Interview Date: May 14, 2023
Table of Content
CREATOR INTERVIEW
Extra Focus is a Substack featured publication focusing on living with ADHD and reaching 59,000 subscribers every week!
Its creator Jesse J. Anderson creates great content on different channels about ADHD as a real ADHD advocate. In addition to his newsletter, he runs two podcasts and has a book that will come out later this year.
But he says that his newsletter is BY FAR the most important piece of the puzzle.
In today’s interview we talked about his whole newsletter process and how he built such a huge audience in 3 years.
Let’s start!
NEWSLETTER IDENTITY CARD
TOOL STACK
- ESP → Substack
- Writing → Substack, Craft
- Planning → Notion, Notes, Things
- Design → Figma
- Growth → X, Instagram, Youtube
- Payment → Stripe
- Brainstorming → ChatGPT
MEET THE CREATOR
Welcome Jesse. Let’s start with getting to know you.
Hey there, I’m Jesse J. Anderson. I’m a writer, speaker, designer, developer, and an ADHD advocate. I myself was diagnosed with ADHD in 2017, which completely changed my whole perspective on my life.
Finally, there was an answer that explained so much about why I always struggled with procrastination, why I was always late to everything and seemed to have no sense of time, and why any work that wasn’t interesting or urgent felt literally impossible to accomplish. No wonder I could never seem to reach that “potential” my teachers always talked about—I had a different type of brain and no one had told me!
In early 2021, I started writing about my journey with ADHD in small atomic essays and my newsletter, Extra Focus. Later that year, I started working on my book by the same name, Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD which is coming out later this year. Along the way I’ve worked on various other projects too, but the book and newsletter are currently my primary focus.
I also host two different podcasts, both started in 2022. ADHD Nerds is currently on a pause between seasons as I scramble to finish my book, but I’m still recording weekly episodes of The Weekly Build with my friend and fellow ADHD developer, Marie Ng, where we discuss the different apps and other projects we’re building.
START
What is Extra Focus all about?
Extra Focus is my weekly newsletter where I share strategies and talk about my personal experience of living with ADHD. It’s a place where people with ADHD can feel understood and validated by seeing that they aren’t alone with the ways ADHD affects them.
Why and how did you decide to start the Extra Focus newsletter in the first place?
Back in 2021, I joined the Ship 30 for 30 cohort which is a daily writing challenge to write an atomic essay every day. That’s the first time I really started writing about the things I’d learned about ADHD (I was diagnosed in 2017 and had been doing a lot of research and therapy to better understand how ADHD had been impacting my life).
This was my first foray into regular content creation, and it just seemed to make sense that I could use a newsletter as a way of letting people know about the essays I’d written that week.
Can you take us through the process of creating the first version of your newsletter?
I remember at the time I was very stressed about what the format would be. It felt like I needed to figure it all out from the first issue and that it would be permanent for forever.
I talked with friends about what regular sections I should include and settled on this format of having a quick intro that would link to my latest essays, a reminders section, a feature piece, and then ending with a quote of the week.
I used Substack to start because it was essentially just signing up and then writing a blog post so it was very little setup.
After awhile, my intro section kept getting longer and I struggled to find the best content for the other sections, so I moved to a simpler method of just having a main section at the beginning, some resource links, and then ending with some embedded tweets.
You have a huge audience on different channels. (Podcasts, Youtube, Instagram, X etc.)
How did you start building your audience? When did you add the newsletter to your channel mix?
Thanks! I’m really lucky that I started my newsletter basically at the beginning of my journey. It is BY FAR the most important piece of the puzzle.
“I’d rather lose all of my followers in every other channel than lose my newsletter community.”
Outside of the newsletter, I mostly started just by slowly building an audience on X by first sharing all of the atomic essays I wrote for Ship30for30, and then writing more quippy quotable tweets that have sort of become what I’m mostly known for.
I try to write tweets that are evergreen, so that they can be valuable pieces of content to come back to in the future to get ideas from my own work.
A lot of it was just repetition, and learning from what connected with people and what didn’t. The great thing about X is that you usually get pretty quick feedback on whether an idea is good or not. And when it’s not a good idea, it just sort of disappears in the feed and doesn’t really hang around. So for most of the last couple of years, it’s been a great way for me to test out ideas and ultimately become a better writer.
Growth has definitely been exponential. Getting from 1,000 to 10,000 felt a lot harder than getting from 10,000 to 100,000.
GROWTH
How did you gain your first 1000 subscribers?
I created a small pdf that was a few of my short essays on ADHD put together. I called it my ADHD Strategy Guide and I started plugging it on X and TikTok.
Lead magnets often can result in a lower quality audience, but I think my content was so similar and people that enjoyed the guide were hungry for more, so it turned out to be a really successful strategy for me, especially in the beginning.
Reaching 59,000+ subscribers is a huge success. Which growth channels do you mainly use?
Well, it used to be X. I loved using X and it was an effective place to grow my newsletter. It’s where the majority of my subscribers have come from.
That’s unfortunately changed a lot in the past 6 months. I find myself using X less and less, and the engagement has dropped to a fraction of what it was previously.
Luckily, Substack has been a great move for me and I am seeing a lot of growth directly from there.
I also get some incoming growth from Instagram and YouTube, but those are much smaller channels for newsletter growth. I’m hoping to ramp up my YouTube content later this year though, and more directly talk about my newsletter to encourage more subscribers.
Regarding growth efforts, what would you do differently if you had a chance to start over?
Honestly, I don’t know if I would do anything differently! I’ve been very fortunate over the past couple of years. Maybe stick with Substack from the beginning? I started with Substack and then switch to ConvertKit when I hit 1,000 subscribers.
ConvertKit was great for some things, but I never really pursued sponsorships much so it was ultimately a pretty large expense over the long run. I’ve been back with Substack since January this year and have been loving it.
What are your plans to continue growing?
I’m really curious to see where some of these new social media networks take us. Substack Notes is really interesting since it is directly tied to the platform I use, which makes it easy for someone to subscribe if they find me there.
I’ve recently started using Bluesky (sorry I don’t have any invite codes to share) and I am really intrigued there. It has a lot of the energy that early X had, with a lot of third-party developers getting involved which is exciting. I don’t know if it will have a large enough audience to make an impact long-term, but it is exciting.
Later this year I’ll be releasing my book (which borrows the name from my newsletter), Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD. I’m really hoping that will lead to some growth as I spread the word about the book and start doing more podcast interviews and work like that.
MONETIZATION
How do you make money with your newsletter? Can you share the breakdown of your revenue streams?
Currently, the only way I make money is through paid subscriptions via Substack. I used to do sponsored ads but I honestly found it to be stressful and difficult and ultimately didn’t pay very well (despite having a large audience).
It was difficult to find good sponsors because I was picky about who I used—there’s a lot of sketchy stuff in the mental health space and I wanted to be extra careful about anything I put my recommendation on.
I may do sponsorships again in the future, but for now having a paid plan has worked out great!
Can you elaborate a bit on how you start and build paid subscriptions?
It’s funny – when I switched back to Substack in January I wasn’t even planning to do paid subscriptions at all! I was excited about the recommendation network and chat features, it just felt like they were innovating in the space and building more community-focused features which I was excited about. It didn’t hurt that it was free.
When I set up my account, they had a pledge feature which seemed pretty cool. But after messing around with it a bit, I ultimately found the pledge feature to be a bit confusing and not a great user experience. So I figured “let’s just turn on paid plans and see what happens.”
It maybe wasn’t the best plan because I didn’t really do any sort of big launch or anything (which Substack recommends), but enough people signed up initially that got me excited about the potential. And then I started building the plane as it was flying, figuring out what I could do to make the paid plan worth it for those people that were already started paying.
What do you offer to paid subscribers?
I’m experimenting with this a lot!
When I first started accepting paid subscriptions, I didn’t want to add any work that would feel like a burden if I got only a few paid subscribers. I had that problem with Patreon where some people were paying me money—which I was super thankful for and I wanted to provide good content/bonuses/etc for them!
But ultimately, there weren’t that many patrons so the total amount of money coming in was small enough that it was hard to justify spending much time there. I ultimately decided to cancel my Patreon because of this.
So when I launched paid subscriptions with my newsletter, I basically said subscribers would get full access to the archive of old issues, and an occasional extra issue for paid supporters only. Thankfully, it’s been much more successful than the Patreon ever was so I’ve been able to dedicate more time to doing additional content for them.
Roughly 3 times a month I do an additional newsletter for paid supporters, usually this is a Reader Q&A, Community Thread (aka discussion prompt), or Resource Roundup (collection of ADHD resources). The Reader Q&As are usually pay-walled so that half the questions are free for anyone, and half are for paid supporters only.
I’ve also just recently started experimenting with adding a small “Shiny Objects” section (aka links to interesting videos, articles, etc that I find interesting) to the end of the main newsletter, and having just that section paywalled for paid supporters only.
My guess is that this will all look very different 6 months from now as I continue to learn what my subscribers and supporters find to be most valuable!
Any other plans regarding the monetization of your newsletter in the future?
Once I finish my book, I’d love to do something like offer a signed copy to anyone that signs up for the Founder’s plan. Something to entice people to pay for the top tier.
Currently the Founder plan doesn’t offer any additional benefits other than just giving people a way to further support me and the work I’m doing.
I might consider doing future sponsors if it makes sense, but that whole process is so deeply unfun that I might just keep delaying it indefinitely.
E-MAIL SERVICE PROVIDER
Why did you choose Substack? Pros and cons?
They are the one platform that really seems to be innovating in the space while everyone else plays catchup. And they really seem to value their writers and are continuing to focus new features on how to make the experience better for writers. I love that.
I’m not sure I ever would’ve gone paid otherwise, but it was so easy with Substack that I was able to turn it on just to try it out, and the rest is history. And since it all goes through Stripe, I can technically move to another platform and keep those subscriptions active.
SYSTEM & PRODUCTIVITY
What is your typical weekly process from creating to releasing a new issue?
I used to spend hours and hours on a single issue. It was very stressful and time-consuming. These days, I practice Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion.”
I set a timer for 30 minutes and write the whole thing in that time.Occasionally I’ll go a bit longer, especially if it’s for a bigger topic or something that requires more extensive research.
But since I know that I’ll write it quickly, I end up thinking about it leading up to my writing time. I’ll often have my topic or general idea decided the week before and I just sort of mull on the idea throughout the week, so by the time I sit down I already have a good idea of what I’m going to say despite not having written a word yet.
I’ve started using the Things app as a place to store any other resources that I’m considering sharing that week, either as a Shiny Object or as something like further reading for the topic I’m discussing.
What is your weekly content distribution system?
Sometimes I will convert the main content into a X thread, but outside of that I don’t really have a regular weekly rhythm for promotion. This is something I’m hoping to get better at this year. Particularly for places like Instagram where I do a terrible job of promoting the newsletter, despite it being my largest audience.
NEWSLETTER EXPERIENCE
How did writing Extra Focus contribute to your life professionally & personally?
Writing Extra Focus helped confirm the value I have to add to the world. It’s helped me better understand myself and I’ve heard from so many people that it’s made a huge impact in their life. It’s incredibly fulfilling!
What is the most challenging part of writing a newsletter and how do you handle it?
The hardest part for me is just the self-doubt and constantly second-guessing yourself. I often feel like something I’m writing is terrible or is going to feel to obvious or too personal and uninteresting to my readers—but I often I find those are the issues that people connect to the most!
I think I deal with it by just “trusting the process” of writing consistently every week, even when it feels like I don’t have much to say.
Can you tell us one mistake you made during your newsletter journey?
Spending too much time working on the things I don’t enjoy and am not very good at. I spent so much energy trying to find good sponsors for the newsletter, and I just hated every minute of it. Not to mention, I was terrible at it! It was such a drain on me that I wanted to quit the newsletter entirely.
Thankfully, I kept going and by moving to Substack and turning on paid subscriptions, it’s taken away that pain and wasted energy and I’m back in the place of loving the newsletter again.
Everything I do is about energy management. If I don’t enjoy something then I need to fix the process or I’m inevitably headed toward burn out.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned over the past couple of years is trusting my intuition on that. If I can feel like I’m not enjoying something, it’s time to get out and rip the bandaid off quick. No point in trying to force it once you realize it’s not going to work.
Just because “everyone else does it this way” doesn’t mean it has to be the way you do it. Trust your gut!
FUTURE
What is next on your newsletter journey? What are your short-term and long-term goals about Extra Focus?
Short-term: Continue to grow and find a good balance between free and paid content. Ideally, most people feel like they are getting a ton of value from the free content, and enough people want to go the extra mile and pay for the paid content to really help sustain the whole thing.
I hate the feeling that people will feel like I’m hiding my best content or something, so that’s a tricky balance I want to figure out.
Long-term: I’ve become really passionate about writing and teaching about ADHD. I would love for this to become sustainable so I could dedicate even more time to it. Right now, in addition to all the ADHD content creation and educational work I do, I have a full-time job which is a job I love and I’m good at.
My long-term goal is that I’m able to sustain myself and my family full-time with the newsletter, youtube, and other work I’m currently doing on the side.
RECOMMENDATIONS
What would it be if you had the right to give one piece of advice to aspiring newsletter creators?
It’s cliche, but just start writing! Make a schedule and stick to it. Find a community and subscribe to each other’s newsletters to encourage that early growth and learn from each other.
What are your favorite newsletters that you can’t wait for the next issue?
I read way too many newsletters and it’s hard to keep track, but a few of my favorites are:
- The Hyphen by Emma Gannon
- Plan Your Next by Nate Kadlac
- Every
FINAL WORDS
Thank you so much for inviting me to chat about this! For anyone that wants to learn more about me or about ADHD, sign up for my newsletter and you’ll also get the free strategy guide I talked about earlier.
I’m also writing a book that should be coming out later this year (you can join the waiting list at extrafocusbook.com).
Thank you so much, Jesse and looking forward to reading your book!
