A newsletter writer's brutally honest growth advice ft. Evan Armstrong

**Evan Armstrong** (0:00)
You come to me to find out what news actually matters.

**Francis Zierer** (0:02)
You are a guy who is paid to be prickly and opinionated.

**Evan Armstrong** (0:06)
I wanted this product to exist, no one was going to make it, and so I had to do it myself.

**Francis Zierer** (0:11)
What is the ethos that's missing from the rest of tech media that The Leverage pervades?

**Evan Armstrong** (0:15)
Their job is to make you feel something, I view my job is to make you do something. If my accuracy rate dipped under 85%, I would destroy this publication and shoot myself into the sun. You shouldn't trust your mind to people who are frequently incorrect.

**Francis Zierer** (0:28)
Tell me more about your audience.

**Evan Armstrong** (0:29)
People who can sign million-dollar checks is the type of reader that I want.

**Francis Zierer** (0:35)
Welcome back to The Creator Spotlight Podcast. My name is Francis Zierer, and today we're speaking with Evan Armstrong, creator of The Leverage, a newsletter covering the tech industry with roughly 35,000 subscribers. Business is made up of some paid subscriptions, some advertising, and a consulting business. So good episode. Evan is a really smart, articulate guy. I enjoyed speaking to him. I think you will enjoy listening.
You never thought of yourself as a writer, you told me. And then in 2020, I believe it was, you were working at Substack. You just worked there for a few months, but you started writing to sort of dog food the product. And people liked it. I think you wrote about dating app ethics. People like it. You say, oh, well, I guess I'm okay at this. I keep doing it. Start with this sort of spark to flame of you starting to write and then that sort of absorbing your professional identity or becoming your professional identity.

**Evan Armstrong** (1:28)
Yeah, I mean, I mostly thought of myself actually as a math guy. Like I spent most of my day in spreadsheets and doing analysis.
And like I never sent anything, wrote anything longer than like a 50 word email.
It just wasn't what I did. And then while I was at Substack, like you said, I just dog food the product and I found out I had this secret talent that was so secret I didn't even know about it. And I could write and people liked what I said. And looking back now that I'm multiple years into this journey, and I read my first few essays are really bad, but they felt really good at the time.
And so now, like it just kind of took over my life. And I found that after I finished my day shift doing startups, I would be writing until one or two in the morning. And I realized that this was like what I much rather be doing than doing startups.

**Francis Zierer** (2:15)
Okay. And you started a newsletter and sold it. What was that newsletter? And then, I mean, kind of the next part of the chapters and you're at Every for a few years, is the newsletter you started?
Did you sell it to Every?

**Evan Armstrong** (2:27)
Yeah.
So it was called, man, I'm so embarrassed by what I made at this point in my writing career, but it was called People Speak. And it was just like me grappling with the implications of technology being the most powerful sector in the world. It was more sociological and theoretical than like what my current writing is, which is much more pragmatic. And so that was like what I was doing and blogging with on the side. And then I met the guys at Every, I met Nathan and Dan, and kind of conversations just progressed. They said, why don't you do what you're doing and come here internally? I had written a guest post for Every that had done quite well.
And they're like, oh, actually, we think this guy has the juice. And so they like bought this publication. I mean, it was very small, but it was just like a little aqua hire to bring me in. And then I was just there for the next couple of years through every twist and turn at Every.

**Francis Zierer** (3:22)
So it was basically like a small signing bonus, just come on, come work for us.

**Evan Armstrong** (3:25)
Yeah, yeah. It's not like it's, when you hear acquisition, you think Lambos, you should more think like I got fancy Mexican to celebrate. You know, like it was not a big deal. It was more just them taking a bet on me as this very unproven writing talent.

**Francis Zierer** (3:43)
And so- What year was that? How many years into you writing was that?