The Self-Liquidating Flywheel Every Newsletter Operator Should Know
And how a solopreneur gained 18k subscribers — and $1.2M in revenue.
We (Chenell & myself) interviewed Olly Richards on the Growth In Reverse podcast and just published that episode this week.
Here’s why we wanted to chat with Olly:
He founded StoryLearning.com in 2013.
He grew it to a $10M online business with very little overhead.
He now only works ~4 days per month in it.
Giving him time to build a personal brand at OllyRichards.co (launched in 2023).
Where he built a 118-page book (in a Google Doc) about how he built StoryLearning.com — and it’s FREE by the way.
The Google Doc helped Olly grow his newsletter to over 18k subscribers.
That same lead magnet has indirectly led to $1.2M in revenue for his personal brand.
All this is overwhelmingly impressive.
It’s clear when talking to him that Olly is smart, entrepreneurial, and disciplined. He did a lot of things the “right” way. But there’s one key part of Olly’s story that’s living rent-free in my mind.
And it’s something I believe strongly that newsletter operators — including myself — need to learn.
What is it?
It’s how Olly paid for the distribution of his 118-page Google Doc and grew his newsletter, in essence, for free to 18k+ subscribers in ~18 months.
And it’s called a Self-Liquidating Flywheel (or SLF for short).
But before I get too deep into the SLF, you should understand the potential impact this can have on your business.
Spending Your Subscribers’ $100k To Grow
Olly readily shares that he used paid growth (over $100k!) to market the free Google Doc, and grow his newsletter audience.
That’s right — he didn’t market his newsletter. He promoted a free resource.
You might be asking why the hell you’d spend $100k marketing a free resource 🤔
He marketed a free resource because it was the Trojan horse into his ecosystem. And he knew anyone who found the resource valuable would be an ideal fit to work with him in some capacity.
Olly shares in one post how he spent over $100,000 marketing the Doc.
Nearly $50k was spent sponsoring other newsletters (“Sponsorships”)
Nearly $7k was spent on Twitter & Meta ads
$thousands spent on other paid efforts to push the Google Doc
Olly shared the image below in one of his blog posts about this.
“Still, $100k is a lot of money. Most people can’t afford that!”
That’s right. That’s why you use other people’s money to fund it. And you do that with the Self-Liquidating Flywheel.
The Self-Liquidating Flywheel
Back when I was working at SparkLoop, we interviewed Michael Houck of Houck’s Newsletter. He’s grown his newsletter to over 75k subscribers, mostly through paid growth & newsletter acquisitions.
Michael said something in that interview that stuck with me (I’m paraphrasing):
“Newsletter operators need to run their newsletters more like startup founders.”
What he meant was that operators should reinvest all net profits back into growth: Pay your bills first, then put everything back into the growth machine. Michael was doing that at the time with beehiiv Boosts & SparkLoop’s Partner Program.
And Olly was doing the same thing with his paid growth efforts — except he was using multiple channels to a more lucrative offer.
He’d created a “workshop” called the 7 Figure Marketing Stack.
Olly ran the 5-day paid workshop, recorded the whole thing, and built a sales page for it, selling it as an “evergreen” workshop.
Suddenly he had something to sell to newly acquired subscribers. Any purchases would help offset the cost of acquiring them.
And like magic…
A percentage of those subscribers converted and purchased the evergreen workshop. And the shiny red cherry on top was that it got to the point where the conversions were enough to cover his acquisition costs.
Then, Olly would use that revenue to buy ads to promote his Google Doc case study.
And that, my friends, is the self-liquidating flywheel.
Acquire subscribers → sell them a valuable evergreen resource → use revenue fund paid acquisition
Don’t Just Sell Anything — Sell What Complements the JTBD of Your Newsletter
You don’t need a full-blown course like Olly to build a self-liquidating flywheel. You just need a Self-Liquidating Offer (SLO) that helps your readers do what they already came to you to do.
A Newsletter’s Job-To-Be-Done: 3 Main Buckets
Most newsletters fall into one of three Jobs-To-Be-Done buckets:
Educate — ex. teaching people how to grow an audience, invest, run a business, learn French
Inform — ex. curating niche news, industry updates, popular trends
Entertain — ex. commentary/opinion pieces, stories, memes, gossip rags
TIP: Some of the most popular newsletters combine multiple JTBD elements; for example, MarketBriefs does a great job keeping readers informed on daily finance news while adding humor as entertainment value.
So what does a revenue-generating asset for each of these look like?
SLO #1: for an Education-model newsletter
Reader’s motivation: “Teach me how to do this faster/better”
Relevant asset: Template, checklist, swipe files, mini courses, toolkits
If you write a how-to newsletter on solopreneurship, your SLO could be a $17 bundle of business idea frameworks.
SLO #2: for an Information-model newsletter
Reader’s motivation: “Keep me up-to-date/ahead of the curve”
Relevant asset: Deep dives, exclusive reports, curated databases
If you run a curated media industry newsletter, maybe it’s a paid directory of podcast booking agents.
SLO #3: for an Entertainment-model newsletter
Reader’s motivation: “Give me more of what I love/hit me with that dopamine”
Relevant asset: Bonus content, behind-the-scenes footage, merch, membership, patronage
If your newsletter is built on humor or storytelling, offer access to a behind-the-scenes micro-podcast or bonus content.
It’s important to remember in all of this the win with your SLO.
The win here is that you’re not asking your audience to change behavior. You’re just extending what they already value, and then monetizing it.
The obvious caveat here is whatever you are charging for needs to be valuable and solves a problem your audience is facing. I won’t get into selling vitamins vs. painkillers in this article, but remember people are most inclined to pay for a solution to a painful problem.
How Do I Build My Own SLF?
Let’s do a quick review based on Olly’s system.
There are three main components:
Valuable, Free Lead Magnet: Olly built an extremely high-value resource as a free lead magnet: his 118-page Google Doc Case Study (of how he built his $10M business)
A helpful SFO as an upsell: Olly sold a live workshop to his audience, recorded the whole thing, and packaged it into his SFO (the 7 Figure Marketing Stack course)
Paid acquisition via relevant channels: Olly bought ads in newsletters and on social to market his lead magnet (118-pg. Case Study).
So the steps are pretty clear, but let’s review them for how you can replicate the SLF yourself.
Step 1: Create an aligned, lightweight digital product
Something that adds value, builds trust, and complements your newsletter’s JTBD. It could be:
A bundle of templates or swipe files
A short email course or challenge
A curated list or directory
Bonus content or behind-the-scenes stories
Step 2: Build a simple sales funnel
Drive traffic (organic and/or paid) to a free lead magnet
Pitch your SLO on the thank-you page and/or in welcome email sequence
Keep it evergreen and low-lift
Step 3: Reinvest any revenue into paid growth
Start small.
A bonfire starts with a spark. You need to spark paid growth with an initial investment.
So test newsletter sponsorships or Meta ads with a tight audience. You’re not trying to scale to $1M — you’re trying to break even (or close to it).
That’s it, that’s the flywheel.
Wrapping Up
Most newsletter operators will hit a ceiling with organic growth.
That’s just the reality in 2025 and the state of social media.
But if you want to keep growing — and you want to fund that growth without draining your savings — a self-liquidating flywheel might be the smartest play you’re not using yet.
More stuff from me.
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This is an excellent write up. Well done.