Yo! Welcome to The Reeder Newsletter, where you get actionable tips and strategies for creating memorable content every Saturday.

First time reading? Subscribe here to get future sends.

I’ve seen it at every company I’ve worked at.

It’s easy to blame sales, pricing, or timing. But the real reason? They built trust before we showed up. By the time we entered the conversation, buyers had already made up their minds.

That's the latency problem. I'm unpacking in my 15-minute talk "Win the Market Before They're Ready to Buy" — part of Influ2's free live event on May 6th.

You'll learn:

Register here →

Most founders and CMOs write board updates for investors.

I write mine for you.

Every quarter, I pull back the curtain — real numbers, real decisions, real lessons. The same way I'd present to a board of directors.

If you're reading this, you're on the board. You've backed this business with your attention, trust, and sometimes your wallet. So here's your quarterly update.

Ready? Let's ride 🌊

Every week I'd open my newsletter platform and check the subscriber count. It was almost always flat or down. As a marketer who teaches audience growth for a living, that stings in a unique way — because I know how to grow. I've done it over and over. And I believe it's one of the most important parts of a healthy marketing strategy.

But mine wasn't growing.

The honest reason is simple: The business is doing well. Really welI.

When deals are sitting right in front of me, my own audience growth goes in the backseat. Sales are immediate. Audience growth is a long game. And I only have so much time and energy. So something had to change.

Then I went to Dubai for the 1 Billion Follower Summit.

I saw the biggest creators in the world with millions of followers. I felt outclassed and out of place.

But then I noticed what most of them didn’t have — leverage.

I have the expertise and credibility. I’ve got a track record of undeniable results for high-paying executives at scale. I have inbound leads, strong revenue, and an established name in B2B marketing. I have leverage that most creators in that room would trade for.

What I don't have — yet — is the distribution to match it.

On the flight home, I got honest with myself. Distribution isn't a vanity metric. It's a moat. An engaged audience makes everything easier: better clients, higher price points, bigger brand deals, more stages. In a world where AI is commoditizing knowledge faster than anyone's ready for, audience is the thing that survives. And it can’t be bought.

I want The Reeder to last my lifetime. I don't want it to die while I'm still alive.

That's when I finally admitted it: I can't grow The Reeder the way I want all by myself.

So I had to choose:

Option 1: Keep doing what I'm doing. Grow slowly, protect my time, accept the ceiling.

Option 2: Build a team, invest in the channels, and accelerate growth.

Option 2 was the only one I could live with.

Ambition is a helluva drug.

Q1 bookings: 84% to goal

A miss by all accounts.

But, an expected one.

I’ve learned that selling marketing services is a seasonal game because budgets in B2B don't release on January 1st. They trickle out through February and March as leadership finalizes priorities and unlocks spend. Which means Q1 isn't really a sales quarter — it's a mindshare quarter. The whole point of my 95-5 content system is to be the first call when that budget is released.

And that's exactly what happened.

Five leads came in during one week in February. Two of them opened the conversation the same way: "Budget just got approved. You were the first person I called." That's not luck. That's 365 days of showing up compounding into a one-call close.

By March 31st — the last day of Q1 — we were already at 82% of our Q2 booking goal.

The quarter wasn't slow, it was seasonal. There's a difference.

I'm not going to pretend I was actively chasing these numbers in Q1.

The honest truth: I hadn't built the engine yet.

You can't drive a car you haven't assembled. Q1 was about getting the team, the systems, and the strategy in place so that starting Q2, we're actually running.

So treat these numbers as a baseline — not a report card.

Part of me looks at those numbers and feels the gap between where I am and where I know I can be.

The other part thinks about how good it's going to feel in nine months when I look back at this as the starting point. Both feelings are useful. One keeps me hungry. The other keeps me patient.

55.5% open rate on a flat list is a signal worth paying attention to. The audience is engaged, but my reach just needs to catch up.

On LinkedIn impressions: the competitive side of me wants that number over a million. But the honest answer is the impressions were enough to drive the lead flow that mattered. Vanity metrics don't close deals. Mindshare does.

YouTube is a fresh start by design. We made a deliberate call to launch a new personal brand channel — Devin Reed — separate from The Reeder. I'll be honest: it's a decision I haven't fully decided was the right one yet.

Starting from zero when you already have credibility elsewhere is humbling in a specific way. But I believe the long-term architecture is right. Phase 1 is building the foundation. The numbers will look small. That's part of the bet.

Instagram and TikTok are early. Q1 was mostly dabbling. Q2 will be about performance.

My CMO at Gong, Udi, taught me something I've carried ever since: "I hire people who are better than me at something, then I get out of their way."

So I did.

Colin came on in Q4 as my brand and social strategist. He's given me the confidence and creative direction to fully lean into my identity as a creator — not just a consultant who posts on LinkedIn. That mindset shift has been as valuable as any content we've made.

Share Your Genius — partnering with Rachel and the team allowed me to offload all media operations and production. I set the vision, they pressure-test the strategy, and they handle execution. That's how I went from a LinkedIn newsletter with sporadic videos to a real multimedia strategy. Thought partner in the front, production team in the back.

Kristin is the newest addition. Editorial direction, content repurposing, newsletter, and LinkedIn growth. She's the engine behind turning my content vault into a system — and the reason the Beehiiv migration actually got done (did you notice??)

Shot Ready Playbook
Dubai humbled me. I was surrounded by world-class creators who were shooting constantly — high conviction, no friction, immediate execution.

But I was…fumbling, unprepared, and missing moments I'll never get back.

So instead of shying away, I built a system for it. The Shot Ready Playbook is a complete guide for planning, recording, and publishing content while traveling — equipment, formats, workflow, and all.

The name comes from basketball: be ready to score before the opportunity arrives.

I used it for the first time in April at two live events. The content is coming to your feeds next week — you'll see exactly what it produces.

Full story and public access coming soon.

The System

Before Q1, The Reeder's marketing stopped when I stopped. If I was on a client call, nothing was being created. If I was traveling, nothing was being published. Everything depended on me having a free moment.

That's not a marketing strategy. That's a bottleneck with a newsletter.

Now the team is producing content and building systems in tandem — with or without me in the room. That's the real shift. Not any single hire or any single tool. Marketing that compounds while I'm busy doing everything else.

Here's what I'm publicly committing to. Which means you can hold me accountable.

Playmakers launches. Bi-weekly deep-dive content breakdowns — written and video. Every other Wednesday, one play, fully broken down. Reply to this email if you want early access.

YouTube phase 2. More output, more consistency, more reps. The foundation is set. Now we build.

Newsletter growth becomes a real priority. Beehiiv migration is done. Monthly lead magnets start in Q2. The goal isn't just subscribers — it's the right system to attract the right people consistently.

Instagram and LinkedIn stay consistent. Not chasing virality. Building the habit of showing up with quality every week on every channel.

The AI experiment continues. Building real AI workflows into how I run this business — not just prompting. I'll share what I find.

For the first time, I'm setting public Q2 marketing goals. They drop at the top of the next memo. Consider that a commitment.

Every week I used to open my newsletter platform and watch that subscriber count sit flat. That number used to sting.

Now it's just the starting line.

Holler at you next Saturday,
Devin

PS: It took me 2.5 hours to write and edit this newsletter.

If you like today’s post, you can help me grow by forwarding it to one person with a quick “You’ll love this newsletter. Totally worth signing up.”

Pen by Devin Reed​
​Founder, The Reeder​

Follow me on LinkedIn | YouTube | Instagram | TikTok

Note: These are affiliate links, but I would recommend them without the commission.