Side Project — MIA Newsletter
A weekly newsletter, and the sponsorship and events business built around it
Practical marketing writing shared across five places every week. The newsletter also has paid sponsors and an in person event twice a year.
What It Is
MIA is the newsletter I write every week on Substack, plus everything that's grown up around it: an Academy, a jobs board, a community, live events, and paid sponsors. The newsletter itself is practical marketing writing for marketers, founders, and business owners who want a reliable way to grow.
Why I Built It
I'd been the first marketing hire, or the only marketer, at several startups. I kept running into the same three problems: no reliable numbers to compare myself against other companies, no templates that were actually usable, and too much noisy content to know what was even worth reading. So I started writing down my own playbooks and sharing them, first for myself, then for the thousands of other marketers stuck in the exact same spot.
What It Does
What started as one newsletter grew into several kinds of writing: deep dives, growth case studies, marketer interviews, product launches, and paid Product Showcases for brands that want to reach the list. All of that growth was organic. I grew through the content itself, SEO, webinars, and by borrowing audiences from other communities until they became mine too. It also grew through Substack's own recommendation feature, where other newsletters recommend MIA to their readers and I recommend theirs back, through a WhatsApp community where marketers network and trade feedback, and through Marketing & Chill, MIA's own get-together twice a year in Lagos. That one brings sixty to eighty marketers, founders, and creators into one room for an afternoon.
What It Taught Me
Writing every issue myself taught me how people find and share writing worth linking to. Growing through Substack's recommendation feature and swapping shoutouts with other newsletters taught me how creators actually help each other grow, sending readers back and forth instead of competing for the same ones. Building the WhatsApp community taught me that a newsletter reader and a community member want different things, and you have to build for both on purpose. And co-hosting Marketing & Chill twice a year taught me that some of this only works in person. A room of sixty people in Lagos builds a kind of trust a link in an inbox never will. Selling sponsorships taught me how to run a real sponsorship program end to end: pricing packages fairly, writing down exactly what a sponsor gets, and actually delivering on that promise instead of just taking the money.
Want something like this?
I'm open to full-time or in-house work where you need an ongoing plan or someone to lead marketing for the long term. I also offer specific marketing and sales services for teams that need help with the work itself: marketinginaction.xyz/services.