Austin Scholar #121: How to help your kid start a newsletter (or something like it)
& why I started Austin Scholar
Hey, y'all!
This week from Austin Scholar...
Austin’s Anecdote: Why I started Austin Scholar
How to help your kid start a newsletter (or something like it)
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been up to…
I am so incredibly lucky to be able to go on this trip with my friends and spend time with them before we go off to opposite sides of the country. This has been such a beautiful experience and I truly do have the best friends in the world. It’s going to be hard when we don’t see each other every day.
We’ve been planning group FaceTime calls and private SnapChat stories to keep each other updated, though, so we’re preparing for it. Because of our shared educational journey, I believe that we’ll be uniquely bonded forever.
Austin’s Anecdote: Why I started Austin Scholar
Since today’s newsletter is about how to help your kid start a newsletter, I feel that there’s no better way to start than with a trip down memory lane about why I started a newsletter of my own.
I’ve talked about bits and pieces of the story, but here’s the full thing for you to (hopefully) be inspired by:
As you know, Alpha High’s defining characteristic is that, because of 2 Hour Learning, students are able to spend their afternoons working on Masterpiece projects – 4-year-long passion projects with goals that are as impressive as being an Olympian.
For the first few months, I’d thought I wanted to do my Masterpiece on mental health, as it was the topic that had taken up most of the last year of my life.
But as I got further and further into the planning process, I realized that thinking about mental health and struggling teens all of the time made me sad. And I didn’t want to be sad.
So I was back at square one: with no idea what to build for my project.
But then I did the Ikigai exercise during one of my afternoons at school.
The first step of the exercise is to think about something you love. For me, I immediately thought of writing. I’d been writing short stories and half-finished novels since 4th grade, and I didn’t want to stop. Writing is definitely one of the things I love most.
The second step is to think about something you’re good at. For me, that’s education. At this point, I’d been on an alternative education path since the fourth grade and had been using online apps since I started learning math. I knew a lot about education and helping teenagers – arguably, more than most parents.
The third step is to identify something the world needs. If you ask me, the world needs a change in the education system. We can be doing so much more to help (and actually educate) kids than we’re doing now.
The final step is to ask yourself: what’s something you can get paid for? In my case, that looked like writing about the education system from the perspective of a teen, and publishing it as a paid Substack newsletter.
I’ve been able to create my unique perspective from this Ikigai model – I’m a teenager writing about education, teaching kids life skills and mental health. After I had my core idea down, I was able to take David Perell’s Write of Passage course to enhance my writing skills and get me started publishing on Substack.
And the rest is history.
How to help your kid start a newsletter (or something like it)
This is my guide to help your kid kickstart their own newsletter brand (or something similar to that – this also applies to a YouTube channel, blog, or any other content brand):
Why?
First off, you might be wondering why you would even want this in the first place. Well, alongside the intellectual benefits of improved writing and research skills, having a newsletter looks excellent on college applications.
It shows dedication and persistence, deep interest in a topic, and a brand that positions you as an expert to others.
For me, Austin Scholar is so incredibly fulfilling – I know I’m spending my time in a way that helps other people, which definitely makes me happier.
Do the Ikigai exercise
One of the first steps is to figure out what to write about, and the Ikigai exercise is (clearly) what’s worked best for me.
Follow the same steps I did (what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for) to figure out what your perfect topic is.
Create your Substack account and profile
And the fun begins!! Spend some time brainstorming a catchy name for your newsletter, decide if you want to be anonymous, and use your Ikigai exercise to create an engaging bio.
There are a ton of articles out there on how to create an excellent Substack profile, so there are plenty of resources if you get stuck.
Once your account is set up, you can create a logo and design your Substack website to look exactly how you imagined.
HOWEVER, the age requirement to have an account on Substack is 16 years old, so if your kid isn’t that age yet, have them try out beehiiv instead.
Write 5 articles
Just start writing!! You can experiment with different styles and organizations of your newsletter – the goal is to just have fun with it. Especially in the beginning.
Make sure you’re writing something that you could replicate once per week, yet provides value and action items for your readers.
Most importantly, write something that you enjoy writing.
I recommend writing five before you ever publish anything. It may take a few tries, but the idea is to get into the groove of writing and have a structure before you actually publish. That way, once the newsletter launches, you feel more confident and ready to go.
Start posting
Once you’ve written a few articles, it’s time to actually post them!!
Start getting your name out there. Yes, it’s scary, but it’s so, so worth it.
If you’re struggling to actually hit the publish button, create some sort of accountability system. One that’s very effective is to tell your parents the date you’re going to post your first article and come up with some sort of reward for doing so (ex. dinner at your favorite restaurant, buying something from your Amazon cart, or an additional privilege like screen time).
Email it to all of your family and friends
When I was starting Austin Scholar, I individually emailed every single person my mom knew and every person at my school and asked them to check out my newsletter.
Get your core subscribers down quickly so you can start to see the value in what you’re doing and motivate yourself to continue.
Never miss a week
This is the most important step.
If you want to be successful, you can’t miss a week of posting. If you start excusing posts because of one thing going on in your life, it will be easier to excuse posts about a thousand other things.
Stay consistent. Your subscribers are counting on you.
Grow to other platforms
After you’ve found your footing on Substack, it’s time to grow to another platform (such as X or LinkedIn). To truly build an awesome brand, you’ll need to have a presence on multiple social medias so you can saturate your potential audience’s feeds with your name.
You also get different readers (and opportunities!) depending on which platform you use, so you should definitely take advantage of that.
To start posting, you can repurpose your already-written articles and find the punchiest pieces of each one for short-form posts.
Now, maybe your kid isn’t a writer.
That’s okay, too.
You can help them to follow the exact same steps for another platform, like YouTube or TikTok (they can make videos where they don’t have to show their face, if that’s not something they would be interested in). Do the Ikigai exercise, create their profile, make videos, start posting, share with family and friends, never miss a post, and then grow to other platforms.
If they do all of that, they’ll be growing their brand in no time at all.
Scholar’s Sources: What I’ve been up to…
The sci-fi book club is back at it!! I loved the first Foundation book, and the second one lived up to my expectations. This third book really plays on the dichotomy between the “one great man” theory and the core idea of the first novel that the future is determined by the actions of the masses. Foundation and Empire is filled with espionage, lessons on understanding humanity, and fantastic characters like the elusive Mule.
Again, nothing like the TV show, but a super engaging, thought-provoking book that I highly recommend you try out.
My family and I used to watch The Profit together all of the time, but we’d kind of forgotten about it for a bit. But while I was scrolling through our downloaded TV shows trying to figure out what to watch, I came upon The Profit again and was immediately hooked. It’s such a good show – you’ve got all of the business drama along with actually learning things from the host, Marcus Lemonis. Some highlights:
You need to focus on three things: people, process, product
Focus on curating a few signature, high-quality products, not a bunch of products
If you have one excellent product, create a good, better, and best set so you can have a wider market
I’m honestly starting to get a little stressed about college, and the best thing I can prepare for right now (aside from filling out the millions of Stanford forms) is to put together my dorm room!! It’s such a fun, cathartic activity and I love to scroll through the Amazon dorm essentials while I’m watching a show with my family. It’s everything middle school me daydreamed of (aside from the bright turquoise wallpaper and Black Widow posters).
Thanks for reading. Go crush the week! See y'all on Sunday.