Don’t stop with the first idea: LeQwane started a resale sneakerhead business before he launched a community for other resellers. Then, he evolved into a newsletter for sneakerheads and sold it in the first year. Now, he operates an agency that teaches others how to create newsletters and use social media.
See social media as a marketing channel: Don’t build on rented land, but use rented land to drive growth. It’s OK to go to social media because that’s where your audience is, but make sure you plan to drive them to a place where you have unrestricted access to them, such as a newsletter list.
Know the value of engagement: The sports media company that bought the Alert Daily newsletter wanted the loyal community, as witnessed by 50% open rates and 4% to 5% click-through rates.

The Story of LeQwane Lynch

LeQwane Lynch has been a sneakerhead for as long as he can remember. He also remembers the exorbitant cost of being a sneakerhead during his teens.

“I realized, being a 16- and 17-year-old kid, that you don’t have enough money to buy the $300 to $400 sneakers. People were buying these shoes for $100 to $200 and selling them to me for $400. Once I figured that out, I bought two pairs of shoes – one to keep and then one to sell.”

He quickly found entrepreneurship was better than keeping the sneakers.

LeQwane also had the advantage of living in New York City, where he could attend new sneaker releases in person and online. He flipped rare and collectible shoes for two years.

Turning sneakers into content business

In 2018, LeQwane realized he could build a business around his sneaker knowledge. With two business partners, he launched a private community called Alerts on Discord to teach people what he knew about the sneakerhead business and share proprietary information about and early access to upcoming releases.

About 1K members paid $30 to $40 a month. Its success stemmed from the strong sense of community and information quality. “We had connections with people at Nike and Adidas who gave us early information on products, which we then delivered to our paying members,” LeQwane says.

Over time, the community morphed into a source for streetwear, collectibles, augmented reality, and electronics. In 2021, membership grew as the pandemic fueled a peak in the resale market. By 2022, the resale market slowed and LeQwane took the opportunity to evaluate the state of his business.

Refocusing on his content tilt for a new venture

LeQwane recognized the community tackled a broader tilt, and he wanted to refocus on its roots – sneakers. While the resale community was small (he estimates 150K in the US), the sneaker enthusiast market offered an estimated 10M potential readers.

“I looked at all the top sneaker blogs and media companies, aggregated data, and realized there was a much larger audience interested in sneakers beyond just reselling,” LeQwane explains.

Around this time, Milk Road and Beehiiv were gaining momentum along with big name newsletters like Morning Brew. LeQwane wondered how he could capitalize on this momentum.

“Things like [newsletters] were popping off and I was just playing around with the idea that I could take some of the information inside the community and provide it to your average sneakerhead that doesn’t normally have access to some of the proprietary information and well-organized information,” he says.

Up until then, sneaker newsletters and blogs typically shared basic information and a rarely updated release calendar, even though that could change from day to day.

At the end of 2022, LeQwane launched the Alerts Daily newsletter targeting the everyday sneaker enthusiast to provide information previously only available to resellers in private communities.

Explosive newsletter growth

Launching the newsletter required LeQwane to learn email marketing and execute daily content creation. “If I could get 80% of the people who signed up to say they loved it, I would continue,” he recalls. “The second goal was, ‘OK, if I can get 1.5K subscribers in a month, I will continue.’”

LeQwane smashed these goals in the first month, gaining 3K subscribers and a 95% satisfaction rate.

LeQwane began to wind down the private community and focused on the newsletter. By March 2023, the newsletter was gaining 2K to 4K subscribers each month. Engagement was high – consistent 50% open rates and 4% to 5% click-through rates.

The growth came from LeQwane’s strategic use of social media and short-form videos, including Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to drive traffic to the newsletter. Some of his videos earned over 1M views.

“We were growing anywhere from 75 to 150 subscribers a day completely organically through Instagram and TikTok,” LeQwane explains.

Within six months of going full force with the social media, he had turned his 50K combined social media followers to over 300K and grew his newsletter to 20K subscribers.

Partnership that led to the sale

Running a newsletter in the growth phase is not profitable. LeQwane saved revenue from his private resale community and his own resale businesses to give him a runway to grow the newsletter. But after six months, he knew he needed to monetize it.

He added a sponsor slot for each newsletter edition, looking for strategic partners with whom he could develop long-term relationships. That was especially important given the relatively few companies serving the sneaker industry.

One newsletter partnership quickly developed into something more. Overtime, a sports media company, took notice of LeQwane’s organic growth on social media and the newsletter’s increasing influence.

“They came to me with the idea of expanding what I was doing but with the resources and reach that a larger company like Overtime could provide,” LeQwane recalls.

Overtime had 3M followers on social media, but its newsletter, which had been publishing a year longer than the Alerts Daily. They wanted to acquire it and work with LeQwane to make a bigger platform.

LeQwane weighed the pros and cons of selling his newsletter. On one hand, the newsletter had become successful, generated revenue, and met his beginning goals. On the other hand, the grueling grind of publishing a daily newsletter started taking its toll. He found himself excited to explore other options.

The selling process

Formal sales negotiations involved multiple rounds of discussions. The newsletter’s valuation reflected more than total subscribers because its impressive open and click-through rates indicated a strong, loyal audience.

LeQwane agreed to remain for a few months after the sale to help the company integrate his growth strategies and maintain the community engagement that made Alerts Daily so successful.

The sale was finalized in July 2023, just 11 months after the newsletter launch. While the financial details remain private, LeQwane credits his growth metrics, loyal audience, and content niche as reasons for such a quick and profitable sale.

Post-sale plans

After his post-sale consulting ended, LeQwane took a month off, and when he returned, he reflected on his next venture. He realized he could teach his growth strategies using short-form video to other entrepreneurs and newsletter operators.

LeQwane launched Reach, a social media and newsletter growth agency. He works with newsletter operators who are interested in developing a social media presence but do not have the budget to hire a team.

Advice for content entrepreneurs

LeQwane has a few tips for his fellow content entrepreneurs:

Set up both personal and professional social media. That way, when you sell your content business, including its social media accounts, you still have your personal channels.
Build strategic partnerships. What does not seem like an opportunity now may present itself down the road. Look for how you can help your partner meet their goals or solve pain points – theirs or their audience’s.
Monitor your subscriber list often. Bots and Apple privacy tools can inflate your open rate. LeQwane often created segments to get a more accurate assessment of open rates. Don’t fool yourself or your potential sponsors and partners with inflated metrics. Don’t be afraid to purge inactive subscribers from your list and run re-engagement campaigns to keep your list and metrics healthy.

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