👋 Hi Reader,

Thank you for your patience over the last 10 days. I was due to write this issue on the morning of Feb 28th from Austin, when I heard about the war breaking out. Since then, I had just one priority: to get to my family back home safely as soon as possible.

I am now back home after a protracted series of flight delays and cancellations, so let me get right to the task at hand: my takeways from NMS 2026.

Pre-event meetup - 25th Feb

I was at this event last year. And I was surprised at the sheer number of unofficial meetups that fellow attendees organize. I had gatecrashed my way into one of these pre-event meetups last time. Meetups like these provided a warm and intimate get-together for attendees to know each other and have unfettered conversations without any agenda. People organizing events, please take notes.

So I landed in Austin way earlier in the afternoon, so I had enough time to grab my badge and be fully energized for these meetups.

​Chenell Basilio (whose Growth In Reverse (GIR) community I am a part of) organized an evening meetup with Dylan Redekop. It happened to be at the same venue (Central District Brewing) as the Beehiiv folks, so I bumped into a lot more people than expected

• Meeting the Khan brothers (Zain and Maaiz): Zain is a partner at SMB Deal Hunter, a media brand and platform which connects 180k+ operators to businesses who are up for buying.
• Meeting Dan Krenitsyn, COO at Beehiiv: Dan was incredibly curious and attentive throughout our entire conversation. We both agreed that B2B media brand-building, newsletters included, is a whole different opportunity waiting to be cracked open.
• Meeting the high-energy group from Community Impact: Marie and Erin were so much fun to speak to.

Side note: The beehiiv team, especially Dan and Sam, are such amazing folks to hang out with!

Talking about fun, its not at every conference that you meet a group of like-minded people to just let yourself loose with.

Chenell and Dylan are some of the most warm folks you will meet, and they also brought their friends along. So I bumped into Thom (with whom I had been in touch since the last event) and Austin (whose work on LinkedIn I have followed for years, but never imagined I would meet IRL).

I would let the picture here talk about the fun we had hanging out at Taqueria De Diez.

Day 1 Highlights

Alright, enough of fun, let’s get down to business. Matt had such a stellar lineup of guests for his talks, and he started the conference with a fiery speaker - Anik Singal. Anik unveiled his entire playbook on how he used AI-driven video content to propel his brand on YT and socials. It was a hot take, but it was the perfect conversation-starter for the conference.

Chenell came up next with a detailed playbook on newsletter growth, and aced it as usual - no biggie.

​Chandler Bolt from SelfPublishing followed that up with such a refreshing take on brand-building, that I spent quite a bit of time reading about his journey (and his book) after. A lot of my friends who took a self-publishing route with their books, might want to take a look at what he is building.

The fireside chats last time were a big draw, and Matt kept this winning format by pulling in Dan, Emily, and Robin for his next talk. The acquisition numbers that the Daily Drop and Industry Dive pays per customer made me sweat. But these folks backed up their high CPAs with detailed monetization plays, which made these numbers seem smaller, compared to their lifetime value payouts.

I figured that there are levels to the monetization game to acquire revenue per customer, which I am only beginning to understand.

Side note: Matt and Ahrif do not mess around with their catering arrangements. Top tier food options at lunch!

Lunch was followed with talks by Sherrell Dorsey (The Plug) and Sean Devlin (All Healthy) - both incredibly detailed talks on how they both operate and write their newsletters respectively.

Side Note: All Healthy is such a gorgeously designed newsletter.

I spent the rest of my afternoon meeting people outside the speaker area. The best part about Matt organizing these events is all the vendor booths are friendly. None of them pitch the product, they are very easy to chat with, and most of them have killer swag to take away.

One of them happened to be Open.Video. I had not known this platform before, and the fact that such a platform exists was mind-boggling to me.

As a marketing operator working with B2B clients on video, Open.Video gave me a lot of options beyond just hosting the video content on Vimeo or Youtube. Jeff Bernard was incredibly patient with my barrage of questions on how the platform worked. I am going to explore this product intently in this year.

I also met Erim and Sean from Meco. I spent a lot of time talking to them about their journey building the Meco newsletter app.

I then headed to the VIP dinner, where I bumped into Tyler. Tyler and Louis run the ‘Letterland’ podcast where they talk a lot about the newsletter ecosystem (give them a follow!).

I also spent a lot of time talking to Ammar and Esteban from the ADHD Weasel. This duo cracked my brain open, when they told me they are racking up 240k+ followers on Threads, and Ammar is doing this, while still at university. If you and I are still debating whether to get going on socials, seeing these folks operate should get you started.

Day 2 Highlights

​Matt Paulson from MarketBeat opened Day 2. I met him at the dinner the night before, and he was shy, but very nice to talk to.

Matt on stage is a different story altogether. He got the audience cracking up with his narrative on monetization and how he sees each channel for opportunities others might miss out on. His Level 10 talk was 10/10 IMO.

I spent more time hanging out with people at the speaker area, but I returned to listen to Ryan Deiss. A little known fact - I started my career in marketing by doing DigitalMarketer courses, so watching Ryan speak on stage was my career coming full circle.

Have you heard this saying ‘never meet your heroes’? If so, I would keep that advice aside, when it comes to meeting him. Ryan was wonderful in the 5 min he gave me 1-on-1, and I will cherish that interaction.

Lunch time was splendid like Day 1, but the table I was seated on blew it out of the water. I met Andy Mackensen again. Andy spoke at last time’s event. I told him that even with this year’s stellar lineup, his talk from last year was still the most value per minute I got from any session I had attended in the last decade. It led to a wonderful interaction with Andy and he mentioned a bunch of other people I should talk to about newsletters. Amazing guy.

I then turned to the other side of the table to speak to Emily Claire, founder of the 10x email club. Emily has the best career journey I had heard about in ages, watching her talk about it was so intriguing. Give her a follow!

I walked into Sam Gaudet’s session after lunch, and my god, that guy woke everyone up with his energy levels. I think I am going to steal his framework for presenting wholesale: very specific advice on how to win at Youtube, plenty of examples, and very charming in telling his story - plus he aced his Q&A questions.

​Alexis followed him right after, with so many inspiring stories from real founders, and how there is a potential to maximize your acquisition price with actionable advice. Plus, she is always a pleasure to chat with 1:1. I would recommend watching out for anything she puts online at TGA.

Side Note: Check out the episode I recorded with Alexis!

​

Last but not the least, Matt and his crew knew how to close a show on a high. He brought up Codie A. Sanchez on stage.

Yes, Codie Sanchez.

My god - she is such a force of nature. Watching her speak live on stage was an experience to behold. She dropped so many truth bombs in the conversation but with so much humor and warmth, that the crowd was held in a rapture.

Side Note: I got to speak to her for 2 min in an after-event meet-and-greet - and I am still smiling from that interaction.

Side Note: Meeting Chris Petkas (Codie’s husband) was a bonus. Such an amazing down-to-earth guy!

Big Takeaway from NMS 2026

I go to a small number of events each year, but the two events from Matt’s team have given me something that I could not get from any other: the ability to continue talking to a large number of people, long after the event has concluded.

It happened last year, and I bet I have a number of conversations lined up in the next few months, which I am eagerly looking forward to.

I think Matt, Ahrif, and the Growletter team have outdone themselves this time with the scale of the event. And I sincerely hope that they keep the intimate nature of this event sacred, when they regroup for the next one in 2027.

Need more insights on what happened at NMS? I would love to talk to you.

Let me know by hitting ‘Reply’ on this email, or send a note to marketing@letterstack.co.

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