👋🏽 What’s good?!
Welcome to Rooms of Influence. Every two weeks, I share short reflections with the founders, organizers, and creators in my orbit — breaking down how the best operators use IRL events + content to build disproportionate influence.
From executive dinners and field marketing tactics to conferences and virtual events: the actual playbooks behind the rooms where trust compounds and deals happen.
Nathan May built a business to $1,000,000 in about ten months.
He didn't post publicly until he'd already crossed the million mark.
Most founders do it backwards.
Start a newsletter and immediately think about ads…
You picture Morning Brew, a giant list, sponsors lining up. So you chase subscribers like they're the product. And that’s the trap.
Here's what he did instead.
Nathan doesn't sell ads. He barely thinks about them. For him, the newsletter isn't the thing you monetize with banners. It's the thing that makes everything else you sell convert like clockwork.
He put it simply: Your newsletter is a room. Trust builds on autopilot, until someone is ready to buy.
The “room” does the work
Here's what that actually looked like.
First, he wrote to his list twice a month and gave his best material away for free. Not the leftovers or hand-me-downs. The 24-karat gold.
Then he DM'd the exact people he wanted as clients and invited them to subscribe. One by one. No fancy funnels or ad budget.
He gives away the secret and sells the execution. Most people who read his stuff think, "This is great, and I still don't want to do it myself."
So they hire him. The free material isn't a giveaway. It's the pitch.
Why the room beats the megaphone
Here's the part you might miss.
Most of your future customers aren't ready to buy today. They will be in three months, or six, when the timing is right and the budget clears.
The question is whether you're still around when that moment comes (and most aren’t).
An ad reaches them once and disappears. A newsletter is how you're still in the “room” when they finally pull out the credit card.
Nathan hit $1M in revenue in 10 months, mostly off that list.
Edwin has 7,000 subscribers. He ran a $65,000 launch.
Max does $500,000 to $600,000 a month on the same model.
Small lists. Deep trust. The newsletter is the machine underneath all of it.
The Breakdown — What you can steal and implement today
1. Don't build for ads, build for trust. The newsletter's job is to make the rest of your business convert, not to sell banner space.
2. Give away the secret, sell the execution. Publish your best stuff free. The people who want it done for them become buyers.
3. Invite people to the room using hand-to-hand combat. Nathan DM'd the exact clients he wanted and asked them to subscribe. No ad spend required.
4. Twice a month is plenty. Show up consistently, write like you know the person on the other end, and let trust compound.
That last part is the whole thing. Trust compounds. Reach doesn't.
One to sit with
Nathan built a million-dollar business in a room most people never even saw.
So ask yourself this week: is your newsletter a megaphone, or a room? One chases attention. The other builds the kind of trust that's still there when the buyer is ready.
Watch the full conversation with Nathan on the Rooms of Influence YouTube channel to hear the full conversation.
Keep building,
Vernon
P.S. I just put together a 5-day email course on building a webinar with a small audience. You can grab it for free here.
Find me on LinkedIn
Growth Dinners is an IRL, invite-only dinner series + community for founders who’ve hit $1M+ in revenue or raised $2M. If you have products or services that would benefit founders or a founder looking to join our next dinner, let’s jam.
WebinarRev has driven over $1.2M in closed-win revenue for B2B and B2C brands. We’re a full-stack webinar service handling all things related to webinars. See if it makes sense to work with us here.