One of the most successful newsletters of all time only published 3 issues.
In the 1980s, a former president of The Harvard Lampoon named George Meyer bailed on going to medical school and instead decided to make a living from betting on dog races.
Two months later, he was broke.
A couple of his former Lampoon co-writers convinced David Letterman to hire Meyer as a writer on his late night show.
A two-year stint there was followed by a brief stint writing for Saturday Night Live, and eventually an assignment to write a movie for Letterman.
That went nowhere and Meyer found himself without a job or any real prospects.
So, he started a print newsletter called Army Man.
He called it a “magazine” – actually he called it “America’s Only Magazine” – but it was basically a newsletter in a pre-Internet world.
It was essentially a bunch of jokes written by him and some of his comedy writing pals including Bob Odenkirk and Jack Handey (whose SNL’s classic bit “Deep Thoughts” appeared in the newsletter).
Only three issues of Army Man were published, but they spread like wildfire in the comedy world and became legendary.
When the showrunner of The Simpsons was putting together the show’s writing staff, he snatched up as many Army Man contributors as he could including Meyer.
Eventually, 10 different Army Man writers worked on The Simpsons.
Besides being a fun story, there are several important lessons here.
1. The way you get what you want is to start doing what you want before anyone is willing to pay you to do so.
2. Newsletters (and content in general) is an incredibly powerful way to create opportunities.
3. Great content spreads – that even proved true in world without the internet.
4. You don’t have to “monetize” a newsletter to monetize a newsletter.
5. Stop waiting, start creating. You never know what it may lead to.
If you want to put something cool into the world, I’d love to help you do it.
Let’s chat.
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