Today’s Life of Scoop Plus is a case study. It details the early stages of a journey many local newsletter operators are keen on – the local business flywheel.

At my core, I am a storyteller. I’ve made my living for the past five years sitting by a digital fireplace telling stories to tens of thousands of people every day. So, this “case study” reads more like a story, with clearly marked lessons sprinkled throughout. Enjoy.

P.S. Sorry it’s a little late today. Had to get Noah’s approval before sending.

Noah Scott launched ChesCo Buzz 10 months ago. It’s a local newsletter for Chester County, Pennsylvania – a wealthy area west of Philadelphia. Go Birds 🦅

It follows a typical local newsletter format.

First there’s a catch-all mix of general stories. Then there’s a featured event with lots of details and a beautifully formatted events calendar with many events featuring basic details only.

Noah earned his first 600 subscribers on Reddit, posting event rundowns on Chester County subreddits. This is tricky as Reddit is notoriously ruthless towards self-promotion.

Since then, nearly all of ChesCo Buzz’s subscribers have come from Meta ads.

Numbers for nerds:

By the way, Noah still has a full-time job and no plans of leaving.

You know the movie, The Proposal? Ryan Reynolds’ character’s family basically owns every business in the tiny Alaskan town of Sitka. Which is probably the only reason 95% of people even know Sitka exists. Me included.

Obviously that is just a movie and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever own every business in your town, but the Paxton Philosophy is basically a flywheel that looks like this. It usually starts with the local newsletter (although it can start with a business, too) and expands as you add businesses and real estate to your portfolio.

Basically it’s a portfolio of local assets that all support each other. I did it with Naptown Scoop & Royal Flush. Michael Kauffman is doing it with Catskill Crew and his recently acquired commercial property. And Noah’s doing it with ChesCo Buzz and Mammoth Lights.

At first, Noah thought his first non-newsletter local business would be an SEO agency. He’s good at it and the margins are nice. But after helping a friend with his Google profile and website, Noah thought, “Why don’t I just crush SEO for my own business?”

One problem: he didn’t have a business.

So he picked one. Christmas lights.

Noah spun up a website and a Google profile and received 2 dozen inquiries in the first six weeks. But two of those callers asked a question that changed everything.

“Do you offer permanent lights?”

He didn’t. But like any good entrepreneur, Noah said, “We sure do!”

And then he frantically Googled permanent lights. And he liked what he saw.

Noah decided permanent lighting was a better business than Christmas lights.

It wasn’t unlike my realization that luxury portable restrooms were way better than standard porta-johns. Side note: Do y’all want a Royal Flush case study, too? It’s an interesting story I’ve never told in detail. Reply and let me know.

Bonus: There’s no rule saying permanent lights businesses can’t install Christmas lights, too. Andrew Rampulla is the ultimate Ladder Daddy. Start here to learn how to do it. Local newsletter king Jas Singh (Winnipeg Digest) is starting a Christmas lights business with his local newsletter. Hopefully he’ll let us do a case study on his first season in January.

First, the timeline:

Noah got the first Mammoth Lights job in classic entrepreneur fashion: friends and family. They weren’t free, but they were heavily discounted. Then again, it was mostly for practice. Most permanent lights dealers have hands-on training but usually only 2 days.

The next jobs came from ChesCo Buzz. Incredibly, every time he’s put Mammoth Lights in the newsletter, Noah’s gotten a new customer. That luck will run out eventually, but it’s a great early sign.

He didn’t even make a big deal of it. He just included it in a “local business bulletin” one week.

Now he’s promoting Mammoth Lights with native ads.

Eventually, Noah will promote Mammoth Lights on ChesCo Buzz’s Instagram as well. It’s a great business for that because it’s so visual.

Right now, 45% of Mammoth’s customers are from ChesCo Buzz and 55% are from Google.

Noah chose Bosso as his light supplier. Unfortunately, you can’t because they just instituted a policy requiring dealers to have $1 million in annual revenue. But there are others. Check out Celebright or Trimlight.

Noah set prices by talking to Bosso, researching on Reddit to find out what people paid for installations, and of course, calculating a healthy margin based on his cost of goods sold.

Noah currently does every install himself with a little help from a handy brother in law. This business does require getting on a ladder so if that’s a dealbreaker for you, look for another one.

Let it be this.

Local newsletters are a wonderful first component of a local business flywheel (the Paxton Philosophy). I recommend starting with a service business first because they have lower startup costs. Test demand before going all-in. And don’t ignore conventional marketing strategies.

Personally, I ran Naptown Scoop for almost 4 years before I was comfortable starting Royal Flush out of it. Noah only ran ChesCo Buzz for 8 months. But there was one major difference.

I quit my job to start Naptown Scoop before it made a single dollar. I needed to make Naptown Scoop a profitable enterprise that paid all of my bills before starting another company.

As Life of Scoop Plus members, I want to make these Friday emails even more useful to you than the Wednesday emails everyone gets. But I need your help with that. Please email me any questions you have, topics you’re curious about, or local newsletter pros you’d like me to interview for a case study like this.