Dani Bruflodt has sent a newsletter every Friday for seven years. This month, she passed her 300th edition.
That kind of consistency requires dedication, but it can absolutely be worth it. Because when Dani was ready to sell an online course, she was able to ask her list what they wanted and build based on their feedback. She had months to tell them about what she was making and get people excited to buy, and when she finally launched, she hit five figures in sales.
It all happened because she committed to one small, repeatable habit.
Here's how Dani from Thyme is Honey turned a simple email newsletter into an engaged community, and then turned that community into a launch pad for one of her biggest wins.
From social media consultant to building her own brand
Dani founded Thyme is Honey in 2011 as a social media consulting agency, working with small beauty and skincare brands. For about a decade, she managed at least eight clients at a time across Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and Facebook, handling everything from graphic design to captions to community management.
As you can imagine, balancing all that took some serious organization skills.
"I would be managing eight different brands on four different platforms on any given day. The context switching and the different brand voices and all the different accounts got to be a lot," Dani says.
Around 2020, Dani decided to step back from client work and build something of her own. In all those years of juggling brands, she’d learned that the best way to keep things running smoothly was to have organized systems. So she leaned into it.
She launched the Weekly Page newsletter and the Daily Page planner as a way to pass along the organization and productivity habits she'd developed, and to help her followers bring that same sense of calm and control to their own work.
Consolidating a scattered tech stack into Podia
In the early days of building her own brand, Dani ran her business with a long list of separate tools. Her website lived on Showit. She sold products through Shopify and Etsy. Her newsletter was on Flodesk. Client invoicing happened in FreshBooks.
"So many platforms, right?" she says. "The way businesses were run back then, it was just a long list of subscriptions."
She found Podia when she was researching where to build her first online course, and she figured she would mainly use it as a course builder. But she quickly realized how much more Podia could do and started moving pieces of her business over one at a time.
"Not only did my costs just drop significantly, but the switch also cleared so much mental bandwidth. Needing to just learn and stay updated on one tool instead of a dozen, and feeling like the core aspects of my business were organized in one place was really game-changing for me," Dani says.
It also changed how quickly she could move. "I could put things up so much faster than before. With Podia, I was just becoming so much more agile in my business."
Having everything in one place meant that Dani could spend more time making great products, including free lead magnets to grow her list.
Growing a list with useful freebies and consistent newsletters
Dani’s business is built around her email list and newsletter, and she grew her community by sharing simple free digital downloads. Her most popular designs are printable calendars and planning pages she redesigns every year to keep them fresh.
"I get thousands of new signups a year through those," she says.
People mainly find her designs through Pinterest, and her pins have stayed strong even now, more than 10 years after she started. Because Pinterest is a visual search engine, it works well for nice-looking printable organizers, trackers, and calendar pages that help people reach their goals.
As with search engines, people go to Pinterest to look for things they’re interested in, so there’s the chance to be discovered long after you post.
"It's so evergreen," Dani says. "I still get traffic from things that I wrote a decade ago."
Once someone finds one of her free printable lead magnets, they can put in their email address and get added to Dani’s email list. Then Dani uses a short email welcome series to invite new subscribers to join her Substack, where she consistently publishes new content about digital organization and productivity.
Dani mainly stays in touch with subscribers through her newsletter, which she sends every Friday. She’s been sending it out for over seven years and hasn’t missed a week.
To get that level of consistency, Dani recommends having a formula that’s easily repeatable, so you’re not starting from scratch every week. Her formula is one productivity tip, plus something to read, watch, listen to, and enjoy.
"That's it. I send it every Friday," Dani says. "A repeatable format that doesn't suck up too much of your energy is my key."
While Dani does emphasize that consistency helps you grow, she also calls out that you don’t have to send something every week to be successful.
"If you can post once a month, post once a month," Dani says. "I always say quality over quantity. Your audience picks up on that energy if you are stressing yourself out."
The best cadence for your newsletter is the one you can stick to, so pick a schedule and a formula that you can repeat long term and start sending.
When in doubt, ask your email list
When Dani wanted to create an online course, she didn't guess at what topics she should cover and spend months creating something based on that guess. Instead, she asked her people what they wanted directly.
"I just asked my email list," she says. "I emailed everyone a link to a questionnaire and collected their responses into a spreadsheet so I could analyze the data."
After looking through the responses, Dani realized that her audience wanted a framework for the digital organization system she'd built for herself over the years, including how she integrates it with analog, handwritten tools. That request became an online course.
Because building a course takes time, you can (and should) use that time to engage your audience and build excitement around your program. Giving your potential buyers lots of notice and updates during the building process can make them more excited when launch day rolls around.
"The mistake I see people make the most is having a very short runway to launch," Dani says. "I like to give it at least six months, so that you have plenty of time to warm up your audience."
When launch day arrived and Dani shared the course with her audience, it brought in five figures in sales right out of the gate, and she would go on to run four cohorts over the next two years.
The core of a good business is good relationships
A big course launch is a huge win for any business, but if you ask Dani what she’s most proud of, it’s not a sales number. It’s the relationships she’s built with her audience and her customers over time.
The email list, the newsletter, and the course all grew out of one habit: showing up consistently and providing value for your people, week after week, so they look forward to seeing what you’ll make next.
If you're ready to simplify your tech stack, build your email list, and create digital products and courses for the people you serve, you can try Podia for free for 30 days. We can’t wait to see what you make.
Dani Bruflodt runs Thyme is Honey and offers services as a Podia Pro, helping creators build simple, sustainable digital businesses. You can follow her on her website and on Substack.
