How We Write Mind the Beet

Reflections on almost four years of writing

When we started Mind The Beet, it began as a way of clarifying our own thoughts and sharing them with our friends and immediate network. We strive for authentic and vulnerable writing about our own lived experiences, making it as personal and unique as possible. Almost four years in, our writing habit is going strong, and we are extremely thankful for all the encouragement from readers and stories you have shared on how posts have been useful to you or made you feel seen.

We average ~8K reads a month (mostly from our network with email and LinkedIn, but with 1K/month from Google Search), a 40% email open rate, and a slow but steady subscriber growth rate that reflects our organic growth from word of mouth:

A common question we get from our readers is how do we write “together” so here is a behind the scenes peek on how Mind the Beet runs.

What is the product?

Mind the Beet newsletter is about our life - life as leaders, as product people, as a couple and as parents. As a marketer and a product maker, I know firsthand that the best product is one that is focused - so we contemplated only focusing on parenting or only focusing on product leadership - but it did not resonate or ring true for us. So we write about the key facets of our life because you can’t beat the truth.

So our marketing mix is pretty simple:

• Product: Helen and Adam’s life as leaders, product people, couple and parents

• Price: Free

• Place: Substack

• Promotion: Sporadic LinkedIn, Threads and Instagram

Where do post ideas come from?

Our ideas are made up of things we’ve learned where personal experience would add something a search engine or ChatGPT couldn’t. Examples of those posts were how to write a career reel, how hire a nanny, how to deal with mom guilt while traveling. Long car rides are perfect for our brainstorm sessions.

We were worried that we’d end up writing a lot of “lists” posts - top 5 tips to do X - and while some of our posts are that (My 10 Favorite Productisms, Our Picks: Top 5 Children’s Books in Our Household Library) most actually are not. What surprised me in our creation process is how natural it was to incorporate interviewing other people (Interview: First Year as a Product Manager).

What hasn’t worked super well yet is having guest writers - we’ve had one (How to Empower a Friend to Make a Career Decision) and we’d definitely love to have more guests come on and share their lived experiences.

Since the “product” of our newsletter is us, we double down on content that is timely. Adam and I have both reflected on our work anniversaries/transitions (Celebrating 19 Years at Microsoft with 19 Lessons, and Mega-corp to growth stage start-up), our wedding milestone, back to school - we both try to find the nuggets in there that would be worth reflecting on and sharing.

Lastly, we also give ourselves permission to update and repost our newsletters - our life and lessons learned are not static. So sometimes our points of view, lessons learned or perspectives change. As that happens, we take an old post, update it with latest thinking and repost it.

How do you actually write together?

Despite common tropes of couples working together being a terrible idea, for us, it’s been a great way to have non-transactional conversations. The average American couple talks to each other for around 20 minutes per week - and this is our way to create additional space.

What are the characteristics of our best post?

• 1000- 1200 words or less helps our readers get through the content; anything longer and people start skimming and less than 1000 words feels too fluffy

• Scannability is key - Breaking up the posts with imagery and headlines makes it be more accessible

• Personal experiences resonate a lot more than esoteric or industry specific commentary

• Our most commented posts are those that make people feel seen for the struggles they face (Burnout & Boredom: A Manager’s Pandemic Retrospective on Mental Health)

How do you make the time for this?

We have two kids and busy lives so to make something like this work on a regular basis, we are very explicit about Mind the Beet being a priority for both of us. We each aim to have one solid post a month and accept that the other week may be an update or a repost.

Support comes in many ways - the transactional support of managing the kids on one of the weekend mornings, help with making the social cover for the post or stopping to review and provide feedback on the post.

Another form of support is acknowledging and not judging each other for our different approach to workback schedule of a post. I don’t mind the stress of a deadline and often will start with an empty page on a Saturday morning and get to a draft for Sunday publish. Adam prefers to work incrementally throughout the week, marinating and iterating on a post. Interestingly, over the last 3 years, we have periodically flipped our approaches and both learned something from that experience as well.

What’s your actual writing workback?

T - 2 weeks - Adam starts thinking about his post; Helen does life things

T-7 days - Adam finalizes his topic and the hook in his head; Helen does life things

T-3 days - Adam writes his first draft; Helen starts thinking about her post

T-1 days - Adam submits for peer review after multiple edits; Helen writes her first draft and submits for peer review

Publish day - Adam pre-posts for a 7am publish time 90% of the time; Helen puts the finishing touches and publishes by 10pm 90% of the time

How do you give each other feedback?

A key part of our writing process is a “peer review” - we do it on every post and we are better writers for it. Over the years, we’ve both learned how to provide it in ways that resonate with us.

For example, Adam prefers to hear observations or issues with the post, but doesn’t want a solve to be offered. He often seeks to know how something made me feel and where he needs to get more personal. On the other hand, I appreciate feedback that helps me organize my posts better. I sometimes bury my most impactful story at the end and Adam helps me re-order and amplify key points.

We also remind each other that our feedback is just that - one person’s observation and it is ok to take what you like and leave behind what isn’t helpful.

I love our collaboration because of how much better my writing is once it is reviewed by someone I trust.

Mind the Beet Trivia:

1. The title “Mind the Beet” came from a quote that resonated from Tom Robbin’s Jitterbug Perfume - read more about the origin here

2. We almost went with “Midlife Pro Tips” as a name.

3. A post about Adam’s love of Vessi’s shoes got thousands of views when we had less than 100 subscribers - and we still don’t really know why.

4. While both Adam and Helen are listed on the Hidden Gems for PM's Inside Taylor Swift Lyrics, Adam was the mastermind behind it and it is our most popular post with 23.5K views.

5. My mom categorizes all of our Mind the Beet writing into war or peace posts. Our war posts are the detailed posts on work best practices and the peace posts are the ones on life and parenting and things that spark joy.

Thank you all for being a part of our community and journey. We love getting comments, notes and post ideas from you. So please keep them coming!