Purpose of this Case Study is to show
It was the summer of 2017 and “passive income” was all the rage. I was fundraising as a director at SHIFT when a friend, suggesting I also consider passive income streams, lent me a book. Skeptical, but never one to turn down a book, I read it—and with my entrepreneurial spirit as kindling, it sparked my infatuation with digital brand-building; I put the book down and created TopChristianBooks.com. Far from being my first website, it was my first attempt at building a digital community. From scratch.
My objective? Build a brand and platform that would cultivate a loyal following through genuinely helpful, meaningful, and relevant content. Figuring out how to monetize would come after. To that end, I focused my content on a trifecta of passions: a love for reading/writing, thoughtful theology, and—most critically—an empathy that translates knowledge into service.
After writing dozens of articles myself, a friend offered to contribute, giving me an idea: why not gather a team of writers?
I pivoted, rebranded to TCB media, drafted a new logo (don’t look at it too closely) and reached out to writers to pitch my vision; I soon assembled a team of 40 volunteer TCB writers.
Now, needing a system for efficient collaboration, I set up a content guide, content calendar, and submission process that allowed my feedback for revision. By personally editing each piece, designing creatives, and optimizing distribution, I ensured a consistent brand voice.
After 1 month, we saw a 10X growth in visitors, 1K email subscribers, and more still, on social. And I’d quickly learn that my enjoyment of creative community engagement rivaled my enjoyment of writing.
But on top of my responsibilities at SHIFT, juggling TCB’s tasks on my own—writing, editing, and operations—wouldn’t be scalable. Or sustainable.
As a recovering perfectionist, entrusting creative agency to others was daunting, but I knew growth wouldn’t come by holding all the keys, but finding the best hands to put them in.
My first step: hiring a virtual assistant (VA), but not before crafting an assessment to test both a careful adherence to brand guidelines and a creative intuition in gray areas like content repurposing.
Next was the search for lead editor, to oversee the content team and calendar. Emailing our readers with a newly-drafted job description that offered a small stipend, resumes began flooding my humble Google form.
Overwhelmed by an impressive list of candidates, ranging from PhD holders to editors at magazines I read, I knew qualification would be the common denominator—but culture fit would be the variable.
After finding my rockstar lead editor—who captured TCB’s tone so well I often wondered if I had written it myself, and more often thought, Why didn’t I think of that!?—I was confident to focus fully on community engagement.
My approach was simple: create conversations they enjoyed returning to; to win not only their clicks, but their attention and trust as well.
How? Equal parts competent content (enter ethos and logos) and relatable conversation (that’s pathos for ya); to speak the language of head and heart. And I believe witty humor can do both.
I took the risk of weaving wit into the fabric of current events or theological controversy—but it wasn’t seamless. I learned from mistakes: failed jokes, an unwisely placed emoji 🤡, a Walking Dead parody with mixed reactions. But for every unsubscribe, a positive email highlighted genuine connection. (And I learned the value in user segmentation and being candid)
But beyond memes and jabs at their (growing) pile of books they were going “finish soon”, it was the emails—replies to knock-knock jokes that morphed into heartfelt exchanges best had with tissues at hand—that revealed the secret to growing a brand: actually care.
So, lessons learned?
Thoughtful Humor opens the door 🚪,
Helpful Content invites them in 👋,
Genuine Empathy makes them stay 🏡.
We hit 5K email subscribers by February. It was thrilling. But with software expenses on the rise, we needed revenue. I was willing to experiment with different ways to generate revenue.
With one exception: No ads on the site.
I decided that early on. Why? Because everything communicates. And if TCB Media was to be a trusted resource, committed only to content that put readers first, I couldn’t risk anything that might communicate otherwise. Trading trust for revenue never lasts—just ask… well, anyone.
Instead, I sent a candid email asking, “What could we create worth paying for?” Responses poured in: a digital magazine, a book summary service, a premium newsletter, a book summary service, an app for sermons, a book summary service—they’d even prepay to help us launch!
While TCB had yet to earn any revenue, we had earned a seat at our community’s table. And our readers were loud and clear: they would feel most served by a book summary service. I took a nearby napkin and quickly scribbled some ideas.
And just like that, I set my sights on my next venture: “The Acceleration Program”.
Don’t worry, I changed the name.
The aim of the TCB media case study was to demonstrate my ability to perform the following Lead Writer responsibilities (per the job description):
Purpose of this Case Study is to show
AccelerateBooks.com is a book summary service for Christian leaders, distilling insights from books across many genres. It’s seen 500+ organizations served in its lifetime of 10K sign ups. But it didn’t start this way.
It started in January 2018 as the “The Acceleration Project” and existed as nothing more than a nebulous, but ambitious vision. This vision would be refined in the furnace of further education: an MBA from the University of Barnes and Noble. Hoping to crowdfund the project, and encouraged to “move fast and break things”, my next steps would be:
… and 🥁✨
By the end of the week, 100 people had signed up, and I’d raised $20,000.
MOPSCLAW is a word I made up and has served me well. MOPSCLAW stands for Marketing, Operations, Product, Sales, Customer Support, Legal, Accounting, and Web App, in no particular order.
While you’d have to pry this blueprint from embarrassed fingers if you wanted to show this to anyone with a business background, it did the job and kept my mind organized.
The next section slides will be prefaced with the time period which area of MOPWSCLAW was being addressed.
I tasked myself first with marketing strategy. Though I’d end up devising dozens of strategies and funnels over the next 5 years, they’d all include aspects of:
While valuing both organic and paid traffic, I initially prioritized the latter to fill the funnel quickly and keep the business afloat. Survival, then, rested on my ability to skillfully trade Ad Spend for attention, and then:
Knowing my audience spent most of their time on Facebook, I spent most of my time mastering Facebook ads, an endeavor that demanded a blend of technical proficiency and creative intuition.
Constant testing was vital to ensuring maximum ROI. While Facebook’s CBO offered to do the heavy lifting for me, I believed that manual testing, via the Michigan Method, was the only way to keep a poised finger on my ad spend pulse—even if it meant tirelessly monitoring over 100 ad sets at once, in strategic combination of:
You can probably tell which aspect I enjoyed the most.
Creative Intuition:
To stop the scroll, I employed pictures that painted their pain, words that described their dreams, articulated aspirations, and called them by names they hadn’t even realized they responded to—words mined from the surveys of my user research. Depending on the user segment, this might look like:
One of the most effective creatives? A low-res meme of evil Kermit.
SALES
After curiosity caused a click, the baton of attention was passed on to the sales page. Fascinated by the art and science behind effective sales pages, I relentlessly tested the inclusion and order of every word and every element, including:
While I was able to borrow similar strategies from my fundraising experience (objection handling, risk-reversal, pricing strategy), learning CRO in digital spaces required experimenting with new words—”get started”, “start now” or “show me how”?—and new tools: funnel progression analytics, heatmaps, screen recordings, and A/B split testing. Occasionally, I’d go offline and conduct observational tests in-person whenever my friends agreed to navigate through the sales page as a “first-time customer”—for the 16th time.
COMMUNITY
Despite a granular targeting and segmentation that would make a data scientist proud, ads still found their way across grumpy eyes. Combined with increasing organic reach, AccelerateBook’s ads and posts invited comments ranging from skeptical to vitriolic—tempting my impulsive, snarky response.
Monitoring and moderating these comments was critical for instilling confidence in the AccelerateBooks brand, of both existing customers and prospects on the fence.
And as I warded off trolls in one hand, my other hand carried and cultivated our growing community newborn (not sure how I feel about this illustration)
With a careful budget in place for marketing & sales, and a system for social listening, I shifted my focus to building a talented team that would help me develop the next 2 areas—the Operations and Product.
Tackled in tandem, I defined these areas as follows:
Hiring Process
Given our niche audience and the delicate nature of theological views, ensuring a particular intuition—the theological spidey-sense to read the room, and wisely navigate the selection and summarization of books—was a priority. In other words, I was looking for the intuition to know not to serve (or mention) spiritual bacon to theological vegetarians.
This rubric of intuition, culture fit and specific knowledge, informed my search and eventual hiring of my lead content editor, copy editor, proofreader, typesetter, creative publisher, a team of 12 writers, customer support manager, and an operations manager to oversee the publishing of 8 new summaries monthly.
Content Ideation:
Content Development:
Content Improvement
Out of all the areas, Web App development was most difficult—perhaps because it was the area of my biggest hopes. My basic web design and WordPress skills allowed for a simple website, albeit sometimes buggy. But a vision of an AccelerateBooks app, or AccelerateBooks v2.0, compelled me to take a shot.
build an elegant web app for AccelerateBooks with UX-enhancing features, starting with features that would guarantee more customers
web design, html, css, a dash of Javascript and PHP
collaborate with web developer contractors to make my mobile mockups a reality
Not prioritizing “clear communication skills” when hiring developers, results in a snowballing nightmare of finding a new developer (still communication-poor) to clean up the (compounding) mess made by the previous developer; rinse and repeat.
Waking up to emails in all-caps after a developer’s code tangoed with a previous dev’s code and accidentally charged all my customer’s credit cards.
A frankenstein of a website, held together by the confused code of 5 developers; and $6,000 less in the bank.
Numbers don’t inspire me like words do. I’d always complain that I was better at making money than counting it. But growth would be a guessing game if that didn’t change; success would be elusive if I couldn’t see it in a PnL. So, a dozen accounting & finance books later, I drew the following conclusions, made the following decisions, and saw the following results:
But before the earnings had time to adjust to their new bank home, I received a letter that read in bold:
A young entrepreneur oblivious to legal scare tactics, I was blindsided. A major Christian publisher claimed copyright infringement, even though my legal education of 5 books on copyright, would suggest otherwise. To be safe, however, I contacted our lawyer.
The verdict
According to her, it was likely all bark, no bite, but, as she was legally obliged to say: still possible. I didn’t like still possible.
The ruling A (-nother) Change of Plans
Did you know that according to my copyright lawyer, out of all industries, Christian companies sue each other more than any other? How rad!
Perhaps a new way to sign off:
…in the name of Jesus the law! we pray, amen.
The closing remarks
When I finally looked up from the NDA’s and partnership terms, a year had passed. And though only wanting to describe this year in four letter words, my mother’s resilience only saw dark clouds finally parting over previously turbulent waters—but now a calm lake, our legal ducks swimming in a straight row.
Our budget was nursing its wounds (again). Pursuing a full web/mobile app would be too risky. But a Single Page Application (SPA)? That, my friend suggested, could work. And I was once again gripped by excitement, for better or worse. I shared my renewed hope to our team, our users, and our investors (i.e. lifetime members), and in a new email, optimistically laid out a roadmap.
“Drumroll please 🥁✨“, I began to type, “Don’t know about you, but we’re feelin’ Twenty-Twenty-Is-A-Great-Year-For-Accelerate-Version-Two!”
Spoilers: Twenty-twenty was not a great year.
At this point, all the main areas that demonstrate the relevant abilities, acumen, and skill have been outlined.
Route 1: So, at this point, you may simply choose to end your exploration here.
Route 2: Or, you can keep going for a few more slides to see what happens next for Accelerate, specifically:
If you'd had your fill, then: thank you so much for taking the time to read everything up to this point!
However, if you need to know the end...
