The design story — The Channel

Why I created The Channel

I've spent 15+ years writing email campaigns inside founder-led, thought leadership businesses. I've been the copywriter, marketing manager, copy chief, Director of Growth, CMO. Now, I'm coach and consultant to founders who want to ship more high-energy, high-converting writing and email campaigns in their business.

During this time, I've noticed two things:

Once a piece of writing is finished, there's an insane amount of friction and tech BS required to get the email out to readers. Most founders want nothing to do with this.

There is no dedicated writing app or software for email-centered businesses to write emails and campaigns.

The reality is the founder would love to write more. But the complexity in getting emails out is too much.

So they hire a team that needs to co-ordinate. And that's when every team mangles together a Frankenstein of Google Docs, spreadsheets, project management softwares. And SOPs. So many complex SOPs that hardly ever get followed properly.

More tech = more friction = less fun = less creative output = less money made.

This is a problem.

For the founder, the more they write and send, straight from the source, the higher the market response.

And in my experience, most founders don't stop writing because they don't enjoy it. They just hate the B/S that goes along with the writing.

So I decided to fix both problems with one tool. First for myself, and then for my clients.

I knew what I wanted:

A beautiful, clean, distraction-free writing experience.
Something that would make the job of writing emails and shipping campaigns a breeze, by removing all of the micro frictions.
Something that helped ship better email campaigns, faster.

The result is The Channel.

And it's built on a handful of simple design principles.

The Core Design Principles

The problem: The creative process is chaotic, and fun. Without any organization, it becomes unproductive.

Yet, with too much organization and systematization, the process gets strangled, as managing the system becomes more work than it's worth.

Our answer: ride the edge between organization and chaos with the guiding vision of:

Friction Free, Chaos Management.

This boils down into 7 key principles.

Founder & Writer First. First and foremost, we help the founder and writer ship more work. The goal is to make it easier to create, express, and share the Vision and Philosophy of your products and offers, with minimal friction (and bullsh*t) getting in the way. It's not a tool meant for PMs and team members to hound and hassle you with reminders and noise. It's the place where you go to get the writing done, not get clobbered by reminders and due date deadlines. → L07

Clean, Distraction-Free Writing. The Channel is the space you open when it is time to write. One click into exactly the doc you need to work on, with a beautiful, clean, distraction-free writing experience. Just you and the words, with all of the tools and controls you need in the moment to write an email within a click or two. Where friction is minimized and expression is amplified. → L17

Ideas Where You Need Them. Capturing ideas when they arrive is smart. The problem is remembering where the ideas are (and fetching them) when you need them. That becomes a source of friction. We let you capture ideas on the fly and place them (and find them) exactly where they'll be written. That way the ideas you need and want to focus on next are always in the right place: right in front of you. → L14

Effortless Idea Capture. Ideas come at any time, in any moment. Capturing them when they strike is the smartest thing you can do, so your creative battery is always charged. The Channel lets you capture ideas from anywhere and route them exactly where you need them. Current campaign, upcoming campaign, future ideas list. Wherever you want, whenever you want. → L10

One-Click Send. Once the writing is done and it is time to ship, we want it published and sent with one click. No futzing with project management softwares, doc permissions, email or contact management softwares. No wondering about where things are supposed to go, or if the right people will receive it. And certainly no copy and pasting your writing into a web tool, only to have to reformat everything again (FML). → L15

Maximize Offers. The Channel is an email-first tool with the sole purpose of helping you ship more offers and make more money. That means sending more emails to your list, so you can build the relationship you have with your audience and make more money from the leads you already have. This is the whole purpose of the game we play. → L05

Soul-Driven Work Only. AI tools are incredible amplifiers of productive work. They do feature in The Channel. But only as assistants meant to help you do the writing. They will help you accelerate idea generation, editing, and publishing. The burdensome and drudgery work that makes you want to outsource your writing. But these tools are there to help you write better. Not to write words for you. Your voice is your own, and we understand that it's the most important asset you have in the Age of Authenticity. → L09

THE DESIGN STORY: THE PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE CHANNEL

Why I created The Channel

The Core Design Principles

If that sounds like how you want to work, come and try it.