YATM ✊ | Starting Again After 12 Years & Creator Day Presenters
You Are The Media
from Mark Masters
You Are The Media (YATM) is the home for marketing misfits. It started in 2013 at the seaside, in England 🌊 The community is built around creativity, interdependence, visibility, experimentation and co-learning.
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Hi YATMers, I’m Keir Whitaker, a Bath based consultant, advisor and event organiser working with Shopify Partners, including agencies, app companies, and related SaaS businesses.
After seven years at Shopify, I set up my own consultancy in 2019 to help founders, and leadership teams with business development, marketing, and partnerships, working out what needs to be done and then helping them stay on track.
I also run Craft+Work, a series of conversation-driven events that bring together Shopify Partners, marketers and creative professionals to spark conversations.
If I was starting a newsletter today, this is what I would do differently.
Building something that lasts isn’t about chasing attention, it’s about knowing your role, inviting people in, and creating work that stands the test of time.
YATM has just hit the 12 year mark. The newsletter has been central to everything I have built.
Maybe things would be different today with all the AI tools at my disposal to make everything quicker.
Creating a newsletter is about:
1. Clarifying your thinking
2. Connecting with people who actually care
3. Provide a record of your work that can grow into something bigger than yourself.
If I could start YATM from scratch in 2025, armed with everything I’ve learned, here’s what I would do.
1) Know the role you serve for people
When I started, I was exploring how you can have control of the work you produce.
Like an indie record label, can a person control the distribution, rather than relying on the big labels to give you visibility?
At times, I tried too hard to sound knowledgeable or I went off on rogue tangents because my audience was small and I had nothing to lose (I was chaotic with my thinking).
There will be deviations and modifications, but there still needs to be a central message, to everything. A clear reason for joining in, that’s not available anywhere else.
If you don’t know what you believe, what you’re testing, or what you’re curious about, no format or tool will help you.
2)Clean slates are ok, but protect what you are building
In the summer of 2019, I did something by mistake that was pivotal, I deleted the entire YATM database. Every subscriber, every contact, every name, gone.
It was awful, but it taught me who my true audience was, I rebuilt it from scratch a second time, from memory and reaching out to people.
It forced me to recognise, why does this newsletter exist? Who is it for? What do I want it to actually do?
Back up regularly, export a copy, save it somewhere safe, and never assume it’s protected. Clean slates are fine when intentional, not when accidental.
3)Build it as part of a platform, not just a newsletter
By 2018, YATM had evolved into more of a magazine than a simple weekly email. It became more like what you see today.
If I were starting again, I’d lean even harder into this. A newsletter shouldn’t just be a vehicle for content, it should be the hub of a larger ecosystem.
Think modular, community and multi-format, such as text, audio, video and interactive elements.
The newsletter becomes the place where everything converges, your ideas, your people, your experiments. I would make more of an effort to connect everything. I treated live events and the newsletter as separate worlds, when they should have always complemented each other.
4) Bring people in sooner than you think
One of the biggest shifts for YATM happened in 2020 with the first YATM Takeover, Keir started today. For the first time, other voices, members and contributors, had a chance to be seen and other people to connect and say, ‘I’m part of this too.’
At first, I worried whether I could trust other people to represent the newsletter. Would it dilute my voice?
It didn’t. It amplified it. It made YATM richer and more varied. If I were starting again today, I’d do this from day one. Invite other people in and give them ownership.
Make them co-creators, not just subjects or interviewees. Even a handful of trusted voices transforms your newsletter from a monologue into a conversation.
5) It’s not just about reach
When I started, I assumed growth numbers were the metric that mattered, more subscribers and more clicks meant a reputation. Over time, I realised that the right people matter far more than the most people.
If I were starting today, I’d focus on connection. Who is this for? Who will actually read, respond, and participate? Can I reach out to them? Sending people a DM to subscribe as they may find it useful is fine.
Write in ways that invite participation, that gives people room to show up and contribute. Over time, this helps with trust.
6) Create work that lives beyond the moment
One of the subtle things I’d do differently is design every issue to be modular.
Sections that can stand alone, writing that can be republished, ideas to come back to, prompts that can be reused.
It also future-proofs what you make. Twelve years in, I can see how some early writing, once buried, could have been expanded. The more I understood or repurposed in new contexts if I’d thought modularly from the start.
And finally….
There is no end….find what you know you cannot stop.
Let’s Round Up
Twelve years is a long time in the life of a newsletter. At its heart, everything comes down to relationships. People show up because they expect you to show up.
Let your newsletter become a hub for everything you care about.
Even if you’re just starting out, you can take the same approach: think first, write second, involve others, and let the work be bigger than yourself.
Because after 12 years, one thing is certain: people don’t just want to read content. They want to be in it with you.
👉 If you’re too busy to write, this is for you to read
It's Not About How Much Content You Make
When you look to serve others based on your values, not fitting in and finding a place you cannot stop, it becomes attractive for others to make that step.
It also makes you realise that when it comes to people belonging to something, producing content is not enough.
It’s about welcoming people and how we can unite each other.
Here we go. The Creator Day '26 presenter reveal...
I shared on Tuesday, with Creator Day attendees, the presenters for next years occasion. The theme for 2026 is 'community.'
Let me give you a rundown and get you up to speed:
Michelle Goodall understands from the role of community as a business asset.
Jon Alexander believes businesses can treat people as participants, not passive consumers.
Lea Turner knows how to cultivate a thriving community.
Gus Bhandal knows how LinkedIn connects but also opportunities beyond the screen.
Phill Agnew knows what it means to get people joining in.
You'll also see the Secret Speaker. Think of this as the People's Champion. It is for someone who is values led first and monetisation came second. It could be a club, it could be side project that started from the heart. Not everything has to be B2B. This is open to the YATM community to steer.
Reach out to me, by replying, if you'd like to be the People's Champion or a person, friend or colleague you have in mind.
If you haven't booked on for Creator Day yet, I really hope this is the nudge. It's £199 (until 28th November). Use the code TeamYATM to save £20 to £179, book here.
If you'd like to spread the cost over four months (with the code) so it's £44.75 from October to January, reply to this email with 'I'd like to spread this' and leave it to me.
You Are The Media (YATM) is the home for marketing misfits. It started in 2013 at the seaside, in England 🌊 The community is built around creativity, interdependence, visibility, experimentation and co-learning.
