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Hey there rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Wade writes a weekly newsletter for brand-new dads.
He's been there himself — scared, sleep-deprived, and googling at 3am.
He just wants to help other new dads feel a little less lost.
He writes it on the side, in the evenings, once the baby is finally asleep.
⛳️ Problem:
Wade sits down each week and just writes whatever is on his mind.
Some issues wander into three topics. Others bury the good part at the very bottom.
His readers open them, skim, and move on. Nobody ever forwards them. That one hurts.
His struggle:
He writes whatever comes to mind, so his issues ramble and never really land.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ Working Backwards
That's what Jeff Bezos built into Amazon.
Most teams build a product first, then write the announcement and hope people care.
Amazon does it the other way around. They write the announcement FIRST — before building anything.
Get this — every new idea starts as a pretend press release.
That's the short, happy announcement a customer would read the day the product launches.
It's written in plain words, no jargon, describing why the finished thing is so good.
And here's the key move.
If that announcement isn't exciting to a real customer, they don't build the product at all.
They start from the reader's reaction, and work backward to what to make.
Bezos called this working backwards, and it's how Amazon shipped the Kindle and Prime.
This is the same Amazon that became the second US company ever worth a trillion dollars.
Wild, right?
Starting from the customer, not the product, is a big reason why.
You can write a newsletter the exact same way.
Instead of rambling and hoping it lands, start at the end: the reaction you want.
First, write that reaction down — the one thing you want a reader to feel or say at the finish.
The best test is simple: would they forward it to a friend, and what would they say when they do?
Then let that one line be the judge of everything else.
Cut any sentence that doesn't push the reader toward it, and keep the words plain.
Now every line has a job, because you know exactly where the issue is headed.
🚗 So Wade tried it his way.
We're back with Wade and his newsletter for brand-new dads.
His issues rambled and buried the good part, so nobody forwarded them.
So he wrote his next issue backward instead.
First, he wrote the reaction he wanted.
Before, he started typing with no idea how the issue should land.
Now he wrote it down first: "I'm sending this to every new dad I know."
Spoiler: that one line ran the whole issue.
Then, he made that line the judge.
Before, he'd keep a funny tangent about his commute just because he liked it.
Now he cut it — it didn't move a scared new dad toward forwarding the issue, so it went.
Finally, he worked backward.
Before, the useful part hid in the last paragraph, where few readers reached it.
Now he built the whole issue around one real fear — "what if I drop the baby?" — and one calm fix.
He sent it to his 300 readers that Friday.
He hit send, half-expecting the usual silence.
Nine of them forwarded it, and two replied, "sending this to my brother" — the exact reaction he'd written down.
Ta-da.
🧸 Don't write and hope it lands. Write the reaction you want first, then earn it.
The prompt below builds your next issue backward, starting from the reaction you want.
You just tell it your topic and the reader you're writing for.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt, or just run it as is. Your AI sidekick will use the example values and give you an output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
Inputs:
What my next issue is roughly about (the raw topic, even if it's messy right now):
{e.g. how to handle the fear of hurting your newborn in the first weeks}
Who I'm writing for (the specific reader and how they're feeling):
{e.g. brand-new dads, scared and unsure, running on no sleep}
What usually goes wrong in my issues (the honest weak spot):
{e.g. I wander into side topics and bury the useful part at the bottom}
For Audience: {e.g. first-time dads in the first three months, overwhelmed and googling at 3am}
For Outcome: {e.g. one focused issue built around a single reaction, that people actually forward}
Outputs:
1. My target reaction — one sentence naming exactly what I want a reader to feel or say at the end, written as something they'd tell a friend while forwarding it.
2. The one idea — the single point this whole issue should make, cut down from my messy topic, so it can earn that reaction.
3. The backward outline — a short issue outline built from the reaction back to the opening line, where every section has a clear job.
4. The cut list — the tangents, throat-clearing, or extra topics I should delete because they don't push the reader toward the reaction.
Then write the ONE opening line that hooks my reader straight into the single idea — no warm-up.
That's it, my fellow mavericks!
Yours 'helping you build a smart AI sidekick so you can work less and enjoy life more' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️