What does it take to turn a free newsletter into a $750,000 business in just three months, with zero ad spend?
Former Chief Medical Correspondent for ABC News and Good Morning America Dr. Jen Ashton, a double board certified physician in OB-GYN and obesity medicine with a master’s degree in nutrition, did exactly that with Ajenda, her wellness-focused newsletter that has turned into a thriving membership product.
Backed by 181,000 email subscribers and 560,000 Instagram followers, Dr. Ashton transformed trust into traction.
What began as a beehiiv-powered free weekly newsletter quickly became a paid program with fitness plans, nutrition guides, expert Q&As, and a high-retention community.
In under a year, Ashton left network TV and built something of her own.
By focusing on her newsletter first, the doctor built a trusted, owned audience that became the perfect launchpad for her wellness brand, Ajenda.
Instead of going straight to market with a product, Dr. Ashton created a direct line to her community, making her eventual launch far more successful.
This post is a breakdown of exactly how you can mimic the doctor’s success: start with your inbox, show your journey in public, and build what your audience is already asking for.
Dr. Ashton’s success didn’t just happen by luck. What she used is a repeatable playbook for creators, founders, and experts, and it all started with one simple newsletter.
Here’s how she did it.
Why Dr. Jen Started With a Newsletter
After 20 years on television, including 12 as Chief Medical Correspondent at ABC News; Dr. Jen Ashton left the media world behind in mid-2024. Her goal was to reinvent.
Ashton launched Ajenda, a free weekly newsletter focused on women’s health, fitness, nutrition, and wellness. But more importantly, she launched it as a way to speak directly to her audience – without gatekeepers, platforms, or noise in between.
Ashton started with trust, a playbook that’s turned ideas and communities into large, successful brands.
From Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop to other breakout brands that began with a newsletter, many creators first built deep trust and prioritized understanding their community deeply and only then launched products for their community.
And they all picked beehiiv to host their newsletters from day one – for its audience ownership, direct deliverability, and scalability.
She Built the Brand Before the Business
Most creators start by selling. Dr. Jen Ashton started by sharing.
Ashton spent six months documenting a personal wellness transformation – a self-described “experiment” to get in the best health of her life at 55. She shared workouts, nutrition changes, challenges, and progress updates publicly on Instagram and privately through her newsletter – and she did it all without pitching anything.
This wasn’t performative marketing. It was real-time trust-building…and it worked.
In just a few months:
The “product” hadn’t launched yet, but the demand was already proven.
Turning the Wellness Journey Into a Scalable Product
When Dr. Jen Ashton launched The Wellness Experiment, it wasn’t an abstract course or generic challenge.
Ajenda partnered with Rare Days, a studio focused on helping creators launch digital products, to translate Ashton’s experience into a product for her audience. It was a structured, replicable version of the exact journey she had taken, reimagined as a cohort-based wellness program.
The $59 product included the following features:
Weekly content drops around the 3 pillars of wellness, nutrition, and fitness
A robust exercise library tailored for the audience demographic
A members-only community
Live Q&A access to Ashton and her trainer Korey Rowe
The newsletter wasn’t just informative. It was guided, personalized, and rooted in credibility, and it launched with just a handful of emails and a few Instagram posts.
That was enough.
5,000+ people joined the first cohort.
Revenue crossed $750,000 in just three months
No affiliates. No paid ads. No viral growth hacks.
Just an audience that was already ready.
Breaking Down the Growth Strategy: What Made It Work
Owned Distribution Channels
Dr. Jen Ashton controlled the messaging and timing. With a newsletter built on beehiiv, she reached 181,000+ people directly, no algorithm required.
Ashton had six months of public progress posts, community feedback, and follower commentary to draw on. Her results were her marketing.
Here are some typical comments she received:
“I always get lost in all the confusing info out there. HELP!”
“Where do I even start?”
“I hear fitness is important for long-term health, but…”
Those weren’t testimonials. They were a proof of demand.
Scarcity Through Community, Not Deadlines
Instead of relying on countdown timers, Ajenda created urgency through alignment:
You weren’t just joining a program.
You were joining a group of people doing it together.
You were signing up to take action with Dr. Jen Ashton, in real time.
That cohort energy was critical.
$0 in Ad Spend
There was no paid push. Growth came from the following outlets:
Direct newsletter announcements
Organic Instagram stories and posts
Press coverage that amplified Dr. Ashton’s pivot from TV to wellness entrepreneurship
beehiiv's native tooling – segmentation, deliverability, and analytics – made the funnel efficient without complexity.
Ajenda’s Revenue Stack: The Newsletter as a Launchpad
Dr. Jen Ashton didn’t just build a product. She layered a system:
Layer 1:
Free weekly newsletter, Today’s Ajenda, focused on value, insight, and expertise in women’s health
Layer 2:
A digital product with multiple phases, geared towards high volume with a lower ticket price
Layer 3:
Membership community with accountability and support, driving retention and upsell potential
Layer 4:
New product lines in development: deeper programs, continued education, physical goods, all built on the foundation of trust
This was the beginning of a system.
What Creators Can Learn from Ajenda
The story of Ajenda isn’t just about one product or one launch. It’s a model for what the next generation of creator businesses can look like.
Here are the key lessons:
Build in public before you build to sell.
Dr. Jen Ashton's experiment wasn’t marketing. It was trust-building at scale.
Test demand with free content.
66% open rates and overflowing direct messages (DMs) signaled that her community wanted more, long before a product existed.
Own your list, not your following.
Ashton’s 181,000 beehiiv subscribers were more valuable than any social metric.
Community creates urgency.
People joined the 8-Week Experiment because they didn’t want to go it alone, and they didn’t want to miss out.
Pricing matters.
At $59, Ajenda lowered the barrier to entry while maximizing volume, a strategy more newsletter creators should consider when launching.
Don’t monetize too early.
Ashton passed on early brand deals to build credibility first. When she did monetize, the response was immediate and massive.
A Newsletter Is Not the Product. It’s a Launch Pad.
Ajenda proves what’s possible when a newsletter is used intentionally, not just as a side project, but as the first step in a broader business vision.
It built trust.
It drove action.
It created a new kind of media business – expert-led, audience-owned, and infinitely expandable.
Dr. Jen Ashton’s story isn’t exceptional because she was on TV. It’s exceptional because she applied what every creator has access to: content, authenticity, consistency, and she executed it with precision.
For newsletter creators looking to turn attention into income, this isn’t just an inspiring story. It’s a playbook.
Build your own growth engine with beehiiv, from your first subscriber to your first six figures.
