Sometimes, hard work matters less than luck. In September 2019, I took the reins of StockUp, which I was told was a popular email newsletter sent out weekly by The Motley Fool, rounding up our most interesting free news stories, videos, and podcasts from the past week. The job sounded fun, and I threw myself enthusiastically into it. Turns out, it was fun!

Like my work on the Twitter feed, I set out to give StockUp its own distinctive voice. I added wry category headers above the headline for each item. Snuck in a different joke each week in our blurb encouraging people to find us by asking their smart speakers. And I found great articles our talented roster of writers had written, and showcased them in ways that (hopefully) led readers to click through and learn more.

As COVID-19 hit, I used the newsletter’s intro to cover the pandemic’s effect on the markets and spread the best available public health data about how to fight it. (Lotta handwashing advice there, for a while. You remember those days.) I also added a whole new section: Jargon Decoder, explaining complicated investing terms in plain, friendly English.

My tenure on StockUp ended alongside StockUp itself. The audience numbers I tracked looked suspiciously great: roughly 1 million recipients when I picked it up, and 3 million when I left. Before you rush to congratulate me, it turns out there’d always been a catch. 

I was told upon putting out the final edition — and not a moment sooner — that StockUp was the email newsletter we sent automatically to people who had asked us to stop receiving our other email newsletters. (I always wondered why my requests for a dedicated StockUp signup page on Fool.com went nowhere.) 

Eh. C’est la vie. I had fun. With any luck, at least some of StockUp’s readers did, too.

Read an archived edition of StockUp.