Building Malachi Daily: Raw Behind The Scenes 🙏

Hey all 👋 

If you’re new, this what to expect from my personal newsletter:

• 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Thoughts + resources on faith, parenting and family

• 💼 Business updates + learnings (BetterLetter, Malachi Daily, and more)

• 🗓️ 1ish time a month

There’s a lot of faith talk in this one, so if that’s not your jam..there are some cute pictures of our son Judah at the bottom :)

Today: The Malachi Daily origin story and where it’s headed in 2025. If you’re new, this is MUCH longer than my normal newsletters, but it’s close to the heart.

Malachi Daily Update 📈 

Malachi Daily just crossed the 25,000 subscriber mark on December 31st.

We have plans to grow the community to 100,000 people in 2025.

That might sound cool and exciting, but this journey has been anything but easy or straightforward.

Multiple times, we almost shut it down.

Starting Malachi Daily has been one of the biggest steps of faith I’ve ever taken.

(it’s up there with leaving my full-time job back in 2019 to start my first business 2 weeks after we became foster parents)

Things could be changing in a big way for Malachi Daily in 2025, so I wanted to reflect on the journey thus far and share some behind the scenes I’ve never shared before.

Here’s the not so short story 😅👇️

(got emotional processing this and typing it out)

The Timeline 🗓️ 

December 2022: Moving On 📉 

From 2020 to the end of 2022, I was working as a small business coach (my first ever business).

When I first started it, I thought I was going to be a “coach” forever.

But during an end-of-year prayer journaling session in 2022, God revealed to me that I’m not primarily a “coach” from a vocational perspective - but rather that I was a builder.

Coaching was simply the bridge God used to get me out of corporate and into entrepreneurship.

And now, it was time to transition out of the coaching business.

I was surprised.

So I asked, “Okay, so you’re calling me out of coaching, but what are you calling me into?”

Crickets.

No clear answer.

Part of me was scared because I had no idea what was next. Part of me was excited because I was ready for a change.

January 2023: Idea💡 

I’ve always been an idea guy. I come up with 1 new idea for every 60 seconds I spend in the shower. It’s both a strength and weakness.

When I started the coaching business in 2020, I had to suppress that part of myself. I had never started a business before and I had very little idea what was doing.

The coaching business was only going to be successful and provide for our family if I focused ONLY on the coaching business and didn’t get distracted.

But during the prayer journaling session where I sensed God calling me out of coaching, for the first time in 3 years, He gave me the green light to let the ideas flow freely and build something else.

One idea came immediately to mind (I had been sitting on it for over a year).

I wanted to create a way to help myself memorize Bible verses.

At the time, I didn’t have a great grasp on Scripture. I knew concepts but couldn’t quote anything off the top of my head. And I struggled to find specific passages or connect dots from book to book, OT to NT.

Memorizing Bible verses was a habit I had wanted to form, but nothing out there worked for me.

Great! I’ll build that…

BUT I needed a way to pay the bills (remember, the coaching business was on the way out…and that was our only source of income).

I’m a dreamer, so I thought maybe everything would go smoothly, and this Scripture memorization thing could make money and become my job…

But despite my excitement, God made it clear this idea would NOT generate income (very comforting to a guy with a wife, 2 kids and no plan to support the family 🤦‍♂️).

He basically said, “Build it anyway. Trust me.”

On paper, it made NO sense.

But I remember feeling very clear that God was asking me to do it.

I’ll never forget that conversation with Dana in our upstairs bathroom..

“Hey, sooo I think God is telling me I’m supposed to move on from the coaching business..

Aaaand the only thing about what’s next that I’m clear about is this Scripture memory thing that isn’t going to make any money…

I know it makes NO sense..but I think I need to do it.”

It felt ridiculous saying that out loud.

Part of me expected (and wanted) her to say I was crazy and pull me back to reality.

That would have felt safe.

On the surface, was fearful and anxious.

But deep down, almost too deep to notice - I had peace about doing the crazy thing.

To Dana’s credit - despite her logically knowing this was an irresponsible decision - she knew God wants our trust more than he wants our definition of “responsible.”

“I don’t understand it…but okay. He will provide.”

So onward we went.

February - May 2023: Build 🚧 

I tinkered around with how to send daily text messages to myself and a few friends at church to help us memorize 1 bible verse a week.

The plan was to send 1 image a day, and make each day more fill-in-the-blanks.

Then, I realized sending images is WAY more expensive than regular texts.

So I started sending actual text messages - testing 3 different SMS platforms, mapping out workflows, figuring out content.

I’m also a teacher at heart.

Memorizing Bible verses is cool, but I hate when people rip them out of their context and misuse them (on purpose or by accident).

So I had the idea of teaching people 1 bite-sized piece of context every night. So the rhythm was:

• Every morning: 1 Bible verse with fill in the blanks

• Every night: Bite-sized context about the author, audience, or original language

Everyone I talked to LOVED the idea, which was encouraging. I felt like I was really on to something.

In April (a month away from when I planned to launch publicly), a guy I met named Michael Whittle introduced me to Isaac, who coincidentally (or not) happened to be working on building a Scripture memorization tool as well.

Two meetings later, we decided to join forces and start working on Malachi Daily together.

June - October 2023: Launch 🚀 

After refining the process and lots of testing, we launched Malachi Daily as a free text messaging platform that helped people memorize Bible verses and learn their context.

We wanted to get people using it, get feedback, and eventually charge a small subscription fee to cover the costs of sending texts.

I got a friend (shout out to Marc Stasio!) to help me record an official-looking video at our church.

We launched it to our friends and very small instagram followings.

We got ~500 sign ups within the first few weeks. The response was REALLY positive.

I was elated.

We started running FB ads (Isaac’s expertise) to go beyond our networks.

In the first month, we got ~1000 sign ups and complete strangers loved it.

I got texts from users every day with gratitude and encouragement.

It was exhilarating to have created something people enjoy.

But there was one minor problem…People didn’t want to pay for it 😅

We had ~8% of people voluntarily pay $3-$10/month to support us, which was amazing, but not enough to cover operating costs and sustain the model.

Text messages cost money to send. And the more people who subscribed, the more money it cost us. And that adds up when you send texts twice a day.

From initial testing to running ads to sending texts to 1000+ people for a few months, we spent ~$10,000.

We built something people LOVED. We even knew how to get it in front of the right people.

But I was going to be broke pretty soon if we kept going.

At this point, we’re eating heavily into a dwindling savings.

We had been barely scraping by all year from the few coaching clients I still worked with, and Dana picking up some shifts in the hospital as a speech therapist.

By my calculations, we were supposed to run out of money in June. But somehow we kept having just enough.

The end feels near.

October 2023: We almost shut down. ❌ 

At that point, I was incredibly discouraged (a massive understatement).

Time and money invested. People loved it. Helping people grow spiritually.

But Malachi Daily was actively losing money.

And I still didn’t have a way to pay the bills and support the family.

Yet, I still felt the call hadn’t changed - I was supposed to be working on Malachi Daily.

It made NO sense to me. It was a very raw time. Questioning God. Confused and angry.

I was frustrated with Him, myself and the circumstances.

“I thought this was what you wanted me to do?! Why would you tell me to do this and have it not work out?! Am I irresponsible? Did I make a mistake? Am I a bad steward? Did I hear you wrong and I’m just an idiot?”

At this point, I was having an existential crisis.

“Should I apply for jobs? That feels like complete failure, but I also need to provide for my family…

Should I start another business? That feels risky and irresponsible since that will take time to start making money, so I don’t even think that would work.

Lord, where are you? Why won’t you just bail me out and tell me what to do?”

At this point, Isaac flew from outside of Toronto to NJ. We spent two full days trying to come up with ways to make it work.

I was hopeful we’d come up with a brilliant idea to save Malachi Daily and everything would be smooth sailing from there.

We considered:

• Building an app

• Raising money from investors

• Building new software to make it cheaper to send text messages

• Pivoting to email instead of text messages

• Shutting down

I honestly hated all of these ideas.

Especially building an app or moving to email.

I didn’t see a path forward.

The whole reason I started it as a text messaging service is because it avoids the noise of the inbox, doesn’t require a download, and it has 98% open rates.

If Isaac said to me, “I think we should call it quits” —

— that would have been it. I wouldn’t be writing this email today. I was out.

Big fail. Time to move on, get a job, quietly shut it down.

But he had hope. He thought it was worth giving email a try.

Reluctantly, I agreed.

At least I’d be able to say to God that the failure wasn’t due to lack of trying.

I fully expected we would email for a week or two, and then officially call it quits.

Hope was at an all time low. Feeling like a failure (as an entrepreneur, as a husband and father, as a provider) at an all time high.

It was a dark time for me. Barely had words to pray.

The Psalms of lament became real in a new way to me.

The end was imminent.

November - December 2023: Job Interview + Pivot to Email 📨 

Still trying to figure out how to provide for the family, I was pursuing anything I could.

I was talking to Next Door Photos to potentially open a location in NJ.

I remember interviewing for a job role and literally telling Dana right after:

“I really hope they don’t offer me the job.”

I felt no peace when I imagined myself in a normal job.

We pivoted from SMS to email, using Mailchimp (my least favorite software ever).

And two good things happened:

• Instead of being limited to 160 characters (text messaging limits), I could do A LOT more teaching around the context of Bible verses.

• Instead of paying $1 on ads to acquire a user, it cost us $0.25 to acquire a new email subscriber. And we were using Sparkloop to offset the ad spend (and even be slightly profitable). Malachi Daily stopped losing money!

  • We grew from 1,000 to 8,000 subscribers. I start sharing about our growth on social media.

One bad thing:

• Personally, we were about to run out of money. I still didn’t have a way to pay the bills. I had to get a job or start making money ASAP or we would start pulling out of retirement to make ends meet.

December 2023 - January 2024: Rapid Growth 📈 

We switch from Mailchimp to beehiiv.

I keep sharing about our growth on social media.

Random people see my social media posts and start reaching out, asking “Can you help us grow our email newsletters?”

I desperately needed a way to make money. Isaac was considering a next step after sunsetting his previous marketing agency as well.

This was the first idea that actually felt viable (and enjoyable) as a way to make money.

We prayed on this idea of helping others grow their newsletters for 1 week. It felt like this was where God was leading us.

On January 8th, 2024, BetterLetter was born.

Starting a brand new business in a new space wasn’t rainbows and butterflies from the start either.

But we grew juuuust quickly enough to the point where it sustained our family.

It felt like that scene in Top Gun: Maverick where the plane just narrowly escaped crashing into the mountain.

March - August 2024: Burn out (almost shut down, again) 😩 

Malachi Daily keeps operating, but we stop investing in growing the audience (at this point, I had no money to invest into it and we needed to focus on building BetterLetter).

Judah was born. What a blessing.

But it also felt like more weight I had to carry. It made it really hard to sit in the joy of our family having a new child.

This season was a GRIND.

I’m burnt out from writing the content every other week while trying to be a present dad and building the new business from scratch.

What was once a delight became something I dreaded.

I hated that I didn’t want to do the work and create the content.

Even without investing in growth, it was costing time and mental energy I didn’t have.

I tell Isaac I don’t know if I can keep doing this. I almost call it quits again.

I wanted God to tell me to shut it down and stop working on it. It served its purpose, right?

1. I trusted God now more than ever (after ~1 year of not having a reliable source of income)

2. It led to the creation of BetterLetter

Quitting felt like the easy thing to do. But whenever I thought about it, it didn’t sit right.

Isaac still didn’t want to quit.

Again, no peace.

When I asked God, “Should I stop?”

He seemed to just say, “Keep going.”

I was numb.

Barely hanging on, I kept going.

Going through the motions for months.

Isaac stepped in and took some of the content creation off my plate, which gave me enough capacity to think beyond the next day.

September 2024: Hire Writers ✍️ 

I bring on a few writers to help with content. I move into the editor-in-chief role.

It costs money, but BetterLetter is in a good enough spot to where I can breathe again from a time and effort perspective.

Exhale.

This feels way more sustainable.

November 2024: Growth Again 📈 

After holding steady at around 15k subscribers for most of the year, we started investing in growing the community again.

December 2024: The Path Forward 🛣️ 

Last month, I fasted for a few days asking God specifically what he wants us to do with Malachi Daily in 2025.

Answer?

Keep going. 

Invest more. Serve more. Get creative.

it feels like a second (or third) birth for Malachi Daily.

I have renewed excitement. Ideas are flowing. Growth is happening.

The plan is to reinvest BetterLetter profit into Malachi Daily, grow it to 100k subscribers in 2025, keep it free and create some truly unique ways to serve our community.

I have a sense this might be the beginnings of something big.

Of course, things rarely go exactly as planned. And there will still be hard seasons ahead.

But I’ve always had a sense that God had bigger plans for Malachi Daily than I ever could imagine.

Who knows..Maybe we’re building a media company that exists to participate in this part of Jesus’ most famous prayer:

Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

If you’re a person of faith, I hope this encourages you.

Building is hard.

Stepping out in faith is scary.

Obedience doesn’t always make sense at all on paper.

In fact, it might look foolish.

But it’s worth it.

It’s the adventure of a lifetime.

It leads to greater trust in our Creator.

And it reveals just how faithful, loving and powerful of a God we have.

More to come.

Happy New Year 🪩

Kieran

P.S. That was much longer and heavier than usual…Enjoy these cute pictures of Judah (before and after his haircut) while he enjoys his few months as the youngest in the family 😂