How one evergreen funnel, strategic automations, and an engaged email list became the foundation of a multi-seven-figure creator business.
Sam Vander Wielen helps coaches and online business owners legally protect themselves through DIY contract templates. She’s built a multi-seven-figure business since 2017, and she’ll tell you the same thing every time someone asks how she did it: email.
When Sam started her first online business in 2016, everyone around her was chasing social media virality. Instagram was exploding. Platforms were rewarding reach. Going viral was the goal.
Sam had a different instinct.
“I felt very alone in the idea that my goal was to get as many people over here [to my email list]. I was just siphoning everybody off those platforms and onto my email list.”
It wasn’t a popular strategy at the time. But Sam, an attorney-turned-entrepreneur from Philadelphia, had a streak of pragmatism that made her skeptical of building on someone else’s platform. She wanted to own her audience. And she was willing to be patient about it.
“I think of it like compounding interest,” she says. “If you and I started a job at the same time, but you never invested in your retirement account and I was depositing $5 a month, over time you think it’s nothing. But then you look back and you’re like, oh, I should have been doing that 10 years ago.”
Today, Sam’s email list is the backbone of a business that generates multi-seven figures annually — built almost entirely on two core products, a single evergreen funnel, and twice-yearly live launches. She’s been a Kit customer for a decade. And the way she uses the platform is a masterclass in what email-first business building actually looks like in practice.
Results at a glance
- Multi-seven-figure creator business built primarily around two products
- One evergreen webinar funnel drives the majority of revenue year-round
- $500,000 generated in a four-day live launch
- 10+ years using Kit
- Creator Network consistently generates new subscribers
- Weekly newsletter keeps subscribers engaged between launches
- A/B testing continually improves funnel performance
- Facebook Custom Audiences improves paid acquisition ROI
How an evergreen email funnel powers Sam’s business
The architecture of Sam’s business is deceptively simple. All of her content across social media, her podcast, guest appearances leads to one place: a free class called Five Steps to Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business.
Once someone registers, Kit takes over.
“Because I use EasyWebinar for people to watch my webinar, we’re able to integrate with Kit,” Sam explains. “If someone came but left, if someone never attended, if someone left early, there are all these different options, which gave me the ability to grow out this octopus of a funnel with all these different emails that go to people based on their behavior.”
Regardless of what a subscriber does in the funnel, they enter a Kit email sequence that nurtures them toward Sam’s flagship product, the Ultimate Bundle. It’s a sequence she’s refined over years, and one she was nervous to touch, even when she thought it could be better.
“I didn’t want to break it because it had been going so well,” she says. “So we used Kit’s A/B testing features to test the emails: half the people who signed up for my webinar went into track A, half went into track B. We got all the data from all the emails while running the same funnel with a different sequence.”
The new emails performed better. And Sam had her answer without risking what was already working. Earlier this year, she ran that exact funnel live, and it generated $500,000 in four days.
How Sam uses email segmentation to keep subscribers engaged
Running a high-volume sales funnel twice a year creates a real challenge: how do you keep people around between launches without exhausting them?
Sam’s answer is a weekly newsletter that deliberately doesn’t talk about legal templates.
“I learned pretty early on that I wasn’t going to keep a whole lot of people around if I just kept talking about legal stuff,” she says. “I didn’t want to write it, and I don’t think most people wanted to hear it. So I started writing about what else they were struggling with: mindset, email marketing, evergreen systems. That’s how I’ve kept people there, and it’s how I’ve gotten people to refer my emails.”
Sam’s weekly newsletter has also become the primary distribution engine for her podcast, On Your Terms. Rather than relying on podcast algorithms alone, she uses email to introduce each episode, tell the story behind it, and drive listeners directly from her inbox to the show.
She also uses Kit’s conditional content and tagging to make sure the right message reaches the right person. Subscribers who’ve already purchased are excluded from ads for her free webinar. Beginners get filtered out of more advanced content. When someone clicks through the funnel but doesn’t buy, they now enter a soft opt-out sequence Sam recently built, a gentle pivot that keeps them on her newsletter without continuing to receive sales emails.
“I know the value of them staying on my list,” she says. “I just use some cute language, like: I just don’t want to hear from you more about this right now. I just want to get your weekly email. And so now I know they’re going to get a lot more nurture from me.”
The result is a list that stays engaged and stays ready to buy when Sam opens her cart.
Using email to launch a bestselling book
When it came time to release her debut book, When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy: A Practical, No-BS Guide to Online Entrepreneurship, Sam leaned heavily on her email list and Kit network.
For months leading up to launch, she emailed her list and offered bonuses to anyone who purchased early, a campaign made possible by Kit’s forms and tagging capabilities, which let her identify and reward buyers automatically.
She also activated the relationships she’d built through years of being embedded in the Kit creator community. She reached out to fellow Kit creators—and to Kit founder Nathan Barry himself—asking them to mention the book in their newsletters.
Scaling email marketing across an entire team
Sam’s business isn’t a solo operation. She has three full-time team members and several contractors — a copywriter, ads manager, social media manager, tech VA, marketing assistant, customer assistant, web designer, and director of operations, all working inside a single Kit account on Pro.
“We use it a lot for having team members come in, having someone do a funnel analysis, having my ads person get in there,” she says. “If something’s broken, my tech VA can get in and fix it. I don’t have to send over everything, and they can look at things I wouldn’t even know to send them.”
Her ads team uses Kit’s Facebook Custom Audiences integration available on Pro to retarget her email list, building lookalike audiences from her most engaged subscribers. For her recent $500,000 launch, they spent $22,000 on Meta ads. The return on ad spend speaks for itself.
How Creator Network became a consistent email list growth channel
“I’m obsessed with it,” she says of Creator Network. “I’ve actually seen a ton of traffic from it.”
Sam’s approach to Recommendations is characteristically intentional: She only recommends creators whose emails she actually reads, whose work she genuinely stands behind. But she’s also been strategic about building reciprocal relationships, particularly at Craft + Commerce, Kit’s annual creator conference.
“When I spoke at Craft + Commerce, I was going around hustling to meet everyone and saying, will you recommend my Kit newsletter? Because I already recommend yours, and this is what my emails are about.” The result: Pat Flynn went home and recommended her newsletter, sending a significant wave of new subscribers her way.
“It was kind of wild to watch how many internet-famous people were already getting my emails,” she says. “Once I could meet them in person and ask, they were like, oh yeah, I love your emails. And it was just an easy, natural next step.”
Creator Network has become a meaningful list growth channel for Sam; one that compounds the same way her email strategy does, quietly building in the background while the rest of the business runs.
Why Sam still believes email is the most valuable business asset
These days, Sam hears from friends and peers regularly, people who are finally coming around to the idea that email is the most durable audience they can build. She’s gracious about it.
“I’ve just kind of been there the whole time,” she says. “It’s kind of funny how many times, probably even in a week, someone will reach out and say, ‘Okay, I’m finally in. What do I need to do to build an email list?'”
Her answer hasn’t changed much in nearly a decade: start now, stay consistent, and think of it like compounding interest.
“Email has been everything,” she says. “It’s the backbone of my business.”
Sam Vander Wielen is the founder of Sam Vander Wielen and the creator of the Ultimate Bundle. She is also the author of When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy. She has been a Kit customer since 2016. Her weekly newsletter and podcast, On Your Terms, cover email marketing, legal protection, and online business strategy.
Start building your email list with Kit, request a demo.
Frequently asked questions
How did Sam Vander Wielen grow her business with email marketing?
Sam built her business by directing all of her content—social media, podcast episodes, guest appearances toward a single entry point: a free webinar called Five Steps to Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business. From there, Kit automation takes over, nurturing subscribers through a sequence that leads to her flagship product, the Ultimate Bundle. She runs the funnel live twice a year and keeps subscribers engaged year-round through a weekly newsletter.
Why does Sam focus on email instead of social media?
Sam has been email-first since 2016, when most creators around her were chasing social media reach. Her reasoning: email is an audience you own. Social platforms can change their algorithms, restrict your reach, or disappear. An email list is yours. She describes it like compounding interest, the earlier you start, the more it builds over time.
What role does automation play in Sam’s business?
Automation is central to how Sam’s business runs without constant hands-on effort. Kit handles subscriber behavior routing, sending different emails based on whether someone attended her webinar, left early, or didn’t show up at all. Conditional content blocks let her send one email that delivers different messages to different subscriber segments. Her soft opt-out sequence automatically moves non-buyers into her newsletter rather than continuing to send them sales emails.
How does Sam use Creator Network to grow her email list?
Sam treats Creator Network as a relationship-building tool, not just a growth mechanism. She recommends creators whose work she genuinely believes in, builds in-person connections at Craft + Commerce, and asks those creators to recommend her newsletter in return. Around 50% of her list growth in certain periods has come from Creator Network referrals.
How often does Sam launch her products?
Sam launches her flagship product, the Ultimate Bundle, twice a year as live launches. In between, her evergreen funnel runs continuously, so the business is always generating revenue, even when she’s not actively promoting anything.
What Kit features does Sam use most?
Sam’s team uses Kit’s automation sequences, conditional content, subscriber tagging, A/B testing, Facebook Custom Audiences integration, Creator Network, and Kit Forms (for book launch bonus redemption). Her entire team (three full-time members and several contractors) works inside a single Creator Pro account.
Can creators build a business with only a few products?
Sam is proof that they can. Her multi-seven-figure business is built almost entirely around two core products: the Ultimate Bundle and her book, When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy. She’s intentionally kept her product line narrow, choosing to optimize what’s already working rather than adding complexity.
