Newsletter | Rey Belen

The newsletter

What I noticed, and where I’d start. Two short sections once a month, plus a photograph from wherever I happened to be.

Monthly ~230 words Two sections and a photograph Replies come to me

What arrives

Short enough to read. Specific enough to use.

One letter a month. It takes about two minutes and ends with a question rather than an offer.

The Gap What I noticed, and what’s actually causing it.

Where I’d Start The move, if it were mine — ending with a question for you.

From the Road One photograph. Place and date, nothing else.

The last one

Read one before you decide.

This is the whole of the most recent letter — not an excerpt. If it isn’t worth two minutes a month, you’ll know here rather than after subscribing.

Rey Belen

Newsletter · No. 01 · August 2026

The Gap

A client asked me to fix their engagement problem. Before agreeing, I wanted to know whether they actually had one.

The posts were pulling thousands of likes. The team was pleased. Revenue hadn’t moved in three quarters.

The engagement was real. The audience was wrong — and that is not an engagement problem. It is the wrong attention, winning.

This is the shape most misdiagnoses take. The metric that looks healthiest is usually the one measuring what you are already good at. Nobody audits a number that is going up.

Where I’d Start

Pick one number tied to a real decision — did a right-fit person take the next step — and let the pretty chart fall. It gets worse before it gets honest, which is the hard part to explain to a room that likes the current chart.

If you are carrying a metric you would defend but could not tie to a decision, that is the one I would look at first.

What is the number your team would be most reluctant to stop reporting?

From the Road

Kapurpurawan · May 2013

— Rey

Reply to this letter if you want to. It comes straight to me — not to a list, not to an assistant.

Why people write back

Every reply reaches me.

Not a list, not an assistant, not a support address that routes somewhere. If you disagree with something in a letter, I’d rather hear it than not.

Some of the better thinking here started as somebody’s disagreement — usually from someone closer to the problem than I was.

Now that you’ve read one.

Next letter goes out at the end of the month.

Same form, same three fields. Takes about fifteen seconds, and you can leave whenever it stops being worth the two minutes.

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