Hey, Toaster Readers!

Normally, we'd dive into this week's news, but honestly? So much is happening at the crossroads of marketing, lending, and tech that our heads are spinning! It feels like a year's worth of change is packed into every month.

While that means tons of exciting stuff to cover, it's also getting trickier to cut through the noise.

So, instead of opening with a news summary this week, we wanted to share a bit about what we're building here at The Free Toaster and how we plan to become your absolute go-to source in this niche.

Here’s the game plan:

1. Reinvesting in Content: Everything we earn (huge thanks to our 4 awesome early sponsors!) is going straight back into making this newsletter better – more killer content, smarter tech, and new partnerships.

2. Leveraging AI: Right now, it helps us write faster and find stories you need to see. Soon, it'll connect the dots between announcements, earnings calls, and past reports to give you much richer context on everything we publish.

3. More Expert Voices: We're talking with some amazing folks to bring you specialized columns. Imagine deep dives into direct mail, paid social, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), AI agents, and more. The Free Toaster started with just us (Carlos and Nick), but we're gearing up to be much bigger!

4. Building Human Connection: In a world full of AI, human connection is priceless. We want The Free Toaster to be a real community. Think small dinners, coffee meetups, maybe even live podcast events.

Look, building a newsletter and a community is tough, especially now. We pour a ton of heart and hours into this because we genuinely love it (even if the financials don't make sense on paper, yet!).

We're in this for the long haul, and we hope you are too.

If The Free Toaster is hitting the mark for you, could you do us a huge favor?

Share it with a colleague, drop it in a Slack channel, or get your boss to sign up. Your support is what keeps us going and growing.

Seriously, thanks for letting us into your inbox. We're working hard to make this the best publication in our niche. We're not there yet, but with you on board, we’ve got a real shot.

Thanks,

Carlos and Nick

We’re excited to welcome our friends at Fintel Connect as our newest Toaster sponsor

Turn partnerships into your top growth channel with Fintel Connect. 

Drive thousands of new accounts and billions in deposits with the only partner marketing solution built for fintech and banking – your all-in-one affiliate platform, partner network, agency, and marketing compliance engine.