Email strategy
paid test task for Nik Huno

The SilverHands

[paid test task] [newsletter email] [2026]

one newsletter email that tells a real story and sells a course without ever sounding like a pitch

Nik Huno writes on Substack for guides, healers and mentors who are leaving traditional careers, a crowd that bounces the second something smells like marketing. Before hiring, he set me a paid test: write one email for his list, about 80% story and 20% offer, that sells his course The 3-Hour Guidance Business. It had to sound like him, not like a marketer, and it had to stay far away from anything that reads like coaching Instagram. It was a test task and not a client project, so it sits here as a work sample.

Someone leaning out of a window, waiting for a letter

A pigeon flying in with an envelope in its beak

click a stone

how I worked

Read his essays, Instagram and YouTube back to back, then wrote a voice profile: how his sentences move, what he does often, what he would never write.
Studied the audience through the research he shared, to find the exact words his readers use for what they feel.
Wrote six possible angles, each with the story, the feeling underneath it and how it leads to the offer. Picked one and wrote down why.
Wrote a first draft, then reviewed it hard against the brief. It had slipped into third person ("Nik said...") instead of his own "I", and the pitch had crept up to about 60/40. The second draft fixed both.
Added subject line and preview text options, formatting notes, and a short note explaining my choices.

what it taught me

that a pitch works best when the story has already walked the reader to the door, that reviewing your own first draft against the brief is where the real fix happens, and that writing in someone else's voice is mostly deciding what they would never say.

the six angles I considered

the silver hands (my pick)
(1)
The Handless Maiden fairy tale from his latest essay, turned on the reader's own "silver hands" life. The offer lands as a map, not a rescue.
not online
(2)
Built on his own line about where he sees himself in ten years. Risk: asking people to leave marketing, inside a marketing email.
almond blossoms
(3)
The thing you keep almost doing is a calling still in its bare-branch stage. Risk: slides into lifestyle-creator territory.
the cost on the front end
(4)
Every workaround for not being yourself leaves a residue. Risk: more argument than story.
Chiara took the book out of my hands
(5)
You keep preparing while other people begin. Risk: borrows his latest opening image too closely.
the thing that already happened
(6)
You've been doing this work longer than you've called it work. Risk: reads like the sales page turned into an email.

Why the silver hands won: it grew out of what he was actually writing that month, it gave the offer a structural job (a map, not a promise to grow your hands back), and it showed I had read his essays and not just his sales page.

read the email (v2, written in Nik's voice)

inbox

Nikita Huno to you

the silver hands

a fairy tale, and the door I keep almost walking through

Dear reader,

There's a Grimm fairy tale I keep returning to. The Handless Maiden.

A miller, drowning in debt, makes a deal with the devil. Wealth in exchange for something he doesn't realise he's giving away. His own daughter. When the devil comes to collect, she draws a circle of protection and washes herself clean; he can't touch her. So he demands her hands instead. The miller cuts them off himself. To honour the deal.

She grows silver ones in their place. They work. They hold things. They do most of what the real ones did. From the outside, you'd never know the difference.

She lives like that for years. The deal is technically being honoured. The work is technically getting done. Only she knows the hands aren't hers.

The first time I read it, I thought it was a story about technology. The second time, I realised it was also about a job. A title. A version of myself I built to honour a deal I made before I was old enough to know I was making it.

The version that said the right things at dinner. The version that was good at the meetings. The version that kept a folder of certifications and another folder of half-read books on the work it would have been doing if it weren't doing this. The version that helped people on the side and called it a hobby.

The silver hands version.

I lived inside mine at Bloomberg for five years. I don't think I stayed because I was a coward. I think I made the trade so early it felt like growing up. Other people called it stability. I called it being responsible. My body had its own word for it, but I mostly wasn't listening.

Most people reading this have a version of those hands too. I notice it in the messages I get. People don't write to say they've failed. They write to say everything's working, technically, and they can't tell why their chest tightens on a Tuesday afternoon for no reason they can name. They've been calling it a block. I think it's probably a real ability they've been hiding behind humility.

Here's the part of the fairy tale I keep circling.

The hands grow back. Grimm is clear about it. They don't grow back faster, and they don't grow back because the maiden finds a smarter shortcut. They grow back because at some point she stops pretending the silver ones are real, and walks into the forest, and stays there long enough for something true to come through.

Seven years.

I don't think this letter can do that for anyone. What I do think is that there's a smaller step before the seven years. The part where you let yourself name what's already been happening. Not to anyone else. Just to yourself. That the work you've been doing for free since you were fifteen might be the work. The voice note that turned into ninety minutes. The colleague who keeps finding a reason to stop by your desk. The stranger who started telling you about their dying parent within ten minutes of meeting you. That the certifications were never going to give you permission. That what you've been calling a block might be your body refusing to keep pretending.

I don't have this fully figured out either. I have a suspicion about which hands are mine, but I'm still in the forest. The clouds over Puglia have moved twice since I started writing this. The silver ones still hold a coffee just fine.

Maybe that's where most of us start.

Love,

Nikita Huno

P.S. If any of this lands, the 3-Hour Guidance Business is open this week and closes Friday 30 May at 11:59 PM CET. The founding price ends tonight at 9 PM CET. It isn't a course about growing your hands back. It's the structural map I wished someone had handed me on the floor of my apartment, the night I had $243 in my bank account and no plan. Details: guidancebusiness.com. There's also a free letter series called Becoming the Guide if you want a slower way in.

Non aspettare che la voce si spenga.

Don't wait for the voice to go quiet.

my process note to Nik

Where I started. Read your last few Substack essays back-to-back. The silver hands one, almond blossoms, the May piece on not online. Scrolled through your Instagram captions and sat with a couple of YouTube videos to hear how you talk vs how you write. Then asked the audience GPT a handful of specific questions about what your buyers are afraid of, what they want, and the language they use for the block they keep hitting. “Hiding behind humility” and “this is probably a real ability” came back from two of those answers and ended up in the email almost word-for-word. Pulled the deadline structure, the founding-price language, and the Becoming the Guide thread from the sales page itself that you sent.

Angles I considered. Outlined six angle directions before writing a word. Silver hands, not online, almond blossoms, the cost on the front end, Chiara took the book out of my hands, the thing that already happened and a few more. I picked the silver hands because it hooks into what you've been writing about this month, lets the offer land as permission rather than pressure, and is the angle a reader of your Substack, not your sales page, would write.

How I structured the pitch. 80% story, 20% offer, with the 20% living entirely in the P.S. The body builds one frame (silver hands, the deal, seven years, the smaller step before the forest), carries the reader to a moment of self-naming, and stops. Deadlines stated as information, not pressure.

What I'd test next. Three things, if useful. A subject line split between “the silver hands” and “a deal I made before I knew I was making it,” since #1 is the more readerly hook and #2 might out-perform on long-time subscribers. Whether the $243 line earns its place or reads as too on-the-nose for readers who already know that story. And a P.S. variant that drops the deadline language entirely and only links, for the segment that bounces at the first sign of date pressure.

One more thing to note. The P.S. references the 29 May 9 PM price-jump and 30 May 11:59 PM close. If the actual send slot is different in your sequence, the P.S. needs a one-line tweak.