📰 Why You Need a Newsletter

In partnership with

Good morning.

Today’s newsletter is very meta. It’s a newsletter about leveraging newsletters to grow your business, in partnership with my favorite newsletter, Morning Brew.

Mom, I’ve made it. 🙃

All jokes aside, I’ve been reading Morning Brew every day since 2018, and it’s the primary way I stay informed about what’s going on in the world, in a refreshingly light way with the kind of humor I love.

Alrighty then. Here we go.

— Gordon

The gold standard of business news

Morning Brew is transforming the way working professionals consume business news.

They skip the jargon and lengthy stories, and instead serve up the news impacting your life and career with a hint of wit and humor. This way, you’ll actually enjoy reading the news—and the information sticks.

Best part? Morning Brew’s newsletter is completely free. Sign up in just 10 seconds and if you realize that you prefer long, dense, and boring business news—you can always go back to it.

Join 4.3 Million Readers Now

Everyday Insights 👀
Keeping you in the know

• 4 Styles of Coaching—and When to Use Them [HBR]

• The Ultimate Guide To Crafting a Winning Monthly Newsletter [beehiiv]

• The state of AI: How organizations are rewiring to capture value [McKinsey]

📰 Why you need a newsletter

Starting a business and becoming an entrepreneur sounds exciting.

Building, growing, and nurturing a database sounds like the opposite of that.

The challenge is that your database is your business—a living record of your past, current, and future customers.

It can tell you who has bought, who has interest, and who is likely to buy soon.

Most importantly, your database is your direct line of communication to your customers. An algorithm can’t hide them or take them from you on a whim.

Too many businesses rarely use their database. If they have one at all.

Yet, a well-organized, high-performing database can transform your business.

Less not knowing when your next commission will hit your bank account. 😅

More spontaneous trips somewhere tropical with friends. 🏝️🍹🤙

Better yet, what if your database wasn’t just where you store your contacts and occasionally log notes?

What if your database not only deepened the relationship with your existing customers but drove more leads than your business could handle every month?

Most businesses miss the point about their database: It isn’t just about having contacts in a CRM.

It’s about building an engaged audience that becomes an army of raving fans while dramatically lowering your customer acquisition cost (CAC).

This is why…

Newsletters are the ultimate growth lever for your business.

And honestly, it’s crazy to say that.

If you had asked me in 2017, I would have said email is dead.

I mean, with a 21.33% open rate across all industries, good luck.

But a lot has changed since then—email has gotten its groove back.

Plus, studies show email has an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent.

Ah, yes, please. 🤑

A newsletter doesn’t replace your CRM, by the way; it becomes the main way to capture, nurture, and convert leads before they even hit your CRM.

The problem is that while some businesses have a newsletter, it’s often inconsistent and more focused on the business's accolades and offerings than on creating real value for the reader.

Unfortunately, with customers’ inboxes already overflowing with promotions, most newsletters get lost in the mix or become a quick unsubscribe.

A great newsletter should be something your customers and new leads find genuinely interesting, helpful, fun to read, and full of your personality.

They should be excited to open each issue and reach out the moment they don’t receive one. Like suddenly not hearing from a close friend.

So, how do you get started?

HERE’S HOW:

1. Give your newsletter a job

2. Identify your core content pillars

3. Create a template and subscriber flow

4. Create content to capture and convert

5. Share everything you know every week

Let’s dive deeper. 🤿

Step 1: Give your newsletter a job

Before you write a single word, ask yourself: What’s the job of my newsletter?

Think about who you want to help, what problems they have that your business solves, and how your newsletter can solve those problems each week.

In a sentence, it could be: "I help [niche] avoid [problem] by [solution]."

A great newsletter solves a specific problem for a specific audience.

Maybe you help local homeowners discover unique restoration tips for their historic properties, or you help business owners build simple systems to reclaim their time and energy so they can invest it with family.

Whatever it is, your newsletter’s job needs to be front and center to make your newsletter indispensable to readers.

Step 2: Identify your core content pillars

Strong content pillars are fundamental for newsletter growth.

These themes provide structure, prevent content from becoming scattered, and keep your strategy aligned with your brand and your target audience.

Aim for 3-5 recurring themes that directly tie back to your newsletter’s job.

If your job is to help business owners leverage systems, your pillars might be:

1. Productivity Hacks

2. Automation Tools

3. System Design

4. AI Agents

5. Notion

If you’re helping people become homeowners, your pillars could be:

1. The Buying Process

2. Financing a Home

3. Homeownership

This step makes your content creation process way easier.

Each pillar will have numerous topics within each that you can cover, such as each step of the home-buying process.

It gives you a framework to work within, which means less time wondering what to write about and more time actually writing.

Consistent, targeted expertise will build deep trust and create loyal subscribers.

Step 3: Create a template and subscriber flow

Your newsletter needs to look good and be easy to read.

But it needs a system even more than that.

Create a simple, repeatable template that keeps your design consistent and makes writing each issue less intimidating. People love knowing what to expect.

Think about the newsletters you read and the ones you don’t!

Is it the quality of the content that makes the difference, or maybe the drain on your brain from the fonts, colors, or design of the template?

We all consume so much content each day that it’s easy to be overstimulated by simple things like big blocks of text, too many colors, etc.

Remember, less is more when it comes to good design.

Once you’ve built your newsletter template, it’s time to create your subscriber flow.

A typical subscriber flow should have:

1. Simple and clear landing page to capture emails (email only)

2. Brief survey after subscribing to learn more about your audience

3. Thank you page with what to expect next and how else you can help

4. Welcome email (one or a short series) stating what readers get and when

The key is to make the experience seamless from the moment readers subscribe to when they receive your next issue and to set clear expectations of the value readers will get and how they’ll get it.

Step 4: Create content to capture and convert

With your system in place, it’s time to grow your email list.

Leverage the long-form content in your newsletters to create short-form content for social media. Help bring attention to problems your customers have and give them an outline of how to solve them.

Direct them using a clear call-to-action (CTA) to download a free lead magnet that solves a very specific problem for them, adding them to your list, or encourage them to sign up to your newsletter for more in-depth content from you.

Lead magnets can be resources such as checklists or templates that help your audience get a quick win. By making the lead magnet offer irresistible, you will quickly gain new subscribers.

Short-form social content becomes the gas that fuels the growth of your newsletter and, ultimately, your business.

Step 5: Share everything you know every week

You’ve got the job, the pillars, the template, and the system.

Now, it’s time to write.

Remember, your newsletter is meant to serve and solve, not promote. Focus on giving value first. Give, give, give, then ask.

When you share what you know freely, you build trust and authority. It’s about building goodwill. Then, when you do have something to sell, your audience is much more likely to buy.

Each issue showcases your knowledge and demonstrates your expertise.

Use a mix of helpful tips, personal stories, and reader-focused educational content.

Consistently deliver valuable information by curating industry or market news and answering common client questions. Consistency and value are how you win.

Don’t be afraid to share your best ideas, either.

Your audience will learn to rely on you as a trusted resource when they gain insights from you that they can’t get elsewhere.

The more you share, the more valuable your newsletter becomes.

You not only stay top of mind in your industry, but your business becomes the clear choice when your audience is ready to buy.

Does your business have a newsletter?

Let me know. I’d love to check it out.

See you next week.

ONWARD TOGETHER.

In The Weeds 🌾
Resources so you can dive deeper

• The 10 Best Newsletter Niches [Newsletter Operator]

• How To Build a 7 Figure Newsletter From Scratch [Matt McGarry]

• A 10-Step Guide to Launching Your Email Newsletter [beehiiv Blog]

• The Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear [Hemingway]

• How Dan Koe Makes $2 Million per Year Writing 2 Hours per Day [beehiiv Blog]

My Favorite Things 💙
What I’m reading, watching, and learning

1. Non-Fiction Book: Last week, one of my favorite creators hit one million subscribers on YouTube. To celebrate, he launched his second book and is giving away a PDF copy. It’s called “Purpose & Profit” and was written to help people “Transform Your Relationship With Money & Discover Your Life's Work, " two topics many of us could use help with.

2. YouTube: A few weeks ago, I watched an interview with Grace Andrews, the marketing director for Steven Bartlett’s massive “The Diary of a CEO” podcast. There is so much gold in here. Check it out here.

3. Learning: I’m now 452 consecutive days into learning to play piano using the SimplyPiano app and 324 days into learning French on Duolingo. It turns out my “10 minutes or more each day” strategy works!

Next Steps 👇

Whenever you're ready, here’s another way I can help you:

I help service-based entrepreneurs create authority content to build trust at scale, dominate their local market, and create their dream life.

• Do you want to start a podcast and have no idea where to start?

• Thinking about launching a newsletter to nurture your database?

• Need a content strategy to fill your sales funnel with qualified clients?

Book a Discovery Call Today