Transcription
All right. All right. How's it going? Yeah, good. How are you?
I'm just changing my uh I've got a sub header now. Am I in a thing? Better better golfer. Okay. Than you. I mean Yeah. Than what? Than than than than you. Yeah. What else would it going to be then? Well, I don't know. Just like I don't know. Better than you were before. Yeah, it could be that. Okay. Yeah.
All right. So, we're talking I don't know if these come up. So, we're on Riverside. So, we have these little name tags and then a little subheader that you can put in as well. And James underneath his name is put better Kur. Um, and also now changed it to not a wanker.
That's that's a throwback to the last episode we recorded. Oh, okay. Do you see see what I did there? Cuz I called you a wanker right at the end. Okay. Wow. This is like um Thanos Avengers style storytelling. Yeah, it's tie in here. I'm trying to build law into the podcast. Send better emails law.
Cuz we do have a bit of lore by accident. Do we? Yeah. Just like you know the the the hot takes. Uh pork chop. Pork chop. That's law. Yeah. Yeah. Is there other law? Oh, vagina candles. Yeah. Did that make it into the cannon? I don't know. It did in mine. It did it. Well, I bet it did in yours. Yeah. Oh no, I don't want to know about your cannon, Jamie. You should keep your cannon to yourself. James, we're trying to be more highbrow on these. Um, yeah, we're trying to attract nicer, bigger clients. Ah, I don't know. I think I think uh trying to be more professional. I think all the big clients we have love our banner. True. So, and our lovable nature. Yeah.
H um someone told us this week that we that she thought when she first met us that we were that we might have been lovers and that was our connection. Yes. Which I loved, by the way. Yeah. I didn't love it as much, but you know, I think she she thought it was brave that we had decided to have a romantic relationship and also start a business together. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? It was brave of us. It was brave of us. Yeah, it was brave. Uh we aren't lovers. At least primarily not lovers. It's not the first thing we are. I think you're a bit strenuous about this. Okay. We Okay, I'll just Yeah. Like you're you're really you're setting the record straight on a record that nobody even knew about until 20 seconds ago. Okay. Right. I feel like I feel like Yeah. Give it. Let's Let's Someone said that they thought we might be lovers. Let's give that room to breathe. Okay, fine. Yeah, maybe we are.
Do you think Cuz people have also said that we're brothers. Yeah. Do you think we look more like lovers or more like brothers? I mean, we live in Norol, so we could be both. Well, yeah. Uh there is that. Um I think we look um more like brothers. We actually got that quite recently as well when we stayed in Bristol. The woman at the um checking us in for breakfast said, "Yeah, she she said she suggested that we were twins, which is which is a bit of a stretch, I think." Yeah. Um we do look different enough not to be twins. I mean, you're you're like 4 in taller for starters. Yeah, but I I get that 4 in back somewhere else. Yeah. I wondered who was going to sing to that. Okay. Uh I thought what I was saying about keeping his eyebrow. Yeah, sorry. Let's uh let's move on to the topic.
Well, yeah, there there are too many threads that tie us there. The tapestry of rel of our relationship is too complex, convoluted to be for labels. It just is what it is. Yeah. It's multifaceted. True. Let's move then let's move on. Yeah. It's a modern working relationship. Yeah.
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So the topic at hand is it's a pretty abstract it's a pretty abstract topic that we want to talk about today and it's about the hidden benefit of writing a newsletter and that hidden benefit is something that benefits you believe it or not even if you're writing your newsletter to zero subscribers. Yes. Just say it, Jamie. I actually don't know what it is. I think you you should you should probably say Fair enough. Calling it what it is. Yeah.
So, the Yeah. The clickbay version of the the title of this podcast would be um why you should write to zero subscribers. And the reason is that writing a newsletter is a um beneficial activity that every business owner, creator, thought leader um anyone who has any opinions about anything ought to be writing a newsletter purely for the sake of writing um your thoughts down um or discussing your thoughts if you use a ghostriter for example. But you know um having a space to think about and articulate your thoughts on a on a given area usually your area of expertise um is um uh a huge benefit to every aspect of your life. And so we're going to be talking briefly about that today. Um I'm not this isn't going to be our longest episode. I think it's fair to to say that it's not going to be our longest episode, but um this is a benefit that we have found Jamie through serving clients for the last 3 years um is uh one of the things that that people enjoy most about working with us is that we give them a space um a dedicated ring fence space through which they can just think about their area of interest or or expertise or both um in a way that maybe they don't get the opportunity to do um most other times. Uh so yeah, that's what we're discussing today. Nice.
Okay. And I think if you know how we like analogies, um, you know, I think what we offer our clients in that ring fence space is something akin to perhaps therapy where you have the opportunity to discuss and talk talk freely about things in a in a protected and ring space, right? And so if we think about okay, well, not everyone has the benefit of having us on board to help them do that. Uh, and so a good alternative to therapy is journaling. And this is probably what newsletter, writing your newsletter is, right? I think I would go so far as to say that you should just find joy in writing newsletters. Find joy in not writing a draft that's perfect the first time, but instead is a space for you to enjoy writing and and explore different topics that that you're an expert in. What I would this what we want to talk about here or what we're talking about here today probably isn't suitable for those e-commerce brands. Uh arguably I think this is more for content creators. It's more for thought leaders. Yeah, who are discussing who are diving in deeper into into subject areas. Yeah, unless those e-commerce brands are doing something quite different with their email marketing like they're you know they are they are offering thought leadership on you know around the the products they sell or you know something like that. But generally, yeah, I agree with you. There there isn't the same catharsis in like putting together an email in Claio selling, you know, whatever it might watering cans. Um, what we're talking about here is is creating long-form written content. And really, whatever medium you do this on, whatever medium you do this on, um, there is uh there is a big benefit. But I do think that um that maybe the key distinction between writing a newsletter and writing say a LinkedIn post is that when you're writing a newsletter because the audience you're writing to has already opted in that it's it it is a to borrow your term Jamie it's a safer space than than perhaps any anywhere else you can publish something because um I I just speaking from my own anecdotal experience here and Jamie maybe you can relate when you're writing a LinkedIn post for example your mind isn't purely on the subject matter that you're discussing. It's also on, you know, will this hook entice people enough to expand the post. Um, can I say this in front of people that maybe I want to win as clients one day? Can I will the algorithm favor this particular piece of content or should I, you know, phrase it in a way that is more algorithm friendly? You know, so all of those other thoughts are going through your head. um how will this be perceived by like the general public, you know, blah blah blah. What comments might I get? The the newsletter is almost like the pure purest form of of content posting because um you don't have to worry about the algorithm. You don't have to worry that this this content is going to, you know, get into the wrong hands. Um everyone who has um subscribed wants to read what you've got to say. So, it's a much nicer audience to be writing to and I think that brings out the best in people.
Yeah, I really like that. I think the you know if we if we go back to you know you being um the content creator or the thought lead or whoever you are and just stripping away all these expectations that are normally on you for for writing marketing content and that's algorithm and and hooks and best practice and longtail keywords and um you know headers and um all of that stuff. strip all of that expectation away when it comes to writing a newsletter because what we are writing is essentially a letter to someone. And yes, there are still best practices and there are tweaks and and ways you can optimize newsletter content to perform better, but nothing like we see on other channels. And so when I was talking about finding the joy in writing, um, again, we want to kind of find the joy in exploring topics and find the joy in and the excitement in talking to people about your area. um in a way that we can't do in other channels. um and that's, you know, if we go back to journaling, it might be that you you write a version of a newsletter and it's never the one that you're going to send, but you know, a version of it will be. And I think it's just having that freedom and that space to be able to write in in a in in a way that's that is where we strip away all those other expectations.
Um and that was a thing that I spoke to um a little while back. Like I spoke to a charity about um their newsletter. Uh and the newsletter for like it had for so many people had got to a place it's like oh my god it's just like a thing that I have to get done. It's like on my checklist. I never want to do it really. It it feels like a pain in the ass to do. I don't enjoy doing it. I've asked different people to do it and they never like doing it either and I know we should be doing it but it never gets done. And the conversation that I had had around with them was, "Okay, you're a charity that's doing excellent work, and you've got this these bunch of subscribers that have said they they support your charity. They may or may not have donated, but they're at least interested in what you do. How about we find the joy in spreading that good news again? How about we find the joy in writing and speaking about the work that we do in a passionate way that is stripped of all of these other marketing expectations?" And that's what we can do in the newsletter. And that was one of the key takeaways and one of the pieces of feedback that we had that I had from having that conversation with that charity. Um, and so I think that is a benefit that we that we should have from writing the newsletter. Um, but also sometimes it is just a pain in the ass and sometimes it does is the last thing you want to do, you know, on any given week. So I would just say I think this is the one of the benefits we have of newsletters over any other piece of content marketing.
Yeah, agreed. I I really like that and that um that is often the thing that gets you through the doldrums of starting a newsletter because every newsletter that's ever existed from you know um uh the the huge like Morning Brew for example which has you now over 4 million subscribers. Well, there was once upon a time where that was being sent to, you know, probably four or five subscribers, right? And there is that that um and that's a newsletter business. Obviously, it's very growth orientated. Um, a lot of B2B lists that we see kind of stagnate at a certain number, whatever that is. Maybe it's 100 subscribers, maybe it's a thousand, but you know, it's it can be hard for some businesses to grow as rapidly as as something like Morning Brew, of course. Um, but there is this sense of like, okay, there's probably going to be a point where you're writing newsletters, maybe for weeks, maybe for months, um, to a crowd, to an audience that you're an audience size that you're not happy with, you know, that is, um, is is on the route to being at a a place where you are happy with it. And for those um, for for that time, however long it might be, it can be really hard to find a motivation. It can be really hard to sit down and think, I'm only writing this to 11 people. I'm only writing this to 37 people. I'm only writing this to 100 people. Whatever whatever your, you know, whatever your uh your expectation might be. And it's in those moments that we have to find the joy in the process itself. Uh and we have to find the thing that it's giving us that isn't the dopamine hit of having thousands of people reading our content. That isn't the dopamine hit of replies flooding into your inbox the moment you hit send. you know, that isn't huge poll responses or massive sales or um selling the course or filling the event that you've got or any of those things. That stuff will come, but in the meantime, there needs to be something else because not everyone's going to have that immediately. You know, there are very few newsletters that start and immediately have an audience. So, in the interim, in the interim, you need to find something else. And I and I would guarantee that if you're able to find that and if if that's able to guide you through those initial um those initial phases of starting your newsletter and getting it off the ground, it will stick with you even when you do get the the more conventional rewards that a newsletter brings. You'll still enjoy it and you'll still do it um because of the fact that you have you you have framed it in your mind as something that is good for you first and good for your audience second. And I think that's a really healthy spot to be in. Yeah.
Nice. Cool. Okay. I don't think I don't know if I have much more to say on this subject. I think it's I think it's it's just something worth worth saying and something that's never really talked about. And I think, you know, we writing an an email uh writing a newsletter or a letter as we like to sometimes call it, it doesn't have to be grammatically correct. It doesn't have to fit a certain form. it can just it's just talking to people. It's just writing to people in a way that's that just oozes personality and and brand and um and so that's something that we need to always remember but particularly in those early days um and the benefit of that and you know sometime this is one thing that we actually use the podcast for as well right it's a ringfaced ringfenced dedicated time that James and I get to talk about email marketing and and generate more new opinions about it and explore new areas and you know this is a version of that for us and our own newsletter is a is a version of that for us as well. So, um yeah, I don't know if I've got anything else to say on on on the subject. Is there anything for you to bring out?
No, no, I'm happy. Let's let's uh let's wrap it up. Nice. Cool. Okay. Well, I hope you enjoyed this little mini episode. It's a little bit of a departure from the normal stuff, but uh yeah, let us know your feedback. It's nice to get the feedback if uh if you want to send us a message, but otherwise, thanks for listening. Nobody's made it this far. We can say anything. We can say anything we want now. Yeah, that's it. Um well, okay. Well, bye. If you are still listening, see you later. Yeah. See you. Bye. Bye.
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