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Check out Back Pocket Insights, my private podcast community with short, story-driven episodes pulled straight from everyday life and client conversations.

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Most entrepreneurs overcomplicate two things that don’t need to be complicated: email marketing and creating new offers. You either freeze because you don’t know what to send in a newsletter… or you stay busy building something new instead of selling what you already have. Both feel productive. Neither necessarily move the needle.

In this special episode pulled from the private Back Pocket Insights podcast, Michelle answers two powerful questions from the community: What should I send in a newsletter? And how do I stop getting stuck in creation mode? She breaks down how to think about email marketing strategically instead of formulaically, how to position your newsletter inside your sales pipeline, and why selling before creating is often the smarter move for service-based business owners.

Whether you’re a coach, consultant, OBM, VA, designer, copywriter, or ADHD entrepreneur, this episode will help you simplify your email marketing strategy and stop hiding in busywork that feels safe but doesn’t generate revenue.

You’ll learn:

1. How to decide what to include in your newsletter without overthinking it
2. Why positioning and intention matter more than format in email marketing
3. How to use storytelling, value, and sales together effectively
4. Why constant creation can become a comfort zone that stalls growth
5. When to pre-sell an offer instead of spending weeks building it

This is the real truth about business growth, especially for neurodivergent service providers who crave clarity, structure, and results without falling for every trend online.

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Hey everyone, I've got a really special episode for you today.

What you are going to be hearing on today's podcast is actually two or three episodes from my private podcast called Back Pocket Insights.

Some of you probably don't even know that I have a private podcast because.

I don't talk about it a lot.

And that's why I wanted to start sharing it with you guys here on the pod.

This, these episodes are part of my Back Pocket Insights community.

It's my low ticket community.

The link is in the show notes.

You can absolutely jump in on this.

This is like my networking community.

And in addition to the monthly training that we do, I also have this private podcast directly for the members of that community.

And a lot of these episodes are very much driven from questions received inside of the community.

So they're a little bit like private coaching episodes.

And so what I wanted to do is I wanted to bring them on the main pod and just kind of share with you once a month or.

So some of the most popular episodes.

From that previous month that the members were loving and talking about and resonating with.

So that's what you're getting today.

I hope you enjoy it.

I would love to see you inside of Back Pocket Insights.

If you want access to these private podcast episodes, if you want to ask.

Questions where you can get your question.

Answered in a private podcast episode, you can do all of that inside of Back Pocket Insights as well as network with a community of over 50 women and men.

There's men there too and, you know, learn.

There's always a training every single month or some type of challenge or something that we are focused on to move the needle in our businesses.

And so anyways, enjoy these episodes and I will see you and talk to you soon.

What should I send in a newsletter?

This is a question I get all the time.

So today I am going to answer it to the best of my ability.

And I'm also going to link in the show notes an old episode that I recorded around email marketing and newsletter because that might be helpful to you as well.

So.

But here's the thing with newsletters.

I want to really just speak to the fact that I'm going to say whatever the hell you want.

Right.

And what I mean by that is that I don't feel like there's any one right way to do or write a newsletter.

Okay.

I think what it really comes down to is looking at your email marketing as a whole and understanding, like, what do you want to achieve or accomplish with adding a newsletter to Your list and or where in your pipeline does this fall, right?

So when you look at the Sunday morning Brew, most of you get the Sunday morning Brew.

Hopefully you read it.

That has evolved over time.

When I first started it had a lot of sections and it was like a story.

It's always started out with some type of like personal story reflection, a story that ties to business.

That is personally how I love to engage with my audience and connect with them on a human level, right?

Like here's what's, here's what I'm experiencing.

Here's a lesson I learned.

Here's something we've discussed with a client, right?

So it's very much story based that ties into a lesson or something that is like actionable for the client.

Right?

Now you see, if you're on the most recent list, you see that it's evolved.

And now I'm giving this like power move of the week, right?

I switched it because I wanted something.

I wanted a better way to market my newsletter as a lead magnet itself.

And so in doing that I can now say, like it includes your CEO power move of the week.

One quick action that you can take what will move your, the needle in your business, right?

So I didn't change the way I did my newsletter.

I just changed the what draws people into it, the lead generation and or the action, right?

Because I want to see who's taking the action.

It gives people.

Like it's a value add.

So at the end of the day though, again, as I always say, every strategy works.

They're not all going to work for you.

Your newsletter, I've seen newsletters that are quick little like three things I'm loving right now.

There's like a three, two, one format that I've seen of like three things that I love.

Two things, like two things that I'm working on and one client shout out, right?

And most newsletters, this is one that I do not include, but I'm thinking about starting to include.

It is some type of client testimonial or client case study or a client shout out, right?

This is twofold it again, it gives some added value to your clients, but also it creates some social credibility in sharing your client testimonials.

So it's, I would, I would say that that is a great thing thing to include.

I think, you know, people love to hear what's going on in your life, right?

Like that's the thing.

Like people, anytime I share something personal or anything of that sort, like people do love that.

So I look at my Newsletter very much from this, the state of like, I want to use this to nurture my audience.

I want to use this to get to know my audience.

Obviously, I sell to them as well.

I do think you should have some type of sales component in your newsletter.

I don't think it should all be value add.

I do think that there needs to be a sales component because again, you don't want to get Friend Zone.

You don't want people to just feel, like, I love reading her thing, but I never buy from her.

Right?

So again, making sure that you position your newsletter correctly is more important than what you include in it.

If you can't think of anything, like, I don't even know where to start.

One of the things that I would do is just reflect on your week, right?

Like, what is something that happened in your week that you can write about?

Um, what is a question you answered all the time on a client call?

What.

What type of networking did you do?

Did you have a great conversation in coffee chat?

Like, did you do coffee chats and had great conversations and the same topic kept coming up, right?

Do you have a framework or do you have your content pillars?

I know another strategy that I have helped clients implement is where they pick one topic for the month and all of their content is around that.

So if you have, like I have, I could very easily implement this because I have a framework.

It has eight steps.

So each month I could talk about each step.

And so every month, you know, every week in my newsletter would touch on a different aspect of that step, and then all of my social content would derive from that as well.

So that's another way that you can do that.

So if you have some core topics that you talk about, you can either talk about them, like one topic per month, you can talk about one topic per week, and then just rotate it.

So week one, you're talking about this topic.

Week two, you talk about this topic.

Week three, you talk about this topic.

At the end of the day, my biggest piece of advice I can give you of what to include in a newsletter is just to write from the heart.

Write from the heart.

Write what's on your heart and just send it, right?

Like, just get into the groove of it.

I will be honest in saying that how I got started was I hired it out.

So it's not that I hired out the writing, but I was.

I hired out my ideas of, like, here's what I want to talk about this week, and I let somebody else write it because the writing of it intimidates me the most.

It wasn't that I couldn't come up with the ideas, it was the writing of it.

We have AI now.

You can very much utilize that.

I'm not saying you should use AI and not hire somebody.

Again, there are, there are people out there that are email newsletter specialists and this is what they focus on.

And I highly recommend you connect with them.

If you don't have an email marketing strategy.

Again, what you put in your newsletter is only as good as the positioning behind it and your intention to with it.

So keep that in mind.

So this may not be the answer that you were hoping for, but hopefully it's getting you thinking differently.

That's always my goal, is to get you thinking about why am I doing this.

Because adding one more thing to your plate without any intention, without any clear outcome desired, is just one more thing.

And it's going to be very hard to maintain and it's not going to get you the results that you're desiring.

So think about that.

And then again, just right from the heart, don't overthink it.

Right?

Don't overthink it.

Try some things out and see which gets better.

Best open rates, see what gets.

It's really a game of trial and error.

And that is the best thing I can tell you.

All right, have fun with it.

Try it out.

Send.

Send an email.

Just send an email.

Okay, Today I want to just remind you to not get stuck in creation mode.

Okay?

Creation mode is not always the answer, but creation mode for many of you is the safety zone.

It's what you're comfortable with, it's what you enjoy doing.

And this is what I mean by this, meaning creating new offers, creating new lead magnets, creating new programs, create anything, any style of creative creation, creating new PDFs, new graphics, new this, whatever it is.

This constant state of creation is going to convince your brain in your mind that you are being productive, that you are being busy, that this is a good use of your time.

But I'm telling you that creation is not moving the needle in your business.

And I'm going to take it a step further to say that I firmly believe that you sell first and then create right pre sell the idea.

So if you're thinking about creating a new offer, all you really need to sell it is a basic outline of it.

You don't need to have everything all figured out.

You don't have to.

I'm not saying you want to just, you know, piecemeal it together, but especially if it's something that you're not sure you're going to keep around.

This is where beta runs, founding member runs, whatever you want to call them, really serve a wonderful purpose because you can very easily say, I'm testing this idea, I'm going to be creating it as we go.

Here's who it's for, here's who I'm looking for, right?

And it allows you to, you know, really test the idea before you put a ton of time, money and energy into something that may or may not sell.

Okay.

Now I'm not saying that you should do this for everything because I do feel like some things, especially if it's a signature framework or something of that sort, like, you know, you do need to create it and there are definitely pieces that you need to create before you can sell.

But I just, the biggest point here is that I don't want to see people getting stuck in a state of creation.

I'll give you an example of this.

I had a client inside FVA the other day who said, I've got a new idea and I want to start working on it.

When can I start my new 60 day period with the focus of creation?

Right?

And so here was my thought, my answer back to her.

I mean, and there's a long story there, but my point is this, is that she needed to know who she was even going to sell this new offer to, right?

Yes, she was excited about it.

Yes, people had told her it was a good idea, but a lot of the people that told her it was a good idea are not available to purchase that said offer.

So again, before you create it, you had, she had the idea in mind.

She, there's nothing that she needed to do to actually sit and create it.

But sitting and creating it felt more comfortable than doing the work of the visibility to create the awareness of this new said offer, to create warm leads, to generate new interest, right?

That's really where the time and attention needed to be focused was in the visibility efforts of said new idea versus the creation of the idea.

Because there is isn't enough interest into it.

Just because we are excited about it doesn't mean you should.

You just don't want spend all your time creating something that isn't going to sell.

And we've all been there, okay?

And I'm not saying that your offer isn't going to sell, but how many.

Of us have created something, a lead.

Magnet or this or that or whatever and we spent all of this time and energy creating it and it doesn't sell or it doesn't it doesn't work or it doesn't, you know, serve the purpose.

I did this last year and I'm not again, I always tell you like I am not immune to this because I get stuck in this too because it's fun.

Our creative brains love to be in this space.

But last year I spent hours upon hours upon hours creating a quiz thinking it was going to bring me in all of these amazing leads and people were going to love it.

When in reality, quizzes are no longer really that popular.

People aren't really taking them and the ones that are taking them are taking them out of sheer curiosity, but they don't really have any intention on moving forward.

Right.

And so I really could have done a lot more research around like are you still using quizzes?

Who's used them, how?

What's the feedback, Ben?

You know what I mean?

Like I really could have spent some more time creating some awareness, doing some market research versus spending all the hours and time and energy that I spent to create the quiz that doesn't convert.

It doesn't convert.

Nobody opts into it.

It just doesn't serve any purpose.

And I honestly don't even promote it anymore.

And it's not from lack of trying.

We literally, my, my assistant and I promoted this thing for like I think at least 60, if not 120 days straight.

We changed up the way we promoted it, I mean, and we still didn't get any opt ins.

So again, time and energy wasted that did not need to be wasted.

Right?

So be mindful if you're catching yourself in creation mode before you have proof that this is something that is going to sell or convert.

Okay?

Because I know y' all love to stay in your little safe creation space, but creation is not what moves the needle.

Visibility, sales, promotion, right?

Those are the things that move the needle in your business.

Everything you create needs to be sold.

If you're not selling what you're currently offering, what makes you think this new said thing is going to change that?

Right?

Like there's more to the story there than just constantly wanting to create new.

Okay, I love you.

I'll talk to you later, bye.