[Day 5] 💡What (The Hell) Should I Write About in My Newsletter?
How to Use a Newsletter to Change Careers, Rebrand Yourself & Strut Into an All-New Industry With *Swagger*
Hi! Welcome to Day 5 of our brand-new career training series, “How to Use a Newsletter to Change Careers, Rebrand Yourself & Strut Into an All-New Industry With *Swagger*”—muahahahahaha.
-Ash
Table of Contents
Day One: What’s Your Newsletter’s Job?
Day Two: What’s Your Newsletter’s Big Idea?
Day Three: Is My Newsletter Idea Any Good???
Day Four: Which Newsletter Software Do I Use?
Day Five: What (The Hell) Should I Write About in My Newsletter?
Day Six: How Do I Make My Newsletter Fascinating, Sticky, Memorable & Sellable?
Day Seven: Write a Hook That’s Stickier Than a Jam Packet
Day Eight: Own Your Voice & Dare to Take Up Space
Let’s dive into today’s lesson! ⬇️
Day Five: What (The Hell) Should I Write About in My Newsletter?
I am a horrible person.
The other day I opened a newsletter about someone’s weight loss journey, and the first thought I had was, ‘could not possibly care less without legally entering a coma.’
Now, that’s not just because I’m a horrible person—though, let’s be honest, the evidence is compelling—but I’m also an experienced battle-scarred newsletter veteran who knows all the black-market techniques for making your writing as hot, sticky, and dangerously addictive as a funnel cake laced with classified government stimulants—even if you’re talking about something as banal as 1990s-era weight loss tactics. (Complete with a side of grapefruit.)
If the goal of your newsletter is to pivot your career ✅ & help you build your authority in an industry you (practically) know butt-all about ✅, then we must learn how to leverage these silky black-market techniques so you don’t waste all of your time writing awkwardly about the consistency of the corn in your stools, only to end up broke, spiritually shattered, and endlessly muttering lines to passersby from Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends.
Which brings us to one of my FAVORITE topics on earth: newsletter writing 101. Otherwise known as: what the hell am I writing in this thing?
Because, there are so many ways you could go with this.
But, only a few ways are going to help you leverage this newsletter as a tool to enter an all-new industry, earn respect for your ideas, grow your reputation, and come out punching with your head held high chanting, “DON’T HATE THE PLAYER, HATE THE GAME.”
I think we need a soundtrack to this email course, don’t you?
So, let’s start there. How do you build authority with a newsletter—and what are you supposed to write so people actually want to read it?!
BEHOLD:
The Conundrum: How to Write With Authority if You Aren’t Yet…An Authority???
Ah, yes: one of the many mental hoops that would DEFINITELY stop a person of lesser resolve, but not you.
Oh, no.
Your resolve is made of the same unbreakable material as gas station hot dogs. Impressive, right? Not many possess such nuclear fortitude.
Raise your hand if you’ve been super duper procrastinating this because you don’t know what to write, because all of these other newsletter people are writing things that sound smart and wise and all-knowing, but you’re just a wee babe at this game, so what can you possibly have to contribute???
🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️🙋♀️
Take that cunning mastermind Jo Thompson, for example, who probably does long division for fun.
This is Jo’s Substack newsletter, The Gardening Mind.
Here, you can see I have highlighted all of the posts where her smarty-pants knowledge is out on display. Look at all of this wisdom! This guidance! This experience!
It’s enough to intimidate the hell out of you into not starting a newsletter, because you automatically think, “Well jeez, I don’t have all of this experience to bring to the table in [ insert your new industry / topic]. Who’s going to listen to me??? What will I even say????????”
Cue: the crushing of your newsletter dreams.
Now, I will say this: this kind of content is KILLER for paid newsletters. Paid newsletters thrive on practical, how-to…unless you happen to be, like, Meghan Markle. But for our purposes right now? You won’t be an expert in your new subject matter. So, the question returns:
What do you write about?
How can you build authority without having any?
There is a way. And, it’s been proven to work across all types of different industries, for all kinds of different newsletters. Anyone, no matter how little experience they have, can build their authority using this technique—not to mention one hell of a respected newsletter.
That technique is one that I call:
The Credibility Code: A proven strategy for establishing authority with your newsletter from day one. 🌟
💥 💥 💥 Upgrade now to the (new!) Founding Member status to unlock this lesson and ALL “Learn With Ash” advanced email courses—a minimum of four (4) in-depth, 2-week email trainings per year—including this one: “How to Use a Newsletter to Change Careers, Rebrand Yourself & Strut Into an All-New Industry With *Swagger*” ⬇️ 💥💥💥