Start one if you're willing to keep it up: a newsletter is the one marketing channel you own outright, and it keeps you present during the months when nobody's ready to hire yet. Here's the honest bar I give the women I work with: a tiny list is fine. An abandoned one isn't.
Start a simple weekly or biweekly note now, even with a tiny list, and protect the rhythm.
Your list is the one audience you own, and it warms up future clients while you deliver client work.
Write one email this week to the people who already know your work, and send it.
Marketing your business is part of running a business.
Leah Neaderthal, Smart Gets Paid
A tiny list is worth writing to, because a consulting business runs on a handful of clients a year, and ten right readers can produce one of them. Do the math on your own numbers:
So start with the people who already know you, and let the list grow as a side effect of everything else you do. The mistake is waiting for a "real" list before writing to the one you have. The twenty people reading you today include someone whose problem lands next quarter, and when it does, you're the consultant already in their inbox.
A newsletter lands in the inbox and stays there, while a feed post is gone in a day. Jakob Nielsen's newsletter research puts it structurally: newsletters go into the inbox and remain there, while stream-based feeds constantly replace old postings with new ones. His research also found newsletters work as a long-term investment that maintains relationships during dry spells, and for a consultant, the dry spell is exactly when referrals slow down.
| The newsletter | The feed |
|---|---|
| A list you own and can take anywhere | Reach an algorithm rents to you |
| Lands in the inbox and waits | Scrolls away in a day |
| Long-form, one reader at a time | Short-form, reach that swings |
| Half of users say it influences B2B purchases | Engagement mostly from peers |
The two work as a pair: the feed makes new people aware of you, and the newsletter deepens the relationship in private. Use both if you like, and make sure one channel is yours outright.
A newsletter costs you one writing session a week or every other week, and the discipline matters more than the polish. Here's what the session looks like once it's a habit:
That's it, as one piece of a marketing system. If the frequency worry is what's stopping you, there's a whole podcast episode on it: "Am I sending too much email?" Pick weekly or every other week, put the session on your calendar like a client call, and protect it.
Real talk: when I bring up newsletters, I hear the same three fears every time. "I don't want to be spammy." "I don't want to bug people." "I don't want people to think I'm annoying." Of course those come up. You were raised to not take up space, and a newsletter is you taking up space in someone's inbox, on purpose, every week.
So here's the mindset I teach. Marketing your business is part of running a business. Every brand you love does it. Oprah does marketing. Netflix does marketing. And you can never anticipate anyone's reaction anyway: if you think people will be upset, you're probably wrong, and if you think they'll read every word, you're probably wrong too. All of us are guessing. So you do you, market your business, and let readers decide for themselves.
The Academy is where I teach the whole marketing system, newsletter included, with a room of women doing the same work.
No. Write to the list you have, even if it's twenty people, because those twenty include past clients and the colleagues referrals already flow through. Waiting for a bigger list means the archive never starts, and the archive is what makes issue forty land harder than issue one. Start now, and let the list grow as people meet your work everywhere else.
Whichever mainstream email tool you can set up this week, because the platform is the least important decision in the whole project. Every major tool sends email, shows you opens, and lets you export your list, and that last part is the one feature that matters: the list stays yours. Pick one, skip the two-week comparison project, and put the saved time into writing.
Use it as a supplement. A LinkedIn newsletter reaches people through the same feed mechanics as your posts, and the subscriber list lives on their platform. The email list is the home, because you can take it with you. The email list is the asset you can export, move, and keep for the life of your business. Publish on LinkedIn if you like, and make sure the real relationship lands in the inbox.
Unsubscribes mean the filter is working. Someone who was never going to hire you or refer you just took themselves off your list, and your numbers now describe your real audience a little more accurately. It stings for a minute, and it is not a review of your work. Write for the people still reading. They're the ones who were always the point.