Hey, hey! Welcome back to another episode of The Email Sound Booth with your internet BFF and queen of keeping it real, Liz Wilcox. 🚀
This week, Liz is coming at you—throat tickle and all—to demystify that daunting beast: writing a weekly newsletter. (Spoiler alert: you do NOT have to sound like a business robot or the next “sage-on-the-stage.” In fact, please don’t.)
In this episode, Liz shares:
- Why you don’t have to send a newsletter every week… but also why you might actually want to if you want those juicy email list results.
- The reason nobody expects you to be DJ Jazzy Jeff, Vera Bradley, or an all-knowing biz expert (lol, love that for us).
- Her “Guide on the Side” mindset—aka, blasting the myth that you have to be the End-All-Be-All Expert™️ just to send an email to your list.
- How to let go of newsletter perfectionism (forget the perfectly staged food pics and over-edited subject lines—just TALK to your people!).
- A super simple, zero-stress 20-Minute Newsletter Framework to help you keep it short, sweet, and so much less intimidating.
Liz keeps it totally real about what it’s like sending emails when you have a business (yes, you can talk about the time you stepped in dog poop or how you finally bought a new laptop—your subscribers are humans too!).
Whether you’re a food blogger, e-comm whiz, pet psychic, or dream realtor—take this as your weekly permission slip to just. hit. send.
Catch you next time! ✌️
P.S. Don’t forget to snag the framework and check out Liz’s membership if you’re ready to make your inbox (and your life) a whole lot easier.
Check out Liz’s Email Marketing Membership here
Join the Email Sound Booth Facebook group here
Check out Liz’s free welcome sequence here
Liz’s Kit [Convertkit] affiliate link
Rather watch the Podcast? Check out WATCHLIZ.COM
Transcript
What’s up? Liz Wilcox here. And my throat is doing this weird thing. Hang on. I’m gonna mute myself. I’m not gonna re record, but I am gonna mute myself so I can cough. Hang on. Are you there? I don’t know if this is any better, but I’m not gonna re record because you should know, you can be real and you can have a business.
And speaking of real, welcome to episode 127 of the Email Sound Booth. Let’s talk. Let’s talk about how daunting. How daunting sending a weekly newsletter is. So I recently just finished up Ask Me Anything April, which was where I went live every Wednesday, ish in April over on YouTube. And I asked where I answered any and all questions. We’re talking business memberships, failures, life, survivor. I answered it all. You asked it all. I answered it all. And one of the things that kept coming up a theme was like, Liz, sending a weekly newsletter. Do we really have to do that? It just feels daunting now.
Do you have to write a weekly newsletter? No. I mean, Coca Cola doesn’t have a newsletter. If you buy a 20 ounce of coke, you don’t have to, you know, get their emails every day asking you to go back into the store, right? So there are some businesses, I know that’s an extreme example, but there are some businesses that, yeah, you could do without a newsletter. Now if Coca Cola did have a newsletter, I would subscribe to that because I love Coca Cola and I want to know the behind the scenes stuff, right? If they had a Patreon, my dumbass probably would join because I love soda, even though I haven’t had a soda in a long time. Actually, that’s a lie. I was at a blogger conference, Flavor Media Summit in Savannah last week and I had one of those Mexican Coca Cola’s. Oh gosh, my mouth is watering. Anyway, we’re not talking about soda, Liz. We’re talking about writing a weekly newsletter.
And do you need one? Why is it so daunting? Okay, so yeah, you don’t have to have one, but there are some businesses where it would behoove you. You would see bigger, faster, better results with a newsletter. And that’s what I base my whole business around. I feel like an email. Evangelica or Jelica? Evangelica. My bookkeeper’s name is Angelica. Evangelicist, y’all. You know what I’m trying to say? Evangelite. That’s not right. Evangeline. That’s my friend’s daughter’s Name. Okay. Anyway, I want to preach the gospel of electronic mail is what I’m trying to say.
If you are an online business owner, if you’re E commerce, if you’re a YouTuber, you’re a food blogger, you know, even if you are a pet psychic, you know, it would behoove you to have an email list. Even realtors, right? So let’s get that out of the way. I’m an email first business. Yeah, sure. Now I have this podcast, I have this YouTube thing going for me. I do public speaking, you know, Never thought I would do that, y’all. But I am email first. Yet just yesterday I couldn’t sleep. I got up at 3 in the morning. Guess what I did. I wrote like seven emails because I’m an email first business.
Now, how does that not feel? I mean, getting up three in the morning, that was daunting. That’s hormones or something. I don’t know. But writing the newsletters are actually pretty easy to me. So if you’re finding that, you know, your newsletter feels daunting again, it’s like this, oh my gosh, over and over, you know, comes every single week, and I have to write it again and again. Let’s just reframe the situation here. Let’s reset your mind. A remindset, so to speak. You are not, and I say with love, you are not the sage on the stage. You are not the end all, be all expert and let that be a pressure relief valve for you a lot.
Especially when it comes to email. I don’t know what it is that makes email feel so formal, right? Where you feel like, oh, I have to get the formatting right. I have to, you know, if you’re food bloggers are on my mind, you know, oh, the pictures have to be perfect, this, that and the other, you know, the subject line has to be just right. Listen, throw all that in the trash. If writing a weekly newsletter feels daunting to you because you feel like you have to get the formatting right, you feel like everything needs to look perfect, and you feel like you have to be this sage on the stage that just tells everyone what to do. And you know, here’s my four steps, here’s my four reasons, here’s my blah, blah, freaking blow. No, no, no, no, no, you don’t have to do that, babe. You don’t have to do that.
What if instead you are writing to a friend? Remember, I teach the email staircase follower, friend, customer, right? What if I just opted into your newsletter because we both want to learn More about the art of being a dj. You just happen to be a DJ for the last five years, and you want to share stuff with people who are excited about being a dj, too, right? No one is expecting you to be DJ Jazzy Jeff, okay? They just want to learn what you know. They just like your vibe, as the Kardashians would say. I like your vibe. Yeah, that’s my Kardashian impression. I’ll stick to email, I promise.
So remember, like, you are not the sage on the stage. Think of yourself more as a guide on the side, baby. You. You are the friend that maybe just knows a little bit more. Or maybe you’re E commerce and you’re the friend that just makes the jewelry so the girlies can look good when they go out tonight, right? You don’t have to be Vera Bradley. You can just be you. And that’s the beauty of email. That’s what I love about it so much. You don’t have to be performative. I mean, we might think social media, oh, that’s where I can be myself. I can be my weird self. But that’s so performative, right? Because you’re performing for the algorithm. The more wild I can be in the algorithm, the more I’m gonna see y’all. I be seeing some shit in my algorithm. I’m like, how did I even. We know too much about each other on social media. It ain’t like that in the inbox, right? You just be yourself, right? The version of yourself you wanna be.
You don’t have to be the sage on the stage. If email feels daunting, it’s because you’re trying to be too much of the leader. Now, I consider myself a leader in my space. But here’s the thing about true leaders. They’re not up on the stage preaching, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, do this, do that. They’re in the trenches with you, okay? They’re walking off the stage, getting behind you and pushing you towards the goal you want to do, right? That’s the kind of leader I want to be. That’s the kind of emails I want to send. I want to tell you about the things that I’m doing right now in hopes that, you know, maybe it’ll help you too. That’s why I did. Ask me anything. April. April 2025, every week. Hey, ask me anything. Come on. In two hours, y’all, I have a standing desk. I stood for two hours straight. Talk Tok Tuck, Tuck, Tuck talking. Okay?
So if you need help writing your emails, just Remember the. Normally, this is where I pitch my membership, right? $9 a month. I write your emails for you. But I’m going to give you this 20 minute framework right now. And if you want the 20 minute framework, I can link to that in the show notes. It’s like 20 bucks or something. Or you can join my membership, or you can just write this down. You know, pause this, go find a pen and paper, because I know dang. Well, you’re not taking notes right now.
So 20 minute framework greeting. You know, hey, Liz, hey, Shahara, whatever, right? Greeting, a personal update. That’s two to three sentences about something that has happened to you since the last time you emailed them. I got a new computer, my fridge broke. I stepped in dog crap. Whatever. I read three books. I listened to the new Will Smith album. That’s a thing. He’s got a new one. It’s actually pretty good. You should check it out. You know, whatever. There’s a personal update again. It doesn’t have to be this sage on the stage. Oh, I went and I spoke. And this one, the three topics. And here’s testimonials. I could write that, but you don’t. That’s serving me, not you. Right? When we can relate to each other. That serves us both. Stepping in dog crap, buying a camera. That’s relatable stuff.
All right, so again, greeting, personal update, and then just segue into the content. Got a new podcast episode, a new YouTube video. Do you just. Do you actually have three things you want to share? You know, three top tips for abcdefg. Share those. Right? And then get the heck out of there. Right. So personal greeting, our greeting, personal update, segue into the content. Put the content. Get the heck out of there.
Now I said the word segue, and that might be scary if you don’t know how to write segues. Just put the caps lock. If you’re not watching on YouTube, you should be the caps lock right there. Right? Put that on and type in the words. Anyway, anyway, what I really wanted to talk about is my new podcast episode, my new studio, the fact that I went to Flavor Media Summit, and here are three things I learned from food bloggers that might help you, too. Bada bing, bada boom, boom. Okay, bye. Love you. Bye.
All right, that’s it. The weekly newsletter. It doesn’t have to be that daunting. Remember, you’re a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage. It doesn’t have to be. Perfect, perfect. Talk to a friend. These friends have something in common with you. Get in there, get to the point, get out. Just like this podcast.
I’m Liz Wilcox. You are awesome. If you need more help writing your weekly newsletter, you already know. I’m going to link to 20 minute newsletters in the show notes and my nine dollar month membership where I do all this stuff for you so you can get back to doing what you love. All right, I’ll talk to you next time.
