3min chapter

Noah Kagan Presents cover image

How Justin Welsh Makes $1.7M/Year with 0 Employees

Noah Kagan Presents

CHAPTER

How to Create a Newsletter Template That Helps the Reader

I run through a list of ideas on Monday around noon, I pick an idea. Whatever stands out to me that day. And then I do quick research. So I have six prompts and by the end, I'm done with 12 pieces of content. It's essentially the same template every week. Doesn't matter because it helps the reader. Here's a big problem my readers face. Here's how most of my readers try and solve the problem. Here's why that doesn't work. Here's what I would do instead. Action action action cheers the end.

00:00
Speaker 2
Can you share a little bit more about that? I think that's probably in your course as well, but like at a higher level.
Speaker 1
It is, but I'm happy to share it. Like I've talked about it in many places. So for example, I'll take 45 minutes or an hour or I'll take two 30 minute blocks. It just depends on how my week is looking and I'll set aside time to ideate and ideate is like really simple. I subscribe to a bunch of curated newsletters. I subscribe to a bunch of YouTube channels that are all relevant to what I talk about. Solar partnership, digital courses, marketing, a lot of the things that I talk about on social media every day and I'll spend two 30 minute blocks looking through those things is anything that anybody is talking about interesting to me. So I'll try and note six to 10 things during that block that are interesting. And I just keep a running tally in notion. So it's a tally of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of ideas, right? There's no new idea. Like I'll see someone how to grow on Twitter to 5,000 followers. Well, cool. He has his way. I can talk about the same topic and show my way, right? How would I do it? So I run through a list of ideas on Monday around noon, I pick an idea. Whatever stands out to me that day. And then I do quick research. I'm looking for one quote, one tweet, one book and one article. That's what I want. And so I'll do maybe 15 minutes of research to find something that either backs up what I'm saying or maybe disagrees with what I'm saying. So I can talk a little bit about it. So now I've got my idea. I've got my research. And then I open up my newsletter template and my newsletter template I've created. And it's essentially the same template every week. Doesn't matter because it helps the reader. Here's a big problem my readers face. Here's how most of my readers try and solve the problem. Here's why that doesn't work. Here's how I would do it instead. Action action action cheers the end. And so I have a template of like in this sentence, say this in this next paragraph, describe this and then this follow up paragraph, describe this. It's all very system ties. So I can write the newsletter quickly, title headlines, body done. I can usually do a newsletter in less than 45 minutes. And then I have a system where I look in the next step, step four. So the next step is editing. I ask myself four editing questions and then step five becomes writing, which is like how do you turn this into a story? Pain, agitate, intrigue, positive future, solution, story, done. What's an observation about this thing that I just wrote about? What's a prediction I have for the future about this thing that I just wrote about? What's a contrarian viewpoint that I have about the thing that I just wrote about? And I'll just run through them again. So I have six prompts and by the end, I'm done with 12 pieces of content. And then I stagger those 12 pieces of content across two weeks. And then I write the pre-newsletter CTA, the post-newsletter CTA, and I'm done.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I'm on your newsletter. Yeah.
Speaker 1
Cool. It's the same newsletter every week. It just talks about a
Speaker 2
different problem.

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