My 6-Step Framework for Writing A High-Quality Newsletter

January last year, I told my best friend that my goal for 2022 is to reach 100 newsletter subscribers.

He laughed at my face.

But if somebody would tell me that in December 2022 we’ll hit 850 subscribers, I’d laugh to his face as well

I’ve went through a fucking incredible glow up over the past year, and it warms my heart to know that it’s still the beginning.

The plans for my newsletter in the future year(s) are huge. Dang, my network isn’t even ready for this amount of value.

You askin’ why am I doubling-down on my newsletter so much?

Those who are going to treat it seriously are the ones who’ll experience a massive high in the upcoming years.

Why wouldn’t they?

In the world of shallow information & platitude overload, the ones who counter-attack it with depth & novel perspectives are the ones who rise above everyone else.

Newsletters are the media for building a cult-like following.

The media for creating a niche of one and eliminating all competition on the internet.

It’s a vessel between your current life & building the one that you desire through doing the things you’re obsessed with.

All of that, if done right, of course.

Most people on social media haven’t discovered the true potential of newsletters yet.

They either haven’t started one yet, or they do cheap-kind of content (like curating their favorite resources).

But now is the go time:

The potential your mind can create in the world of newsletters is infinite.

And I know what you wanna say:

“I don’t have time for that.”

“I don’t have any ideas.”

“I’ve got nothing valuable to write about.”

“Social media is already consuming too much time from me, how do you expect me to create a high-quality newsletter?”

Enough.

Over the past few months, I’ve been experimenting a ton, and came up with a repeatable system for creating high-quality newsletters every week (even if you’re not an expert).

And yes, while working on it for less than 2 hours per day (cuz heck, I spend 6-8 hours at school every day).

More than that:

You can use this system to extract your newsletter into profitable content ideas.

So are you ready for me to show it to you? You are?

Sweet.

Let’s take a dive.

Step 1: Observe

The best creators (with the best ideas) are the ones who are obsessed with life, not their laptop.

You need to become obsessed with observing your life. In other words, your consciousness.

Because everything is a state of consciousness (getting too deep in here haha).

Believe it or not, you have tons of valuable things to say.

You just might not be self-aware enough.

Throughout your week, try to be more aware of those 4 sparks:

• problems you’re experiencing (Sh*t, that’s making me pissed)

• transformation you’ve been through (Ooh, I’ve really improved in that over the [time-frame])

• ideas that spark excitement in you (Damn, I wish I wrote that!)

• stories that you desperately want to tell (I need to tell this to someone ASAP)

You can pull-out sweet ideas from all of those.

And if you feel totally desperate, then…

Step 2: Outline

Outline is the bold structure you create a week before sending your newsletter.

Why is that?

Because this way, we can use our subconscious mind to do powerful things.

Your subconscious mind is as crazy active as your conscious mind, and it’s a sin not to take advantage of it.

If you give your mind a thought to chew on, it is going to come up with awesome insights.

Some of those your conscious mind could never think of.

You know those random moments when you’re making breakfast & you suddenly get hit by a perfect idea or a solution to the problem you’ve been facing?

That’s exactly how it works.

Creativity is connecting dots, and your mind is connecting them best in the background.

But let’s get back into technical stuff.

When creating your outline…

Answer these 6 questions:

• Who are you writing to? (be specific)

• What’s the big problem (and how is it affecting their life)?

• What’s the big benefit of solving it (what’s the transformation they’re going to experience)?

• How do YOU understand the problem/idea? (write a personal summary)

• What is it related to? Add quotes, resources, or any pieces of long-form content related to the topic

• What’s my personal experience? (add some stories/anecdotes to give it more flavor)

Don’t forget:

You always start with the thing you’ve observed, and then fill in the rest.

But if you feel the juices flowing, there’s no need to fill it in jump straight into writing!

Step 3: Fill

You feel a spark of inspiration.

You create an outline.

All good.

But if you want to stuff your newsletter with depth & value, you need a lot of intentional consumption.

Or (the less fun word)... research.

And here’s where the magic of the subconscious mind comes into play:

As I’ve mentioned earlier, the subconscious mind constantly works in the background.

So whenever you’ll consume something that naturally excites you & makes you curious, it will try to connect it to that thing.

And yes, that’s going to happen even if you wanna write about writing, but you consume things about fitness.

And this is exactly how you create your “unique” solution to your problems:

You study your interests.

You let the subconscious mind do its job.

You apply your learnings from one topic to another one.

It requires practice, but it’s damn fun.

Not only for you, but for your audience as well.

Also it is exactly what builds that unbreakable bond in between you & your true fans.

Cuz dang, you gotta be obsessed with people who have the same problems & the same interests as you.

Step 4: Write

That’s the toughest step, but we all know that.

All that thinking and playing in your head is fun, but going from an idea to execution is what requires you to clench your teeth.

When getting into the writing, you want to split the entire throughout the week.

Ex.:

I write on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays & Wednesdays (today’s my last writing day wooo), every day for 30 mins.

That might seem like too much time (I have 1 issue written in under 45 minutes), but there’s a good reason for why you should leave enough room in there:

It’s because your first iteration is going to suck.

Use your first draft to clear my head & organize the things I actually wanna say.

Don’t care about the structure.

Don’t care about the typos.

Don’t care about the random things you say.

Go with the flow - let it all out.

Your next iteration is going to be much better & clearly articulated.

Just trust me on this one ok?

Step 5: Edit

Out loud.

That’s the only editing tip you’ll ever need.

Seriously. Read your writing aloud.

Writing is not only a game of words. It’s also a game of music that your sentences play.

Reading out loud makes you check the rhythm, and also makes it easier for you to spot mistakes, or parts that just sound meh.

Advanced tip:

Visualize some of your core ideas. Not only it makes it easier for people to educate them on your unique perspective - it also gives you an insane amount of authority boost. Plus, it’s not really that hard to do it - I create all of my visuals on my own in Canva. Take a lok and get inspired (or you know what? rather take that inspiration from someone else)

Step 6: Repurpose

“Can’t I just end things by hitting that publish button?”

Yup.

But why on earth would you do that?

Your newsletter has a lot of golden nuggets that can be repurposed into tweets & a thread.

So not only it gives you a bank of ideas to pull from when you need inspiration - by doing that, you also create assets to drive traffic to your newsletter.

People love punchy tweets.

And punchy tweets can only be created if there’s depth behind them.

When you overdeliver the value in 1 tweet, and give people an option to learn more (you plug a link to that issue), you’ve automatically earned new subscribers.

Of course, as with everything, the ability to turn deep concept into 280-or-less-character-tweets requires practice but damn…once you learn it, it’s totally worth it.

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Alrighty, that was it for today!

To get you started a bit…you can reply to this email with a link to your newsletter & I’ll subscribe.

Talk next Sunday,

— Claudia

P.S.: My goal is to provide the best value I can with this newsletter. To help me with that, could take 2 minutes to fill out this survey?