4 Pointless Fears Holding You Back From Creating a Customer-Focused Newsletter
It's not knowledge or ability holding many businesses back from creating a newsletter. It's fear. And those fears are without merit. Here's why.
Most people don’t avoid building a newsletter because they’re busy. They avoid them because they’re scared.
You already know a newsletter would help your business.
You subscribe to a handful and trust those businesses who supply you with information you can use. You’ve thought:
“We should really email our customers.”
“We have a list somewhere… right?”
“A newsletter would help with referrals / staying top of mind / sounding like we’re still alive.”
This isn’t going to be another “Newsletters Are Magical!!!” motivation parade.
I think they are. The money flowing into newsletter platforms (like this one and Beehiv) show investors see a future and need. Research shows that a focused-on-customer-needs newsletter builds trust and that trust is a competitive advantage.
There are four common fears I’ve seen over and over.
They’re real. They’re human. Hell, I’ve felt all of them too.
They are all also bullshit.
Let’s unpack them so that you can put these fears behind and begin helping your customers even more than you already do.
Fear #1: I Don’t Want to Bother People
This fear pops up like a prairie dog every time someone thinks about starting a newsletter.
You imagine your reader opening their inbox, seeing your name, and immediately flinging their laptop across the room while screaming, “HOW DARE THEY SEND ME SOMETHING RELEVANT TO MY OWN WORK?!”
But . . . Do you unsubscribe from newsletters that help you?
I’m going to guess you don’t.
You read and nod your head quietly along. You save the ones most relevant to you. And you face the day feeling ever-so-slightly more competent and informed. You ignore/unsubscribe to the others.
People aren’t bothered by useful. They’re bothered by noise.
You aren’t bothering people if your newsletter:
answers real questions
tells the truth about something confusing
saves someone time
makes someone think
or just helps them feel less alone in the chaos
You’re becoming familiar — even trusted — in the best possible way.
You have an inbox. You know what interruption looks like.
Helping is when you show up with something they actually needed — even if they didn’t know to ask.
There’s a companion fear to this one around frequency. “I don’t want to bother them too much.”
While respecting your customers’ time is a good thing (no, a GREAT thing), you can go overboard.
There is a “that’s just too much” level every newsletter reaches, but no one knows what “too much” is until they reach it.
Fact is, your audience might want to hear from you more often. Don’t limit your reach voluntarily. Within the confines of how often you can produce a newsletter, increase the frequency until more folks than normal unsubscribe from an issue.
Congrats. You’ve found “too much,” now dial it back and enjoy the goldilocks feeling of a “just right” newsletter frequency.
Fear #2: I Don’t Know What to Say
Yes you do.
You say it all day long:
On calls.
In meetings.
In emails.
In Slack.
Over coffee.
You’re full of answers, stories, and explanations. You are an expert in your business.
The problem isn’t ideas — it’s expectations.
You’re imagining:
a 7-section “real newsletter”
a beautifully formatted masterpiece
Something Anne Handley (who writes my favorite content writing newsletter) would applaud
Something that demonstrates your brilliance without revealing any of your insecurities
Stop. Just please stop.
Your first newsletter can be:
“Here’s one question we get all the time. Here’s the cleanest answer I have. Here’s what to do if you need more help.”
That’s it.
A newsletter is not a Broadway production; it can start out as community theater.
It’s a conversation — one helpful thing at a time.
Back in my magazine editing days, I tried for two years to get someone who had designed, implemented, and ran a document scanning operation for a mid-sized regional bank.
“But what can I write about” he kept asking.
I kept telling him you’ve forgotten more about how to run a scanning center than most folks will ever know! I still regret not being able to get him to share his knowledge.
You have valuable knowledge between your ears that will help people. So help them.
Fear #3: What If No One Reads It?
They won’t.
At least at first.
And that’s fine.
No one reads your first newsletter because no one knows it exists yet.
But here’s the part people miss:
The act of sending the first one makes the second one possible.
The second makes the third make sense.
And by the seventh or eighth, something strange happens: People start paying attention.
You cannot build trust with people you never talk to. You can’t build a relationship if you aren’t around.
There is a slight caveat to this: if you already have a list of customer emails, your first newsletter will be read. In fact, the open rate will probably be very high as existing customers open out of loyalty and curiosity.
From there, the work of earning their attention over and over begins.
Fear #4: What If We Can’t Keep It Going?
This is the fear behind the fears.
It’s also the one that will hold you to its grubby bosom as it gently strokes your hair until you murmur, “not yet, I can’t commit to this.”
While fear has you in its grasp, your competition is going full speed ahead.
But here’s what I tell every client:
Start with a cadence you can hit on your worst week, not your best one.
You don’t need daily or weekly to start with. You need “repeatable.”
You don’t need “content pillars.” You need “topics your customers care about.” (Though these overlap within a broader content marketing strategy, but that’s a much different post!)
You don’t need “a big launch.” You need to just go.
Look, sticking to a publication schedule is HARD. Every writer and marketing professional I’ve ever met struggles with this.
I’ve been doing this for just over 30 years now and the fear of deadlines and not being able to keep up is still there. Though thankfully buried deep these days.
There’s good news though. While this is often the biggest fear, it’s also the simplest to overcome (not easy, mind, but simple).
How. Have a system.
If you’re reading this and aren’t a professional writer, you probably think we faff about as we wait for inspiration to strike — that ineffable spark of creativity that leads to beautifully written words.
That’s horseshit. It’s amateur thinking.
You create a list of topics.
You create a schedule.
You write to meet that schedule regardless of if you “feel” like writing or not.
That’s the basic system for every publication yesterday, today, and tomorrow. (I’ll write about writing systems more next year.)
Systems aren’t handcuffs. They help you reduce decision fatigue, improve your consistency, and are a relief valve for anxiety.
So What Do You Do With All This Fear?
You live with it and don’t let it get in your way.
Or, as Paul Atreides from Dune would say (this is for my fellow sci-fi nerds):
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. \\— Frank Herbert, Dune
To get started, lower the stakes:
Pick a date.
Answer a customer question.
Hit send.
Do it again.
Fear shrinks when you start moving. Especially when movement results in another human saying, “Wow, thanks — this helped.”
My recommendation is to get started, which you can do on your own.
There’s nothing magical about newsletters, and there’s no secret handshake required. What trips most businesses up isn’t ability — it’s friction. Decisions pile up. Weeks get busy. The “we’ll get to it” folder grows mold.
And that’s usually where things stall.
Which brings me to why Newsletter-in-a-Box exists.
It’s for people who already have the expertise, already know a newsletter would help, and are tired of letting good intentions die in the cracks.
You bring:
expertise
stories
an audience worth helping
I bring:
a simple, repeatable system
the writing
If this stirred up that familiar “we really should be emailing people” feeling, and you want help finally getting it off the ground without spending your Sundays staring at a blank screen, send me an email at bryant@simplyusefulmarketing.co with “fear” in the subject line.
No pressure. Just a conversation about whether this makes sense for you — or not. Regardless, hit send on something soon. Your customers are waiting to hear from you.
Thanks Bryant for this timely post. If I were to add a fifth fear, it would be "what if I'm writing too much?" This is something that I often worry about. Am I writing too much content for my readers? But then I realised that if people don't want that much content they can just leave, and the people that do want that content will stay. Through that we can continue to build a community that is mutually beneficial. Thanks again for this great post. 🙏