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Ok, so it's 7:35 am ET, and I'm sitting at my favorite table at the coffee shop where I go each week to write my newsletter. And I'm feeling S-T-U-C-K stuck.

I briefly glimpse through some of my older broadcasts to see what I could repurpose, only to realize that so much of what I wrote about a year ago was basically for a different business model, so that won't do.

And I click over to LinkedIn because I'm avoiding the hard work of coming up with a topic, when this post by Tara Robertson, a Leadership Coach and Inclusion Consultant, shows up in my feed:

But let me pull your attention to one thing in particular:

Maybe you too get hung up on those vanity metrics.

(I certainly do, as much as I hate to admit it.)

And not to say that isn't valid. After all, existing in capitalism, we need to earn money to simply exist.

As someone who lives in an exceptionally expensive part of the United States I'm acutely aware that while I genuinely enjoy my work and writing this newsletter, they also need to make me money to cover my family's basic needs.

(Don't even get me started on how much my family of four has to pay for a super crappy healthcare plan since my husband and I are both self-employed...)

If the point of having a newsletter is to market and sell your products and services, sometimes the only "proof" you have that it's working are those vanity metrics.

So when you aren't getting a ton of opens and clicks, or heck, replies, that really sucks.

What makes this extra challenging is that for a business selling your services, the financial payoff of writing a regular newsletter isn't always obvious.

Heck, you might not see the financial payoff for years. And that can feel damn discouraging.

(It's why I preach consistency and having the infrastructure in place that makes it as easy for you as possible to stay top of mind in order for your newsletter to even have a chance of "working".)

But there's the piece that I don't talk about enough, that I'm reminded this morning to say out loud- err, type into this email.

It's the part of this work that doesn't really align with this capitalist system in which we exist, but is equally important so that you stay motivated to keep showing up, and for this to feel sustainable when sometimes you're questioning if it's even worth it.

And that's finding the joy in this, whatever the looks like for you, and reminding yourself that your words are making the difference in someone's life, even if you can't always see it.

Keep it joyful! ✌️

-Bev

P.S. If you want to check out Tara's newsletter, here's the link.

And in case you're wondering, that page was built on Kit's Creator Profile, a feature that allows you to create a basically a mini website where you can publish your newsletters and people can sign up for your newsletter.

I did not create Tara's, but it is something I've helped some of my clients to build, and some of you have came here through my Creator Profile :-)