He started his newsletter even though he wasn’t short of clients
When career coach Mark Crossfield started his practice, he had plenty of clients.
After 28 years as a civil engineer, he knew lots of people, and referrals kept his diary full. He didn’t need a newsletter.
But he started one anyway.
Most self-employed people do the opposite. They wait until their diary is half-empty, and then they’re left with an empty mailing list and a sense of desperation that readers can sense a mile off.
That’s the worst time to start. You don’t have the peace of mind to find your voice, nor the patience to let the list grow, and you end up writing newsletters that reek of sales because you need to make sales.
Mark started when things were going well. And that gave him something you can’t buy later on: the freedom to write without having to sell, a list of exactly the right people, an open rate that’s stable at around 40 per cent, and a foundation that later supported both his books and his podcast.
His story is one of the two case studies in the first chapter of my new book.
René Hjetting
