We Stepped Into CEO Mode and Realized Everything Was Wrong

up until now, we have mainly been emailing our list. We always have emailed our list, but when we had something to promote, we would send out an email to promote. So whether it was our workshop, our Strategic Philanthropy Workshop, whether it was our 3-day live Icon Maker live event, whether it was any other type of promotional event, um, then we would mail. It worked, but it wasn't relationship building per se. And so for me now to come into this role and looking at this with different set of eyes, I can see that when I became CEO, I realized we were missing an entire layer of our client experience. And that includes ongoing education, that includes ongoing inspiration, ongoing nurturing. And so that gap was very apparent to me and showed me that, that communication itself is a system, and it's one that we need to design in the same way that is intentional, as just as intentional as automations, just as intentional as workflows or onboarding flows and systems of that nature. So really what today I'm going to do is I'm going to show you this new template that we've built. It's called the Scale Smart Report, and it's a weekly rhythm, a weekly newsletter that we're going to start to send out to the people who are in our contact database. And this blends updates, insights, and resources for our audience. This is one of the consistent mailings that we'll do. What makes this entire system sustainable is that it's templatized and it's automated. And once the content's ready, our all-in-one CRM system handles everything, right? It handles the scheduling, the tagging, the delivery, ensuring that it goes out every single Monday without fail. We can duplicate, we can tweak, we can send in, send it in literally in minutes instead of hours because it's templatized. This rhythm becomes a part of the brand experience. It becomes part, and it really is one more way, a smart way in my opinion, that we can add automation to redefine that client experience and what it feels like to be in our community, to be in our Iconmaker community. If you'd like to see the platform that we use to automate systems like this, there's a free trial in the link below. You can certainly check that out. It's the same all-in-one tool that helps us to deliver the onboarding automations and now our newsletter all in one place. So let's walk through the different sections of the actual newsletter itself. So all I did here was I added Scale Smart is the name of our company and it's home of IconMaker, which is our educational branch. And so I've created a logo, a graphic. And I just simply imported it into the system. So it's always going to have that at the top. And then the issue is presented by— this is a new section here— the issue is presented by whoever the sponsor is of that newsletter. So I guess the other thing that you want to think about from this perspective is, yes, it is nurturing, it is also helping build relationships, but it can also be a revenue driver because we do have a substantial email list And now we will have the capability to actually sell sponsorships to the newsletter. So I think this will grow over time. I don't think that we're going to be seeing long, long lineups of people wanting to sponsor the newsletter right out of the gate. So that's okay. But we're, we're creating and templatizing this with that intent, with the idea that putting that into the universe, we're putting that into the newsletter. It's an intention that we have. To have sponsors for the newsletter. So this is where that sponsorship hyperlink will come. The next section, as I talked about earlier, is the greeting block, which will be edited every single week. I'm gonna write a short conversational intro, maybe 2, 3 sentences, 4 or 5, somewhere in there. And it sets the tone or the theme for that week's insight, followed by— then we have these little graphic dividers that I created. In Canva, by the way. Very simple. Just align and align with our little microphone logo, and it visually helps the reader to separate one thing from the next. The next part is called the SMART Growth Principle. So this will be between 400, 600, maybe upwards of 800 words expanding on my main insight. The structure is loosely going to be the challenge, the perspective, the practical step that readers can apply this week, and then I sign off on it, followed by again a sponsor section. So if we have sponsors for the newsletter, we'll be happy now to put in the title of the sponsor's message. We can put in a graphic or an image here of that the sponsor has provided to us, and then a write-up about their message and a way for them to— for our readers to be able to grab it for free. What we follow that up with is another section here called Smart Growth Toolbox. Where we list, say, 3 to 5 different quick recommendations. These could be tools, templates, resources that people can use, and they're trusted by us. So these are things that are vetted, tools that have been vetted by us that we love and that we would recommend to others. So think software, think tools, maybe even like some AI tools, things of that nature. There are numerous tools that we use. I don't— I can't tell you exactly how many on the list, but maybe, oh, probably easily 25 I could come up with if I just sat down and wrote them all out. Tools or resources, and put a short description and a link, right? That link is an affiliate link, so if someone were to purchase that thing, there would be likely just a small little commission coming back our way. The next section here is From the Studio. This is where I'm going to be linking my newest content. So YouTube tutorials, our Icons of Influence podcast episodes, my Substack articles will be linked in this section so that our readers can go through and say, hey, I wanna watch this week's YouTube video, or I wanna watch the podcast or listen to it. I wanna read Sheryl's Substack. They can go to those links. And then obviously on YouTube you can subscribe, so can you do on a podcast, and you can subscribe on Substack as well. The next part is a Smart Growth Spotlight where we would highlight a win, a client win, or an internal lesson showing how we walk our talk. And the next part is the right next step. So this part here is going to be, again, in the template, we've written it as a join the workshop, whether that's our 4-hour deep dive workshop, which is a highly rated workshop that we do, or any other type of workshop we decide to present, we can customize this to suit what we want to invite people to that particular week. So describe the workshop here, a little next action in one sentence to update that call to action, CTA, call to action weekly as needed. So that's— then we put a button, join the workshop. Now, one thing that I did do on the template is I put an image of myself. I could change this image if I wanted to in the future. It is an image with a circle so that it has the appearance of, again, blending in with the background. And then I've put in my signature underneath it. I could have put my signature or just written my name, typed it in, but I really felt like I wanted to go the extra step to put my actual signature in there. Because it adds a personal touch. And I want this newsletter— because most of this is going to be, again, nurturing and tools and things of that nature— that I wanted there to be some sort of softness to it or some type of personalization to it. So I put my name and my signature there, and then below that, ways that people could message me on my three primary platforms. I have many social platforms, but these are the primary 3: Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, where people can message me. If people wanna watch my latest YouTube video, despite having put that link up earlier to a specific video, this would be another way that people could watch my latest YouTube video. And then that one, that link at the bottom, I will link to my whole channel, not a specific video. And then partner with Scale Smart Icon Maker. This is a work yet in progress, but the idea here is that if someone who is on our list is interested in sponsoring the newsletter, wants to be involved some way, wants to collaborate, then they can click on that link and it would take them to a page that would explain how people can work with us. At the very bottom of the newsletter template, we have the footer, and with the, this system that we use, and if ever we wanted to change that footer, all we have to change is the custom value and it will change globally. And at the very bottom we see, want to change how you receive these emails? You can unsubscribe from this list. Click on Save the Template. And all I have to do is clone the template week after week, name it with the title. In the title I'll add the date. And from that point we just can alter that particular version of the template going forward.