82: Here's Why You Keep Ghosting Your Email List (It's a System Problem, Not a You Problem)

You started an email list. You were proud of it. And then...you never emailed it. 😅 Now every time you think about sitting down to write, the cursor blinks, your brain goes blank, and you tell yourself you'll do it later. Later never comes, and the guilt just keeps stacking. If that's the loop you're stuck in, you're not lazy, and you're not flaky. You're missing one thing. In this episode of The Creative Bodega, I break down why consistency with your email list was never a discipline problem, why a small list of people who trust you beats a huge silent following, and the one small move that breaks the blank-page spell. If your list has been collecting dust, this one is for you.

Check out the full show notes for this episode CLICK HERE.

Things I cover inside this episode:

• Why creators with huge accounts and silent lists are quietly losing money
• How a list of 100 people who trust you out-launches 50,000 followers
• The real reason the weekly blank page keeps beating you (it's not you)
• Why Instagram is a slot machine, and what owning your list changes
• The two-creator test that shows exactly why the inbox wins the sale
• The reframe: consistency is a system problem, never a willpower problem
• Your one small move this week to break the blank-page spell for good

Resources & Links mentioned in the episode:

• 💌 The Newsletter System waitlist. My 6-week program doors opening September 14th, built to take the blank page out of your weekly email for good. Getting on the list means first word when doors open: join the waitlist.
• 🎙️ Listen to last week's episode (81) on why every solopreneur needs an email list, not just a personal brand. It sets up everything in this post, so start there if you missed it!

Connect with me:
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Transcript

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You're deciding everything from scratch every time. What to write, how to start, what to say, how to end, what is even the point? Every week, a blank page and a thousand micro decisions is too much. It's just too much for us. We, we, we just can't. So of course it feels impossible. Anything would feel impossible if you had to invent it fresh from nothing every seven days. That's not a you problem. That's a starting from nothing problem, and those are very, very different things Welcome to the Creative Bodega Podcast. I'm M Connors, Instagram content strategist, one of 43 Canva verified experts worldwide, and a mom of two who is not on Instagram for fun. I'm there to market my business, grow my email list, and get the heck off my phone, and that's exactly what I teach. You can expect simple content strategy, visual systems, and Instagram to email tactics that actually work without taking over your life. Let's get into it Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Creative Bodega Podcast. This is episode 82, and I just got out of my DMs. I... You know I love my stories. I, I just love talking in my stories, and I love DM'ing people, and I love having conversations. And I uploaded a story saying, "Hey," like, "episode 81 came out today. It's like a big announcement, so excited," whatever, whatever. And I got three DMs about an hour later saying, "Em, I think you uploaded the wrong episode." Because let me just tell you what's going on over here. There's a lot going on. I am pivoting. I recorded an episode originally, episode 81, about the messaging edit, which is the program I was going to run in the fall. Made the pivot, was like, "Let's freaking go. I'm, I'm, I'm gonna start this new program called the Newsletter System," and I had already paid my editor to edit original Episode 81 promoting the messaging edit, and I had to, you know, send him a Slack saying, "So sorry. Uh, we're, we're, we're, we're pulling an audible and I've got a new Episode 81." And then I proceeded to upload the wrong one. And thank God. If you guys ever see something that I messed up, just tell me. Every time someone's like, "Oh, I just assumed, like, so many people told me," and I'm like, "No. Nobody told me." Um, but three people told me almost at, simultaneously, and I had to go in to Buzzsprout, delete the wrong one, upload the right one, and, you know, tell everybody what I did. And it's like one of those moments you're just like, "Are you fucking kidding me?" Like, I wanna like bash my head against the wall or go barf. I'm not sure which one. Like, this is such a big day for me. Today as I'm recording this is Monday the 17th, so I'm only, I'm only a week ahead on my, my podcast episode, and I, it, this all just happened real time and I just kinda wanna cry. But, but you know what? I'm human. I'm human. This is, this is what we do. And the person that let me know, she's like a podcast person, and she was like, "Oh," like, "I'm sure you have someone do this for you." I'm like, "Oh, oh, no, no. It's, it's me. I'm the one that has to go into Buzzsprout and fix this mess that I made." So just bear with me. Like I said, don't have all the answers, and this is all happening real time, and I just wanna be honest with you about everything going on behind the scenes. I also just got off a call with my therapist/business strategist, Ash McDonald. She is literally a godsend. She is so good at what she does. It's kind of crazy. And I just feel even more excited about what's going on. Like, I'm working through this with her and real time, and, like, she just has amazing ideas and, like, I, I just got off the call even more invigorated and positive that I'm making the right move to switch from, "Here's how to make posting on Instagram more simple," to, "Get yourself an email list and start a consistent newsletter if you wanna build a personal brand in the future." It's just, it's just a no-brainer. And so last week, Episode 81, I told you, you know, that everybody needs an email list not a personal brand. I told a story about a friend of mine whose husband is a account who was verified, disappeared, or it got hacked, or it got whatever. It got disabled. And she was sort of like, "Well, everyone needs a personal brand." And I'm like, "Well, n- n- no, everybody needs an email list." So if you go back and listen to that one, I think it's a, a smart idea if you haven't listened to it yet, because it kind of sets everything up about what I'm gonna say today as we get rocking and rolling. And the story about my friend's husband, I mean, I've seen this story play out many times with creators. Have a solid Instagram. They-- We get on a call for some reason. Like, I can think of two to three women off the top of my head, whatever. We get on a Zoom, whether we recorded a podcast together or we just wanted to shoot the shit. We got on a call and, like, a launch flopped, or they're just like, "Business is not good." And, and I'm like, "Well, what's up with your email list?" You know? "What's your open rate?" And there's, like, silence. And it turns out that they're collecting emails most often, but they never email their list. Or the only time they email their list is during a launch. You guys, I'm talking these are creators with, like, 100,000 followers or more. I have almost fallen out of my desk chair, and they've sat there and been like, "I need you for this." And I'm like, "Oh my God, you are leaving so much money on the table. It is just not okay." And you cannot rely on posting on Instagram to truly launch something. Like, you're just setting yourself up for failure, in my opinion. So they have the list. They have the people who raised their hand, and they said, "I wanna hear from you." And it's just sitting there collecting dust. Or even worse yet, in my opinion, they're only emailing when they have something to sell, which just is the kiss of death. Like, someone is gonna unsubscribe faster than you can blink if you're only emailing your list when you have something to launch. So the amount of money being left on the table in those conversations is just horrifying to me, and it, it just, like, genuinely keeps me up at night. And I'm like, "You're right, you do need me." And here we are. Here I am, Em from the Creative Bodega, launching a brand new program called The Newsletter System to make sure every female solopreneur building a personal brand is emailing their list regularly, because that is the future, in my opinion. So here's the part I really want you to sit with, because I think it's gonna reframe how you think about your own numbers. The size of your Instagram account is not the thing. Like, I've said it before and I'll keep saying it, the follower count is not The asset. You could be sitting there right now with two thousand followers on Instagram and a list of one hundred people on your email list. One hundred. And if you email that list once a week, and your people actually know and trust you through that beautiful newsletter you're sending every week that is valuable to them, you can have a bigger launch than somebody with fifty thousand followers who never emails a soul. I am not even kidding. I am not exaggerating for effect. I mean that wholeheartedly. A hundred people who raised their hand and chose you, they said, "I want that free thing you have. I wanna hear from you every week," who feel like they know you and they like you, that is worth more than tens of thousands of followers who forgot you exist ten seconds after they hit follow. Because when you show up in someone's inbox week after week, there's something that is so magical that is built, trust and familiarity. The know, like, trust thing everybody talks about, but nobody explains how to actually get it. You get it by showing up consistently in a place they invited you into. So the woman with the giant account and the silent list, she's technically ahead on paper. She looks numbers-wise like she's ahead, and she's losing to the woman with a hundred people who actually sends regular emails. I believe that with my whole heart. That's the game. That's what almost no one is talking about and what no one tells you. Now, I want to be really fair here because I don't think these women are lazy at all. I don't think you're lazy either if this is you, and you don't have a list. I think emailing your list feels like a mountain, and I wanna name exactly why because believe me, that mountain was in front of me back when I started my business, and I did not wanna put on my hiking boots and climb anything. I was so scared and so overwhelmed. Every single week when you sit down to email your list, it feels like you're probably starting with a blank screen and nothing to say. That is so overwhelming, and it's the worst feeling in the world. You open up your email platform, the cursor's blinking at you, and your brain just goes blank. It just, just goes empty. "What do I say? What do these people wanna hear from me? Haven't I already said everything that I know? Is it even worth sending? Just forget it. There's too many choices and decisions to make. I'm gonna close this out," right? And you think you're gonna do it later, but the later never comes because then the next week you sit down, and it's the same damn blank screen with the blinking cursor and the same panic and overwhelm, and, "I'll do it later." But you don't, and a week goes by, another month goes by, and then you feel guilty, so you avoid it even more. And now, you know, there's this layer of shame on top of overwhelm, like hi, literal worst feeling in the world as a solopreneur, and it's a spiral. And I need you to hear me on this. The problem in that spiral is not you. The problem's that you're being asked to reinvent the wheel every single week. And I don't know about you, but I am a geriatric millennial, perimenopausal mother of elementary age school kids with a dog and a house and a crazy sports schedule and so much going on. I can't sit down and look at a blank screen and a blinking cursor and try to make all these decisions and make this magical newsletter come to life You're deciding everything from scratch every time. What to write, how to start, what to say, how to end, what is even the point? Every week, a blank page, and a thousand micro decisions is too much. It's just too much for us. We, we, we just can't. So of course it feels impossible. Anything would feel impossible if you had to invent it fresh from nothing every seven days. So I wanna repeat, that's not a you problem. That's a starting from nothing problem, and those are very, very different things. And I want to hold this up against Instagram for a second because the contrast is so overwhelming. When you post on Instagram and just hope it does its job, look at everything that has to go into it. Your follower has to happen to open the app at the right time. In the window when your thing is live, then the algorithm has to decide if it's worthy enough to feed it your post or your story in the first place, which as we covered last week, is completely out of your hands, and I can't even see the numbers on my own account anymore. I just can't even look at them. Then once it's actually in front of your person, they have to stop scrolling and watch it and not blow right past it because we all have the attention span of a three-year-old. They gotta pause. That's a massive stack of coin flips, a- and they all have to freaking line up heads up or whichever side you picked. Every single one has to land in your favor in a row for one person to see that thing you made. That is way, way, way, way, way, way, way too much left to chance for me. I don't know about you. I can't build a business on a slot machine, okay? I, I wanna take my coins elsewhere. I wanna save my money. So it's more than just odds. I have spent years building my audience organically without ads, just showing up until it added up to something. I'm not willing to let one platform decide how much access I get to these people that I worked so hard to bring together. That's my relationship with them, not Instagram's. My podcast and my email list and newsletter, the places I actually own, that's where I put my energy now. That is my commitment on where I'm gonna put my energy, and I'll share more as I keep experimenting with what works. Instagram is going to be one of my top of funnels, but not everything for me, and I am scaling back drastically on how much time and effort and posts that I make on there because I'm just not seeing the results Now here's the other option. Maybe they hear from you weekly. They already know you, they already trust you, and you land in their inbox after they raised their hand and told you they want to be there. Zero coin flips, no algorithm bullshit to deal with, no praying. You wrote it, you sent it, it arrives exactly to every single person that is on your list. That is gold. That is absolute gold, and it is sitting right there for the taking, and so many people are walking past it because the weekly blank page beat them And let me make this really clear because I think this is when it might click. Picture two creators. They both have services. They're both service providers. They could be coaches, designers, photographers, um, virtual assistants, OBMs, whatever, it doesn't matter. They basically are exactly the same on surface. They both post consistently on Instagram. They both show their faces. You see them, you hear them, you feel like you're getting to know them a little bit. They both genuinely help you. They both solve a problem, a real problem that you have. On Instagram, they look identical. Same vibe, same value, same effort from what you can see, but there's one big difference. One of them also sends a weekly newsletter. Every week she's in your inbox with something good, a story, an insight, a tip, a peek into how she thinks and how she's running her business and how she can help you. You're reading her emails for months. You feel like you know her at this point. You've watched how her brain works. You trust her. The other one is just posting and hoping that you see it. That's it. You like her. She seems great, but she lives on the app, and you only catch her when the algorithm happens to show you her post. Now, you've got a problem that she can solve, and you're ready to pay someone to fix this problem. Which one are you buying from? Which one are you buying from? I, I know. I already know, and I think you already know. You're buying from the one who's been in your inbox every single week, the one who feels like a person you know, not just an account that you follow, the one you've let into your actual inbox week after week, building something the whole time. Same skills, same offer, same face to camera, completely different level of trust, and trust is the thing in "2026 and Beyond" that is gonna open the wallet. I don't know about you, but if I see someone showing up in my inbox every week, I'm like, "They're legit, and they're not gonna let me down, and they're not gonna ghost me. They're not messing around. They've got it together," right? And that's what email does. It's not about being a better writer or having a bigger list. It's about being the one who's actually in the room when it's time to buy. So here's what I really want you to walk away with today. This is a reframe, and it took me a while to understand it myself. Consistency is, is not a discipline problem, okay? You're not flaky or lazy. You don't lack willpower. You're not bad at follow-through, and I don't want you saying any of that anymore. The reason you can't stay consistent with your email list is that you don't have a system. That's it. That's literally the whole thing. And boy, oh boy, do I have a system that works so well. You've been trying to power through with your willpower or just, you know, trying to be more disciplined or, you know, just trying to make yourself do it, and the willpower was never, ever gonna fix this because the thing that's broken is not you. It's that you've never had a repeatable way to show up on email through a badass newsletter. When you have a system, you don't wake up and have to decide from scratch. You don't stare at a blank page. You are not reinventing anything. You just follow the system. The decisions are already made, okay? You just show up, and you fill it in, and you do it in a very minimal amount of time. I do, at least. I think my newsletter takes me 30 to 45 minutes a week, maybe, per week. That's how I email every week without dreading it, not because I'm any more disciplined than you. I swear to God I'm not. I'm a person who avoids the things she dreads like anybody else, and I knew I was gonna dread this. I knew I was gonna dread having to email every week. I was so scared I show up and I'm able to show up every single week because I have built a system that made showing up the easy choice instead of the hard one. And that's changed everything for me because the second the blank page goes away, the guilt goes away, too. And you guys, we don't need any more guilt. We already have enough. I got the mom guilt. I got the wife guilt. I got the homeowner guilt. I don't need you to have guilt in this area. And then you're just the person who emails their list every week. Can you picture it? You're just that person with no spiral. So here's a little heads-up before you go, uh, and it's a step up from last week, so definitely pay attention. The thing I told you about that I've been building, the one that opens in mid-September, I'm saying September 14th, I'm not gonna lie, I may need another week, so don't kill me. But another week's not gonna kill anybody. This is TBD. It's called the Newsletter System: Email Made Doable, and I named it that on purpose because that word system is gonna be the entire fix for everything I just talked about. It's the way. It's what takes you from staring at a blank screen every week to just showing up and sending. And I'm not going to get into how it works today. That's actually where we're gonna head next week because there's one more thing standing between you and a list you actually email, and it's, it's a sneaky one. It's the, "But what do I even write all of it?" That's next week's whole conversation, and it's gonna be the bomb.com. So for now, I just wanna let go of the story that you're bad at emailing or you're never gonna be able to do it. You just can't climb the mountain. You're not bad at it. I'm gonna send you some hiking boots and a walking stick and pack your backpack with snacks and water. I got you. You've just never had the system, and this is very fixable. So the doors are probably opening September 14th, if not the week after, and I honestly cannot wait to get started. So come back next week. I'm gonna show you how to never dread the blank page again. That's what I got for you this week. Thank you so much for being here, and I will see you on next week's episode. Thanks so much for hanging out with me on the Creative Bodega Podcast. If you loved this episode, please be sure to share it with a fellow solopreneur who could use a little content creation inspiration. And hey, don't forget to check out the show notes for any resources I mentioned on the episode to help you create content that feels easy and actually gets you results. If you want even more Canva and content tips, head over to my website, thecreativebodega.com, or find me on Instagram under the same name. Until next time, keep creating, keep showing up, and most importantly, try and have a little fun with your content. I'll see you on the next episode.