I'm 221 days late. Let me explain.

Hi Reader,

Been thinking a lot about newsletters.

Between you and me, I've never had a great relationship with them for a number of reasons, including (but not limited to):

They're expensive to maintain...like gym memberships
Believe it or not, I sometimes don't have a new thought to share every week (or every other week for that matter)
I'm a very busy person and sometimes I just get lazy

But that's no excuse. I mean really. Because when you look at the statistics, they speak for themselves:

Approximately 22% of marketers rank email among their top ROI-driving channels (HubSpot, 2026)
Others still find email a more efficient way to keeping in touch with a specialist subject area (Reuters Institute, 2020)
Your business is 40x more likely to get new customers from email marketing than through social media (McKinsey, 2014 - this may be an old reference, but it's still true)

So why does it feel like such a chore despite the upside?

I'd bet money on it being a systems problem. As a small, boutique business, it's common to have growth pains -- which, don't get me wrong, is a great problem to have. But systems are often reactive to those problems.

My husband-slash-business-partner, Nick Serrecchia, is a "systems whisperer", whether he wants to acknowledge himself as one or not. He's created this beautiful Airtable spreadsheet for us that is extremely simple to use and keeps us on track with the things we promise people (including ourselves):

You may have noticed I have significantly more on my to-do list than Nick. You may also have noticed that "Monthly Newsletter" is written clear as day at the very top and -- as of my writing this -- is about 4 days late.

What is my point?

Well, it's common and normal for marketing to slip through the cracks. As you can plainly see, it slips through the cracks for me! Ever heard that phrase, "The cobbler's children have no shoes"?

The best time to start marketing was yesterday, but the second best time is today. That being said, you can expect bi-weekly newsletters from us at Onward, now that our systems have married up with our natural way of operating.

In these newsletters, we don't plan to waste your time at all but share useful tips, insights, resources, and data to inform your own marketing and sales systems efforts.

To make these worth your time, let us know what you're interested in learning more about. ⬇️

What would you prefer to read about twice a month?

Launch Strategy + Planning

Offer/Product Development

Sales Systems + CRMs

Audience-Building

All of the above

Something else (respond directly to share)

Talk again soon.

Onward,