How to Automate Your Monthly Newsletter (So It Goes Out Even When You Don't Feel Like It)

Since launching BlockBuilder, I wanted to send a consistent monthly update for months. There was so much happening, new features, announcements, things I was excited to share.

And every month I'd sit down to do it, it would take too long, I'd get bored, and I'd skip it 😅

I knew it wasn't the right thing to do. It's just what happened.

Here's what I finally realized. I wasn't skipping it because I had nothing to say. I was skipping it because every single time, I had to start from zero:

• Pull the updates from wherever they were
• Find a tip worth sharing
• Write the intro
• Format the whole thing and schedule it

Skipping the newsletter was never a motivation problem. It was a starting-from-zero problem.

And those two problems need completely different solutions. You can't willpower your way out of the second one. You have to remove the zero.

Why I built this

I have ADHD, and I'll say this plainly: it is very hard for me to get excited about something that doesn't give me a dopamine hit. Writing a monthly round-up for BlockBuilder, my embeddable block software, was not a dopamine-fueled activity. Haha.

But here's the part that made me a little mad at myself once I saw it.

The content was already sitting in my tools the whole time. The changelog entries lived in one place. The office hours recordings lived in another. The upcoming member challenges were already on a calendar. And the format of the email never changed: intro, a few updates, one tip, one call to action.

What in your business only happens when you have a perfect day?

That's the question I'd sit with. Because the answer is usually something important that keeps getting skipped, and it's almost never because you don't care.

I wrote about the assembly-versus-writing distinction in the affiliate content post, and the newsletter was the same thing wearing a different outfit. Pulling updates, finding a tip, formatting the email... that's not writing. That's not strategy. That's assembling pieces together, and assembly doesn't need a human.

So I built a skill that knows my brand voice, my colors, and exactly where my content lives. Then a scheduled task that runs it on the 30th of every month. It pulls the recent changelog entries, grabs the best tip from that month's office hours calls, builds the fully branded email, creates the draft in my email platform, and opens a review task so I know it's ready.

I show up, read through it, and hit send. That's it 🙌

The whole setup took about as long as writing the newsletter once would have. And now it runs every month whether I'm having a good day or not.

What actually changes

Where to start

Don't start by building anything. Start by finding where your content already lives.

The newsletter you keep skipping is almost certainly made of things you're already creating somewhere else. Write down the sources:

• Your updates. A changelog, a task list, a "what shipped" doc, a product board
• Your recordings. Office hours, Q&A calls, workshops, anywhere a good tip got said out loud
• Your calendar. Upcoming launches, challenges, events, deadlines your people need to know about

Then write down the format. If your newsletter always follows the same structure, that's good news: the more fixed the shape, the less editing you'll do on the other end.

If your source content isn't stored anywhere yet, that's ok. The first prompt below will tell you what you need to set up. Use it as a roadmap, not a blocker.

Save what comes back. That design is the blueprint for everything after it, and it's the part most people skip straight past.

Let's be real about automated newsletters

Nobody wants a newsletter that reads like a changelog dump. I don't either.

The automation doesn't replace your voice. It replaces the hour you spent hunting for the pieces before you could even use your voice. The skill that builds mine knows how I write, and I still read every draft before it goes out. Sometimes I tweak a line. Sometimes I don't touch it.

And if you're thinking "my newsletter is more personal than that," good. Keep the personal part personal. Let the system hand you the updates, the tip, and the structure, then write the two sentences at the top that only you could write.

The goal was never a newsletter that writes itself. It was a newsletter that actually goes out 👉