Today I’m tellin’ you all about my lovely client Leanne who’s an Online Business Manager.

Now, if you’ve spent more than 14 seconds on my website, you might be thinking, “Wait, Olivia… aren’t you supposed to only write for the literary girlies?”

Yes. Gold star for observation.

BUT before you clutch your pearls and report me to the Niche Police, you should know:

Leanne has been a client of mine for years. In fact, she was my third-ever client.

Which means she’s seen me grow, change offers countless times (just read my About Page to learn about that), buy a campervan, set off dilly dallying around the UK. She’s stuck with me through all of it, supporting me in literally everything I do.

So when I decided to launch my Long-form Content Retainer, I wanted to test it on someone who a) wouldn’t judge me and b) wouldn’t mind being my guinea pig as I refined the offer.

Hence, working with the lovely Leanne.

A quick intro to Leanne (and why she needed help)

Leanne’s an Online Business Manager (aka OBM) which means her whole thing is helping people get their shit together by building systems to automate and delegate all the unnecessary stuff in your business so you can actually, you know, live your life.

And she’d been talking about starting a monthly newsletter for a while because she “didn’t want to grow her audience on borrowed land” (aka social media—also literally her words, not mine). 

But yanno, between client work and just life, writing newsletters kept sliding down the priority list. Plus there was the whole overthinking thing when it came to content—how to say things, grammar, punctuation, making it sound like her, getting the structure right, etc.

So when I offered to write a monthly newsletter for her as part of testing my new retainer, she was allllll in. (wahoo)

Structuring the newsletter.

When I mentioned the structure, Leanne was ON IT like a car bonnet. She knew what she wanted, had all her sections laid out, all on-brand, and had already made sure that the content would be content her audience would actually benefit from (as I said… she’d been thinking about this for a while)

Each month, the newsletter centres around one main theme. That theme then guides every section. The sections were: 

• A monthly tip
• Things she’s been into lately
• A client case study
• Resources/tools her audience might love
• Answering a question her audience submitted 

For example, in the second email we wrote, the theme was Email Marketing. The tip was about repurposing content from emails. The tools she recommended included Flodesk (an email marketing platform). The client case study was about a Flodesk Setup she did, etc.

Honestly, this newsletter is a must for anyone who wants to get their business (and life) in order, so if this sounds like something you’d love receiving in your inbox, you should totally sign up here!!

(And if you’re thinking about working with me to send your own structured monthly newsletters, don’t panic. We can brainstorm this together or I can provide feedback on your ideas. You don’t need it all figured out like Leanne did—although we do love her for it!)

Designing the email template.

But before I even wrote a word, I created a custom email template for her because I truly believe that if you’re wanting to go all-in with monthly newsletters, you’ve got to give it a personality. GIve it a memorable look. Make it a thing. 

And creating an on-brand design will help do just that.

So, her monthly newsletter needed clear, distinct sections since it was going to pretty much follow the same structure every month. And because Leanne has a bit of an office theme going on (you know, Flow State Office and all that), we brought in folder tabs to signpost each section. 

It not only made it on-brand, it makes it easy to navigate and super scannable for her readers. If you want to have a nosey at the design, I’m here to deliver.

While designing an email template isn’t part of the main deliverables for my Long-form Content Retainer, it IS an add-on. Which means you can get reallll pretty email templates too if you want them.

The writing process.

The whole shtick of my retainer is using voice notes to create your content, which means the process was pretty simple: she’d voice note me a rough guide of what she wanted included in each section, and I’d use that to write her content.

Now I’ll always give credit where credit’s due—it was actually Leanne who inspired this whole voice note thing. I remember her messaging me something along the lines of “Can I just voice note you want I want and you write it?”.

So it was no surprise that she had great things to say about this whole process.

Here’s some voice note snippets:

(because she didn’t have to write a damn word, she could just ramble and let me handle it)

(because taking the weight of content creation off her shoulders, plus actually speaking things out loud, resulted in her getting waves of creativity)

Writing the actual content. 

So once I had her rambles, I’d turn them into actual written content. And for funsies, let’s look at one of my fave bits.

As I mentioned, the second newsletter was about email marketing. And Leanne was about to fly to Australia to visit family, so I knew instantly what I was going to write for the intro.

I loved this opening because it did a few things at once. You learn a little more about Leanne (she has family in Australia). It’s a subtle flex about her systems working even when she’s offline (proving she doesn’t just talk the talk, she walks the walk, too). And it hooks you in because you’re curious about how the hell she’s in your inbox while very high in the air and supposedly offline.

It’s wayyyy more interesting than “Today we’re going to talk about email marketing systems.”

The Outcome

We started getting replies like this from her readers after sending just two email newsletters.

&

I always say that building a relationship with your audience is a slow-burn but when the content genuinely sounds like you and gives actual value? This is proof people start paying attention prettyyyy damn quickly.

So far, I’d say our collab has been a success!

• Leanne finally got her newsletter started
• Her subscribers have responded super positively
• The voice note process has made content creation feel easier for her
• She’s saved herself time (and overthinking) by not writing them herself

Now I suppose I should paste a testimonial here, to show Leanne thinks it’s been a success too, but you know what? Leanne wrote a lovely Thread about my offer so I’m just going to leave that here instead.

Author’s Note.

This project was the first time I got to test out this whole Long-form Content Retainer thing properly, and I knew immediately this direction of writing content was perfect for me.

I felt soooo creative and it just clicked in a way I’d hoped for (but kinda didn’t expect if I’m being honest).

But mostly, I’m just happy I got to work with Leanne on this. She’s supported me through every “okay THIS is what I’m doing now” pivot, and that means a lot (love you, Leanne)

If you want to see more of Leanne’s work and maybe get some systems sorted in your own business, you can find her on Instagram, check out her website, or sign up for her newsletter In The Flow here (highly recommend, it’s so so good and I’m not being biased)

And if you want ME to write your own monthly newsletter (or storytelling emails, promotional emails, blogs, or whatever) have a stalk through my Long-form Content Retainer sales page and then enquire!