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#dogoodwork is not a label but a way of living.
It is the constant and diligent effort to achieve a new level of excellence in one’s own life.
It is the hidden inner beauty behind the struggle to achieve excellence.
It is not perfect but imperfect.
It is the effort, discipline and focus that often goes unnoticed.
The goal of this podcast is to highlight that drive.
The guests I have on this show emulate this drive in their own special way. You’ll be able to apply new ideas into your own life by learning from them.
We will also have 1on1 episodes with me where we’ll dive into my own experiences with entrepreneurship and leadership.
Every episode is designed to provide you with ideas that you can apply and grow in excellence in all areas of your life, business and career.
Do Good Work,
Raul
INTRO
Welcome back to the podcast.
Today, I am talking to Ben Billups.
Ben is the founder of Noble and has
been in performance marketing for nearly
a decade and has six startups under
his belt and is a two time founder.
His work spanning e commerce, ed
tech, and news media has culminated
into unique strategic perspective.
That combines the efficiency of
guerrilla marketing with the robust
outcomes of enterprise solutions.
Now, Ben is building a world class
team in email marketing, specializing
in e commerce strategies, newsletter
growth, and audience sourcing.
And he is on a mission to elevate the
global quality of life by enabling
brands to reach the right people at the
right time with the right information.
PODCAST
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552:
Ben, welcome to the pod
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532: Thanks
for having me on excited to be here.
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552: dude.
So there's so much that we can dive
into from running the agency to
doubling your business and itching down.
I want to first start with the premise.
Why newsletters?
email is like the
cockroach of the internet.
Like it's always been here and
it's never going to go away.
I feel like newsletters
have always been a thing.
Like newsletters is not new, but it's
making a trend or a, an uprising.
In the marketplace prime.
I'm seeing a primarily with B2B
information and or services.
So I'm curious to get your take of why
did you lean into email and what are
some of the things that you're seeing
exciting within the scope of newsletters?
Because it's like making a comeback.
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532:
Yeah, 100 percent I can't say exactly.
I agree with the connotation
that it's a cockroach.
If anything, I think it's the golden
darling child of the Internet.
but I understand what you're
saying, and to some extent, yes,
you're like, it never goes away.
And people have been saying for a
decade and a half at this point,
they're like, oh, email is that's
the old way of doing things.
It's dead.
But in reality and you could pull up
these charts if you look at a chart of
just Global revenue from email marketing.
It is a straight linear growth curve
over the course of two decades.
Like it only goes up, which
is that's rare for anything.
And for, especially for it to be
that way for so long, like there
isn't even a dip in the growth curve.
It's just like email market
revenues goes up and up and up.
And so that's part of the reason why we
niched out into it is because it's an
extremely high ROI channel that almost
any brand can benefit from focusing
on, speaking to the B2B newsletter
space, or even newsletters in general,
or like very hot creator newsletters,
whether you're doing sponsorships,
services, software, whatever that is,
the reason there's a couple of things
that are happening all at the same time.
There was a swing even in
the consumer marketing space.
There was a swing back to newsletter
or not to newsletter, but really
just like email marketing popularity,
especially with the iOS 14 update
that impacted advertising tremendously
about, three years ago at this point.
And then you have things like the TikTok
ban, what's happening a lot with, any time
these platforms change their algorithm,
or there's a change in regulations
that impacts, using these platforms,
the way that I look at it is, really,
there's two categories of marketing.
One is rented audiences, and the
other one is owned audiences.
And rented audiences is that's
if you're doing Amazon FBA,
meta, TikTok, whatever that is.
And that's where it's it's on a platform
that you don't have control over
your ability to reach that audience.
That being said, obviously they could
be reliable and highly profitable
for extended periods of time.
So it's not like it's a waste of
time, but you just have to understand
the fact that from a business
perspective, you don't fully control
what's happening in that channel.
And if, tomorrow, Instagram says,
Actually, we don't want external
links in our reels or whatever it is.
And that could dramatically
impact your business, depending
on how you have things set up.
And you just, that's not a decision
that you get to make or have input on.
On the other hand, you have owned
audiences, which email marketing is one of
a few different types of owned audiences,
but the reason why owned audiences
are so powerful is because, generally
speaking, and this is not a hundred
percent true, but generally speaking,
the bigger your email list is The greater
your revenue opportunity from that email
list is you have contact information
of either potential customers or past
customers directly within your ICP and
you can monetize that in a variety of
different ways, including using that to
inform, like doing things like building
lookalike audiences and meta, et cetera.
And so we put a ton of emphasis and
we approach it from a philosophical
level, very much thinking in
terms of this is first party data.
That's an asset within the business.
So there's even, there's there's
multiple outcomes there as well.
There's businesses where they
actually get more valuation when
they sell the business because of the
sheer amount of data that they own.
There's also businesses where they
file for bankruptcy and the data
that they own is part of the assets
that's in the sell off, right?
And so building that it's legitimately
an asset within your business, it's
data, Collecting that, keeping it up
to date, et cetera, has a ton of value.
Speaking to newsletters specifically,
there's, I think there are some
similar reasons why there's been
a swing back to newsletters.
One is that, especially in the B2B
space, especially if you go like B2B
SaaS, there was like this rage for
a while with cold email outbound.
So people building these systems
to send direct response messages to
people who probably don't even know
who you are and just sending them
offers or trying to get them on a call.
And that still works.
I'm not saying it doesn't work, but
especially in the SAS space, it got
very saturated because it's if it's
you and three other vendors and
you're all competing for the same 100
companies on this fortune 500 list or
whatever it is that are in your ICP,
that gets saturated very quickly.
And so SAS companies, I think we're
the canary in the coal mine where
they just started to see diminishing
returns in terms of their investment
versus what they were able to, to get
out of a marketing effort like that.
And so there's that.
And then I think just emphasis
on owned audiences in general.
It's picked up in popularity because
there's a lot of email platforms.
There's a lot of educators who have been
just raising a lot of awareness with
like how much money you can make with
sponsorships and with list rentals and
how much like services you can sell.
And so especially in the B to B
space where and really, I think of
B to B is like, Most B2B is five
figure plus deal value, right?
Five figure, and it's not uncommon
even in services and SaaS for that
to be six figure plus deal value.
And so the idea that you could have
someone on your email list and be building
rapport with them before they even take
action on any of your lead magnets or
hop on a call or anything, that just
started to gain a lot of popularity.
And that's what we're doing a lot of
list building for our clients right now.
It's it's very easy math.
If it costs you, anywhere from a
dollar to 5 to collect a single email
subscriber, and then you land one
deal a quarter from your newsletter,
then it's like very easy math.
It's wildly profitable, right?
So in the B2B space, it just started
picking up a lot of steam because, a
good way to think about it, and this is
just true of marketing in general, right?
A lot of people have heard
of the rule of seven.
Which is this idea that a prospect or
somebody within your potential audience
has to see something from you roughly
seven times before they're going to take
action and you could make a pretty good
case that a newsletter is actually the
number one, most cost efficient way to
hit seven to 15 touch points within your
ICP in a fairly short period of time.
And so that even just goes back
to like your frequency, right?
So like the clients that send.
And obviously there's a lot of variables
in there in terms of like how you're
collecting your audience, how exact it
is, how good your content is, et cetera.
There's a lot that goes into it, but it
there's a ton of marketing That goes into
just getting in front of the right people
consistently in a cost efficient way.
And I think there's just been this
growing awareness around it, which is
what's led to this kind of boom, or I
guess you could even say like rebirth of
newsletters, in the last like year or so.
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552: Yes.
I've been seeing that trend primarily
on Twitter, which is definitely related
to SAS and B2B SAS, which makes a
lot of sense how it's expanding.
I appreciate your insights.
And from someone who does, I see your
videos almost every day on LinkedIn.
So I know this is going to be
a really good conversation.
A few things on that note
where it is an inbound play.
It is an authority play.
I think one of the other key aspects
to like, when you mentioned the shared,
like you don't own the algorithm,
like you're just renting that out
from, and people gamify algorithms
because they change every single
quarter, sometimes every month.
But the interesting point there is
that within, because I came from the
direct response advertising underground
world, like we would like you name it.
We probably sold it.
There's like interest groups so you
can target specific interest based
on Oh, this person's demographics.
They probably read, HubSpot or they're
like, those are interests, but you're
renting it based on the platform.
The algorithm gives you based on
data points that they collect.
The interesting part with the newsletter,
it's almost like an owned interest group.
Because you know exactly
what they're going to like.
So in another way, it's another way
to target, but then you actually
own the quality of that newsletter.
this is one of the things that you
mentioned too, is if I do a drip sequence
inbound with my lead magnet, that's
not the same as a newsletter because
the ethos of a newsletter, from my
understanding, please correct me if I'm
wrong, it's you're coming from a place
of generosity and or authority, either
taking one of the four personas, right?
You're an authority in the
space, teaching down what you've
learned from the high heavens.
You're a leader who is like exploring
unknown territory and charter
territory, or you're just a reporter
talking about what's happening with
tech news or updates or whatever.
Or you're just selling or like
ideas or thought leadership, Oh, you
downloaded this thing behind a pay,
like a, an opt in page or a paywall.
And then you drip them with seven
or nine emails over the course of
14 days, assuming that's going to
consume like transition to a sale.
I think the newsletter has to
come from a place of give give,
Add value, build relationship.
And then from there, it
transitions to sales conversations.
How are you seeing and how are you
strategizing around what I just
mentioned, like lead mags versus
just like newsletters and how,
because they're almost the same,
but they're also different in a way.
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532: Yeah,
the right approach really just comes down
to the specifics of the business, right?
Some businesses just know that, 80 90
percent of the people who are going to
buy are going to buy in a two week window.
And so they're just super
aggressive in that 2 week window.
And then after that, they don't do much.
there's still money in the
list after that period.
That being said, I think, especially
in B2B, because the price point
tends to be much higher, you tend
to be competing with a fewer number
of vendors for value or services
or software that commands a higher
price, taking the opportunity to build
rapport over time with someone is it.
and it's part of this full ecosystem.
So it's very typical with the way that.
You'll see someone approach marketing
on LinkedIn or Twitter, Where the
thought process is I'm getting my
profile in your feed every day, right?
You see my videos go by, you start
to build an impression of who I am,
what I do, what I know, et cetera.
And newsletters operate
in a similar universe.
The one thing that's particularly easy
with newsletters too, though, to your
point is you're basically collecting
these top of funnel, intent signals.
to give you a good example, one of
our clients, he basically consults
for other agencies, in operations.
And so what he'll do, we do a
bunch of different like warm
outreach enablement for him.
So we do the core list building,
but then we also help him scope out.
Who clicked on my Calendly link
and then didn't book a call, right?
Or who clicked on this specific
video and we have some idea that they
probably at least watch some of it.
And if we reach out to them, they're
going to be more receptive to it.
Then if this was just pure cold outreach,
or if we were just leveraging this email
list to send direct response messaging.
And so you can layer in all types of
different strategies and it really
just depends business to business, like
what the best stack of strategies and
tactics are, but the typical baseline
to your point, the newsletter is
value added content that's designed
to get engagement and is also
designed to collect intent signals.
So it's we can see.
If you've opened seven newsletters in
the last 30 days, you're probably pretty
interested in what we're doing, right?
And versus if you opened one,
that gives us a signal, right?
We can also layer direct
response on top of that.
You can take segments of your contacts
that are like hyper engaged and you could
just be pushing them straight sales offers
and you'll get good results from that.
And they're unlikely to unsubscribe
because they've been engaging
with your content so much, right?
So there's a lot of ways
to slice and dice it, but.
Having that newsletter at kind of
that, core because that's where you're
generating the information to then keep
pulling prospects further down the funnel.
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552: Yeah.
The way that my, one of the follow
up questions, you answered it there,
but I was going to think, how do you
differentiate newsletter versus CRM?
Because the CRM is engaging and
following up with people who are
high intent, especially, in the B2B
context, The newsletter can just
seem like it's noise, but then from
there, you're picking up the signals.
And then from there, you're moving
them into, let me reach out to them to
offer an opportunity to jump on a call.
Maybe it's a discovery session
or whatever, and then that's
how they move to the CRM.
How are you inter interplaying with that?
Is it the same system for newsletters
in CRM or are you separating them?
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532:
So it's typically separate systems.
Sometimes it's combined.
If you're using a platform like active
campaign, for example, That's a full
featured platform in the sense that.
You can very easily support a newsletter
and a full CRM all within under one
roof, which can be good, but from a cost
efficiency perspective, we have a lot of
clients where maybe they're using BI for
their newsletter, for example, which is
a very inexpensive newsletter platform.
And then we're just helping them
integrate that with HubSpot or
whatever it is that they use.
and again, you can slice it
up a lot of different ways.
Sometimes you can create some kind
of definition for a hyper engager.
And then sync that to their CRM
to be flagging for warm outreach.
It's here's their phone number.
You should probably
give them a call, right?
That's one way to do it.
But then also you just have your
traditional magnets where it's if you
have an ebook or a free consultation or
whatever it is that gets them to that next
step of the funnel, you can obviously be
pushing that to your newsletter audience.
And then as soon as anyone takes
action there, they're in your CRM.
It's pretty straightforward.
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552: to move
them from one location to the other.
Let's switch the tables here.
And you talked about early before the, in
the prerecord, niching down, not niching
down, tell me the arguments to not niche
down right now while you're on the fence.
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532:
so just for context, we do both
consumer and B2B services now.
my background is in e comm.
I started going down the email
rabbit hole in the e commerce space,
specifically larger beauty brands.
it's something that personally,
I just really enjoy.
It's fun to send an email
Oh, we just made 30, 000.
That's pretty cool.
also the volume of data
is pretty addicting too.
especially when you're dealing with
bigger brands that have lots of
traffic or lots of email addresses,
sometimes you can run a split test
and hit statistical significance in
24 hours, that's a rush of blood to
the head where you're like, Oh yeah.
And then you're like, you
just keep iterating and you're
very quickly figuring out and
optimizing those marketing efforts.
And we still work with.
Various e commerce brands.
But we're seeing a lot of
traction in the B2B space.
I think a lot of it is just coming from
that wave of interest in newsletters.
We're working with some software
companies, PR companies, et cetera.
A lot of these brands are thinking,
you know what, we need a newsletter.
And then they're coming to us
for that list building component.
we're just seeing a lot of
traction there right now.
And at the end of the day, we've grown
purely through referral and inbound
for over two years now, and a big part
of the reason why that is just because
we have really great fulfillment.
And so the thought process with niching
down is just, we're in the middle of
considering can we reliably fulfill on
both verticals or should we really zero
in on the B2B side and just make sure
we're doing the best that we possibly
can in terms of I can come up with about
as many reasons to niche down as to not.
A lot smart people are telling me to
niche down and I accept the advice.
I don't really disagree with any
of the points I think for us,
the goal is for noble to become a
holding company that has within it.
a media brand, a data brokerage, a service
business, and a software product as well.
So the long term, that five to 10
year roadmap is a pretty big vision.
there is a part of me that wants to
make sure that we're keeping tabs on
what's the latest and what's the best
in different verticals, because it's
likely that eventually we will be
serving all those verticals very well.
Short term though, it is easier to
say, okay, like I know if we just
say, We only do this newsletter
growth service and maybe a little
bit of content or whatever it is.
It's easier for us to build systems
around that and to scale that in, from
like a team perspective and everything,
because we know exactly what we're
looking for in terms of quality and
execution and like KPIs and everything.
Versus on the e com side.
And another thing that frankly is
like difficult in e commerce is
just that the business itself is
frankly like a bigger variable.
So like in B2B.
It's usually a lot simpler and it's
a lot easier to justify different
marketing efforts because like
attribution can be hard B2B attribution.
It's like notoriously difficult, but
because the deal value is so large
and like the ICP is usually like
pretty, specific, right now we're
talking to a company that sells.
It's literally like a software
add on to Microsoft 365.
They only want like the CTOs who work
at companies with at least a thousand
employees and use Microsoft 365.
And it's that's so specific
that we know we can succeed.
When we go find that audience for
them, versus like in e commerce,
there's frankly, just a lot more
complications with the business in
general, where maybe they have like
good site traffic, or maybe they have.
A decent sized email list, but
operationally they're not ready to grow.
And it's okay, there's been brands I've
talked to where they were in the multi
seven figures and just like listening
to them talk about the business.
I'm like, yeah, there's a big opportunity
for you in email, but I'm not even sure if
this is a top five problem for you because
the bottom line is just the consumer
space is just much more complicated.
So sometimes a lot of it, in my view,
comes down to client selection as
well, where We know we can deliver
disproportionate value as long as a
brand meets a minimum standard, but then
there's just a lot of other variables
that can impact success from internally
within the business itself that can
complicate, being a good service provider
in that context, if that makes sense.
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552: have you
considered also creating your own IP and.
Processes unique to each vertical
like when you just select and
pinpoint one You can go real deep and
just create new innovations there.
Is that part of the mix
here when you're thinking?
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532: For sure.
Yeah.
And we have stronger
IP on the B to B side.
So long story short, we basically
developed a proprietary list growth
process for news publishers, And
then we flip that out into B to B.
And that's how we double our business
so quickly was that we basically
our core offer on the B to B side or
really like any newsletter that has
high ticket sales attached to it.
Is that we can scale
anyone's email list for 0.
75 an email with an exact audience match.
And that's something we could deliver for
almost anyone that runs a good newsletter.
And so that IP is what's driving a
lot of traction for us right now.
And then, the innovation there really
just comes down to becoming better
and better at sales enablement.
And then becoming better and better
at, our data sourcing as well.
Where we find these audiences and
what audiences do we have access to?
So one of the projects that I'm
super excited about right now is
we're actually getting pretty close
to having a fully developed, social
media, like email address, append tool,
where we can take anyone's LinkedIn
following, we can take Facebook groups.
We can take Instagram, we can take
Twitter, and then basically we can
build audiences and then also enrich
that data to say okay, you have half a
million followers, here's how many of
those followers like actually are in your
ICP and here's their email addresses.
Things like that are very
meaningful in the B2B space.
In the e commerce space, I do consider us
to be one of The better agencies around.
There's obviously a lot more competition,
just in e commerce in general, in
terms of being a service provider.
But honestly, I think a lot of our success
in e com comes from our overall mindset
and know how, which can be harder to
differentiate because it's not like a
stack of case studies I could show anybody
about how we crush in e com, but sometimes
it can be harder to describe, because we
place so much emphasis, for example, on
list growth when a lot of vendors don't.
You're going to generate a lot more
revenue in a six to 12 month period with
us than you will with another vendor.
That's a fact, but that's
not necessarily like IP.
It's more so that our approach is so
zeroed in on what's going to drive
leverage for an e commerce business
that we just see better results than
other vendors do, but it's not IP yet
in the sense that it's not nobody else
has figured this out or there's zero
other people in this versus like in B2B.
I've been in this space for a
little while now, and I haven't come
across anybody who does what we do.
So that's part of why
it's so easy to sell.
I'm not great salesman, we just
have something no one else has, and
that makes it very easy to sell,
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552:
that's the key thing.
Even when I work with companies and
they're offering the same thing.
Everyone else is, we find that
unique thing that no one else offers.
And then when you sell that,
it's it's a brand new product.
And you mentioned that you had a
volunteering experience that helped
you shape how you view fulfillment.
Can you share, share that with us?
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532:
Yeah, I think for me, like a lot of,
the early days of the agency, it was
a typical progression for anyone who
runs an agency where I was working
at a bunch of different startups.
Like I was in house guy, all these brands.
And then eventually like my network
just started sending more work my way.
So I just started taking work on the side.
I had a full time job and was
freelancing eventually there was enough
business coming my way that it made
sense To go full time on the agency.
And I think a lot of that but those
are referrals like those referrals
that I would get came from people that
I met and worked with over the course
Of like nearly a decade right and that
just came from Doing the best job that
I possibly could at each stage And I
even track that all the way back to,
things that I did in high school where
I, would work on, like I would do,
sound at church and things like that.
and I just had great mentors who
would basically, they showed me what
it looked like to do something with
excellence, how to be hyper conscientious
with what you're doing, and also how
to anticipate needs, which I think
as a service provider is one of the
number one differentiators, which is.
And again, I think a lot of
principles that you learn in
different niches are there.
They're multidisciplinary, right?
They lot of things that you learn in
one space can cross over into another
if you abstract it to a high enough
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552:
It's principal based.
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532: Exactly.
And I think one of those things are
is just anticipating what's needed.
So it's not just being aware of.
It's not just following a process
or like doing what's in my job
description, but also understanding,
okay, we've just done this.
What's the next thing that we need
or what's a potential problem that
could happen that hasn't happened
yet, but then how can we even stop
that problem before it happens?
And what I realized is just over
time, the people would keep,
people would stick with us.
Like I've had clients that signed with
us day one who are still with us, right?
And a big part of that is just because
we care a lot about our clients and
we're so on top of, what's going on
with each client that's, what's driven a
lot of the strength in our fulfillment.
And I track a lot of that back to just
experiences that I had, working with
great mentors, working in areas that seem
unrelated, but it basically, taught me
how to do things with excellence and how
to Serve the people around me in a way
that's strong and that they appreciate
ultimately that could be hard to sell on
the top end right anybody will tell you
like oh yeah we sell amazing services
but really what that drives is it drives
retention because once they're working
with you they realize they're like oh
yeah this guy cares and he's exactly
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552:
How do you operationalize it?
How do you take a concept like that
and operationalize it to the ethos
of how you run the shop and how
the people that you hire execute?
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532: Yeah,
that's basically been my number one focus
for almost a year now, which has been,
and there's a lot of things that go into
it, but I think a lot of it comes down
to a just like your team culture, right?
So making sure that you're imparting
that level of dedication to your
team is important, making sure that
you do have good processes and not
just processes that say, here are
the 10 steps to execute this task.
But also here are the like eight
things you need to think about
and troubleshoot for if you like,
see something that looks maybe out
of line or just different, right?
And like things that are worthy
of investigation, building
that type of thinking into your
processes is really helpful.
And then outside of that, really
I think the job of any great
founder who's trying to scale,
like the real skill is recruiting.
It's finding the right people.
And it's if you have the right people, the
right processes and you have good culture,
you're guaranteed to succeed in some ways.
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552: Your risk of
failure goes down with the right hire.
No, I appreciate that.
And that is like the ethos of what
started this pod is like, how do
you take out that I call it the
inner beauty behind struggle, like
behind trying to achieve that.
And how do you live that out?
So this is cool to have
you personify that for us.
One of the things that you've brought
up in getting this podcast booked is a
unique way of your mind, like how you
approach thinking and decision making.
Can you walk us through your mental
model or your mindset framework?
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532: for sure.
I think, looking back in like high
school and college, I was very much
perfectionist, which in some ways
benefited me, but in other ways, it
held me back like in the sense that,
you have to develop a really good
sense of how much does something
matter and how good does it need to be?
And also you can't look at every problem
as the same, not every problem is DEF
CON one, I think one is the biggest
one and then five is the lowest,
So it's you have to understand
like what, how big are the problems
and then you can prioritize them.
And then you can focus on the
right things and build leverage.
the two big concepts that have
really helped me, one is that I've
read a lot of, Nicholas Nassim
Taleb's books, so like antifragile,
fooled by randomness, et cetera.
I highly recommend a lot of his books,
especially Anti Fragile and Black
Swan, because one of the big concepts
that I pulled from him was just this
idea that the overwhelming majority
of mistakes are non fatal, right?
So you think about, fatal for your
business, fatal for your relationship
apply that to whatever context
you want, but the overwhelming
majority of mistakes that you can
make, Aren't going to be final.
And so that really helped free me of
the perfectionist mindset where not
everything has to be perfect all the time.
It's more about understanding which
problems do I really want to avoid?
And then which problems are actually
just going to increase the speed of
iteration, which basically gets us to
the second concept, which is OODA loops.
So it's OODA, observe,
orient, decide, and act.
It's a concept that, actually
came from the Air Force.
And basically it was an observation that
was made by Air Force trainers where they
realized it wasn't the pilot who hesitated
to make the best decision, which would be
basically perfectionism embodied, right?
But it was actually the pilot that
made the first decision that usually
ended up succeeding in an exchange.
the thought process behind OODA loops is,
you make an observation, you orient based
on that observation, you make a decision
and you take action when you're following
that process, you're thinking about it
explicitly as you're doing it effectively.
What you're doing is you're by taking
action, you're generating the information
that you need to make your next decision.
And that next decision might
be to backtrack, right?
You might be like that was actually
the wrong decision We should go back
to what we were doing before But the
faster that you make that decision, the
faster you generate that information,
and then the faster that you can actually
improve what you're doing overall,
Or should we do that?
It's just move in the direction
that you think you should move.
And very quickly, you'll find out
like, is the market responding to
this, or clients reacting well to this?
Yes or no.
We're in a really good position
right now where we're iterating very
quickly on what are basically like how
good our services are, how we source
audiences, how we build them, et cetera.
the top line is that, we have almost
zero churn, which to me says, overall,
everything's working phenomenally well.
we're looking for those signals to
say okay, if we source an audience
this way and then we activate them
this way, does that mean that this
client actually gets more sales?
Does it mean that they have
better email performance KPIs?
And then we just keep iterating
based on those feedback loops.
And so I think a lot of, at
least our success has really
come from that type of thinking.
and even like Approach to what
we're doing now in B2B was basically
an accident where, I was doing
a lot of e com and I was working
with some big, publishers, right?
It's like news companies and the
development of our process that we use now
for growing clients in the B2B space, it
came out of a strategy that we developed.
It was basically a client
requirement from a publisher
where they were like this is cool.
We have this giant email list of people
who should be reading our newsletter.
Can we figure out how to, Reach out to
them in a way that's safe and effective.
And so we engineered a process
specifically to them, but even at
that, I did that like a year before
I even started selling this service.
And it didn't even occur to me that
this had a massive application in B2B.
It took me almost an
embarrassingly long time.
And then part of the other
part of the progression was.
Then I heard, someone at a conference
basically say Oh, the best way to
get clients is to have a newsletter.
And then he started diving into all
these lead generation strategies.
And I was listening to him thinking like,
Oh, I was like, I can build a list way
easier and way more affordably than that.
And so I actually created
an e commerce newsletter.
To get e commerce clients and then in the
middle of building that list I was like,
why don't I sell what i'm doing right
now because nobody else does the thing
that i'm doing And then that's when our
business exploded But it was just and
again, it just goes back to like oodle
loops where it's like I was just making
The best next decision and then making
observations based on that and then
making another decision This B2B thing
is probably like shiny object syndrome.
And I'm like, okay, like
I accept the feedback.
And then we doubled our business almost
by accident selling this thing that
I had been sitting on for a year.
And then now I'm thinking maybe the
e comm stuff is the shiny object.
And maybe this is all I should be
doing because it's working so well.
And so I think it is really hard to
pinpoint, what's the right decision,
but we've made so much progress in
the last year or so, just because
I've always just focused on what's
working, can it work better?
And then what's not working as well.
And do we even need to
be doing that anymore?
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552: No.
And I think that two key points there on
the first one, like the anti fragility
that not everything is an issue, that
draws back to me when I used to take
vacations with the team and I would
tell them, unless you're on fire or
a client is physically on fire, like
legitimately, there's fire on them.
Like you're not calling me it
because they're the same ideas.
there are very few things that
could be such a huge issue.
Where either you're going to figure
it out on your own or we'll solve
a bigger issue when I'm back.
So I love that approach in the OODA loops.
I heard a dude, this guy,
he was a, he's a, air pilot.
He's a jet fighter and he had like
somehow lost control of his thing.
He had five seconds to make a decision.
Cause if not, you'd crash and die.
And he told me, he's yeah, you've got
to make a decision in three seconds
and then make the action within that 5.
3 seconds.
If not, you're going to die.
Obviously that's a life or
death situation, but here.
We're in front of the screen all day.
We're making decisions that, don't,
we don't physically feel or see.
the other thing too, in the information
age is that we have so much to think
through, so much to discern, so
much to like mentally work through
that we think that's the work.
And I like this approach with the
OODA loops is that just make a
fricking choice, but take action.
And then from there,
make that other choice.
And that's an iterative approach where
you're saying that you fell forward Into
accidentally doing this thing when in
reality it was a chain of decisions and
actions that based on your intellect and
discernment as well as the environment
telling you this is the right decision
or not, it feels like an accident, but
in reality you were just leading up based
on your best decision at that point.
So that is a huge takeaway here
because there's so much about how
to decide what's the best thing,
how to validate your idea, how to do
an MVP, like there's no other way.
Just go out, sell it or see what happens.
you have to face that quote
unquote potential for failure.
But in reality, going to the other
point, there may not be such a
thing as failure at that point,
just to leave a feedback loop.
I love it, Ben, for our listeners
out there, where's the best place for
them to thank you for being on and to
learn more about what you're up to.
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532: I'm
very active on Twitter and LinkedIn, so
you could just punch my name in there.
I'll pop right up, posting every day.
So feel free to message me.
My DM should be open.
So yeah, happy to chat all
things email marketing there.
And then, if anyone here is listening,
you have a newsletter or you're
interested in a newsletter and maybe
you're interested in scaling that
you can go to forward newsletters.
com, which is just FWD newsletters.
com, to learn more about what we do there.
raul-_1_05-20-2024_110552: Sweet.
Ben, thanks for being on.
ben-billups_1_05-20-2024_130532:
Yeah, appreciate it.
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