If I had to pick one marketing channel to focus on, it'd be email marketing.
Why? Because it's a relationship that you own, control and
you can nurture. It's a direct line to your audience, unfiltered by
algorithms and platform policies. When done right, it can be
a gold mine. Today, we're diving deep into the world of email
marketing with none other than Matt Raglan. He has a wealth of experience under
his belt, having worked with creators at ConvertKit and Podia is
now he's serving as the Managing director at Good People Digital.
Matt is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to email marketing.
He's here to share his Hershey Kiss strategy from making seven
figures with an email list. In this Marketing Props episode, you learn first,
the common pitfalls marketers should avoid when consulting
and advising. Second, why focusing on content distribution
and referrals are so important. 1st. Third, the Hershey Kiss strategy
for monetizing your email list. And fourth, a power up that's accelerated
Matt's career. To help you apply Matt's Hershey Kiss monetization
strategy, I've created a free Powerups cheat sheet that you can download for free
marketing powerups.com. Find the link in the show notes and description.
Are you ready? Let's go. Marketing powerups
ready. Go.
Here's your host, Ramli.
John, we were talking about when, you know,
it's like time to move on. I feel like lately, especially with
what's happening in the economy and the tech
scene, I feel like a lot of marketers have been really thinking
a lot about that, about stepping out and it's
something that's also internal and personal to me. I've been thinking a lot about when
it's the right time to do my
own thing. You suggested this book calling. I'm curious,
you made that move like almost three years ago in 2020.
I guess you're probably going to say it depends, but how do you know when
it's time to move to become
a full time solo creator or the Advisor
marketing advice, whatever that is for. Folks,
I do recommend starting to build before
you know it's time. That's part of it for me. If you can get
to a certain amount in savings or
I think actually a better this is kind of a limiting belief like,
trick that I played on myself, like, looking back is
instead of thinking of it in terms like, oh, I need X number of dollars
in the bank. It's probably better to think about how
much revenue have I generated from these non
salary positions? Because this was the thing.
Romney. I was like, well, when I get whatever, 30K in
the bank, then it's like, okay, I feel pretty good. And I would get
to like 15 2020. I was like, oh, it's close. And then
some expenses would come up and I'm not
going to get all super woo woo, but I
was at a Mastermind and I was talking about this with some of the other
members and like, oh, you need this. Well how much money have you made from
your how much money have you made
from your side hustle in the last twelve
to 18 months? Because you say you need like 30K in the bank,
but how much have you made? And I looked it up over
like ten minutes, just like very simple like course reports,
AdSense, blah blah blah, and think I had ended up I
had made like 70 grand in the previous 18 months.
Like, okay, well could you do
at least that or probably like 40 or 50% more if it's
the only thing that you're doing? Yeah, probably could. And they're like, okay,
there's your salary. And so instead
of thinking about like, I need X number, you still definitely
can, but I would say if you have trouble
getting to your savings account number, maybe it's better to
look at, okay, how much have I really been generating? And then extrapolate
that out. So that's like one thing. Start to build. That's very practical,
but start to build before you think it's time. And then
we just talked about prioritization with Kiddos
and work. This had started to happen because our
now four and a half year old was
basically one when I quit. And part
of it for me was that YouTube was going
well. I had run a couple of courses, I was doing some coaching on the
side and I said I had been generating that revenue
and it got to a point where I knew
that something was going to have to take a
pretty significant step back or I was just going to have
to start working more. So I've always run
with a few sprint exceptions, run a pretty balanced
life, 40 to 50 hours of work per week,
sometimes as low as 30, 35, but kind of
in that normal range, lots of time with family.
And I was like, well if I want to do more with
my side hustle, then I'm going to have to work more on
it to grow it. So where's that time going to come
from? Is it going to come from what it
had been coming from was taking time away from my family. So I was doing
like 45,
50 hours a week at Podia,
shout out to Podia great people and doing
another ten to 15 hours on my own side. So I was doing like that
was one of my heavy sprint sessions where I was doing like 50,
60 hours. But basically I'd work Monday through Friday and then I'd
work most of Saturday, if not all of Saturday on my own
projects. So I was a one day a week dad
in terms of being super present,
not just the bookends of the day. I was like, okay,
well something has to give. And I
talked to my wife a lot about this and it was a very
gradual thing. I'm not saying it has to be gradual, but having
kids. My wife worked part time, so we
didn't have her full time income to
fall back on or rely on. So it was a much more gradual progression
for me. So to be realistic, to understand your
financial commitments and that's the biggest thing.
I already talked a little bit about how much revenue generating, how much revenue and
savings. The other thing that I didn't
understand well enough at the time
was just like what our personal household
run rate was, our burn rate, basically, to be all
techy about it, how much money are we spending each month?
Because with my full time salary, with my
side hustle income, and with my wife's part time income,
we were putting money in savings. We were doing all the things,
but I didn't really notice how I
really like ramit SETI's stuff and everything was automated.
So it's like the giving goes out
and the spending goes out and investments go out and savings go out
and taxes are automatically taken out, blah, blah, blah. So it's like
everything was running. I didn't know how much everything cost,
really. And so when the side hustle,
which was a nice side hustle, but not a full time income,
when I started,
I became aware of those costs really quickly. And so
that's like the biggest thing, looking back at that
time and deciding know all of your numbers
as well as you possibly can so that you can make the
most informed decision about based on family
dynamics, household income, household expenses.
Are you going to be able, are you going to be willing to
cut back on things? I wasn't initially
just understanding those things. It'll help you now.
This is the last thing, though, on this question.
And Romney left. I can be a bit of a rambler.
Keep going, dude.
It does get to a point, and I eventually got to this point where I
was like, I'm thinking about this too much. I think I've
told Spencer at Podia this, but it was getting
to a point I was like, I am
subconsciously not paying as much attention to Podia work
and that's not fair to them. So it's time.
And so I had made like that wasn't going on for a long time.
Clarification everyone. I wasn't quiet. Quitting.
All the milestones were being passed,
all the boxes were being checked. But there was
like a moment just kind of dawned on me, a big project.
And I was like, I noticed the week following that it was different than just
like, oh, we finished a big project. And I had been thinking about it.
We finished a big project. I'm just kind of burnt out. I need to chill.
I was like, oh, I don't want to think about this at all. And I
was like, it's time.
Interesting. I think that energy piece is
so important, I don't know who I learned it from.
Follow what gives you energy at that moment.
Obviously all the stuff that you talked about,
the financial, making sure that makes sense and making sure that
you understand your costs. But as well.
I think that's the other piece though, when people ask me when is it time
to move them on? If it's like sucking your
energy away from me. I used to work for a larger organization
early in my career. I stuck it for like four or five years. And I
remember calling it a soul sucking please.
Because it's not the soul, it's the energy. It's just
sucking your energy, whatever you're doing there. And you can tell,
I would say pay attention to when it's sustained as well
because we all have bad days or we could even have bad weeks.
But when you're already thinking about
this and you notice that a sustained lack of energy
and attention, I do believe that there's something
significant there that's worth paying attention to. And it could
be that when you first notice, okay, it's time to start
making more intentional plans. And one
of the things that I know we're going to talk about is like, okay,
how do I start generating some revenue? What are those first
bits of experiments? Revenue generating experiments that
I can run that are going to give me an idea of,
okay, is this feasible?
Yeah, that makes sense. So you started 2020.
You left podia. Before that you were believe you were a ConvertKit.
How has that there's this Tweet I love. You have this camera
in front of you and you're like, first thing I'm.
Looking at right now. Yeah. Matt Ragland. Oh, that's cool.
That's really cool. The same camera from Toy camera right there. What camera is it?
Point at me right now. It's an M 50.
Canon 50. Right. Nice. I was thinking about
it. I ended up going for the E 6400. The Sony.
Yeah. Probably going
to be a Sony guy next camera purchase. Makes sense.
I don't have enough Canon stuff to be like, I'm a Canon guy, I have
a camera. Right. And the other thing, the lenses for each of
the Canons, they don't fit with each other sometimes. The N 15 eight lens,
I don't think adapter.
I'm curious how the ride has been. How has that ride been since 2020?
I'm sure there's like a lot of us. It's been a roller coaster.
I'm glad that I've done it because of
all the things that I just talked about. It was time. It was time.
I'd been thinking about it for a while and it was time.
That said, it was because of also some
of the financial realities. My wife
has worked less and I support her. That has been the right decision
for us. That's something that we've done together. But since then it's
been whatever Matt can make that's the
was it was fun because I really went
into it. The first six months of that first year in
2021 were probably the best six
months that I had, and I've
had other great months since. But I was planning I did a
Cohort launch, and that thing did well. So basically I
did probably 70K that
first six months, maybe a
little less, but around that. And we rented an
airbnb in Florida because for a
month at the beach. And that was great.
It was like, we're doing I don't have to get on any zoom calls,
and I'm just spending half the day with my kids at the beach, which is
like, it's a great memory, and I'm really glad we did
that. But looking back, that's where it's like,
I spent a good bit, I made a good bit.
And then when I did the second launch of the Cohort
that summer, I was like, here we go again. This is going to be great.
It just like, no. People were not interested in being productive
in August 2021. At least people that I know
are on my email list, lots of great people on that
email list. But that just wasn't a time. I was like, oh, no, now what
am I going to do? Because I
had basically budgeted a cash flow of expected
air quotes for the listeners, an expected cash flow of
like 100 and 2130. I was like, I can make it
a chuckle. And all of a sudden, that was like,
OOH, it's going to be a hustle to get to 100.
Really going to have to work at this. It might. Oh,
no. So what I started doing
at that point to supplement
my shortfall in course revenue,
was that I started doing more consulting
and more implementation operations for surprise,
surprise email and courses. And so there
was a little bit of like, I'm doing what I was doing at Podia
and at ConvertKit, but just like, on my own.
But that network, those skills have continued
to pay off for me in really big ways.
So basically the rest of the year goes on,
and the timeline kind of speeds up after this. But the first year was really
key. The year wraps up, and it was fine.
But I mentioned
when I was doing those numbers initially, and people are like, oh, you did like
70K in the
last 18 months of your side hustle. Can't you do more if
you're only spending ten to 15 hours a
month or no, a week on this? If you were spending 40
hours, maybe you're not going to quadruple, but definitely double.
I was like, Hell yeah. Definitely going to double.
Definitely did not double.
We made it, we're fine. But it
was a moment where I was like, okay,
it's not smooth sailing. I was definitely, like, towards the end of the year,
I was dipping down in
terms of getting worried about things,
and I just want to tell the truth on it. And I said,
looking back, we were totally fine. But it had not been like, this steady
ascent to the top that I had envisioned in my
mind. The other reason about this is like, I really thought
that my YouTube channel I expected that my YouTube channel was going to take
off in
and post 2020 post COVID as more people at home trying
to be productive on their own. And I've got all kinds of stuff that's going
to be perfect for this, like self managed, self directed productivity.
And I said I did a lot of good work.
It just didn't always turn into money. And we'll
come back to that later. And at the
end of the year, I had made almost as much money
consulting and doing email course operations
as I had on the actual courses that I made. And I
reconnected with another former ConvertKit
colleague named Daryl Vesterfeld, who was the first head of growth
at ConvertKit, and he was running
a branding marketing agency mostly
geared towards creators, but would do other
projects as well. I'd worked with a bunch of authors like Daryl has worked with
Gretchen Rubin, and he was on the early
team at Story Brand, like Donald Miller. So he
was, I think, director of marketing for Don when that was all taking
off. So super smart guy in addition to our ConvertKit
overlap. So I was just telling him my
story and he is like, oh, do you want to do more of the course
and email part? I was like, kind of seems like that's the
direction it's going.
And he's, well, like, how about you come work
with me? Why don't you be a partner at Good People Digital
at GPD and you can run newsletter,
email operations and courses for our clients, because I haven't
been doing as much of that. I want to get back into it, but I'm
running all these other parts of the agency in the business. He's the founder,
CEO. He's like, you go run this part of the business and
work with the team.
We'll run it together. And there are a couple of other great partners there
as well. Matt Gartland's one of them. Tim Grahl is another. And it
has been great to work through
that with them, to have more of a team to work with.
And also, I mentioned this to you before
the show or like, right at the beginning. I do feel like even though
I'm creating less content right now than
I was at really any time of the past five or six
years, I haven't been doing as much YouTube. I do feel like what I'm working
on right now with our clients and with GPD,
good People Digital is the culmination of everything
that I've been doing for the past ten years, and that includes
starting my own blog, starting my own email list on AWeber
in 2012. Don't use AWeber. If it even exists anymore,
don't do it. I've been setting up email
lists for over ten years now. And then of course,
my experience at ConvertKit, the network that I've been fortunate to
build, and a lot of great people to work with. So if
that's the meme of how it started,
how's it going? It's a little bit different than
what I expected, but I do feel really good about
my decisions and I think something that everyone should
take into account when it comes to decisions like this is
thinking is being willing to follow
the vision that you have, even if the path is a little different than you
expect. Before I continue, I want to thank the sponsor for this episode, 42 Agency.
Now, when you're in scale up growth mode and you have to hit your KPIs,
the pressure is on to deliver demos and sign ups. And it's a lot
to handle. There's demand, gen, email sequences, rev ops and
more. And that's where 42 Agency, founded by my good friend
Camille Rexton, can help you. They're a strategic partner that's helped
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to talk to a strategist right now to learn how you can build a high
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Riverside FM. Riverside FM is my Goto
video podcast recording tool. This whole show is recorded on it.
What I love about it is that it's almost like being in a virtual studio,
which makes it possible to record and edit at the highest quality possible.
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the link in the show note and description. Anyway, let's get
back to our episode. Yeah, that's true. That makes sense. There's this
police proverb that says that if you're given two paths,
always choose the harder one because that would make you grow the
most. And that really stuck with me in many
ways. I mean, the path you described is
definitely not the easiest, but I
do believe that things get set up for you or for people towards
what's next. I'm not sure. Maybe we're talking to Flux.
I really do believe that, yeah.
And there are also things like I was talking to some people in a mastermind
that I'm in I was talking to them about this last week, is that doing
all of this has taught me things about myself and how I work and
how I react to people that I never could have learned if
I wasn't willing to take this path. There's even
still stuff that I'm doing this month that like,
ah, this thing that I did at ConvertKit, this thing
I probably did at AppSumo, this thing I did at Podia,
and now this thing that I'm doing with a partner.
It finally had this light bulb, and I was like, it's that
thing that I'm doing. And I have to stop doing that thing and I have
to do this other thing differently. And I don't know if I ever would have
figured that out without going
through the bit of a roller coaster that I have.
Yeah, that makes sense. One of
the things that you have put together, I feel like one of the lessons that
you've taken and now formulating good People
digital is around this tweet that you shared around seven steps to making
seven figures with an email list. I want to dig to that. That's what we're
really going to be digging into today.
And the very first thing, 20 minutes in,
totally fine. Now that philosophy hour is over.
It's leading up to this, the longest. Intro I don't with YouTube parenting
philosophy.
I love it, but I don't want to dig through all seven at
one go. I want to do it in chunks because that's the way you suggested.
Especially, this is a great primer for people
who are thinking marketers who are thinking about doing
their own thing. This is something that they should be doing before, especially the first
three around, really thinking about content distribution
and referrals. That's the first three out of that seven.
Curious. I understand it, but maybe
other people understand it. Why those three first? Other than like,
oh, I should just start vising from the very which will
be the very bottom we'll talk about in a bit.
The distinction in that as I hold my tiny pencil, the distinction
in that is if you already have especially like if you're in sales or
some kind of like biz dev role,
you probably at that point can skip this a little bit to
say, hey, I'm doing this thing now. You know what
I do? Let's do it together. Which is basically how
my consulting started after my
second cohort launch fell a little flat and I was like, I need
to make 20 grand in three months.
How can I do that? So I was just
able to reach out to people and of course, I had been creating content at
that point. But the reason that I say content distribution
and referrals first is because
if you are doing that online,
twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok,
Reels, whatever it is, depending on the platform, depending on the channel newsletter, which we'll
also talk about, you are publicly establishing
expertise that people can
point to or check in on you with.
This is one thing, unless you're working for one
of the fang companies or you're at this popular
spot. If I
wanted to work with you, and I went to this landing page that you have
set up on Card, shout out to AJ at card. Love your
product. And it's just like, so and so worked
at these places, and now you can hire me for thousands of dollars. I'm like,
Nope, not going to do.
And but if I see that you're posting thoughtful
pieces on Twitter or you are regularly sharing
concepts on LinkedIn, one of my friends that does this extremely well is Brendan
Hufford. Brendan's awesome. I had him on the show. Yeah,
Brendan's. Fantastic. Yeah. And Amanda as well, who we've
already talked about. If I was thinking about hiring that person
for the thing that they're good at, then it's not just like going to their
website. Anyone can set up a website. I'm not saying it's easy to set up
a website, even though it's gotten pretty easy. And you can put single
set up copy, like, here's my stuff and here's a couple of case studies.
You should still do all those things. But I want to see and
I was just talking to a coaching client about this today. I want
to see if I go look you up on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram,
YouTube, whatever, I want to see 30 pieces of content,
probably minimum. I'm not going to read them all, but I just want to see
that you've been thinking about this and talking about this, and I'll scan
through a few and say, like, okay, I have a feel for
this person's personality and style, how they think
about things. I can start to imagine what it would be like to
work with you. Whereas if I just go to your website that you've
tossed up with a couple of pages during
a weekend sprint, still good for you. You should do that.
But that doesn't tell me nearly enough about whether or not
I'm going to be interested in hiring you. Because there's
also, like I mentioned, the fang companies. There's also plenty of people say,
ex Google. Right, okay.
Yeah, I was thinking the same. Just because the people
who work at these big companies, they might not be good at
doing what you need help with, just because maybe they're doing
something very specific really well, like pressing a button really
well, or something else. Great button pushers.
Yeah, exactly. That makes sense.
So that's why I say content is
just making the thing. Distribution is getting it onto
the platforms. That's why Social has
I feel like there was a stretch, maybe, like pre COVID,
where social was not great for distribution,
and I think that it was less focused.
This is all like, my own social bubble,
my own echo chamber of Twitter and LinkedIn.
But it feels like to me I
don't know how you remember those days,
but Twitter back then seemed a lot more random.
And then when threads took over Twitter,
and I remember talking to my friend Blake Burge about this. Shout out to Blake,
great guy, that he said
he was talking to me. He was doing, like, a review of my Twitter.
He's like, you talk about way too much random stuff. I was like, it's me.
It's my personality. He's like, no. He's like, you talk
about newsletters and courses and that's. It interesting.
It's like, maybe you can say something about football
on the weekends, but it's like, one thing
and it's Go team. It's not like he's
like, people come to your Twitter. If you want people to hire you or buy
from you via Twitter or LinkedIn, that when they go there.
That's all they should see. That's all they should see.
Yeah. I feel like what you're maybe
starting to change a little bit, but I still feel like that's very much.
Like, if you're doing that, then again, people come to your socials
to figure out if they want to work with you. What are you
saying? What are you putting out there consistently that lets
them feel more convinced that
you're the right person.
To me, what that really leads up to is about building trust.
Imagine if absolutely.
You're trying to hire a programmer. Maybe that's not a good example,
but you're trying to hire a designer who it's
much easier to hire somebody who has great behance and a
place they've done some designs that you want for
yourself rather than somebody who hasn't. It's the same here, where you're
sharing your thoughts and your idea, and that builds trust that this guy,
Matt or Ramley or whoever, Amanda or Brendan,
they know what they're talking about if I'm going to try to hire them for
SEO, because that's what they talk about on Twitter and LinkedIn, and it's something
they care about. Really? Yeah. And you look at it and say,
Matt, just us. We've known each other for a little
while. I was like, I've had three different podcast interviews
because of that seven Steps tweet. I was like, hey, why don't you come
on and talk about that great. That's cool. It opens up
opportunities, too. I think that's the other thing that opens up.
Getting invited to podcasts or getting
invited to speak even at conferences.
Right? Stuff that you shared. Yeah, if anyone's listening and they want to fly me
out somewhere to speak. But this is
what we're talking about, though. It's true. This is the culmination of
it. I have been tweeting about this for a while. You write about
marketing and positioning and other pieces
of that niche of that topic, but this
is how it goes. I write this tweet, I come
on Ramley's podcast. Someone hears this and
like, oh, maybe I would like to work with Matt on my newsletter or
my course. I get a client out of this. Someone else listens to, like,
hey, Matt can come talk about this on my podcast, or. This conference.
But it's all like you're just in a very like I was talking
the same client I was talking to earlier today is like it's like moneyball in
a sense. I'm just trying to get on base.
I'm trying to get on base every day as often as I
can that one of these is going to turn into it's
venture capital for your own ideas. That how many of these
can I put out that I'm going to
make a living on a few ideas that pop, but I
have to put a lot of them out there. That makes
sense. I feel like this is very foundational,
like Marketing 101. How do you keep yourself,
your personal brand top of mind when they're thinking about this case newsletter
and helping creators and then when somebody thinks about that,
it's like, oh Matt, it's up there. If people are thinking
about content or content marketing or strategy, amanda gets
up there. Or if they're thinking about know like Brendan Hufford
is up there. And really that's what this is building.
I hate the word personal brand, but yes, you're building
this notion that you are the guy for X Century
with this. Well, this is where the whole now
it feels like a meme on Twitter. Like the x guy.
Yeah. I love
it when women will put like the ex guy,
the newsletter guy. And it's just so tongue in cheek
and fantastic. But that's where that
came from. And it goes back to being disciplined on your topic
and on your curation of the content that you're putting out.
When someone goes to your profile that's what they should
get from you is a deeper understanding
of this is what I do and this is how I can help you.
Your newsletter is a deeper extension of that.
I still think that I have a long way to go personally
in making myself the clear choice
for newsletters. Now, some of that is just different personalities,
different styles, different focuses. Like Matt McGarry is
great at paid acquisition of ads or paid
ads for newsletters. I'm not good at that.
I have no interest in it because there are better people at it. So I'm
not going to necessarily go down that sub niche. But the
other part of this and this is where I think I know I'm
still learning and developing and what is the unique
voice or style that I can apply to
this topic. And sometimes it's just a framing mechanism. Like Tiago
Forte is my latest
all time of this
example with his Building a Second Brain. And one just
amazing name and title. Like Building a Second
Brain is just so clear and interesting. And I remember listening
to him talk about on a podcast, he's like, yeah, I didn't think it was
a great name at the time, but I just went with it. And you hear
all this stuff about like, well, we got to be really careful about what we're
saying. It's like building a second brain. Sounds nice. He just falls into it
to hear him tell it. Yeah. Now, I'm sure that it's a
subconscious culmination of a lot of things that he had been learning up to that
time. But I digress. We've had enough philosophy and subconscious
talk so far. But finding out
what is your special sauce? What is the unique thing that you put onto
this that are going to make people think it's
about more than just the information? It has to be
more about the information. It has to be about the story
and the style that you put into it. And I think
I'm still learning that and kind of leaning
into what that is, because the people who can do
that best, those are the people like yes, that person,
that thing. That's when you know, that's when you know,
like, Jack Butcher did an amazing job with this with visualized
value. He's like, how can I take this mental model, this concept, or even
this quote, and turn it into something visual?
Well, that was like, he did that. And it's like,
who does visualized artwork,
business concepts or personal development? You're like, oh, there's Jack,
of course. And he
was really intentional about that. So I do think there's a lot of value,
no pun intended, in spending time thinking about
those things. But the balance that I would give to
it goes back to what we talked about at the beginning of this, is you
can spin your wheels thinking about what the specificities
of your offer are for so long that you
don't get started. But it is still
really important to think about those things over time so
that you can endure, you can last and grow
without feeling like you're just on this, like, well, I'm going to get stuff done,
hamster wheel. Because that's one of the things that I've
struggled with. Well, I'm the person that you asked me,
I'm going to skip ahead a little bit. What's my
power up or what's my marketing superpower?
It's the showing up. It's doing the
work. It's the consistency. Those are the things that I
will do. I will endure. I will outlast.
Right now, this is like the Tweak of is like,
if I was better at positioning. This is Lily's story I'm telling myself right
now. If I'm better at positioning, if I was better at sales, if I was
a little braver in this particular element of the business,
could I level up much faster
than thinking it's going to be?
I'm just going to show up long enough and I'm going to win? I still
think that's true, but could I go a little faster if
I change these things? And I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure what all those
things are, but I'm much more aware of
that as a reality and a possibility than I ever have been.
I feel like there's so much to unpack. There one
thing that really stuck with me, though, is that I think often
people have fear of just creating that content and distributing and
getting referrals. And sometimes people over,
and this is my problem. Sometimes I overthink things,
and sometimes the journey just get started. Just take that first step.
Just get that first step and continue to listen.
Trust your intuition. Have people around you that can give you
guidance and support you'll
figure out that path is exactly what this is where we're
going into philosophy again. There you go.
Yeah, I love that. So that's the first part.
I want to get to the second part, the next three. And it's
really about I see it more around Monetization.
And the next three steps is around membership and super
exclusion. Impulse Products is $100 or less and commitment
products. I'm curious that might be easier
focused than advising and coaching. Why those three? I'm curious
about the next abaco you. Built so you can come
at this from either direction. And I have
a tweet up somewhere so easy to find things
on Twitter. I have a tweet up somewhere that is an
interpretation of my friend Brian Harris, who he's rarely on Twitter anymore.
He just turned 40 a couple of weeks ago. Happy birthday, Brian.
And he had a Hershey Kiss
model of Monetization that I thought was really interesting.
And it's basically the inverted process that I
mentioned in those seven steps. The seven steps that I'm talking
about right there cover a much more overtime
scalable and more passive income related.
I'm developing products to talk about jack again or anything
that has to do with zero marginal costs, build once, sell twice
type of thinking. It's like, okay, if I can keep doing this. But if you
flip it on its head and this is what I know you're asking about and
I think is really valuable, especially for people who are looking to make more money
sooner, who doesn't want to do that? This is the part that you clip out
and you say, like Matt says, you can make more money sooner with these
three simple steps. So number one, I don't know if there's three,
but if you start with advising and consulting
one, it's much easier to find one person to pay you $5,000 than
to find 100 people to pay you $50. It's just one
person now. You have to be able to sell. And that is a whole other
thing to just say to someone on a call, will you
give me $5,000? Not in those many words. That's not a good
closing line, but that's essentially what you're saying.
But it still is easier to find one person to do that, to find 100
people to give you $50. If you do that and you
can find a couple of people like that to be your clients, then it
starts this waterfall effect. You can also think of it like hershey Kiss
or a triangle.
And so we're starting at the top. And then as you move down,
you think like, okay, as I've been coaching, advising,
consulting these people on this thing that I'm good at, let's say newsletter
growth or development or whatever, then I'm consciously thinking
the whole time, what are as I've worked with two
or three people, what are the common things that between
my experience and the direct coaching that I'm giving to these
people? What keeps coming up?
What are the seven steps? What are the ten steps?
What are the things that I'm talking to everyone about?
Okay, now I can do group coaching because
I know everyone needs to do these ten things.
Great. So now I've gone from $5,000
client but only a couple to
$3,000 group coaching. But I can work with five or six
people at a time. You're basically like a premium cohort model.
Speaking of which, after that, then you say, like, okay, much more structured,
and I'm going to charge 1500 for this cohort
and try and get 20 or 30 people in. Great. My friend
Justin Moore did this with Creator Wizard. I saw that.
Yeah. I think his first cohort of Creator Wizard
had like eight people. And this was three years ago. And his last
one, which I think was like his eight cohort could be more or less than
that. He capped it at 100 spots.
He's like, no more. No more.
Yeah. And then to bring up Tiago again, like, Tiago now is 1000 people.
Sign up for building a second Brain.
So now we're down to cohort, let's say 1500.
You don't have to cut the price in half every time.
You don't have to cut the price in half every time. But it's like a
good rule of thumb, let's just say. And then you go,
now we're going down. So everything that you've learned in the prior
level gets applied to the lower level. So what
did I learn in one on one coaching that I can give to group coaching?
What am I learning in group coaching that I can apply to a cohort?
Now, what did I do in a cohort that I can now turn
that same set of lessons into a self guided course
that people can buy anytime? And in that self guided course,
what are like, the ten, absolute,
five absolute essential things that everyone has to do? Well, that's your
starter package, and it's $47. So now I have a $47
impulse product. I have a, say,
$247 expansion of the Impulse product
into the self guided course. I have $1,000 commitment product,
which is you're going to have to show up to a cohort for four to
six weeks and do this together. And even now, I can
start going back up as well as like, okay, now if I want
this is where I initially had it as advising,
consulting, private as needed. Because if
you start from the bottom. Then you go there. Start from the bottom. Now we're
here. Then you would look at and say,
hopefully I'm making enough money on the
very constrained, very time specific cohorts,
plus the evergreen sales of the self
guided course, plus the like, I just signed up for your
newsletter, and this looks super interesting, and I like what Matt has
to talk about. And so many people have told me so many good things about
Matt. Yay. We love Matt. Let's give him $27 when I sign up to
his email list. That sounds great. Cool. So hopefully all of that is
all going so well that I'm keeping coaching
private. At that point. If we're starting in the other direction,
it's application, I have to talk to you and be like, I would like to
talk to this person. I would like to help them, instead of it
being like, who wants to give me money? And hopefully this will work out,
because we've all been there. You're probably at some point, because that's where
I was, let's say three years ago,
I was like, I would start with coaching, and I would
do coaching. I would not charge $5,000. I was too afraid to charge,
like, that amount of money.
Another little quick aside about that. In terms of pricing, it's really hard
for you to charge, at least for most people. It was for me. It's hard
to charge an amount of money for a thing that you offer that you're not
willing to pay for something else. And that
doesn't mean you need to go out and pay someone $50,000 to
be your coach, even though if you are that person, please contact me.
You can give me the $50,000 to feel like you're able to charge that we
can all just have this big coaching network
effect. Yeah, I like that, but it is
hard. When I started,
some of that was just like, I hadn't been in consulting before. It's not like
I worked at Bain or, like, what, 500K? Sure. I don't
even know if that's right. But I remember I did do,
like, a consulting hour with someone who was like, yeah, we're from Bain.
I was like, Damn it, I charged this person, like, $500. I should have
done way more than that. Definitely the budget.
But it's hard if
you don't have experience in that, if you aren't
able to say, like, I would pay $5,000 for a coach.
It's hard when you're pitching someone on coaching to be like, oh, yeah, you should
pay me $5,000. There's a dissonance here we are in philosophy again.
There's a dissonance between what you're willing to do and what you're asking someone else
to. For most people that you can't, it's too hard to do that in
the moment. So you're like, I don't know,
$500. Mr. Person from Bain who went to Yale,
and he's like, what? I spend that on Kale
watches, probably. Kale, yeah, I spend
that on coffee every week.
The other thing, that the advantage of starting
from the bottom, going that shout out to Drake. He's from Toronto.
That's where I'm based. See, I'm very hip.
Yeah, the 23 year old that I work with, hey, Tim.
Whenever I make a hip hop reference, he just stares at me.
I was like, I did a Jay Z line a couple of weeks
ago, and he's like I was like, well, this is when I was a youth
myself. This was a really back in a really hot song, brother.
Sorry. That makes sense. The other
advantage of that, especially if people are still working full time, is that hopefully
those things, the evergreen stuff
and maybe the course is that it's not taking up. Like, you're not trading
time for money, essentially. You're not eating
up your balance of life that you mentioned earlier,
and you can test out the waters and figure out what works before
going much larger pricing.
What I'm doing with clients now, this is just like an up to date version
of this is a
version of a presell, very low lift cohort
as validation of a product. So we are kind of like mixing
those two worlds together. It's not a full on cohort. It's also, like, not doing
an entire it's also not doing an entire consulting
offer. It's saying, I have this idea.
I'm going to presell it for, let's say 100, $200,
depending on what you eventually want to raise the price to.
And then doing not a course, just a series of
live presentations. And that's it. The only thing you have to put
together is a series is basically one really long PowerPoint.
And that's what you present over the course of, let's say,
like, three meetings over six weeks. Not six
weeks, like six total meetings. Nathan Barry's doing this right now. I got an
email from Nathan this morning, said, like, I'm doing a creator the pilot project.
He's like, I'm doing this creator flywheel thing is two weeks. And maybe
it's three weeks. I'm going to show up three times, and some of them
are going to be hot seats, which are wonderful, but also you don't have to
get ready for anything when you're leading a hot seat.
Just, like, respond to people talking. It's great, and it's
your experience that they're paying for. And so almost
everyone that when we work with clients that don't have
courses yet for us to promote on their behalf because
they're living life and running other parts of the business, this is always what
we do. Like, okay, this is going to be a
two, maybe three week presentation, only cohort,
and you're going to validate it, make $5,000,
and then we decide what to do from there. You could just do that whole
same thing again next month. But that's like the updated
version of this is I do think you should be live,
and I do think you should obviously charge money for it.
It should be a compressed window, because the other thing that you'll get here
besides money and validation is you'll have actual customers,
you'll have testimonials, and you'll have feedback. You'll be able to have those moments.
And this is the other nice thing about being Live. If you can handle it,
some people can't handle it, and that's okay. But if you can do that,
and if you're thinking you can't, you probably can just you got
to do it. But you'll be able
to present something. This was always huge for me. You'll be
able to present something and see how people react to
it,
and you have to be an engaging presenter. That's a whole other thing.
But when you see how people react to it, you're like, oh,
I thought this thing was really important. That doesn't mean it's not important,
but it either means, like, you have to reposition it, or maybe it
isn't as important as you thought. And then you'll see other things that you just
kind of say, and people are like, OOH, tell me more about that. You're like,
oh, I didn't even think that mattered, but it's really interesting. And then
you're obviously going to say stuff like, this is really going to slap.
I shouldn't have said that. Now I'm trying too hard. This is going to be
really good, right? This is going to be really good. And you
say and people are like, that's really good. You're like, yeah, that is really good.
I'm really going to emphasize that more. And you can only get that
when you're on Live with people. It's true.
Yeah. You also see the questions around people
might have that they get confused about, that you can craft and hone
even more in future iterations as
well, which is interesting. When you're saying that it's compressed, do you
suggest, I really love this idea, because now that recording
could be your pre recorded course that you can
sell, right? Which you did live, right?
Yeah. So now you got it. You just sell that recordings.
I love this strategy. Exactly.
What do you suggest? Like an hour, those compressed sessions, six of them throughout,
like, a few weeks, like an hour each? Is that what
you leave time for?
A Q and A at the end of each one? Only go over
one key outcome every time. So kind of think about what
are the five, six, seven steps, 1 hour? You can
go twice a week. I wouldn't go more than three times per week.
And if you think you're going to go more than that, then just make it
a Monday through Friday, one week, and say, like, we're showing up
noon, teaching at noon.
We're showing up. And you just do that and
then have a couple of Q A only sessions
where like, okay, we've talked about this whole thing. Like, a friend of mine,
Miles Snyder, he's doing a cooking cohort, right?
Now, or he's getting ready to start it. And what he's doing is he
does three sessions per week. And the first one is,
here's the cooking technique that we're going over.
The second session is like, here's the dish that we're making. And then the
third session is like, hey, it's kind of like cooking together,
but that's just like a Q and A session. Like as you're putting this together,
as you've been trying, let's have A-Q-A
session about it. So he does three per week,
and I think he's going for like a month. So a little bit more intensive,
but he's also validated it at this point.
This is such a good strategy. The other thing that I'm really thinking about is
that once you have those, there's something that a guy named
Russell Brunson, I've read some of his books. And it's like a buyer's buyer Secrets.
Right? Like a buyer clickfunnel trusts. Yeah, right. He said the
buyer is a buyer. And when they buy that 100,
$200 cohort
that could turn into a coaching or advising, especially if they need exactly.
Which is exactly what leads to the last step, essentially. Which how do you find
clients? You find clients who have already bought from you. They've already paid
you money, they already. Trust you, they've already given you a credit card, they've already
opened up their wallet to you,
and now they're more likely to pay you 515, 20 grand
just because they've built that trust up to you, essentially.
Exactly. So that's why we're building initially in
something that's a little bit more controlled and then letting people
experience at a more accessible price point. Not everyone has to do that, but experience
it at a more accessible price point and then you can grow.
Because one of the great things about coaching is how you can just
do it. You're the expert and you can just do it. You should
have a plan. Yes.
But you can only have so many clients at
once unless you turn into a coaching certifier.
But you can only have so many clients at once. You can have as many
course students as that's the
zero marginal cost of content. Yeah, love that.
I just want to recap the seven steps to making seven figures for
the email list. Content is first, distribution, referral,
membership number five is Impulse. Product number six is Commitment Products.
And then Seven is coaching, advising, service.
Essentially, that's the seven steps you put together. So let me
change that a little bit as I've updated. Okay.
Really? Distribution and referrals are the same thing.
Referrals is just a type of distribution.
You're distributing it through referrals.
And the reason I bring this up is that the thing that I would add
in I'm just going to say this, I'm not going to go down the rabbit
hole. So we've gone down lots of rabbit holes is
sponsorships. Sponsorships should have been, of course, like you're getting
sponsors. You should get sponsors. So blah, blah, blah. Sign up for the ConvertKit
Sponsor Network or my friend John at Backyard Ventures. Shout out to John.
But get some sponsors if that's
something that you're interested in. The only thing we didn't talk about, I'll just touch
on it briefly, is the membership subscription model. Right?
And Jay Klaus is the best person that I know,
period about,
like, especially for a newsletter. There are plenty
of paid newsletters on substack. You can go look at those business models. They can
be really profitable. But the thing
that I've been thinking about and have been experienced
is I've done some work with Ryan Holiday in the past and
have gotten to see how his business is set up. And one of the things
that I think is really so this is like Daily Stoic. Daily dad obstacle
is the way stoicism all the things he
has a membership that I don't think most people know about.
Yeah, exactly. I didn't know.
It's a natural extension of the newsletter itself.
And it
is kind of in the substacky way of like, you're going to get extra stuff
and less of other things. I e ads and sponsors.
But what he does with his so he has the daily emails.
If you sign up to Daily Stoic Life, I think it's $200
a year, basically $18 a month.
And you don't have to see any ads on any of
the emails. Not that he has a lot, but a
few each week, which is not every email. You also get
weekend emails. So it truly is daily.
You get access to a forum.
And the other catch on this is that Ryan
does have a handful of courses that he launches every
eight to twelve weeks. New Year, New You
is the most popular one, the beginning of the year.
But if you're a member of and each of these courses
are anywhere from $100 to $200 the
whole year membership, which you already get extra stuff, you get extra
emails, you don't have to see any ads, and you get access to every course.
So each course is 100 $200. If you sign
up to the membership, you get all of those included. So it's
a very low lift membership for him.
And this is all because it all is inclusive of everything
that he's doing. You don't have to see ads.
I don't have any great conversion numbers on that.
But there are the more what we think of as memberships
often or subscriptions, the way that I kind of bucket them is like what Jay
is doing with a very active community, with creator
science. He's great. And then there's more of the substac
model, which is like, hey, you're going to get extra stuff.
And it's like five to $8 a month. That's the substack model,
more of a subscription than a membership. And then what Ryan does
is it is kind of a hybrid of
both because as far as I know, he's not
overly involved in the community of it,
but it's more about access to the courses
and a lack of ads and additional content.
So that's another piece of it as well. I do think that's
a very viable model, especially if you
have a larger list as a way to even
if people don't have C ads, a lot of people don't like C ads,
and that's a way to do it. And if you're offering courses on
top of that, then it's a pretty straightforward sale
in terms of a value proposition to say
if you bought all these courses, it would be $800 or it's a $200
membership and you get extra emails and you don't have to see any ads.
So the membership subscription model is definitely another thing
to consider from a monetization strategy,
because if you convert 2.5%
of your audience at $200 a year these are not Ryan's
numbers, to be clear, but if you convert
2.5% of your audience, if you have 100,000
people on your newsletter, you convert 2.5% of that audience,
which is not super duper high. It's not super low either.
It's a solid number at $200 a year.
That's a $500,000 membership. That's just memberships. And then
if you are getting $2,500 per
send for a sponsorship, which is again
not crazy for 100,000 people, now you're doing 120K
on sponsorships. So we're getting to like 650K,
not counting courses, not counting coaching, not counting
consulting. You're well on your way to seven
figures just through sponsorships and memberships without having any other products available.
And you will naturally have other products available. Yeah, but you
have to send the newsletter. Yeah, that's true. You got to send the newsletter.
It's important. Shout out to Jay Klaus. I'm part of his creator science community.
Yeah, of course, Jay's. Awesome.
Thank you for that sharing for that seven steps, seven figures. I hope that helps
marketers if they're thinking about building their own side hustle and
making really seven figures out of it, making people full time.
I want to shift gears and you've already said your
career power up. I just want to reread exactly what it is. Again,
you're talking about like, you will survive. There's a song
stuck in my head. I'm a survivor, right? Like Destiny
Child or even the other one, much older one.
Can you just reiterate again what that career path?
You worked at many different places at AppSumo ConvertKit,
at Kodia, and you've been doing your own stuff now since
2020. Yeah, my power up
has been that I'm very dedicated, I'm very consistent,
I will stick with it and I will show
up. I will do the work. The power
up that I'm developing on top of that is really starting
to better understand where more
of my true gifts and opportunities lie that are past.
Just like I'm going to keep
showing up and sticking to it. That matters. But if you. Can add a
key differentiating factor or source of courage
to amplify that. That's where I'm at right now. Such a good conversation.
I know we got deep into philosophy, but this episode
also has a bunch of practical tips. You can find out more about Matt
by following him on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. You can also go
to Goodpeopledigital.com. You can find all of that link in
the show. Notes and Description thank you to Matt for being on the show.
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