The Grind Mastermind Episode 3: Email giveaways, automating funnels and cold outreach

Transcript

[00:00:00] Josh: Anyways, we’re live. Episode three, the Grind Mastermind.
[00:00:04] Chris: Nice, let’s grind it out, man.
[00:00:06] Josh: How you been the last two weeks?
[00:00:07] Chris: I’ve been pretty good, super busy.
Lots of stuff that I’ve been working. Lots of new stuff. Some experiments should be lost to talk about. No learning. No learning.
[00:00:22] Josh: Just a quick admin item. We’re recording episode three. Episode two will go live on Sunday. So I had a delay last weekend. Episode one is already live. Episode two will go live this Sunday, and then next Sunday I’ll get episode three up.
Now if you’re watching live right, You won’t have that problem. But anyways the video and the podcast for episode two will be live this upcoming Sunday. And then I’ll quickly catch up with episode three. Cool, man. Well cool. You wanna just jump into to your 10 minute for the, for those of you listening or watching for the first time every two weeks.
Chris and I go live. We each take about 10 minutes, give an update on what we’ve been doing, kinda like a build in public type style for the, for the last two weeks. And then we set some goals for the next two weeks, keep each other accountable, and then we talk about, you know, books, resources, strategies we’ve picked up on and, you know, hopefully share with you to give you some help.
Anyways, I’m gonna, I’m gonna stop talking, Chris, how’d the how’d the last two weeks?
[00:01:21] Chris: Pretty good. So what were my objectives? Let’s look into it. So pull it up here. The first one, explore newsletter giveaways and finalize lead management process with ba. All right. So as far as the giveaways I’ve actually said everything in motion.
I pulled my email list a couple of times. I got a couple of votes because I wanted to first understand what they wanted to receive as a gift. What’s most compelling. Right. So
[00:01:56] Josh: gave, was my vote most popular?
[00:01:59] Chris: What, what, what did you vote? Because it wasn’t, it was
[00:02:02] Josh: anonymous. Oh. Oh, right. It was, I voted for books.
I mean, I’m a book nerd. Right. So, okay.
[00:02:07] Chris: Yeah, I think I got, . I think that wasn’t the main thing. The main thing that people wanted was the one-on-one consultation, which is interesting. The one that they perceive as most valuable.
[00:02:22] Josh: That’s a good sign for you. Right. I would imagine. I’ve also,
[00:02:25] Chris: I’ve also got a couple of vote for the books, so not the most, but, so I think my plan was actually to do both.
One book, which I’m gonna give this away, and I can. Alchemy by Rory Sutherland.
[00:02:41] Josh: If they’re watching on YouTube, they can see it. If they’re listening, then they can’t. But yeah, that would be cool to do. Like one session and one book giveaway.
[00:02:51] Chris: Yeah, exactly. So so basically the value, like 1 0 1 call, it’s typically between 300, 400 depending on whether it’s like coaching or consulting, plus the, like, the 11 pounds, $11 of the books of the book.
So, yeah, the book and the consultation is probably gonna be my giveaway. And the goal here is just to have people share the newsletter as much as possible through social media. And I followed your advice. So I set up King Sumo nice. From the guys at up was just $49 one time, the tool. So it’s super simple, super stream.
And works really well and you can have people participate. You can see the stats
[00:03:35] Josh: and And do they allow? I think the reason why I liked it too is that it tracks if somebody shares with their audience and get other people to sign up as well. I think. Yeah. Yeah. It’s all like built in because that’s, I think, the key of the giveaways, right?
Is like you want people to share. That’s how you can get like the exponential. Cool.
[00:03:56] Chris: Exactly. And, and the nice thing also is that it allows you to, other than just allowing people to share on social media and you can select different social media networks, it also allows you to add like extra entries.
And those extra entries are, can be like, visit this link or subscribe to my YouTube channel. So, and you could decide how many points each entry gives. . So that was really good. I added a couple of things. One was the YouTube signup. The other one was follow me on Twitter, and I can’t remember the other one.
So I, I have a couple set up. So the next step is just to launch it. So next week I’ll probably. You’ll write that down? I’ll probably start.
[00:04:44] Josh: So launch newsletter giveaway. Yeah.
[00:04:48] Chris: Cool. Yeah. I’m gonna announce, I’m gonna announce the prizes on Monday with my daily newsletter and them probably Tuesday, Wednesday launch the giveaway.
[00:04:59] Josh: How, how long are you gonna make it?
[00:05:01] Chris: Like a week? I actually have to look into. . Mm. I have to see what works best. I, that’s one thing that I didn’t go into.
[00:05:09] Josh: I, I feel like a week, I, I feel like a week is probably cuz you want to find a good balance between like enough time so people have time to share and not too much time.
So there’s some urgency. I think. Yeah, probably, probably about a week, five days, five, seven days. I don. , I
[00:05:28] Chris: think you probably also might want to cover all days in a week to cover all different patterns of how people are busy and stuff.
[00:05:36] Josh: Yeah, I would probably say either like seven or 10 days.
[00:05:40] Chris: So maybe from Tuesday to Tuesday or Tuesday to.
yeah. Friday, other next week.
[00:05:46] Josh: Yeah. Maybe do some research and Yeah, you can let us know on, on the next episode what you decide. That’s exciting though. I’m, I’m interested to see how it goes. And then I think what I’ll do is once, I mean, I’ll talk about this in my segment, but once I get my website updated and everything, I’ll probably do something similar with a, with some books or something, so,
[00:06:07] Chris: okay, cool.
Nice. And. and I, it’s gonna be good because I ran two more sponsorships in the meantime. So I got another 70, 80 subscribers. Still not entirely sure of the quality because I’m all, I’ve also been getting a couple of unsubscribes in the past emails, so not all of them might be super qualified, but at the same time, I was able to increase the number and now I have a bit, a bit of a larger pool to run the giveaway too.
Right. It went. It was pretty, pretty good.
[00:06:40] Josh: Cool. I would, I would say in that regard, keep an eye on like, open and click rates. If open and click rates are like kind of staying the same, that’s a good sign. If your list is growing and the open and the click rates are staying the same, you’re obviously gonna get on subscribes.
Right? Anytime you get new, new subs, especially in batches, so, yeah. Yeah. Cool. What about the okay, so your foot first item, so for the next two weeks you’ll launch that newsletter giveaway. Now that you’ve kind of planned it out, or most
[00:07:07] Chris: of it I have, I have one question here for you. Mm-hmm. . Which was so I’ve actually announced to the newsletter that the giveaway is gonna be for the newsletter, right.
For newsletter members to kind of keep it private. Do you think I should still also publish it, share it online with people who are not subscribe? Or would it be kind? I think my
[00:07:30] Josh: audience . . Like I don’t even rem I’m on your email list. I don’t even remember you saying it’s only for your email subscribers.
Okay. I think you should definitely share. Well, cuz number one part of the giveaway is to have them share it publicly. So it’s gonna happen anyways. Oh yeah. And that’s why you’re doing it right? Is to get new subscribers. So I would, I would definitely publish it. I think that the, the, the, the big potential reach you’ll get is from current subs.
And then hopefully people that they share it to also share. Right. That’s why the giveaway. Mm-hmm. idea is such a good one, in my opinion, when you set it up like you have because of the potential exponential growth from the shares, but yeah. Yeah. I, I would share it publicly if I were you. . Yeah. Yeah. I don’t care.
Right? So think from my perspective, right? I’m a subscriber, I don’t care. You know what I mean? Yeah. . I just want a chance at like getting a book. I don’t even want the consultation. No offense, you know, , I could talk to you any day of the week. I want a book or two. So anyways, that’s my thoughts. Does that make sense?
I think it’s one of those cases where like, You’re, you kind of overthink it cuz it’s your business. But when you put yourself in the shoes of the subscriber, like, I don’t even remember that you said that. You know what I mean? . Yeah. So, yeah. And it’s something we’re all guilty of. Okay. What about finalized lead management process with your va?
[00:08:50] Chris: Yeah, so for the va we basically, I created an email for them, support at conversion alchemy. So now she’s got an account. We set up all our tools together, shared, and we, I, I, I actually had to simplify. I don’t want, I initially, I thought like of having on the website two different ways for people to get in touch.
One with the currently link to book the call and the other one to email my assistant, but I decided to cut that down that branch. So now it’s still just with a calendar. , but at the same time, she’s able to like keep track of all the leads. So whenever someone books a call, I get the card of the customer creating my crm automatically.
She’s able to follow up so I don’t have to remind, remember when I need to follow up on people. Whenever she has a doubt of whether she needs to follow up, she knows that she sends, she has to send me an. So we’re on the same page. So for now, it’s pretty streamlined and simplified. And also I have her run kind of like a pre-call research before the first call that I have with clients, so that I kind of know the background.
She, she goes on the LinkedIn page, she researches the company a bit revenue. . So yeah, it’s pretty fleshed out and it’s kind of like a, considering like a beta version, it’s not super comprehensive, but for now it works pretty well.
[00:10:21] Josh: Cool. I mean, it sounds like all you need for now and you can adjust yeah.
From there. You, we had a note here as well to discuss the automatic funnel.
[00:10:33] Chris: That’s something that I’ve been working on. It’s quite it’s quite comprehensive. Let’s just say for now that probably in two weeks I will have a much, much clearer idea and also something that I can share. But it’s basically so one of my goals for the year was to start selling maybe a course, some information product that can help me scale the business and could be on the side of helping business owners or freelancers.
So I that’s something that I’ve been working. But this whole automatic client model, you can look it up. There’s a great Facebook group that’s called Nothing Held Back by this guy is a direct response marketer, copywriter called Alan. So Tanish, and you can add it in the, in the, in the notes after.
But basically the whole model is based on a super small initial offer that super. Packed with a lot of value. Usually it’s an ebook that costs like $5 and people buy that ebook and then you lead them to a funnel with some app sells until you sell them a high ticket program. Right? And then the nice thing is that it basically works.
It’s optimized on economics, they call it. basically, after you optimize the whole funnel, you are sure of going, of breaking even on your ad spend on the same day. So with with how the funnel is structured and how you map the products, you basically don’t spend anything on ads because you break even, right?
And, and, and you are able to spend more and more than the competition. And that basically leads you to kind of validates this automatic client. , right. I’m basically working now. I’m at the stage that I’m outlining the sales page that I’m going to test. So even before building the product, I’m going and doing this dry testing, which basically is building up the, landing, the sales page, and having people sign up for a wait list for this product, basically just to see and then running ads to this page and to see if the, if the product is interesting for people, if I would have.
potential buyers and then build, build the actual ebook. Right? The ebook,
[00:12:48] Josh: right. Yeah. So sounds like the standard kind of like, I think they use Tripwire as like one of the terms they use like as well, like moving the customer along a journey, right? Yeah. Low price point, mid, mid, mid-price. Like they kind of like evolve to your more expensive products as.
Like you and trust you more. So do you want me to add that as
[00:13:11] Chris: a is? Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The, the main difference is a lot of people have been doing webinars, webinar funnels now. So this is basically the main difference. This is like not a webinar. Webinar doesn’t try to sell you to, to give you a free thing and then sell like a 500 course.
Mm-hmm. basically sells you a super low offer and then gradually, right. Upsells you. Yeah, you can set for next two weeks. I’m probably gonna have a draft of the sales page,
[00:13:40] Josh: draft of sales page for funnel. All right, so are those kind of the two key goals? Launch newsletter, giveaway, draft sales page for funnel?
[00:13:53] Chris: Yeah. I’m probably also going to start exploring. Not giveaways, the newsletter. Cross promotions. Hmm.
[00:14:04] Josh: I’ll write it down. You want to look into
[00:14:05] Chris: it? Start exploring. If you want to look into it, there’s a nice tool. Then just find out
[00:14:13] Josh: what’s the tool. We’ll, we’ll add it to the notes. It’s
[00:14:16] Chris: called you gotta
[00:14:17] Josh: remember that Facebook group and it’s called
[00:14:22] Chris: Letter Growth dot.
[00:14:24] Josh: Letter growth book. I also listened to episode one and I realized that my keyboard is so goddamn loud, so I apologize to everybody who can hear my, it’s either my keyboard’s too loud, which I know it is, and, or my mic is too sensitive, so I gotta play with something there. Anyways, okay, and that’s something I’m probably like two weeks behind.
in terms of some of the things you’re doing. Like I want to, I want to test a giveaway as well. Just my site’s not ready yet. I’ll talk about that in a minute. And then cross promos for the newsletter. I think it’s a great opportunity too. I just, again, I wanna update my website and my, make sure my landing page is good.
We could do a cross promo too, as well, if it makes sense. Yeah. But gimme another week or two. Okay. Every, that, that it on your end? Yep. cool on my end. So from last two weeks, reach out to a minimum of 20 leads per day. I hit this, so I, I, I, I’ll pat myself on the back a little bit cuz I think I did a pretty good job.
Some days even more. It kind of depends. So from what I’ve been experiencing is outreach, especially cold outreach can be much easier or harder depending on like the type of outreach, right? Like some. , if I’m reaching out to a very specific target of people and I have a good list prepped ahead of time, it, it could be easy to do like 40, 50, 60 in a day, right?
Whereas if maybe like I’m testing with like a new user type or segment, you know, getting to the 20 could be tough. But definitely kept up pretty well in the outreach and it’s led to like a good amount of calls. So I, I think we have a pretty good. Of you know, calls and demos that have been set up.
So it’s been pretty good on in that regard. This is related to Vista, right?
[00:16:07] Chris: Do you have any idea of the conversion rate from from outreach email to
[00:16:13] Josh: call? Not really. Bec part of it is part of it’s hard to, it’s a pain to track and part of it is like cross platforms. So I’m, I spent like probably a week more focused on LinkedIn.
and then spend a week on email and then some both. Like for example, I might find a company we really want to hit and they have LinkedIn and email. So I’m doing both at the same time. Or like sometimes I’ll find a company with two or three people and I’ll send them all. So maybe I should do a better job of trying to track it, the other thing, and what we’re doing for the next two weeks.
And so I guess I’ll, I’ll segue this into my, you know, one of my goals. We’re putting in place a cold email and potentially cold LinkedIn outreach campaign. And so since that’s automated we’ll have much better data on the conversion metrics. So I’ll put that down as number one as launch cold email campaign.
And then I’ll put in brackets LinkedIn because I’m not sure if we’re gonna do it yet. But that will be very helpful for me to. Part automated.
[00:17:18] Chris: How are you planning on automating that?
[00:17:21] Josh: So for email, it’s pretty straightforward, right? There’s a whole bunch of programs you can find. I don’t, we don’t
[00:17:27] Chris: know which, would you have like a sequence
[00:17:29] Josh: or something?
Yeah, we’re putting together like a four to six email sequence cold email sequence. And there’s a ton of tools. There’s a ton of options online for that. And it’s a, it’s a great way to do cold email outreach, especially if you have a defined target market, right? And you can get those emails and you know, it’s gonna be a group of people that probably fit into your, into your target market.
And pretty easy, right? Set and forget and or set. And then on a weekly basis, monitor, like, what we’ll probably do is, you know, test multiple headlines. Test two or three versions of the entire campaign, like the four to six email. We’re gonna make a duplicate. So there’s actually like two full sequences that were AB testing to see which one converts at a higher rate.
So it’s pretty powerful, right? I think the key for email outreach is, number one, can you get a pretty good list of emails? And then secondly, how good is the content, right? And then there’s a lot of software. Mm-hmm. . So there, there’s also software out there that will help you do the same on linked.
Sergey actually pointed me to this tool called Linked Helper which I can add to the show notes as well. I’m pretty sure it’s against t os so be careful FairWarning to everybody who’s watching or listening . But there are tools out there that will let you do cold outreach on LinkedIn in a flow as.
Right. So you can send like invite with custom notes and then follow up messages, right? Like it’s an email sequence, but on LinkedIn, again, which can be very powerful if you have a very defined audience and you can come up with a good list of target people, right? So like in your case you could go on LinkedIn and you know, especially if you have LinkedIn Premium or whatever the heck it’s called sales Nav, you could get a list of like, I don’t know, 1,005 thousand SaaS founder.
and send a custom campaign. Hey, John Smith. I see, you know, you’re working in this industry, was wondering if you needed it, you know, whatever your pitch is. So we’re, we’re definitely gonna get the email going. I don’t know about LinkedIn. I’ll let you guys know in in the next episode. But it’s pretty powerful stuff if you can get it up and running.
Nice. So that’ll be
[00:19:39] Chris: the tool. Is the tool a paid tool, a LinkedIn helper?
[00:19:43] Josh: Yes, but it’s, it’s. It’s pretty cheap. I think it’s something like 15, 20 bucks a month. So it’s like very reasonable. Right? You get one client and it pays for it for a couple years. Yeah. Well, depending on the value of your client, obviously, but yeah, it’s, it’s really good.
I’ve used it in the past. Again, you, you want to be careful and it has, it has built in settings, right? And the reason why it’s cool. , it kind of like randomizes actions to basically pretend like it’s a human, right? Mm-hmm. . So you, you, you, you make the settings like, you know, here’s how, here’s the max number of people I want to reach out to in an hour.
And it kind of goes through, it’s basically a robot running your LinkedIn and it’s random, right? So it’ll take, it’ll take random amounts of time to click on different actions. Anyways, check it out if you’re interested. Again, be careful because. , you know, it’s probably against t os so you didn’t hear it from me.
But anyways. Mm-hmm. I’m, I’m gonna keep the 20 outreach per day. Nice. But I’m probably gonna shift more to cold calling, put in brackets, cold calling. And so the reason for this is we’re gonna be automating the email and potentially LinkedIn outreach. So I’m gonna focus on cold calling. Which cannot be the fun, the most fun thing in the world.
But once I find, once you get into a rhythm, I don’t know how many of you folks out there have done cold calling, but I find the hardest part is just making the first call. If you have a good list of numbers, once you make that first one or two calls, get those first one or two rejections out of the way then you can get into a good rhythm.
But
[00:21:16] Chris: yes. What’s the, what’s the average reaction that you get from. , and what’s the worst direction that you ever got? .
[00:21:23] Josh: I mean, that’s the thing, right? You get afraid, but the worst thing is like, I’m not interested. Don’t call me again. And you hang up and you’re like, okay, that sucked, but whatever. I’m still breathing, right?
So it again, I think it all, I think most cold outreach comes down to how good is your list and how good is your messaging? It’s just those two things, right? If you have a list of your target, and then you make it very clear right away what problem you’re solving, what pain point you’re solving, what value you’re adding.
Then they’re just gonna say yes or no, and then you can move on with your day. Hopefully you’ll mm-hmm. people say, yes, you’re gonna get a lot of nos. Right. It’s, it’s a great humbling experience, right. Especially if you’re like young and cocky or whatever. It’s a very, very humbling experience to do cold calls.
So,
[00:22:09] Chris: I’m, I’m curious when you, when you start speaking to these people, I’m thinking from the perspective of copywriting, right? When you, when you have to think about like how, what do they know already of what you are about to, to, to share their awareness sophistication stage. So where are these people that you call?
Like, do they. Of solutions like the one you are offering? Not
[00:22:36] Josh: really. Some education, not really in the sense that there’s not much competition for what we’re doing from a technology. So I’m selling technology, right? So it’s a little bit different from a service based offering, but in our case, it’s like my.
Question is usually qualifying, right? Hey, do you do this type of immigration? Mm-hmm. . If they don’t, they can’t, they’re not gonna use our tool anyways. I just say, okay, you know, thanks, have a nice day. If they do, then it’s about pitching whether they, you know, are interested in the value that we provide, right?
So, number one, to qualify. And then number two, hey, are, are, you know, are you looking for this? So in your case, it could be , Hey, are you a SaaS founder? What? Whatever, you know, your, your key target is. And if they say yes, you’d be like, Hey, you know, are you interested? And then, and then it’s your main value prop, right?
You gotta get right to it. It’s like, Hey, are you know, are you interested in increasing conversions on your website? Have you know, have you recently updated the text or copy on your website? Maybe assume that they don’t even know what copy means, right? Mm-hmm. Hey, have you updated the text or copy on your website recently?
Well, you know, actually, right? You know, we’ve. and then you, and then you just go off of what they say, right? Well, you know, actually our rates have been, our conversion rates have been down. I’d be interested to learn more. Right. And then the key of the cold call is typically, if you can have a full conversation right there, great.
If not, try to schedule a longer conversation, right? Mm-hmm. , especially if they’re busy, they seem like they’re in a rush. Okay, cool. Can we book a 20 minute call on you know, Thursday at 4:00 PM or whatever, and you try to get their email and or if you, you know, you have their phone number so you can just.
what, what I like to do is do a demo cuz we’re trying to show them how our technology works. So I try to get the email and, and do like a video call like we’re doing on Zoom right now for those that are watching this on YouTube. But you know, in your case it could be an intro call. Hey, great. Seems like you’re in a rush.
Do you have 15 minutes to talk on Wednesday at 3:00 PM And I can tell you a little bit more about how we can help increase your conversion rates. You know what I mean? So keep it like super casual, no pressure, not sales. and see what happens. Yeah. Nice.
[00:24:42] Chris: So yeah, it’s also, it’s also probably pretty helpful for you because asking the qualifying question helps you collect some data and input so you can kind of yeah, start thinking about are these leads actual good leads, are they a fit or should I change the target?
So yeah, it’s a pretty good approach. Mm-hmm. ,
[00:25:01] Josh: I’ll let you know how it goes. I mean, I’ve done, I’ve done cold calling in the past. And yeah, it, it’s pretty much like, can you get to your main value prop asap? And then do they want it, right? Mm-hmm. . And that’s it. Anyways, I’ll report back in two weeks. And then lastly I need to finish the SG website.
So my first two goals are Vista related, and then my last goal on the solo printer grind side. About half of the, so I ended up hiring someone to, to update the SG website, thanks to your recommendation. And you want to ask, yeah, so she’s done like two pages. There’s one or two more. The first one looks really, I really like the homepage, so hopefully by the time everybody hears this, my website, the solo printer grind.com website will be updated and it’ll look a lot nicer, lot simpler, cleaner.
And I wanna update the join page, and then when that’s updated, I’ll start doing some more growth stuff like you’re doing with your email list. And, and I’ll start doing it with mine. So I want to finish the website and, and kind of in brackets I’ll put like, you know, Including join page and key messaging.
So like the other thing I want to do is update the join page text, go through my different social media profiles, update those a little bit so they all kind of like have similar language and everything’s flowing well. So like, for example, when we post an episode like this or I post something on TikTok and people are like, oh yeah, I wanna learn.
you know, the, the text in my profile matches and then they click it and it flows well to the text on my website. So anyways, those are the key goals for,
[00:26:34] Chris: uh, Consistency is super important for
[00:26:36] Josh: branding. Oh yeah, absolutely. So that’s it. And then from there I’ll shift to more, you know, I, I, I want to keep growing the the newsletter because the numbers look good for me.
I don’t know about you. I’d be interested to hear, maybe this is something we’ll, we can quickly talk about as. , we’re almost at the 30 minute mark. But anyways my open rates have been very good. Right. So Chris and I each have a daily email newsletter. I’m Monday to Friday. You’re Monday to Friday too, right?
Do you do, yeah. So Monday to Friday and I’ve been getting like 35, 40% open rates. So what I’m writing in the emails seems to be interesting to people. So that’s a good thing I. haven’t done a great job of growing the list bigger. So I want to get that join page updated and improved, and then focus more on growing the list.
What about you? What, what, what have, what have you been seeing, especially as you’ve been growing yours a little bit more in the last couple weeks?
[00:27:35] Chris: I really like that. Now I’m seeing more engagement. So Nice. And it also, it’s also a great way to come up with ideas, right? Because when you start getting feed.
your mind starts working on like new solutions, new things to, to do with your list. So it’s been a great source of like creativity as well for me. So lots of things to plan, like the giveaway and stuff. Mm-hmm. . And yeah, there’s a, I still see it’s not automatic in the sense that it’s not that you run a sponsorship and then boom, your lists start spreading automat.
It’s probably because I’m still at the early stage, so people are not super incentivized to spread the word on their own. Right. So you still see that there’s like input corresponds to output. Now it’s not. input corresponds to 10 x the output, it’s still a linear mm-hmm. correlation. But I mean, it’s like everything, like at the early stage you have to put in the work, right?
So to make it grow and get it to the point where you want it. So for now, it’s a lot of exploration. I didn’t know anything about giveaways or cross promotion or sponsorships before, like even before, like even two weeks ago. , yeah. Of learning, which I think is the main, most important thing that you can do at the early stage learning and experience.
And the grind.
[00:29:05] Josh: It’s the grind. Right. It’s why we, it’s why we, it’s why we use the name. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. It’ll, it’ll be exciting to see. I also find as you, as you start to get some replies, it makes for. Content. Right? Like I, I love the the Ben Settle style where like, he’ll just write an email and he’ll just paste an email that he got from a subscriber and then answer it, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it’s just, it’s so easy. I’ve been doing that on TikTok. That’s pretty much my whole TikTok account. Yeah. Is just, I quote a comment from a recent video and answer it. It’s the easiest way because it, you know, the user generated content is so good cuz you know, at least one of your followers wants that question.
And if one of them does, probably more than one does. Right.
[00:29:51] Chris: So, yeah. Yeah. Cool. I’ve actually, speaking of ideas and daily email, I’ve actually been asking my my list, whether they want the, whether they would like an extra email a week on Sundays, like a digest basically with all the links to the daily email.
and I got a couple of responses, so I think I’m going to do it, which is just going to be basically assigning to my assistant to collect all the links to my emails and I’ll probably add to it. I’ll have her prepare the email with links, and then I’ll probably just add to it a couple of lessons from my Sunday weekly review that I always do in any case.
So just gonna be a simple value add and also an extra attach with these people that I can. Like every week. So yeah,
[00:30:42] Josh: it doesn’t pretty much what, what I would suggest there is, and this is interesting because this is something someone suggested me last week, is actually have that as a separate list because you might also have maybe the people who are, you have a monthly one too, right?
No, no. I, I canceled the monthly. Oh, you canceled. So you should, you should have this as a separate list, which like for example, I just checked your email in the morning. I don’t need a digest on Sunday. Mm-hmm. . So I wouldn’t opt in if I had the option and I would probably just delete it if, if I got it on Sunday.
But you can make a separate list, and this could be people who are already on your list that want the digest or people who are interested in your digest, who don’t want your daily email. That’s how I would do it, if that’s what I might do. Something similar where once every two weeks or once a.
because I, especially as I start running more like in-person networking events and stuff, some people just want to know about that, but they don’t want my daily email. So I would do it as a separate list if it makes sense for you, which sounds like it probably would.
[00:31:46] Chris: I think what, what I’m, what I’m going to do is I’m going to send that first email to everybody, but in the first email, allowing them to unsubscribe from that specific Sunday list.
Mm-hmm. . Yeah, I maximize opportunities, but still filter
[00:32:03] Josh: people and then you can build that onto your website or even your flow of onboarding where it’s like, hey, if, if you don’t want my daily emails, but you want my digest, just sign up to this.
[00:32:15] Chris: I’ll add it to my sequence. Welcome sequence. Cool. I’m taking note that,
[00:32:20] Josh: Want to quickly end with what we’re reading.
Yeah, sure.
I’ll go first while you’re typing. So I finished, yeah, I think in the last episode I talked about the Ray Crock book, grinding It Out. I think now it’s back on, back on my bookshelf behind me for those watching on YouTube. Great book. Have you, have you read it, grinding It Out by Ray Crock? No,
[00:32:44] Chris: I actually got it, but
[00:32:45] Josh: Oh, nice.
It’s a, it’s a, it’s basically a memoir. He wrote it in like 78 or 79, like it’s an old. Oh wow. But it’s great. I think you’ll like it. It lives up to the name. Grinding it out, like this guy was a, you know, he’s a hard worker, was a hard worker. Unfortunately he’s no longer with us, but I think it’s right up there with like the shoe dogs of the world.
Like a great book written by a hardworking, successful entrepreneur and he really gives you a good insight. the journey and how hard it was. Mm-hmm. and whatever, whatever. So it was really cool. Highly recommended. And right now I’m in the middle of, I guess when, when we do this show, like the odds that we finish a book like the day before is so low.
So probably gonna be like me telling you what I finished a week or two ago and telling you what I’m in the middle of right now. But anyway, so I, yeah, I finished Ray Crock about a week ago, grinding it out. Highly recommended. I’ll throw it in the show. ,
[00:33:41] Chris: if you had one lesson out of the book, what would you say that is your main takeaway?
That’s
[00:33:47] Josh: a good question. I, I think I actually, in one of my daily emails, I summarize some of the key takeaways. So definitely join my email list, souler grind.com. If you want to get those as I kind of finish the books and they’re fresh in my head, there are a lot of takeaways from that book. Again, like a lot of overlap with Shoe Dog, but also extremely enter.
I, I would say probably the biggest one, maybe not the biggest one, but the one that’s most unique to his story is like, don’t pressure or rush yourself in entrepreneurship, because he was in his early fifties when he finally got involved with McDonald’s, he didn’t even started, right. McDonald’s was started by two brothers, the McDonald’s brothers in somewhere in California, and he went and found it or discover.
and then was like, Hey, let’s take this thing worldwide. And they were like, no, we just want to freaking chill and you know, sit on our porch at night and go to bed early, which is totally fine. But yeah, he grinded for decades as as a salesman and he didn’t start McDonald’s till his fifties. And there’s some interesting stats out there about how the average successful entrepreneur is actually in their like thirties or forties, right?
So guys like us, guys are girls that are listening maybe on the younger end. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself because the statistics support that the, a lot of these successful entrepreneurs are actually starting their businesses or the businesses they start, that are successful are usually started when they’re a little bit older.
Right? So it doesn’t mean don’t start a business when you’re young, cuz there’s lots to learn and who knows, right? Like, you know, you look at, especially in the tech world like the Zuckerbergs, and I mean, that’s obviously an outlier, but you know, it doesn’t mean you can’t be successful when you’re young.
But uh, and this is gonna segue into what I’m reading right now, as Gary V says, like, you have a lot of time, right? And don’t put too much pressure on yourself, especially when you’re very young. Mm-hmm. . So right now I’m reading. crushing it by Gary V, which is the second time I’m reading it. A lot of my books I read at least twice if they’re good and I’ll read them every couple years or whatever.
Crushing it. I think I first read it maybe two years ago. Really good book if you are trying to build a personal brand and or leverage social media to create content. I’ll talk more about it when I finish, so in, in the next. , but it’s, it’s a, it’s not rocket science. A lot of the information is pretty straightforward.
It’s well-written, and he also shares stories, so it’s called crushing. Because he wrote a book originally called Crush It in like 2010, where he kind of talks about using social media, the different platforms, whatever. And in this updated version of the book crushing it, he’s updated a lot of the info cuz the platforms have obviously evolved.
And he also shares stories of people who read, crush It and Applied what they. And are now crushing it. And so he shares a whole bunch of like real world examples. Really good read, highly recommended, especially if you’re into social media and, and personal brand building. and that’s it.
[00:36:52] Chris: Nice, nice. I think I’ve actually got that crush It book like seven years ago.
Oh yeah. I’m just gonna write that. But yeah, I mean, I was, I was at the beginning my journey and wasn’t really relevant at all. , but it was yeah, I mean, maybe the first few chapters are helpful to put everything in perspective and kind of the work that you have to put into, I think,
[00:37:15] Josh: I think now would probably be a better time for you to read it, to be honest, because you’re, you’re so focused on this content and stuff like that.
Yeah. So you should, you should consider it.
[00:37:26] Chris: What about you? On my side I. This is really cool. Short read. It’s called What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by Hmm. Jim Paul. And it’s basically the story of this trader guy wall Street Trader, who basically accumulated a fortune and then lost it all.
And a couple of lessons. I think actually Tim Ferris bought the rights and, and at the end of the audio book there’s kind of like a podcast with Tim Ferris and the writer of the book, which is really nice. Hmm. But the main lessons I would say a couple of lessons is the first one, it, it’s basically that studying losses, it’s more important than studying people who make money and, and how they make money.
So it says, Studying like losing and how not to lose is more important than studying how to make money. Hmm. And that’s because there’s a lot of people who can have success in different areas in all different ways, but whenever you hear about those people, you only learn about the successes and, and you are blind to everything that can make you fail, which is out more than, than the rare occasions of success.
Right. And one of the main causes of. loss failure, it says that it’s personalizing success. So when, whenever you are succeeding, you are kind of like in your own bubble, everything is working really well, you tend to personalize success. You see successes like your own skill set. You don’t consider the lack that went into it or the, yeah, the serendipity.
All the different factors that don’t depend on you, that brought you to this success. And then when you lose everything, , you, you realize how much of it was in, in your control. Mm-hmm. . So yeah, these are pretty powerful lessons. Also, like emotions are not good nor bad, but emotionalism because it is bad, which means kind of being too emotional.
Yeah. Interpreting like emotions are not bad in themselves, but in interpreting your emotions as something Bad or good. That’s kind of the thing that ruins you. Right? So being in control of your emotions in a way. Right? Yeah. So this was pretty good and also quite short read or listen, so I would recommend it.
[00:39:55] Josh: Cool. I, I think there’s a stat or like studies out there that people claim success to be their fault, quote unquote, more often than not, versus. , they tend to blame failures on external factors. Yeah, yeah, I’ve, I’ve read, I’ve read of that before. I don’t remember where, but anyways, it’s interesting. It’s a great title too, so I’ll have to check it out.
I’ll mention that in the show notes. Awesome. I think that’s it for today then. So I will include, we’ll include a summary in the description. We’ll include the show notes. We reference some of these tools, so I’ll throw them in there and we’ll see everybody in two weeks. We do this live as well on YouTube.
So if anybody’s interested ever in tuning in live, make sure to just follow the Solo Printer Grind YouTube channel every Friday morning at 9:00 AM Eastern. Well morning if you’re in or around the Eastern time zone. And then push to YouTube stays on YouTube. And podcast platforms, of course. And we’re starting to post some snippets of the episode on TikTok and shorts and stuff like that as well.
So anyways, if you like this, please make sure to like, subscribe, share with the friends, share with the family, all that kind of stuff. And that’s it. Chris, any last words?
[00:41:10] Chris: No. All good. Let’s grind it out, man. Let’s keep it going in two weeks. Sounds good.
[00:41:15] Josh: All right, take care everybody. Have a good one.