A Million Dollar Side Hustle and the All Powerful Email Newsletter

The Small business show episode 380 for Wednesday, May 18, 2022. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, where we are small businessing every week. Small sponsors for this episode include a new sponsor, TaylorBrands.com SBS where you can go to get 40% off of this AI driven all in one platform. For anyone aspiring to start a business or a side hustle. They've got everything. And then also a returning sponsor, hunterdouglas.com SBS where you can go see their smart solutions for dressing your windows and take advantage of some generous rebate savings too. We'll talk more in depth about each of those a little bit later in the episode here for for now. Back here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How goes it, man?

It goes. I had a successful working while traveling trip last week, which is good. We had to go pick up our son in Portland, Oregon. Yeah. And I made it an intention because we've got another trip coming up in a couple of weeks and I knew that if I got behind on things at the office I would be, it would just be a disaster. So I brought that extra screen with me and.

Oh yeah, you talked about that makes.

Such a difference, having that. And then just carved out time every morning to just dig in and get through my lists and do the things that I needed to do and make sure I was staying on top of things and pushing things forward. And really it was great. I got back and it's like, yep, okay, good to go. Like nothing piled up while I was gone, which is great. So yeah, worked out. That's good, that's cool. Yeah, good.

Glad to hear it.

I don't recommend making it so that you work on every trip that you take. If it's a vacation, make sure you take a vacation.

Does this really work, Dave? Is this really work?

Well, I mean, so I asked myself.

You know, does it really work? Have you ever like carried bags of cement or.

Well, that's the thing.

Dug a hole or, you know, built a fence. That's really work.

You know, it's funny you say that. I've got some. No, I have somebody here. I've got. Well, it's a team of people building a patio for me and, and they started while we were gone and so there's been some progress. And I was talking with him this morning about a couple of things. I was thanking the guy. I'm like, wow, this really is taking shape. It's Looking great. I said, I really appreciate all the work you're putting in. He's like, you know, I enjoy this. He's like, sure, it's. For him, it's tiring. You know, he's like, I have to work hard. But he's like, I don't really think of it as work because I enjoy it. And so it's lucky, man. Exactly. Exactly. There's that phrase, right, that find something you love to do and you'll never work a day in your life, or something like that, I'm sure.

Yeah, something like that.

Yeah. And that's a different thing for each of us.

It is, it is.

It's just important. Don't worry about what my thing is, or don't worry about what the thing that. The guy that's working here at my house.

Yeah. He would probably say, oh, gosh, the thought of working on my computer all day and posting content, that's what he used to do.

I mean, he didn't podcast, but he used to, like, work a desk job all the time. And he's like, yeah, in the old days, that's what I did. He's like, but this is so much better thinking for you. And I don't. Like, there's no judgment there. Like, in fact, it's. There is judgment. It's positive judgment. I'm glad he found the thing that he enjoys, and I'm glad. Yeah, I'm glad I found the thing, too. So. Yeah, you. You all need to find your own thing. So.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

I have a guy here cutting trees down on our property, and it's a young guy. And I started talking to everything. Turns out he was a financial planner, but he just, you know, he's a certified financial planner, but he just couldn't handle being in the office.

Amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

And I was like, well, this is great. You know, watching this guy climb trees and do stuff and working outside is awesome, especially if you happen to be in California.

Yeah, working outside is awesome. This week here. Yeah, it's all good.

Yeah, that's right. So. Yeah, so. So it's good. But, you know, it's. We all have different definitions of that kind of stuff.

And that's it.

It's great.

Yeah. You find your thing and. And just keep cranking. I know, it. It's. Yeah, it's. It's a. It's a great thing, and it is.

Hey, and one of the things I'd like today, I'd love to talk about newsletters.

Okay.

We haven't touched on that topic, I was looking on the. @businessshow.co. it's been a long, long time, and you and I have been talking about content creation and engagement with our listeners and customers.

Yeah.

And so I thought it'd be good to that. But before we do that, I'd love, love to update on one of my side hustles. Oh, yeah. If we have a few minutes.

We do have a few minutes. It turns out. We do. Yeah, man.

Perfect.

How are things going?

So, yeah, good. A few years ago, you know, looking for another challenge and trying to figure out, you know, so much going on with this social commerce. Right.

Okay.

And trying to figure. I don't even know what it was like. We were having people on the show, really doing well in this social commerce space. Instagram. On Instagram and this and that. Selling and connecting with people. So I decided to see. Okay, let's see if I can start a company just with my phone.

I remember that was your like, oh, no, I remember it. I'm sure we recorded it too, where you were like, this is my thing. I, you know, I'm going to figure out how to do this from my phone. Yeah, yeah.

Because, you know, I was like, gosh, man. I had recently sold a company. I had some time on my hands, and I said, let's, let's. Let's do it. So I, you know, investigated for about a year what to do. It eventually started a handbag resale business. I'm a product guy, and I like to buy and sell, and I really enjoy finding the Delta between the buying and selling.

Yeah.

And so just this week, actually last night, this one platform I started on and really learned the ropes for this fashion business that I. I still really don't know anything about other than that Delta went over. We hit a million dollars in revenue on that platform, which is cool.

Amazing. Congratulations. That's awesome.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, we sell on other platforms as well and have done, you know, we do a ton on ebay. Ton. On some other marketplaces that are in that fashion space, which has really grown a lot. But I'm really happy to hit that number on Poshmark. And the one thing I wanted to share is that now I'll take that. One of the reasons that we've been successful. I've been successful on Poshmark is connecting with the people that run it and offering input on what I thought worked well and what I didn't think worked well, especially as they were ramping up and bringing more business sellers on.

So you're talking about connecting with the people who run Poshmark, not just the people who run their own little stores throughout Poshmark. But you're talking about. Right? Yeah.

Okay, two things. But this I'm talking about is connecting with the administrative people and also connecting with their press department, their marketing department, to make them know, hey, look, check this out. I don't know how many million dollar sellers are on Poshmark, but maybe I don't know how many there are, but I don't think there's a ton. And so keeping them abreast of what's going on. A couple weeks ago, I reached out and said, hey, because I know they're PR folks.

Sure.

Featured asked me to talk about their business before and I was like, hey, I'm about to hit a million dollars in sales and da, da, da, da. So I know there's some features coming up where we'll get some more press and we'll drive more people to our Poshmark store and could turn it into something and connecting on another level, which is what we're going to talk about today as well with our customers. But there's always more to the story. And it's up to you as a small business owner to figure out ways to grow it and to manage it and to make the most of it.

Yeah. Well, congratulations, first of all.

Thanks, man.

Fantastic.

It's been a great time.

Yeah.

I'm ready to do something else.

Well, yeah, that's how it is, isn't it?

Yes, it is.

You know, we say we don't have goals, but if we find ourselves hitting a goal that we had, whether we knew it or not, there is often the after effect of slowing down. Like the drive to get true. The drive to get wherever we've gotten can back off. And I've caught myself at this many times. And you hit a comfort level, whatever that might be. And that to me is the most dangerous thing ever for business, is getting comfortable. I don't want to say complacent, because that's two different. Complacency is also very dangerous. But that comfort position can really hurt. And I've seen it happen a couple of times to me and I'm sure it's happened to other folks out there too. So it's. It's an interesting thing and it's a really hard thing to recover from. When you hit that comfort level to figure out how to turn the drive.

Back on, you have to find something. You constantly have to find something that motivates you.

That's It. That's right.

In this business, my whole thing was when we first started, look, I'm going to start a business. Just use my phone. I don't want to spend more than an hour a day. And I wanted to make a net profit of 500 bucks a day.

Yes. Just.

Just as a side hustle. Okay. About 100 grand a year our day. And, you know, it hasn't quite worked out that way, but the system is definitely working. And I don't do it all on my phone because I've automated a lot of it.

Right.

Hired some contractors and stuff. When I realized, like, this is crazy, but it is important to keep challenging yourself, keep refining the system. In my case, for this business, it's like, oh, let's find new platforms and let's connect with other sellers. I wrote a book about my experience called Poshmark Unlocked. And so I got. That motivated me for a while and connecting with people and building a group around the book. So it sounds like a silly little thing, but when you can control the narrative of what it is you're doing, you can build it into something much, much bigger.

Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah. When you can control that narrative. You're right. Yeah. The narrative for yourself is the most important one, I think, to just keep driving forward because otherwise it's not gonna happen. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting, your comment about reaching out, letting in your case, Poshmark know that here's a thing I'm doing, even though it's literally on their platform, they could know, but. But there's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of sellers. They can't monitor everyone. In theory, they could monitor people that are starting to hit certain benchmarks and reaching out, and I'm sure they do. But it never hurts to be the one to sing your own praises. One thing I started doing over a decade ago, it didn't happen right out of the gate with my MacGeek Gab podcast, but I started doing it pretty early on. And I do it for this show and I do it for Gig Gab, which is the show we do for working musicians, is anytime we mention anything on the show, just in the course of the show, the sponsors, of course, know that they were mentioned. That's fine and it's great. But if we mention just someone else's product, like here we're mentioning Poshmark, I will reach out to them after this episode is published and just let them know, hey, we mentioned your thing and it has gotten especially, I mean, with all the shows, but it is a way of being able to grow your presence. Because generally speaking, if you mention someone and it happens to be a positive mention, well, they might want to tell other people about it and that doesn't hurt. Right. At the very least that happens and oftentimes they'll say, well, I want to know more about your show. And some of those people wind up becoming sponsors. But really it's not about that. Certainly not primarily for me, it really is just about letting people know. Right now it's difficult to do a Google alert for when someone mentions you in an audio format. You can do Google alerts for when you were mentioned on the web. And certainly we put things in the show notes. In fact, we even put chapters in the show notes at businessshow co. So you can get those in your podcatchers and jump around and we always mention that stuff. But I figured it doesn't hurt. And I have a little engine that I use to semi automate sending those out and it's great. Great. Yeah, yeah.

And when I started reaching out to like their marketing department, I just told them what I was doing. I said, hey, I'm trying this new experiment to see if I can run this thing just on my phone. Here's my, this system I'm trying to set up. And you know, it got their attention a little bit. But then when you started seeing some success and I just kind of kept them posted then like, hey, do you want to be, do you want to be in this newspaper article or online? Do you want to be on this thing? You know, so keep those connections. And you know, LinkedIn is the key, one of the keys to the kingdom for me and connecting with all those, those people and brands and everything, it's just, it's a, it's huge.

Yeah, I find cost you nothing. I, I wish LinkedIn were, were a better social network, but it's, it's, it's not right. Like people, people aren't communicating on LinkedIn, but it is a fan. I mean some people are, but in general, most people are not, but they are keeping LinkedIn up to date as they move around the industry. So connecting with someone the first time you meet them, when, when there is a, just a connection, you know, you've, you've met them via email or whatever, connecting via LinkedIn and then later, you know, you might find that they've moved somewhere else and, and now you've got a connection there or they've moved up the ladder wherever they were, and now you've got a connection higher up the ladder. These Things can pay off. So, yeah, I do the same thing. Anytime I have contact with somebody, I always connect them on LinkedIn. And I put, I keep a little database. I use it well, it's going to come as no surprise. I use FileMaker database because I use FileMaker for everything. And I built a field in there for people's LinkedIn profiles. So when I connect to them on LinkedIn, I put it in there and now I can jump right to them and I don't have to bother searching LinkedIn because you only get X number of searches a month or whatever and, you know, so, yeah, I've used it.

To find suppliers, to find. I mean, just everything you can possibly think.

Everything.

Yeah, that's really good.

And feel free to connect with me and Shannon on LinkedIn too. That's a, that's okay. You know, we, we would love to be connected with you. It's. It's a great thing. Yep. All right, well, we were going to talk about email newsletters here. The next thing that I want to do, Shannon, if, if it works for you, is talk about our two sponsors.

Yeah, let's do it.

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I wouldn't say that. No, no, no. I, I mean, we've had, you know, tens of thousands of subscribers to newsletters and different ways to do. And I have a different thought process on a lot of other people on.

Sure.

How to do it. But I think the most important thing is, you know, it. They're massively powerful. And I think I, I read a lot about business and small business and stuff.

Sure.

It seems like lots of companies are coming full circle back to the power of the email newsletter versus, like, everybody was really heavy into social.

Yeah.

For so long.

Yeah.

And I know that's changed a lot with some of the new things, tracking and all that kind of stuff.

Well, the tracking and the, the algorithms that have.

Yeah.

You know, that, that prioritize those things which get emotional reactions out of people and terrible.

Well, yes.

I mean, it's great for them. I suppose it's great for them, but it's. It makes the platform less valuable for just getting the word out.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. So I'm happy to see that. I've used newsletters in all my companies over the years, had some, you know, great response. So, you know, first, I think we should Talk about why you need one. Talk about quality over quantity, how to manage it and, you know, what kind of content to put in it. I think we can start with why you need one.

Right, okay. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, I think you've. You've probably sold people already, but. But yeah. What are some of the other reason.

Yeah, well, a couple. One thing I like versus doing social media stuff is it's your cost. You own the data.

Right.

The data you're getting access to on social media platforms belongs to the social media company, right?

Yep.

So you, you know, having the data, you can track that data more accurately. And I think that we've talked about this concept of a thousand true fans here a lot.

Yes.

And this is a way you can build those true fans. And then the obvious thing is you want to sell more of your stuff, whether it's products or services. But there's a far greater kind of macro view of this, and I think it all revolves around the relationship that you get to build with existing customers and potential customers. And I think the newsletter is just really the way to go.

It is. And your point about owning the data is key because that relationship is now yours to manage. You're not, you know, you're. Yes, people can unsubscribe, and you need to let them. But beyond that, you have a direct path to these folks now. And as long as you're responsible with that and respectful with that, you can maintain that direct path to these folks, which is great. Yeah.

Yeah, it is good. And, you know, one of the mistakes I've made many times is I'm always in a hurry. You know, I'm the guy. I'm trying to drive fast as I can down the road.

Sure.

And I'm always trying to build the biggest list I can. And that, you know, that's really. And I have to tell myself this a lot. You got to change the frame of that.

Okay.

It's not how many, you know, tons of subscribers that you can build as fast as possible. It's really on what connections you can make with people.

Right.

And having 50 true fans is more powerful than 500 people that you're hassling.

I see what you're saying. Oh, yeah. Okay. So instead of just looking to just grow the list any way you possibly can, better to take the time and reach out and actually engage with someone and then have them join the list because now they're going to want to hear what you have to say.

That's right. Somebody that joins the list because they want to and they want something from you. Yeah, I'm going to mention this a little later, but you know what? They want some value that you're adding to their life. And that could just depending on your business, it could be, you know, a coupon. It could be as simple as here's a good deal. Certainly the majority of newsletters are all product or service driven, but I would say those aren't the best.

So. Yeah. Okay. So I mean, if, if you've convinced someone that they want to sign up because they want something from you, well, then you have to deliver something of value to them. Not just buy, buy, buy from me. Please, please, please. Right, yeah, absolutely.

And for me, and this is where my views are a little different. I've always made the newsletters personal and I've always had. And we would jokingly call it the monologue. And you know, I would monologue the intro in the newsletter and I would talk about something that was going on that was interesting to me and that allowed me because I wanted to have a different kind of connection with my customers.

Yeah.

And so even though it could be something as simple as we're selling parts and we're selling repairs, because I realized in my field, which was, you know, parts and repairs and all this kind of stuff, we're really event driven. So where we were. So giving you a discount, like on a screen repair for your MacBook Pro.

Does no good if you don't have a broken screen. Yeah, today. Yeah, today.

That's right. So over and over, you know, I was, how do we connect with these people? And for me it was, well, here's. We have a great team of people that work here. Let's talk about them and let's talk about what's going on in my life and what's going on in sharing. You're really open on social, Dave. I'm not as much anymore. But you do that. You do the same kind of thing.

To a degree, I'm not as good as I have been, you know, but I, I go in fits and starts where I will be sharing things and then, and then I'm not consistent with it, which I realize is part of what you need to do on social to keep people engaged. Very different with an email newsletter where you want to share things. When you have something to share, it's different. But, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

And some people will hate. Hated the monologue that I used to do. But we would just create links. Hey, just. You can skip this if you don't want to hear what's going on with me or my family or, you know, my kids. But we had other people that would say, man, I love getting that newsletter every week. I can get updated on whatever this, that and the other thing. And I would, I would tell stories in there, right. And make some great connections. One of the most memorable and the largest amount of replies I got was when my. One of my kids was really young and the first sentence in my monologue was, you know, my kid eats his boogers and I need your help. How do I get through this? And just different things and trying to phrase it. So I'm a big fan of personal content.

Well, you're not the type you had, you had two things with that, right? You, you had an interesting lead. Right? My kid eats his boogers. But then the follow up I think is probably what got you more responses than just the lead. The follow up being. And I need help with that. Right, because everyone wants to help. And there's a lot of people out there that have had kids and many of them probably ate their boogers. And so you had an audience of people that a. You had cultivated. They were fans of yours. And now you open the door and said, hey, if you've got any suggestions, let me know. And now the floodgates open.

Right, that's, I'm going to add that to my notes.

Yeah, well, but that's the key is making it so that people know that they can reach out to you. And honestly, that's something we've, I'll say we've stumbled with on this show. We've done it incorrectly at times where we haven't done a monologue. We've introduced, we've reintroduced that over the last six months where we will start the show with something about that's happened for either one of us. And it's a pretty natural thing. Sometimes we don't even know what that monologue's going to be when we hit record, but we give ourselves that moment in the beginning of the show to share something personal that's relevant to the overall structure of what the show is before we get into our content. And it has helped. There's more of you reaching out and you can reach out to us, like we said, connect with us on LinkedIn, but also simply send us a note. Feedbackusinessshow.co we, we'd love to hear from you. It's. It's great.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

In fact, we answered some of your questions. What, last week? It was last week.

Yeah, we're gonna do that more based on your Requests we're gonna do, you know, try to do it like an episode each month with, with, with questions.

Yeah.

And, you know, we all get tons of these emails and newsletters from companies and stores and things that we frequent. And you know, how often do people just, oh, delete, delete, delete, you know, or unsubscribe. So I think you have to give them a reason to want to open the email beyond the stuff that you're selling.

Yeah.

And it could be like a couple things I really like is exclusivity and scarcity. Really powerful. And if you have something in your business that you can apply those concepts to, some exclusive content, exclusive product that you only have a few of or a small quantity, something that's only going to be available for a little while, those are great things. Along with, you know, like I was talking about personalized content, but if you're not comfortable with that, but maybe if you're not comfortable somebody else in your, your company is. You never know.

Sure.

But, but I. What value are you really adding? I said. Mentioned that earlier. And if you become a resource, and I like how you called that out and flipped it on the head, you know, I talk about helping solve problems, but you can also ask for help, you know, that kind of brings that vulnerability in, which I love. I think it's really.

Yeah. I mean, we all, even, even those of us that sit here with microphones and record and release podcasts, we aren't experts in everything. We might not be experts in anything, but, you know, we are happy to share the things that we have learned, but it certainly doesn't mean that we've learned it all. In fact, quite the opposite. So, yeah, we need help too. Just, you know, we're a community, really what it is.

Definitely.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and I think an important part aspect with your newsletter too is you want to automate and, and track the data.

Right.

So you need some good tools to do that. When you use a company like mailchimp or Constant Contact. One I really like is. Is CL Klavio or Clavio K L A V I o. I think it's.

Klav I Y O if.

Okay, you're right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I love the tools that they have. And you know, one thing they all allow you to do is segment your audiences, which is, I think, really important as you fine tune, you know, somebody that just signs up to your newsletter. Maybe you don't want to dump the booger story on them right away because they're like, what the heck you know, but you can, you can introduce them and drip, drip some content to them a little bit until they get familiar with you or something. But I love the being able to segment your audiences to potential customers, existing customers, any way you can think about it. Because then you can tell your story in a little bit different manner to each of those audiences, and it's more powerful than just blasting out the same thing to everybody.

Yeah. Did you do a lot of that when you were doing that with Tech Restore? Were you segmenting your audience based on various points of data that you were able to.

Not as good as we should have. Sure. We segmented it based on client type, whether it was, you know, a parts customer, a repair customer, an educational customer. Because we had, you know, school districts that we would do repairs for all over the country.

Sure.

So those, you know, we had somebody that wrote that, that Edu newsletter. Hey, here's what's going on. Because just to relate it and to be a resource to those folks, you know, here's trade shows we're going to be at, here's this conference or whatever.

Got it.

And then, you know, the parts guys, they just, what's, what's going on with availability and pricing and this kind of stuff. So it's a different audience.

Yep. That makes sense. All right. And in terms of like, frequency, how often would you recommend sending to people? Like, what. What did you find work? What did you find? Didn't work. Perhaps that's even more valuable.

Yeah, yeah, I've, I've tried all different kinds. Weekly, monthly. I think weekly might be too much unless there's a real reason. I think it depends on your industry, your audience.

Sure.

Sometimes people have event or date driven businesses, so as these events get closer or dates get closer, you have to change the frequency. Right. Mind, people. But I think the once a month is two scarce. You don't make that great of a connection. Once a week, I think might be a little too much. I really like the bi weekly concept.

Okay.

Because then I, I don't get it. And, and personally, I think it works out great.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Yeah. Okay. Right. So bi weekly at. As a baseline and then potentially more frequently than that if you've got some special, truly special thing to send to folks. Okay, yeah, I'll buy that.

You know, Yeah, I, you know, I think it works out pretty good and I would love to, you know, hear. I mean, I signed up for some newsletters and you get it like every other day.

Oh, it's too much.

And it's Just too much, you know, it's just too much. I think it's important to keep things short. I think it's important to have bullet points so people can scan it when they open it and see if there's something in there they want to read further. Right. I think that's really a good thing to do to, to show that you value people's time.

Well, and maybe that's, that's the, that's the thing to hold on to. Bullet points are one way of showing you value people's time. Right. But. Yes, but it's not the only way. But perhaps operating from that mindset of, okay, if I were reading this and I knew that, you know, I didn't have all the time in the world to read some four big mondo graphs of data that's going to take me five minutes. Give me the, don't bore us. Get to the chorus. Right. Like the old Joe Perry Aerosmith thing. Right. Tell me what's going on and show me how to get to where I want to get to and then that's it. Get out of my way.

Yeah, because maybe they're not going to read every single newsletter you have. Right? Right.

Well, they're not going to. It's not a maybe. They're definitely not going to. So.

Yeah, and I think humor, I've talked about humor on the show often. Yeah, that's a great way to do it. You know, we spent one Mac World, you know, macro, maybe a different show, but we were, you know, scanning people's badges back then and sure. Getting all the data that you get.

That still happens. The whole badge scan thing. Yep. Yeah.

And like, oh, I don't want to get your email. We're not going to do anyone. Can I send anything to you? Da da, da da. And the first, when I got back, literally the day after the show, I got all their data and I sent out a newsletter and I said in the subject, I said, okay, we lied. And I just gave them the one sentence as, hey, we want to be in touch with you. Thank you for giving it. And then I said, please click this to opt in. We will make it worth your while. And we got a massive amount of opt ins because we were kind of joking around about it and having fun with it.

That's really smart.

Yeah.

Huh. I like. No, I like that. Like, that's a great way to like the double opt in. The secret double opt in. Right. That, that's what that is, is effectively. Yeah. Huh.

Yeah, I like it. And, and a lot of Times I wouldn't have any great content to share because it's like, I got to come up with this. But you can share other people's content.

Right, Right.

Just like on social, we do it a lot in the small business support group. If you go to businessshow, co Facebook, that'll route you right over there. And if something's useful, if you read an interesting article related to your field, or maybe not. Maybe it's like, hey, it's spring, and here's top 10 camping tips or hiking, whatever.

Yeah.

You know, share it. You just never know how, you know, someone reading your. Your newsletter is going to react to that and find some value in it. You don't have to, you know, create something from nothing every single time.

It's true. Yeah. There's plenty of content. I'm always on the lookout for things, you know, that. That catch my interest. And. And as soon as I notice that it's caught my interest, like, okay, well, wait, where else can I. You know, I see myself as many things, but a curator is pretty close to the top of the list. You know, we have. We have this audience. I have audiences at other shows, and of course, all this content's out there. But if you're listening to me, we probably share similar interests. So if I find something that is interesting, I'm gonna tell you about it. And sometimes those things that I come across, I'll post on our small business support group. Other times, it's something that I want to banter back and forth with you about, Shannon. So we put it in the show. But think of yourself as a curator, and suddenly the amount of content that you have available to you opens up hugely, which is great.

Yeah, yeah, I like that. You can even highlight that as a section in your newsletter, you know?

Yeah.

Be like, oh, there's things that. And. And there's a company called Huckberry, I think. Okay, they do that. Great. They know they sell outdoor gear and clothes, basically. Shoes. They don't. Well, they make some of their own, but they always have a section like, oh, our favorite hikes. And. And, you know, best lake this or, you know, this. And. And it. I open up. I don't buy anything from them, but I open up because I look at that and go, that's pretty cool. I like this. I like that.

Interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then lastly, you know, on the content front, the great thing about it is, is once you create it or curate it, you can share it across everywhere and repurpose it on your social channels. I mean, this is not stuff like, oh, now I have to create newsletter content, social content, stuff for Twitter, Facebook, whatever. But you, you can share that stuff over and over because your, your audience is different on each channel.

Yes.

And it's, it's, it can be really great and you can create a really good system that uses that content and dribbles it out. We do it now with, you know, many episodes that we have cut up into small little chunks and they're very popular because, like, oh, in five minutes I can learn all about the importance of, of putting a funny line on a name tag or something. Like last week.

Yeah, that's right. No, that was super popular. That's right.

Yeah, people like that. So to kind of wrap it up, build a list. You own that data. Really important. Grow it organically. That's how you're going to get true fans of your business. Track and automate it and create interesting content that adds value to people and you'll be successful. I know it works.

And we do it here. Whether you know it or not. If you go to businessshow. Co, you will find the ability to sign up for our newsletter. And we do all of these things here. We hope we get it right, at least most of the time. But you can let us know. Feedbackusinessshow.co. we'd love to hear from you. Yeah, yeah. Good stuff, man. Thank you for being the resident expert on this.

Oh, no, not expert, just I've done it for a long time. I'm definitely still learning. I just. That help concept you mentioned is really good. I always say I learned the most here.

Yeah.

So share with us how your newsletter system works. Feedbackusinessshow.co. or come over to Facebook in this small business support group. Yeah, we'd love to hear from you.

Absolutely. Thanks for hanging out with us, folks. As we said, connect with us on LinkedIn. We put our links in the show notes at Business Show Co. Sign up for our newsletter. While you are there, make sure you visit our sponsors too. We, we don't get paid when you visit them, but we do it. You know, our job is to introduce you to them. So go visit them and, and whether you buy anything from them or not is between you and them. But we'd, we'd love to make sure we have made that introduction. So check them out. TaylorBrands.com SBS HunterDouglas.com SBS and keep living that charm life, huh? We'll see you next week.