Managing Business Email Lists and More with John Gautereaux – DBA Small Business Show 14

Greetings and welcome to the DBA show, the podcast, the small business podcast, where we come to you every week talking about all things of interest to small business owners. It is Wednesday, May 13, 2015, episode 14 of the DBA Show. And here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. That was a lot of numbers, Dave.

I know. Yeah, it felt like it was too many numbers. I think I got them right. But it wasn't smooth. No, it wasn't smooth. But, Shannon, it's not just the two of us here today, is it?

That's true. So we're joined by a special guest today, John Goodarow, good friend of mine that I've known forever, who's got some experience in marketing and lead generation and email. John, thanks for joining us today.

Happy to be here, guys.

Awesome. And, you know, just a way of introduction, you know. John has a long background in marketing and business development. Done a lot of work with consumer advocacy, law firms and legal service organizations. He's been a moderator panelist for association of Corporate Counsel, also the Harvard Law School. And he's started a bunch of businesses and worked, done some programs with LegalZoom, started a company called JustLux.com and today we're going to talk about his company, east west and Blue, or EW Blue, and how they handle lead generation, email marketing, some of the pitfalls. And, you know, we've had some of our listeners ask questions about, you know, how do I get started with this stuff? So John's here to talk about that today. And again, thanks again, John.

Yeah, I'm delighted to be here, Dave. I impressed with all those numbers that you rattled off as well. So I'm in good hands, I can tell.

Yeah, something like that. As long as I remember to press record, we're in good shape. So. That's right.

That's right.

So tell us for, you know, get us rolling here. Tell us a little bit about EW Blue, what you guys do and, you know, how you got started in the business.

Yeah. Well, so east, west and Blue, which We affectionately call ewblue.com we connect information professionals and marketing professionals who both live and oftentimes play well in Fortune 500 organizations. And so what we've tried to do since we started up about 12 months ago, actually, we try to help them repurpose their information where it lives. And big data is a, is a big problem for a lot of organizations, whether it's on the compliance side dealing with phi or personal health information or pii which is your personally identifiable information. We.

So this is all like data security stuff, making sure privacy and that kind of thing?

Yeah, it's part of that, but really it's about repurposing that data within a compliant framework that says, yes, this is how you can play nicely with this data. And this is how, you know, consumers would allow themselves to be contacted within. You know, obviously we're talking about, you know, email marketing today. And so that's kind of what that's about. We've, we've helped large banks and we've helped an organization that, you know, like a visa or a MasterCard, I can't say which, but we've helped them repurpose some of their data.

Got it, got it. That's great. And so how did you guys, what was the impetus to start up? I mean, I know you have some background and in that and you know, give me some feedback when you were sitting around talking about, hey, we should look, you know, do take what we've learned and start a company to do this right.

Yeah. What's the back of the envelope? What's the coffee shop napkin? You know, business model like so we, we kind of. My partner, I'm, I'm proud to say is my brother and we. His background is data. He's been a list manager, lead gen guy going back 20 years. And my background is, has been in marketing and business development. And so what we thought about maybe a couple of years ago actually was, you know, how we could work together. And then a few opportunities came our way and that led to a conversation when my company that I was running marketing for was owned by a private equity group, a billion multibillion dollar PE out of New York, and they sold us. So, you know, I was asked to transition into a different role, which I really didn't want to do. And you know, at that point I said, now's the time, you know, so it's one of those jump off the bridge moment where you say, oh, maybe this is good timing, this is fortuitous. There's serendipity afoot here, so we've got to pay attention. And you know, so that's how that kind of came about. And we, we, yeah, we were both in a good position to do that. And we unfortunately we picked up, you know, three clients within the first 30 days and we thought, well, wow, this is going to be a nice little hockey stick move. And it's not always the case.

Sure.

That the first few clients portends, you know, massive revenue at the end of the year. But so that's how we started. That was the genesis for our little shop.

Yeah, that's cool. And, you know, it's really an interesting point that you make, is that initial success, you know, does that really dictate how things are going to be? And sometimes, you know, as a new business owner, you know, you can get a skewed perspective, like, oh, we nailed it, you know, and it's going to be like this over and over and over. So, you know, I think that's a really important thing. Could probably even have a, you know, topic on another show and chat about that.

Yeah, I mean, it, you know, I, we went through a little bit of that with. With Backbeat Media. When we started the first year, we were just taking orders and piling up money, and thankfully we did that right.

You, you.

You pile up money. Don't. Don't spend it all. Because it's not like, where were you.

Six months ago, Dave? We needed that information.

Well, you know, it was, it was. It was a happy accident, actually, at the time. We had a lot of things going on. We didn't have time to spend it, so. But that was good because then the market cratered. I mean, this is 15 years ago or whatever. But. But yeah, you make a good. Yeah, yeah, that initial success is nice because it gives you some cash flow. Right. But it's not. It's. That's all it gives you is, you know, I always say nothing exists until the contract is signed or the money's in the box or both. And. And that's it. Yep.

It is true. And it's like that, you know, you. You get a hit single and it's, okay, great. And you're now, you know, rock star on a famous. But, you know, three months, three months from now, you're going to be working on the next. What's your next hit single? Right.

Right Back at Starbucks.

Yeah.

12 months later. Yeah. So I would love to hear that show, you guys. You need to get some folks on there because I would be one that I would enjoy listening to.

Yeah.

So.

So, you know, the show is the small business show, and we're, you know, we focus kind of guys. I mean, honestly, just getting started, but small, smaller, bootstrapping guys. So, you know, some of the things that we've had listeners ask questions about is, you know, so how do I get started in email marketing? And then also, you know, how do I avoid getting, you know, having trouble and getting labeled as a spammer? You know, how do you gracefully make your way into you know, your potential customers, email box or, you know, some sort of lead generation. And what are some of the things you have to watch out for?

Well, I mean, look, if you're asking me specifically what does, you know, what's my first step if I'm starting my little company, is this what I should do?

Sure, sure.

You know, I can, I can answer that, Shannon. But I think what I'd like to do and you and Dave, you know, give me pushback or, you know, steer the conversation. But, you know, sort of a way to frame up the discussion would be to kind of talk about what a little bit bigger than a small business does. And that way it can give context in terms of aspirationally what I'm looking to do. As a small business guy. I think the pitfalls are still the same. I think some of the things that you want to get to are still the same. And then maybe we can sort of, you know, take a deeper dive and put a sharper point on the pencil as you guys kind of give me some feedback. But as I mentioned, I ran a marketing team up in Seattle. I didn't mention where, but it was an organization, a legal services group last year. And that was a great experience. And I had a team of about 12 sales reps. I ran sales operations as well. And also on the team I had three marketing folks. I had staff of two sales support people.

Okay.

And so subsumed under those five individuals was, you know, a marketing web mail product called Eloqua, that Oracle. So I don't know if you guys are familiar with Eloqua.

No.

And it's, you know, it's a very expensive product, but a very good product. And it's, you know, it's got all the bells and whistles, as you can imagine. And so those five individuals, you know, kind of handled all the day to day. And I monitored what we were doing and sort of, you know, set the expectations and kind of rolled the ball out and we would go to town literally every month. We had a very, you know, systematic way that we reach our customer, consumer, client, whatever c you want to use.

So it sounds like the, the email marketing or the lead generation certainly is a part of the overall marketing scheme is kind of what you're saying. Right?

Absolutely. And sure. And, and Shannon, I don't want to cut you off if you want to make another.

No, no, I'm good.

So I, I guess that leads to the one sort of high level point which is, look in terms of marketing, you know, Peter Drucker, who's you know, one of the all time great business gurus. He talked about businesses, they have two basic functions and that's it. One is marketing and the other one is innovation. And so, you know, when I got out of business school, that just, it stuck with me. And it's one of those things, when you think about it, the basics of business is, is getting a client and then of course, keeping that client. And innovation allows you sort of pivot and move, whether it's products or services, how you need to. But marketing, of course, is the tip of the spear. That's where you need to get out there. And so, you know, marketers always talk about, you know, we're having a conversation and if they're not, they should be. It's the conversation that, you know, you guys have on a routine basis. Basis with your clients. And so, you know, do you call them clients, Dave? You call them consumers? Customers? What do you guys call your, your, your folks that you work with?

Yeah, it's all, it's customers, right?

You know, yeah, customers.

And I've always said every business is the customer service business. It doesn't matter what business you're in.

Exactly, exactly. And it's. So that's part of that conversation. And so, you know, we've always talked about this sort of, there's a journey that the client's on, and that's what we're trying to do as a business. We're trying to get in front of that consumer or that customer on their journey. And so that's what I'm trying to do is really understand how do we continue that conversation with our clients and with, with our customers. And so from us, you know, we are basically, we were this organization that I'll talk about.

Yeah.

In sort of theoretical realm. We, we had clients, we had professional services. So we were an LPO or a legal process outsourcing company, basically.

Okay. You're, you're guiding your clients in the, the methodology and, and what they can do and the right way to do it. The wrong way.

Correct?

Correct. Okay.

Yep.

Absolutely. And so over 15 years, this group, this organization that I was running marketing and sales ops for, they had accumulated. And this is the sine qua non. This is the essence of what we're trying to get to here, which is email marketing. They had, they had put together this list of 37,000 to 40,000 individuals that we would reach out to on a monthly basis.

Okay.

And so there's all sorts of pitfalls as you, you know, so aptly put the beginning of the call that, you know, we need to kind of keep our, our, our clients out of those pits. You know, we want to make sure that they don't fall into either non compliance or as you indicated, you know, be called a spammer or someone who's actually bothering individuals either without permission or simply, you know, way too often. And so some of those things that we would do, you know, it would require us to put together these various campaigns. And you want to be very systematic as a business owner, small business owner, or a medium sized company. I mean, our revenues were probably somewhere just shy of 30 million a year. And I had a marketing budget of about a million dollars. And so for our software we probably use three to four different vendors. And so whether it was a CRM tool, whether it was an email management tool like an eloqua, and then we had other folks who would kind of go through and scrub our email list to make sure that we were compliant, that folks who didn't want to be contacted were automatically weeded out. And so that would cost us, you know, I'd say probably about 65,000 a year was spent just on that, just managing those lists.

So, so that's good.

That's more than a dollar, a, a subscriber just to manage them, not, not even to send them or do anything like that. Is that, is that fair to say?

So that was, that would also include the management as well.

Okay.

Okay.

Yep, yep.

And you're selling, you know, these are, I imagine, high dollar services that, that are being marketed. So the, the return on investment could be pretty dramatic if you, you know, land a new customer.

Right, Absolutely. And one of the first conversations that I had with the president who signed my contract when I got on board was, look, you know, we can look at this industry or we can look at, you know, tech industries and how do we come up with a number that approximate what should be spent? So you can back into that by looking at revenues and say, okay, for, you know, a very fast growing sector, we might say it's 10% of marketing, which would be $3 million. And we were, frankly, we were a cash cow. We were, you know, acquired by PE for a very good reason. And they wanted to, you know, kind of tighten the screws a little bit, you know, right size quote unquote, get rid of about 20% of the staff and then flip, you know, 18, 24 months down the road. So I kind of knew that when I took the gig that we were looking at that. And so, you know, that was the marketing budget. So, Dave, back to you in terms of, you know, what sort of metrics, what sort of KPIs can we kind of hang our hat on? You know, it did seem reasonable at the time. That 65 grand was. Was probably a pretty good amount.

Sure.

Yeah. Well, it paid off. Right. The company sold. So that was good that, you know. Well, and that, you know, it's interesting. It depends on what your goal is with your company too. Right. I mean, that. That company was at a different stage than. Than, you know, maybe a small businesses, but. But not that the end was. The end goal for some folks is the same. I mean, most of the things we talk about here are sort of the, you know, the, the lifestyle businesses, if you will. Right. The. The things where, where it's going to. Your plan is to actually earn some money from this thing to support your, you know, your life and your family. But. But at times, you know, the pivot happens and you say, okay, it's time to sell this thing. And so then you position it to look a little better that way. That's actually, that's a show. That's. That's an episode that I would love to. To do is, you know, what is it? What does that even look like for. For some business? But anyway, that's.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. So you're. So you have.

We have a.

Let's say, you know, to get down to kind of more of a. On a micro level is, you know, we have a guy, you know, whatever size, smaller business and running and, you know, he's just, okay, I'm. I'm in this certain area and I want to reach a certain clientele. I mean, I imagine. Is there any tips that there are things that you can come up with? It's like, hey, if you're looking on Google for companies that are managing these lists or lead generation, you know, is. Is that a safe way to find, you know, those, those folks?

Yeah. So, you know, I'll go ahead.

Well, I was gonna, I was gonna add to that kind of the overarching question of is it safe to buy a list from someone else? And that's part of what Shannon was asking.

Yeah. In a dark alley, you know, on this. I mean, because it's such a. Find them. Yeah.

Hey, listen, I've got a trench coat and I bring it out once in a while, trade shows, and I just open it up and people come around, they want to buy that lead list.

So how do you do that safely? Because, you know, kind of like the Google mentality is like, hey, yes, we're, we're pitching an advertisement to you, but we want to make it useful to you. That, that's, you know, the, the mantra. And one of the reasons why I think they're successful. Cause it is, you know, those ads are usually pretty relevant. And I would think that certain lists are going to be relevant to your industry and certain other ones are going to just. People are going to be really bothered and you're going to. It'll backfire against you.

Yeah.

So is that a safe thing to do?

Yeah. So I guess I'll give you a bad example that we ran into. I was running marketing for a law firm.

Okay.

They were a government contracting company doing lots of GSA business. And what they would do, they would represent individuals, smaller businesses who were mom and pops shops who wanted to do, you know, multi million dollar contracts with the federal government.

Okay, so they're the integrator type thing where they can make it happen for them.

Exactly. That was part of their business model. The other part was making sure that they could bid and if they didn't win, how could they appeal? You know, and that's a, that's a. Actually it's a significant business. And so they turned to me and they said, look, you know, we want to do this online. We want to create this website. We want to do these sorts of things. And I stepped into that role for, you know, probably about 18 months for them. And one of the things that we did is, you know, the head of the law firm, the general manager, general partner, managing partner, he came to me and said, look, I want to do this. I need you to go get a list. And, you know, and I, the first thing that came to my mind was, you know, the black hat, white hat scenario, right? And I knew folks who, who said, oh, yeah, dude, I. I've got this and I can, I can do X, Y and Z for you. And the good news is that, you know, east, west and blue. Ew, blue. We've got a significant amount of data that's been acquired over the years, and it's, you know, several hundred consumer records and, you know, up almost 900 million IP addresses and, and different sort of, you know, email names that we've come across. And so I was able to kind of app a list that the, that the managing partner had acquired. And, you know, we ran through it and I swear to you, we probably got rid of about 80% of all the names. And this guy probably dropped five grand on a list. And so, you know, from a legal Perspective, you know, I have a degree in. In law and a degree in public policy. And I looked at this and I went, God, you know, I'm anxious about this, but, you know, I can't really veto this guy. And so we went through and we used an email service provider. We went through and got these guys to send out the 20% that were left. And out of the 20% that were left, probably about 90% reported us for spam or unsubscribe.

Yeah.

Because nobody. Because nobody had opted into that particular list.

Absolutely right.

That's right. That's right.

So this guy, he was very, very upset. And I had, you know, I had a very frank conversation with him. I said, look, I didn't sign off on this. You asked me to do this. We ran through the paces. I did everything we could to make sure we were. We could be unsubscribed, you know, and all the good things. And this. The email service provider came back and said, look, if you guys have one more occurrence like that, we are going to basically, you know, you'll be done. Blacklist you. Yeah. You'll be. You'll be out of our company. We won't be able to use you anymore.

So that. That brings me to another question, because I've been doing, you know, publishing on the web for what, 16 years now or something, and.

Right.

And years ago, you could, if you had the technical acumen, which you can either possess or your hire. Right. You could run your own mail server and send your own list out. And we still possess that technical acumen here. But we have found that sending our own list out versus we always send our own list, but sending it ourselves through our servers versus sending it through a service provider. Servers. We get way better results sending it through a service provider. And it seems like that's just the way things work these days, right?

Oh, I totally agree. It's, you know, it's the whole idea of, you know, there's an imprimatur. There's this, you know, very unspoken, you know, approval that this company, whether it's mailchimp or whoever you want to name, these guys are sending out, they're managing our file for us, and those organizations are just. You. You feel a lot more comfortable as. I don't know about you guys, but when I get some of those that are unrequested, that I didn't opt in for, that I have not given my permission, I'll know. Okay, I can unsubscribe here. And I know that I'm not I'm not giving away information by unsubscribing.

I didn't even think about it from that standpoint. I was, I don't even think percentage wise, I don't think that our list is being delivered even, I mean, I think at the mail server. Yeah, at the mail server level, I think it's being, you know, deprioritized at best or perhaps even blocked. Right. Just because it's coming from, from our server and we're not on any blacklists. I know how to look those up, but I don't know how to look up white lists. Right.

You know, so that's a good point. And you know, Dave, we experienced it two years ago to send our own, you know, opt in list and this kind of thing and all. It does not take much to get, you know, on some list. Even if it's not a blacklist, maybe it's a, you know, something not as severe, but to where the stuff just kind of stops showing up. And I imagine a mailchimp or a constant contact, you know, they must have, you know, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of servers that are managing this stuff. And I think that's probably why they're, if you've never used mailchimp, you know, it's, it's in my opinion one of the keys to the kingdom. You know, free product for up to 16,000 emails a month and a bunch of wonderful things that you can add on at a very low cost to manage your list. And I, we use them a lot and they are highly. What's the word? I don't want to use the word suspicious, but you know, if, if, if your list is not of a good quality, they will be the first one to tell you.

Absol.

Absolutely.

They honey pot them. Right? Isn't that right, John? They know what addresses are on these for sale lists and if they see you add one, they know where you got it from.

Absolutely.

That's interesting.

Yeah, yeah. We seed all of our lists and we will routinely receive emails back even from 10 years ago. And we'll know, okay, we got this file from this particular client in 2007 and then 2015, we're getting emails, we're getting pinged because we've seeded those lists to see who's repurposed, who is reusing it, you know, without even permission. And so you're absolutely right. Those, those are, those are important sort of scenarios to be aware of. But you know, Shannon, I think you mentioned something that, that it touched upon a client of ours. This is a Current EW Blue client. You know, they, this organization is, oh, they probably do about 50 million a year and they asked us to come in and manage some of their data and they just got nailed with an interesting scenario. And I bet both of you have had run ins like this or maybe you haven't even thought about. But because of all the landing pages they are driving, quite a bit of their spend goes through Facebook and they've got a certain type of ad that's extremely successful. They've been able to monetize it. And what they've done is they've created these great landing pages.

So let me stop. Give us a brief. I know guys like you and I that like to talk. Brief is tough, but let's.

Oh, sorry.

No, no, I'm the same way. I love to talk to you. These are great. But just a brief, quick, you know, definition of a landing page for some of these smaller companies out there that maybe are not familiar with that tactic. You know, like there.

Sure. It's, it's, it's a specific page within your website. Your, you know, your, your, your home stomping ground. The thing that you've created where you want people to go. You create a specific landing page that basically feeds into an email campaign or feeds into an outbound call center campaign where people are directed to go, hey, if you want more information, go to this page. And it's specifically geared to allow you as a business to measure the success of your marketing.

Excellent. Okay, great. Okay, sorry, I don't want to story. Not get you.

Well, if you guys have, you know, additional info, please jump on. No, it's great, but so these, these guys, very successful business and you know, 50 million a year, obviously great revenues. And what happened because they had set up some autoresponders, when individuals filled out forms on those landing pages, again measuring how well these, these particular Facebook ads were doing. Okay, they created these autoresponders and then people would report spam even though they had just filled out the form. They had said, oh, this is bam.

I don't want it.

So they would fill out a form, then immediately get an email. Yes or not. Oh, yeah, yeah, correct.

So what we had to suggest to them is, look, don't drive this to email. Drive it to an additional landing page that pops up and says, hey, you've successfully done whatever. And because they got a, they got a report back at the end of the month. And these guys are very meticulous. They're in the legal space, but it was just one of those things. Where so many autoresponders came through, they were reported, and certain ESPs came back and said to them, the email service providers came back and said, hey, you need to clean this up or else we're gonna have to.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's amazing. And, you know, people are so. I guess all of us are very protective of our email address. I mean, I. Half the time, I think my customers would, you know, give you anything.

But.

I said, well, no, we just. Just. We just need to contact you and tell you that your order shipped or, you know, your repair was completed or whatever. And so it's. It's. It's very interesting. We.

We all have our own little, you know, false email addresses that we create. You know, that's not my routine. I have one email that I use where I just give it to different people all the time.

Sure.

You know, I know that that will. Gmail will, you know, get rid of all the spam. And for the most part, anything that I get, like, I have a list of. And I don't know how close we're getting into running out of time, guys, but I want to cover a couple of things, you know, about being very cognizant of creating content, because at the end of the day, any sort of email list has to come from, you know, content that you're creating to be very purposeful and trying to drive the conversation with your clients. So, anyway, I don't want to cut you off, Shannon, so if you have some other questions.

Well, the one thing you were talking about different email addresses and things, and the one thing I found is, like, working with mailchimp, was they always recommend that your email really comes from you. And I can say if you send a generic or an email out from infotech, restore.com something, for example, we don't get nearly the positive response when it comes from shannonechrestore.com Absolutely. And people know who, you know, typically if they've done business with us, they may know who I am or this kind of thing. And it's just. It's because, you know, we've talked a lot about getting into their mailbox, and, you know, we won't today, but we could certainly talk, spend another half hour or so talking about, you know, then how do you get them to open the email? And actually, then how do you get them to take that action? It's really a multifaceted, you know, thing you're trying to, you know, to get the customer to do.

Absolutely. It all comes down to trust and, you know, I agree with you. You do need to be able to use that actual name, but, you know, create the one name that helps you manage your subscriptions. Because I do have, you know, groups that I, I give permission, you know, my permission goes out to the New York Times. I receive small business emails every week. You know, I've got a list here that I've created for you guys. But like Warby Parker. I'm a big Warby Parker guy, as a marketing guy. That's, that's one that I want to get. You know, email from Vimeo, Imogen and Willie is a jeans company in Nashville. They're in Seattle now as well. You know, companies like that, that I, as a marketer, I want to see what they're doing. I want to know how they, you know, have a conversation with us.

Sure. And so what, what three, you know, so you mentioned those three companies. So is there a shared trait in those email messages that you could kind of look on and say, well, this is why I like to get them. I mean, what is it that they do? You know, that's a similar thing that's shared across those three messages that, that attracts you to.

Yeah, perfect segue. So the most important thing for me is they are, they have quality content.

Okay.

And it, I know it seems easy to say, but they take the time to really create something that I want to read.

You want to read.

Exactly. So it's, it's informative. It's not always navel gazing.

Right.

Because we oftentimes we want to just say, it's me, me, me, me, me. Right. It's the, the curse of, oh, teacher, I want to raise my hand and tell you a story about me.

Okay.

Oftentimes it's information that's just, it's about thought leadership. You know, it's talking about a particular, you know, industry trend, a particular compliance, you know, issue that you should be aware of. And so things that are, obviously, if I want to learn about products, I'm going to, you know, focus on what they're selling me.

Yeah.

But at the same time, they're also going to give me recommendations, they're going to talk about other things, they're going to be intellectually honest, they're going to be passionate. And those are the things that resonate with me. And those are the things that I, you know, who was, I think it was Seth God was talking about, you know, oh, you don't want to have an HTML, you know, type of email. But, you know, because it was the whole, is it cute or Is it impactful? Yeah, you know, and you know, where do you guys stand on that?

Well, I think you may, you know, like using the Warby Parker example, you know, there's a company that's selling you something, but you know, they're selling you glasses and you're not always. I mean, that's not an item that you're buying all the time. Right. But you still want to have a relationship with them. And I've read their emails and it seems to me that they're trying to make that personal connection with you with some good, useful content. So when the event driven or the event happens that you do need glasses or you want to reorder frames or something, you're going to have that relationship with them.

Exactly.

And on the HTML versus text question, I was probably. Well, I wasn't the last because I know the guy who is the last because he still only uses text. Rich Siegel over at Barebones Software. But, but I was, I was pretty close. Right. You know, and, but it's, it's. That ship has sailed. Right. The reason I hung onto email has to be text only for so long was because there were many scenarios where someone would be reading an email and couldn't see it. HTML, like those first smartphones, even the Trios and the blackberries, they would totally munge an HTML message. Well, now you read an HTML message on your iPhone. It looks way better than it did even on your computer five years ago. Right?

Yeah, for sure.

Right. So it's fine as long as you design it well and test it on, you know, multiple platforms and multiple sizes so that it's actually going to fit. I think that's okay. I don't. And like I said, I'm a holdout. I still send most of my email only in text, but I don't have a problem with HTML. I do have a question for you though. You said it's all about the content. And so it almost sounded like if I could distill what you're saying and then ask you for, to make sure I got it right, it sounds like, you know, whatever, you might go and either post to your blog or even if it's, if it's relevant to your industry, go and rant about on Facebook. It. That's the kind of thing that you might want to start sending out to your email list in addition to the, hey, also you should buy our product every now and then, right?

Yes.

You know, interspersing it with those, you know, blog post via email kind of things. So that, so that you're actually giving people content? Is that, is that what you're saying?

Exactly. And Shannon, if you want to jump on with another question too, maybe we can get two for one there.

Well, I, I would just make a comment as like I, I totally agree with that. You know, we, our marketing guys always struggle with, okay, how do we, you know, we can't really run a special on repairing your, you know, MacBook Pro retina screen because, you know, maybe yours isn't broken. So we are an event driven business and our goal is to again, just over time give you useful bits of information in our particular vertical. It's the Apple world. So we're sharing information, what's going on and tips and being useful and to where again it's like you're showing up and you're going to take a guy's daughter out on a date for the first time and they're very suspicious of you. And over time you're going to earn your way past the front porch and talking to this kind of thing. You have to earn the trust. And then once in a while, and I would say, and I know the number exactly, but it's probably only 20 or 30% of the time that we are actually pitching a product or a service. The rest of the time we're just being a resource for the customer. And I think for any business that's a great way to start, is to become the expert in what you're doing. If you're a Mac consultant, that there's tons of stuff to talk about. If you're a, you know, we're have a guy interview on who's an outdoor guide, hunting, fishing guy. Well, there's tons of stuff to talk about to get in the door and have that relationship and that's, you'll grow your list and your customer base organically and very authentically. I think if you do that.

Yeah. And so I would just affirm what both of you said. It's really, it's, it's about creating for sure trust. It's all that's at the center of everything. And so, you know, you look at this content that you're trying to create and look, I, you know, I've been in this content creation business for a long time. When I started, you know, Luxmont 10 years ago, I was writing articles, tons of articles. The most important thing that you can do, Dave, to kind of circle back to what you were talking about is repurpose, rinse and repeat. You want to repurpose all of your content. You want to Throw it across all the, all the different social media touch points that you can. So, you know, I mean, we, we could, we could do, you know, several shows just on the different, you know, sorts of social media, you know, organizations out there. But definitely.

Shannon, did he just invite himself back?

I don't.

Maybe. I think that might have been it.

He's got to have a better microphone next time. That's the only thing.

We'Re gonna work.

That's a done deal. Done deal, guys.

We are running, you know, getting closer on that time, but I, I. Do you have another question, Dave?

I have one final question. Yeah. So for the, the small business owner that wants to take advantage of email marketing, they understand the pitfalls. They understand that they've probably got to use a service provider even if they know how to build a server and, and send out, you know, you know, major domo stuff or whatever. The question is, how do you go about building your list? It's, or getting your list. It sounds like you don't want to buy it, you want to build it on your own. So what's the best way to do that? Quickly.

Yeah, so, you know, the touchpoint model for me is, look, you're trying to, you want to, through your sales reps, you're, you're gathering a database, your CRM is being developed. That's your initial sort of, you know, opportunity to reach out. You want to get some, some, you know, people to, to affirmatively say, yeah, you know, I send me some emails. You want to reach out to them. So it's trade shows, it's sales meetings, it's emails, your autoresponder landing pages, all of these surveys, you know, thought leadership articles that drive more contact and touch points. So once you kind of, you know, build a list. So I think this kind of segues into one of your other questions, Shannon, about success stories. So the guys at Daily Candy is a gal, actually, who started Daily Candy back in, I think, 2000. She started with 700 names on her email list and she would just send out. Are you guys both familiar with Daily Candy?

No.

Yeah.

Oh, good.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, Daily Candy was, it was, it's a female driven website, very focused on daily specials. And so the, the, the hook was, look, these aren't even advertorials. These are just local specials. At first they were just national specials that they would highlight and then they.

Became from different, from different stores. Anything, anything. Nail salons. Nail salons.

Products for your hair, whatever. And she would write, you know, a little blurb and she was sent out to 700 people. Well, it became Daily Candy and pretty soon it was geo located. They were totally targeted and these guys were able to go out and create Daily Candy Chicago, Louisiana, San Francisco. And so she started literally with 700 names. Within several years, I think maybe two and a half years, she had 3 million names. And she was able to bifurcate her business and kind of pivot a little bit towards even Daily Candy kids.

I see.

And so she sold her business, which was quite literally one little micro landing page every day targeted to one special thing in that particular city. And she started with 700 names and she sold her business to NBC Universal. At the time, maybe it was Comcast for $125 million.

Yeah, I hate her.

Yeah, so I think it's awesome.

Why? Why do we hate her? Right? She paved the way.

We love her. Of course we do.

I know.

Look, this is Groupon, this is Urban Daddy, this is Ask Men. These are all cutting the same cloth.

As the guy did a very similar thing. I mean he was just a food guy and he had a bunch of friends and he would send out his reviews to them and slowly but surely. So to me, the takeaway from the conversation is there probably isn't if a real shortcut that's going to build this giant list for you if you want. And you guys certainly chime in long term success and with an authentic email campaign that you're going to have for years and years and years with your business and it's going to grow and support. I think you really have to kind of think about it from an organic standpoint and from a content standpoint and in the centerpiece of it all. Like John, you said earlier, a trust standpoint.

Absolutely. And, and you know, it's that trust and authenticity and the integrity and, you know, good content from multiple, you know, multiple locations across social media, from email, that's where we're able to say, look, I might not be successful on every single campaign on everything I do. In fact, you're probably going to fail. You know, as the biggest marketing gurus will tell you, you'll fail more often than not. But the fallout of your email list, the quality is going to help that be as low as possible. And by, you know, focusing on the quality, that's what's going to help you maintain a very good list and frankly grow it. And that's where you'll get that, that nice little hockey stick. Within 12 months, you're, you'll be impressed with what you've got to manage.

Yeah, no, that's great.

Well, John, question.

Yeah. Yeah.

How often should I, if I'm, you know, small business, I'm building up my email list, how often should I send out to it?

Okay. We, we came up with a metric that was basically if I was hosting a webinar or any sort of thought leadership event.

Yep.

That would count as one. And I could reach out to our folks and say, look, we're doing this, this thing. We're not selling, we're. We're feeding you. It's value add. That's one event. Then we would do two on top of that if we needed to. So three at the most a month.

Got it.

Okay.

That was our number.

That's.

Yeah, that's good to know. Yeah. So, John, as we start to wrap up here, you know, we, we. Steve Jobs is famous for the, you know, connect the dots quote where, you know, it's easy, you look back on your life, but you, you know, you can kind of connect the dots of how everything worked out. But so here's your chance. You know, if you could go back to when you were just getting started in business. Any kind of, any business you're thinking of, you know, what, what critical bit of advice, you know, one sentence. What, what piece of advice would you like to be able to tell, you know, a younger John Good row that you know, would, you would benefit from dramatically?

Yeah. I would say, God, that's such a great question. And frankly, I didn't realize that was Steve Jobs. That's great to know. Yeah. I would say, don't be afraid.

Oh, that's really good.

Yeah. Fear keeps us so much. And you know, that would be the thing I would say to a 20 year old.

Yeah.

From junior college about to go into, you know, a four year school. Do not be afraid.

Powerful. Yeah. I mean I, you could say that to any, anybody at any time. I think it's such a valuable thing is that is because it's. Can be very paralyzing. And yes, freeing yourself of that can be just, you know, liberating for your business.

It's funny, Shannon and, and John, I showed up here today and of course I'd gone through the questions with Shannon. I knew on the schedule, I knew that we had you here today, but when I sat down to record this show, I was thinking we were doing, you know, a show without an interview and fear was gonna be the topic I was gonna suggest.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's awesome. That's great. Hey guys, this is a lot of fun. I really appreciate the invite, man.

Thank you so much for being here. I think we've got some great information and some news and, you know, even though you invited yourself back, we'll, we'll. We'll take you up on it sometime and dig a little deeper into some of these things. So that's how you do it, right? You're pushing your. Your personal brand. So.

My personal brand, I gotta watch out for it.

Well, thanks again, man. We really appreciate it.

You got it, guys.

Thanks. I. Take care.

Well, that was great, man. It. Despite his, his microphone not being ideal, I still think this is a valuable show. I think we'll be able to make it sound decent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, he's got a lot of great information and some, some great stories. And folks, if you, you know, if you're out there, if you have some stories you'd like to share or if there's. I know we didn't get to cover a lot of topics that maybe we might have missed a few things. You know, we'd love to hear from you@feedbackbapodcast.com and we can even get some other questions back to John if you'd like us to forward them on.

Yeah, we can get him a good microphone and the questions and then we'll have them back, so.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Awesome.

Awesome. Yeah, that was good. That fear thing, I feel like that's. Well, it's definitely on our, on our future list. Maybe it's even next week's show because it's, it's such a. Like John Sales. It can be a really paralyzing thing.

Yeah. Yeah, let's do that. Let's do that. And, and I think, you know, today, the big, you know, fear and trust, I mean, what, what powerful message, you know, of. Of getting it, you know, getting yourself going and how do I get started and all this kind of stuff and, and I, I think we can. I'd love to talk some more about both those things next week.

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, cool. Perfect. Awesome. Well, thanks for listening, folks. Shannon, thanks for lining up, John. This was, this was fun.

Yep. Fun out here too. We'll talk to you soon.

Take it easy, folks. We'll see you next week.