Doberman Dan — How To Create And Sell A Physical Print Newsletter

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float, Shark with your boy, my boy Matt Wolf and Joe Fit. Hey, what's up, everyone? Why are you barking at me?

I don't know, actually, I do know.

Because you want to be dmx.

No, Rough Rider. We were listening to him yesterday.

We were listening to DMX in the car.

Flashback to the 90s California love.

All right, well, why were you really barking like a do?

Well, we're in the good graces of Mr. And the one and only Doberman Dan.

Doberman Dan.

This dude's cool. He's a good guy.

Yeah. So, you know, anybody who's been sort of following us for a little bit now would probably remember that we used to have a newsletter we did called the EGP Letter. And it was a print physical newsletter that we actually mailed to people's houses.

So old school.

And we did it for about 13 months. And there's a good chance we'll be doing it a little bit more again after this episode, but.

No, no, no, no, no. Don't play it like that. There's just a good chance we are going to make this shit happen again. It's going to happen in a bit.

I just wanted to tell Dan Ryan that there's some good potential that it's going to happen.

You just like to piss people off.

I know.

Well, Dan's a easy to piss off, so it's fine. Hey, Dan. Yeah. No. All right. Doberman Dan is. He's been at it for a very long time. I forget how many years did he.

I think he said seven years of doing it. Now he's about to release his hundredth issue.

Nine.

Nine years.

Nine for the issues. But it's been doing a lot of other stuff for a long time.

Yeah. No, the newsletter. So the newsletter's been nine years. He's about to release his 100, which is. We made it to 13.

And it's a grind, but it's also extremely beneficial. Dan lays out a bunch of ways that he does it, and it was nice to know, actually, that we did 13 of these and we kind of hacked our way into it just figuring it out. And he had the same struggles that we had. So we're like, oh, cool, we're normal, I guess.

So in this episode, we're gonna go ahead and dive in with Dan and talk about how he does the newsletter, the logistics behind the newsletter, how much it costs to print the newsletter, his sort of creative process behind creating the.

Newsletter, and how he got out of being a potential statistic in inner city Dayton, Ohio, as a police officer and how his business has probably maybe saved his life. I'm stretching a little bit, but maybe not. Depending on using the stats that he threw out.

Yeah, we'll let him get into that. In the conversation he breaks down what he was doing before this as a cop and how he got into copywriting and how that transferred into a newsletter and really, really cool story and a lot of great sort of tactical steps that you can follow to create a newsletter for yourself if you'd like to do that. Now, before we jump over with Doberman Dan, I did want to tell you we still have our free book available. Our Evergreen Profits Traffic Playbook. No, Evergreen Traffic Playbook.

We don't even know our own stuff.

I don't even know the name of the title. Evergreen Traffic Playbook. It basically breaks down the exact strategy that we use to drive a bunch of traffic to our website using SEO, PPC and other methods. And it also has a whole bunch of guest experts sharing their best traffic tactics. And you can get it completely for free over@evergreenprofits.com trafficbook correct?

That's right. Where do they go for that?

Evergreenprofits.com trafficbook cool.

Yeah. Now you're going to learn a lot of good stuff and just go grab that thing. Like honestly just, just get it and you're gonna get some aha's. Kind of like what we did here with Dan because the newsletter like that was. We're like, oh man, we should bring that back. Leveraging some content. We already have. You'll learn more about this soon once we have this more concrete and out into the world.

Yeah, yeah. We'll open up the kimono a little later.

But this is. Keep your kimono close, good sir. You stay far away from me. Let's go hang out with Dan and definitely go try, try go get that traffic book@evergreen profits.com traffic. You can tell it's the end of the day. This is when we do our intros after four episode recordings. My brain's a little fried.

All right, Brain doing this. Brain fried. Let's go talk to Doberman Dan.

Brain fry. Hey Dan, how you doing, man? Thanks for hopping on the show.

Doing great. Thanks for inviting me.

So is, is Doberman Dan your real name?

Yes, my mother named me Doberman.

Yeah.

I'm actually glad I have the moniker because my, my last name is really unusual and I was teased ruthlessly about it as a child. Still have trauma issues as a result. So like I stumbled onto this Moniker just by accident, when I used to write, I wrote articles for the bodybuilding market back in the day and I wrote an article about like, comparing Rottweilers to Dobermans because my Doberman at the time got in a fight with a Rottweiler and won because he was lean and fast and the Rottweiler was big, bulky and slow. And the whole article was about how I got. Let myself get big and bulky and decided to go on a program to get Doberman lean. And then I signed as a joke, Doberman Dan. And all those guys started calling me that, like guys in the market and, and Bob Kennedy, Robert Kennedy who owned Muscle Meg International. And then all those guys. So it's stuck ever since. And I'm glad, like, I never have to use my last name and be traumatized about teased, being teased about it.

And I'm going to be honest, I don't even know your last name. I'm curious to ask, but maybe I don't want to put it out there.

Just the mystery is so it's, it's a bastardized French name that, that the, the customs people screwed up the spelling. So it's Gallipoo, spelled G, A, L, L, A P, O, O, which is actually, it is Gallipo is what it's supposed to be, which is a fairly common French Canadian name. But whatever. I guess my great grandfather just stuck with it. He thought, oh, okay, well, I don't want to change it on the paperwork. So just imagine how badly I was teased in school as a kid with a last name ending with poo Poo.

It is true. I got a little chuckle on my end here when you said it, but yeah, I love what you owned. And do you see this as almost like a different character you bring to your business, or is this just you, Dobrim and Daniel?

That's a good question. It's definitely, it's definitely a Persona, but it was even developed before I was in business. So I was in law enforcement for 12 years. I was a cop in the inner city in Dayton, Ohio. And that's just such a. So incongruent to the person that I really am. Like, I was supposed to be a musician, so one of these touchy feely artist types. And then I wind up going into law enforcement. So the Doberman Dam Persona, even though I didn't have a name for it back then, was just my act of, you know, putting on body armor and a uniform and going into that character, playing the character I had to be to survive in that role. And it kind of carried over into business, too.

Yeah, I know. I could see that. I'm just fascinated. We're actually. Matt and I are reading a book by this guy, Guy, Todd Herman, called the Alter Ego Effect. I think it is. And that's why it just kind of resonated, because he's talking about how you can have this other Persona, maybe creating the character you want in business or life, relationships, whatever. It is sort of a way to.

Detach yourself from the Persona that the world gets. It's not who you are with your friends and family, but it's like the Persona that the world gets, kind of.

Yeah.

That's interesting. And you guys are. This is the second time in I think maybe only two weeks that somebody mentioned that book to me. So I got. Get it now.

Yeah, it's good. I mean, I think both of us are just a few chapters in, but so far it's a good concept. But my last name is Wolf, so I grew up being called Wolf Boy throughout school. Like, that was literally my nickname. Everybody called me Wolf Boy.

Aren't kids cruel? Like, Wolf is an easy to spell, easy to pronounce last name. I wouldn't think of making fun of that, but, God, isn't school a great.

It's an interesting place.

Yeah. I just. I embraced it over time. I didn't care.

We all have our own struggles going through there. So. So you know Dayton, Ohio, then. So you're an inner city cop there? Police officer. What was that transition like to copywriter? Was there something in between there?

I didn't. Like I said, I stumbled into that career. Literally the whole life planning was. I was working in security at this department store, and the guys I worked with are like, hey, city of Dayton's given a civil service test for police officers on Tuesday. We're gonna go take it. You want to come along? I'm like, I don't have anything else to do Tuesday. My life planning, you know, And I told them, yeah, this will be interesting to see how I do. But if. If I pass and they call me for an interview, as soon as they ask me about drug use and I'm honest about what I did in high school, they're certainly going to disqualify me. But.

It wasn't that bad. I mean, you know, this was the 80s, early 80s. We. We all smoked a little weed in high school.

You know, hey, there's no judgment here. You're good.

I was in high school in the 90s, and we all smoked a little weed in high school.

That's right.

Great. So nothing changed really then?

No.

Well, what happened was in the academy they told us, okay, back then, Ohio Police and Fire pension was you put in 25 years and you retire with a full service pension. And they told us this is before we graduate. You know, we're already bought into this thing. We're a few days before graduation there. Oh, by the way, the statistics show that.

Almost none of you will make it to 25 years to get a pension. And most of you will be gone on a disability pension of some kind, either mental or physical. But those of you who do last 25 years, and there will be very few.

68% of those will be dead in five years or less after retirement. Now this is when somebody could retire. They started when they were 21. Somebody could retire from the police department in their late 40s. And almost all of them are dead in less than five years. And I thought, huh, future doesn't look too bright here.

Wow, I wonder if those statistics still hold true today. That's just, that's crazy. I never knew that about. And that's specifically in that line of work is that's what they see.

Yeah. What did I have? I have like 35 people in my academy class. And so now we've passed the 30 year mark. Then I got on the police department in 1986. But oh, by the way, the pension plan changed the rules. They're like, oh, yeah, remember how we told you guys after you invested your entire lifetime in this, you could retire at 25? Nah, now it's extended to 30. And then when they reach 30 years, like, yeah, we changed the rules again. You're not going to get 100% pension. You're going to get 60%. If you want to stay another five years though, we'll give you 100. Which is really savvy thinking for them because almost all of them will be dead if they stay 35 years, so they don't have to pay out anything.

Geez, man, that's. And I know that's still happening. I have some buddies in the fire department here, same exact thing happening. So it's, it's rough.

I think that's what got me thinking, like, yeah, I ain't going to do this the rest of my life.

Sure.

And it was only, I was only on, I think a couple years when somebody hit me up for the Amway business. And all I saw was, you reach direct distributor, you make $2,138 a month. And that's what I was making as A cop. And I saw, I thought, ah, okay, there's my ticket out of here. I can do that. And then just work part time and make that and go back to playing music. That's what really got. That's where the transition happened from being a civil servant to getting into business.

That's. That's perfect. And I feel like that, that. Well, what did you take there? So I know you know, copywriting is a skill set now. Is that, did that allow you or did that kind of get you to this kind of thinking of, hey, I gotta figure out how to sell this thing, not piss off my friends and family.

Oh, I pissed off friends and family for sure. So I didn't know anything about copywriting or direct response marketing. And of course we didn't even have online marketing then. And I sucked at the Amway business, that I failed at that and lost a good chunk of change. But it got me at least got me thinking like, okay, I know what I want to do next. I want to have my own business. So I, after that, after failed at that, I failed at another multi level. And I started like for nine years after I got introduced to the concept of having your own business, I started multiple businesses a year, like minimum two, usually three businesses a year, traditional businesses. And they all failed. None of them even got off the ground. None of them even made a dime.

Wow.

And you know, after nine years, you got to figure like, I obviously don't know what the heck I'm doing, I better figure this stuff out. And I figured out that I sucked at marketing and selling. So I found this guy, Dan Kennedy, who was selling this thing called the Magnetic Marketing Kit. And he sold it as kind of like a done for you marketing system for getting customers without you chasing them down. They would come to you. And I bought it for that to try. I'm thinking, well, this will help. Whatever business I was trying to get off the ground that was just bleeding money and not making anything, I bought it for that. But that was the switch there. When I saw what he was doing, I saw the style of marketing he was using to sell stuff and I saw that he sold a bunch of copies in a three ring binder with six cassette tapes for 397 bucks. And he sold it with words on a letter. And I thought, wait a minute, that's cool, that's what I want to do. So I just emulated what he was doing. I didn't buy any books, I didn't buy any courses. I just took what Dan Kennedy was doing to Sell that information product that marketing, managing a marketing system. And I created my own self published bodybuilding course and started selling that mail order with two step ads in the magazines and direct mail. And that was the first business. After nine straight years of multiple serial failures, that was the first business that made any money. And that was the first business. About a year later I was making enough to quit the police department.

Oh, so you were a police officer? Officer that entire time there. Wow.

Yeah, thank God. Or I saw as full time copy part time serial failure entrepreneur. So it's a good thing I had the job or I would have been eating out of dumpsters.

Got it. Yeah. Because I was going to ask what kept you going, but what kept you going is you didn't want to get killed in the line of fire. I get it now. Okay. I'm assuming that was your motivation.

Pretty strong motivator.

Yeah. That's cool. So how did the newsletter come about the Doberman Dan newsletter that you do now?

So when I that first business I started in the bodybuilding niche that was initially an info product business for the first year and then I discovered hey, these guys want to buy supplements. So I started reselling other people's supplements and then I started my own, my own line and labeled it, you know, with my brand and sold supplements and there's been several businesses since then, all started with direct response marketing and my own copy. So there's been.

Several other info product businesses and different niches. There's been say I started another bodybuilding supplement business in 2004. I've started actually a couple different supplement businesses and sold them and.

Like I said, multiple info product businesses. And then let me see, was it 2011? I'd been publishing marketing stuff online not as a business just because I want to like get some lessons out of my head and you know, share it with people, hopefully help them not make the same dumb mistakes I have. So I've been publishing online and then December 2010 I decided, you know what, I'm going to start a paid paper and ink newsletter like Gary Halbert used to have. And so I launched that as a side venture. But at the time still my full time business was the body. The second bodybuilding supplement business I started. So that's how the newsletter started, just as a part time thing initially.

That's pretty much what happened to us. I would say too because we were chatting right before we hit record that we had a print newsletter as well a couple years back. Now lasted 13 months. And you said you are at what issue now.

So I just started my. Is it ninth year? My ninth year, yeah. I just finished issue 100.

Wow, that's amazing because just the 13 months we were in it, it was amazing. But it's consistency and it can be a grind if you don't have your system straight. We figured it out a little bit, but kind of like what you were saying, it was a different part of. It was a side part of the business. It was never really the main thing.

Yeah, we were running an agency at the time as well. So it was kind of a. Trying to get agency clients but then also showing people what we were doing as an agency.

That's smart, but. And it sounds so easy in theory, doesn't it? Oh, just, you know, put some words on paper every month and it's hard to write a monthly newsletter.

It's a grind, man.

Yeah, we actually had a hard time. This is, this is honestly the truth. We had a hard time keeping it short. We had some issues that were like 45 pages long because we just get on a roll with what we were typing and we actually, we started to get feedback that they were getting too long.

They always got longer.

For whatever reason. It was hard for us to be concise in like a nice neat like 14 page letter. So we ended up sending out like these books basically by the end of the thing.

Oh, geez.

Oh, that's funny. And people complained it was getting too long. Isn't that funny?

Like, sorry, we're giving you so much. What are some struggles that you've had with keeping consistent with the newsletter? Some, some first things that just pop out.

Oh geez, man. Like if we want to get to the root cause of the issue, it's probably just a screwed up head issues, you know, the listening to the voice in your head that the one that probably 80% of the stuff he says, at least according to psychologists, is negative. So that boy, that voice just messing with you, you know, like.

It'S the middle of the month and you should have started 14 days ago. But you know, that listen to that voice is like, ah, you know. Yeah, people don't want to hear from you. What are you going to share that's new and different than what everybody else is saying? You know, like always just all you hear from that voice is discouragement. Right, right.

That's, that's. I mean that's fascinating to hear that you are in it this deep and you are so talented with your experience and all that. And you have the exact same struggles that we had. We always found Ourselves the last week, we're like, oh, crap, deadlines here. Shit. We got to write. We have three days and always turned out great.

We always write that letter within like 48 hours, 72 hours leading up to like the printer deadline.

Right.

But I love it. But when you're, you know, sometimes that's when you produce your best stuff. When you're under the gun and you don't have options to goof off.

Correct. And that's what we noticed. So is that kind of a constant theme for you then? Is it more later in the month is typically your best work is done?

It seems like not all the time. For a while, I was actually ahead three issues. Wow. But then probably for the past year.

So I used to dedicate part of each day for the entire month writing the newsletter. And I found a little bit more efficient system for organizing my writing time at least. So now there are certain days devoted to it, but there's still those times where it's blown off and the regular days are blown off. And then when you realize my deadline to get the stuff to the letter shop is the 25th, and you realize, oh, man, it's the 19th or the 20th, and I got a handful of days to do what I should have been doing all month. But, you know, sometimes it's good to be under pressure. Sometimes it just forces you to focus and you come up with your best stuff and make note. I mean, there's no doubt about it. Your subscribers are expecting you to hit it out of the park every month. Like, they're not going to cut you any slack. Most of them won't. If you kind of have to half ass your way through it that month because, you know, you. You're fighting with somebody and you had a bad month, you were all bummed out and you were late. They just won't accept that.

How do you make. How do you prevent that from happening? Like, how do you do, you know, if you're like, this could be better or this isn't going to resonate.

Huh. That's funny you asked that. There have been months where it was the 25th, and I was doing one last checkover before I sent it to the letter shop, and I realized.

This sucks. This is not gonna cut it. And, like, there's nothing in here that's salvageable. I gotta start all over.

Wow.

So you did.

But, you know. Yeah.

You do. I guess you do what you gotta do, you know.

Yeah.

It's kind of funny if, if you can get in the flow no matter how, whatever Head trash you're dealing with or you're under the gun or, you know, or, or you're, you know, your kid is sick or your dog is sick or whatever, something seems to happen. I mean, once you're in the groove of producing it and then once you're in the actual flow of doing it, even if you, you started out like, I have no idea what to say at a yada yada, you just start putting stuff on paper. As long as you just keep moving forward, the good stuff usually comes out.

Yeah.

One of the things we noticed with our letter too is there was times where we'd write an issue and we'd be like, I don't know if this one's going to hit that well this month. I don't know if people are going to really like it. And a lot of times the ones where we were sort of uncertain about were some of the more popular ones. And I think it was because of that, that sort of. We kind of forget maybe we're more advanced on some of these topics than some of the people who are subscribing. So when we talked about some of the stuff that we thought maybe this is going to be too basic for them, that was the stuff that hit because they really needed the basics and they hadn't had it yet. So, you know, there was, there was. We always kind of never knew what sort of response we were going to get when we press send, basically.

Yeah.

That's an interesting observation. You know something else I found, like, even advanced people when, when they're presented advanced information, like they understand it. The, the rookies might not understand it, but the advanced people do, but that just because they understand it doesn't mean they're doing it, you know, and the same with the basics, like, even when you write something you, you think is basic, you know, for, for some people it's like earth shattering. It's a breakthrough. And other people who already know it are usually not doing it. And so it's like a reminder to them like, oh yeah, these guys are right. I need to get back to doing these basics.

That is an interesting way to look at it and it's almost freeing to all of us who feel like we have to, yeah, keep getting advance, keep giving this crazy ninja trick thing. But it's like, no, stick to the basics. Maybe sprinkle some of that stuff in there as well, but always have some basics in there, the core fundamentals, for the exact same reason you just said there. I think that's smart.

Exactly. Plus another thing you're dealing with is.

You just don't. Most people don't value their own stuff or their own intellectual property because you're, you're used to it, you're accustomed to it. It's part of you. You know, it's like to you, no big deal. But to other people, like, it is a big fricking deal. So, I mean, that's pretty common too. You write something, you think, yeah, yeah, I guess this is okay for most people. Get it. It's going to be like awesome.

Yeah.

And that's, that was our big. That's so a lot of our. What we did back in the day, you know, in the newsletter, has now translated to this podcast. Yeah, this is now our out.

And exactly what you just said. Matt and I will have these one on one conversations. No guests. We call them therapy sessions. And those have now become some of the most popular episodes. And we're not planning for those. Typically, sometimes we walk away. We're like, really? We're going to put that out. Okay. They end up being more popular and they resonate. Yeah.

So I'm curious, do you have any sort of process for coming up with ideas and consistently staying fresh with your topics?

I just stay like. So I read a lot of stuff on a lot of different topics and I have my own personal interests that I keep up on and read about.

But.

I'm always keeping my finger on the pulse of the business I'm in. So online marketing, I work with clients and even though my own businesses in the past, a lot of them have been health, fitness, bodybuilding stuff, I've had businesses in other niches, business to business niches, and I've worked with clients in several different categories. So like, I keep, I just keep my finger on the pulse of those and, you know, just see what pops up, see what trends are happening. This was, this was a while ago, but I was looking to start a new thing. Like I said, typical serial kitchen table entrepreneur. Starting businesses is fun for me. Not so much running them, but starting is fun. So I was starting something new and I thought, I want to do something in a market I've never done anything with. And I was just reading through the news.

And they were talking about scrapbooking, how scrapbooking is. This is, like I said, this is a while back had caught on like wild. And there were all these stores selling scrapbooking supplies and I thought, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try selling something to these guys. So I figured like, huh, what can I sell? So I developed this. This manual about how to make money with scrapbooking, which was simply, you know, creating scrapbooks for other people. But, you know, so that whole idea, that entire business, just came from me reading the news. So I think the answer to your question is I just always have my antenna up. And sometimes an opportunity like that just jumps out. Other times just stuff gets crammed into my brain, and later it pops out, or the stuff that gets crammed in gets all mashed together and synthesized into something new that pops out.

That's actually an interesting way to hear. A lot of successful guys like Elon Musk will read books in totally different fields and then essentially synthesize together some new invention or way of approaching business. And it's amazing. So is there a process that you take to record these thoughts and then kind of extract those into your newsletter, or is it just literally from your brain?

I've got what I call fodder files. So when anything, even if it seems unrelated just for some reason, clicks with me, and it will either go into the DDL fodder file. DDL stands for Dobermandan letter. Or it'll go in my podcast fodder file.

And I go through those ideas or things or articles or whatever.

Every so often to see if something will pop out. And oftentimes it does, you know, and that'll become like, the entire theme for a newsletter, or it'll become the theme for a podcast.

That makes sense. I like that. So that's. It's essentially your. Yeah, your Swipe files. Fodder file is that. It sounded like you bent down. Is that like a file folder? Or is it literally like an Evernote file or something you have that you're just always keeping up with?

Well, I got folders in my Gmail that I use, but I just. I still do paper files, you know, and I actually print the stuff out and put it in the file folder because for some reason, it sure makes sense in theory to organize stuff, like with the folders in Gmail, but that stuff, like, goes missing or is just, for some reason, goes off the radar. The stuff in hard copy, I refer back to, at least.

That's funny, because I heard you move away a little from the microphone. I'm like, I think he's going through his file. Nailed it.

I was opening the drawer.

How cool is that?

That's awesome. So with the newsletter, is the topic of the newsletter, is it pretty much always copywriting, or do you kind of vary the topics month to month?

I vary the topics.

I honestly don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think if I could step back and look at this objectively. I was my own client, so I was advising a client like me. I would tell them.

Do one of two things or both of these two things. Like, first of all, plant your flag somewhere with a market that's easily reachable. So plant your flag there and say, this is going to be a newsletter for whatever it is physical therapist, and also decide on your superpower, whatever that is, and then talk about that theme every month. I did not do that.

People even asked me when I launched my newsletter. Oh, that's interesting. Who's it for? I said, well, anybody who uses direct response, marketing and copy online and or offline, it just doesn't matter. And like that. That's stupid because that market is so broad, they're really hard to reach and super expensive to reach. That's why I say plant your flag somewhere specific and your theme be the same thing every month. It's your superpower, because what you're doing, you're showcasing your superpower for your specific audience every month. And what I'm doing, first of all, targeting this way too broad. And then second of all, I'm just pretty much writing about whatever I want to now. The topics are always anything having to do with direct marketing, online marketing and copy. But then I write some.

Like attitude stuff, you know, some get your head straight stuff. And it's funny, like some of those I've written and I finished and I was really nervous about like, oh crap, people are going to hate this. They're going to quit in droves because I didn't talk about marketing. And those are the ones I usually get the most feedback about. Positive feedback.

We actually did a little bit of that. That was more my side is like, oh, I'll write a little bit more about the mind study. I think I talked breath work in one of the issues and yeah, just like what you said, like, I don't know this little in right field, but we're going to throw it out there because it's something I actually do. And what do you know, people wrote in, said, I really love that idea. I never thought of that.

Isn't that interesting?

We even had like issues where we. And we talked about like investing strategies and like, and like setting money aside and stuff. And we're like, this is definitely not going to land. And people loved it.

No, that's so cool. I remember when I was a subscriber to Gary Halbert's Newsletter. All of a sudden, he just got on this investing tangent, and all he taught about was how he's found that the stock of companies can go up or down based on the news that comes out, the press releases that come out that morning or the night before or something like that. And he taught about that exclusively for months, probably because he was selling a product on it. But. But his core audience, it just didn't matter. They just stuck with him. And like, oh, Gary's talking about investing this month. And probably the same thing with you guys. You got a core audience of people who love you, and if you're sharing something that you really believe is going to be helpful to them, although it might be slightly off topic, they not only stick with you, but they appreciate it.

Yeah, and that's what we've. We've come to gather of ourselves in this podcast as an example, is that we're pretty good generalist. We can hang with a. With a lot of these experts. We bring in enough to, you know, talk the talk because we've probably dabbled or experimented and then, you know, pass the results somehow to our folks, either through audio or newsletter or something else. But, you know, being those generalists, it's kind of helped us out because we know there's a lot of opportunities that come from, you know, getting people interested in something. We could follow up all sorts of different content offers and whatever it might be.

Well, we've just recently started getting smart about it and actually segmenting people based on what their interests are, too, so that we can start tailoring their messages a little better. But, yeah, we're.

That.

That was some of the. One of the things that we've always sort of beat ourselves up over is that we're such generalists. You know, we've got expertise in SEO and paid traffic and copywriting and some direct mail, and, you know, the list goes on and on and on. We've pretty much experimented with it all, and that was actually something that we used to beat ourselves up over. But this podcast has been now our outlet to literally talk about all of it.

So how would you, Dan, how would you recommend someone? Or would you recommend. Because I know you haven't really done it yourself. Is from a generalist to planting a flag. Do you think that's always the case?

What are your thoughts there?

So here's what I see. Like, like I said, my. My audience is too broad.

Yeah.

I think. I mean, I've been making it work. My gosh, I've been doing this nine years. But you Know, who knows what I could have been if I would have done it a little better. My audience is broad. My, my expertise, even though copywriting is one of them, you know, like, you know, my expertise is various things. So I'm kind of somewhat of a generalist too. And then I look at somebody like Ben Saddle, friend of mine and colleague. So his, he's planted his flag as the email marketing expert. So his target audience is. It's not super niched, like you know, saying hey, this is just for accountants. It's. But it is, it's niched in a way that it's for people who sell with email. So that's kind of broad. But him establishing his superpower as one thing, that's what I hear and what he's told me has worked out really well for him, you know, and then I know people that plant their flag in one area really narrow, like a one no guy. One guy.

No.

Only works with cosmetic dentists, but he's a generalist that works there, you know. And then I've seen people plant their flag with one just narrow niche like that. And their specialty is only one little narrow thing. So I guess I see people making it work in different ways.

Yeah, so. So with a two part question, would you recommend somebody to start a newsletter as, as you know, a part of their business or as the whole business? And then second part of that question, if so, like what, what sort of advice would you give somebody that's just trying to get one going? What would be your, your initial? You know, learn this lesson so you don't have to go through what I went through.

That's a good question. A lot of business people probably should have a newsletter. So how I discovered the power of it was that the Last Bodybuilding, the second bodybuilding supplement business that I started in 2004, I was getting great results on the front end, getting people in on one of those free bottle plus shipping and handling offers. But so this was back when they allowed you to do that with supplements. So it was forced continuity. But so many people were quitting, they get the free bottle and quit and like their first continuity wouldn't even hit yet. So that was killing me. So I thought, I gotta fix this. And I added a newsletter. I put it on my site for sale year subscription for something like 79 bucks. But then with the auto ship, I included that as a bonus and really played it up and built the value that you get this free newsletter every month. You stay a member of our auto ship. And I knew what content they would go crazy over. So I made sure every issue just had great content. It was really hot button stuff for them. And all of a sudden a stick rate of 1 or less in my supplement continuity program got up to average of four months, which doesn't sound like much, but in the supplement industry that's like probably two times, a little more than two times more than what's typically standard.

Wow.

So I thought I said this is interesting. I tried to take the newsletter away in various forms to save the money of sending it, you know, being pennywise and pound foolish. And I tried to replace it with I'll send it in PDF, it'll look exactly the same is the print one, but I'll send it an email instead. And then the retention rate, my continuity tanked back to zero. You know, okay, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to have a special membership site for the people and they can get the newsletter there.

The retention rate still was horrid. And I'm like, okay, well I see what's going on here. I added the print newsletter back in and all of a sudden retention goes way back up. And that's when I first discovered it. So so basically I gave that newsletter away free to active autoship customers. And then when I saw what it was producing, I started giving it away free to customers who'd bought any product within the previous whatever it was, 60 days or 90 days, and I had an insert in every issue selling something. So I made money and had a really high profit margin on that newsletter every month in that type of business with a free newsletter. So, you know, any business that, any business can use it like that, you know, as far as starting it as a business itself, it depends on what business you're in because.

Probably in most cases you're gonna have a really hard time making money just by selling subscriptions. So it needs to be like part of your platform. Yeah, a paid part. You're gonna get paid for it, but there's got to be other stuff like you sell back end products or you offer a really high price done for you service. So the newsletter becomes not just the continuity income, but it becomes a way of generating clients for your high priced stuff and services.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Now just for the listeners who have never experienced anything with direct mail or newsletters or anything, I'm just kind of curious to chat about the logistics a little bit. Like what does it typically cost? How long is the newsletter? What does it typically cost to ship one out? You know, I'M just kind of curious about all those logistical elements that a lot of people would probably be curious about.

Mine is 16 pages now, and it's been that way for a long time. My first year, like they kept getting longer and longer because I had so much to say on a topic. And I got the same feedback as you guys, like, hey, this is too long. And I thought, okay, that's interesting. I feel like I'm over delivering on my promise, but they don't want it because they're suffering overwhelm. So for me, 16 pages seems to have worked out to be what the ideal length is every month. And that bodybuilding business I was telling you about, I think that was only four pages. Four pages of content and then an insert, which was a sales pitch, but.

So that's kind of an extra.

Yeah. So mine are 16 pages, black and white. It's as easy as sending an email. Just every month I email the artwork, the newsletter in PDF and the list to the letter shop. So that's it. That's the only work I have to do. And for 16 pages, black and white stuck in a 9 by 12 envelope, posters stuck on there, the addressing, all that stuff, I am going from memory here, don't quote, but.

I think it's three bucks and change.

That sounds about right. Back when we were doing it as well.

Yeah.

Because we had the same kind of setup, black and white, when it was 16 pages, but the same size envelope. All that stuff sounds about right. Yeah. Per customer, per mailing piece.

Yeah. Until it started expanding into like 40 pages. And then towards our last like three or four issues, we actually started putting like these hardcovers on them so that like they looked more polished and professional. And then we started adding USB sticks.

In and then books occasionally.

We were just like totally destroying our profit margin as time went on. But.

And that's probably the overwhelm like you said, Dan. I mean, yeah, we thought we were like, oh, great, we're over delivering. And I know people appreciated it and they recognized it, but at the same time, I'm sure the consumption rate went way down too.

Yeah, it's kind of ironic, but that's exactly what I discovered also.

Hmm. Well, I love the, I love the usage of a newsletter. So for folks listening just with the, with the subscription type offer, the stickiness of it. And I could totally see that because, you know, even if it's just a handful of pages, you know, five, six pages or whatever it is, you know, of great content, but if that's an expectation that these Folks are getting and it's going to be in their mailbox. I could see that working for almost any type of continuity product out there, not just a physical supplement or something like he had.

I agree. And one of the things it's great at is building a relationship because you basically show up in somebody's home every month and have a personal conversation with them and they're expecting your arrival. And so.

It works so well for that that it's a great way to establish new business. In fact, Dan Kennedy told me this.

Most people think he started his newsletter, whatever it was, 40 plus years ago. And yes, it was a paid newsletter. But what he said, what most people didn't know, is when he wanted to plant his flag somewhere, he'd find the key players in that market and people he wanted to work with. And he gave him a complimentary subscription. But he didn't send him a letter saying, I'm giving you a complimentary subscription. He just sent the new subscriber welcome package as if they paid. And his point was, well, those are high producers that he's targeting and high producers are almost always readers and they always subscribe to a bunch of different publications. And when they get it, they most likely think, what's, oh, a new subscriber welcome page. And they say, oh, I guess I paid for this. And they start reading it. And that's how he's started in multiple markets. That's how he established himself, planted his flag there and then started getting high fee clients from there with comping newsletter subscriptions to the key players in those markets.

How cool is that? And if you're thinking costs like you were just saying, for 16 pages, three, four bucks right there for rough estimates, hell of a marketing, targeted marketing, you're going right to the person, you got to get their email or their address and details, all that fun stuff. But I'm sure you could figure that out or ask the right people. And yeah, your marketing, that's your marketing cost. And just think of the benefit, the upside of doing that. It's an amazing strategy.

Yeah, and in today's world too, you know, we did a little bit of that kind of thing with our newsletter where we just kind of sent them to people that we thought were kind of influencers in our market. And every once in a while you'd see people on Facebook or Instagram or whatever showing a picture of their newsletter going, hey, thanks guys for the free newsletter. And it was just like, you know, we got a little extra promotional boost out of that too.

That's great. I love that, you know, as much as I love online marketing. I've been selling online.

Since 96. Like that was that bodybuilding business I had. I was selling info products offline and mail order, but then I had them online in either late 96, early 97. So I was selling info products and supplements shortly after that online. So I've seen online progress from the wild wild west days to what it is now, and I love it. But if I wanted to plant my flag in a new market, like, you know, if, if we're talking business to business stuff, like all of a sudden I want to market to.

Whatever owners of construction companies or, or even something even broader like plastic surgeons or whatever, I wouldn't plant my flag online. Not initially. I do exactly what Dan Kennedy was talking about. I'd find the key players that I'd want to work with and I just comp them a newsletter subscription, you know, and like send them the welcome package. Here's your new subscriber welcome page. And every month and watch clients for whatever high fee service I'm offering just pop up out of that. It's not, it's not immediate, so it's not the quickest way to do it, but it's one of the best ways to do it.

Yeah.

And we may have some sort of mechanism built into our podcast where we collect every single guest's address. You may have noticed when you registered me on the podcast, we asked for an address and a shirt size because we send every guest a shirt. But we're also keeping addresses for that type of thing. If we ever start up our newsletter again, our first handful of subscribers is going to be our past podcast guests.

You know, you'd be getting one. Dan.

Smart.

Yeah, and I love what you were saying is plant the flag. Ideally, if you could do it offline with a newsletter form or any type of content, like a wow box, I would imagine this can come in any shapes or forms. And as long as you know your cost, you see it as a marketing expense or investment. And I would imagine, like, even if you don't have this person's perfect address, if it's just the office address, plastic surgeon, let's say, but it has a new subscriber welcome package or whatever it is, just make it look like them personalized, then that's gonna get to them and it's going to get opened. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, no doubt.

Do you have, do you have any team members or are you a one man show?

For all intents and purposes, a one man Show.

I don't have any employees. My wife works with me in our business. So, you know, my business is the Doberman Dan business that the newsletter is part of it. Well, so, you know, I call it the Marketing Camelot. And the newsletter is one of the benefits of being a knight in the Marketing Camelot. So my business is. That's the subscription business. And then I also occasionally offer products on the back end about marketing stuff. And then clients done, you know, whatever you want to call them, done for you clients or clients, copywriting clients who pop up out of that universe. So that's my business and it's just me and my wife, no employees. I do have a couple.

Whatever you're.

Going to call them, independent contractors. One person for customer service and also acts as a personal assistant and helping me schedule stuff.

And the only other independent contractor is a guy who keeps up on the maintenance and changes on my websites.

Gotcha. I love it. Lean business. Yeah, that's all you need.

Now, I know we're kind of getting tight on time here. There's one last little topic I want to touch on. You mentioned your podcast. Are you still. You're still doing a podcast now?

Yes, it's weekly. It's called off the Chain with Doberman Dan.

Very cool. So what have you found has been the benefits of having a podcast? Why have you kept doing a podcast?

My wife and I were just talking about that. It's really hard to directly attribute revenue to it.

Because somebody stumbles upon the podcast or whatever and they listen to it. And maybe I pitch my book on there or pitch the Marketing Camelot. I don't pitch it, but I tell them to go to a website to check out my book or my Marketing Camelot. And so if somebody buys the book or signs up for the Marketing Camelot, there's no tracking mechanism that I can institute that'll show me they came from the podcast. But I can attribute a couple copywriting clients that it was like the thing that sealed the deal. They listened to it for a while to figure out that, you know, I knew what that guy was talking about, and that's what pushed them to contact me and hire me over any other copywriter. So, you know, I can attribute that stuff to it. But like I said, it's difficult to directly attribute revenue. But what I have found is that it's just another great part of your platform to build a relationship with your existing people. So if that's all it does, if it doesn't attract new people to you, it just builds a Relationship with your existing people. It's worth it.

Yeah. Now, do you do interviews or is yours. Are you teaching on every episode?

It's gone back and forth. I got on a streak of where it was just nothing but interviews. It started out with just me and then a few interviews.

Mixed in there. And then for some reason I got on this track that it was all interviews. And then I went back to just lately it's been nothing but me. And I think we got one interview scheduled for next week, so. And. And if you listen to it like it's. I've transitioned into new stuff. I started talking about marketing stuff, and now mostly the thing that I'm most fascinated with, and I probably talk about most on the podcast is, is mindset stuff. So, you know, and I've never done.

That. I can. I can't even recall one incident where I've ever done any hard teaching. It was like it was just an interview or if it was just me, it was more infotainment and mindset stuff. I've never done a podcast like, okay, here's how you write, you know, a high converting piece of copy because frankly, like, that's how I support my two bad habits of sleeping indoors and eating. So, you know, if you want me to share that, you got to pay me. So the. I'd say the podcast is more relationship building with infotainment.

Right. That is exactly what we try to harness here on the podcast too, because we'll just go bored out of our minds recording these things if it's just street content, no jokes or no, you know, just cool conversations. So I think, yeah, that is key for everything. And, you know, translating that to your writing as well helps so much. I know when we were doing our newsletter again, it's like entertain ourselves. And I'm pretty sure our listeners, our readers are going to be entertained as well if we're having a good time.

Yeah, I remember I actually used to be subscribed to Ben Settle's newsletter for, I don't know, a year or so, and he used to always talk about the concept of.

Some of the highest paid people in the world are entertainers, and educators are usually fairly low paid professors. You're probably better off trying to lean more towards the entertainer side than the education side. And it's been years since I read his stuff, so I'm probably butchering the philosophy, but I remember him talking about that quite a bit.

No, that sounds like you nailed his point exactly.

It's working out all right, Dan. So I want to wrap it up here and. Well, I'm curious. So where do you see yourself headed, you know, in the next handful of years? Is the newsletter going to be around? Are you starting more businesses? Just want to. I'm curious.

That's a good question. I'm always thinking about those things. I'm going to assume I'll still be doing the newsletter because I still enjoy it. And in spite of all the suffering that it causes me, I still enjoy it. I must be a sick, sick person to enjoy that. So, you know, and I've got some really great nights, as you see. I don't call them subscribers. They're knights in the marketing. Camelot. And, you know, I get really cool feedback from them and I've met several of them in person. They're really cool people. So I expect to keep doing that as far as starting new businesses. Yeah, that's probably going to happen, even if I say it won't.

Probably going to happen when and where? I don't know. But right now I'm just very fond of selling to the affluent, selling to people with money, and selling expensive stuff. So any new project will be selling to people with money and expensive stuff. The more expensive, the better. If I can figure out how to sell a yacht with a sales letter, that's what I'll be selling.

Oh, I love it when that happens. Let us know. We'll have to recap how you did it.

And we actually met a lady at an event recently who sells yachts for a living. So maybe we can make the connection.

Singapore or something. Yeah.

Oh, cool.

Awesome. Well, so what are. Is there a book that comes to mind that you just would love to share? Something that resonated, hit home to you? Maybe you refer back to it pretty often.

Well, if I tell you the most recent one, you'll think like, huh, what? But you know, a book I really enjoyed and learned a lot from was a fiction book. Well, when it was. When it was written in whatever it was, late 40s, early 50s, it was fiction. Unfortunately, what it wrote about is now nonfiction, but it's Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Have you guys ever read that?

No, but I've heard the description very similar to what you said. Yeah. So I will now after this.

Yeah, I've never read that either.

No, it's a tone, man. It's like a doorstop. But I. It's been a long time since I read it. I should reread it. But I. I really liked, like, the characters came alive for me, so that was cool. But it talked about it basically talked about how tough it is to build anything, to create anything. In that instance, you know, it was talking about business, which I can really relate to. And just, first of all, how tough it is to be a creator.

Second of all, how tough it is to just run a business. How many things are against you. And as soon as you start making a little money.

The bloodsuckers come out of the woodwork and they will never be satisfied until they suck you dry and you're dead.

And it just was a real wake up call. Like, I'm reading it as fiction written in the early 50s and realizing, holy crap, what she wrote about as fiction has come true. And it's like, you know, man, we entrepreneurs, we people create stuff. I mean, this is a lone gig, man. We are truly alone. Like, the majority, the 99% do not understand us. And even worse, a lot of them just see us as a meal ticket. And they're just out, specifically the government. They're just out to bleed you dry. And that was. I really as sick as that. I really enjoyed that book.

Well, it's. Yeah, you're in. Good. You know, you're not alone when you're reading that. You're like, oh, okay, I'm not alone in this universe, you know, of creators out there, entrepreneurs, however you want to apply it.

Yeah.

So that. No, that already resonates the way that you just described it. And I will pick that up.

If it's a giant doorstop of a book, that'll probably be one I'll do on Audible.

Okay. Don't watch the movie on. There's a. There's a three parter movie either on Amazon or Netflix. It sucks. Now you close.

Thanks for saving us a ton of time. Probably cool. So to wrap it up, because I know you got to get rolling. What are. What's the best place that people can check out your newsletter? Podcast everything you have in the mix?

The best case to come into my world is on my website@dobermandan.com and so you'll see a couple things there. You'll see what I call my just. I call it the JSTDT business model, which stands for just sell the damn thing. You'll see that in action as soon as you opt in. And then if you opt in, every Saturday I send a notice about a new podcast that's published and there's a ton of articles on that site there too. So that's probably the best way to get into my world.

Awesome. Dobermandan.com, we'll link that in the show notes as well as some other stuff you mentioned throughout here. Matt, anything else before we sign off?

No, we covered a ton of ground. Thanks so much for hanging out with us and just opening up with us.

Yeah, man. Appreciate the time.

Oh, yeah, my pleasure. No, I appreciate the invite. I had a good time. I hope you guys did too.

Of course. Absolutely. Sweet. Well, we'll stay in touch and yeah, we'll let you know what we hear back feedback about this one.

Please do.

Awesome, Dan. Well, have a good one and yeah, we'll talk soon.

Thanks, guys. Bye.

Bye.

Thanks, everybody for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to, and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes.

Thanks for listening.

Go get it, Wiki wiki. We love you.