Will Wang - The Cold Outreach Strategy Guide

One of the things that we do, my team have kind of built out for this is just really deep research and deep personalization. Because a lot of the people, they just don't put the effort in. Right.

It's.

For us, the personalization is the 20% that gets 80% of the results. For example, if James had introduced us and I was trying to get on your podcast, I'd actually go through and listen to five or 10 episodes and reference the exact episodes and what I liked about each of the episodes. And then I look at, well, where do I think I can bring the value to your audience? Or what are you trying to get out of your podcast that I can help you with and really make sure the value is driven towards what you're trying to do rather than, you know, I want to come into the podcast just to. Just to sell some shit like that just doesn't work.

Right. This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float Shark with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf.

Jo.

Hey, what up?

Yay. Yay, yay.

Are you excited?

I am. What are you excited about this episode? Yeah.

This one.

That's the one we're talking about. I'm pretty sure it's not the last one. That one was a good one, too.

They're all good.

Let's focus on this one.

We don't make bad episodes, Joe.

No, that's not in our DNA. Not at all. So today.

We'Re on a copywriting. We're on an email, cold email outreach. Really? Not just email, actually. We're just doing all sorts of. This is like basically the guy we're chatting with just crafts interesting campaigns to get the attention of folks.

Yeah, it's like getting on people's radars, right?

Through.

Through cold email, through direct mail, through reaching out on LinkedIn, through sending people lumpy mail, which, you know, who does that?

Will Wang does that.

Will Wang does that.

And also do a lot of successful companies. So he breaks it down how to do that.

Yeah, so we cover a lot of ground on this one in order to get people's attention on your business. And I even asked him some, like, very specific things, like let's say I need to get more affiliates to promote my product, because we do, if you're an affiliate, promote our shit. But let's say you need more affiliates to promote your product. I asked him, how would you do a cold outreach campaign to get more affiliates to promote your product? Or let's say you're an e commerce business that has, like a, you know, low ticket Dollar items. How would you leverage cold outreach to do that?

Yeah, if you have a big ticket product or service or something. Like even if you are a big firm, you know, or if you have clients that are a big firm of you, you know, are a big firm and you're a consultant of them or something like, there's so many strategies here. You could swipe that. It was literally just like rattled off strategies.

Yeah.

So Will Wang, that's when I go back. Will Wang is who we're chatting with today and he's over in Australia. He is a buddy of James Schramko. He's a buddy of ours. He's a friend of us all. And Charlie Valor, who's a member of ours too. That's right. Shout out to Charlie Valor. So Will Wang's just awesome. He's kind of like a behind the scenes guy running his own agency, Growth Labs, with a Z and with a zed. A Zed, as they say in Australia. That's right. It's official.

Yeah.

He's just crafted all these campaigns and it's what's kind of cool. Is he. He basically, he kind of claims he's. This is all just basically ways to sell with using modalities and stories and things like that that just aren't commonly done. Yeah. And I don't know, he's perfected it. He's super creative and he doesn't do it with like. I mean, he basically is streamlined this thing to a point. Like he runs an agency. He made it like a lifestyle agency now too. So he breaks down a lot of that. I think that's. That's how we started things out. So if you're an agency and you're kind of like, oh man, agency life. Well, yeah, that can be a thing. But he's actually shaped it and he's given some resources and stuff on how you can do the same. Yep.

He's also got a podcast too, called the Content Driven Business that's available at content driven business.com, his agency. If you want to work with him on cold email and copywriting and the various services, that's@growth labs.com with a Z. So go check that out. And we took notes on this episode.

We're always taking notes. And this one, as always, is one that you're going to definitely need the notes on. They might be longer than normal, I don't know.

Yeah, there's a lot of cool tactical stuff in this one. And if you text the word comp to fugs plus fugs plus f U.

G S plus yeah.

Should we keep that going or no?

Yeah, but I'll also give you the number just in case you're confused. The phone number to text to is 38470. That is 38470 and text the word comp. Comp is what Matt said. Matt sounded like a horn there.

That's like. I was gonna say you sound like a cruise ship, but now you sound like a honking. I don't know. Duck. Duck, yes, yes, like a cartoon duck. Oh, you just stepped on a duck comp.

Yeah, there you go.

That's what it sounds like. So if you text that number and the word to that number that is. You will get the notes. I always get that backwards because it's kind of weird.

But text comp to 38470.

Yeah, you'll get them notes. So.

Or go to hustleandflowchart.com comp comp.

Hustleinfloatchore.com comp. So you could do that. And this episode also was sponsored by.

Our buddies over at LinkedIn, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions.

So that LinkedIn is pretty dang cool. You've heard us mention it. We've actually talked about it in this episode as well.

Yeah, you'll hear it. You'll actually hear a fairly in depth conversation around LinkedIn and using LinkedIn ads in this episode. So it's a great episode for LinkedIn to be sponsoring.

It's very true. So Will actually did line out a bunch of things about how he uses LinkedIn in his follow up or actually his discovery, you know, like first touch. But also follow ups, he's using organic. But this sponsorship, like what LinkedIn's really trying to push here is their, their ads network. And it's, it's interesting and you'll Will's perspective, but also it's, it's a time I think you can jump in at a, at a good time with LinkedIn because things are growing really well. And it's also a place you can reach the right professionals at the right time.

Yeah, and I actually, I'm realizing right now that in the middle of the episode I gave you like a way to go and get a hundred free dollars of LinkedIn credits.

You did.

And I think I said it wrong. I'm actually looking at the copy right now and I said it wrong. So this is the real URL here. So you can try LinkedIn for yourself. They're giving you a free hundred dollars LinkedIn ad credit to launch your first campaign. You Simply gotta visit LinkedIn.com flowchart that's LinkedIn.com flowchart on the show. I actually said LinkedIn.com hustle, but it's LinkedIn.com flowchart.

Terms do apply. Terms and conditions apply. But make sure. Go. Go get your $100. It's free@LinkedIn.com flutter flowchart. Yeah, ignore that other URL that comes later in this episode because it's incorrect. We actually. Fun story. We did try to get that one, actually, but it was taken. So true story.

So somebody else is going to get credit for that if you go to it. So don't go to it.

Yeah, so go check it out. You're going to love it. There's a ton of people, 62 million decision makers or something like that. Probably more by the time we've done this on LinkedIn. So, yeah, use some strategies that Will talks about and then use this free credit. You'll love it. See ya. And let's go over to Mr. Will. Hey, Will. Welcome to the show, man.

Hey, guys. Thanks for having me on.

Of course. Yeah. We share mutual buddies and friends and, yeah, James Szramko being the number one, the common thread.

The common thread here. James is amazing.

Yeah, he is. I mean, he's just a super connector and just a good guy all around. I think you've been on his show super fast business quite a bit, it looked like. Right.

Yeah. We've actually got a whole series on there, the Get Client series. So, yeah, I've jumped in there. I think it's up to four or five episodes now where I kind of lay out some of our processes. James been the ultimate salesperson a good way. Having run sales teams, he shared so much value in terms of his selling processes, too. So, yeah, it's been a whole bunch of fun.

Yeah, man. Yeah. We've learned a ton there. And then just met great people throughout the whole years of being with them. So it's really cool, man. And we're talking, like, it's kind of funny with all these times we record podcasts. Like today we've been talking a lot about copy and angles and storytelling and da, da, da. And then we're like, oh, this is exactly what you do, too. Or a big piece of it, at least.

Yeah, it's weird. We always have these kind of, like, themes that form throughout the day. And today's theme is copywriting and storytelling and that kind of stuff. So that's what we're going to get into. But before we do, let's. Let's Talk about your story a little bit. Let's go back to what you were doing before you were an entrepreneur and how you kind of got into it.

Yeah. So unfortunately I don't really have the sob story where I was living on a friend's couch and all that kind of stuff. But essentially my background is in corporate it. So I was a massive nerd sitting in front of the screen. My role was in data itself. So literally looking at spreadsheets for like 12 hours a day and just really unfulfilled, really wanting to do something about. For me it was like, there's more to life than this kind of stuff. A few things happened with corporate where I had to take a hit for them, but they didn't reciprocate. And I was like, that's it, that's enough, I need to get out of here. The problem was I was on a pretty decent corporate salary, like a six figure salary. So I tried all this stuff like affiliate marketing and.

Selling stuff on ebay that I bought from Amazon. Just arbitrage. But to replace a six figure salary, that's just not going to happen. The thing is, through the whole journey, I got really good at copywriting because I was looking at how do you improve and get more sales. And copy was such a big factor. So it was a good, always blessing disguise in that I got to practice copy and practice my tone of voice and eventually I kind of settled on, well, why didn't I do copy for other people? And that was kind of how the agency started. And it's been a little bit turbulent. I had a lot of ups, a lot of downs. But yeah, that's kind of the journey to get us to kind of where we are.

I like it. I mean, that's a cool story because I know a lot of people listening can relate because they're, you know, maybe they already transitioned from a day job to what they're doing now. But you know, I think it's super cool not having a sob story too. You know, not everyone needs to have the broke, blah, blah, blah. But no, you had a great, you know, salary, but at the same time you figured out a way to completely make it. You know, you designed a life for yourself that you want. And I think you even like you told us prior to recording that you've actually designed it. Even better now since you've been in, we could jump to that in a minute. But yeah, man, so what is so it be developed into an agency and was that growth and growth labs? Is that what it is?

Yeah, Growth labs. It kind of got that one naturally. So I guess what I first started doing as soon as I jumped out and the first year is obviously a hard journey. So if there's any sobs or it's like, holy crap, do I have to go back to work and what the hell is going on? But I pretty much started selling websites to people. The first deal was on a gaming forum. I'm a massive nerd, so I was on gaming forums and guys like, hey, I just needed website done, like, I can do that for you. But then it came to games, the webs.

I play a lot of first person shooters, Overwatch, a lot of strategy. I mean, I've got like, you know, kids in the business and stuff now. So I haven't. I get really deep into it. I've got a really addictive personality. So if I play a game, I'm in there for like 40 hours a week. So I try to stay away from.

It a little bit. All right, that makes sense.

So, yeah, but this guy did his website and he's like, look, dude, your coffee is actually really good. Can you try and do some ads for me? Because I've go to a website now but there's no traffic. So kind of naturally progressed that way and then did a bunch of networking and just said yes to everything and did the wrong thing. Kind of went too wide in terms of services and came back down. But that's kind of the path that I kind of stumbled across.

Yeah.

So with the agency now, is it still you writing copy or do you have a big team and you've trained a whole bunch of copywriters? What does it look like today?

Yeah, so today I've actually reduced it. So we were growing bigger and bigger and just getting more work. But some of the work wasn't as fulfilling, some of the copy wasn't as fulfilling. I started to get other people to do it, but my main thing is I love copy. I love writing, persuasion, all that kind of stuff. I've kind of narrowed it down now, so we actually scaled down the agency where we've probably halved in size in terms of the clients that we're working with. But every single client we've got now we absolutely love working with and they're all getting great results. There's less management because we're doing less as well, but just doing the things that we do a lot better. So, yeah, we're kind of scaled down, to be honest. And then there's other stuff happening on the side, other courses and side projects, but Agency just kind of runs a little bit better than it used to.

Yeah.

Now is there like a specific type of client that you're looking for? You know, like some, some copy agencies only work with like the health space. Some only work with like marketers, some only work in real estate. Like is there like an ideal avatar for your client?

Yeah, there is. So I guess the two services that we still do is one is like the LinkedIn and code email outreach. So that's more kind of like people going after enterprise deals, software companies, financial services is big for us tech. And the other side where it's like copywriting for conversions. Whether it's funnels and email sequences, that's more in the online space. So online courses around health, around wealth. We haven't really gotten to spirituality yet because I'm still finding that a bit of a not quite me. So. Yeah, but those are the kind of main areas.

Gotcha. Yeah. So it's interesting, you said yes to a lot of things when you were starting. You said, right, so how did that show up as an agency for you? It sounds like it got the momentum going, but what there was a time where you were just like, ah, too much or like you said, you just got too wide. So talk about that a little bit. I think that's a good experience.

Yeah. It just got to the point where, I mean when we first started we were trying to do Google Ads, Facebook ads, conversion, copywriting, building funnels. We didn't tackle SEO because I wasn't that crazy where I thought how can do this stuff as well. But literally we're trying to do as much as we can because I thought that's how you had to grow. But that meant I was doing work for 18 hours a day. It meant that we weren't really specialized in one area. So it's really hard to build a brand and we have to go out and chase so much business at the wrong pricing. So that kind of happened. And I was doing crazy 18 hour days for like six or seven days a week. And I just got really, really burnt out. And I kind of left my pretty comfortable corporate job where at 6 or 5pm I could be like, all right, see you guys. I just don't give a shit what happens now. The building burns down. It's not my business to the point where it's like stressing out at night, not sleeping properly. It's like, oh crap. What happened with this client's campaign and the people I was hiring as well? We had to hire so quick to keep up with it and we just weren't hiring the right people, so that's kind of where it got to. And then over the past year, I've really been scaling back on exactly what we do, but just doing a few things really, really well.

Yeah. You mentioned lifestyle is a big piece of what you scaled back to is this lifestyle design. And that actually caught my ear. You're like, okay, here's an agency guy. And he's like, no, no, I scaled it back for lifestyle design. So what does that look like now for you?

Yeah, so James had a massive part to play in it because before.

I.

Was just like, you know, going after, like, hustle, hustle. If I'm not working 18 hours a day, what am I doing? I'm a loser. But James, like, well, hang on, dude. Like, no, he works with massive successful businesses. The owners are only working like four hours a day. That's not the right message that people put into the world. So for me now, like, it's only we're still working at it. Definitely not perfect. And there's definitely days where I'm still doing fairly long hours, but now it's more about the control and what I'm actually doing within those hours. So typically now I'm working about six hours a day, working on things like creating content, working on things like copywriting for myself and for my clients, and then talking to new clients and potentially walking through the sales process. And that's the only thing that only things that I do and my team in the Philippines are amazing and they kind of do the rest of it and make sure everything functions really smoothly.

I like it. So what, like going back, if you were to start this all over again as an agency, what would you do differently?

I probably wouldn't even start an agency. I don't know.

Hey, good honesty.

That's great.

I think after going for the business model is I love agency because it let me learn so much so quickly, and it was kind of like paid learning. So I really love that aspect of it. But as a business model, it's really, really hard to grow and scale because it's such. It's driven by labor and hours putting into it. So knowing what I know now, I mean, I probably would still go for the same journey, but I would be really focused on just doing the one thing and just becoming world class at one thing. Yeah, I think that'll really help. Or just even serving one industry might even be a lot better.

Yeah.

Well, I want to talk a bit about cold email too. So I know you do Cold email. Before we do, can you sort of define cold email to our audience in the way that you see it? Because I've heard different definitions, so I just want to make sure we're all talking on the same terms.

Yeah. So cold email, the way that I look at it is starting a relationship with someone who doesn't know you yet. So for me, it's like, well, they don't know you. They don't know of you. They don't know about your services, but we think we can help them. So we use cold email to open the door and start a relationship. It's not about sales. I don't think of it as a way of selling, but it's just about having a right conversation with the right people.

Gotcha. So when you do cold emails, like, what do you do differently? Because as podcasters, and you're a podcaster as well, but as podcasters, we get a lot. A lot of cold emails.

Right.

We get a lot of people saying, hey, I listen to your show. I love it. I'd love to be on it. And I would say 98% of them, we just hit the archive button and never even reply. So what do you do differently to make sure that people are actually paying attention to the emails you're sending?

Yeah. So one of the things that we do, my team have kind of built out for this is just really deep research and deep personalization, because a lot of the people, they just don't put the effort in. Right. For us, the personalization is the 20% that gets 80% of the results. For example, if James had introduced us and I was trying to get on your podcast, I'd actually go through and listen to five or 10 episodes and reference the exact episodes and what I liked about each of the episodes. And then I look at, well, where do I think I can bring the value to your audience? Or what are you trying to get out of your podcast that I can help you with and really make sure the value is driven towards what you're trying to do rather than, you know, I want to come into a podcast just to. Just to sell some shit. Like, that just doesn't work, right?

No, it's smart, man. And have you. Have you done that to get on other shows yourself?

Yeah, so I actually did that to introduce myself to James. So that's kind of like back in the early days. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, we kind of. But we don't do it so much for podcasting at the moment, but it works really well. Whereas most of our clients Just want leads and sales. So that's kind of more of our focus. But yeah, it can definitely work for podcast outreach. Actually, James shared a really good one with me the other day where instead of asking to be on a podcast, there was a code email outreach from one of my friends, actually, that asked him who he wants on as guests and trying to introduce guests into that podcast. And it was only after the conversation kept going, then he's like, by the way, he's what I'm kind of good at. So if you ever need a guest with this, I'd be more than happy to give value to your audience. So that was awesome.

Yeah, you start with value, you're leading with all that stuff, and then it's kind of, once you get warmed up and get the conversation rolling, then, hey, here's what I do. And probably at that point, if you're giving so much value, they probably ask you, hey, what's up with you?

And I think that's almost like the Cole thing. Be the mysterious guy. You don't need to be doing the talking so much about you just like, hey, here's some other cool stuff.

What are some other ways for cold outreach and email? Like, what are some uses? And then maybe we can get into more specifics about how people can apply cold emailing.

That's a good idea.

Yeah.

Yeah. So there's a whole bunch of uses that we've seen. If you want to build referral relationships, that's a great one as well. Getting onto speaking platforms or speaking stages. So we've used that as well. One of our clients uses us just to book speaking gigs, which is pretty cool. And obviously then you've got the straight up lead generation and, and going after the sale. So there's a lot of creative ways to use it to build brands. You can get onto PR and some pretty big platforms, reaching out to editors. So you're pretty creative with this kind of stuff.

Yeah, well, maybe I can throw out some business concepts or things that we might consider using cold email and maybe you can give us an idea of how you would use cold email in those circumstances.

Yeah.

One, for example, right now, this is going to be a selfish one because it's current for us is we're, we've got our evergreen Profits newsletter and we're actually in a process of trying to get more affiliates on board to promote it. And you know, we get a lot of cold emails from people trying to get us to promote their stuff. And just like the other cold emails, a lot of them get ignored Right. There's. There's some that rise to the top, some that we pay attention to, but for the most part, most of them we just kind of went, yeah, they didn't even try. And we ignore the email. So how about, let's start with that example. If we're trying to get more affiliates on board to promote something, how would you approach that?

Yeah, so I would approach it by, first of all, looking at what type of affiliates you actually want. So I think one of the biggest problems or biggest mistakes just going out to everyone and going, yeah, I'll just send the same message out to everyone. We like to be. We kind of like to take the sniper approach rather than the shotgun. So we'll just look at, you know, who do we know would actually treat your audience with respect and be the right fit for them? Who treats their own list with respect? What type of content are they putting out? Are they a direct competitor or are they actually in the same industry? Seven same people, but with a very complementary product? The first step would actually be doing a lot of research and maybe coming up with a list of five to 10, even 20 people that you think could actually be a good fit. And then looking at, okay, for each of these people, let's do some deeper research. Let's get on the email list, let's see what they're sending out and really finding out how they treat the people who go through the list. Because with partnering up and doing affiliate stuff, you don't want someone else to ruin your brand and your reputation. So it's really important to the research to make sure that the right partners for you.

Yeah, so that's good. Yeah. So you do a lot of research and then what would your, like, first step be of that whole interaction?

Yeah, so first step, I just open. Open the conversation. I'd reach out and say, hey, I've been on your list for a while. I've checked out maybe some of your products that I bought. It's awesome. Love what you do. How can I help you? Like, what are you. How can I help you grow your brand or your product? You might even say, look, I've actually got. We've actually got a list ourselves. We do this product.

If there's some potential for us to help you, hey, by all means, just shoot me back an email and let's have a conversation.

Yeah, so it sounds like, I mean, it's similar how we approach things as well. It's like if you can approach it with value and knowing who you're talking to, not shotgun Approaching everything, which I think was a term from another podcast we talked about earlier too. The copy podcast is like shotgun and sniper approach. It's kind of funny how similarities but lead with value. I mean, like one of the things I, and it's just a natural thing in my emails with anyone I'm talking to is like, hey, how can we help you out further? You know, like, you're doing this. Do you want any, like, for you? Do you want to go on more shows? We could do introductions, you know, and it's just kind of like a thing that I've now ingrained in myself. I know. You do it in your own way as well.

Yeah, you email them and say, hey, how can I help you?

Right.

You're not going, hey, can you help me? You're saying, hey, how can I help you? And then maybe even the fact that we have an affiliate product doesn't even come up in the first email. Maybe it's just build the relationship, ask how you can help and start opening lines of communication. And maybe that affiliate email even comes later, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. There was actually, there was actually a great episode that you guys recently did, I think as you were traveling back from event where you were saying, hang out with these high level elite marketers who've been around for ages and ages and how they were just really nice people who are open and helping. I think that's just the kind of attitude you have that you kind of need to do this stuff.

Well, yeah, it's cool you brought that up because that is, I mean, that's funny because you just recorded that the other day. It's just funny how fast that got out. But yeah, it's interesting when you get past the people that are just using these automated tools like outreach systems, like, and then we had the guy. GMass was on this, on this podcast. Mailshake is another one. Mailshake is one that we've used. But you know, there's, there's good and bad ways to use all these outreach tools. Of course, you could just load it up with emails that you don't, you shouldn't be emailing, like, don't do that. Or you can have a conversation and, you know, use it as a follow up thing and a way to stay in front of them and top of mind. And yeah, that was the cool thing at Rich Sheffrin's place is like, no, when you get to a level you could see there's a way of thinking that's different than the people who are just kind of just not thinking about the human on the other side of the device that they're reading on.

Well, it really comes down to like the super successful people. What you notice is it's more like their mindset is give, give, give, give, give. And then the ones that are kind of like still, you know, struggling and really having a hard time, their mindset is like, how can I get other people to give to me? How can I get other people to give to me?

Right.

And like you sort of, when you get among a lot of high level people, you start to realize that pattern exists is that their focus is on giving as opposed to like, how can I take from others?

Yeah, it's quite funny too, because I'm starting to do a lot more events, just both speaking and networking and just attending events. And we always seem to pick up a decent amount of work from events. But my goal going into events is never to pick up leads or sales or anything like that. It's always like, what can I learn? How can I contribute to people around me? And the stuff just happens naturally when you start sharing what you know. So, yeah, really good point. I think you can definitely see it with everyone operating very high level.

Yeah, yeah, no.

So we don't need to go through like a list of a whole bunch of ideas. But this is, this is just another one I want to touch on because I think the approach might be slightly different. But let's say I was like a coach or a consultant and I saw somebody that I feel like, okay, this person or this company, I've got what they need, I know I can help them. Like, like maybe I saw their, their, let's say I'm an SEO consultant, just for example, and I saw their website and I'd like, I know where the holes are and I know I can help them. How would I reach out to that person to try to offer them my services?

Yeah. So the first thing I'll do is, you know, obviously there's technical stuff in getting the emails and stuff like that, but after you've got all of that, we can come back to that because I've got a whole process around that too. But, but the number one thing I look at doing is seeing from them if they even care about this. Because even though they have all these holes and we know, hey, we could do a few things, you might go up in the rankings. They might not even care about rankings and SEO at all. So one of the first emails we send is, look, I've got some ideas that might help you do this. Is this something you're even thinking about? Is this even on your mind? Are you curious at all? Because if not, I don't want to send you a massive SEO report because that takes away from the value. Whereas if you are thinking about it, that adds to the value. So that's number one thing that we start with. We might send an email saying, hey, I was on your site, saw that you've got a few. I noticed, I'm from SEO background. I noticed there's a few things you can do to really increase your rankings quickly. Just wondering if it's okay to share those ideas with you. If not completely, fine, just send me back an email. Yes or no. Either way, I'm cool.

Yeah. So it kicks off the conversation and from there it's kind of an open door, it sounds like. Right?

Yeah. I think from there you just kind of let the people you're talking to dictate what kind of help they need and just kind of have a conversation. For me, it's not really B2C marketing. B2B marketing is human to human marketing and just really understanding the person on the other side of the screen.

I think it's so smart that you just said human to human marketing. We've talked about it before in this show many times and it's coming up more and more, I feel like, because I think people are starting to realize, yeah, there's so much noise and spam out there. I mean, like we just talked about. We'll get back to it. Actually, it's getting the email. It's like, yeah, there's a lot of ways to scrape email addresses is to find all these tools out there. I think like Hunter I.O. is one of them. And it's like there's. But you know, there's a good use and a bad use of these tools and then, you know, if it's in the wrong hands at the wrong, you know, like not thinking about the human on the other side. I mean like we can actually see you in this video. We're like, cool. But if, like, even without the voice, if you're just text, it's like, ah, could just be a spin. Like, I don't know, it just doesn't feel tangible. So I think having that in mind is so important. Important.

Yeah.

Let's get back to the emails. Actually, like, how do you, how do you actually source these people? How do you get the emails to start communication?

Yeah, sure. So I'll kind of COVID at a very high level because we've actually built a lot of code for it. So we get pretty advanced because this is obviously what we do for clients, but at a very high level. It's like if you know the name of the person you're trying to email, and that's very easy to find online, especially if you go after a business. If you have the email domain, you can use a tool just like Hunter. So I'm a big fan of Hunter. Plug the name and email in and it'll tell you if it's right or not. We go a little bit deeper in terms of the research that we do for these people, because sometimes the domain they've got on the website is in their email domain and there's a few other things that happen. So I won't go into too much detail because that's like the exception to the rule. Then you've got to make sure that it's the right email. So there's services out there like Neverbounce and a few other services that actually cleans emails and checks that emails are valid. One of the mistakes you can make is sending out to a bunch of emails that aren't valid, and that's going to get your domain blacklisted. So. So definitely make sure they're valid emails. And it just comes back to good practice in sending emails in general. Not even with cold emails.

Yeah.

I guess. All right, so I'm just thinking of the process here. So to actually get the email, you're going to essentially find whatever target you're trying to look for there, start the communication through, and then what? Use your software. Or someone can use something like Hunter and.

Basically essentially know that this is a good email. Do you ever use contact forms or anything that's a little quicker or.

No, no, personally, we don't. And it's something that I probably might test. But to be honest, every time someone uses a contact form to contact me, it's like, now you're in my actual warm email list and now I've got to get my team to get you out of there. And so for me, it's like, well, if we're starting a relationship with the person we're emailing, let's make it easy for them to opt out of that relationship. So rather than having to take an extra step and annoy them, if they don't want to hear from us, I'd rather just go straight into the inbox. Rather than contact forms.

I like that. It's a better experience for everybody. I mean, really, it's just less friction and it's more human as well. If you have the email address. Do you ever use any other modalities like messenger or Social or maybe even.

Making a video and sending a video to. To the people?

Yeah, so we definitely do a whole bunch of. We do a whole bunch of videos and there's a whole bunch of customizations as well. There's software out there that you can put, you know, a blank piece of paper and you can put the name, so you can customize by name. So there's some really cool stuff out there. But we go across a whole bunch of different modalities. We don't generally do Facebook messenger because most of our clients are B2B. So you don't want to be trying to get into people's messengers. It's not the right way to start the relationship. But we also combined cold emails with LinkedIn outreach. We also use direct mail on top of that as well. And we also do some LinkedIn advertising and retargeting advertising to the right people, if you've got a decent list. Yeah.

I'm curious about the direct mail thing. It's obviously got to be a different process to get addresses versus email addresses. How does that process look?

It's a lot of research by the team of the Philippines. It's literally just Googling businesses. I mean, we have to do the research anyway as part of. So every single contact we send out, we do a whole bunch of research on that business. So as part of it, we go to Google, get their address. Generally there's a phone number on there as well, and we just can kind of compile all that data into one spreadsheet.

Gotcha.

Very cool.

And so when you do send the direct mail, what are you sending? Like postcards, sales letters, lumpy mail? What kind of things are you doing?

Yeah, so we alternate between. So lumpy mail is still working quite well, if it's not too cheesy. So there was the stuff with the rubbish bins and money in the rubbish bin that kind of got a little bit cheesy. But if it's kind of relevant to the industry or what you do, that's still working really well. For example, there's a client we had working with recently with the emails that were able to get into the bigger towns like New York and San Fran and all that kind of stuff. But they had a segment where they're trying to get into small towns like Buffalo and things like that, and email just wasn't getting the cut through. So what we did was we created a really, really nice envelope. It was like silver and gold and sparkly. So it looked like they were being invited to an actual event.

And it kind of was.

I was doing like a launch event and we use those to get into small towns and the conversion from those are just crazy. People rocked up to the event. Like, this is amazing. We're doing this now for our sales teams. But just got so much cut through. So it depends on what you're trying to do with the outreach, what the goal is. You can always tie it back to how you should be doing lumpy mail or direct mail as well.

And how about with direct mail? Because then you're dealing with, especially with the types of folks you're working with. It sounds like you have a gate. You have an assistant or some secretary or someone checking your mail. Typically it's not the business owner. I'm sure it can be a lot of times too. Do you have ways to bypass that gatekeeper?

Yeah. So I'll take that same example with a really nice letter. So we actually had someone handwrite every single name on there.

For the gatekeeper. When they get it, it's like it must be an invitation to a wedding or some kind of event. It's handwritten. So obviously there's been effort put into it. There's a stamp on it, so it looks legit, like someone's put the stamp on there. Therefore it's personal. I'll just hold that straight through. Whereas if it was generic and printed, they might be like, look, it might be a nice envelope, but there's no effort put into it. It's probably some kind of promotional stuff.

Yeah.

Now are you doing this at Voluum or is this like you find an address and you just send in one at a time?

No. So we're doing this at volume. The service providers that we use to do the handwriting, we've hired people off Craigslist and in Australia it's called Airtask and to do a similar kind of thing. But yeah, we don't want to do it dotted out volume. It's commercially not as viable if you're doing it one by one because everything's just more expensive. So we typically send about a minimum of about a thousand direct mails for each campaign.

Yeah, that's really cool, man. And I love to hear that you guys are doing direct mail. I mean, a lot of people just don't think of direct mail. I mean, we use that in our business. It's more of a subscription paid thing, but it's always fascinating. And there's only a select people. But it's just an empty inbox typically for most places. There's so much noise in email typically and even messenger and all that stuff. LinkedIn. Oh my God. I wanna circle back on LinkedIn in a sec too.

Actually, let's go there right now and I'll ask this later. But how about LinkedIn? Do you have any specific strategies or best practices practices people can try and try for themselves and maybe a little bit organic and maybe even a paid strategy?

Yeah, definitely. So we're still getting really good results from LinkedIn by reaching out to people and actually connecting, but it is getting harder and harder. So the reason why I kind of prefer cold emails on LinkedIn is because with LinkedIn it's like that wrap that Eminem did in one mile, you only get one shot, did not miss a chance to blow.

Where you've only got one connection request or one in now attempt. If they don't work, that's it, you can't reach out again. But the problem is a lot of people are still doing the wrong way where they might get the connection request but then they just go and just spam, just spew out their entire sales pitch. For us, it literally is the same process as when we do emails, when we do direct mail. It's a lot of research looking at what they've liked in terms of their activities, looking at what they've posted and referencing them. That and starting a conversation. So for us there has to be a trigger or some kind of reason to connect. So it might be, hey Sally, I saw that you posted about this recently. I'm actually in the industry or I'm a big fan of this as well. We'd love to connect and keep. Just follow what you're doing. And so then after you've connected, start a conversation. Don't even think about the Sally, just be like, hey Sally, it's really interesting that you commented about this. I've actually got a similar view. So what's your thoughts on this other topic that's kind of similar? And so you're just getting to know them as a human and then at the end of it, if you do a good job, they'll turn around and go, look, it's a really good conversation. What do you actually do? And then it's like. But still don't spam them. Right? Just simple, here's what I do. Very short, quick summary. If you need help, that's cool, we can have a chat. But hey, I've enjoyed this conversation so much. I'm happy to keep talking about this Other thing that we started the conversation with.

I like that. Yeah. Because I can't even think there's maybe been like 1% or less people that actually take that approach on LinkedIn. Yeah.

I feel like most of what I see on LinkedIn is copy and pasted. Just like the same thing to everybody.

My pet peeve on LinkedIn is the people who, when they do the connection request, they've got your name in there. So it's like, hey, well, let's connect. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, cool. But as soon as they do it, they spam you and they don't even have your first name on the message I spam you with. It's like, come on, you can't be that lazy.

Surely.

It's true. It's wild, man. So, I mean, if you could just be a human in LinkedIn, dear God, you're going to stand out. But like, like you said, it's kind of like you have that one shot. And I think a lot of people might even be trained to ignore a lot. I mean, I know we kind of are a lot of times to not even think to check that inbox. So it might be like weeks until that thing is actually seen, if ever, because it's buried by other spammers.

I actually feel a little guilty because I'll flip through my LinkedIn and 90% of it's junk. But then there's like 10% of them are like, things that I actually probably should have responded to in a more timely manner.

Yeah. How about on the paid side of things? I know you mentioned something about paid. What kind of strategies are you using there?

Yeah, so we're actually testing LinkedIn in terms of the paid platform. So caveat thing, it's a super, super clunky platform. Like, it's so difficult to use. It's buggy as all heck. It's just like, really bad to use.

Sorry. LinkedIn is also a sponsor of ours right now.

Oh.

I like, delete this part.

I'm still curious.

So we've. Okay, don't worry about it. But I love it. Okay, so here's the other side of it. I love the results because the results are ultimately what matters as marketers.

Right.

So, yes, I'm sure they'll improve it. Like, when Facebook first started the advertising platform, it was super crappy as well.

It's horrendous.

Yeah, yeah. It's same kind of thing, like, well.

Here'S how we can make it right real quick too. If anybody listening to this wants a hundred dollars in free credits to LinkedIn, they could go to whatever is it LinkedIn.com hustle.

Yes.

All right, so there we go. We just fixed it.

Yes, do it.

Because look, the results are awesome on LinkedIn. It doesn't matter about the platform. The platform is completely irrelevant. If you can get the results from it, that's the important thing. So, yes, it's clunky, yes, you're gonna have to figure it out. But hey, if you can get the results, who cares, right? We're seeing really, really good things come through. So there was a period a little bit previously, maybe a year or so ago, where I think just after Microsoft came in and the data was a little bit funny and it just fluctuated a lot. But now it's really, really steady and we're getting some pretty cool results. So one of my biggest clients, they're spending a whole bunch of money on Facebook ads. And their cost per acquisition on Facebook is about $250. Well, so on LinkedIn, it's a high ticket product. So it's actually a really good cost, right? Yeah, on LinkedIn, the first campaign we ran in the first month, I think we got that cost about 280. So it kind of matched with Facebook. Yeah, but the quality of people coming through and buying on LinkedIn, they're actually more serious. So in terms of the long term customer lifetime value, we're seeing that to be high on LinkedIn versus on Facebook. So even if it costs a little bit more to acquire on LinkedIn, the end result, the customer lifetime value and stickiness and retention is actually better going for that platform.

It makes sense. I mean, that's the purpose of LinkedIn, you know, is your, and especially for the folks that you're working with and a lot of agency owners, consultants, all that stuff is, is just you're gonna get a better lead, they're probably gonna act a little quicker. They're ready, you know, they're actually there for that purpose on LinkedIn. So you're not interrupting some, you know, not cat videos, that's more like YouTube, but, you know, like whatever on Facebook or other Instagram. Like they're not there to do work necessarily.

LinkedIn is this social media platform where businesses are there to communicate with other businesses. I mean, it's what it's designed for. Facebook is where people go to like, you know, see what family is and friends are up to lately, you know, so it does make sense.

I think we appease the LinkedIn gods.

It's really cool because even the way they've set up the ads. So on Facebook nowadays, if you're selling like an info product, it's such a long form copy, you've got to tell the story and sell it on the ad itself, whereas LinkedIn you can't because they just give you a small amount of space. But it's so much better because like they're on there doing business. Talk about the benefits of what your product does, talk about your audience and that's all you have to worry about. And, you know, let the product do the, do the heavy lifting. Which I think is essentially how marketing should be done rather than trying to trick someone into a product. Now it's on LinkedIn, it's like, hey, here's what we do, here's the benefits. Check us out.

How do you set up the targeting on LinkedIn? How do you make sure your ads are being seen by the right people?

Yeah. So you've got to really figure out who is a buyer of your product and who would actually use your product. LinkedIn targeting is in terms of B2B. There's nothing like it. As much as I talk poo poo on the product interface, I love the, literally my business runs on this platform. There's so many targeting options in terms of the B2B space. You can target by job title, by company industry, company size. You can look at company growth in terms of percentage of growth in headcount. There's just so much good data in there and it's data you don't get on any other platform. You can be creative of it, but as long as you know who's a good buyer for you and who's a good user of the product, because they're not always the same person that will really help you out in terms of using LinkedIn.

That's really cool. No, it's good insights, man. And yeah, no, I think it's because we've had a lot of people on the show either we had some LinkedIn experts, but there are a lot of folks and just people in our circles. Really, dude, it's crushing on LinkedIn. If you use it properly in both organic and then the paid stuff, it's all, if you do it right, the right people are there, you just gotta approach it right.

We've even been seeing more and more organic engagement on LinkedIn. It's better engagement than we get from Facebook. So it was not a sponsor, so screw them.

Yeah, that's fine.

Let's talk a whole bunch of crap about them. It's all good.

LinkedIn loves us now.

I'm curious because you've done so many campaigns and you do so many wide range of different modalities and ways to get attention. What's a campaign that you can, you don't have to say the name of the campaign or the client or all that stuff, but could you walk us through a campaign that you just like, you made yourself either yourself proud that you actually, actually, yeah, you like it made you just like, holy shit, how did I pull that off? Like, and you know, it was just.

And you're talking about across multiple mediums.

Yeah, just anything that you found to be like so impressive to yourself, you're like, wow, I did that. Cool. Like, can you walk us through step by step one of those.

Yes.

So there was a campaign we ran. So this was more based in Australia, hopefully. My, you're good. Cool. So I mean we do a lot of work in the US but this one is a new product introducing into Australia. So this was like a financial services product where they had to talk to the biggest companies about capital raising. It's really, I'm not in financial services so I don't know how they structured it, but apparently it was good for the companies. Right. So brand new product into the market and they were going for the top, top of the top. So literally only listed companies on the stock exchange and only the CEOs and also board members. So what we did was it was a really different campaign in that normally a lot of the other people we work with, they go after mid size or even if it's a larger size companies, it's not head of the companies. So we had to come up with a campaign that got the CEOs essentially at different angles and at different times and with different messaging to get them on board. So what we did was there was email sequence off the back of it, off the email sequence. We did Lumpy Mount that referenced the emails and then what we did, we had the list and we uploaded back up to LinkedIn to run ads directly at these people. Yeah. So it's like a multi touch, multi combination campaign. And I think what ultimately happened was we got open rates of about 74%. I was looking at this yesterday. 74% and a 40% reply rate.

Wow.

So.

From the emails themselves, not even the stuff that came through on advertising or direct mail. And yeah, this is like some of the biggest companies in Australia. So I think they did about 150 grand in the first month of the campaign and then multimillion dollar pipeline in like 60 or 90 days or something like that.

And what does something like that cost? Like to run all of those pieces? What would that cost somebody?

So it depends on how many pieces they do, but something like that, anywhere up from 8 and a half to 12 grand just for the different assets and all the different research. And that's generally around kind of the level that we play at.

And most of that's going into the direct mail campaign. That's probably where the biggest cost is, right?

Yeah, a whole bunch of that is direct mail. A lot of it is also the research element and just the time spent researching each one. The LinkedIn AD component, obviously there's an ad cost to it as well. Yeah. So mix of everything.

Gotcha.

I think it's super fascinating and I love the whole multi prong approach where you're syncing it all up as a singular campaign that you've thought it through. And I mean that's just, it's brilliant because now you got the whole on and offline strategy. You're kind of everywhere to them. They're like, man, these guys are legit. I gotta work with them or at least talk to them.

We were, we were thinking about hiring people off Australian version of Craigslist to stand outside the offices with like a big cardboard like CEO's name and stuff like that. But that's a bit creepy. So we're like, all right, maybe not that.

Yeah, yeah. I'm curious how somebody can use some of these strategies like the cold email outreach and maybe maybe direct mail. I don't know, like if they have a more low ticket product. Let's say you're like an E comm business and you're selling a $30 product, but your profit margin on it after cost of Goods is like $12 or something. Is this kind of thing still viable for businesses like that?

Yeah, we've actually helped a couple of E commerce clients build the relationships with other people. So for example, we had a client who sells dog tags, so customized dog tags, but it's only about $25 each. And you know, there's profit margins and things like that. But what he did was he used cold email to get into vets, dog trainers, and also bigger businesses that had more products. So that was the way that he could do it. So each person he got through with emails was actually worth thousands and thousands because it was just the bulk order behind it.

That makes sense. Yeah, I guess if you're gonna do a lot of small things, go for the bulk and figure out a partner or someone that can distribute that. Sell it.

Yeah, sell it wholesale.

Yeah, definitely. I like that, man. Curious about follow ups. So what is your follow up? Like, what's your mentality around follow ups with your messages? Once you or maybe you don't get a reply or if they do, they kind of drop off. Do you have a strategy or a mindset around that?

Yeah. So follow up is actually everything. We typically get more responses on the second. So with most of the sequences we write they go from five to eight emails and we get most of responses on emails two and three.

But we've had some really good responses on the sixth and seventh and eighth email as well. So.

Typically about three to four business days, sometimes longer depending on the industry and the message and what we want to do. So it really depends on the campaign. But we won't do anything less than five emails on a sequence typically just because people are busy. Sometimes the really good thing is especially on cold emails you get to try different angles. So maybe on one of the emails you can reference a case study. Maybe on another email it's like, hey, can I just talk to you on the phone quickly. There's so many different ways that you can test it, but follow up is key. If you're not doing it, it's just one email, you're not going to get good results. You have to have the sequence behind it.

So with your follow ups. Yeah, because I mean this is, it's so true. And even us, we sometimes forget about it. I mean, because it's just like, I don't know, sometimes it just doesn't. You're like, I don't want to bug that person. But we had like an affiliate manager, Matt McWilliams on. He actually helped do the Rich Sheffrin launch that we were at.

Oh, awesome.

And he was like, no. In like the millions of messages he's literally sent like the over. I don't know how many years you've been doing this. He's like, I've never had a person complain. They always thank me. Because you're helping them out. It could have been something they totally forgot about. Oh yeah, I meant to get back to you or that was a great idea. I just didn't have time.

Do you strictly stick with email for that, for all your follow ups?

It depends. So it depends on what platforms we need a campaign for. But sometimes like the campaign we talked about, we'll use the direct mail to follow up with emails so it can be across campaigns. But one of the things that I will mention is that on every single email that we did to Follow up. We've always got a line in there that says, look, these emails aren't relevant for you. If you don't want to get these emails, that's completely fine. Just either click on this link or shoot me back a reply and we'll take you off. So in theory we're only following up with people who are, who are interested, but they might be really, really busy. So that's the kind of mentality we've got.

And then. So what kind of tools are you using that have that kind of tech in them to make, to allow people to sort of unsubscribe from getting more.

Yeah, so we use. There's a few systems but my favorite is probably quickmail IO. It's a Cody mailing software. Quickmail IO.

Okay.

Yep.

I haven't heard of that one.

What is. Yeah, it's very built by an engineer, so very techy. A lot of great components to it and they've only recently fixed the ux. So it's a super powerful thing but sometimes it gets. You've got to learn how to use it. But it's been recently updated which is awesome now. But there's a lot of functionality in there that some of the other platforms don't have that we really like in terms of timing responses a lot better and timing follow ups in a more customized way. But that software, if someone replies to one of the emails, it takes them off the sequence immediately. Or if they click on a link, takes them off the sequence. You can build flows in it where if someone replies a certain way, it will highlight that to your inbox and create a task for you. It also detects people saying with automated replies, hey, I'm out of office. It detects it and holds off on the second email for a little bit longer and just makes our job really, really easy in terms of following up.

I like that. Yeah, it's the only one we've like I mentioned before, but Mailshake does do similar stuff. But that one sounds like you probably use it at like a totally extreme level where it creates tasks and all this other stuff too.

I feel like Mailshake's big sort of USP is simplicity. Like it's a very simple user interface. It's kind of intuitive when you first get in, but it doesn't have like a crap ton of functionality, but it's just easy to use.

Right?

It sounds like the one you're talking about. There's a ton of functionality but you kind of give up usability a little bit with it.

Yeah, I think, look, there's no perfect platform for someone who just wants to run a simple campaign. We've got a bunch of clients on mailshake too. So we're constantly testing different platforms. And I really like mailshake. You just get in there, do what you got to do, and just get your emails out. Whereas some of the stuff that we're doing that needs to get a bit more complicated, then that's when we use quick mail. So different platforms for different folks and.

What they want to do makes sense.

I'm curious about the storytelling aspect. We talked about it towards the beginning of the show. How do you wrap story around all the different campaigns you're doing?

Yeah, so storytelling. I'll look at it from two parts because we do a lot of warm emails as well. Like sequences offer ad campaign. And we do the cold email stuff, obviously. So stories in cold emails are really hard to do because you've got such a short amount of time. You need to get their attention. So there's less of that in cold emails. The skill that we've got is to be able to bring a little bit of that, a little bit of personality into emails using stories as well with the code. So to do that, we often reference case studies. We reference stuff we've done with other clients. We put jokes in there because jokes can get people curious, obviously, only if it fits with the client that we're working with. So if we're doing it for ourselves, I'll put so many jokes in there, people will just, you know, they either love it or they're like, who is this guy? You're so random. Just get out of here. Have you been practicing?

Or these are like, oh, you go to, like, dadjokes.com or something. I don't even know if that exists.

I try and do my own, but I have, I will admit I have used like a whole bunch of dad jokes in there. But, you know, that's fine. Yeah. So the jokes. And by using a little bit of that, you can kind of insert some story and also personality just by having, you know, one or two liners in the cold email, obviously, if you're not very jokey. And I always say this, like, we had an accountant who's very amazing what he does, very dry personality. So when we send an email out, they had a bit of joke in it. People were like, oh, this accountant's awesome. When they got on the phone with him, they were just like, whoa, hang on, am I talking to the right person here? So it's really about Your own personality. So it's a little bit harder in cold emails, but just insert some personalities. Insert a point about yourself or maybe a common. If you go for the same sports team, you're from the same area, things like that, that kind of works. Longer emails and sequences.

That's when stories can really, really shine. So we've got a client that's doing really well already, but we tripled the sales and one of their products just by having a story sequencing in there. Where we went for and talked about it wasn't just about, hey, you've come for this webinar, so buy our stuff. It was more like, look, I know you've probably got some hesitations and some doubts. Here's how I got to where I am. Here's some of my other students, here's their stories, their objections, what they were scared of. And we really just seeded that idea of, you know, you're. You're not the first one to go through this. And it's okay because showing through stories other people have gone through and his results, they've got.

Yeah, and so now you're talking more like if you've got somebody on, like an email subscription list, this is the kind of autoresponder emails that go out.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. That's really cool. I mean, this is fascinating. I love all the different. It's like a big thing of the journey is meeting people where they're at, making sure you're not just trying to rush the communication. And I think that's my big takeaway here is meet them where they're at, physical LinkedIn, or be everywhere if you can sync it up and then just kind of be cool. Just be very helpful and don't, again, don't rush it. It's just like, just be a natural relationship builder. And then you kind of have this goal in mind, but you might not make it, and that's okay. They might even refer you to someone else. That's a better fit. Have you actually had that happen with some of your campaigns?

Yeah, we have. So we had this pretty cool campaign. So this was a software company in Australia. And we got him in the door with, I think, the international. So I'm not. I don't buy makeup or anything. L'. Oreal, Pretty sure they're international, right? Pretty big. Yeah. So we got him into l'. Oreal. L' Oreal said, your email is awesome. What you guys do is awesome. Speak to Maybelline. And then Maybelline referred them onto one of the biggest pharmacy chains in Australia. So that was a really cool thing where they got the lead first and foremost, but then the lead referred them to a whole bunch of other people based on the email that was written. So that was pretty cool.

That's perfect. See, that just shows that you're doing the right thing. And it's okay if it doesn't. If it's not that person. Because some people are just so determined, and it's like, no, just. I think if you just give that value and you're showing that you're doing something different, you stand out and people notice it. Yeah. And they'll share you around.

Yeah. I'm curious when it. So when it comes to the storytelling aspect, like, once you've got somebody on a warm email list and you're. You're following up in, like, more of an automated fashion, how do you. How do you find the stories? Like, I feel like that's kind of. I think, you know, conceptually we understand, like, we should be telling stories. People. Stories sell, and people relate to stories. But how do you sort of find the story in your product?

Yeah. So it depends on how much access we've got to the customers or the end users. My personal favorite is just doing interviews with them. Just being able to get 15 to 20 minutes of their time sitting down, having conversation, and asking them a few set questions. So it's going to be a validator listening and watching this. I've actually got a template I use when we go through and get these questions, I'm happy to share it with everyone as well. So, yeah. Yeah, it's all about understanding. It's kind of painting the picture of a journey after they've completed the actual journey, but then getting them to think back to their feelings and emotions at the start of that journey and the whole way through as well. So, yeah, there's a whole bunch of questions that if anyone listening wants to see, though, we use that to lead the conversation. But then when people start talking about themselves and you're listening and open to receiving what they're saying, they just give you gold. And so that writes a lot of the copy for us anyway. So it's a pretty cool process.

That is a really cool process. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And it's really just the right questions will uncover the gold, and then that can develop a whole story or a whole freaking string of stories that tie together. Yeah.

When I look at copy, it's like, for me, the skill is in the writing. So a lot of people think it's the writing component that's the most valuable. Literally, if you've got the right ideas, you can pay someone online much cheaper to do the writing itself with a framework. It's really about understanding the strategy, the emotions and the subtleties behind it. That's really where the value in copy is. Rather than just putting some words on the page. Questions are everything that leads into that whole process.

Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest misconception when it comes to copywriting is that if I just find the right words and I put them in the right order and I use these high value words, then sales are just going to. To flood in. But at the end of the day, it's really like you need to change the. You need to change somebody's perspective. You need to understand the psychology of why somebody wants this and get into their heads a little more. And it's less about the words and more about understanding the psychological triggers behind why they would want something. And then at the end of the day, the words don't really matter. I mean, you can make, you can make videos where you're just kind of talking off the hook or off the cuff, and that can convert people into your product if you're hitting the right psychological triggers. So I think that's really valuable.

Pretty dang good. Oh, man. Well, tell us a little bit about your podcast as well. Does that relate to what you're working on here or is that more of a side thing?

No, so I'm actually going. The reason why I scaled back the agency was to go more into the podcasting and also more into the content and also teaching space because I love teaching, just really enjoy that kind of thing. So the podcast is a bit of a pivot as well. I'm always breaking stuff in the business. Used to have one good marking from the trenches where it's like looking at the current marketing tactics that are working now. But it wasn't quite the right fit and we weren't hitting the right target market in terms of we're looking to help small business owners who just want to grow their businesses. Not necessarily. The stuff that we had was a little bit too advanced and didn't apply to everyone. So we've actually pivoted to a brand new podcast called the Content Driven Business Podcast. And what we do is we literally just go through and look at templates and we share a whole bunch of templates with everyone listening as well and discuss why they worked, look at some of the best campaigns we've got, and just help people create better content that helps Them stand out and better copywriting in a more effective way, rather than staring at a blank screen going, oh, shit, this sucks. I hate copy. It's like, well, just take this, take the ideas, and then just do it better.

Yeah, I dig it. That's sweet. Is that an interview show or is it just you?

It's half. Half. So I'm actually not grading camera by myself, so I need someone to kind of bounce the, you know, bounce energy off. So I think you guys know Charlie Valor. So Charlie's my co host on that one. Yeah. And then there's. Yeah, so Charlie's awesome as well, and he's helping with the co hosting. And then there's a few. It's kind of half halfway. Every second episode is an interview. So I had James on for our very first episode. So we kicked it off pretty strong. And we've got people, you know, actual business owners doing some cool stuff and content on for every second episode as well.

About. Right on, man. Very cool. I dig it. Well, I think. I mean, is there anything left that we might not have asked you? I feel like we, like, grilled you with a bunch of questions, but it was just like, so easy to. Is there anything else?

No, I don't think there is. I think we've gone through a fair few things, but, yeah, I've really enjoyed this. I mean, I'm actually a massive fan of the podcast as well. So, yeah, every single episode, it's just been so good in terms of, like, how you structured it with the lifestyle and the planning episodes, the one looking at how people structure their businesses, how they become top performers, and those are awesome. And then the tactical stuff's amazing as well. So.

If anything I can do to share value with the audience, just let me know. I'll share the templates. And if anyone's listening or watching, they want more information, just reach out to you guys and happy to help as much as we can.

Thank you, man. I appreciate that.

Yeah, I was going to ask books. Do you have any sort of books that you recommend often or you find yourself checking back to. Or anything like that?

Yeah. So I have two books that I must read every quarter. So every few months I go back and read it. Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. But just the first part of it, because obviously the second part is more tactical, like VAs. And that may get outdated. The first part about looking at why you're doing what you're doing. I always tend to get lost every three months because I'm like going a million Miles an hour between different things. And it's good to bring myself back.

That's so smart, actually. I love that because people will say the four hour work week. And. And I'll think about it because I actually, admittedly I've not read it in a while just because it's been so long. But yeah, I do remember most of the book is probably pretty outdated at this point with resources and stuff. But that's that first half, like, it's a mind shift. It's a reboot almost. So it's brilliant. Yeah, I love it.

Yeah. So I literally only read the first half and as soon as that's finished, like, all right, cool. James Schramko's book Make More Work Less. I mean, that's in a nutshell of what we're all trying to achieve. So I read that there's a whole bunch of copy books as well. I'm happy to send you some links and stuff that'll look at. Brain Audit is a really good copy book, especially for people getting into the Brain Audit by Sean d'. Souza.

That's a new one to me.

It really breaks down psychologically what people think about. But this is more for long form copy for sales pages. Not so much for the email sequences and stuff like that, but long form sales pages. But it's got some. Some good principles behind it. I don't know. I'm a massive reader, so I'm always going through books.

That's great, man. Yeah, well, yeah, if you have a list or whatever. Later on, if you think of some, shoot us our. Shoot it our way and we'll get them in the show notes.

So where can people go contact you? I mean, we'll link stuff in the show notes, but how do they get ahold of you?

Awesome. Best place would probably be contentdrivenbusiness.com so that's where they can go. And we're constantly updating new templates they can download as well. So probably the best place to start for the agency stuff, we're@growth labs.com so L, A, B, Z. Because I couldn't buy the S, so I had to buy The Z. Growth labs.com, yeah, whichever site they go to, if it's more for the content templates, definitely. Content driven business.

Sweet. All right, Will. Well, dude, we covered a lot, man, and thanks for being so open with all the campaigns and all these little nuances and stuff. It means a lot.

This is the tough geek add on, so thanks for having me on.

You're welcome, man. Have A good one.

Thanks so much for tuning into that episode.

I hope you dug it.

I know Joe and I dug it. I actually kicked Joe out of the room. He's not here right now. Because I wanted to tell you about a tool that I really, really dig. We use it in our business. We recommend it all the time. It's called Easy Webinar. And it's a tool that lets you do live webinars, automated webinars, hybrid webinars, and, you know, pretty much any other kind of webinar, if there are other kinds of webinars. But anyway, this tool is kind of like your all in one, do it all tool for anything webinar related. It's Easy Webinar. It's put out by a dude named Casey Zman. He's been on the podcast. If you haven't listened to that episode, it's a killer episode. He's a really smart dude, but his software is amazing. It does everything. It's, you know, the title tells you exactly what it does. It's an easy webinar platform. And we use this in our business to run automated webinars all the time. We don't do a lot of live webinars these days. We like to do the kind of automated webinars where somebody can register and then they can either watch it like 15 minutes later or they can watch it the next day, but it's just kind of always running. And it's a system that helps us make autopilot sales off of our webinars. Super cool tool. If you haven't tried it yet, it's an amazing tool. And Casey is actually hooking you up. He said for listeners of Hustle and Flowchart, I can't believe he's doing this, but he said for listeners of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, he's giving 25% off off of the membership to use Easy Webinar. It's already super, super inexpensive for what it does and all the cool features it has. But he's hooking you up with 25% off because you're a listener of Hustle and flowchart. Go to easywebinar.com hustle. That's where you can get that 25% off discount. That's easywebinar.com hustole. It's a awesome tool. You're gonna dig it. So just go grab it. Check it out. Easywebinar.com hustle. See? No, not see ya. You'll hear me in the next show. I don't know, I don't know how to close these things. Go get easy Webinar. Talk to you later.

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