Maxwell Finn & Rich Schefren Talk Marketing to Marketers

Dead to go there.

Yeah. All right, so we're live. Welcome everyone. We got Maxwell Finn in the house and Max and I haven't caught up in a while. And so we thought, well, two things. One, I didn't get done everything I wanted to get done as it related to flow. I have some things to talk about there and I'll brief you on it too, Max. And then since I didn't get done this stuff on flow and we haven't spoken in a while, I figured why not let's get together, let's have a conversation. Now I'm just making sure that everything is copacetic. Says that we're live. Some people are joining us now. Usually I have a whole intro. Max generally gives people a whole bunch of time to join us, but this time not so much. So we got super last minute. Yeah. So we got three people watching right now on YouTube. We got two people on the Strategic Profits Group, two people on my personal page, four people now on YouTube. So that's slowly growing, but generally we have more. So hopefully we'll see how this goes. So how's this week been for you? Anything interesting from a marketing sense?

It's, I mean everything at least in the paid traffic world's been. Been Apple, Facebook, iOS 14 related. Like that's been the, the main, main topic and main thing that people actually are, are interested in and care about. It's, it's interesting because like it shows how dependent people are on single traffic sources and, and uncertain other businesses. And I, I've talked about this for a really long time and it's ironic because I've like built a career on talking about, you know, teaching Facebook and different channels. But like I've always also said, don't be dependent on these businesses. And it's the same whether you're dependent on Amazon for all of your sales, whether you're dependent on Facebook for all of your traffic. Things like this inevitably happen when, when you're dependent on another business, you can't control what they do. And so we're in this weird place now where there's this power struggle between two of the biggest companies in history and most of us are caught in the middle and like where people are getting hit, like small businesses are just getting crushed on both sides.

And I was talking to. Have you ever met Katie Vogel?

The name sounds familiar. I let me pull her up.

She, she was like the media buyer slash marketer behind a lot of Agora financials growth. Like pretty badass. She left Agora a little while ago. When there was that exodus. And so I was talking, I was catching up with her like two days ago and she was saying to me that she's doing a lot more data stuff now. And I was like oh cool. Like anything interesting. And she's like one thing that's pretty interesting. Like we only can track five different variables with UTM parameters. What we've been doing is I've had a link creator created so that we can track as many different things as we want, embed that into a link and then use the UTM parameters around it because they have to track who's the copy chief, who chiefd that project, who's the copywriter who wrote it, all these kinds of things that they need to know like on every promotion. And I haven't heard much people talk about that. Like use a link creator to actually embed in a link like all the criteria that you need like to track what do you, what do you, you know this world more than I do. So what are your thoughts about that?

I mean the problem, the problem isn't that it's tracking is not doable right now. Like that's what she does, what she's doing and I'm sure they built a cool, you know, cool tool. But like that's. There are a ton of solutions right now to track and report.

Right.

The, the issue isn't. There's two, two big issues right now. So one is that we went from a two way street to a one way street. And what I mean by that is you can pull all the data, not pull all of it because Facebook's also like remove breakdowns of age placement, things like that. But in terms of conversions and knowing where the convers came from, you can seal that. Just because somebody says don't track me doesn't mean you can't use UTMs and see they click this ad like that's how Wicked reports highos all these software. That's how they work, right? They're, they're not really fancy technology. They're, they're relatively basic but they just write time right place and they built some cool stuff on top of it. So it's, we've lost that going back into Facebook. It's the data comes out but if somebody says don't track me and they click your ad and buy, they can't be pushed back into Facebook, which hurts optimization helps hurts the learning phase. It makes sure the data inside Facebook is not reliable. So things automation rules don't work well. So that's one of the big issues and the other is, while you can do all those things using UTMs, it's also not very scalable. Right. There's like a lot of manual work to do. If you're creating these really robust links for every single ad in every single ad set and every single campaign, right. If you're like us, we're running, I mean, tons and tons and tons of campaigns and we're launching new stuff all the time. So if you're building out unique UTM parameters for every single one of these, can't that be.

Is it. Can't that be automated? Like, isn't there an option in Facebook? Like, weren't you the one that showed me that, like, that where you could tell Facebook to automate?

Like, yeah, so they have. Correct. So, but what I'm saying is, like, you're saying what I'm talking about specifically what Katie's doing. So if you, if you want to go beyond that, right, you want to add additional variables. So, yeah, you can use. I mean, that's essentially, again, a hire. Some wicked work. High risk and wicked have. They have tags they've built that basically you can paste them into URL parameters at the bottom of your ad level, and it dynamically pulls in the ad ID and the ad set id, and it allows you to match those two things up and it does that automatically. So you don't have to manually write anything in there. But if you want to do anything additionally beyond that, you're manually creating a ton of links and having to create some type of reporting infrastructure where you can monitor all those links, figure out ways to build out pivot tables in data studios to match everything up. All this is doable. It's just a matter of how much time you have and how much you want to track.

Got it. What, so what do you see as, like, what do you see as the solution for Facebook? Or do you think they're not going to have one? And long term, like, they're going to have problems just, like, you know that system better than probably most. Like, what's your overall thought as someone who's a major shareholder in Facebook? So I've been drilling off stock, like, all the way up, but wondering, like, how soon I should sell it all or should I just hold it forever or what? Like, what's your thoughts?

Well, if you, you know, so if you watch Facebook's earning, I'm getting a little bit echo. I don't know if it's because you don't have the headphones. So if you heard Facebook's earnings Call for last quarter, they had record. I'm be quiet for a second because obviously listening is gonna hear an echo. So we'll just, Just wait for a second. Okay?

Yeah. Let me take a minute though. So bear with me. I gotta find the headphone jack on this. Hopefully I don't press the wrong button. Hold on.

Just kill the entire live stream.

Did I. I hope.

No, I was, I was joking.

Oh, you know what I can do? I can put on crisp. Hold on, I'll change the audio here.

I think the. It stopped on my. Actually, I just came back.

What?

Test one, two. Okay. I think, I think we're good.

Really? We shouldn't be like, we shouldn't be any different. Hold on.

Weird.

Yeah.

I don't know because it came in and out like it wasn't. There wasn't an echo the whole time and then just started. So right now it's good. So whatever, whatever we're doing now, you keep going.

But I might with it while we're talking.

That's fine. If people stop hearing me then. Or it goes dark or whatever. You know, it was Rich's fault, not mine.

Yeah, I'll pick all point.

So, you know, from a, like a, a stock standpoint and like a company standpoint, the future of Facebook, I'm not really, as a shareholder, not really worried about their, their future. You know, they had. Because they can pull levers. I think that's what people forget is like these platforms control the dials, right? And so if you're, if you're Facebook and you want to make more money, obviously you can get more advertisers, right? You can grow the, you can grow the user base, you get more inventory. But what they could also do is just dial up the CPMs. They can increase the prices. They can also deliver more ads per user session. So there's things that they can control without having any impact on, like advertiser growth or user growth that can increase earnings. And if you looked at their, their, you know, their earnings call, if you were on that, like, that's basically what they said. They said our cost per ads went up 30%. So it was 30% more expensive to run ads on Facebook last quarter. And I believe it was like 10 or 15% increase in number of ads delivered per user session. So, you know, no duh, like, of course you're going to make a lot more money when you charge us 30% more. So Facebook has those dials to play with while they figure out solutions. And then I think what you're going to see. And it's ironic because Apple is kind of long term, I think, doing more damage than good based on this move. Because they're forcing companies like Facebook to build more walled gardens and expand their walled garden. Because if I'm Facebook, I want to keep everybody on my platform doing as much of their Internet stuff as possible.

Right? Right.

So right now, if I'm on Facebook, what do I leave Facebook for? Why leave Facebook to go read the news? I leave Facebook to go buy things. So Facebook right now is coming up with more and more solutions to keep commerce and news and other things on Facebook. And so like two weeks ago, they rolled out for Instagram, basically their own affiliate network. So brands can connect with influencers and they can do deals directly inside Facebook. So there's all these things used to happen outside of Facebook. They're not going to happen inside Facebook because guess what, if you tell Facebook, don't track me outside of Facebook, but you do everything inside Facebook, they can track everything you're doing. So it doesn't change anything. So I think you'll see that happen. At the end of the day, Facebook's one of the biggest companies in history. They have tens of thousands of really, really smart employees getting paid a ton of money. They have billions and billions and billions of dollars in cash. Like they're not going to just sit idly by and not figure out a solution. I don't know exactly what the solution is going to look like, but there will be a solution. I don't see Facebook disappearing anytime soon. I think Facebook, every few years, it seems like people say Facebook's dying and they just get bigger and just get bigger and bigger and bigger. At this point, I look at Facebook and Google and a lot of these companies as utilities, more so than even companies. So they're so deeply ingrained in every single thing we do that to, to unwind that and for them disappear is, is something I don't see happening in the near future now. Are they around in 50 years, 80 or 100 years? I have no idea.

Right.

The. The 25 biggest companies in the world right now. I, I forget the stat. It was something like this. But yeah, something to get back to me. It's like the 25 biggest companies in the world right now weren't around 25 years ago or 50 years ago or something? Something like that. Right. So yeah, 25 years from now, are these companies going to be around or the biggest? Probably not. They'll probably be all kinds of space exploration, exploration, AI companies and robotics companies that are that have taken their place. So yeah, I'm not too worried about Facebook as like an investment long term, obviously short term with inflation and stuff, there's going to be issues because people cycle out of growth stocks as inflation goes up. But that's a whole another boring economic story we could talk about.

All right, so let's. Yeah, let's, let's talk. So let's see like what some questions are here and some hellos. Yeah. By the way everyone, no matter what channel you're watching this on, you're watching on YouTube, you're watching it on LinkedIn, you're watching on Facebook or your ham radio. Yeah, ham radio, cb. If you're seeing skywriters, write out the transcript of what we're talking about no matter where you're watching it. If you can comment, give a thumbs up, we can see all the comments and the, all the big tech algorithm gods are very look favorably on comments. Hey Mika, good to see you. Mika's a close friend of my ex wife and a close friend of mine. We don't know who this Facebook user is. In Toronto we have Giancarlo. He's saying he's a ghost and he's saying hi from heaven. We have Hitesh saying hi to both of us from California. Giancarlo, Toys R Us. Not sure what that is. Funnel Wicks is great for that. I was talking to Mikhail today who owns funneltics. Okay, Richard, this will be an interesting one. Maybe we'll agree on this, Max. Or maybe we'll disagree. Rich, in your view, how many emails a week sent by an email marketer is okay before it turns to spam? It seems to me that some marketers think if they have your email, it means they can bombard you with emails and unrelated offers to the original offer for which they got the email. In my view, it is bad practice. What is your opinion? It's really hard to say. What I can tell you is, is that like at the end of the day, I think you got to do what you feel is right. But what I can tell you is, is that in the short run, in the short run, I've never seen any tests done for the long run. But in the short run, the more emails you send, the more money you make. Period. And that doesn't matter if it's like if you're sending two a day, if you send three a day, you'll make more money if you send three a day, if you send four a day, you'll make more money. Like there is no end to that limit. I mean I guess there is start sending a couple hundred a day. But like Agora tested this and my argument to them was like, yeah, in the short term of course it's going to make more money because like, you know, you're not counting all the people that are opting out that might have bought later. But you know, in general email open rates go down over time. And so if you're running a business to maximize profit and that's the only thing that you care about, which I'm not suggesting should be, but for some people it is and that's okay. Like you know, they do business to make money and they're not doing anything illegal then. Yeah, like you mail as frequently as you possibly can. And like, just to be clear, like I think this is like, this will be eye opening to some people. But like, you know, for steal our winter subscribers, they should have heard like at least it referenced when I was doing an interview with Fernando. Because like at Agora, like if we have a winning promo, like that winning promo goes to every single name that we possibly have. It's like even though like a buyer could come in on a fear based promo, which is a totally different positioning than agreed promo. Agreed promo is someone who wants to make money because they don't have any for the most part, right? And a fear promo is like they want to lock in and save and not lose like what they have. So we're talking about like two totally different universes. And I'm oversimplifying but like it doesn't matter if it's like a high fear based back end, they will send it to the greed buyers because a winning promo wins regardless of who it's being sent to. Like that's their experience. And it's the same with like sending out promos to email, right? Like if you have a winning promo, you're trying to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible, period. And that goes very counter to like, you know, segmenting by interest and doing all this kind of stuff. But like, and it's hard to argue with $2 billion a year in sales, like that works. Now I'm not suggesting everybody does that, but like, you know, it is a very different way of working and it even is different. Like one of the best examples I have of this, which is actually taking the question even further past just email, but just to kind of give people a perspective like of this like kind of different way of doing things. You know, we have an avatar, right? But what I would say Is, is that like we had James Alter, right? James Alter was a self help guy. Like, that was his positioning at that time. Joe Schreifer, the head of Agora Financial, had this idea of like that for a cryptocurrency promo. He decided, he asked the publishers, like, who wants to do it? Doug, who's a publisher for James Raises, and said, we'll do it. And then he, Joe and whoever the copywriter was that worked on it with him wrote it for Altucher, right? That promo was a success. And it was so successful that we spent I think about $60 million or something like. Or maybe it was like 20 million. Yeah, whatever. Maybe we spent 20 million. We brought in 60. I don't remember. Just advertising. James Altucher and crypto, right? Like, so anyone that would have joined like the company and been trained in Internet marketing would have came in and been like, okay, who's the avatar for the buyer of this crypto offer? Like, it made no difference. Like, that wasn't what it was about at all. It was a winning promo. And that winning promo then became the positioning and became everything else. Like, so a. To me, that's related to what we were just talking about because a winning offer trumps everything. And you know, when you have a winning offer, you're trying to get it in the email box as frequently, as often to as many people as possible. So now to circle back to this question, right? Like, it all depends on whether you're playing the long game or the short game. If you're playing the short game, you email it as often as possible and you want to be in the email. You want to be an email almost every day, ideally, because that's how you have a reputation with ESPs and stuff like that. And that doesn't mean sending promos every day, but it could. And if you're sending content, even better. But what are your thoughts, Max?

Yeah, I think it's.

What do you guys do with your Patriot brand email every day, right?

And it's because we're not just sending offers every day, right? We have a daily newsletter we send out. And so it's like there are certain people that I want to hear from every day. Like they're, you know, I guess that's the way I look at it. It's like, are there, are there people and brands that you follow that you actively want content from daily? And the answer is yes, right? There are people out there that, like, I follow these people because I want to hear from them, right? Like, if I followed, let's say Just use you rich. Like, I want to learn from rich. Right. And so I voluntarily, I voluntarily go and I sign up for his email list and I sign up for his YouTube, subscribe to his YouTube channel, et cetera, et cetera. And he shares a tip once a month. Like, I'm gonna be pretty bummed, that guy. Yeah, right? Yeah. It's like I, I want to learn. I went to learn from him and now he's only sharing a little bit with me. And then when he tries to sell me something, I'm gonna be way less likely to buy from because I'm gon held back and not provided any value. Whereas if you're following somebody and they are sharing insights and knowledge and content and value multiple times a day in multiple channels, and then they try to sell me things, I'm much more likely to buy from them because I built a relationship with them. Like you build relationships with people by having lots of interactions.

Right.

It's hard to build a relationship with singular interactions over a period of time. And so, yeah, I think going back to, it's like, if you're just saying, should I just pitch every day? Probably not, if you're looking to build something long term. If the question is, should I email or send messages every day. Yeah. And I think there's a lot of, of data to support from people that this is not me, but people that send a lot of, you know, I'm talking millions emails a day that if you're sending to your highest engaged group, you can send to them multiple times a day and they're going to open and, and then that gives you kind of a net benefit because the ISPs love you because your open rate, like, it has this ripple effect that's positive for kind of the bottom of your email list.

Right.

So, yeah, I think content's fine. Mixing with offers. I think you're saying offer, offer, offer.

No. Right.

And like Morning Brew is another example. Morning brewing, like, I get excited to get their email every morning I wake up and that's the first thing I read every morning because it sums up all these great things that I want to hear about. Like, it takes a lot of work that otherwise I'd have to go out, look at all these sources, and it does it all for me. And I can spend 5, 10 minutes and get a quick pulse of, okay, here's what happened in the stock market, here's what happened in politics, here's what happened here, here. And then I sign up for Marketing Brew and Tech Brew, and they have all these Other newsletters. So I get like four or five emails from them day. But I love it because I want, I voluntarily wanted that content. So yeah, I think it's if done right, you can send a lot of times per day to the right people.

Yeah. And I would also say that look, you could even do offers every day. There are people like Ben Settle before him, Matt Fury. Right. That would send out emails every day that did have a promo attached to it but also told the story before it. So it was entertaining and people enjoy it. Right. And those work really well. And also because they're story based, they get a high open rate. So we'll move on. Hello, Asthma. She didn't say hello to you, Max. I think that's kind of rude. Isn't Facebook analytics going away too? Is that true or is that not true, Max?

It is true. I mean it's basically become reporting inside. Facebook's become useless. So it's. Yeah, that's done.

Hey gang. Where are all the coach potatoes? Rich is live with some gold nuggets. Yeah, I don't know. We got like 42 people watching right now, which is better than nobody. Hello everyone from Miami, Florida. Hey Hugo. Good to see you. Hugo is a interesting guy. Like he, he used to sell a lot through infomercials and now does a lot of stuff online. And he asked me about his like my coaching and I was like, I told him that I thought like joining a mastermind whether it's yours with Tim Bird. Right. Or whether it's like going to a geek out that I believe like in the short run he would be better off there because there's a lot of stuff in e commerce that I wouldn't be able to tell him because I don't know it and would be more relevant to his business. And yeah, we got one coming up together. Right? You got yours in St. Pete. Yep.

Founders mastermind in June 11th. June 12th. We're really excited about it.

I'm excited too. I'm actually going to be speaking on stage with Dan Kennedy and then immediately thereafter flying straight to St. Pete's so I will be hanging out with you guys. I'm looking forward to it. Rich, there is a switch for Streamyard to fix the echo. I, I hit it. I hopefully that Rich, an email marketing. Do you pre frame the click the CTA to sales video so people click more. How do you do it? Through questions or curiosity or how? It all depends. Right. Like you have any thoughts about this, Max? I mean from my perspective, like it all depends on where you're sending them. There are certainly, sometimes there are benefits to sending blind emails where you get the maximum number of people to click over. And then there are times where you don't necessarily want the maximum number of people to click over. You want to kind of pre sell people before they get there. But it really varies. I mean, for me it really varies and it really depends on, you know, if we're hitting a list multiple times, we might hit them with multiple angles, right? Like frame it in different ways with different types of subject lines coming at it from different directions. So anything that you would say differently about that, Max?

No, I think, yeah, it depends. Yeah. Like you said, if you've already qualified them like where, where are they at in the journey, right. If somebody that's been in your ecosystem for a while and, and you know exactly who they are and they bought X, Y and Z, that's a different type of person you're communicating with. And somebody ice cold coming in from an ad that you have no knowledge of their buying power, their level of interest, where they are career wise, what their goals are. And so I think the, the further up in that journey you are, right, kind of higher to the top of the funnel, you're, you're going to want to, to do more qualifications and whether that's running, you know, one of like Ryan's models with the ask method, whether it's running through the assessment quiz and then segmenting, bucketing those people out further down, that's kind of up to you of how you go about doing it, what you're selling, et cetera. But, but then I think there's obviously merit. Once you know these people are, and you know they're qualified, then the name of the game is like, well, how do I get their attention, right? How do I get as many of them to where I want them to go? And so your, your strategies change. There to be more curiosity based and more driven about getting them to click and then getting to that, that offer or whatever you're actually pitching them.

I did a Steal our winners with Kevin Rogers from Copy Chief Live and the main topic of the interview was his 4x6 like copywriting system. Right. And we covered like all these elements so that like you could write copy quickly and it would be effective. But in the conversation which often happens in Steel our winners interviews, there's something that else that comes up that I get really interested in that also kind of we talk about, but that's not the primary purpose of what the interview is about. So we might mention it in the action guide, but it certainly wouldn't be in the headline or anything like that. And with Kevin Rogers, like he was going over this whole copywriting process, but in that conversation he mentioned that he, he created and launched a successful coaching program. It was like a mid, I think it was like a mid four figure kind of price, like maybe like five grand or something like that for 50 coaching clients just through the ps of his emails. And, and so what he was doing was in the P.S. he mentioned that like he's going to do a coaching program to help copywriters get more paying gigs. Like, you know, like if you want to work with him then it's going to be a small group. He's trying to figure out like what he's going to cover and etc. So if you are interested in this group, like reply to this email and tell me like how long you've been writing copy, like what you're like. He asked like four or five questions. Where are you struggling? Like, right? And he took all their answers and then he qualified them into like four or five points. Like what do they want? Right. What's their timeline? What are they struggling with? Right. And like he's doing this like for a month and he's accumulating these answers and then these answers are what the coaching program is going to be. It's going to help you get rid of these struggles, help you get on this timeline to get these outcomes. Right. And then finally like sent it to the whole list like maybe two times like and was able to, you know, sell the whole coaching program just through that. And if you think about it like who do you want answering those questions? You want your most engaged people. Well, who gets to the bottom of the email? Your most engaged?

Most engaged.

Yeah, yeah. So it was a really smart kind of process. Right. So that's why I'm saying I totally agree with everything you said, Max. But even to expand beyond that, it really is so dependent on what you're trying to accomplish. Right? Like, you know, it's not always about getting the maximum clicks, although when it is, generally the less you tell them, you know, the more people you'll get to click. Especially if you have like a picture of a video and it's click here or something like that. Like that's. Those are easy ways to get more people to actually click on something. But that's not always the goal.

It's interesting. So this is slightly on topic and the echo came back. I don't know what happened, but the, it went away. So it just, it came back for a second. So I'm reading a book right now. I don't know if you read it.

Think Again.

By Adam Grant.

Yeah, if I didn't, if I didn't read it, I bought it, I think.

Yeah. So Think Again by Adam Grant. He wrote Originals, which is also a really good book. And, and it's fascinating to me. It's. The whole premise of the book is, is essentially why people are so bad at changing other people's opinions, right. It looks like specifically at politics, looks at like Red Sox Yankee fans and just it's, it's this idea that we are hardwired to further entrench into our existing beliefs and that somebody with a opposite belief trying to change our minds 99 of the time we go about it the wrong way and all it does is cause us to dig our heels in further.

Right.

So it talks a lot about like there's different modes people get into, but the two big ones like preaching and prosecuting that you get into when you're trying to persuade somebody, right. You're either a preacher or prosecutor and either way as you're communicating your message, somebody else, they're, they're feeling defensive and, and they're going to kind of pull back and pull back. And that's what's interesting just to how this ties into what he was asked essentially is like the most effective way to change somebody's viewpoint ironically is to let them do all the talking, right? Is it's something called, he calls it motivational interviewing. This concept that was invented in the 80s by this. Think it's Canadian Doctor and, and it was created to help. There was a lot of these towns in, in Canada where like the measles vaccine, the percent of people getting it was like really low. And they were really struggling with getting the community to, to do this because they believed it was, it was dangerous. And the me there was measle outbreaks happening for the first time in a long time and they found that like all the things they were doing to get people to take it weren't working right. They were using the science approach and they were pushing backs on them. And they were also then guilting them and saying, you know, you're responsible for all these things. Or they were preventing them, you know, their kids from going to school if they didn't have it and it didn't change anything. If anything made it worse. And what they started doing, eventually this guy figured out it's like to just ask open ended questions, right? To ask Something to start out, you know, what is, is it about, you know, vaccines that you're.

You're worried about?

Right. What is about your friends and family that they're saying that got you concerned in the first place? Like, what do you think worst case scenario would happen if you got the vaccine? Like all these things. Right, right. And eventually through this, like hour plus long conversation, through eventually pulling threads as they move forward along them talking and telling the reasons they don't like something or do like something, they come to the realization on their own.

And.

And it's incredibly effective.

Right.

If somebody comes to the realization of kind of the goal that you have in mind, like, this is what I want them to accomplish, but they come to that realization on their own, it's way more effective than us trying to persuade somebody to make that. That change or to think that way. And so that's the power of a lot of these, you know, like you said, asking a lot of questions at the end, or whether you're doing, you know, quizzes or assessments. It's like you can ask the. These kind of leading open end questions in a way that gets the person to the goal you want them to get to, but they get to it on their own and they're much more likely to actually pull the trigger and buy.

Are you there?

Yeah, I'm here.

Okay. Pull the trigger, buy, and then I cut you off.

That's what I said. That's.

I ended. Okay. The. I don't know if I can. I wanted to show something. I wrote this. Let's see here if I can grab this real quick. I wrote a blog post 11 years ago. And this blog post, it was like an experiment, right? Like I wanted to see what would be the effect of writing a blog post. That was nothing other than questions like that. Actually, all the content itself, I can't seem to copy and paste it though. Let me do it here for a second because now I can find it. Site colon. Strategic profits. Com. A daring online business blog. Blog post. There it is. Let's see if I can separate it so that I can actually isolate it. There we go. And now let's see if I can. Share screen. Share screen. There we go. Share it for a second.

Yeah, I can see it on my end.

Okay, so. And I found this to be somewhat fascinating. Like, even when I read it to myself, like, it really took people down like a path just by asking questions. I'll read it out loud, like a couple of the paragraphs. Just tell me what you think. Okay. Can you write A valuable blog post made up entirely of questions. I think I can, but will you give me your opinion by commenting below? Once you finish reading it, should we begin? I'm ready. Are you? How's your business going? Is it doing as well as you used to dream it would? Do you think you could improve it right now if you were forced to? What could you do right now that would move your business in the right direction? Are you willing to commit to doing it today? If you are willing, will you write it down right now so you don't forget? Do you procrastinate? Why do you think you do it? Do you really enjoy the activities you do instead? If you had to choose, would you say it's a fear of failure or a fear of success? Could it just be a bad habit? If procrastination was just a bad habit, would you be willing to create a new habit of being action oriented instead? If so, can you commit to doing that one thing that'll improve your business? The one I asked you to write down as soon as you finished commenting on this book Blog post. Do you think this is an interesting experiment so far? Are you getting value out of it? Should I assume if you're still reading, you are? Should I continue? Have you ever stopped and thought about how much you already know? Can you imagine how different your life might be if you applied everything you already knew? Could blog posts like these that just ask questions instead of telling you more to know help you use more of what you already know? If so, do you think you might see more blog posts that are made up of just questions like this one never happened? Do you think if you share really good content with your prospects, they would immediately buy more from you? What if they already had enough? Don't we already? Don't we all already have enough? Or don't we have enough already? Well, if good content isn't enough to get people to buy, what does get people to buy? Don't you think people buy to solve a problem or problems? So what if your content helped your prospects understand their problems better and show them how your product or service solved it? Do you see how much more effective this sort of content would be? And it just goes on, right? Like, and I got like some really interesting comments. Like why are there comments on this post yet? Will someone post theirs before I finish this one? Like so they answered in all questions, right? Like, interesting challenge. After the fourth paragraph, I started to feel like I was stuck in a police interrogation room being hammered with questions until I confessed. See, like it forces People to think. Right. And that's why I was trying to, like, I was asking them to do things, and I was asking them if they procrastinate. Like, Right. Like, I was trying to, like, create this kind of interesting. I. I really enjoyed writing it. I don't know if this is enjoyable to read, but it certainly was.

I think if it was. I think if it was formatted in a way that was more paced, it probably would have done even better. Because I agree, I think essentially what you did is you took the, you know, what Adam Grant talks about, right. And, you know, did it 11 years ago. But this idea of you have a goal of where you want to. Want to get them, and instead of you telling them this is the way you should be thinking, this is what you should be doing, you ask them questions that you inevitably know is going to get them to that realization, but they're coming to it. Right? So it's like one. If you can map that out, how long does it take? Do you need 45 questions to get them there? Or can you do it in 10? Right. Or if you. If you need 45 or you need 80 or need 100, can you do it in a way that's more like. The first few are structured in a way that people can think about an answer, and there's like a button to click to the next, you know, the next phase. There's kind of a gap and some time to think or even putting breaks in the paragraph and saying, like, you know, you know, these questions, and then you have a notepad ready and spend the next five minutes actually writing down answers to those questions. So they're actually like, taking a break, writing, thinking about another coming back. So it's almost like a goosebumps type story where it's like, okay, you've done this. Now make a decision to go, go do this.

Right.

But it's. It's interesting. I'd imagine that the. The main reason why it hasn't taken off is because it's exponentially more difficult to create that piece of content than it is to create really any other piece of content.

Right. Like, my brain works differently than most people, you know? You know, so I can speed read, and I can speed read questions like that. So to me, it's just forcing my brain to kind of think through those answers fast. Right? Like, and the.

You're like a robot. You're. You're operating a totally different level than normal people.

But I really dug it. And I mean, a lot of people really liked it, and it was cool. Like I just like. Yeah, it was just like a novelty though. Like I just had this idea one day, right. I collect questions. What if I just wrote a blog post that was nothing but questions, like in paragraph format to just see what would happen. And it was more probably just because it was a different idea. That's why I wanted to do it. I like doing things that nobody else has done.

I'd be. Yeah, I'd be curious if you did if you re retried that in 2021. Because it's like I think the same thing all the time. Like there's got to be different way people get really complacent. There's like this is the strategy that works webinar, right. It's like webinars work and this is what all the big guys do. So I got to do a webinar. And so we ended up with is a multi year period where everybody sells anything over a thousand dollars on a webinar.

Right.

And where it's, you know, a webinar to an application, to a phone call. And it's like there's got to be. There's not even got to be. There is tons of other ways to accomplish that, that goal. Somebody's just got to kind of bold enough to actually start trying it and. And doing different things. Yeah, I would love to see how that would perform.

And whoever does something different is generally the person that's gonna like kick ass if they stumble upon something else that works because, you know, it's not as obvious for the prospect, you know, and it's like when advertising is not as obvious, it's generally not. It still needs to be seen, but just not obvious that it's an ad. So let's see here. I'm not sure what Asma's asking here, but let's take a look. What about analysis on blog? I have no traffic and answering questions on Quora, but still not. Have, still not have traffic to increase traffic to my blog and share my blog too. Yeah. So like I'm not a Quora expert by any stretch. I don't know if you've spent a lot of time on Quora, but if you're not getting lots of traffic from there, I mean the only assumption I would make is that you're not giving great answers and that's probably why. Or even if you have great answers, maybe you get more follows on Quora, but I don't know if that translates people coming to your site. Yeah, I mean the challenge is, is that like if you're trying to get people to a free blog, you probably aren't in a position to pay for that traffic, I would assume. And the. So what are your thoughts though, Max? Like, I mean this is like, it's just not the way to start.

Well, it's a few things. One, it's hard to answer this without having context around like what industry you're in, what, what's the con like? There's. There's a lot of follow on questions. I'd have to give you a really good answer. And then the echoes back, it just lingering. It just keeps attacking. It sits there and wait and then gets me.

Maybe I'll put my headphones on these headphones and see if I can do these.

I think the misunderstanding in Internet marketing or just, I'd say just business. In entrepreneurship and business, it's like that things happen fast and pay traffic has played into that because if you have a lot of money, you can make things happen a lot faster and you can shrink that, that kind of adoption curve for your business and everything. But the, the reality is that it takes a very long time of seeing mediocre results to achieve decent results, right? And to grow. And so if you look at like the, the biggest YouTubers in the world, right? Like they didn't first day on YouTube start out with massive viewership, right? Like, what they did is they loved what they created content around and they created content every single day. They had a schedule, they created valuable, engaging content day after day on a schedule. And week over week, month over month, year over year, they slowly built up a following. That following shared with their friends, shared with their friends. They had a network effect and that word of mouth. And eventually they got to a point where they were big enough that they had this, this ability to start running paid traffic and other things they could do to really amplify it. But it was built on legwork and time. And I. The problem is like, we don't see that, right? You don't. When you see success stories and you know people that are successful, you know them because they're successful. So you see them from the time they're successful to now because that's when they were talked about. That's when the press and the media, right. Like, nobody talks about the years or decades of work that got to that point. Like, and you could talk with any industry, right? Steve Carell didn't become a movie star until he's 40 years old, right? Like, you think about Steve Carell, he's like, he's one of the biggest actors on the planet, One of the biggest Hollywood stars for his first 40 years of life.

Right.

I'm 31, so it's another nine years. He was a struggling actor. Nobody. Right.

So it's too late.

And so I think it's a little. A little. But I, I think that's like. I don't want to tell you a tactic because there's so much more information I would need to know for telling you tactics, but I think a mindset is important, is like, how, how long have you been answering questions on Quora?

Right.

I've been doing it for a few weeks, a few months. Have you been doing for years?

Right.

If you've been doing it for years and you're still not seeing traction, like, then I think what Rich said is probably accurate. It's like they're either the, your, your answers aren't valuable enough. You're. You're missing the mark somehow. Where you're driving them to is an interest. Like there's something about the content. But if you've been doing it for a few weeks or a few months and you haven't picked a momentum, to me, that's not an automatic disqualifier of saying, like, you're not meant to do what you're doing and you're not good. I think you need to, you know, give it the time. Especially when talking organic, like, if you don't have the luxury of capital, it's a grind, Right. If you're putting sweat equity in, it's a grind. And it's going to be a long time before you see results unless you get really lucky. Listen, there, there's always going to be those stories with somebody that just like, goes viral, right. Happens to post this, the right thing at the right time in the right place, and it gets blown up. But that's not the norm. Like that, that's, that's a total anomaly when it comes to building a, you know, a business or becoming an influencer or whatever it might be.

Yeah, I would, I would tend to agree with that. I would say that on most platforms, if you stick with it long enough, they will. Like the way the algorithms are built. Like, they will test you out. They'll give you plenty of opportunities, like YouTube certainly does. If you're posting consistently, they are hoping that they can find a video of yours that will eventually get traction. Why? Because they know that if that happens, you're more likely to post much more frequently. And at the end of the day, they want everyone to have traction because they want people to stay on their platform. So you know, it's a win win for everyone involved. And yeah, you bring up a good point, Max. And it is, it is a time consuming process and to think that you're going to hit it out of the park in a few weeks or a few months. While it does. Excuse me, while it does happen, it doesn't, it doesn't happen for most and. But most people who stick with things long enough eventually see something positive out of it. That's been my experience. These should be interesting because Andy's a really smart guy and he's going to ask questions that probably you can answer better than I can. And he was a client of mine a gazillion years ago. Hey Richard Maxwell. Hi all. I think the big players are all going server side using Facebook's API, Google's API, etc. All first party data. Would you say you agree?

Yeah, I mean so that's, Facebook rolled that out a while ago, capi, which is conversion, their conversion API and I mean that's what Shopify is built in. So when you start a Shopify store now you just put your pixel in there and they, they, they do all the work for you or you need a developer to set it up if you're on like you know, kind of non Shopify where it's plug and play. The problem though is even with that it still doesn't matter. Based on Apple's rules, it doesn't matter how the data is passed back to Facebook. If the user says do not track me, it doesn't matter whether the data is passed back through a pixel or through server to server. That data cannot be touched or used by Facebook. So I agree.

So unfair to Facebook because all they really care about are small businesses and it really hurts them from helping small businesses.

It is amazing that. Yeah, I missed that memo until, until this year. That's what they cared about.

Yeah, right. Like I, like I never got like. Well that's probably an overstatement. I got like so like I screamed out like so loud. Like everyone around me heard me like when they said that like yeah, like you give a. About small business. Like the same people, accountants. Yeah, the same account. The same people that bounce accounts all the time that put people out of business that won't even take a phone call or like give you a reason. Yeah, they care. It seems like they give a lot more preference to big business and big brands for, for a company that supposedly cares about small business.

Yeah, I mean that's what it was. I mean this, this past year has been a, it's been a pr, a bullshit PR battle by Apple and Facebook where both parties have been lying about their, their true reasonings for why they're doing it. The difference is that Apple actually is really good at PR and has goodwill.

Yeah.

And so they won and Facebook has no goodwill and they suck at pr. So they got. Nobody believed them. Right.

What do you think the possibility is, you know, that Apple and Google are in cahoots together to try and make Facebook less relevant. I mean Apple has that like deal with Google where they're the default search engine.

They get about 812 billion a year.

Yeah. It certainly is better for Google if Facebook is not such a good place to advertise. Right. Like, so there's already money transferring between Google and Apple. They're like, I don't know. I, I believe I, I think you disagree, but I believe that Apple's eventually going to have their own ad network. I think it's.

Oh, I don't disagree at all.

Oh, you don't?

I think I've been posting a lot about it the last few weeks. I think it's, it's like I just posted the other day about, they just hired a, I just posted it on, on Instagram the other day. They Let me see, one sec, the guy's name. So they just hired Facebook ads manager Anthony Antonio Garcia Martinez. So they're hiring like people from Facebook's ad team. So yeah, there's, there's a 100% chance that Apple is rolling out a self serve kind of ad platform that's competitive. Facebook. But it's like an Apple ad network is probably the, the hottest ad network when it rolls out. The hottest, most valuable ad network in the world. Because we all know the Apple users are the most valuable customers. They spend the most money, they, they buy most frequently. That's where all the advertisers want anyway. So a place where I can just go and just target Apple users and get all of this amazing data that Apple has. Because like Apple has an insane amount of data they have. I would argue that they have better data, maybe not more data, but better data maybe more than, than Facebook because they also guess what, like they're connected to your, your wallet, they're connected to your transactions. They know what you're buying, how much you're spending. They know your bank balance, they know, they know everything. Right. They know your health, they know your, your heart rate, they know your blood pressure, they know whether you work out. Like they have way more like value.

If you're a dude. Yeah, if you're a dude, they know when you masturbate.

They know everything.

Yeah, no, I mean, like, because, like, anytime I wash my hands, they know I'm washing my hands, right? Like, I get that text, you're washing your hands. Like, you know, so if they know this hand movement, I'm sure they know other hand movements. And yeah, like, I'm all Apple too. Like, I'm all Me too.

Yeah.

Credit cards and Apple credit cards. So, like, yeah, I mean, everything I buy is through my Apple credit card, through my phone, through my watch. Like, yeah, it's pretty insane.

Yeah, it's, it'll be. They, they 100 will roll out their, their.

All right. I'm glad you agree.

Yeah, I totally agree.

When I did a steal our winners, it was Kurt Molly and he was like, oh, I don't think they'll ever do that. It's like.

And I'm like, they have to, they, they have no. Think when you're a, a 2 trillion dollar, you know, plus or minus when you're, when you're worth $2 trillion, like, you can only grow. Like, think about how when you basically have sold phones to everybody on the planet. And I, like, they can only expand so much more with their hardware. Right? The hardware is not where they're going to grow. AirPods have been a big success, but that's, that's not going to be, you know, their big thing where their growth is, is taking Facebook and Google, taking their entire bottom line and just plopping it onto their business.

Right?

That's where they're, their growth is. It's in software and services. So that's where they're going, they're going to go really, really hard on that. It was a smart move. It's basically we're going to play the good guy, put all of our goodwill to use because we're like Coca Cola. We have all this goodwill. So we're gonna play this story for a few years of Facebook. We're all about privacy, privacy, privacy. So give us all of your data because we're protecting. We trust it.

Yeah.

So they've been setting this up for a long time of, okay, let's go all into Apple. Let's put all of our device, all of our stuff's gonna be Apple, all of our everything because they protect our data. Apple now has all of your data and now they're gonna roll on our platform and their angle is going to be we're a, a, you know, a data first ad platform. We care about your data. We anonymize it. They're gonna have all this fancy shit that they, they spew that make people feel good about Apple sharing data with advertisers.

I don't think Quinn is very happily happy about the way you're talking about Apple.

He's super happy right now. He's, he's eating his food. So he's. This is happy, this is happy noise he's making in the background there. Eating his teething crackers, I think, or peanut puffs. He's, he's enjoying it. But yeah, it'll be, it'll be really interesting and it'll be interesting to see how Facebook handles it and where Facebook's growth is. But as a point of your question, your, your actual question was whether Apple and Google are in cahoots. Yeah, here's the thing about Apple.

I'm listening. I'm grabbing a. Yeah.

Apple, and this really started under Steve Jobs, is like a, they play this good guy character, right? They're cutthroat. They're. They're as cutthroat as it gets. They're about winning. And you don't become the biggest company, one of the biggest companies in the world by being friendly and playing fair. Playing, you know, let's all get together and stuff like. So Apple is, they're already. There's rumors they've been working on their own search engine. So here, Apple's move. And this is why they're getting sued everywhere right now, right? And Amazon does the same thing, is Apple creates this ecosystem, okay, where, hey, we invite all, all of you business owners, all small business, big business, come build on our ecosystem, come build software, come build hardware that integrates with our software, yada, yada, yada. And we're gonna, we're gonna get you hundreds of millions of customers. We'll help you become a big business. Everything that, what they don't say is that we're also, if you become really successful, we're gonna see exactly what made you successful. And then during wwdc, we're gonna roll out a suite of new apps that are going to put a dozen you out of business. And, and they've done it systematically every single WWDC since the iPhone came out, since the App Store came out. The second year of the iPhone, the third year of iPhone. And, and so Spotify, hey, Spotify, this is a really Pandora Spotify, really smart. They're, they're doing, People are downloading love, listening to music. Well, let's do direct deals. We have all the relationships. Let's do better deals with musicians. Let's roll Apple music. We'll underprice because we don't pay the 30% commission. We'll make ourselves top in the App Store. We'll preload our app on every hard. On every device so you don't need to download the app. And so I think they're doing the same thing with Google. It's like, what, what better it is brilliant, right. If you think about it, the ultimate business move is to have somebody pay you 8 to 12 billion dollars a year for you to dissect everything about their product that makes it great and then build your own. And then when you're ready to launch that product, you say thanks for your, you know, your 20 billion or 30 billion, $40 billion. We're now done our deal and now we have Apple Search. Thank you. Like, I mean it's, you can't even get mad. I mean that's just, they're, they're just the best when it comes to competitive.

Especially can't get mad like because it's like the reverse of like the Yahoo deal.

Yeah.

Like Yahoo ruined their search engine by serving Google results. Right.

Like now the big, the big question, the big question is, I'm curious, like your thoughts are on this is. So I'm a free market person, right. So I, I am a big believer that if you straight up outcompete somebody, you deserve all the success. Right. If you just out competed and you out invest, you're Jeff Bezos, right?

Right.

And you just, you made, you saw the future and you invested everything and you just, you just out hustled out thought right. Out invested and you now are Amazon and you're just the biggest company in the world and you're, you can just beat people up, you can acquire people like, all right, that's, that's capitalist. That's free market. Where, where I start to get concerned is with what Amazon and Apple both have, which is they're both market makers and market participants.

Yeah.

And that's where I get, that's where to me it's like that's no longer a free market. Right. If you're Apple and you have created this giant marketplace for other businesses to play in, that's great. And you make a lot of money by being the market maker there. You take 30 of everything. Right. Epic Games, every in app purchase, every download, you make money.

Right.

But then if you decide we're also going to roll out our own competitor games and we're going to roll out our own Apple music and we're going to roll out our own TV network, our own movie studio and we're, we're going to roll out our own hardware that has advantages like Apple Tile that just came out, right, the little tile thing, it's a direct knockoff of tile which have been around for eight years. Right.

Looks like Dropbox. Right.

But the difference, the difference with this is that it's not fair because right, if you're a tile, you don't get access to certain features that Apple now. So Apple's tile basically gets to use Fly my iPhone and they get certain hardware usage that tile doesn't have access to because it's not open to developers. So it's really hard to say it's truly a fair market when you're giving certain advantages to your company that you're not giving to other market dissonance. Right. And so that's where they're really running into a lot of hurdles. And like the EU came out and said basically they haven't done the hearing yet, but they came out before the hearing and said, yeah, we think this anti competitive. We think basically what Apple's done is anti competitive. They're being sued in France, Germany, Australia. They're being sued now in the US by Epic Games. So yeah, I mean there'll be. And that, that's the arg is that the market maker versus market participant is the big argument. And I think there's, there's a lot of, of grounds there to say that that's true like that, that I think it's anti competitive.

I think that's true. I think that, I mean, I'm more of a hawk on this than you are. Even though I believe in the free market, but I also believe that you can get so big that you have too much control. And I think that these companies have too much control. I think that their size allows them to buy anybody who could be a competitor way early. I don't think they should be like one of the best solutions I heard years ago, which made sense to me was like they should not be allowed to make any acquisition over $100 million. It's like the easiest way to just block off them starting to buy out competitors because it's like at some point it's got to stop. And obviously, well, not obviously I lean right even though I have no idea what the hell is going on in the world anymore. I've never known less and I kind of am happy about that. But like, like these companies have an agenda, they have Too much power. They are now if they're not the biggest lobbying group, they're right under Big Pharma. Like, like, you know, they're paying most of the politicians off. So nobody's got like our back. And there's just all these deals that like any other company would go to jail. Like, you know, like when Google had that deal with MasterCard where MasterCard was feeding them back the data of all everybody's purchases. Like, how is that not against the law? Like, and how, like why isn't anyone going to jail? Like, it's just insane. So I totally agree. I mean it's most obvious is like if you're the market maker, you can't participate in the market. Especially with all the data from the market. I mean, Amazon does that all the time too. Like anybody that sells well, they introduce their own version of that product. And why wouldn't they? Right?

And then you have a company, you have companies like, you know, Robinhood that have been able to do, you know, commission free trading because they didn't tell you is they actually make money by selling your trades to Citadel who place the trades and they can front run. Like they're basically saying, I'm going to buy Apple at a thousand to a share and they go and buy it and then they place your order after. Like so there's, there's so much of this stuff happening right now that's, it's amazing that it's, it's all still allowed to be happening.

Right.

And it does make it incredibly difficult to, to, to compete once you get to a, a certain size because like you said, you can just, and you only, you only hear about the big ones like Facebook, Apple, Google. I mean they're buying companies every day they're buying companies for 10, 50, $100 million. All day long they're just placing big bets because there's so much money. It's like, hey, this company, you know, blows up, it's worth nothing. Like we got a few talented developers and technology, we can throw it in there and we prevented them from becoming big, which is just. Yeah, I mean that's the opposite of like a free market.

And that like I think it was in the book the Four written by Scott Galloway, which was an excellent book.

Yeah, he's really great.

Yeah. And he was talking about, what was he talking about? What was the last thing you said? Because it was related to that number.

Of like these small acquisitions that happen all the time that we don't hear about.

Oh yeah, yeah. So he was saying that like in Silicon Valley these days, most vcs are. It's not about, like, bring it to market. It's like selling it to. I got your text. Selling it to like one of the big tech companies. Yeah. And you know, that's that I wanted to. Before you run, I know you gotta run me. J says hi to both of us, but I wanted to see if you had any comment here. Have you seen CPMs increasing by 80 to 100 in the beauty niche? Our CPMs have gone up significantly.

I've seen. So I've seen weird things happening on both sides. So I've seen ad accounts where CPMs have dropped by a similar percentage.

Oh, wow.

And. And I've seen AD accounts where CPMs have increased by a similar percentage. And. And I think unfortunately it's just right now there's with statistical modeling, which stuff Facebook is showing purchase at this, at this point, like it's. Everything is thrown off and it's so crazy. And Facebook's like testing out all this new and a lot of it's broken. So the optimist in me believes that a lot of this will settle down over the coming weeks. That we're just dealing with a lot of fluctuations because nobody knows what's happening. And that's leading to people spending a lot more, spending a lot less, or, you know, and that obviously has an impact on auctions, which impact CPMs. The beauty niche though, is always like, to me, it's always been one of the most competitive. Like that and biz op and like education are two of the markets that always have CPMs that are, you know, 50, 60, 80, sometimes 100 plus. I would just, I wouldn't focus just on the metric though. I'd focus on are you seeing a corresponding increase in conversion rates? Right. So what matters to me at the end of the day is like, is it profit or not profitable?

Right, right.

So my CPMs increased by 20 or my conversion rates increasing by 20 or 30, because sometimes you're paying more, but you're paying for a higher quality customer. And so those two things, you gotta kind of do the math and see how they balance out.

Got it. Well, very cool. So do you got a jet?

I do have the jet. I'm. I'm taking over. I gotta, we gotta do our nightly walk and stuff. But I, I know you hit me up last minute and we haven't chatted in a while, so I made sure I hopped on for a bit.

Can we see Quinn? Can you show us Quinn before you.

He's.

I can bring him in. Yeah, Max was really nice. Like, when I realized that I was not gonna be able to review everything I wanted to for flow, I didn't want to cancel the live stream. And I know that Max is a lot more plugged in to all of what's going on as it relates to media buying and these networks. So I thought it would be great to have him on and I'm glad that we did. It was also cool to catch up with Max. And there's the mighty Quinn.

Here's the rock star.

So cute. Is he sleeping well now?

He is not. So there's still really bad sleep, so it's. We don't get much sleep anymore, but he's good during the day.

Thanks, man. Appreciate you and appreciate you taking the time and yeah, let's catch up real soon. Let me know when you're around. All right, cool.

Always get a chat.

All right, guys. So yeah, it's just me here solo. We'll answer some more questions and then we'll call it an early night. Or not. We'll see. There's Max saying hello to everyone and smoke signals here. Hi, from B.C. canada. Good evening to both of you. Jamie Porter checking in from West Palm Beach, Florida. Hey, excellent topic. Cool. It also seems that automated rules are not reliable as before. That's true, Hugo. They're not doing what they're supposed to do. It's the same happening to your Facebook accounts too. I've heard that. So, yes, email open rates go down when the receiver does not view the sender as relevant and authentic practitioner. I think once you consider if you had pay post the email, would you still send it? I don't think that's even the right way to think about it, dude. If we're marketers, then the goal is to get it opened.

And.

Quite frankly, when someone does not open your email, it actually dings you. So you hurt your deliverability when you send emails to people that don't open it. But for someone that opens it, the best thing that you can do is send them as many emails as they opened because that helps your reputation score. So it's not a question of whether you would pay for it because you might not be willing to pay for 10 messages to send to someone who opens all 10, but you'd be silly not to send it to someone who opens all of them because it improves your reputation. So as long as you're sending good stuff, then I just disagree with you. Facebook user Mr. Rich, how are you, sir? Hope all is well shared to my group. Thank you man say you were signed up to 10. Listen, if they each send two emails a day, I would run into the unsubscribe button and lightspeed. Okay, so then you should. But that doesn't mean that that's not what that business should do. Mr. Max, great to see you again. Maybe Max is hearing this. Greetings, Rich. Max, from a longevity standpoint for an ad spend, is concerning a billboard ad that runs for 30 days with your logo or simple domain name a way to generate traffic effectively? Or is that incredibly terribly stupid? Steve, in general, that's incredibly stupid. Specifically it could be a good idea depending on the actual use. But if you think about it like what are you expecting someone to do? Stop at that billboard, remember your domain name, go to their phone or get online when they're home and then remember that domain name and then go check it out. Generally not the best idea, but you know, you could have a specific use case where that could work. Hello, should you ask them if they prefer daily or weekly newsletters? Also, if the email is cold, should you segment out over a few days when sending new emails to hopefully not have a bad open rate unsub with the entire list? Yeah, you definitely would want to warm up a list by sending to the people who are most likely to open first, if that's what you're asking.

Denise.

In considering inbox reputation to keep it high with ESPs, would you adjust mailing frequency to your email list by segmenting by open click frequency and sending more often to the active open click subscribers and less and less frequently to the less active subscribers? Exactly, Ralph. That's what you would do. And if you want to know how to do it so that you could have open rates at like 50% to lists that have a million people on it, then if you're still our winner subscriber, you want to listen to last month's interview with Fernando Cruz, the head of Legacy Financial and Agora Property that he's helped grown from 100 million to 400 million. And credit's email deliverability is one of the reasons he was able to do it. And those he has a list of about a half a million that has like a 45 list of 450,000 that has like a 50 plus percent open rate on a list of like 900,000 that has like a 48% open rate. And that's primarily due to segmenting based on action and exactly what you were saying, Ralph. So yes, Rich, I was under the impression that Dan Kennedy had left us. Did I hear correctly? That you will talk to him next week now? Yes. I'm not talking to him next week. I'm talking with him on stage on June 8th and 9th. So he's still alive. What you. You. What you heard was that he was dead, but he isn't. Hey, Jason. And Tampa, good to see you. Dan Kennedy is still here. It was close, but he pulled it out. He's very much alive. Yep, I remember that Q and A blog post. It was very interesting. Thanks, Ralph. The feds are in preparation of their antitrust traps to use on tech companies in San Francisco. Is it worth worrying? It's not worth worrying, but it's going to happen. It should happen. The only reason it hasn't happened is because they changed the antitrust laws a bunch of years ago that it had to have a negative impact on the consumers. And so far they've been hiding behind the fact that everything's free. So then why is it bad for the consumer? But it's horrible for the consumer because it limits options and it's a real problem. Like when everyone's buying on Amazon and then Amazon decides to blacklist you because now all of a sudden the stores around you are out of business. And now how are you going to get your stuff right? Or if you have a business and Google has decided to delist you or Facebook has decided to block you, that's a problem. And that happens daily. So there also has been no massive innovation in the last five years. If you look at what happened when they broke up Ma Bell, that's when all innovation happened. With phones, there's been no innovation last couple years because now big companies are protecting their turf. Rich, your question blog is an interesting concept. A bit intense, but nonetheless interesting. Thanks, man. I'm totally going to use this. Thank you, Rich Efren. My pleasure. If I inspired you to do it. Awesome, actually. Amazing format. Could do a lot with SEO schema. With that or to somehow have it as a type form. Yeah, that would be kind of cool. Andy, I have a question. Okay. I have a question about Facebook ad costs and the weight loss niche. Does Facebook generally charge more for weight loss? I'm currently running a campaign for a customer and the costs are 5x plus what I'm used to seeing for the same type of ad. Wondering if you have any insight. Weight loss is an extremely competitive niche and you're. So you're bidding against other people, so yes, you would be paying more for that. All right, let's see what Mika has to say. Mika, you know you could come over here and ask me these questions directly. And we gotta schedule that lunch. Working towards somehow combining my current work. Chronic healer, yoga teacher, new voluntary supplemental insurance. Okay, well that part I'm not sure like how we combine it, but let's.

See.

What would be the best way to begin working smarter, not harder with merging the work that I do. Stuck, motivated, but having a hard time focusing on what's more important. Okay, so chronic yoga healer, yoga teacher, and now supplemental insurance. I don't know enough about the supplemental insurance, Mika. But yeah, just hit me up and I will help you personally. Be my pleasure. You know that. So Eric Schmidt was on the board at Apple, but I think there's a lot of animosity over Android. Apple are working a lot on their own search capacity too. Lots of new patents. Yeah, that's what Max was saying. Hi Rich. Hey Nick. Tech Teetel Riverview. We know that story made up make up some of the best sales letters. We know that stories being okay and my question is, can you make up or create your own person and story or do you have to actually create your story from a real person? You can tell a hypothetical story, Nick. It just depends on how much stock you're putting into it. Lmfo. That's hilarious, Rich. I'm not sure which part, but great content you're both sharing. Cool. Apple is definitely in the midst of a takeover. What do you think is the timeframe for Apple roll up their ad platform? I'm thinking like three to four years. It's scary when you have offline. When you have an offline and way off topic conversation with your spouse, you're on the churches and within hours you start seeing Facebook and Google Ads on that same topic. Yep. Look, Google knows who you spend time with. So does Facebook. They know based on and so does Apple. Right. Like they up until now, like if you're tracked by Facebook and tracked by Google and you know you got your phone with you, they know which other phones you spend time around. There's nothing that these companies don't know about you. They know more about you than you probably know about you. And certainly more than anyone else knows about you. People get real honest in the search box of Google. Right. Like dealing with depression. How do I lose weight? How do I get a divorce? How do I. It's all there. The ultimate funnel hack. A question for Max. Sorry. Any Facebook courses he recommends for all levels. Yeah, Giancarlo Unicorn his courses. He gives them away free. He used to and people love it. So go track that down. Maxwell Finn's courses on Facebook. Advertising riches newborn in the background. Nope. Appreciate the info, Mika, just hit me up. Thanks a lot, Max and Rich. Jason, I'm listening to the new expanded version of the Cialdini influence on voice stream. Thinking about scarcity. We are suppliers to medical offices. We don't want to imply that our stock of the products are scarce or they won't think of us as a reliable vendor. But promotions are maybe specials or new products we could. Or if other companies in our industry are having supply issues with a product we could use. That product is scarce, but we have thoughts. Look, scarcity is always valuable. It certainly. Yeah. If you are trying to develop a relationship or maintain a relationship that ensures that like you're gonna have it on stock, then I guess locking in people so that they would always get priority because it's hard to keep these in stock because so many people want them. Something like that could work or using other things on top of it so that. So the package of it is scarce. I think you're thinking the right things, Jason. Thank you, Rich. I enjoyed today's call. Hey Rich, I'm seeing that some people are warming up the subscribers by presenting them with a five day part E course which is either video or emails that on the sixth day they present the offer. What do you think? I think that's fine. I think that if they. They should allow people to advance from day one to day two to day three because if someone's in heat to make them wait five days, you might make them wait past the point of when they would buy. I like the idea of a blog post, a question, find a creative way to be different. Thanks. The idea. My pleasure. Will do. Please do. Mika, I really would like to help you. Hey, Mr. Daigle, good to see you my friend. How do you. How does the diversity inclusion movement affect niche info marketing strategy? I don't think it does, but I don't know if you're asking as a joke. I hope so. All right guys, look, we're going to end early tonight. I got Matt flying in in like two hours. I have four events that I gotta speak at in the next like four weeks. On Monday I'm speaking for a Perry Marshall group that he's promoting right now, something. Then the following week I'm speaking at Geek Out. Then two weeks after that I'm speaking in Cleveland with Dan Kennedy. And then three days later I'll be at the Unicorn Mastermind which is now called Founders because it's Unicorn and Tim Burt. I'll be there Speaking, so. And I'm not a speaker, so that's kind of a lot. And I'm trying to get everything done so that I can get steal our winners delivered. And also enjoy my week in Miami with James and Nick for geek out, and I'm hoping that that happens. And also get everything lined up for a coaching program with Matt, which is why he's flying down tonight. So with all that, guys, I'm swamped. I'm busy. But I wanted to make sure that I kept the streak alive, that I spoke to all you guys and I appreciate all of you for tuning in. As we went on, the numbers grew, and that's awesome. And yeah, I'll be a geek Out Francisco. I will be there the whole time. I'm going down on Tuesday or Wednesday, and then I'm spending the whole week out there. So I'm super stoked for that. In fact, that's it. So thank you for the congrats, everyone. And I will see everyone on Tuesday, and I think I'll be here with Matt. So Matt Rizvi will be here with us. And Thursday, right now, at least, I'm thinking about doing it live from geek out. Maybe not in geek out, because that might not be fair, but maybe pull some of the people in from geek out and do a live stream that way. And that would be next Tuesday. So, no, that'll be next Thursday. Tuesday, maybe we'll wrap up flow with Matt. So that's it, guys. Have a wonderful weekend. To higher profits and beyond. Rich Efrin, over and out. See you next time.