personal freedom

Are you a Brick or a Stone? Personal Freedom is A Decision

This week I’m going to be releasing a very special interview of myself and Daniel’s. The guest is Dane Maxwell, formerly known as the guy who has helped numerous people build their own SaaS (Software as a Service) based businesses through a program called “The Foundation”.

If you’re not familiar with Dane, check him out on one of Pat’s “early” podcasts via this link. This interview was a game changer (and still is!) for many online entrepreneurs.

The election process is something that a lot of people take for granted. But in the US, we shouldn’t ever forget how many people have fought for what we have today.

Unfortunately, the powers that are in control in society – especially the media and the federal government – have led many of us to believe we’re only capable of what others say we are.

If you look at both sides of presidential ticket, one side says we need more protection from all the bad things in the world, while the other one says that we need protection from all the challenges that we might face in the world.

Either way you look at it, the Federal Government is trying to tell us we need more of it in our lives.

In return they’ll give us liberty to live a peaceful life and just keep doing what we’re doing.

But is it really so simple?

We’re All Stones Treated as Bricks

I recently heard an analogy about how the world is trying to make us copies of each other. Like we’re being made into bricks to be the infrastructure of this society. We all conform into a certain code of conduct.

And we do. Especially those of us who are products of higher forms of formal education.

It’s what our school system trains us to be. Teach to the test, not the individual.

Sure this is fair treatment, but is it the best treatment?

I don’t think so. Not everyone is the same naturally.

Instead of bricks, we’re more like stones. Some of us are big, some are small. Some have weird angles and yet others are made of different materials.

You can still build with stones… but not as easily as you can with bricks.

It’s easy to understand why working with brick might be more preferable by a craftsman (or in the real world, the top 1% of the top 1%). They want the easiest way to build something that has a strong structure.

But value of the end result isn’t going to be as high as if stones were used.

With bricks, you just place each one on top of each other until you have the form you want and put a roof on it. With stones, you have to strategically think about how each stone fits into the building.

Like Glenn, when I see a stone house, I admire the work that went into it.

Can You Be a Stone once You’ve been Trained as a Brick?

When it comes to people, I believe so. We’re never truly bricks. We’re just treated that way.

That’s really what New Inceptions is all about. Helping people who think they’re bricks “refind” their uniqueness. Their own perfect spot in the world.

When it comes to finding your spot, Dane wants us all to know about our individual worth and value. We are valued for who we are and our contributions to helping others.

You might have heard that he’s becoming a musician to get that message out. Further than he could with The Foundation.

His songs are meant to help people feel loved and appreciated for who they are. Here’s a glimpse:

I recommend subscribing to his newsletter to get the rest of his new songs.

But yes, it takes a lot of work to find what makes you unique and realize you’re a stone.

Exercising Your Personal Freedom

Here’s the deal. You, like me, or even Dane, are not defined by your past.

We don’t have to always be the person that everyone sees us as.

Perhaps society and your education would make you believe otherwise, but really your future does not rely on who you’ve been or what you currently think of myself.

Heck, just yesterday Maria let me know of a guy who killed himself over the pressures of what was going on in his life. From what I understand, he turned to alcohol and other means of blocking out the pain. And eventually it got to him. You really have to feel for his family and the grief that he caused them.

But yet, I’m sure he felt stuck.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

As Sandra Bellamy said in session 50 of the podcast, you need to embrace your quirkiness. Or as I would simply put it, you need to exercise your personal freedom.

How do you do that?

Well, besides what Sandra suggests, I’d become familiar familiar with the 5 Obstacles of Personal Freedom. Start with health because you can’t really help people if you don’t have the energy to.

With it being October of 2016, I want to make sure you’re aware of the fifth one.

You need to know what liberties are currently granted to you in your country. Essentially these are the rules that you have to play by.

If you’re like me, you’ll want to fight to keep things as free as they are. The more liberties governments gives their people, it’s usually done through taking away something else that we weren’t aware of.

Remember that the Constitution is all about what powers the government has – not what liberties it gives us. The government should work for us, not the other way around.

And currently it’s looking more and more like we’re bricks working for it.

Wrap Up

As you’re hearing this heavy pounding of political ads this month in the US, I want you to remember the difference between Personal Freedom and Personal Liberty.

Personal Liberty is the “playing field” that the outside world gives us. Personal Freedom is the freedom you give yourself to be the natural you in that space.

Familiarize yourself with which candidates talk about giving you more freedom. Not necessarily those who talk about “being fair”. Brick makers are usually the ones who talk about strong “education” and treating each other as “equals”.

With the internet, you can educate yourself. Educate yourself to be the best version of you and not what formal education teaches you is “important”.

Also, we shouldn’t judge people by what their demographics are. We should judge them based on their character and their actions – if at all. No one person is inherently better than the next.

Not a person who owns 16 profitable businesses or a person who has a spark of a dream.

Now, get out there and meet some other stones!

convertkit

Barrett Brooks: ConvertKit Transition, Empowerment of Others, and Meaningful Conversations (AoL 054)

We’ve all felt that feeling where, at the end of the day, you wish you felt better about the work that you’re doing. Perhaps you feel like you’re stuck in a rut. Maybe you want to pursue something else with your time? Make more impact on people.

How do you do that?

There’s so much to the answer of that simple questions.

Like the team at New Inceptions, Barrett Brooks, today’s guest, is all about helping people make an impact. He did it with his first business called Living for Monday, then went on to join Fizzle, and now he works with ConvertKit as their Brand Strategist and Community Builder.

In this chat with Barrett, we find out more about that transition to ConvertKit and what he looks forward to doing with them. We also got the opportunity to find out more about his time with Seth Godin, why he likes empowering others, and why he believes meaningful conversations are the basis for great relationships.

SPECIFICALLY, YOU’LL FIND OUT MORE ABOUT:

  • How Barrett got involved with ConvertKit 8:00
  • What’s the people and culture at ConvertKit like? 11:28
  • Who is ConvertKit for? 13:48
  • What was Barrett’s time with Seth Godin like? 15:56
  • Knowing what he knows now about business, how would he have changed his business plan for his old business “Living for Mondays”. 23:13
  • How did Barrett get started with Fizzle.co? 26:17
  • What were things that made Barrett want to become an empowerer of others? 29:05
  • Where does he get his interest in politics and world events? 40:02
  • Why he believes that great relationships are built on deep conversations and connections. 45:16
  • Who does Barrett coach and how does he reach out to them? 47:26
  • His thoughts in how to get more people in deep and meaningful conversations. 52:01
  • Biggest 3 Influencers in Barrett’s Life 59:24
  • What he believed when he was 21 and now sees as bogus. 1:00:11
  • Who’s the most awe-inspiring person he’s met? 1:01:23
  • One thing under $100 that has changed his life. 1:02:37
  • Who comes to mind when he thinks of success? 1:03:10
  • … and MUCH more!

Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer.

ITEMS and PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Barrett’s Choice Books:

SHOW NOTE EXTRAS:

Barrett’s TEDx Talk

Teaser for the Fizzle Jess Lively Interview

Jess Lively Interview:

barrett brooks jess lively

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His interview via Talking Davos:

Thanks for Listening!

Thanks so much for joining us again this week. Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below!

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the top of the post.

Also, please leave an honest review for The AoL Podcast on iTunes! Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and we read each and every one of them.

If you have any questions feel free to email them over via the email mentioned in the show or by our contact form.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunesStitcherSoundcloud, and/or Google Play Music. It’s absolutely free to do so.

A huge thank-you to you guys for joining us!

Cheers!

 

How to Make a Personal Development Plan for Your Business Which You’ll Be Sure to Stick To!

In the last post, I talked about Just In Time Learning. This is something that I’ve been learning quite a bit about recently.

Before I was focusing on building New Inceptions, I would always just listen to whatever the influencers had to say. Many times just because it was actionable information.

But, I never took action and therefore it was really just entertainment.

Once I did start focusing, however, I was able to actually apply what I was learning. And then I would naturally have more questions that needed answers. And the process would keep going.

This process has lead to me mastering skills and abilities that I didn’t know I’d even have before starting on the journey of building a business.

Want to know my strategy for mastering parts of my business? Here you go:

Step-by-step process: How to Make a Personal Development Plan for Your Business that You’ll Be Sure to Stick To

I’m going to walk you through all six steps here. Follow along and do what I do.

Step 1: Brainstorm

Using a mind map, I want you to think of 10 to 15 things that you believe that you could that could take your business to the next level.

Before you think of those items, I want you to give yourself 4 different categories that will help you with your thinking.

These 4 different categories are things that would help your business grow. So, for example, here are 4:

  1. Speaking opporutunities
  2. A website
  3. Products
  4. Engaging with potential clients

If you’ve never heard of a mind map, here’s what one might look like (via Pat Flynn in this 2008 post).

pats-mindmap

These are examples of things that Pat could make money from.

This mind mapping process can give you a much clearer sense of what’s important and you need to be focusing on next.

Step 2: From Your Mindmapping, preferably pick skills and topics that are in the Personal Development Sweet Spot.

Meaning that:

  1. You have a competency in or can perform it.
  2. You have a passion for it (or it’s existence will help your passion).
  3. Other people will want it.

Here’s a visualization of where you should be working:

personal-development-sweet-spot

Step 3: Prioritize – which of these chosen skills or actions will have the most impact on your business?

Now that you’ve brought this list down a bit, let’s see if it makes sense to do them right now.

First, do any of the items that you’re thinking about working on fall into one of the 6 Cornerstones of a Successful Online Business?

For example, if one of your items is learning how to use a certain type of social media (because one of the 4 topics we listed was engaging with potential clients), then you’d learn that social media, when it comes to business, is a form of marketing.

However, another one of our topics was “a website”.

Would it make sense to market your services first or have a place on the web (or in the real world for that matter) where people can find out more about you?

That’s where a website is needed. Marketing and engagement should come after actually having somewhere for people to find out more about what you’re doing.

Again, get the 6 Cornerstones eBook to help with this part.

Step 4: Evidence of Accomplishment

So let’s say that you pick doing a website now because you accept what I said in the last step.

How will you know that your website is done enough that you can start marketing it?

What does “Done” look like here?

That decision is going to be up to you. You might just opt for a long one page solution. Or, you might feel that you want to create different pages that that have different jobs. What’s best for what you’re wanting to do?

You have to start with the end in mind of what you want to achieve before you go looking for how you should do it.

Examples of things that might be considered “done” in my book would include:

  1. My New Product is available.
  2. I have a landing page for that new product.

Or if I wanted to work on traffic and leads:

  1. How many new followers do I need to have in order to get X traffic?

Knowing what you’re looking for will help you do the next step…

Step 5: Find and List 10 Resources or People That You Might Be Able to Learn it From

Ok, so how do you find someone that has the knowledge (free or for a premium) that will help you do what you want to do?

I have 5 suggestions you can to with increasing cost to get what you’re looking for:

  • Search YouTube – You’ll find the free options here. Many times, though, they’re previews of the main course.
  • Subscribe to Fizzle – Only $35 a month and it covers all the bases of what you need to know at any given time while building a young business. (Use this link for 2 weeks for free!)

fizzle

Here’s the main page of Fizzle’s library of courses. Now you see why I recommend them!!

  • Go to a site like Lynda.com or uDemy to find specific skills for your business.
  • Buy a big ol’ course from a lead influencer. These usually have the best results because they’re so rich in details, but you will be paying through the nose for it. (These can typically cost anywhere from $500 – $5000 per course!!) You’ll hear about these courses from big mediapreneurs like Pat Flynn, Jordan Harbinger, and Lewis Howes.
  • Buy a course from a lesser known person through a site like Producthunt.com. Results might definitely vary here, but you might find a bargain!!

Step 6: Implementation through Accountability

Learning about some new topic, strategy, or skill, won’t mean anything unless you put what you’re learning about to use.

Some people like to buy the higher cost courses just because the higher cost will keep them more accountable to implementing what they’ve learned.

However, many of those courses are time sensitive and will expect your full focus right away. Often times you get to meet others through these courses and help each other accomplish more together.

Side Note: If you’re wondering how much a product that is currently being hyped will cost – the more hype combined with the more results a free portion of the product will yield, the more you can expect the final program costing.

So a great example of this was the recent Ryan Levesque’s Ask Method. He was on several shows giving great quality in-depth pointers in how to actually do something. He was also mentioned several times in email campaigns by other folks as affiliates. The actual cost of the program is unknown to me, but I would go out on a limb and guess it was easily $2000 to $5000 per participant. And if people wanted to work with him in a small workshop type of function – that could easily start that price at $10k for the entry price.

Personally, I’ve been through two programs like this: The John Maxwell Team Certification Program and The Foundation. My networks have blossomed greatly because of my involvement with both.

Other resources that are available all the time won’t require as much focus and chances are their price points won’t be in the thousands.

However, you won’t be getting built in accountability with it.

If you have a network already in place of people who are ready to be accountable with you in whatever you want to work on, then you don’t need that extra price

If you’re just getting starting on your business, here’s my suggestion: Hop on Fizzle and make use of their Roadmap or if you’re a reader, read Pat Flynn’s book Will It Fly?

Action Steps:

Here’s my challenge to you.

Pick 5 topics or skills that you’re going to learn about within the next month or so by the end of this week. Then start learning about the first one next week. It might take you longer than a week to learn and do as much as you can for each one. How quickly you learn them is completely up to you.

But you’ll have focus because you’ll know what you’re supposed to be learning about!

And, of course, the bright side of that is that you won’t go crazy trying to convince yourself you need to be doing 20 different things!

Let me know how it works out for you below!

 

starting a SaaS Business

Tips for Starting a SaaS Business and Exploring Current Events with Matej Leban (AoL 053)

Have you heard of The Foundation? The one educational program with Dane Maxwell teaching people how to build a SaaS based business? Perfect students are those who don’t have their own idea, money, or skills to make it work out on their own?

If you haven’t, go check it out!

If you have heard of it, you might have heard that the hardest problem that many Foundation students have is finding someone to work on the technical aspect of things. They don’t know where to look or how to vet those that they have found on a site like Upwork.

That’s where today’s guest, Matej Leban comes in.

Just like other students, Matej struggled with this part. Eventually, though, he figured out a way around it.

Today with SaaSBloom, he helps others do the same thing.

In this chat, we talk about that story and some tips he’s learned in making a profitable SaaS. We also discuss why a guy like him, who’s from Eastern Europe, would be interested in US Politics.

SPECIFICALLY, YOU’LL FIND OUT MORE ABOUT:

  • Matej’s Experience Being a Mentor in the Foundation 8:52
  • What flipped his entrepreneurial switch. 11:21
  • Some tips that Matej has learned to successfully cold contact potential clients. 20:28
  • Where the idea for SaaSBloom came from 24:20
  • What Matej would use to create in the world. 32:54
  • Why Matej, who’s from Eastern Europe, has an interest in US Politics. 34:06
  • Sources that Matej follows to stay on top of World Events 48:50
  • What are 3 influencers that have influenced Matej to where he is today 55:21
  • One gift he likes giving the most. 57:43
  • One thing Matej believed when he was 28 years old, but doesn’t any longer. 58:19
  • If he was going to place an ad cost free into world, what would it be? 2:32
  • One thing under $100 that has changed his life. 3:54
  • When he thinks of success, who comes to mind? 1:04:58
  • … and MUCH more!

Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer.

ITEMS and PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

SHOW NOTE EXTRAS:

Dane Maxwell gives a quick intro to The Foundation and SaaS:

Maxie Describes working with Matej:

Men Who Built America Trailer:

Glenn Beck and Penn Jillette talk about Penn’s book “Everyday is an Atheist Holiday! More Magical Tales”

Thanks for Listening!

Thanks so much for joining us again this week. Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below!

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the top of the post.

Also, please leave an honest review for The AoL Podcast on iTunes! Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and we read each and every one of them.

If you have any questions feel free to email them over via the email mentioned in the show or by our contact form.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunesStitcherSoundcloud, and/or Google Play Music. It’s absolutely free to do so.

A huge thank-you to you guys for joining us!

Cheers!

 

just in time learning

Do Yourself a Favor: Practice Just In Time Learning

In this post I want to talk about learning. Learning to learn is fine – especially if you’re getting a degree or a new job or just cruising around on the web. However, there are times when you need to learn Just In Time. Most people, including me at one point, learn whenever. That might not be a great use of time. Especially when you’re trying to build a business.

I’ve been a proponent of Fizzle ever since I started with them in March of 2015.

Why?

The main reason is that the internet is full of content that you might or might not need. More often than not, it’s stuff you DON’T need. I really appreciate Fizzle because their Roadmap is so to the point. It might not be every single detail that you need at every level of building a business. But, it does give you a general method of getting you where you want to be in a to-the-point manner. Plus the Roadmap is constructed in way that you’re learning Just-In-Time.

I mean, don’t get me wrong – I love knowing things just for the heck of it. One of my favorite ways of killing time is on reddit – and many of the subs that I subscribe to are full of facts, strategies, and FYIs. Heck, I love podcasts that discuss important things in life. My mind just loves learning and wondering about things.

But, notice I say “killing time” there.

I take that phrase very literal.

For me, there’s a time when I want to be productive and then there’s a time for just goofing off. And really, I think you need to be aware of when you’re doing each and why you’re doing each.

I wasn’t aware of all the time I was killing until I had my wake up call.

A Wake Up Call

When you lose someone that is as close to you as my mom was with me, you start realizing that we only have so much time in this world.

Her passing was my wake up call to live life.

There are other types of wake up calls.

Many people experience theirs when their first child is born. Others might even have theirs when they’re saying “I do.” on an alter. And yet, others have their wake up call when they’re being shot at during their first engagement during a battle.

But, the truth is, I really think it takes one of these life changing events to truly wake up.

To wake up and realize that you’re an adult. That you’re now responsible for your own life.

What is Being an Adult?

Being an adult, I think, is more than just being “responsible”. It’s all about knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s knowing that you’re capable of being the best you you can be. And I think it’s also about realizing that you can’t really change the people that are around you unless they want to be changed.

In the Stages of Manhood post, the last stage is being a Sage. If you’re not familiar with the term, a sage is usually known as someone who has the respect of other powerful people. Those people typically seek the sage for his knowledge and wisdom.

A sage has mastered what it means to be an adult. (If you’re a guy and want to learn more about becoming a warrior, lover, king, and eventually a sage, then check out this post.)

Wisdom is Important

The sage is sought for his wisdom.

But what is wisdom?

The dictionary says it as:

“The soundness of an action or decision with regard to the application of experience, knowledge, and good judgment.”

Which means that the sage knows when to do something, not just how to do something.

You know, I went to college to become an engineer. And part of being an engineer is learning about a particular problem and then coming up with a solution that not only satisfies a problem, but it also does it efficiently.

In a way, engineers have to act wisely. We have to take in as much info as we can about a given situation and then have a solution to implement.

The same can be said about many jobs. The more we know about a certain problem, the better we feel when we start on solving it.

But here’s the thing, you can’t ever build true wisdom until you actively learn about a given situation and then apply what you’ve learned. Listening and watching podcasts or videos, gives us information, true. But it doesn’t give us wisdom.

While college and most jobs are all about taking tests without screwing up, life and business aren’t like this. The more we screw up, the more opportunity we have to learn.

It might take us a few times of repeating the same mistake for us to learn from it. In school and on the job, we’re taught to not fail. That’s why we’re taught so much information up front before we ever take a test or get hired for a job.

But as humans, failing is how we learn. You learn as you go.

Learning for Life and Business

So here’s the gist of this post.

When it comes to learning to build your business and solving other problems in life, there’s really no point to go searching for this information until you’re ready for it. Find the solution when you can actually execute it.

It might be nice to listen to some of these big time podcasts like SPI, Entrepreneur on Fire, or even the Fizzle Show so you know what to look out for. But don’t take any classes or seek advice until you’re ready to implement the advice that is given. If you do this enough, you might suffer from what I did for so many years – Knowledge Constipation. The more knowledge and info you have without starting, the less likely you are to start because you don’t know where to start.

Personally, I don’t even bother listening to “Ask Pat” and other Q&A formatted podcasts on a regular basis unless they’re answering a specific question I have.

The truth is that the world is changing too quickly for us to keep track of all of this information and really, if it’s important enough issue, it will be updated in the future when we are ready for it.

Start practicing Right-On-Time Learning – not only will your Evernote account appreciate it, but you won’t be spending a fortune on education that might become obsolete, AND you’ll keep your sanity in check as well.

Thanks again for reading. If you have any stories about learning just-in-time for your business or in life, please share them in the comments!

Cheers!

 

building a long term business

AoL 048: Building a Long Term Business through Relationships, Metrics, and Family with Brandon Northwick

It’s no secret that the way we run our business is based on how we approach the world. Is our business about us helping others with what we think they need help with, without hesitation, or do we see it more as a way of helping others in any way they actually need help? Meaning, we find those problems that they’re actually having and help them there.

To me, this latter method is, I think, how you build true relationships. Not necessarily trying to force what you do on people, but just making yourself available if they need help implementing a particular strategy or tool into their business.

In this rare episode, I dig down into the nuts and bolts of how Brandon Northwick runs his business. I find out how his wife Sara functions in the business, how he uses attraction marketing to get his clients, and how he builds trust with people through that process before getting the sale.

If you’re having problems with closing your service based sales, then you should definitely check out this straight-talk chat.

Enjoy!

SPECIFICALLY, YOU’LL FIND OUT MORE ABOUT:

  • Why you should careful when you using applications like Crowdfire 30:45
  • How do you standardize what people pay you for your services? 34:30
  • Why should people interested in their metrics and when? 36:51
  • How was Brandon’s wife Sara brought into the business world? 38:43
  • What does Sara do in the family business? 40:19
  • How does Brandon’s video strategy enter into his traffic strategy? 41:24
  • What you should do if you feel that your work life isn’t interesting enough to make videos for your business. 43:20
  • How does he generate leads from traffic? 47:09
  • What’s an example of a good opt-in? (The answer is not what you expect!) 49:26
  • What Brandon thinks about having to build trust with a customer before they buy. 52:32
  • How he uses attraction marketing to get his clients. 56:14
  • What kind of people have influenced Brandon’s ability to help people. 57:16
  • What he’s excited for in the future. 58:18
  • Three truths that he would share with others. 1:00:07
  • Three favorite podcasts 1:00:36
  • Something he believed when he was 20 years old, but thinks is bogus now. 1:00:57
  • When he thinks of success, who comes to mind? 1:02:42
  • … and MUCH more!

Right click here and save-as to download this episode to your computer.

ITEMS and PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

SHOW NOTE EXTRAS:

Business for Breakfast – #1 Myth in Building a Lasting Business:


How to Get More Engagement with Social Media

How to Know Where to Sit at a Poker Table (I didn’t know this was a thing…):

Business for Breakfast – Being Guru Centric VS Client Centric:

Thanks for Listening!

Thanks so much for joining us again this week. Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below!

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it using the social media buttons you see at the top of the post.

Also, please leave an honest review for The AoL Podcast on iTunes! Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated! They do matter in the rankings of the show, and we read each and every one of them.

If you have any questions feel free to email them over via the email mentioned in the show or by our contact form.

And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show on iTunesStitcherSoundcloud, and/or Google Play Music. It’s absolutely free to do so.

A huge thank-you to you guys for joining us!

Cheers!

Why I Started Using Email Marketing in 2016 (and Why It Still Works)

Today, more than ever, we’re pressed for time and energy. Each day we start with so many minutes and energy to pay attention to all of the things that we need to deal with.

Many things in our lives distract us from what we want to actually get done. Email checking is one of the biggest pet peeves to most of us – me included. It feels like such a drag.

After swearing to myself that I’d never use email to reach people on a regular basis because of how unresponsive I personally am to it and how overused it seems, I realized that I was leaving a legitimate way to engage and connect with people on the table. Some people actually want to hear from me. 🙂

In fact, there’s some people (again me not being one of them) that actually pay more attention to their email than they do social media. So much so that in the past couple of weeks that I’ve been sending emails, I’ve already had a couple of unsubscribes! Personally I hardly ever unsubscribe from people unless they send too much – (usually those are daily senders and my junk mail tends to grab those after a while anyway).

So what made me realize that this was a good way for me to engage with folks if I’m not the most receptive of it myself? Well, I’m glad you asked. Here’s why:

There are some people who really only get their notifications from the web via emails.

Seriously. They don’t have Facebook, Twitter, or another social media constantly open. Nope, instead, they go to their online email web portal, check to see if anything is going on and if it’s not, then it’s not anything they need to worry about. Larry King recently put it this way on his interview with Lewis Howes when it came to having a phone that can text – “There’s a reason I don’t text. If I need to know it, I’m sure you or someone else will tell me.”

The same is true with social media. My dad is this kind of person as well.

Every cell phone, even flip phones, has email capability.

Unless you know someone that’s carrying a Zack Morris brick or something from the late 90’s or early 2000’s, all phones have email capability. (I don’t even know if those phones can actually use today’s signals or not though, so…)

While there are some people like Larry King who use their flip phone only as a phone, most cell phone users opt to use it for as much as possible. More than 50% (56% of this writing) of all traffic on the web is from mobile devices. People are connected, true, but not everyone has the same apps or use the same social media platforms. Email is “universal”.

People rely on emails for digests of what’s going on from their favorite brands.

When you’re looking to check and see if there’s a sale at a favorite store, are you going to do that via social media, their website, or check for an email if you subscribed to them?

You’ll probably check their website.

However… you probably wouldn’t even think to check their website if it wasn’t the fact that you had been notified by an email of theirs in the past about a sale.

Personally, I know for me that I bought two new Colts hats in the last couple of years because I saw them featured in emails. Had I not gotten those emails, I probably would not have gotten the hats that I wear pretty regularly.

It’s easier for the one doing the marketing to integrate emailing into other marketing systems making them seem more personalized.

Truth be told, I tend to pay attention to emails that start with this: “Hey, Jc!”

Why is that? Because it makes my subconscious feel important. Even though I know that I had to have had put my name in a form somewhere for it come out that way (I go by JC not Jc), I still have more of an interest in that particular email – because I obviously actively signed up for it.

On that same point, 31.5% of US online retailers use the customer’s name and/or a unique welcome message. However, nearly half of US online retailers use personalized product recommendations (44.9% – read marketing funnels) and a quarter of them report adding shopping cart reminders (27.6%) to cover all of their personalization bases.

It’s inexpensive.

Currently, right now with MailChimp, I’m not paying anything to email my email list. I think that this is a great option for anyone that might not have a huge budget to spend on tools when they’re first getting started.

Also, I’ve used other tools like Constant Contact and aWeber, and frankly, I wasn’t too impressed with their functionality. MailChimp has gotten way better over the last couple of years.

However, there’s one cavot that I’m pretty sure using MailChimp has – it has issues getting through spam filters. Not sure why that is.

If you’re using MailChimp and you start hearing about your subscribers ending up with your email in their spam folders a bit much, you might want to consider other options.

The least expensive one that I can think of is ActiveCampaign which seems to have a reasonable price point.

That said, if you already have a course or two and you’re bringing some money in to cover your expenditures, you might want to take a look at ConvertKit – which seems it’s quickly becoming the best platform for online business folks.

Love it or hate it, it’s still effective.

So there you have it. Even though I’m not the first one to use the medium by far (I went a whole year without using it), I’ve realized that even within the few weeks that I have used it that I get more engagement. In the end, if we’re trying to get our message out there as people who want to change lives, then I’ll concede that email is a tool that you might want to reconsider using in the foreseeable future.

Let me know below what your experience has been with email marketing. Did you hate it at first and eventually give in like me?