0:01

You're feeling like you're putting out something

0:04

beyond just sort of a mechanical

0:06

transaction with your market. It

0:08

has the sort of positive halo

0:10

effects if you can make that initial

0:13

commitment and get the engine started

0:15

and I think starting small and getting that initial

0:17

feedback going is really an important part

0:19

of it. That's really, I think something that people

0:21

overlook in the desire to build

0:24

something big is a lot of the small

0:26

details matter at the very beginning.

0:28

That was Tom Miller, founder of Email for Experts

0:30

where he helps specialize consulting firms

0:32

create more high value clients with expertise

0:35

driven marketing. In this episode,

0:37

Tom shares his journey of transitioning from creating

0:39

info products for a broad audience

0:41

to niching down and focusing on helping a small

0:43

group of people solve a very specific problem.

0:46

What I love about this story is it shows how having

0:49

a small audience of the right people is often

0:51

much better than having a large audience of the wrong

0:53

people. So this is an especially

0:55

great episode if you're just starting out with building your audience

0:58

or you're looking to grow your existing audience

1:00

on a new platform. I'm excited to share

1:02

this with you. So let's jump in.

1:04

You're listening to the Content Heroes podcast

1:07

where entrepreneurs, marketers, and creatives

1:09

share how they build profitable businesses

1:12

on their own terms by creating content

1:14

online. And now your

1:16

host, Josiah Goff.

1:20

Hey everyone, this is Content Heroes

1:23

and I am here with Tom Miller, who

1:25

is the founder of Email for Experts.

1:27

Tom, thanks so much for being on the show today.

1:29

Thanks Josiah. I'm pumped up to talk

1:31

to you about some content and get

1:34

into, hopefully some interesting

1:36

stuff that people haven't heard before.

1:37

Yeah, great. So why don't you tell us a little

1:39

bit about your origin story and how you got into content

1:42

creation?

1:43

I am kind of an outside entrant into

1:45

the marketing world. So I spent my

1:48

first five or six years outside of

1:50

college in the manufacturing industry

1:52

working for a company that produced

1:54

products for the automotive industry. I

1:56

think I have kind of an outside perspective

1:59

that maybe people who came from

2:01

sort of the agency world or otherwise

2:03

don't have in terms of content

2:06

creation and digital marketing.

2:08

And so I kind of backed my way into it

2:11

through tutoring. So I

2:13

was working as an engineer, I was tutoring engineering

2:16

students and then I discovered the

2:18

world of information products,

2:20

Ramit Sethi, create a course, create

2:22

a website. So I went down that road

2:24

and actually my first kind

2:27

of mini business marketing

2:29

project was a site built around

2:32

study skills for engineering students,

2:34

physics students, math students. And so

2:37

that was my training wheels

2:39

into marketing was learning through creating

2:41

that site. And through that process

2:43

I kind of discovered, okay this

2:46

is one little corner of the

2:48

marketing universe, but there are actually all these

2:50

other businesses out here that have kind

2:52

of a real business model and have

2:54

marketing problems. I started getting

2:57

here and there engagements through

2:59

kind of personal connections that I had met through

3:02

learning that process. And then

3:04

the kind of business that I'm running right

3:06

now evolved out of slowly

3:09

discovering where I could add value into

3:11

the marketing process for people

3:13

who run those types of businesses.

3:14

Great. So when you got started,

3:17

were you kind of doing it on the side and then

3:19

how long did it take for you to transition over to

3:21

full-time?

3:22

What I ended up doing was after about

3:26

a year working on that initial website

3:28

project on the side, and actually it's still

3:31

up, phyzzle.com - P- H-Y-Z-Z-L-E, if

3:34

you want to see an example of a discarded

3:37

information products website. Actually

3:39

I get a ping a couple of times a month

3:41

of people who are still buying something

3:44

from there, but it's pretty much a wasteland at this

3:46

point. After about a year or two working

3:48

on that on the side, I just realized that I

3:50

did not have the focus

3:52

and dedication to put out the consistent

3:55

content around that topic area that was

3:57

necessary in order to build the volume

3:59

to make that a viable business model. So at

4:02

the time I had a couple of friends who ran

4:04

similar type of information

4:06

products, businesses aimed at students

4:09

or parents of students, marketing,

4:11

chemistry products, math products,

4:14

things of that nature. And they've spent

4:16

five to seven years of

4:18

weekend, week out of producing

4:21

content, promoting that content,

4:23

building out products and eBooks

4:25

and things of that nature. And I just knew that

4:27

I did not, to put it

4:30

bluntly, I just did not care enough about that solving

4:32

that particular problem in order to just stick with

4:35

it for that long. That was the point

4:37

in which I had a couple of

4:39

feelers out there of other people who

4:42

wanted help with this stuff. So I

4:44

did a few small gigs here and there

4:46

to sort of prove out like, can I

4:48

actually do this for other people? And

4:50

that was all at the same time where I was

4:53

working my engineering job. Moved the family,

4:55

we originally grew up in Maryland, moved down to

4:58

Nashville area. I took another engineering job

5:01

and then it was at that point that I realized, okay,

5:03

like I have kind of a decision to make. Do

5:05

I want to go deep on this

5:07

sort of traditional engineering

5:09

career track and go the corporate

5:11

route or do I want to try something different

5:13

and see where it leads me. And so that

5:16

led me to getting more serious

5:18

about actually going out and finding clients

5:20

for me to help with their marketing. And then it was about

5:23

six months of doing both at

5:25

the same time before I kind of

5:27

felt I had enough confidence to make that

5:29

shift at that point in time.

5:31

That's great. So for everyone listening, Tom

5:33

and I connected a

5:35

few years back because we both had

5:38

a similar journey of, we had one

5:40

small kid, one on the way

5:42

and we just left our jobs to

5:44

start our own businesses. And

5:46

we were both featured in the same freelancing

5:49

blog. And it's funny,

5:51

I reached out to him saying, Hey , it looks

5:53

like we have a similar background, we should connect. And

5:55

he said, Hey, I sent you a message through

5:57

your form a week ago on your website.

6:00

But I never got it cause my form was broken and I built

6:02

websites for a living. So, that

6:05

was a hilarious initial encounter

6:07

on many levels. Let's just put it that way.

6:10

Tom, what is your business look like now?

6:12

'Cause I know it's kind of evolved quite a bit over

6:14

the last year or two.

6:16

Yeah, so actually when we first came into contact,

6:19

I think at that point in time, a large portion

6:21

of both of our businesses, we were

6:23

working through Upwork, leveraging

6:25

that marketplace to find clients and

6:27

working it from that angle. And so at

6:29

that point in time I was essentially

6:32

a email marketing content marketing

6:35

generalist where basically any

6:37

business that had a

6:39

digital presence , a desire to

6:41

build an email list to market to that email

6:43

list to sell. I didn't really go

6:45

much the products route, mostly services,

6:48

but there was really no focus to it.

6:50

So I kind of hit it a ceiling where

6:52

I was charging, I think pretty decent

6:55

hourly rate at that point. But it was just me.

6:57

I didn't have any particular specialty and

6:59

I was sort of looking ahead in the horizon

7:02

and looking for that next move. Where

7:05

am I going to focus my efforts?

7:07

How can I actually build something that

7:09

is more scalable than

7:11

just taking that next gig?

7:13

And so that led me down the route of

7:16

specialization. There's actually a guy, Philip

7:19

Morgan , who specifically helps

7:22

agencies , technical firms, figure out the

7:24

answer to this problem, which is: what

7:27

is the particular demographic of

7:29

client that you are best

7:31

tuned to serve that has market

7:33

opportunity, has the ability and the willingness

7:36

to pay where if you solve

7:38

a meaningful problem for them, you

7:40

can charge significantly higher rates than

7:42

you would for just solving that general

7:44

problem? And so I spent the next

7:47

probably, and I'm still doing

7:49

that now. I'm still working with Philip now, but it's

7:51

been about a year and a half journey of

7:54

continually refining what that looks

7:56

like and it's sort of the initial

7:58

kernel of what I realized was I was

8:00

best at helping experts

8:03

in a particular domain, in a particular niche,

8:06

take that knowledge out of their head, turn

8:08

it into content, and then leverage that

8:10

content in order to

8:12

bring potential clients into their

8:14

ecosystem and then nurture those clients

8:17

along through the marketing and sales process

8:20

to very large either consulting

8:23

or agency related engagements.

8:25

And so that's what I've landed on now. So Email for Experts,

8:28

the concept behind it is we

8:30

are using content, particularly

8:32

expertise content, so content that

8:35

is very specific to either demographic

8:37

or an industry vertical and then we're

8:39

using that to feed

8:41

into that process. So I help specialized

8:44

consulting firms, specialized agencies

8:47

build out sort of that content marketing

8:49

platform, that email platform in

8:51

order to enable that. What I do now

8:53

is work with a very select

8:55

group of clients who are sort of perfectly

8:57

tuned for making this process

9:00

work really well. But for the ones who are tuned

9:02

for it, it's definitely a winning formula

9:04

at least at this point in time.

9:06

Awesome. So that's been a great journey

9:08

there, Tom. I'm really curious,

9:11

you started out sort of in this

9:13

more general audience, mass information

9:16

product world, and then you,

9:18

over time have sort of niched down

9:21

to a very specific, very

9:23

tailored audience doing

9:25

something very niche, very specific. I'm

9:27

really curious why you decided to move

9:29

in that direction and what

9:31

that process looked like for you?

9:33

Yeah. I think what was interesting was when

9:35

I first got serious about

9:38

taking on marketing clients, one

9:40

of the first clients that I hooked

9:42

up with and actually on the

9:45

website emailforexperts.com it's the

9:47

first case study that's listed on the site

9:49

was a guy who perfectly fit sort

9:52

of the Ramit Sethi information

9:54

products model. He had been creating content

9:56

for five years, dah , dah, dah. He had all of

9:58

these kind of building blocks in

10:00

place where I could come in

10:02

and help him put a few things into place.

10:05

Email list started growing very rapidly and

10:08

then he already had sort of a library

10:10

of product , so he was well

10:12

known in the industry for specific

10:14

publication. He sold that book

10:17

and then a set of additional

10:19

books that went along with that. He

10:21

already had sort of like a training

10:23

program where he would go and train professionals

10:25

in his field. A lot of the kind

10:27

of prerequisites were in place.

10:30

And so going in and implementing sort of that

10:32

model where you already have a lot of organic

10:34

traffic coming to your site, it's very targeted

10:37

traffic. You own the top spot

10:39

for all of the important keywords

10:41

in your industry. Those were already in place.

10:43

And so somebody like me coming in made a lot

10:45

of sense and I could kinda just go

10:48

down the checklist of optimizing

10:50

the site for opt-ins, building

10:52

out some email sequences

10:54

and funnels. Working on product launches,

10:57

things of that nature. But after that

10:59

I ran into a number of additional clients

11:02

who wanted to do those types of

11:04

things but didn't have really

11:06

any of those prerequisites in place. And

11:08

so it was a bit of a struggle. It

11:10

was kind of me learning that

11:13

I needed to be a bit more selective about

11:15

who I told I could help

11:17

with this type of thing. And so in

11:19

those particular scenarios, it wasn't necessarily

11:21

a failure, but we had to really work hard

11:23

to develop some workarounds that

11:26

would actually work with their business model. I'll

11:28

say for like every 10 engagements

11:30

that I took on from that point forward, only

11:33

one out of those 10 who were already

11:35

in the bucket of realizing that

11:37

they needed very specific type of marketing

11:39

help in this sort of digital information

11:41

products related field. Only

11:43

one out of 10 actually had the prerequisites

11:46

in place in order to make that work really well. So

11:48

all of this is just to say that the

11:51

large majority of businesses,

11:53

both in the way that their business model is

11:55

structured and in terms

11:57

of the legwork that they've already done

12:00

to build up that organic traffic and build

12:02

up that sort of high volume

12:04

exposure to their market, are very

12:06

few and far between. And so

12:08

the thing that was really bothering me about that is

12:11

that there were all of these businesses that

12:13

I actually think were more valuable

12:15

to the marketplace, had a lot more

12:18

to offer in terms of what they

12:20

could deliver, but they just couldn't connect

12:22

the dots between them and their audience.

12:24

And so they're very much stuck in the cycle

12:26

of just relying on the same

12:28

client list that they've always relied on going

12:31

out to their network to try to drum up new business.

12:33

All the typical things that more

12:36

reactive marketing where you've had

12:38

some success, things aren't going

12:40

quite as well or you're trying to grow, but

12:42

you're struggling and so you're just kinda

12:44

going back to the same old tricks

12:46

and they're not working quite as well anymore.

12:49

I wanted to work with those clients because

12:51

just from me personally, like I mentioned

12:53

sort of the engineering background, I'm a little

12:56

bit obsessed with optimization and it

12:58

really bothered me that there were

13:00

these sort of businesses sending their primed

13:02

to deliver

13:04

their service to a particular market. They

13:06

just couldn't do it because they didn't have

13:08

the systems in place. They didn't have the competence

13:11

in the marketing department to make that happen. And

13:13

so that's what initially led me down that road

13:16

of trying to figure out what are the

13:18

kind of principles and methodologies that

13:20

are more applicable to businesses

13:23

that have a different model in particular,

13:25

businesses that rely on a much lower

13:27

volume but a much higher lifetime

13:29

value of client. How do we get these

13:32

same types of things that we know that work really

13:34

well? Bringing an audience in through

13:36

exposure to ideas, through content,

13:38

and then nurturing those leads through

13:41

the marketing process to get them to the point

13:43

where when they get on that sales call,

13:45

they already understand what the value

13:48

that the business has to offer. They're more

13:50

primed for the sales process.

13:52

How do we get those things to work for these

13:54

more typical types of business models that

13:57

are relatively, I think underserved

13:59

from a marketing perspective.

14:02

That's great. When you're talking with these

14:04

businesses, how do you start to

14:08

flesh out a content strategy for them?

14:10

What are the things that you're looking for? The pieces that

14:12

you know, where they have

14:15

the pieces that you can fit together? And

14:17

then what are some of the pieces that get discarded or

14:19

that don't work. What do you typically see when

14:21

you're talking with these clients?

14:23

Kind of one of the initial things that I recognized

14:25

was the businesses that this

14:28

type of marketing is going

14:30

to work for, have to at least

14:32

have made some effort to try to make

14:34

it work independently before

14:36

bringing in an outside consultant

14:38

or an agency or someone like that in. So

14:41

the first external qualifier

14:43

that I look for is basically a.) Do

14:45

you have a high value service that you deliver to clients?

14:47

And then you have evidence that

14:50

you can deliver result over and over again? Because

14:53

that sort of product market fit needs

14:55

to be there. It has to be super solid

14:57

in order to build a pathway

15:00

to that, because we can do all the marketing work in the

15:02

world to bring clients along

15:04

the process. And then if they get to the point where they're on

15:06

the sales call with you and you're talking about what you're going

15:08

to do and it's not all that

15:10

compelling or you're delivering the service

15:12

and afterwards it's not satisfying

15:15

the need and customer is unsatisfied.

15:17

That's just a nonstarter from the get go. But

15:20

the other piece of it is if they haven't

15:22

tried, if they don't have

15:24

a website up, if they haven't tried creating

15:26

some content themselves, if they don't at

15:29

least have sort of like a very rudimentary

15:31

email list in place, then

15:34

it's almost like you are having to

15:36

educate and then also help. But

15:39

the education piece of it, it takes way

15:41

too long. By the time you get to the point where they

15:43

understand what they should be doing, you're

15:45

three months into the engagement and they're like, why

15:47

hasn't anything happened yet? And then you

15:49

just part ways and it never gets off

15:51

the ground. So the thing that I think

15:53

is meaningful is if they've tried it, they understand

15:56

the mechanics of how it could work. So

15:58

by setting up the website, they're thinking about

16:01

what are we doing from a copywriting perspective?

16:03

What building blocks do we need to have on the website?

16:06

What information do we have to have about our services?

16:08

When we're hooking up an email list, who

16:10

is on this email list? What do we say to them?

16:13

How do we get that person to then

16:15

call us about our services? All

16:17

of those questions are already kind of going

16:19

through the minds of the

16:22

founders of the business or the marketing department.

16:24

They're kind of working through those problems. And

16:26

primarily it's just a focus thing cause the

16:29

majority of the businesses that I work with are

16:31

the kind of principal and the consultants in

16:33

the business are delivering the service

16:36

and they're also marketing and selling the service. That

16:38

just doesn't leave a lot of time for

16:40

strategic thinking around marketing.

16:43

But they have, they do understand what it

16:45

needs to look like. And so at that

16:47

point you can come in and say like,

16:49

okay , here's sort of the diagnosis of you've

16:52

done X, Y, and Z. It's not working because

16:54

of this other thing over here or

16:56

you just haven't spent enough time on it. Those

16:58

are the people who are the most kind

17:00

of primed for sort

17:03

of a content marketing and email strategy

17:05

to come in and get put in place and really

17:08

have a meaningful impact within

17:10

a fairly short period of time.

17:12

That's awesome, Tom. What I find really interesting

17:14

is you're looking for very specific

17:17

type of client and really a specific

17:20

transitionary phase. I'm curious

17:22

how you have

17:24

in your own business, set

17:26

up a content strategy. What have you done

17:28

to attract and nurture those

17:31

clients and position yourself as

17:34

an authority, as an expert, as someone

17:36

that can help them?

17:37

I think this is the question that most

17:40

if not all digital agencies struggle with,

17:42

which is like the shoemaker's children shoes

17:45

problem and I was certainly in that boat

17:47

where you know I had done the

17:49

initial work of figuring this

17:51

stuff out for myself with that initial website.

17:54

But beyond that I was basically leveraging

17:57

network freelancing platform

18:00

to acquire clients, but I had no

18:03

independence proof of concept in my own business

18:06

that this stuff actually works. And

18:08

that was constantly sort of tickling in the back of

18:10

my mind. And so when I started

18:12

to go down the route of figuring

18:14

out how am I going to specialize my business,

18:17

that is the point in time in which I

18:19

really made an effort to think out my own marketing

18:22

strategy and how I wanted to acquire clients.

18:24

The nice thing about the

18:27

consulting and agency world is that

18:29

you're working with firms that

18:32

are almost selling that same type of service that you're selling.

18:34

So like I'm helping them through

18:36

marketing consulting and sort of

18:38

marketing services. They are helping

18:40

their clients with, you know, a million different types

18:43

of things. But it is still

18:45

consulting. It is still sort of implementation

18:48

services that an agency would deliver.

18:50

And so there is something to be said for

18:53

you know, modeling what that strategy

18:56

should look like. So when people come into contact

18:58

with you, they are already starting to see

19:00

how this stuff can work in practice. And

19:02

so I really put this

19:04

into full effect in the

19:07

beginning of this year, but I had sort of been formulating the strategy

19:09

in the back of my mind ahead of that. And

19:11

so how it started off was, you know , the email list

19:13

route back to sort of the

19:15

original discussion about most people don't

19:17

have this massive organic

19:20

audience and this traffic sitting

19:22

here just waiting to be converted into email

19:24

subscribers. I was certainly in that boat as well.

19:27

And so I went down the road of

19:29

really building out a

19:31

network, particularly on LinkedIn.

19:34

Also through you know, personal connections

19:36

that I had, you know, reaching out and

19:39

anybody who knew a specialized

19:41

consulting founder or

19:43

an agency owner starting out with

19:45

the interviews. So I wasn't, thankfully

19:48

I was at the point where I had enough of a client

19:50

portfolio that I didn't necessarily need

19:53

to , this sort of new marketing channel that I

19:55

wanted to develop, I didn't need to

19:57

leverage that right off the bat to generate clients.

20:00

That's actually a kind of recommendation

20:02

that I use with my clients that I work

20:04

with now, which is when you're first

20:07

developing sort of a content

20:09

strategy and starting to market

20:11

through content, there is a period

20:13

there were, it is valuable to

20:16

be able to be generous and give

20:18

away things without expectation

20:20

of return in order to build trust,

20:22

build the audience, learn. And that's

20:24

exactly what I was doing. So I was reaching

20:26

out to people cold who fit my sort of demographic

20:29

of, you know , less than 10 people

20:31

consulting firm or agency reaching

20:33

out through LinkedIn, asking for an initial

20:36

interview just so I could learn about their business.

20:38

And I just repeated that process over and over again.

20:41

So it gave me a very good idea of what

20:43

I should be focusing my service around in

20:45

order to solve the problems that they were articulating during

20:47

those interviews. But at the same time, the

20:50

natural, next thing that comes up

20:52

is if you're relatively interesting

20:54

and that conversation they ask, okay, what

20:56

are you up to? What other things

20:58

do you have to offer? And at that

21:00

point is where I started to build that initial

21:02

email list and it was really hand to hand combat,

21:05

one by one getting people interested

21:08

in what I was doing, but at the same time you

21:10

also have to have content

21:12

that is available for them to take a look at.

21:14

So kind of in parallel with that, I

21:17

started down the route, and this is a another

21:19

brainchild of Philip Morgan who

21:21

I mentioned before. He actually has a

21:24

specific methodology and a group

21:26

built around this concept. He calls

21:28

it the expertise incubator. Essentially

21:30

what it is is rapid development

21:33

of expertise and an understanding

21:35

of what your firm does, what

21:38

your market is through publishing

21:40

content. And so it's a bit of a trial

21:42

by fire because the frequency

21:44

that I landed on was daily, so there

21:47

are probably a lot of people who are listening right now where

21:49

they just freaked out and like drove the car

21:51

off the road or something. But the

21:53

idea behind it is if you are spending

21:56

30 minutes, an hour, however long

21:58

it takes to put out at least one

22:01

semi-formulated thought that you think

22:03

would be valuable to your audience on a daily basis

22:06

and then emailing that to them, you quickly

22:09

a.) Start to clarify your own thinking

22:11

about the topic and start to develop

22:13

some ideas. I think the big problem that

22:16

a lot of firms have with producing content

22:18

is they're already thinking like they

22:20

have to have this super polished framework,

22:23

these amazing ideas that they're putting out.

22:25

A monthly frequency almost

22:28

automatically produces that type of feeling

22:30

like, Oh my God, we're only publishing once

22:32

a month. We have to like make it the most

22:34

amazing thing we've ever written. Whereas

22:37

if you're publishing daily, you're just basically

22:39

spitting out whatever's on the top of your head. You were finding

22:42

it a little bit, you're making it so that it's consumable

22:44

and valuable. But at the same time, you

22:46

know , if you have 300, you know, however

22:49

many, you know, I was doing it five days a week, however

22:51

many at bats that you have, 250

22:53

a year, it matters less and less if

22:55

one of those is kind of crappy or doesn't

22:57

hit right. And so I really did

22:59

that. Or I'll say I did that

23:02

for two months before it really started

23:04

to get traction. And when I say traction,

23:06

this is a very small list. So right

23:08

now I think my list is like 135

23:11

subscribers, something like that. But

23:13

every single subscriber on that list is sort of

23:15

hand cultivated exactly

23:17

the target audience that I want to be speaking

23:19

to. And so after

23:21

that sort of initial two month period

23:23

where I was publishing to crickets, people started

23:26

responding, we started having meaningful conversations.

23:28

I had a number of leads come out of

23:31

that, a few of those turned into clients.

23:33

And so that was sort of the early process

23:35

of getting that content engine up and running.

23:38

Once I had that into place, then it was a

23:40

very natural extension for me to continue

23:42

that publishing process and kind of work it

23:44

into my daily schedule, get up

23:46

first thing in the morning, right a little bit,

23:49

hit send on the email list, maybe

23:51

that produces one or two calls that

23:54

week with people that I want to be speaking to and

23:56

then just rinse and repeat. So reach

23:58

out to more people on LinkedIn. Now I have more

24:00

content that I can share with them and say, Hey, are

24:02

you interested in talking about this? And

24:05

then the virtuous cycle takes off from there.

24:07

So that was how I kind of kickstarted

24:09

the engine and it actually is

24:11

a process that I actually ran a workshop

24:14

with Philip on this about second

24:17

quarter of this year. It's a process that works

24:19

surprisingly well for particularly

24:22

solos or small firms who really

24:24

do not have marketing spend

24:26

resources, things of that nature. You

24:29

can leverage sort of that interview

24:31

process, the content publication and everything

24:33

like that. To get that initial traction.

24:35

What I love about that is what

24:37

you hit on, I mean your list is,

24:40

it sounds like a small number for an email list, so you

24:42

said like 135 or something like that. The

24:44

difference though is like I feel like a

24:46

lot of times content creators get caught up in these vanity

24:49

numbers, right ? You hear people talk about that a lot.

24:51

I've seen it in my own case, too, and then talking with clients

24:54

as well. But would you rather

24:56

be blasting out 10,000

24:58

people and you know,

25:00

only a half of a percent of them actually

25:03

care about what you're saying? Or would you rather

25:05

be like targeting a hundred people

25:07

who are absolutely engaged

25:10

and the people who you want to talk with. And

25:12

even though that by comparison,

25:15

the 135 doesn't sound very big

25:17

next to the 10,000, I

25:19

love what Pat Flynn talks about a lot and

25:21

this has helped me too, as I'm starting a podcast

25:23

and looking at the numbers and we've had a really great

25:26

start, but when you're starting from scratch for

25:28

the first several months, probably, not

25:30

a lot of people are listening. If you think about

25:32

them as actual people rather than numbers,

25:35

how much would you pay to step

25:37

up in a room of 135

25:40

of your exact target

25:43

customer and be able to have

25:45

like a personal connection with them? That's

25:47

invaluable. So it really is

25:49

a good testament to this concept

25:51

of, especially when you're just starting out, you don't need

25:54

a huge list. You just need to make sure

25:56

that you're finding the right people.

25:58

It also just feels a lot better, too

26:00

. If you go the route of acquiring

26:02

a list or like running ads

26:05

to a landing page and they're opting in and then you're

26:07

trying to market to those people, it's

26:09

like it really is just numbers

26:11

on a page and then you're kind of publishing

26:13

stuff into the abyss and then maybe

26:16

you get lucky and something comes back when you really

26:18

put in the time to cultivate a list of people

26:20

where you know, like I can open

26:22

up my Active Campaign and look at the list of contacts

26:25

and I actually remember who each of those individual

26:27

people are. Then there's like a real person,

26:29

people reply to stuff. You can have a real conversation

26:32

and this is now like my sort of qualification

26:35

process has evolved a lot

26:37

and one of the things that I've added into that

26:39

process is just personal

26:41

desire for getting your ideas out

26:43

there and having conversations with your market. I

26:46

think a lot of times we also underestimate

26:48

the emotional component of this, too,

26:50

which is it takes some courage to like

26:52

put stuff out there. Especially now, like when you publish

26:55

something on the internet, it's there forever.

26:57

Aliens and 10,000 years they're going to be reading

26:59

your, Josiah, they're going to be reading your

27:01

blog posts. There is some courage involved in that.

27:04

You feel a bit vulnerable and

27:06

where a lot of these things fizzle out is when

27:08

you start the process and you don't

27:10

have good initial traction, people aren't responding

27:12

to what you're putting out there. Even if the

27:15

philosophy and the concepts are sound that you know

27:17

it's going to work eventually, that'll just kill

27:19

it right out. Especially if you are the only

27:21

content creator in your company. So

27:23

anyway, that's an interesting realization

27:25

that's come out of this process too is by going

27:28

through this yourself, you realize like what

27:30

everyone else is thinking about as they're doing this and

27:32

you can start to really understand why. Like there

27:35

are so many sites out there with like three blog posts

27:38

from 2015 and you just wonder

27:40

like why are they not taking advantage of this?

27:42

And it's exactly that. It's really

27:44

the emotional component of it that comes into play.

27:47

Yeah, I've definitely found that

27:49

really the only thing that's holding us back is

27:51

all the stories we tell ourselves in our heads.

27:54

That kept me from starting a podcast for a long time

27:56

and when I finally committed and said, look, I'm

27:58

doing this. I don't know what it's going to look like yet,

28:01

but this is happening. And then it all just

28:03

sort of fell into place and I realized like all those stories

28:05

they were just made up. They're just made up

28:07

nonsense that I told myself.

28:09

Yeah, and even before we started recording,

28:12

you're telling me how like now that you've

28:14

actually committed, you have a process in place,

28:16

you know that these things are going to get published and go out.

28:19

You're realizing how much you actually like producing

28:21

content. You have ideas

28:23

to contribute. All these sorts of things

28:26

start to happen that not only are you

28:28

building trust with a particular audience who may

28:30

be a good fit for your business, you're also

28:32

developing your own ideas. You're feeling like

28:34

you're putting out something beyond

28:37

just a sort of a mechanical transaction

28:40

with your market. It has these sort

28:42

of positive halo effects. If

28:44

you can make that initial commitment and get

28:46

the engine started, and I think

28:48

starting small and getting that initial feedback

28:50

going is really an important part of it. That's

28:53

really, I think, something that people overlook in

28:55

the desire to build something big is a

28:58

lot of the small details matter at the very beginning.

29:00

Yeah, absolutely. This is great

29:02

stuff, Tom. I'm really curious

29:05

now that you been working with clients

29:07

for a few years and you've dug

29:09

into multiple businesses and

29:12

help them with their content, their email marketing.

29:15

What would you say would be some of the biggest takeaways

29:17

or the biggest quick win you

29:19

could share with the content

29:22

heroes audience? Whether they're just getting started

29:24

or they're in that kind of phase where they

29:26

have some traction and they're trying to figure out how to grow

29:29

it and scale it. What are some of the things

29:31

that you found make the biggest impact in

29:33

the shortest amount of time?

29:34

Yeah, and I'll speak specifically to

29:37

individuals who are running a business that

29:39

you don't need a high volume of clients in order

29:41

to be successful, but you just need to get

29:43

in contact with the right clients. This

29:46

goes back to what we had just

29:48

been talking about, which is the first thing that

29:51

I think most people need to

29:53

get clear on is sort

29:55

of your ideal list of like that a

29:57

hundred people who you would want to have on your

29:59

email list. How can you get in contact

30:01

with those people to get the process started. So

30:04

you no doubt if you have a business that you're

30:06

already serving clients, you're delivering

30:08

results, you already have the expertise,

30:10

you already have the ideas in your head

30:13

in terms of how you can solve their problems.

30:15

And the process of articulating

30:18

those ideas into an email form

30:20

is almost secondary to identifying

30:22

who you want to speak to. Because if

30:24

you're just trying to speak to businesses

30:27

who can benefit from my services,

30:29

that's also a nonstarter. So the first thing

30:31

that I would do is go on LinkedIn.

30:34

If you don't have it already, sign up for Sales Navigator,

30:36

you can get one month for free if

30:39

you haven't signed up already yet . If you already have signed

30:41

up, it's only 90 bucks a month, it's totally worth

30:43

it because you can

30:45

filter by demographics, you can

30:47

filter by industry, you can filter by

30:49

roles, companies. Just play

30:51

around in sales navigator and look at like,

30:53

okay, if I had my pick, who

30:56

would those a hundred people on my email list

30:58

be that I would want to get in contact

31:00

with and start to refine

31:02

who that is. There are two typical

31:04

ways in which this generally shakes out

31:07

that I think are most meaningful. One is by industry

31:09

verticals, so I speak to

31:12

CMOs at manufacturing companies or

31:15

I help sort of lawyers

31:17

of firms of 20 people or more,

31:20

you know, whatever that industry is that

31:22

you serve. That's one way of doing it, which

31:24

is very powerful. The other way that's very powerful

31:27

is solving a very specific problem

31:29

for sort of a wide array of different

31:31

industries. Kind of like what you do,

31:34

Josiah . I help high volume websites

31:37

build out a content strategy in

31:39

order to drive more business. So

31:41

that high volume website piece may be a little bit

31:43

more difficult to find within LinkedIn Sales

31:46

Navigator, but there are some creative ways in which

31:48

you might go about doing that. I actually have

31:51

entire video sort of mapping out the whole

31:53

process that I use on LinkedIn to

31:55

identify that audience. I can send

31:57

you the link after the call. I think I call it like my early

31:59

LinkedIn lead generation something. I'll get

32:01

you the link that could be valuable. That

32:04

would kind of be the first step is to really identify

32:06

who that target audience is. Then

32:08

you can start identifying who within

32:10

your personal network, do you know who

32:13

fits that demographic, and then also

32:15

who on LinkedIn could I send a nice

32:17

personal note out to just

32:19

asking to have a conversation.

32:22

Maybe they're interested in reading my content

32:24

or jumping on my email list, but at least a starting

32:26

point to get that process started. That's

32:29

kind of the kickstarter from the audience side. Then

32:31

the kickstarter from your internal

32:33

side is first just carving out the time.

32:35

If you don't have time blocked out on your

32:37

schedule for content, it's

32:40

never going to happen. So the best

32:42

way that I've found to do this is

32:45

it has to happen before the day starts. Especially

32:47

if you have lots of clients. If

32:50

you are kind from the moment you start

32:52

the day, you're just like grinding

32:54

to the end of the day. Whenever I've tried

32:56

to write or come up

32:58

with ideas in the middle of the day, they're just

33:01

horrible, like awful ideas.

33:03

Just regurgitating the worst of the worst

33:05

advice that I've ever heard anybody give

33:07

anybody. But if you wake up in

33:10

the morning, if you have kids, get up before

33:12

the kids are up, have a cup of coffee,

33:14

sit down. And if you're a writer,

33:16

just sit down that sort of blank

33:18

Google doc, spit out some ideas,

33:21

just write continuously for like 20 minutes

33:23

and see what comes out. If you hate

33:25

writing, just grab the little voice memo

33:28

app on your iPhone and then you can send

33:30

it to transcription afterwards and just

33:32

extract the copy out of that.

33:34

But make that time for yourself

33:37

first thing in the morning to get that done. That's

33:39

the first step. The second step is then figuring

33:41

out how to translate that into

33:43

something that you can publish. I would recommend

33:46

daily is not right for everybody. If you're super

33:48

aggressive and you want to give it a shot, by all

33:50

means, but if you just start with, come

33:53

up with some ideas every morning for a

33:55

week, and then at the end of that week, I want to turn that into

33:58

one 500 word email

34:00

that I could send out to this list. Get

34:03

a backlog going in a Google

34:05

document of say

34:07

five or six emails that you would send

34:09

out to people related to that audience

34:11

that you've identified. Then it's just

34:13

a matter of connecting the dots. So when you feel

34:16

like you've had enough conversations with people

34:18

who might want to hear from you and

34:20

you've also accumulated

34:22

enough of a content backlog that you'd feel

34:24

comfortable starting to publish something, then

34:27

it's just a matter of making that final ask of

34:29

bringing that audience onto that email

34:31

list during the software thing and getting all that set up.

34:33

I'm not going to go into that , all that's out

34:35

there on the internet, but actually sending that

34:37

content. Then if those two things

34:40

connect, it's just a matter of keeping the consistency

34:42

there. So those are the two key starting points.

34:44

And actually for the second starting point, I

34:46

think I have set up post called like how to start a

34:48

newsletter that walks through the whole process of figuring

34:51

out where to pull that email list from

34:53

and what to publish first and all that stuff. So

34:55

I'll give you that link as well. But that's really

34:57

what I would recommend to get it kickstarted. So

35:00

you bring the audience side, you bring the content side

35:02

and then bring those together. That's

35:04

the biggest hurdle because once that's up and

35:06

running, then you can start to figure out, okay,

35:08

what is the actual marketing strategy to connect

35:10

to this audience, to our service offering and

35:13

get the sales calls going and everything like that.

35:15

It becomes much easier to talk about that

35:17

step once the initial hurdle

35:19

is tackled right off the bat.

35:21

Yeah, totally. It's much easier

35:23

to steer a moving ship than on it

35:25

sitting still.

35:26

Totally, totally. You get all these

35:28

like crazy theories in your head of like

35:30

what is actually possible before you see

35:33

the tangible result. And then when you see that,

35:35

I've been working on this for three weeks, then 10 people

35:37

were interested you adjust your expectations

35:39

a little bit and do something that's a bit more realistic.

35:42

Awesome. Tom, this has been great. I really appreciate

35:44

you being on the show. Before we sign

35:47

off here, can you just tell everyone where they can

35:49

find you online?

35:50

Yeah. You can just go to emailforexperts.com, everything's

35:53

there on the home page . There are some good case

35:55

studies of this stuff in action that

35:57

I think might be informative for people.

36:00

I have an email list. Like I mentioned, I

36:02

spent the majority of this year during daily . I've

36:04

backed off of that a little bit as the client

36:06

engagements have increased. I haven't totally solved

36:09

that problem for myself yet, but if you go to

36:11

emailforexperts.com/email you

36:13

can get on that. I publish all my best ideas.

36:16

There's an archive of everything

36:18

I've published this year. I'm not sure if you've really

36:20

wanted to sort through all of it. That's the daily process.

36:23

Some of my crappy stuff went out there too, but I

36:25

think it could be valuable for people, so check

36:27

it out. Hopefully it's helpful.

36:29

Hey everyone, thank you for listening to the Content

36:31

Heroes podcast. I just wanted to take

36:34

a second and let you know that we have some amazing

36:36

guests plan for the coming weeks. So

36:38

if you haven't already, go ahead and hit subscribe

36:40

so you can make sure to catch every episode. And

36:43

if you enjoyed today's episode, go ahead and leave

36:45

a five star review to help make it easier for other

36:47

content creators to find and enjoy the

36:49

show. Lastly, I'd like to invite you to

36:51

join our Content Heroes Facebook community

36:53

where you can connect with other online content

36:55

creators to share, learn, grow,

36:57

and have fun. To join the group, just visit

37:00

contentheroes .com/facebook once

37:03

again, that is contentheroes .com/facebook .