🌮 Why I'm America's Dumbest Marketer

Today we're gonna talk something that, quite frankly, I really messed up when I ran my business from 2010 to 2019.

I've recently kind of come out of retirement as it were, and I have the benefit of 14+ years of hidsight, insights, new knowledge and every other regret you think of in the shower the morning after a bad decision, lol.

Today, we’re going to cover ownership in your business, and the whole concept of owning the things that you're building.

And it’s kind of a funny parallel to what’s been happening across the world in the last few years - everything has turned into two kinds of subscription products:

1. Renting - this is the basic subscription model in use by every SaaS product out there. We own the software and you use it. If you stop the sub, the product goes away. Netflix, etc.

2. Sunk Cost Subscriptions (the new hotness) - hey, we’ve already locked you in to this expensive BMW, what’s another $25/month to enable the traffic camera?

Except we’re not that evil. We’re not owning to take from our customers, make them pay monthly, or put them at some disadvantage. No, we’re owning for other reasons, enumerated below:

1. Take charge of communication

2. Form a central hub where you can filter everyone

3. Never have to go searching for clients or customers again

4. Double, triple or more-x your revenue

5. Build a massive profit center into your business

6. Spend less money long-term

7. Form an easy path for testimonials

8. Segmentation for promotions/comms

9. I’m sure there’s more but I recorded this at 8am on a Saturday walk

Dude that sounds amazing.

Right?

The eagle-eyed among you will notice a couple things. First, we are now a content business, and second, we’re setting up an email acquisition funnel. More on those things in future issues.

Like I said before, this is a mistake I made myself, and I see many people making. Even when we go into a business and say “hey you need to email your list!” A cruel irony, being a business owner is, sometimes. #yoda

So how do we own everything? There’s three avenues you need to set up:

1. Website

2. Social media of choice

3. Email list

You know how to set up a website and email list, so I’ll leave that to you. If you don’t know - reply to this email and I’ll help you out.

Social media is much less complicated - you need to own your unique @usernames. For this site’s name, I picked a unique name that was not being used anywhere - so now I own it everywhere. Like a boss.

But don’t worry if your name isn’t available everywhere - you really only need one (I recommend TikTok or Instagram) for a solid social media strategy, which we’ll cover in future issues.

What’s next?

What’s next, indeed. This newsletter is all about growing your brand, selling more, and making money. So we’re going to be diving into strategies that help you own your list, grow your customer base, and do all of those 8+ things in the list above. I hope you’re ready, it’s gonna be an awesome ride.