Micro Niche Mastery

Welcome to the fourth episode of the second season of  The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Tina Larsson, a business analyst and the co-founder of The Folson Group which helps in running buildings like businesses.

Have you heard about making a passive income from helping people save money in building maintenance costs? This podcast will help you understand how is that possible.

thefolsongroup.com

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Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro-niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, his last episode of every season of every podcast, he produced always includes something personal and vulnerable about him, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we, we talk every week with someone that was able to identify a specific need, going to a micro-niche and actually get results. And today I have the pleasure of talking with Tina Larsson from New York. Tina is the co-founder of the Folson group in the folsongroup.com and they chose to solve a very, very specific album and kind of take the idea of like the McKinsey company, where they go into a business and help them save money, usually huge businesses. And they said, “No, we will help people save money. But specifically in New York for co-ops and condo boards.” This is like a very unique, different approach. Hello, Tina?

Tina:

Hello, Ziv thank you so much for having me. This is great.

Ziv:

It’s really fun to talk with people that help other people save money. Like this is such a, a great idea from the get go to create value for people. But it’s so easy to be paid after you saved people, you created the check engine their lives, but tell me a little bit about what does it actually mean? What is a co-op? What is a condo board in case someone doesn’t really know?

Tina:

Okay. So a co-op condo board, it can also, sometimes it’s also called an homeowners association. So it depends on where it’s located. It’s basically an organization where you don’t rent an apartment. You own the apartment in different forms. So you own an apartment. And then what you do just like a government, you elect a few individuals who live there and own there, and they represent the rest of the owners. So those little group of the people they’re called boards, Coop, condo, or homeowners association boards. And they’re the ones who are basically running the show.

Ziv:

So they get paid from the, the people that live in that location

Tina:

No they are not paid. They are unpaid volunteers. So they’re spending, I mean, they’re volunteering, so it’s their time, but I have not seen that anyone has been paid. It’s possible that in other places, in other parts of the world, that they are being paid, but in New York city, they’re not being paid. They’re actually not allowed to be paid.

Ziv:

Tina:

Yeah. So it depends on the size of the building, of course, but, and the, how the quality of building also, but typically it’s two to 5 dollars million a year.

Ziv:

That’s a lot. So it’s a, like how much of a saving can you bring to the table to an average client, if you can share?

Tina:

Yes, we can. So typically we work, work primarily with old buildings who have normally old systems. So they have an old elevator that was installed when they built it in 1900 or elevators from when they built it, 1957, something like that. So they have very, very old system and that’s where there’s most needs for upgrades. And that’s where we save the most. And when in those cases we typically save them five to 10% of their annual budget.

Ziv:

Nice. So how do you actually chose to go into this specific niche?

Tina:

That’s a fun one. So both my partner and I, we come from a wall street background at wall street. I was a business or we were both, but I was a business analyst and I analyzed income statements and balance sheets for the sole purpose of investing my client’s money in the best in stock, in the best stocks, in the best companies. So when my partner get elected to his co-op board, he basically said, you’re a good analyst. Why don’t you look at these numbers and see if we can save any money. So I looked at that financial and I went, well, how, how do I do this? I mean, I, the only way to do it is the way that I I’m used to from wall street, which is I need other comparisons. So I went out pretending to be a buyer, and I got a bunch of financial statements for other buildings. And then I put together a benchmark and that benchmark is what we have, have used and expanded upon ever since.

Ziv:

Yeah. So you found out basically for a need for helping your partner, that you can save money for the, for that specific co-op

Tina:

That for that building, we saved 340,000 in the first three years. That’s dollars.

Ziv:

So you’ve decided to try and help with those skills or those analytic skills and help other co-ops other condo boards, other boards, but how hard was it to get your next deal after proving there’s a concept here.

Tina:

Okay. So it was, it took a while. It was hard only because we thought that property managers, so there’s a third party property manager who is typically representing the bill who’s hired by the board and who represents and work with the building on keeping it updated. But their motive is very different from ours. So their motive is to spend, have as many buildings as possible to manage as many buildings as possible. That’s how they increase their profit margins. And that is maybe not in alignment with the, the goal of a board. So the first one, we had so much resistance from property managers, but once we started getting, going and understood that we really need to target co-op and condo boards, they are the ones who are hiring us, then it started picking up. And then of course, like with any new business, it takes a while, but here we are.

Ziv:

So you actually started with a bigger niche, right? Because in the beginning you could have helped you know, program project managers and like people that actually are running, they have an interest to use their money within their own complex of services. And they didn’t have the, they didn’t cooperate with you. Then you went like more to the, I guess, smaller groups, smaller boards, more independent boards. And how long did it take you once you figured out that you need to go narrow, how long did it take you to secure your first client?

Tina:

Two years?

Ziv:

Wow. What are you doing in two years’ time?

Tina:

Well, we, so in the beginning, when we started our business, we were still working on wall street. So we had, that was our primary. Yes. So that was our primary business at the time. And it was not until little later that it switched. So now this is our primary business and has been for a few years. Yeah.

Ziv:

So if I may ask, so like these days in like in a good year, how many projects can you actually do?

Tina:

So right now we are doing about six clients per year, six projects per year. Mm-Hmm nice, but we still have enough resources to take on a few more per year at this level. I mean, we can always hire people and take on more, but at this level, we’re at a good level. We can take on a few more.

Ziv:

Awesome. So I wanna ask you what type of marketing does a business like yours need to do to actually get new clients?

Tina:

So we have actually, and a lot of referrals lately from LinkedIn. Nice. Yes. So during the pandemic, when they shut our economy down in March or whatever it was of 2020, the first thing that I did was that I hired an executive or a marketing coach, a coach that helps you grow your business. And the first thing that she said to me, she said, “You need to be more active on LinkedIn.” And I said, how do I do that? She said, you have hire a LinkedIn coach . So I hired a, and we’ve rolled up that program in September last year. And now majority of our business comes from LinkedIn.

Ziv:

That is so cool. You found your tunnel, like the, your marketing tunnel for growing, and this is really nice. You save people money, but how do you get paid? Is it a percentage? Is it like a fixed fee?

Tina:

It is a percentage. So for majority of our clients, it’s a percentage. We share the savings with them, but we also have an arm and that was developed coz of pay popular demand. So we have some clients who did not have anything to compare to, and they didn’t feel that their property manager had enough bandwidth to actually go out and get bids. So if they have nothing, there’s no savings. Right? So then in those cases we also have a percent. So it’s a certain percent based on the, the cost of the project.

Ziv:

I see. So it’s a case by case according to the client’s needs for, and like once they start working with you, how long do they stay with you?

Tina:

Forever or as long as they want to, because there’s always upgrades that are needed for buildings. I was just contacted by one condo board today, this morning, who we haven’t worked with them actively because we worked for them for two years. We implemented all the savings that we could find at the time for ongoing operating costs. Right now they have a leak and they need urgent help. So they reached out to us again. So we’re kind of just in the background whenever they need us, after we’ve done the initial assessment. And can’t find we basically, when they hire us first, we start going through line by line and we try to find as many savings as we possibly can find. But at some point we’ll run out because there’s only 150 line items on the operating side. But when it comes to the project side, there are always projects that come up.

Ziv:

Does this mean you actually do hiring for them so that you could find alternative flyers of services of sorts?

Tina:

Absolutely. In some cases it’s alternative. Just like you said, alternative services, in some cases it’s just switching from one phone company to the next, in some cases it’s renegotiating. What is already there? Oh, let me tell you, do you wanna hear a good story?  So we had a large co-op who was replacing three elevators. They already had something called an elevator consultant, which is very common because they are very specialized in understanding what’s they know the entire elevator industry. They had gone out and had three different bits. The lowest bidder came in at $750,000. My partner, I can’t take credit in this case, he’s the negotiator. He negotiated renegotiated with the same, for the same scope. He renegotiated down to 500, $4,000. But listen to this one with the same vendor. And when he said, how come you didn’t give us this price to begin with? And they said, well, you didn’t ask, or nobody asked. He said, nobody asked.

Ziv:

Yeah. While you were talking. I was thinking like, oh man, these people, they know how to negotiate. and that’s the micro skill that you like, you have to Excel in to choose to help in something like that, as well as an realizing and realizing what might be the direction. Of course, this is all really interesting. And I want to like say that it’s really fun to see someone that is flourishing by like being really good at what I do. And being very specific in, in what I do. And even being innovative because solving people’s problems and, and like actually saving them a load of money that is noble. And I really like what you’re doing with your partner with that. It’s really cool. Is there anything people can go to or do in order to learn more about what you do?

Tina:

So we have a website, of course it’s the Folson group and that’s F O L S O N. A lot of people mistake it for Folsom, you know, like Johnny Cash. So it’s the Folson group. We also have free tools on our website. We have a free tools with best, best practices that you can get straight to your inbox. Just put in your name and, and your email address and we’ll provide, send it to you. And there’s one for policies and procedures. There’s one for facade repairs, which is a something that’s very reoccurring in New York. And it’s a very big cost for buildings. And it’s also energy efficiency upgrades. So I would love to, for you, anyone to contact me through there, and I’m very active on LinkedIn, follow me on LinkedIn.

Ziv:

So we will actually put in the show notes, both the website link for the tools and your LinkedIn profile, because I think that guys, even if you are just not in New York, but just interested to see like what the Folson Group are all about and how they manage to get what they to do, what they, I think that will be good for you to check it out. Personally. I am really impressed by the operations. It is. It’s just impressive. I wanna thank you, Tina Larsson for taking the time and sharing with us your success story. And I wanna thank you guys for listening for another episode of the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Tina:

Thank you so much, Ziv.

Voice Over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.com where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.com for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting and daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Starting a micro-niche by being a great negotiator of maintenance contracts, with Tina Larsson (MNM Season 2 Episode 4) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the third episode of the second season of  The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Alyson Lex, a copy coach and a direct-response copywriter who can help you with some hot marketing tips.

If you want to learn more about copywriting that converts, listen to this podcast episode

Find out the two things to consider when writing a copy in the first part

How to find out if your email campaign is successful? Figure out Click-through rates in this episode

What affects email open rates and how important are subject lines and preview lines

Why is there no one-size-fits-all solution for email marketing

Alyson revealed how many call to action she puts on her emails. It’s on the second part of the podcast

Why does Alex prefer text-based links to button

The secret to making a person buy from you

Alex is using the “Poking the Bruise” technique to convert clients. Learn how it works

The best time to use automation and broadcast schedule emails

How often should you send emails to your list? As much as you can get away with

“It’s all about the personality that you put into your list. And it’s about the expectations you set up.” – Alyson Lex

alysonlex.com

systemtothrive.com/episodes

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Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

 Welcome to the Micro-Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche so you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he moved down from the village to the big city for a year, just to give his kids a different experience. Ziv Raviv

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. I have the pleasure here to discuss today with Alyson Lex from Maryland, Baltimore USA. Alyson is a high conversion copywriter and someone that I really appreciate her views. Hello, Alison, how are you?

Alyson:

I am awesome. Thank you so much for having me today.

Ziv:

Well, we shall have passion about the topic of copywriting and our listeners are always interested in what works and how to convey their message with the email list, the people in the email list. So I want to start by just talking in general about like the psychology of copy. How do we actually know what to write about so that people will take action?

Alyson:

And there are really two things that I like to consider with every piece of copy that I’m writing. The first thing is where is my ideal person in their journey with me? So are they brand new? Do they know they have a problem? Are they super motivated to solve that problem? What steps have they taken to solve that problem? What obstacles are they coming up against understanding all of those things about their history and our relationship? How long have we hung out? How much do they trust me? What have they, what interaction have we had so far, just understanding that part of them is going to be really beneficial to figuring out what kind of content, what kind of hook, how much we need to explain all of those things. Then the other thing that you really need to think about is where are they in their day when they’re getting your marketing message.

Alyson:

It’s really, really important to think about how they’re receiving it. Are they scrolling through on their phone at 10:30 at night, after a really long day with all their kids and all of these things, okay. Maybe let’s lean into that or perhaps they’re completely fixed on you and you have a hundred percent of their undivided attention. That’s going to give us some insight as well, because frankly, the ones scrolling on their phone at 10:30, they’re half asleep, they’re thinking about their next day. They’ve got 85 other things on their mind and they really need a little more handholding and you have to keep them a little entertained than the people who are a hundred percent focused on you. So considering where they are in their journey and where they are in their day, it’s going to help you think about their current mental state, so you can communicate more effectively with them.

Ziv:

So we were basically talking about like putting ourselves into their shoes and really trying to be so empathetic that we even noticed stuff like how aware are they for their own problems and for their own, like just actually situation like now.

Alyson:

Exactly. And you know, this isn’t a new concept. So when I worked at Glazer Kennedy, we used to send a lot of direct mail. And so we would think, okay, what are they doing when they pick this letter up? We would actually think, how is this letter going to land in the pile? And that’s why we would send lumpy mail full of fun, little toys or things like that, because it would get it put to the top of the pile. You can’t stack flat mail on top of something that’s lumpy. And so by really practicing that kind of consideration, they’re going to be looking at it over a trash can or, you know, when I get the mail from my mailbox and this is just an illustration, but when I get the mail, I walked and I go to the mailbox and then I walk up my driveway and at the top of my driveway sits my recycle bin.

Okay. And so by the time I get to the top of my driveway from my mailbox, which is about a 25 second walk, if I’m kinda mosey on, right, I have made a decision whether or not I’m going to keep your letter that quickly, because if I’m not going to, it’s going in the recycle bin that I literally walked past. And so that’s the kind of thing when you send the direct mail and this applies to everything, but stay with me for a second. When you send the direct mail, we want to figure out how to keep our recipient from throwing it away in that 25 seconds. We’ve got to grab their attention right now. And by thinking she’s walking up the driveway, that means probably the end of her day. And we know where she is on our journey with us because we’ve got our data and we have an idea of what she’s looking for and we’re super targeted with our messaging. So what do we need to say to get her, to keep that letter and open it inside the house? That’s the level that you have to think about these things. And I know that sounds like a whole lot of work because it is

Ziv:

Indeed, indeed, even is harder when we’re talking about emails because you don’t have 25 seconds. You have like a two seconds away from looking at the open or the subject line to clicking archive or delete. Right?

Alyson:

Yeah. And so that’s why so many people are so interested in talking about subject lines because opens are a thing. Now, personally, I prefer to look at click-through rates. That’s going to tell me more about the success of my email, but it’s not going

Alyson:

It’s not going to get clicked unless it gets opened. So really thinking about what well, but that’s also think about the outside of an envelope. If I’m going to put something on the outside of an envelope, that’s a subject line. What do I say to get it opened?

Ziv:

Yeah. I like the, this debate because there’s controversy. It’s going to have us dating different opinions, whatever works for you at the end of the day, a couple of ideas to help you generate sales and don’t check your links, then it’s going to be a little bit hard unless they reply. But at the same time, I want to just note open rates that are affected mainly by the subject line. They’re not affected only by the subject line. They’re also affected by the relationship and was that relationship nurtured and by the reason. And they actually joined was the reason strong enough that will actually make a huge difference. The biggest difference is, did they sign up for something they actually want. And how far are you in, in the relationship or was the relationship maintained? But I think, yeah, there’s two more things that are also important for just the beginning of like this nice feeling of opening up the mail and deciding that you’re excited to see what’s in it. And that is the preview line. And even the first line of the email, which like that attention grabber, that can actually just turn you away immediately. Even after you opened up the mail, what do you think about that?

Alyson:

Yeah, I’ve seen, so I tend to like my subject line and preview text or work together. So I really look at a couple of different types of subject lines. There’s the curiosity driver, the straight shooter. If I’m trying to come up with a name, I haven’t really named them all. And then, you know, like the question or that kind of thing, but I like to use a more personal curiosity driver and then kind of explain it in my preview text so that they’re not opening it cold because like I said, I do look at click through rates and I could use like the weirdest curiosity driving subject line and then get no click through rates because they don’t care. So I really try to make it all match. I’d rather them not open it at all, then open it and discard because I feel like that takes away from the relationship piggy bank.

Alyson:

And that’s something that I’ve kind of been talking about a lot lately is if you have a piggy bank, every time you give, or every time you show up the way you say you will, or every time you prove, that they can count on you to deliver you add a coin to the relationship piggy bank. And then when you make an offer, you cash out or when you don’t show up the way they think you should you cash out. And when you do this, you, so I don’t want them to open it and make a withdrawal from the piggy bank if they’re not likely to click. So I do like to be very upfront with what I’m saying on my subject line and my preview text. Yeah. The opener, I think is it’s kind of that reassurance, if you will, that yes, you opened it and yes, it’s valuable and yes, you want to keep reading. So it’s a headline straight up.

Ziv:

It’s really like tied with glue to the preview line and the subject line without if you go to a totally different direction, you already disappointed the reader for the first time today.

Alyson:

Exactly. And you’re making that withdrawal from the piggy bank 100%.

Ziv:

So what are some of your tactics to improve click-through rates? Like how many links do you prefer putting the, you play with that? They’re short or they are long give us some of your insights.

Alyson:

Okay. So the first thing to improve, anything to do with your emails is, and I hate this. I hate that there is no one size fits all solution. I wish, oh my gosh, I would be so popular if I could come and say, I have tested every possibility in the world. And this is what’s will be guaranteed to work for you. You could be literally doing the same exact thing as the next person. And because you have different lists because you have different personalities because they have a different relationship with you, different things will work for you, then work for other people. So a friend of mine actually refers to your email list. And I really liked this as a living breathing thing. Think of your email list as something that will continually grow and change and evolve, but it is a person and that person is different than any other person on the planet.

Alyson:

So number one, understand what your list likes, understand what your list doesn’t like. My list, frankly, they do not care about my personal life, unless I can tie it directly into a lesson or an offer. My list does not hate one when all I do is send them offers. It’s awesome. I have a unicorn list I can just sell. I will ignore my list. And I’ve, I’m really getting better about that. So do not do as I do, but I have ignored my list. And then when I said, Hey, I’m sorry, I ignored you. Here’s an offer. I got literal replies in my inbox, thanking me. Look, that’s crazy. Okay. I’ve never met anybody else that has a list like that. And I don’t know how I got it. So really understanding what they like and what they don’t like is going to be the first thing I do like three call to action links that all drive to the same place.

Alyson:

No, I don’t do this click here or click here thing, option a, or option B. I don’t like to do that one call to action per email. End of story. I like to put one toward the top, usually texts. So for instance, I sent one this morning about a webinar and I said, oh, I’m getting ready for this webinar. And I highlighted the name of the webinar and I linked it to the landing page. Then I use gifs in my email because gifs are my love language. And so I had a little bit of texts that talked about what the webinar was about. I had a GIF in there and then I threw in a button that said, sign up now with an arrow. And then I had a little bit more. And then in the PS, I said, oh, by the way, there’ll be a replay. If you want to grab your seat now. And that I did text-based link again. So I don’t put lots of buttons, but I text-based link. I make, I write my sentences and then highlight texts and make that link.

Ziv:

I resonate with those advices. I like how you like you diversify the type of links. And I think that’s two to three links that all lead to the same place. Definitely makes sense. I just want to note, I really think it’s important. Like you said, to listen to your people, to your list, to your tribe and see what they like. And the only way to do that is to look at the data really. And that’s something that is so different from one tribe to another. We’ve seen tribe, tribes have specific businesses where it was mainly women and they really clicked more on emails that has, that had a very short, almost hidden links, just like this tiny words here that was highlighted. And that’s it. And when we put a very big, like ugly link HTTP type of link, they click through rates, went down significantly and consistently. So we gave them what they wanted. They just need to listen. So tell me, once you get people to actually click right, you still need to motivate them who actually buy what will motivate a person to buy something from you.

Alyson:

Oh, that’s a big question. All right. So it really can be boiled down if I want to make it super simple without talking your ear off for three and a half hours, you have to offer them the solution to the problem that they want to solve right now. Not the problem they want to solve next week. Not the problem they want to solve in six months. The problem they want to solve right now. And people listening are probably saying, but Alison, how do I know what, like, we, you just talked about having to understand their day. They’re walking to the mailbox, have they don’t want to solve this right now. It’s your job to make them want to. And so I call this, poking the bruise, and I’d like to come up with fun names for things. Can you tell our name, everything, but I call it poking the bruise, because if you’re like me, you’re clumsy and you might run into a door knob once a week or so.

And so you, it, it hurts when you run into the doorknoob. It hurts when you first do it. After a couple of hours, maybe a day, all that’s left is the little purple circle. And that’s what I call. It’s a bruise, the little purple circle on your arm. And that serves as the reminder of when you were clumsy and you ran into the doorknob and the little purple circle, it doesn’t hurt. It. Doesn’t throb. It doesn’t ache. It’s not sore. Unless you touch it, bump it, brush it, a cat jumps on it, or you poke it. Then it hurts again. And so that’s my metaphor for pain. Your people are in pain. They have purple circles for every problem that they have, but they don’t hurt right now. They don’t hurt because it’s not active pain. It’s passive pain. They’re not walking around their lives saying, oh, I need a new job. Or I need to do this. Or I need to do that. I want to lose weight. I need a partner. They’re not like head down, mumbling this themselves over and over again. It’s just there. And then when it’s activated, when it’s poked by someone, hopefully you, it reminds them, it brings that pain to the surface and it makes them eager for a solution. So that’s the, one of the biggest parts of your copy is to activate the purple circle or poke the bruise.

Ziv:

I liked the visual nature of this metaphor because like we copywriters, we use all sorts of graphic description of how to take people’s pain and agitate it so that they will take action and solve the problems. Right. We come from a place of wanting to help people to solve their problems. But we, we basically, we need to agitate. And you’re talking about with your metaphor about a different type of pain. Like it’s not a cat, it’s an it’s, it’s a bruise and stuffing that doesn’t, they don’t even notice it yet, but you can see it. You can look at them and see that they were bruise and you actually have a solution for them. And by probing it, they, you can just remind them, oh yeah, it is painful. Oh. And you can think that for me. Awesome.

Alyson:

Exactly.

Ziv:

And like also how, you know, it forces you to listen to people because you only want to sell to them or they actually right now want to solve.

Alyson:

Yes. You have to have the right moment. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Ziv:

So I want to ask, I like just open one quick additional topic, and that is the topic of automation versus broadcast type of emails. And just like to see where are you on the camp of that? And we will finish also with talking about the frequency of day-to-day type of communication. So let’s start with your opinion about automation.

Alyson:

I love automation for anything I can get away with. I think, I mean, frankly, in a perfect world, I would have five bajillion emails set up and day one on my list is the same for everyone. And day a hundred on my list is the same for everyone. But I also recognize that that doesn’t feel very personal to people. So I don’t think you can get away with it as much as I wish we could, because I think automation is amazing. And I love using automation to, especially at the beginning of somebody’s journey with me, or if I am having them touch in with something, whether it’s a webinar, a survey, any kind of touchpoint, I think use automation for your regular emails. Just work ahead, you know, your weekly content value, keep in touch. And I know you mentioned frequency, those emails, write them a month ahead, schedule them out, update them then that kind of thing, but everything else should absolutely be automated.

Ziv:

So I agree. And of course, like a welcome sequence just makes sense too. If they just talk to them, having automation for it, if they’re taking action, if you like doing a launch or something, it just easier to manage it with an automation

Alyson:

And you can segment, you can personalize the experience really well to them because of it. So, you know, I hosted a webinar earlier today and when I sent the messaging out to my list, there are really two, well, three things that could happen. One, they don’t click, I’m not measuring that at this point, but one they click or two, they click an opt in. So I wanted to know who clicked. And so I set up an automation because it was a special niche topic and I wanted to make sure I started identifying people on my list. So I just tagged them. So then later I have a segment automations help with that. There’s so much you can do. If, if your email marketing system has automation capability and segmentation and all that stuff.

Ziv:

These days, even the low cost, email CRMs type of services, they support the tagging and the automation. So it’s like really no experience, except for just sitting down and finding the time or finding some help to get it done. So the million dollar question, how often should you send an email to your list?

Alyson:

Very much as with automation, as much as you can get away with. So just like what your list wants to read is different, how often they want it is going to be different too. Some people are happy to get an email once a month and they’re highly engaged. I would do more than once a month. I would do once a week at minimum. And that’s what I personally strive for actually I’m at about 10 days again, do, as I say, not as I do, I am not a good role model. I’m about once every 10 days, sometimes seven, if I’m in promo, obviously it’s much quicker and if you can get away with every day, awesome. And I think you can get away with every day, as long as that’s the expectation you set up from. So part of that welcome sequence that we talked about is to set that expectation.

Alyson:

Hey, and I tell people, Hey, I sent an email about maybe once every 10 days, you know, like I tell them you’re not going to hear from me all the time. Cool. Come find me on Facebook or Instagram. If you, if you have questions, I’m here for you. It’s all about the personality that you put into your list. And it’s about the expectations you set up. If you say, I’m going to send you a, a short three sentence email every day with an actionable tip, do it, they’re expecting it. They’ll want it. They won’t revolt.

Ziv:

And I totally greeted setting the expectations is so important. That’s our role when we are like, as business owners, as tribe leaders is the people that are sending those emails. You know, you should do that. I, if anyone is interested in getting some help, because high conversion copywriting, that is a big deal for many businesses, they need a sales page to convert. They need the funnels to work. And a lot of time they need even specifically a second opinion of, Hey, look at this funnel. It helped me with the conversion to have it in a high conversion copywriter. Sometimes what they look for is not the words. They look for the visuals of it. They look for the relationship, the look for the positioning of the actual solution. And so on, like you said to probe, but if someone needs help with any of these types of things or where should they go and what type of services do you offer,

Alyson:

You can always had. And you’re so right. A second set of eyes is amazing, but they can always head over to alysonlex.com And that’s a L Y S O N L E X.com. Blame my mother, she named me with a weird spelling and you can check me out and see what, that’s my home, my home hub on the web. I am pretty much copy and marketing strategy. So, you know, reach out, ask me questions. If I can’t help. I probably know someone who can, I’m always happy to point you in the right direction and just be of service.

Ziv:

And I want to thank you, Alyson, for sharing with us, some of your views on open rate and click through rates and automation. It’s a topic that you can always hear more opinions and get some advice and get some reminders. So thank you so much for being here in the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Thank you everyone for listening. See you next week.

Voice over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting at daily emails to grow your micro-niche business today,

The post Higher conversion rates through direct-response marketing, with Alyson Lex (MNM Season 2 Episode 3) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the second episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. 

Our guest for today is Michael Wiley, an entrepreneur, educator, and the man behind flippinmobilehomes.com. 

If you are interested in investing in real estate of any kind, Michael’s story of $2 to $8000  of profit from his first flip will inspire you to take risks and take the first step now. 

flippinmobilehomes.com

dailycookie. co

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche so you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host. He uses the insider group method to poll his audiences every single week, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Hi, I’m Ziv Raviv and I’m here in season two episode 2 together with Michael Wiley from Alabama, US Michael is the owner and operator of flippinmobilehomes.com. Hello, Michael, how are you, my friend?

Michael:

I’m doing great this morning. How about yourself?

Ziv:

I’m excited to talk with you because when I, saw what you do in your online course, I was very impressed at how specific it is and how, like it actually helps people with a very specific transformation. What do you help people do? Like what does it even mean? Flipping mobile homes?

Michael:

Well, the thing is that you have the real estate market, which I would call traditional real estate. And so mobile homes will be what I would call alternative real estate. And so I teach people how to invest in those. And a lot of people don’t realize there’s a lot of money in that market where most people just don’t pay attention.

Ziv:

So what type of person makes a decision to flip on a mobile home? Like what is the avatar of your audience, potential clients?

Michael:

Well, I’ll start off with a big name first about this. So I’m just going to ask you a question here. I’ll give you maybe a guess or two for laughs. But when you ask about what kind of person basically invest in mobile homes, right? There’s one name that I’m looking for and they’re really, really successful, really successful the biggest mobile home investor in the world. Can you give me that name just all the time?

Ziv:

I’m really going to guess, because I’m not familiarized with this, but I’m just guessing, like what luck, maybe Grant Cardone,

Michael:

Even more major. I’m talking about over successful. Somebody who could just wipe the floor with Grant Cardone, but I’ll cut the guesswork out. Warren Buffett’s actually biggest investor in the world. So when people like that do something like this, it makes you kind of want to take a look at, you know what I mean? It’s like, okay, what is what’s going on over here with this? And that’s not to say that that’s what guided me on this journey to doing that. But I mean, once I got there and I was like, okay, I’m in the right place.

Ziv:

So you’re actually like an expert on this topic. You help people do it after you first found out all the ways to do it efficiently and you’re doing it yourself. So how many years are you in this market?

Michael:
Four.

Ziv:
Right. And only you’ve got some results. Like what’s the end-to-end timeline here for a project like that.

Michael:

So, the, you mean the actual flip or teaching someone how to do it? No,

Ziv:

Actually, flipping it.

Michael:

Okay. So, I’ll have to explain a little something here. So there’s three different types of flips, right? That I teach people. Number one would be the standard flip, which is where you buy one. Maybe it needs a little bit of referred work or something like that in it. And depending on the extent of wear and tear that could take anywhere from about two to three weeks, the next one would definitely be just buying it out. You would buy that outright and sell it. The next one would be just not having to do any at all, which I guess we can categorize those the same way. And you basically have your buyers list and everything. These are people who are eager to buy from you, right? They’re motivated buyers. They have the capital to be able to invest in something right now. And you basically go out there and you get that on the third guy would be the wholesale, which is basically, you never own the mobile home at all.

Michael:

Right? So basically what you’re doing is you’re still working off of that buyer’s list and you can have yourself. I mean, a really strong buyers list within a pack within the next 24 to 48 hours. So, I teach that’s the first thing that I teach. You need people in your area who qualify to buy from you. They have the capital ready. And what you basically do is you find a motivated seller. So, we’ve got a motivated buyer and we’ve got a motivated seller. You need to get those two people together, where you as a middleman, what you do is you go ahead, basically broker that deal and you put some in your pocket for yourself. And that’s the easiest method that I teach.

Ziv:

That’s like a more advanced way, or like, where do you think people, your students, whether you recommend they start?

Michael:

Well, I definitely recommend that they start with a buyers list first. So, I have a free training set up before any money changes hands, I call it a test or market exercise. And so, this is about maybe or videos. So, three month that’s a one module, three lesson program, little mini course that you take, and it teaches you how to get these buyers for yourself in a very short amount of time. And so that’ll get your story and stuff when you’re actually ready to go ahead and make it for sale.

Ziv:

That’s very interesting because you took what I perceived as the hardest problem, the hardest problem, which is like, how do you find buyers? And you made that into your free stuff. Your free course.

Michael:

Yeah. I actually have a friend of mine who is, she inspires me a lot and her name is Pam. And she was like, she gets onto to alive. She gives me good advice and everything. And she was like, you’re giving us a way. And I was like, yeah, why not? She was like, should be charged for that. I’m like, it’s pretty easy stuff. And you know, when you get off into this space, you kind of take for granted the things that you know, but I don’t have any problem with it and people who’ve got success. And that’s actually one of the ways that helps me to get people into the profitable part of my sales funnel. And I’m assuming that people who are going to be listening to this podcast know what a funnel is, you know, or at least have some rough approximation of what it is. So by them getting those results, just having this list of people who are ready to cut them checks for like 30, 40, 50, 60, $70,000 is legit. Then they’re like, okay, I need to know how to take advantage of this. And I’m like welcome into the fold and that’s how that works.

Ziv:

Nice. So how did you think about the idea of sharing your unique expertise online with like a mobile, like with an online course and everything?

Michael:

Well, I’ll say this right here. There was a book that I kind of learned like the basics from, and I have no problem sharing that. It’s called a Deals on Wheels by Lonnie Scruggs. And it was written like back in the nineties. So it’s, it’s, there are parts of it that are out of date compared to how we do things now. And I was like, well, there’s not really anybody in this space doing that. And even now there’s only a few people who are doing it. And so when I first flipped my first mobile home, I was like, I had this goal in mind. I was like, I’m going to teach this because my story was at the time. And I hope I’m not jumping the gun with any questions that you have here. But I’ll say this at the time, when I first learned how to flip Ziv, I had $2 in my pocket.

Michael:

I would like to say $2 to my name, but hell even that was owed out. I was mired in debt. I worked a nine to five job like anybody else did and car payments, depression, lots of other factors and stuff contributed to me, just not performing as well as I had before I had encountered all these things. And I was literally like, I’m sitting there with like $2 in my pocket. I had to make a decision of whether or not I was going to put food in my stomach or put gas in my car. That’s a tough spot to be in. When I flipped my first mobile home, I didn’t go from like super rich or anything like that. My first book got me about $8,500. And I was ecstatic about that. You go from $2 to 8,500 and that was just like, okay, I’m like this, this is what we’re doing now. You know what I mean? And so going from there to that, I mean, I definitely had some help from a friend of mine who kind of like took me under his wing to kind of show me the ropes. And then once I did that, it was just like, no stop.

Ziv:

So tell me a little bit about your operation nowadays as an educational entrepreneur. Do you have a team?

Michael:

Yes and no. Most of the work that goes into what I do is done by me. And I’ll tell you why. I mean, I have like a I have a studio jammer guy and everything like that. And so they helped me out a lot when it comes down to production. But when it comes down to the flip and everything like that, now first started off by myself. I have carpentry skills and everything like that. And I think that’s what sets me apart from everybody else who teaches this stuff, nobody else is actually doing the work. You know, they just hire people, everything like that. Now I have a crew that actually can alleviate some of that work for me so that I can focus on other things. But for the most part, I’m the face of everything. So if you’ve ever watched something like HGTV, they’re watch, you know, chip and Joanna gay or somebody like that, that you understand pretty much what goes into what I do this part of my funnel. I show people how to do it, that it can be done. It’s not to say that you have to do it yourself, but I mean, when you see somebody else doing it, it makes it that much easier.

Ziv:

What do you think in your opinion is the hardest bit for your students? What’s the biggest hurdle for them before they managed to do the, the first flip?

Michael:

Talking to people, talking to people. So the first module in my course, right. And I just want to talk about that for a sec is mindset, right? So I guess the average person goes into this into the world, period. Let’s not even focus on my course for a second. Let’s not focus on my business. Let’s focus on the mindset of the average person. Has they, every person has a value system. All our friendships, our family relationships, everything is based off of that. The people that are closest to you have the most value to you and the person who comes into this, they’re automatically assuming that they have no value and that when they go to people and they start asking for these, talking up these business deals and putting this paperwork and everything together, their mindset isn’t that somebody is going to tell me no, and it’s going to be so terrible and everything like that.

Michael:

But what I tell them is you’re not just living in mobile homes here. You’re a problem solver. At the end of the day, somebody needs a place to stay. Somebody has something to sell. You’re the person who’s going to be able to make that happen. And even when you go talk to these mobile home parks, they’re squeamish about going in there and talking to part managers and stuff like sitting in an actual office, talking to the big person, the big man or the big woman and staff on campus. And I tell them all the time, I’m like, look, you have something to offer. So don’t go in the door thinking that you’re begging for an opportunity. You’re actually providing them with an opportunity for this. Each one of these lots around here that you see that is empty. That is money that they’re losing the year.

Michael:

The person is going to come to the door and make them make money on that. And then when you come to the door saying, Hey, I can help you make money. That changes the whole dynamic of the relationship. You’re not just somebody walking off the street and begging for a sandwich or even a place to stay or something like that. You’re all an opportunity. So I had them shift that mindset before they even get off into it. And that seemed to help out a lot because a lot of them, like I said, they’re scared. I deal with men and women. Some of them have never talked to people was over there on edge of burden. Some of them are extremely extroverted, which is a good thing. But for those people who can’t do that, or this is new territory for which there is new territory for all of them, most of them I’d say some come from a real estate background. So with all that being said, that’s like, the hardest part is just talking to people for these large sums of money. And these are mostly people who are coming from like the average person, I would say in the United States makes about somewhere, let’s say about 30 to $35,000. The average person, the people who come into my course, they have different backgrounds, but they’re normally not used to getting lump sums like that. And I think that that much money and talking to people just scares the hell out of them. So what else?

Ziv:
What are the other things that your course covers?

Michael:

Well, my course covers the basic. What a, you gotta have, it covers it like this right here. So different mobile homes are going to have different valuations, right? Different year models. And the United States is like split up into these three wins zone category. And I’m like, okay, you can get X amount of money for a mobile home here, but just in case, check your local market. I go from that to how to scope out of a wall. Okay. So that would be prospecting, right? How to scope out a good mobile home for a good price. Then we go to acquisition. This is how you go ahead and you structure your deals. Okay. So you’ll have that down and you’ll know how to offer, how to get the best deal for when you actually go in to do it, how to talk to the current owner and everything like that, how to get your way as you get your foot in the door, get the best deal.

Michael:

Next is, well, does this home mean any kind of repair or anything like that? Because if you could make like minor repairs or something, you can Jack your price up, right? You’d be surprised at what just a simple fix, like maybe a small leak in the roof or something, or maybe a soft spot in the floor, quite common in mobile homes, especially your older ones, maybe a hole in the wall. Maybe somebody opened the door really fast and a door knob kind of went through it or something like that, or who knows what might have making those small fixes so that you can ensure that you get the best deal for it so that you can ensure that the seller and you get the best deal for your home, right? You might be able to take a mobile home that you could acquire for like $8,000 and be able to end up getting like maybe 20,000 out of it, or a hundred thousand, depending on where you stand in the United States.

Michael:

So we cover that minor repairs. The next would-be management. And that’s basically where, you know, you have to have your taxes and everything in order. And I show you how to do that in a paperless fashion. And you can do everything and stuff on your phone. So that’s about the size of that. Once you get that down, I mean, what do you do before, where you can still kick it and everything, I’ll really like for a person to come around and just encourage other people to that it’s possible to get out of their nine to five. That’s about the size of

Ziv:

Do you sometimes offer them any like coaching or one-on-one or some Q and A sessions?

Michael: Of course. So I do weekly zoom meetings. So I have a free public group that anybody can get into. We also have a pay group that’s only for the students and everything. So once I get them in there, I fast track. And from there, I mean, I have plenty of testimonials. I will tell you that if you got a problem, please call me right away. Like you have my cell phone number. I will hop on a call with you. And this is something that I pretty much want to talk about too, while we’re on this podcast is I’m six foot one, all right, I’m over 200 pounds. I’m a man. It’s going to be very important here in a sec. But I also deal with women who are not like that. Right? So as a man, I typically don’t have to worry about getting taken advantage of, or being assaulted by people or something like that.

Michael:

But when you’re a woman or something, you know, that that could be a part of her. That could be a very real possibility. So I offer that just to my women, clients who may or may not have a boyfriend or a husband who could or could not be there with them and I’ll hop on the call with them and we’ll be like, okay, cool. We’re even to guy, maybe they’re just not that confident in themselves. I’m like, okay, you work for me and I’m your investor. I couldn’t be there today. So I’m there via video call, and I’m going to walk you through this and we’re going to talk like that. So those are some of the things like when people buy, my course, they’re buying me. You understand what I mean? Like, they’re not just getting the some course they’re getting full support.

Ziv:

How do people hear about your activities, your course?

Michael:

There’s a couple of ways. So I’m on like as many social media platforms as I could manage, which right now is Snapchat and Instagram, Facebook and YouTube is a big one for me. Cause I love to make videos. I have plenty of videos out there. I do how to videos, where I build cool stuff. You know what I mean? That has nothing to do with flipping mobile homes at all, that I really like to build things. And also people seem to be able to find me through Facebook as well. I have no idea how they do it, but they do it. But the group is definitely growing at a steady pace. I love it.

Ziv:

What would you give yourself as an advice if you were talking to yourself a few years back now that you know what you know.

Michael:

Can I speak freely here? Right. So if I had to go back several years to, let’s say about the time that I first came into the knowledge of doing this, right? So I got a little story to tell and I had an old friend of mine, right? We had been friends for probably about six years at that point. And he was out of town. He was a truck driver and everything, and he needed to, he wanted to start flipping mobile homes. And so while he calls me up, cause I guess maybe I was like the smartest person in his spread circle or something like that. And I was capable of doing it. So he tells me to go over to a mobile home, he calls me up and he’s like, Mike, how’s everything going? And I was like, I am miserable. I have no money.

I’m down on my luck. I’m literally sleeping on a friend’s couch at this point. And he was like, well, I need you to go do something for me, man. So I was like, what is it? So he was like, well, I need you to go into this mobile home and I want you to take some pictures of it. So I was like, sure, no problem. Just shoot me the address. And I’ll go over here and do it, tell me what pictures you need. You know, bedrooms, kitchen, baths, living room hallway, everything like that, interior exterior. So I was like, okay, cool. I can do that. Took the pictures and everything and texted them to him two days later. Now he’s in Colorado at this point, two days later, he’s in town. He sends me a picture back. He’s standing out in front of the same mobile home, standing there, shaking hands with some guy I’ve never seen what he’s got.

Michael:

He’s got like a big stack of cash and I’m like, teach me. So after that I flipped my first meal while he didn’t exactly teach me everything. I’m really good. I’m a fairly smart person, you know, without to moan or nobody likes somebody who is like, you know, no pompous or whatnot, but they would, the bounds of being humble. I am very smart. Right. So I went on ahead and did my first one without his help and everything. And that was when I was like, okay, I’m going to teach them stuff. But fast forwarding to getting to your point. There’s an old saying here is that if you want to know the depths of a man’s soul, offer him Lander money. We went into business together and I was more of the bookkeeper type person. So I got spreadsheets and stuff over here, keeping track of our expenses and everything, how much money and everything that we got coming in.

Michael:

I look in the account one day and I’m like, okay, there’s we’re not rich at this point. Okay. I’m not rich still. Alright, I’m climbing like everybody else. And so this advice is going to tie into what I’m going to say. So there’s 40 grand missing out of the account, 40 grand USD. And I’m like, well, what the heck is going on with the money? He was like, man, look, I started this company. I can do whatever I want to with it. I’m like I’m in business with you. So if you’re doing that with company money, then that affects my life. You know, plus I want to see the company do good. That’s why, where I had to do at work every day. And so without going into too much detail, it spiraled out of control. He went to the authorities, told them that I had stolen $1,500 them.

Michael:

They locked me up. I got out like 12 hours later and I was like, you know what I’m done with him? So the reason why I said, if you want to know the depth of a man’s soul offer blander money is that once the money started coming in, he, he turned on me, but he really revealed more of himself of his true nature. So if I could go back and tell myself, you know, anything, is that in anybody who’s listening to this, you are strong enough, right? Never. They’re going to be marvelous and stuff. When you are going to doubt yourself. And that is if you are a human being, that’s normal, you’re going out into unchartered territory. And that’s a scary thought, just like my students, where they get in there. And they’re like, you asked me like, what they’re most afraid of. This is unchartered territory for them.

Michael:

And I understand that they’re do my best to walk them through it. Now, does everybody meet with success? No. Some people just come in and they let that fear. Or maybe just this interest or something like that. Just take them away. You know, shiny object syndrome. Oh, another course over here. And they just get lost in that analysis paralysis can’t be helped. But if I had to go back and tell myself that as don’t doubt yourself, be extra cautious of who you let into your circles when you’re on your purpose. Because people, especially people who don’t have anything going on for themselves are drawn to people who look like they know where they’re going to always do your best to try to cultivate an air of certainty and boldness. And that is what’s going to draw most people. Am I the most popular? No. When people tell you they wouldn’t learn from anybody else, especially at modus.

Michael:

When I doubted myself and I hesitated on pulling the trigger on what I got going on, I’m like, who am I to be doing this? Nobody’s going to like me and everything like that. Next thing you know, I had a thousand subs on YouTube faster than most people do it. My group is, it’s not, you know, massive, you know, it’s growing to about 400 people now. I’ve got plenty of success stories now, and that it never would have happened. Had I not taken that leap? So that would be my last bit of advice for you is should you gotta jump, man? And you gotta be focused on where it is that you’ve done with.

Ziv:

I love it. And this is such a clear case where you could open it in a very micro niche with very small numbers. I resonate with that. Like my first launch of an online course was with an email list of 400 people. And it was like an $11,000 launch and it was beautiful. So I’m really, if I may say so I’m proud of all that you do. I’m so excited about your journey. Can’t wait to see where you go from here with all sorts of advanced products like memberships and coaching high-end coaching or whatever you do. Super cool to see you flipping mobile homes and helping other people do it. Michael Wiley, thank you so much. Where can people go again to learn more about you?

Michael:

You can find me flippinmobilehomes.com and if you go there and you fill out the questionnaire and everything, you can actually get into the Facebook group that way, and you can interact with me in there. And you know, people didn’t always mesh with me and stuff on messenger, but do you mind if I leave the viewers with a final thought,

Ziv:

Please?

Michael:

So the focus of your, of your podcast here is niching down. And I know that you’ve covered this before. You’re a very thorough guy. I mean, you and I have been interacting and stuff in the group together. And I just really like your stuff, how positive you are about that. But I would definitely like to leave your listeners with this who are afraid of niching down because a lot of people are afraid of missing out on these opportunities out here, look at business this way, you’re in this room and it’s a circular room, right? And around you, you’re surrounded by these doors, right? Let’s say that there’s 10 doors. Just for the sake of visualization. Most, if you had to choose one, you can’t choose two or three or anything like that. Yet you can, one, most people are afraid of opening that door. So they never move to going open that door.

Michael:

This is where most people are, but I’ll say this right here. If you go and open one door, this is, this door is a niche. Okay? Each one of these 10 doors represents a niche. If people think that once you open that door, that’s just, it. There are no more opportunities. I’m stuck here. This is my life. This is what I do. But here’s the thing behind that door that you open are going to be more doors than you could ever possibly open. And there’s going to be more doors behind each one of those doors that you open. All right. So niching down. Isn’t a bad thing. So that’s my final thought on that. And yeah, you guys definitely catching my website, join with the Facebook group. I’d love to hear from you guys and tell them you

Ziv:

Thank you so much for that, Michael. I love it. I’m in for that and see you guys next week on the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Thank you, guys.

Voice Over:
This show was brought to you by dailycookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting at daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Flipping Mobile Homes, From Podcast to Online Courses, with Michael Wiley (MNM Season 2 Episode 2) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the first episode of the second season of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Isaac “Shrek” Daly, the Chief Noob at Noob Spearo who saves lives through his podcast about spearfishing.  

If you want to go to places while enjoying your hobby and practicing your favorite sport, this story will inspire you to go ALL IN on podcasting in a micro niche.

noobspearo.com

www.youtube.com/NoobSpearoSpearfishing

dailycookie. co

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Welcome to the micro-niche mastery podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he wrote his first long form copy at the age of 16, and hasn’t stopped writing since, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome back to the micro niche mastery podcast. This is season two, episode one I’m meeting now Isaac Daily, all the way from Brisbane, Australia, and he is the podcaster behind the brand, the Noob Spearo Podcast. Hello Isaac, how are you?

Isaac:

Thanks for inviting me. I love your energy.

Ziv:

Thank you. And you chose to pay at this side hustle is now forming a business these days and he’s making money like significant money. And that you seen a very micro niche noob spearo. What is the actual meaning of these words?

Isaac:

Noob is like borrowed from gaming, which I think originally borrowed it from the military, which means that a newbie now like a person who’s brand new and something, they know nothing. And there’s obviously some stigma attached to being a noob. And Spearo is short for a spear Fisher person that loves spear fishing and freedive spearfishing in particular. So holding your breath, diving down and shooting fish, bringing them home, cooking them up, feeding your family basically.

Ziv:

And that’s something that just spear phishing, right? It’s so visual. It’s so specific. It’s like how many ways are there in fishing that are not spearfishing?

Isaac:

There’s like there must be 20 different types of line. Angling is low there’s jigs is soft. Plastics is, you know, there’s all these different types of bait fishing and spinning and spear fishing is relatively simple. There’s only really two ways to do it. You can do it with the Hawaiian sling or you can do it with the speed again as be against it, generally powered by rubber bands a little bit like a Slingshot, but sort of cross with a crossbow and then, but kind of not as well. And then, yeah, Paul SPI is similar, but you pull like an elastic band and you hold the spear in your hand and it’s a single length. Whereas the spear gun shoots as steel shaft into the fish and it’s sort of tethered to the gun.

Ziv:

It’s like a, it’s the underwater Crossbow podcast.

Isaac:

I like it. Yeah, we can do that. Yep. There’s hunting stigma attached to crossbows as well though. Like people that use a Longbow when they hunt on land, really disliked crossbows, it’s like a form of cheating. So I think spearfishing doesn’t want to be associated with crossbows either. So, but in either way I get it.

Ziv:

It’s like you Spearos guys, you like to use the spear manually. You like to do make the hunting of the fish with a spear by yourself with your hands. And so, when you decide to fish fishes with spears, like I’m not sure is there available for that.

Isaac:

Spear?

Ziv:

So, you, when you spear fishes, do you usually also do other things to fish or is it like a group of people that insist on only doing the spear way?

Isaac:

Lots of people that Spear fish, they go surfing and kite surfing and they, they might fish with a line or a rod as well. A lot of most spearfishing people are just, they love the water in particular. We love getting in it and getting, holding your breath and going down and hunting and finding efficient stuff. But it can be used as in combination with a whole bunch of other sports as well. Just generally people that love the water and fish.

Ziv:

How many years have you been spearfishing before you started a podcast?

Isaac:

Before I started the podcast? Probably only like three or four years. So, but the podcasts been going seven years now, so quite a long time.

Ziv:

So you started the podcast before you started spearfishing?

Isaac:

I, sorry. I’ve been spearfishing 11 years total now and going for seven.

Ziv:

Yeah, that’s clear. So, what are some of the responses you got from the podcast?

Isaac:

People love it. Like it can be quite a risky sport, so saved people’s lives. I was just reading an email before from a guy, we did an episode about how to deal with sharks in different parts of the world. Sharks can be quite prevalent and learning how to manage them to the best of your ability is definitely some skill. So we did an episode just focusing on how to deal with sharks. And this guy sent me an email just saying, Hey, I use so many of your tips and you know, helped me fend off some sharks and scare couple away. And you know what I mean? And he was really grateful and he didn’t stop the problem that he had some problems with them, but he was grateful that he had listened to the episode and learned a couple of chips and tricks. And that happens pretty often now because we’ve been going so long. Like a lot of people just they’ve listened to it over years and the content just continues to be downloaded forever. So it’s awesome.

Ziv:

How many episodes did you produce in the podcast?

Isaac:

So far? 160, I think.

Ziv:

Right. Do you go straight? Like weekly for a while for a season

Isaac:

It’s bi-weekly for the most part, but I tried to be fairly consistent, but every now and then I might be able to do one a week for a month and then, but then it falls back to biweekly. My patreon pays like per episode? So I don’t want to make them pay too much if I drop too many episodes as well, but I’m quite clear and upfront about how the patreon membership works.

Ziv:

So how many years did you, like at what point did you open up the patreon?

Isaac:

Probably any three or four years ago. So maybe not even that maybe only three years ago, patreons are a good source of income, I use the money to predominantly fund trips where I get to go to different parts of the country and world and go spear fishing and just hang out with listeners and do live interviews. So nearly all of the money that I raised through Patreon is used for that purpose. And that’s kind of the value proposition to the audiences. Like they want to support me and, you know, like I get to come out and meet some of them and go spear fishing with them. So it’s kind of the part of the value proposition because I don’t offer a lot of extra benefits to the people that are patreons, to be honest,

Ziv:

Basically by creating this micro niche show, you’ve got to meet people that appreciate you and that you saved the lifestyle honestly. And they fly you around and get you to enjoy your hobby and your sports.

Isaac:

Oh yeah. A hundred percent.

Ziv:

But you’re also working on some money-making stuff for this. So can you tell me a little bit about your plans and what you do except for the patreon?

Isaac:

Okay, cool. So the first serious money-making initiative was we decided to, I had an, originally I had a co-host that I invited onto the show with me. We did more or less the first a hundred episodes together. And we wrote a book together called 99 tips to get better at spear fishing. And we just, a lot of the book is just tips that we learned in the first 40 interviews we did on the podcast. And then we turn that into a book. We got it, graphically illustrated, and then went up as an ebook on Amazon. Then we did a full whole hog and raised $15,000 on Kickstarter and sold a whole bunch of copies. And it was pretty cool. And then we did another book and that’s on Amazon too. Now I’ve got a third book that I’m working on right now. So we’re going to be live by the end of the year, but books are kind of a low ticket, low value item.

Isaac:

They do increase your authority and your visibility, and they deliver people a lot of value, but they’re not really a high ticket item. So they don’t deliver a hell of a lot of income, to be honest, a great for building community and your audience and all that, but not really a significant revenue on it. And the background at the moment, I’m currently building a video course offering. So that will be a lot more comprehensive. Hopefully obviously raise some, it should solve bigger problems for people where therefore they’ll be willing to pay a bit more money. So that’s also a lot of work involved, so yeah.

Ziv:

Yeah. And you have like any timeline for the launch of the course?

Isaac:

No, I don’t. The next book has kind of taken front and center and I like, you know, there’s that old saying, like the man who chases two rabbits catches none. Like, so I’m kind of focusing on this next book. The project timeline for the video course is probably somewhere around the middle of next year. And the other thing I do probably for revenue is sponsors on the podcast, which also helped to pay the bills. So I’ve got, I think 10 sponsors I’ve got in various different arrangements, so yeah.

Ziv:

Wow. In those sponsors, they contacted you to promote or did you contact them?

Isaac:

No, nearly all of them. I think people would have started contacting me now, but the problem is is that like you can only really have one sponsor from a certain type of business. Otherwise you’re, you’re potentially allowing the competition on the podcast as well. So you can only really sell a certain amount of space and it’s quite a lot of real estate on your podcast. So I’ve really only partnered with people that I really like him businesses that I actually believe in and shop with myself. So yeah. So I’ve, I’ve mostly approached him to be honest.

Ziv:

Do you sometimes get products that you need to review? Something like that?

Isaac:

Yeah. I get the same products. I get sent stuff a lot of the time I prefer to have people just send me stuff with no strings attached. I don’t get out and do enough spearfishing to be a serious product review guy. And they take so much effort like this high doing product reviews is an art unto itself and it’s a skill set, all of that stuff. You’re going to be good. And it seems like YouTube is probably the best platform for that.

Ziv :

So all of your episodes include an interview?

Isaac:

Nah, no I’ve done like documentary style ones, which is more like the NPR style ones, but it’s a lot more work and editing and all the rest of it and a lot more complexity and moving parts, but generally mostly interview podcasts. Yep.

Ziv:

Do you get any help with audio editing the website?

Isaac:

I do. I’ve got, I’ve outsourced nearly of what I’ve outsource all of my audio production. I have a pipeline, I train interns. Now I have a training suite now, an audio training suite, but I have a Capitol of professional editors and I’ve got another guy who publishes episodes now for me and does my show notes. I’ve got a virtual assistant, they house to my website. So this is a team because I have a full-time job as well. And yeah. So, yeah.

Ziv:

Sweet. Do you also collect people’s email addresses when they, how many emails do you have in your list

Isaac:

To, I think just shy of 2000 before I went through and had a big Cal because I was using MailChimp and they charge over 2000 and when you’re not getting a high enough open rate out of them and because I wasn’t delivering consistent enough emails and MailChimp seems to have a real terrible open native open rate in general, just due to the way that Gmail and outlook sort of their algorithm processes, MailChimp newsletters. I’m not a big fan of them, even though it’s free and I love their service. It’s just, I don’t know if it’s a great thing. So I think I’m back down to 1100 emails, but the open rates somewhere around 50% click through rates, probably around 15%. So like it’s a very, very active email list because I’ve called it so diligently. But having said that it should be probably a lot bigger for where I am.

Ziv:

Sometimes it’s better to have a similar list that is very active. My, I did my first launch of an online course on an email list of 400 people and it generated $11,000 on the first launch. So, your email list is great and yeah, I mean these people from all around the world?

Isaac:

Yeah, they are. But predominantly they sort of match my podcast listenership. So I hosted three lips and the stats are really good and it’s predominantly probably it was nearly like 38%, 38% USA and Australia and listeners, but UK and New Zealand have grown and Australian listeners now make up 45% and Americans are probably like 30 to 33%, something like that.

Ziv:

Yeah. Yeah. Those are the main countries for podcasters that in English that most of the people come from the Indians. So, what is your vision for the Noob Spearo podcast from your standpoint?

Isaac:

The vision’s never really changed. Like there’s a lot, like it’s really difficult to learn. There’s so many obstacles to overcome and it’s quite a risky sport. So always about saving lives, you know, like helping people to do it more safely, more effectively, but also to use the resource more intentionally and more sustainably, like think about how, you know, spearfishing is probably the most selective form of fishing because you only take what you want. So it’s just a matter of informing people about growth rates of fish and how prolific they are, their breeding cycles and, and just being aware of that being like I think most hunters are conservationists at heart. And so really just bringing out that mature mindset and people that are learning spearfishing from the start and, you know, just growing the community and making it a better place for everyone. I guess there’s a big vision.

Ziv:

Love it. Do you have any like aspirations one day to make this into your main source of income or something of that sort?

Isaac:

Yeah, I’m I’m, I am, I’m quite serious about this video. Of course, doing it for me. And I’m possibly looking at early to make she going part-time in my work. Cause at the moment I work 50 to 60 hours a week in my normal job and then the podcasts on top of it. So if I could scale that back and just work 24, 36 hours a week at work, and then I’d have a lot more time and energy to work on Noob Spearo. And it’s a lot, it’s very rewarding. Like building your own thing. I love looking behind me and seeing a track record of, you know, like sometimes making content is like such hard work, but when you look behind you, yeah. Sometimes you look at the stuff you, when you made when you started and it’s not that good, but this, everyone starts somewhere and like I’ve left a huge trail of, of awesome stuff behind me. Like, and I’m proud of that. Yeah. I haven’t always been perfect, but like it’s a good legacy. It feels good.

Ziv:

I totally relate to that. You went into a niche in my corner and you just listened to the problems and started to solve them one episode at a time and one resource at a time. And you get to the point where suddenly people contact you and tell you, Hey, you saved my life. And it’s all about the details. It’s all about the fact that every single niche have so many problems that are unique to that niche. So you just go in and dissolve them. It’s so simple and pure of heart. Yeah. This is so cool. You are progressing organically. You’re growing, you’re learning. How long did it take you before you started to delegate and have a team?

Isaac:

Well, I don’t want to talk too disparagingly about my form of chaos, but unfortunately like made some partnership issues. And so almost couldn’t pay myself a wage out of some of the income that was coming. So, but I could really pay it to other people. Probably two years ago, I started to be honest episode 19. We started with an intern audio producer and we trained him up, but he was very good. And I think by the time he had done 10 or 15 episodes for us, we’d started to pay him apathetic, summer money, money, but over the years and over the episodes it’s progressed to now where he’s paying, being paid, probably what he should be. And so that’s been awesome. I’ve brought a VA on about 12 or 18 months ago and she’s just been a lifesaver. And I’ve got another guy now who started as an intern for me helping her social media because social media is just a joint thing, you know? And it’s sometimes you’ve just got too many hats to wear and he came on three months ago. So now I’ve got three people helping me in various ways.

Ziv:

That’s amazing. How do you find them the online helpers? How do you find them though? How do you find them? Where did you find?

Isaac:

And I find them, oh, awkward stories. I guess I put together an internship advert to the local like media schools because there’s too many people graduating from these media academies where they learn like high-definition film production and audio production and they never get to use it in an actual context. So basically, we were just trying to help these people build out and give them resume experience while we got some help with their audio. And over time I’ve built like a training suite. So they actually get proper training. Now, the first guy, he didn’t really get any he was more or less self-taught and he just came on board and, and helped me really build out what I’ve got now. And I was able to do that with social media and using some of the other systems as well with the recent intern who I now pay.

Isaac:

And he started off, I just put out a call through my own community and he’s a young spear fishermen in South Africa and Cape town and shout out to Brandon. And he came on as an intern for three months. And then after which we negotiated some paid work and in a way he’s gone. My virtual assistant was a friend of mine who was moving overseas. She was managing an English school here. She moved overseas to move into virtual work and she’s just so capable and talented. I initially started offering her a minimal amount of work just to help her start her virtual work practice, but also to give me a hand and get some stuff. And she was so helpful that I’ve just offloaded more, more and more tasks. And now she does like, I think 20, 30 hours a month for me. So

Ziv:

How awesome is that? Well, thank you. This is all we have time for today. This has been great Isaac Daily. Where can people go and hear your podcasts and learn more about you?

Isaac

noobspearocom. N-O-O-B-S-P-E-A-R-0.com. And yeah, enjoy it. If you, especially, if you’re interested in spearfishing, I think you’ll like it.

Ziv :

And we’ll put a link for that in the show notes. Thank you so much. See you guys next week in the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast,

Voice over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit dailycookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting, a daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Catching big fishes with Patreon in a Micro Niche, with Isaac Daly (MNM Season 2 Episode 1) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the fourteenth episode of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast – the LAST episode of season 1.

For today’s episode, Ziv Raviv will personally talk about the back story of the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast and how daily emails helped him to become a 6 figure business owner, coach, and podcaster.

Are you still thinking about which niche you are going to pursue in your business? You’ve got some inspiration here, so listen up.

zivraviv.com

kivimedia.co

balloonartistpodcast.com

balloonartistcollege.com

kidsentertainerhub.com

generousmarriage.com

dailycookie. co

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro-niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he married his high school sweetheart at the age of 24 Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. This is episode 14 of season one and as such it’s the end of season one, and I wanted to do something different today, just to get to know one another and to share with you the back story of the Micro-Niche Mastery podcast. I know some podcasters choose to do this in episode zero, but I believe in value first. That’s something that I really believe in, and I’ve decided to first produce 14 episodes or 13 episodes before I get the opportunity to share with you something about me or about what we do in daily cookie. So my personal story, I, in case you are not familiar with anything I’m Ziv Raviv and in the year of 2016, I started my first podcast. I didn’t have any business aspirations with it. I was just hoping to help other people in a very, very small niche and just enjoy giving back after being able to 10 X, a local business of mine through using all sorts of marketing tactics.

I wanted to follow the lead of other podcasters that I appreciated and just give back and see what happens. Well, the first podcast, actually, at the end of the first season, I had an email list of 400 people. And that email list was allowing me basically to do my first launch with a webinar and a very simple funnel of just sending a bunch of messages about like emails about the webinar and launching my first coaching program. My first group coaching program and business-like education, that type of thing. It was actually in four months into my creation of the podcast after the first season. And that was like the first launch $11,000 worth of a launch of a launch with a very, very small list and a very small niche. We’re talking about a niche called balloon artist podcast, like the NYSIIS balloon artists.

Ziv:

The, these are people that entertain kids in parties and decorate the events all throughout the world. There’s actually only about 4,000 people in this micro-niche. So it’s a really, really small like 4,000 professionals give or take. And I was able to like make $11,000 from the first launch and then did another season of the podcast to justify another launch. And then in data launch, I was able to make another $11,000. So $22,000 within year one in general, I would say with any micro niche, once you try a few things and you find something that generates the first five figures, stick to that one. So I actually, tried another idea back to back with this one in idea called the booster monster.com and booster monster.com was not able to create five figures in that amount of time. It was able to create a few thousand dollars, but not something significant.

Ziv:

And basically I decided to put all my energy on a balloon artist to podcast.com. Well, soon enough, I understood that I need to diversify my portfolio of my product, and it started to work with other creators to create other online courses with like in a partnership model. And by September, 2017, a year and a half into podcasting, I had already enough courses to create a subscription-based online school. People would sign up at the beginning just to get access to three webinars a month. And soon enough later we go our a number of webinars for free to five to seven to 10 webinars a month. And in parallel started to cumulate online courses that will be available for free for the members we started with about five of them, and then go up to 10 to 20. And these days, five years later, the members of the balloon artist college, that’s how it was named.

They have access to one handed courses. So this whole journey with the balloon artists podcast taught me a lot about how like the micro niche can actually get you to be noticed way faster just to demonstrate how fast this was. I only started in 2016, but on 2018 in the most respected magazine in this niche, a professional magazine by one of the balloon manufacturer that magazine has decided to announce of the 20 people that are the most influential people out the world, over the balloon industry. And they chose me to be one of those influencers. And that was like in two years time where before that no one even knew me. And basically two years, not just, I was known, but also people have been like recognized me as an influencer. So that created opportunities for me, just being very active in this micro niche and not a micro-niche that was somewhat overlapping, but mostly not is the micro-niche of magicians for kids, kids, magicians, magicians that are kids or the teenagers and people that are focused on kids’ entertainment, but not with balloons.

And I was approached by the owner of the kids entertainer academy, entertain a podcast and the kids that attend our academy and that it was requested to teach for them, which in the beginning was something that was more for the connection and the networking and learning. And later on, they offered me an option to actually buy half of the company from them and eventually buy the other half. So in 2018, I actually overtook that school just a few months after getting balloonartistcollege.com. And I’ve decided to kind of think big because now I was the owner of two online schools in somewhat overlapping niches. Both of them were micro niches. So the number of magicians around the world, the children’s entertainers is about 8,000 people. So there was a little bit of a bigger niche, still, very Micheal and very specific and requires very specific expertise.

Ziv:

And I basically bought a ready-made school with five courses. So since 2018, I nurtured that school and kind of new content. I tried all sorts of different types of webinars and created all sorts of partnerships around the course creation. And these days, this school has 30 full-blown online courses, as well as handling of lectures all for the subscription-based payment, so that these very low, like 30 bucks or 50 bucks in BAC. So, the fact that I had two schools now forced me to think big once again, I had to realize that now I’m running like a chain of schools, and I really wanted to go into another micro-niche, which was not in the entertainment niche so that I could diversify my portfolio and learn new stuff and just fulfill myself, I guess. So that’s when I catered to things like I did Kivimedia, which was the, like the parent company, the model company, if you will, which will be the company that actually provide group coaching for any of my schools.

Ziv:

And then I created a generousmarriage.com with my co-host and partner for that specific company who is [inaudible]. And so now I had three different Micro niches that they operate in and one extra cup. And he gave you media for providing group coaching services on business related topics. So for my standpoint, as said, when you have an activity in your business that is making 10,000 plus you should treat it as a business by itself with its own needs and its own plan. And that’s what I did. I had the plan for balloon artist college plan for KEA Kids Entertainer Academy or plan for generousmarriage.com and a plan for Kivi Media.co Each of them will making a significant amount of money. So on the overall, we were a six-figure business since 2006 and 17. So the next step was to realize that I’m starting to attract people to me that are just interested in my services as a coach, but it never held any of my podcasts.

Ziv:

They never really, they were not inside my Micro niches. They were just excited about having someone to work with them on launching their own business or podcast or online course. So I decided to create, at some point after the clients told me, I need to have my own personal brand. And because they wanted to refer people to me and you didn’t know what to do, like someone who was coached by me, and then they wanted to let a friend snow, Hey, check this out. This is my coach, but they didn’t know what should they send? Where should they send people? Should they send people to one of my schools? It doesn’t make sense. Should they send them to my group coaching program, giving me data to go? No. So I needed to have my own personal brand. And I called this after my own. Name’s zivraviv.com

And I started to provide one-on-one coaching, which actually took off significantly. Just as an example, within 2021, I’m free. I’m a recording this in September. And the brand is expected to make over $100,000 just from one-to-one coaching and with zero marketing, by the way, just from people that they hear about me somehow, I sometimes even don’t know how. So this made me put me in a situation where I’m super-duper busy, right? I’m a very productive guy. I love, I’m also a very supportive person. I have a team in the Philippines or for like a VA and graphic designers and website developers that will help me and nowadays copywriters. So I’ve built this and gradually expanded my team. I will talk about that in another episode, but what happened was I started to feel really bad about not sending daily emails, daily emails, work period.

Ziv:

The more emails you send, the more money you make. That’s something that I’ve noticed to myself. We even had this month where we have worked hard on, like, I did the challenge for myself. And I sent an email every day for 90 days. And at the end of those 90 days, we looked into the numbers. And the last month of those 90 days was the best month we ever had in the last 18 months prior to that. So, but I couldn’t do it all by myself. I was too busy with coaching clients. I would go to sleep and I will feel bad about not sending another email in that is like the spark of that’s how, you know, daily cookie was actually conceived. It was out of a need of mine. I had two copy ideas I was working with back then. And those coping ideals were freelancers.

And even though I was able to negotiate with them and win-win situation where they write stuff, either on retainer or with dependent our deal, that was, I was happy with. I still felt like if I needed to outsource to them, my daily emails needs for probably three online schools. That would be very expensive. And for a long time, I did not do anything with it. I did it. I just was like, knowing that I need to send more emails and couldn’t figure out who should I delegate this to? Because I knew that my higher end copywriters will just be too expensive for my needs. I started to think about how other companies offer a subscription-based service like graphic designs for once a day, a graphic designer would sit down and do a creative cycle for you and send you a graphic design by day, every single day. And you have a pipeline and you have now access to a designer. I thought, Hey, what if I could find something like that in the copy world? And then I’ll just hire them. But I couldn’t find something that is exactly like that. Yes, there are copywriting agency that will sell their copy by the world. But I don’t believe in that. I believe that if you’re a copywriter recharging by the world, then you have no control over your budget. And you actually might be attempted to write less than what you need all to hide more than what you need, because that would be the, the interest of the copywriter and all that aside, that there were people that were charging by the hour, which I couldn’t find someone I can trust that will be affordable enough because the copywriters that knows how to market themselves are relatively expensive per hour, even 100 and $150 per hour.

Ziv:

Like if you go to Upwork, that’s pretty much where the qualities, I realized that if I can’t find a solution to my need, then maybe I should create one. Maybe I should create a solution for that. But instead of creating a solution just for my needs, let’s create it for everyone’s needs that just solve the daily emails problem. And I want to explain what is daily email problem, because this is very, very deep and it goes deep into the hoods of understanding relationships in business and the deep why of daily cookie. That’s what I want to share with you. So yes, of course I can. I’m sharing that here with you. The daily cookie was created out of my itch and my need for feeling better when I go to sleep and knowing that we’ve sent an email to each tribe with some good free resource all in offer, but I also want to share with you how significant it is to connect to this way with people.

Ziv:

So we live in an era where relationships are crumbling. They are diminishing, they are, we are losing the ability to stay in touch with our family members, with our tribe members, with our customers, with our leads. People don’t listen because there’s like this thick, thick layer of noise between us and other people. And the fight for attention is so hard that like all the main platforms are actually saturated already. So if you got to this point in time, this is so magical where someone actually gives you their email address and says, yes, let’s stay in touch. Let’s connect. Then disappointing those people by not staying in touch in a good, positive, meaningful, valuable way is very sad to me. And that is the soul of, of staying in touch with people. And when I say daily emails, you might hear seven emails a week or five emails a week, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

Ziv:

It can be two or three. It can even be one email a week. I wouldn’t ever go below that because it just doesn’t work these days because even emails are saturated. So, but they’re not as saturated as that platform. So writing an email two times a week or three times a week, and later on, if it works even five times a week, in my humble opinion, it’s just worth it. It just the right thing to do to maintain the relationship, to keep on being generous, to bring your name back to the table again and again, so that why is even deeper than maintaining connections with people. Because when you, as a business owner or a tribe leader, or even a copywriter, when you allow yourself to stay in your genius zone and delegate a part of your connection with your list to someone like daily cookie, you actually, you’re making home for the things that you do that only you can do.

Ziv:

And I think that’s very powerful for me personally, a lot of times it’s coaching and strategy and working on my business and even training my team. All of these things are fairly important and only I can do them for now in the company. And that’s why it’s so critical that I will be able to delegate certain things as many things as possible. I’m actually a programmer by training. And I’ve worked for nine years as a programmer and is a project manager in the pole coming wall. But I decide to not touch anything that is programming in the company. And instead hire someone because my role is to think big, to be on the strategy level, to be on the sales level, to do the things that only I can do. So, and these are the little bit about the why of the cookie.

We help people stay in their genius zone by delegating the rest. We help people nurture relationships. Well, how do we do that? Well, it’s a flat fee type of arrangement, like a subscription where you always know what is your budget? And you get out of it as many as about 22 creative cycles a month, which is like a creative cycle every day. And a creative cycle is a copywriter that sits down and work on something for you. Usually an email end to end, but doesn’t have to be an email. It could be an e-book or a blog post, or a checklist that you need to research on an infographic, like basically anything where you need a copywriter to do the research and to write something. It can even be some social media work. And basically the end of the creative cycle, he will update you exactly what he did for you and send you the output.

Ziv:

And every copy we write, we make sure that it is in your voice and that it is generous and relevant for your needs. We also have like a second copy the writer, do the copy editing so that we make sure the quality is high. And then we also proofread the entire piece by a native English speaker, like English as first language type of, proofreader. And I myself like English is my second language. As you must, must have guessed. I am from Israel. And yet I’m so confident as a copywriter and motivated with seeing results that my clients get, that I am super excited about our quality with the support of like three sets of eyes, basically on every single word that we produce for our clients. And what happens next is basically we’re here for our clients. We serve them every single day.

Ziv:

They come to us and for seven days we create a plan, a content plan, and we landed a voice and we listened to the audio files or the YouTube videos, or we read the books. We even watched the online courses when that applies. And that way, when we write, we capture the voice and it’s not always perfect. That’s why we’re very flexible and open for feedback and have a system of how to provide feedback to us so that we will learn and improve even when moving to the task form one copywriter to the other, if needed. And, uh, usually you just get one assignment forever. Like you just get a copywriter to work with you, but in case cases, maybe I don’t know. Then we have a system also to support you with that. So you pretty much can get about 22 emails in a month.

Ziv:

Now just to come for comparison, I’m not going to name our price point because it can fluctuate and change over time. And I also want you to just go to daily cookie.co and find for yourself, but I know the prices that are out there. So if you are going to by the hour and pay $150 per email, you’re probably be able to afford two to three emails for the price of what we sell a whole month of copywriting, which is the equivalent of around 22 emails. So we are very affordable. And what we’re trying to achieve by that is to simplify the decision and to democratize copywriting. Because right now, if you need to hire a full-time copywriter or even just retainer copywriter, you’re going to need to be making seven figures and anything that is below that will just be able to afford us way, way more efficient.

And we believe in the power of business of businesses to change this world to be a better place. And once a lot of smaller businesses will be able to afford a copywriter. So because that copywriter will help you with nurturing those relationships and with delegating. So I hope you’ve enjoyed the micro-niche mastery podcast season one. And if you did, I do want to have one big favor that I want to ask you, which is to leave us a review. It doesn’t matter. What is the review, as long as you actually put it in and tell us what you think about the podcast we believe with this podcast, me and my team. And I personally, I believe that Micro niches are the fastest way to create results with a business. Yes, you can start Micro and then expand. I’ve done that too, but you should always start with a micro niche.

If you’re into fast results. What I’m trying to achieve with the podcast is explore this idea. Interview people that are either serving micro niches or are operating within a micro niche? So, in this season, you’ve had from people exactly like that, like Chris Badgett who created lifted LMS and like Troy Broussard, who teaches automation to micro niches and, uh, started in the micro niche and people like Islam Benfifi, whites copy, and his service as a copywriter is to a micro-niche and other very talented people that were able to share with you the stories in season one and season two, it’s going to be exactly the same only better I need to include. It will include more ideas, more tips and advices for writing copy. We don’t want you to, you know, to need us. So we’re going to share with you education that helps you become a copywriter or a better writer for all of your email needs so that you could do it by yourself.

Ziv:

And you should definitely do that in the beginning. And once you’re ready to delegate, then we want you to be able to trust us. And we will be here. This is all out in the open, very clear. We want to provide you value that you so good that you will grow your company to the level where you’re too busy to write your emails by yourself. And then you will be able to force yourself to use daily cookie. So if you think that’s cool, go ahead and leave us a review. I would love to see what you think about the season one and either way, I will see you after a short break between the seasons in season two of Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Thank you, I’m Ziv Raviv, the host of micro-niche mastery podcast, and it was an absolute pleasure to spend this time with you bye-bye and see you soon enough.

Voice Over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting and daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Why sending daily emails will change your relationships and life, with Ziv Raviv (MNM Season 1 Episode 14) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the thirteenth episode of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Daniel Throssell, also known as Australia’s best copywriter who’s famous for creating persuasivepage.com.

Have you heard about Daniel’s Parallel Welcome Sequence? Listen to this episode and learn how it can help you with maintain people’s attention.

Learn something today? Tell your friends about it too!

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Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro-niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host. He constantly changes nos to yeses with an email Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Hi, I am Ziv Raviv and today I have the pleasure to interview Daniel Throssell all the way from Australia. Daniel is the creator of the persuasive page.com persuasive page.com and Daniel has some insights about copywriting that are just mind blowing. I love your work. Hello, Daniel.

Daniel:

Hi, how you going?

Ziv:

Good. Good. It’s good to have you here with us at tell me Daniel. Just I’m curious. How did you come up with the idea of the parallel welcome sequence?

Daniel:

Yeah, I mean, are we assuming that everyone who’s listening to this knows what that is?

Ziv:

They have no idea. They have no idea than us.

Danielle:

Well, okay. So it’s basically the idea of you can click a link in your welcome sequence to get the next email. Immediately. Every time you click you land on a separate webpage, which tells a different story, sort of a parallel story. So you’ve got two separate storylines going there. You’ve got your daily emails and your inbox, which you can skip. And you’ve got these web pages, which tell their own story. But I came up with that idea. I wasn’t the first person to come up with the idea of clicking to skip and get a new email immediately. I got that from someone else. I honestly can’t remember where from, but I love the idea because so many welcome sequences in my view are cooling down new leads. And by that, I mean, when you sign up and get someone’s email, you read that first email and they say, look in 24 hours, I’m going to send you this email on X, check your email for it.

At that moment, the person who signed up to your list is most likely to want to read it right then and there probably. And you’re saying, you’re not going to have it for 24 hours and there’s nothing you can do to get it. That’s a terrible thing to do in my opinion. And there’ve been lists I sign up to and I’m like, they tease the next email. I was like, I want to read that right now. I’m here right now, show it to me. And I can’t. And by the time they send that email out, I was bored. I didn’t care anymore. I was gone. Attention is the most important thing that we have in 2021 to work with. And so the whole point was about how can I keep someone’s attention for as long as possible when they’ve just signed up? So I want them, if they want to go through 10, 15 emails at once, they can, if I can get two hours of bedtime after they sign up, I want that I’ll have two hours of that time.

And so they can click through and read all my emails. And of course, they’ve got these little stories in between every time they click a link. And so I’m using that to branch out and do Wilder, crazier things. And just, it’s that idea of cultivating your superfans, really that showing you a weirdness because there’s so many people out there sending them emails. So you can really dive into what makes you unique and special. And that’s certainly what I do is just crazy stuff going on. It really cultivates super fan. So the combination of two things, it’s like embracing that weird side of yourself and also holding onto someone’s attention. And so two hours after someone joins my list, if they want, they’ve gone through my entire welcome sequence and they email me, they say, I’m, it’s 2:00 AM right now. I can’t sleep. I’ve just been going through your emails, I’m hooked, right? Versus for someone else, they got bored two hours ago. They forgotten about me already. They’re watching Netflix. So that’s the real big difference. I think in the way I’m approaching the welcome sequence.

Ziv:

So basically you have two different sets of welcome messages. If you will. One of them is in the email sequence itself. And the other one is in those set of like micro pages. And what’s your opinion on those pages, the welcome messages. Do you think it’s important to try and sell on them? Or is that not one of your goals

Daniel:

I am trying to sell? And that’s, that’s a separate philosophy of mine is that, you know, you always want to set that expectation that you’re selling stuff, because if you don’t, then people get angry when it comes out of nowhere. So I am selling, but my primary goal is to get attention. That’s what I want more than anything I’ve before I want their money, I want their attention. And I want them to think I like this guy, because if I can get them to think, I want to read these emails, then I have five years to sell them. If I go for the sale immediately, I might make some more money, but there’s been plenty of people who buy stuff straight up and then they end up dropping off later on. So it’s kind of backwards from the old model, which was, you know, try and monetize upfront.

That’s how advertising works. 20, 30 years ago. You had to do that. You have to regroup your costs because it was so ferociously competitive, but now you can reach people for free almost with the internet. So the game’s changed. And now the scarce thing is not recurred being that money back, it’s getting the attention. So I am selling on those pages for sure, but I’m selling in a very lighthearted and fun way. And I don’t care if they buy or not in that welcome series. I am going to get them at some point down the line. All I want is to make sure that they keep reading.

Ziv:

Yeah. It’s almost like accidentally you offer them to buy something like in a PS with a very small link, never with like this big table of here’s the product with the price and everything. Almost like as a side joke, by the way, you can pay money, you can be, you know, buy this, but what it. And I can testify for that personally, is that you get to the point where you know exactly what to expect from a Danielle Throssell email, which is that it will be engaging. It will be interesting. It will be funny. It will teach you something rather than like to open up. I don’t know, a general email from one of the goo and one of the companies where, you know, they will try to provide value, but they might not be as specific as something that you can trust that will be relevant for you. As you said, like you can, it’s super fans. And I have a question if you don’t mind sharing, if it’s not a secret on the technical level, what CRM are you using to automate all of that? And if you don’t mind sharing.

Daniel:

It’s really like I’m using a Weber right now. I’m just about to move to the Zercher mail. Uh, with new email platform, I’m using bazooka mail already for my broad tasks. I’m a beta tester on that platform, but they haven’t got their campaign builder ready yet. So I will move over to that. The good thing is incredibly simple, technically because a Weber has a fairly simple campaign buildup. All I do is put every email within its own campaign. And every campaign is triggered by either a click or a delay. So if you click you move to the next campaign, or if you hit the delay, you move to the next campaign. I think it’s something that you can set up in any CRM, any broadcast platform, to be honest,

Ziv:

Simpler than I thought I thought there was some sort of like, yeah, let’s just wait for the awesome Ben said,

Daniel:

Yes, yes, yes.

Ziv:

We had on the show mentioned that like, yeah, how wonderful, uh, like let’s catch up after this and chat about the Beatles. So obviously you’re an advocate of setting more emails of sending daily emails. Why should a ccompany sent so many emails like daily?

Daniel:

Well, there are like, there’s so many arguments that people make for this. And I agree with them all. Cause I do it. You know, if people are getting so many emails that if I email once a week, I’m one in like 2000 emails that person’s getting, for example, and people read plenty of stuff every day. Like everyone says, I can’t email every day, they’ll get sick of me. And I’m like, well, they read plenty of things. Every day they read the news every day, they check their Facebook every day, but Instagram every day. So there’s nothing wrong with a daily checking, something. It just has to be new and interesting enough. That is the problem. Most people can’t be interesting enough. So that’s the challenge. And one thing I do say to most copywriters, a lot of copywriters are out there pushing this daily thing on their clients and I’m like, not every client is ready for that.

I think this ties into what we were just talking about before, which is you guys are offering is a much, a really cool idea. You’re trying to offer that lower price point for people to get it because a big barrier to most businesses is I can’t afford a copywriter every day. Like they just tend to charge me too much. So that is usually where I say to copywriters, not every business needs a daily email, but having spoken to you just before, I think that’s kind of cool that you are actually filling that gap in the market. So I think that’s, that’s cool.

Ziv:

I totally agree that not everyone needs a daily email. And I actually recommend to our clients, even though they can get a daily mail form us for the same fee from us, it doesn’t mean that that’s what they should do. And you should measure and look at the stats and like of even come up with enough material first and plan and see that it’s aligned with your business needs and to measure the click through rates and so on. There’s so much more to it than just like this new platform. Let’s also do Instagram or let’s also do daily emails. Now you need to look at the data and like, try it out first.

Daniel:

Yeah. I will say that I have people who, last week I had an email go out late. I messed up the scheduling and I had people, several people email me saying, where’s my email. Like I need base literally said, I’m not exaggerating. I need my daily fix. Where’s my email. Right. So if you do it right, you actually have people hooked on that domain, drip of what are they going to send me today? So I think daily emails absolutely can be done if you do them. Right. And people will love them.

Ziv:

Yeah. And really like sending a little amount of emails like once a week, even, you know, just a drop in the water. I can see where you’re coming from. Totally. So let’s talk a little bit about capturing the voice for a client because especially for people like us that believe in daily emails and believing in good copywriting services for helping businesses grow with us and nurture the relationship over email marketing, but how do you or your students as a copywriter that also teaches actually capture the voice of the client so that the client will feel like those, those emails that actually are being sent by him,

Daniel:

There are several solutions to this. I don’t think this is a one size fits all problem. And it really depends on the business and the level of integration that you have with that client, how closely they want to work with you, how long you are working there and how much you’re getting paid as a copywriter, you know, how much money is this project worth for both parties? I think that all makes a big difference. So I’ve worked with clients where I was long-term effectively, in-house at the company. And so I got very, very good at the client’s voice and so on. Okay. And that just comes with a long time of exposure. If you are not in that position and you have to come in and you can’t get that much information. I usually say that the, the emails should shift focus from being so much about the business to more about the market.

And when you do that, you can sort of take some of the focus off the voice per se, because it’s not so much telling about your story, what you did that day. This afternoon. I took my kids to the parks on the, in my own business. I write a ton of personal stories and I think that is the best. And if you can have, if the copywriter and business can be really integrated so that even the copywriter might submit, you know, this is just one potential model, but the copywriter is submitting ideas. The client will go over that and maybe sprinkle some voice through it. I think that’s the ideal. And that’s how I worked for a long time. But obviously that’s a very intensive thing that needs a lot of, um, cooperation between client and copywriter and so on. So in other cases, I recommend that the emails tend to take a more market focused.

So if you’re selling to the weight loss market, one day, you’re talking about how embarrassing it is to not fit clothes. And then the next day it’s like the shame of I don’t have my pre-child body anymore. So, and it’s all market focused and that takes a lot of pressure off having to sound exactly like the client, because there’s not so much about you. It’s more about the, the client. That’s kind of my approach to, I know there are people who get really technical of measuring voice and so on, but I think I approached that in a slightly different way.

Ziv:

I love it. I guess it’s a combination of, can you afford researching the customer’s voice for this specific project and even having, staying there for long enough to be flexible and to adjust over time to the voice.

Daniel:

Exactly. And I actually have a course on market research and that is one of the cornerstones of what I teach that the copyright, I mean, this is from a copywriter’s perspective obviously, but the copywriter should not be going to the same level of detail for every job. It’s really dependent on the circumstances on the budget, on the client, copyright of integration. So that’s why I say it’s not a one size fits all thing, and you’re going to have different solutions for different projects.

Ziv:

And I, I just do, I can get the sense of it for us. When we do research for a new client, we take at least seven days of going through the stuff before we’re willing to write one email, one piece of copy. So it can really take time a long time to go through, even go through an online course of a client just to get, what are they talking about in the level of details that you want to be excited when you leave the cocoa? So I have a question for you, and this might be a little bit more philosophical or more technical. You might have a very clear idea for your business, but I’m also interested for your opinion as an advisor of clients this time, what is your opinion about the difference of having a welcome sequence that is automatic, right? And every time I have this new email, this new story to share, I’ll just add that to the automatic welcome sequence and make it longer. So everyone goes through the same experience rather than in comparison to send those daily messages when they are alive, when the light just fresh from the oven. But then I don’t have in my head, the idea of what is every single subscriber in my list is going through. What do you think about the differences? When should you use one? When should you use the other?

Daniel:

I think it’s a fascinating question. I’ve thought so much about this. The first thing I would say is that is exactly why my welcome sequence works the way it does because you know, one of the reasons, one of the problems I had was, well, I have all these great emails that I want everyone to see, but if I put them all there, they’re in that sequence for weeks and they’re not reading what’s going on in my real life, which may have changed. How do I get around that? The solution is the way I’ve done it. Someone could go and click through all of them in two days if they want or one day, right? And then, then not, they go through two weeks’ worth of emails in a day. So that’s one part of the answer is that if you allow people to go through their own pace, you can solve a lot of that problem.

I think it’s fantastic to have a sequence that does have some of your core beliefs and teachings in it, but you have to remember that. So few people are going to read everything. So you can’t really assume anyway, but just because it was in the welcome sequence, everyone saw it. And so you’re kind of going to have to repeat a lot of these fundamentals over time. Anyway, I do like having a welcome sequence. I do have one, but I feel like one of the biggest differences, just speaking within my industry and the copywriting industry, you know, I’m a copywriter who buys two copywriters. There are lots of other people like me. And I think one of the biggest differences about the way I do it is that I am, I write a fresh email every day. That’s actually, you know, I put effort into it.

Some people do a daily email, but it’s just like, they’re just thinking, writing a as they think, and it takes them 10 minutes and they’re really proud of that. But the email sounds like it took them 10 minutes. They just thinking on the fly, there’s no art to it. It’s just a brain dump of what was on their mind. I always try and craft a good story. It usually takes me an hour or to craft a good story, have a good lesson in there, but it’s always fresh. That’s the thing. And there are a lot of marketers who eventually get tired of it and they just start recycling stuff and you’re on their list for a year. And you’ll start to see every few months, you’ll see the same emails come up. And I think people really can tell when something’s been canned or reuse, even if they’ve never seen it before, if there’s nothing fresh about it, they can tell, I think we should give readers more credit than we tend to as marketers.

And so my approach is that fresh emails are the best way to go. Absolutely. If you can do it, it’s absolutely the best because people know if I say today, I did this yesterday, I did this. Or here’s what’s going on in the news right now. There’s a controversy right now in our industry about X, Y, Z. I saw this on this news website, but you are like real. Think about the things that people check every day, then use their Facebook, whatever none of it is pre-written, it’s all fresh and new, right? So if you want to be one of the things that people can’t live without every day, I think you have to be new as well. So my philosophy is that new is the best way to do it, like having a welcome sequence, but I want people to be able to go through it faster, skip through it. And I think that gives me the best of both worlds.

Ziv:

Wow. That’s a really good answer. I love it. Is there like, does this mean that basically once you’re out of your welcome sequence, they go into by just being nurtured daily. So before that they were saving an email a day with the option to be faster, but once they finish it, they go into your main list, I guess, and being nurtured once a day through your broadcast emails, correct?

Daniel:

That’s exactly the way I’m playing it right now, to be honest with you, there’s been so much stuff I’ve sent in the last 18 months that I am like, I wish everyone knew about that email. So I am thinking of going back and lengthening that welcome sequence, but I do like the idea of always letting people skip forward through it because in my view, the less time they spend in pre-canned emails, the better I want them to see it, but I don’t want them to spend months in there because then I’m going to sound stale and pre-programmed like, everyone else,

ZIv:

Do you teach Danielle your parallel welcome sequence somewhere?

Daniel:

I do. I have a blog post that lays out the whole thing. And we mentioned my Euro before persuasive page.com. If you go there as a link to that post right at the top.

Ziv:

So if anyone wants to learn more about your online courses and about your ideas, they can actually learn the parallel welcome sequence for free and also consider some of your programs that teach them how to make money on, on Upwork as copywriters and how to do the market research. And so on. Everything has been very clear from looking through your staff. Nothing is hidden and does not like some N to convince you to take a, make a decision really, really fast or anything like that. So it’s all very straightforward and fair and brilliant. So, Danielle, if anyone wants to go again, I would send them in our show notes as well, to persuasive page.com just so that they can see, make sure that they get it in case they’re blogging right now.

Thank you so much, Daniel. And for taking your time constantly, uh, our questions about daily emails and about automations and that your opinion matters to me. Thank you so much. And thank you guys for listening for another episode of the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting at daily emails to grow your micro-niche business today.

The post The Parallel Welcome Sequence, with Daniel Throssell (MNM Season 1 Episode 13) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the twelfth episode of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Joey Ragona also known as “The Entrepreneur Activator,” a heart-centered coach and strategic marketer who helps entrepreneurs find the right customers and make marketing much easier. 

If you want to do things differently, Joey’s story will prove why being different in business is the way to go. Listen to learn more.

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Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro-niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he changed his life five times with the power of an email Ziv Raviv

Ziv:

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. Today’s interviewee is Joey Ragona. Joey is a heart-centered coach and a strategic marketer. And quite frankly, Joe, I have to say one of my heroes online because you always help people and give them good strategic advice. And I love your opinions on mail deliverability and hygiene and email list and whatnot. So first just say thank you Joey for being here on my show.

Joey:

Hi. Yeah. Thank you. That’s that’s so nice of you and thank you for recognizing that. I think that’s what the world needs more is us using our super or just helping people out. So, and thank you for this opportunity to share my opinionated knowledge and wisdom here.

Zivi:

It’s often a contrary to the common knowledge. You know, a lot of people are so afraid to lose their precious subscribers and you go and say quite freely and everywhere. That’s not necessarily such a bad thing to lose someone out of your list. So, before we go into that, give us your introduction of like, who is Joey and what does it even mean to be a heart-centered coach.

Joey:

A heart-centered coach like this is a big buzz word. That’s now coming into the plate. Like as the recording, we are now in 2021 middle of 2021, when you’re starting to hear this word, heart centered a lot. And for me it’s been like that for years. And what that really means is that we serve from the heart. It means that we have empathy for the market. We, we build relationships, we care about people first, then we do about profit. And that doesn’t mean that profit is not important, but it’s not about going into the world and using strategies or techniques or helping, you know, quote unquote, helping expecting a return. It’s more about how can I help this person and maybe eventually down the line, maybe it’s tomorrow, maybe it’s 18 years from now that they’re going to come around and say, I really want to work with you. So that’s really what it all means. It’s serving from the heart and not from the head.

Ziv:

What, like, do you have any back story of your journey that made you realize that walking from the heart is a good idea? That being generous, right? That caring all these good. What made you realize that this is a good idea.

Joey:

Yeah, that’s a really good question. I’ll try to condense this as, as much as possible because I do want this to be framed in the context. And I’ve always been, I guess, from the heart. And when I got into the world of online marketing or whatever you want to call it online business in 2012, from 2012 to 16, I was just doing stuff and, or grabbing all kinds of information and whatever absorbing and the business was.

Okay. And then in 16, but as you know, there’s so many different experts and marketers and all these people. And as you get into the world, you start seeing a lot of stuff. And so my business really wasn’t exploding at to any degree of the six figures and all that. So I went down another path and I followed other experts and gurus and all that and said, okay, well, if that’s how they’re doing this, you know, more of the aggressive marketing and all that. Not that I went heavily into the deadlines and the hard sales stuff, because I’m not a hard salesperson, but I did go down that route. And for 16 to 19, that’s all I did and follow all of the plans, did everything I invest in. Cause when I do something, I think I, I go in a thousand percent, I don’t have asset, right?

Joey:

So it’s like, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do it 100%. And so I invested thousands of dollars in Facebook ads and all that kind of stuff. And the business didn’t grow anymore. And I got clients and, but they were the wrong clients. And it’s not that they’re bad people. It wasn’t that they were bad. They were just misaligned with who I am. And the misalignment was that they were profit first people, all they cared about was making profit. And again, I’m not judging anybody. It’s not wrong to make profit. But when I was trying to integrate some kind of, well, don’t worry about it. Let’s build the business a little bit slower and try to get the right customers. They didn’t care about that. So in, I was between 19 2016 and 19, my heart and head were fighting. So my head was saying, no, all these guys are making six figures, seven figures doing it this way.

But my every time I tried to do something, my heart would say, Joey, this is not right. Something’s wrong. And I would get this butterfly in my stomach and I would have these anxiety attacks and stuff, but I did it. And then in 19, and the funny thing was, I was still in both worlds. So I was still in this heart-centered world of like awesome people and mentors and colleagues and all this and going to those events. Right. Very, and then all in this other one. So in 19, early 19, I went to another event with a heart-centered people and everything else. And the business was still not getting anywhere, but the heart and head was fighting a lot. So this was three years in now. And I said, it was February of that year. And I said, that’s it, I’m no longer doing this.

I make a decision. Like I don’t screw around. So I fired all my clients in 19 and this is the pivotal point that I want everybody to listen to. Like I fired all my clients. My business went down to basically zero. I had no income at all. And for that year, from February to November, it was very, very difficult. Like I know that there’s people who are listening to this that understand what I’m talking about. Like I could barely pay my electricity bill and here’s the hard part that I, that happened. So I decided to go back to the heart center person and because I was doing it one way before 16, like, you know, just randomly thing and decided to go the opposite of what everybody else was doing in groups and things like that. And decided to truly help, not the content marketing help, not the thing, but truly help.

And here’s what I really want to reference. I did this every day for hours, hours, hours, and specific groups like concentrating on who can I help and how can I help them? And when, and remember this, I want you to remember that I couldn’t pay my bills. So there was things that would come up that I’m a superpower like copywriting or whatever it is like dream clients like niche stuff like people asking for help with that. Or can I get a coach to help me with this? And you know how those things go, right? As soon as somebody says, can you, is there a coach who can help me with this? The threads explode, I can help you let’s get on a call and all that kind of stuff. So I decided to do it differently and actually help the person say, what do you need?

And how can I help you? Here’s something I use. Right. And the reason I’m saying this to you is because it was very difficult to do that, knowing that I could not pay my bills where I could easily have said, Hey, why don’t we get on a discovery call? And let me show you how I can help you or whatever like that and do the same thing everybody was doing. Right. And what that did is it positioned me completely different. And it was like, holy crap, this guy really gives a about something. Hey, we can swear, hopefully on this thing we get.

So that was the journey. And I didn’t know what I was really doing, except serving from here. I did, but it was very difficult. It was painful every day. And sometimes to the point of almost depression, because it was like, oh my God, I have to be nice in the group, but I’m really piss off mood today. Right? And so that lasted for about six months. And then finally it was like, the universe turned on a switch and people just started coming out of the woodwork and I got jobs and I got clients and all this other kind of stuff. And here we are two years later doing the exact same strategy. I just told you, it’s not that I’m hiding anything that I, that I do. And it all, it is a serving from the heart and it builds relationships. And that was the journey from going from no more hard selling, no more deadlines, no more pressure, no more of this to, I want to only serve dream clients, a very small amount of dream clients, which relates to everything we’re going to be talking about, which is the list building the right people and all this kind of stuff. Hopefully that wasn’t too long of a story.

Ziv:

Perfect. That’s wonderful. First of all, thank you so much for being vulnerable here and sharing like often as I see you in real life, in, in, in the groups and whatnot, you are always so open and transparent and want to help. It’s almost like you chose as your micro nice in essence, to be heart-centered and to just go out there in specific Facebook groups where you can shine, uh, with your knowledge and your know-how and your experience, and you went all in with that one strategic thing of being different and being helpful, just that like actually caring.

Joey:

Yeah. It was, if you kind of unpack it all, was it a strategy, I suppose now it’s kind of a strategy or whatever, was it a strategy? Yes, I would be lying if I would say I didn’t want to get clients out of it, but the whole part of it was how can I do this differently than everybody else? Because I don’t want to stand. I don’t want to be like everybody else that is pretending to help, you know, those types of people, right. They pretend to help. And there’s this little underlying thing that they want something out of it right then and there. And that just wasn’t for me. And so the last thing that I want in my world is someone to say, you lied to me, you didn’t tell me the entire truth or whatever it is, or you manipulated me that kind of thing. And I don’t want that. And so I just figured it’s a lot easier for people to come to me, which is a longer process. Not, I’m not saying this is easy and overnight and all that. It was a longer process for me. It was six months. Now I can kind of condense it down to three months and teach people now like the actual strategy to it.

Cause I’ve unpacked it, but then I didn’t have a strategy. So it was just about what are my super powers? What are the two or three things that I’m really, really good at that I could talk about over and over and over again. And to that point, there’s people who I’ve seen said many times in the groups that Joey helps this and I’ve seen him say this thing over and over again and helps in the same thing. And that was a key component to what I’m talking about here. Because if you want to go and help, it’s about what am I really great at that I’m not bored about talking about? And it doesn’t matter if you’re asking me the same question every day. And that helped because he was like, all right, here’s one knowledge. Here’s what I know, go do this thing. Right?

 And it positions you differently, definitely positions you differently.

Ziv:

So, tell me a little bit, just so that the audience could really paint a picture of how busy are you, because I know you’re very busy. It was even just hard to schedule this. Both of us are busy, but like how busy are you these days.

Joey:

When it comes to the busy? It depends on the context. You’re asking this. And in terms of the business itself, it’s completely packed. And, but I’m not working 24 hours a day anymore. And I don’t work well. I have a three-day weekend or every weekend. So I have a long weekend all the time. Now, do I work on the weekends and Fridays? Yes. Sometimes I do. It’s not that I want to paint the picture. Like I’m living the laptop lifestyle and whatever. Right. But I choose when I can work. And it’s awesome. So my day, just to give you an example, my day starts at one o’clock like here we are at one 30, my time that we started this. And so my days go from one to five, that’s it four days a week. And it doesn’t mean I’m not working prior to that, but I wake up around nine 30, maybe whatever, eight o’clock and then I’m reading and 10 o’clock till 12 o’clock I’m doing my own thing. So it’s like, I protect time. And so when I’m busy, it becomes that the one to five, now that I’ve only got four days used to be, you write like one or two clients. Now it’s completely filled with calls like this or coaching clients, private clients, or doing my group coaching cohorts. And so, and here’s the funny thing that when I wanted to do this thing many, many years ago, and you know, you, the vision of your business, I wanted maybe a decade ago.

I said, all I want to do is get up every day and coach people. Right. And it wasn’t like that. And here I am today, blessed to be doing that. And that’s all I do. I get up, I show up on zoom and I coach and help people, awesome humans every single day. And so that’s the busy-ness but is it really busy? No, it’s something that I love, love to do.

Ziv:

Yeah. I love it. So let’s talk a little bit about, uh, strategy with email hygiene, a topic that, uh, you’ve been quite contrarian in your approach. And we’ve mentioned it before. Let’s talk into the details. What is it about engagement in email that makes it so important in 2021 and beyond?

Joey:

Well, that’s a broad question and we can get into a lot of the major details cause we can spend a month talking about this. But the main thing is there’s a couple things. One is that with the email service providers, let’s get into a little bit of the technical details without going heavy, but it’s that everything’s going into spam and email service providers out there, the Googles, yahoos things, all that kind of stuff. They want to see interaction. And so engagement is very important and engagement is easy. Yeah. It’s opening the emails, but it’s also are people responding to you are people taking when they open your email and a second later they press delete. The Google sees all that. They see all that happening. So even though your email was opened, you’re like, oh, my open rates are awesome. I’ve got engagement. Well, what happened after that? Did they spend a minute reading it? Or did they move it to the trash folder or did they move it to the inbox?

Right? So your, your stuff has to be very relevant to people and it needs to have some kind of a two-way engagement. That’s why I’m always trying to get people to reply to me or to click on a link. Right. And not a willing to a sales page. This is not about just selling. This is about giving value. Like, Hey, I read this awesome book and it showed me this, go over here and take a look at it. See if you let it get right. And that’s engagement. And that’s what Google will. I’ll just use Google, but it means everybody. So I don’t have to mention them all the time. They just want to see that. And that’s what it means. It means people opening and responding and taking action on your emails, whatever that action is and what have they built. Yeah.  So if they don’t take action, then what I do is I cleaned them off my list and people have this, this view of like, well, these could be people who will buy after two years or five years.

And they’re right. There is an argument for that. However, if someone hasn’t opened my email in like 90 days, and then I send them another aggressive 14 day, Hey, miss you go check this out every day thingy to try and get them to at least do something like open the email or click it. If they’re not doing that, then I remove them because they are taking up space on my email list. And it goes against my ratios. Like if there’s a thousand people in over a hundred are opening, great. I got a thousand people, but peop or whoever sees that. And so does Google. We’ve got all these, you sent a thousand, but only, only 100 people are opening. So in my mind, the argument is, well, like I just said, somebody could be waiting and we’ll buy five years from now. And what I’ve learned, and this goes way beyond we’re talking about here.

But the customer journey that we’re talking about is not necessarily the linear path that we were built to understand. Opt-in page that come in here, they come into our world from many places. Many channels are there’s never, before, when it was all built, there was not all this social media stuff. Right? So in my mind that if I remove you from my list and you’re truly wanting to hear from me, you’re not going to miss me. You’re going to see me on, on YouTube or on Facebook or somewhere that I’m still in your world. And if I still resonate with you, then maybe you’ll reach opt in. That’s my argument against, well, you’ve just lost that person. Well, they’re not interested in me right now. And they’re not opening. They become a liability for me on my list because it doesn’t get the other emails to the right people because Google says this, guy’s not sending anything valuable because 900 people aren’t opening.

Ziv:

So what, what do you feel when people unsubscribe?

Joey:

That’s a good thing for me. Like, I’m like, okay, you unsubscribed, but you didn’t complain about me. That means I don’t resonate with you. And it protects the future for me, because if I keep sending you stuff and eventually I get you on a bad, bad day and that you don’t vibe with me, you’re going to click a complaint. So I’d rather that you unsubscribe and tell me, I don’t agree with what you’re saying or I don’t like you or whatever, and that’s okay. We just don’t align. So to me, it’s a blessing because I know there’s a difference here. Sorry to interrupt. But there’s a difference here that when people are unsubscribing, first of all, I asked them to unsubscribe, believe it or not in the first couple of emails, but when they unsubscribe, it’s not usually from these sales type of emails, it’s not like a long four day cash machine or two week thing that eventually they’re going, oh my God, stop sending me sales emails.

I understand that. And so I’m sending actual stuff, that’s helping them. And I’m like, if they’re going to unsubscribe from that and I haven’t even asked them to anything, then they’re really not in my, my dream client world.

Ziv:

 So what else out of your ideas for these day-to-day type of emails that actually bring value, what would you write about?

Joey:

 Yeah. That’s where your super power comes in. So it’s very segmented to whatever people are interested in. And I don’t talk about, I could talk about a whole bunch of stuff, but now it’s the four or five things that I’m really great at. So it’s copywriting or maybe dream client or something like that, marketing that are segmented to the list. So if they opted in for about a dream client thing, that I’m going to be talking about, dream clients to them and giving them value, not just go buy my stuff.

It’s more, here’s how you choose a dream client. Here’s the difference between a dream client and an avatar? Did you know these things? So really the answer is it’s education. It’s true education. And then what I do is I learned this from Dean Jackson, which is the super PS. And on the bottom of every single email is an opportunity to move forward with me. So it’s not a sale, it’s an offer. It’s a very soft offer. And that’s how you continuously put stuff in front of people. And I see this happen every single day. It doesn’t happen. Hundreds of people clicking on the thing below, but one or two people click and they go and they check something else out or they, whatever they don’t go by, they go check out a certain other value piece that gets them into another part of my world.

And that allows me to make direct offers to the list and without them being off about it, because I can then, because I’ve given them continuous education and that’s how I do it. It’s just education. And once a month basically say, I’ve got this thing, would you like to join us? And that’s it.

Zivi:
Wow. Uh, how many minutes do you, do you send in an, in an average week,

Joey:
Three average of two to three,

Ziv:
And only about once a month, you will like actually offer them to buy something.

Joey:
Yeah. And it wasn’t even like that before, because I didn’t have all of these things to offer and I still don’t have like all of these things. I think it’s a mistake to, they have all of these products and it just confuses the market. And for me, it’s about, there’s only two things that can really, really help you on getting really clear on your dream client and attracting them, right.

And copywriting and marketing, which I’ll release to emails and all those other stuffs. So those are the two main buckets that I can talk about all the time. And I can talk about mindset and productivity, blah, blah, blah. But why make products on that when it doesn’t really right. So it’s always about those two things. And so once I realized that, then I started creating programs that were built around that, like, I have two main whatever you want, call them hero products or whatever. Right. And now I have like sub products from those or programs I should say, but it was never like that. So now it’s more of a consistent, I’m doing this thing again. Would you like to join us? And that’s usually once a month and if there’s no sales pressure, like this is the beauty of it. There’s no pressure. There’s no funnel, there’s no deadline, there’s no launch, nothing like that.

It’s just a, I’m doing this on whatever September 9th would you like to join us? And they send an email back, which is engagement. Okay. And they go, I’d love to tell me more about it. And I, and we have a conversation back and forth in email, and this is where the engagement and Google sees this happening. And what happens is most people just want to set it and forget it. They just want to go here. My funnel set up, click that, go watch the videos or whatever, and then buy my. I’m like, okay, fine. But I’m constantly, and this is where going back to the busy-ness. Now this reminds me of what busy-ness really is for me. It’s about having those, those conversations with people. So it’s back and forth email, or it’s either chats on Facebook and having conversations, not here’s my lead magnet, opt in and watch my stuff and buy.

Right. And so that’s where the most of my time really goes of nurturing and having those relationships and people, there’s lots of people who say, that’s crazy. Why would I spend all my time doing that? And my argument is well, because when I do, when people, when they get on my list and I’m telling you what, I’m just telling you, that I’m all I’m doing is educating and then putting an offer going, would you like to join us on September 9th? They’re like, I’m in, how much is it? Like I don’t even have, so what else

Ziv:

I’m a for you, uh, the lead magnets, or like the, the mechanisms that you use to get someone on your list.

Joey:
It’s a good question. And there’s always about like lead magnets. I call them gifts by the way. So good. It’s a gift where for me regularly, I’ll tell you how my process works. And it doesn’t mean that this is the process to use, but it’s just because of my, where I spend my time. And it’s, how do I leverage that? So if I spend my time on chats with people having real conversations, the very first thing I’m going to try to do or invite them to is my Facebook group, because that’s where I hang out more like every day to helping people. And you’re a part of the Facebook group, aren’t you? So you know how we are in there. Like it’s a very healthy, tight-knit awesome heart center community. We’re not there pitching and all this other stuff. So that’s the very first place that I want to get them to. Now it depends on what they’re asking about. If they’re asking, if it’s conversation might be all about dream clients or something, let’s say, then I might say, Hey man, I’ve got this free mini course on my site.

There’s not even an opt-in for it. Would you like to go over there and I’ll give you the link for that. And then they’ll build there. And then at the end of that, there’s, it’s a five page mini course, which gives in at the end of that, there’s an opt-in. And here’s the reason why I do that. This is opposite contrarians to everybody else, right? Because it would be opt into my free thing, then I’ll show you the thing. So I show them the thing. And then only the right people want to opt in to the next part of it. Does that make sense? So I don’t pull it all back. I give them the entire thing and yes, there are lots of people who go read it. Who never opt in and you might say, or somebody of the other people might say, well, that’s crazy.

You need them to opt in. Well, if I gave them five pages of like major value and they didn’t want to opt in to get like the next piece, which is even greater, they’re probably not my dream client. So I’m not, I’m not going to waste their time and I’m not going to waste my time. But that’s how I get people on my list. Basically. It’s usually from the Facebook group.

Ziv:

 Wow. And how do you get people into the Facebook group then?

Joey:
Yeah. So that’s where the whole heart centered part is. Whereas just going in and focusing on where are my dream clients and how can I help those people? And here’s the thing. And if you want, we can give a link to the YouTube video that I share all this too. It’s right there. Like the whole strategy is right there, but it’s pretty simple.

And we’ve heard about going into groups and helping and all this. And what it does is when you go into groups and focus only on your superpowers, helping those people, let’s say, it’s copy whatever. And you’re answering coffee questions. You’re not selling your dream clients. Here’s the difference are watching you do that. They are not the people usually who are responding to your thread. And this is where everybody gets it wrong because they’re thinking, well, you answer, I answered all your questions. Why isn’t this person reaching out or asking me to help them or get on a call or whatever. Right? And that’s where people are missing the whole strategy. If you want to call it that you’re helping somebody else. And your dream clients are watching you do that. And they’re going, this guy is fricking awesome. And I see how, cause I get it every, almost every week.

Well, I actually do. I do every single week. It’s not every day, but every week somebody will give me that a message. I saw you in this group, helping these people. And I love your opinions about XYZ, whatever. And we get into a conversation. That’s how it happens. But I just told you that I’m spending every day of my work days, doing that, you can’t see the result of this. And that sucks. Like everyday you doing this, you’re like, where’s the ROI? What did I see in this? Right. You can’t see it happening.

Ziv:

Well, I just wanted to say it actually works. And I’ve been in the situation with you personally, I’ve seen you express an opinion. It was so right. And so different than the advice that people gave on a thread that I was like, oh man, such a mistake to even just ask the question is setting you up for failure because you’re going to get so many opinions, but your opinion was so light. I just had to like go in and say, dude, I really loved what you said. That was smart stuff. That’s cool.

Joey:

Thank you. Yeah. And that’s okay. That’s another big piece of what I’m saying here, because when you serve from the heart, it’s that you serve from your knowledge and opinions and that you truly believe that you are not right. That the whole world needs to listen to you, but do you believe in what you’re doing? Okay. So yes, I’ll stay say something and get people who disagree with it. And I’m okay with that. That doesn’t mean that I’m trying to convert those people to my world. They’re not my dream client and they don’t agree with me and that’s okay. And that’s one thing that I had to grow up and be more mature about because before, early on in my life, it was like, well, if you don’t agree with me, you’re an and that’s not the way it is.

Right. And he’s like, okay, if you don’t agree with me, that’s okay. You live there and I’ll live over here and we’re still friends. Right. And so that’s the one maturity thing that I had the girl, but you’re right. It’s about, so you were an awesome dude and you saw, Hey, I like this guy, his opinions, and he’s right about this. And you reached out and now we’re friends. Right. And that was it. I never tried to sell you on anything. We just talked.

Ziv:

Yup. Yup. We connected. And this is about like relationship marketing and connection marketing. It just like way millennials, because it is coming from a place of caring and sharing passion about certain things. And then like, Hey, I know that if I have an issue that I want an advice, I can go to Joey Ragona and get a really strategic, solid advice.

And I think that the relationship building is the super power that, and if it can be taught something that is reproducible. So where can people go, Joey, to learn more about heart centered coaching, the way you do it. And just about what you do.

Joey:

Strategicbusinessacademy.com is my website, strategic business academy.com. I’ll also give you the link to the Facebook group. The Facebook group is called strategic marketing club. So I don’t know if you can search that on the group thingy, but we’ll give you the link for that. And I totally invite you into that group because it’s awesome. They are. And that’s where you’ll get a lot of value from what I do, but those are the two main places.

Ziv:

So, I welcome everyone that are listening right now. Like stop your calls or you’re crawling in the park and go to the show notes daily cookie co uh, this will be episode number 12 and just find the link to everything that Joey does subscribe to his YouTube channel. You will be so happy that you did. So, Joey, Ragona thank you so much for being here in the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Joey:
Ziv, this was awesome. Thank you so much and all the best to you and all your listeners and great speed forward to doing because you are serving the world and I’m happy to be a part of it. Thank you for this.

Voice:

Thank you. This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting at daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Heart-Centered Businesses and the Facebook group growth strategy, with Joey Ragona (MNM Season 1 Episode 12) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the eleventh episode of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Irene Fehr, a sex and intimacy coach and a successful writer who is an expert in women’s sexual health and female libido.  

Irene’s struggles in sex, marriage, and intimacy made her turn towards becoming an intimacy coach. Choosing a micro-niche has never been this personal.

facebook.com/IgnitedWoman

irenefehr.com

dailycookie.co

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro-niche. So, you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host. He is a copywriter that got tired of writing a daily email to three different tribes every single day. So he decided to delegate it Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, and welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. This is episode 11 and I’m here with Irene Fehr who is a sex and intimacy coach@ irenefehr.com. Hello.

Irene:

Hi, thanks for having me on this podcast.

Ziv:

It’s a pleasure, and I want to kind of go through the journey with you of the niching down journey, because as a business coach, I understand coaching helps you to get from point a to point B with your business. If it’s a business coach, what does it mean to be a sex and intimacy coach?

Irene:

Pretty much in all cultures, sex is something that you see on billboards and movies and it’s everywhere. But when it comes down to actual relationships, a lot of people don’t know how to get intimate with each other. They don’t know how to really connect with each other. Most people do know how to have sex, but it’s the intimacy piece that is challenging. And so, a sex and intimacy coach, me as a sex and intimacy coach, I help couples create a deeper connections. And specifically in my practice, in my niche, it’s helping couples who have struggled with this who have gotten stuck in making love and sex work in a long-term relationship to add passion and excitement and connection to their sex lives. This is for couples who are in a committed relationship, not just single people or people who are dating,

Ziv:

And this is already, I love what you’re saying, because you’re already saying no to certain things that exist in your niche. So that’s like a part of narrowing down because you basically help people in the relationships and within the relationships, how to deepen the intimacy, enjoy a deeper, more meaningful, a more connected, safe sex. And then within that niche of helping people with the intimacy you chose to not work with certain people and do work with others, and actually be an expert on solving a unique set of problems that fall under certain categories. Can you tell us a little bit about like, what are you an expert of? Yes.

Irene:

So sex is a huge, huge niche so that there is types of relationships. There are polyamorous monogamous relationships. There is when you’re single versus if you’re coupled there is kink and there’s different positions and toys. And so for me that my niche and my passion is helping couples in a long-term monogamous relationship, manage and reconciliate, or make sense of their practical lives like as their parents, as their partners, to each other, as their workers and being lovers and making sex passionate, and specifically also focusing on women’s libido. So this is even missing it further. So, you have sex in a long-term relationship in my specialty is when it’s the woman who has lost her libido, which doesn’t typically not always, it’s not always something that happens, but it’s usually very typical. And so that’s my area of expertise.

Ziv:

The libido is the thing that diminishes or disappears or it’s something that a lot of women actually suffer from it. I, I, I remember reading on your blog post that the research is about that, about like the data of, at least at the very least how many women are diagnosed. So, around this area, can you share with us a little bit about how serious is the situation that you help people with it’s

Irene:

Super serious, their numbers, as much as 40% of women have been diagnosed or have experienced slowly libido. And so many more women have never actually talked about it. I think so many women, what I see is so many women actually having this experience and assuming that this is normal, a lot of women say I don’t like sex. I don’t enjoy it. I do it for my partner, usually male partner, always, but they do it for their partners and they still experienced low libido. They experienced sex as something that is hard work that requires a lot of getting themselves in the mood, putting a lot of effort in. And so I would absolutely still call that low libido. They just assume that that’s how it is that they don’t like sex, but it’s really, if sex, if the sexier having is hard work, there’s something wrong here. Sex should not be hard. Work sex should be a place of pleasure of connection, of ease of letting go of surrendering, of experiencing heightened levels of consciousness. Not another thing that you have to do. So, to me, low libido is very prevalent. Whether we call it that or not,

Ziv:

As you talk, it sounds a lot like flow. Like you help people establish flow. This unique awareness state of heightened focus and of just experiencing a lot of hormones going through your brain at the same time, the topic that this is like also, well-researched

Irene:

Absolutely, that’s a heightened state of consciousness. That’s a heightened state of sensation. Your body is really open. You’re experiencing lots of sensory stimulation. There’s a release, certainly there’s orgasm and orgasmic energy. And you know, what I mentioned earlier is that most people know how to have sex. You don’t need to teach about what goes into what and how, how to do that. But most people don’t know how to create flow and sex. They don’t know how to get out of their heads and into their bodies. They don’t know how to let go and let go of performance, let go of being in their heads and really being in their bodies, letting the body move them. And that’s what really flow is what the state of flow is, is that you’re not thinking, you know, like a surfer on a wave. They’re not thinking now I turn right now. I move my leg here. Now I do this. They’re just in this beautiful, almost like merging, like them have merged with a wave and they’re riding it. And that’s what I teach in sex is how to connect at that level. Not just perform better and not just have a better orgasm

Ziv:

Because the foundation of it all is like a very strong connection between the partners. Can you give a little bit of a, like, what do you do to help two people in a long-term relationship actually get to the level where they can talk freely about sex and intimacy and they feel so safe and connected.

Irene:

The first thing that has to happen when it’s a couple is that we need to create a safe space for them to really be vulnerable couples who come to me, they come to me after having had stress around sex and all the different patterns that get developed. And so, they come with distress, they come with walls up, they come with these protection mechanisms trying to protect their hearts from disappointment, from rejection, from, from being humiliated or laughed at. So, the key thing is to establish safety between them to allow them to put down those walls and to open their hearts to each other. Again, otherwise you can’t really move on when this work with the sex work. If there’s no safety, they’re going to revert to performance, which is what we’re trying to avoid to begin with. So, safety is key. What’s also really important is helping people connect to themselves.

First, the way I talk about it is if your feeler is off, if you can’t feel yourself, if you cannot connect to your own body and to your own feelings, your feeler is going to be off for your partner too. There’s just one feeler in this. And so literally there’s an on and off switch. And so, starting to reconnect to yourself and hearing your body understanding what it’s saying is really key to then be able to connect to another human being. You can spend hours talking about kind of the biology and the neuroscience around that, but we are feelers. We create connection by feeling each other by mirroring what is happening in each of us. So, if there’s walls, there’s no mirroring, there’s no connection. And we have to create that vulnerability, but it starts with us in our own relationship to our body or pleasure or desires and learning how to speak them and honor them.

Ziv:

So, when you started niching down and talking mainly about low libido and sexual marriages, and specifically female, low libido, you have established your name as a writer, you had the blog, you still have a blog or a successful blog. And you wrote about these and you shared a lot of personal stories from your own experiences. And that actually created for you something that is not just a blog, but it’s a successful business. Can you tell me a little bit about what drew you towards this type of marketing?

Irene:

My story, which actually is very much related to this work. My story of losing my own libido and my marriage and ending up in a sexless marriage because of me, this is what created my business. This was the inspiration. And when I started to openly talk about my own story, there were so many women that started appearing out of nowhere, sharing similar experiences. Like they were going through that, or they had gone through it, or they are facing that challenge right now. And that was a moment when I realized, wow, this kind of marketing based on my own story, my own experience is incredibly powerful. Especially in this area. Most people don’t talk about sex or when they do talk about sex, it’s about conquests and fun positions and all the things that are really cool. And usually, the things that we do when we’re single, but once couples get into a committed relationship conversations about sex, stop, everything is happening secretly behind closed doors in the bedroom of the couple.

And so, when I started to share my experiences, I give a lot of permission for women. And what helped my business to take off was an article was a blog basically that I published in the Huffington post that attracted thousands and thousands of page views and brought thousands of women to my website. Again, women who are like, wow, this is it. This is my story too. I’m experiencing this. And so, in this niche, this kind of marketing is powerful. Helping women understand that they’re not alone. The word they’re going through is not uncommon that it’s not normal, but it’s not uncommon. And that I understand what they’re going through. And that provides a lot of relief for women. And that’s an incredible powerful tool to also draw women in with a solution here. This is what I have, I’ve gone through it. And then I can help you.

Ziv:

And actually the lot of like Micro problems in this situation that you understand so personally and do that you’ve researched as well with a lot of professional scientific tools, as well as like with a lot of, uh, clients of yours. There are a lot of micro problems that you actually solve and publish in your blog. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the responses you got from your readership, from people that like your email list and, uh, in touch with you?

Irene:

I take a really holistic approach to this, that so many sexual issues, especially women’s libido, they’re connected to, for example, the level of connection in the relationship between the partners, they’re connected to how confident the woman and also her partner, how they feel at work, how confident they feel at work, what kind of relationship they have to money, what kind of relationship they have to trust? Like if they trust or they feel safe in the world, they feel supported. And so, I write on a lot of different topics, certainly sex and passion in a long-term relationship, but then also how to create that connection, how to speak your own desires, how to name what’s happening for you, how to learn, to relax, how to trust, how to find your passion at work, even in relationships with kids. And so, you know, again, what I get from my readers is that they feel really understood because everything is connected to everything in our lives. And there is this cultural myth that you can go to a career counselor and it’s completely unrelated to a sex coach, but in reality, it’s all, you, it’s all your confidence. It’s all your belief systems. They’re all one and they’re together. And so of course I don’t do coat loop, career coaching and things like that, but it’s a holistic approach and people really appreciate it. They resonate with that quite a bit.

Ziv:

And also, they get value just by reading your blog. So, there’s no like a blog that you wrote without an intention to share an important story, to inspire, or to literally shed light on something that is usually hidden and hard to know with even practical tips. And as a result, people resonate and they want to read it and they share it in, in all sorts of ways. And I’m guessing that when Huffington post, uh, decided to ask you to write for them, you already had an established blog to some degree, right?

Irene:

Yeah. I was writing for the Huffington post for, for a couple of years. And so, yeah, and writing in different venues. And I mentioned too, that so much of the content that comes in that I write in my blog comes from what I hear and what I learned from my clients that they reveal so much of the things that really matter to them. So, I’m constantly learning from clients and I’m constantly connecting the dots and bringing those learnings to, to my audience, helping them connect the dots, helping inspire them to take action, helping them to, to take charge of their lives. If they have a client coupled for going through this, I’m sure there is at least a hundred other couples going through something similar. And of course, I don’t share any confidential information that that’s incredibly important, but that I take these kinds of archetypical situations, archetype couples, and I share similar challenges in my blog.

Ziv:

I want to go back to talking about the business side of things, because if I, as a listener to this, I think that’s what we get to do. You chose to talk about something that you’re passionate about, something that is personal and do you do this in a vulnerable way, you know, authentic way in, in a consistent way for years, not just on your blog, but also in other blogs. And you’ve created people that are part of your tribe that, uh, your subscribers, your, your audience. And so, there’s a, so the understand that you went micro with the direction and you got noticed, but how do you actually, like, what’s the process of making money out of this? What’s like, what do you do to actually get someone from just listening to what you write? Like, we think we want advice living what you hide and from there actually paying money to you.

Irene:

So there’s different kinds of people who come to my website and I am very SEO driven. So I’m on the first page of Google and several critical keywords in the people who come to my website, they can fall into different camps. One group is they know they want to work with me. They may have read an article. They may have heard of podcasts that I was on and right away they be like, I want to work with her. She does it. And so usually they go straight to the consultation and a lot of the times they need to convince me that they want to hire me. I don’t really need to do the work. Yeah. They’re just really set on working with me. And then there’s another group who are checking out information. They’re not ready to make a decision. They’re not clear their again, their readiness level is not there.

Maybe it’s a new problem. Maybe they’re just, haven’t worked up the courage to, to say yes to this work, because of course, this is incredibly vulnerable work. Your sex life encompasses everything. Like I said, worthiness, confidence, love all these things. And so they go into a flow of emails, receiving lots of value and information, learning about different aspects and in business speak, warm, getting warmed up. And really for me, my goal is to get them the information they need so that they can solve the problem right away, or getting them to make a decision, to get support, to buy an online program, or to hire me as a coach or to hire someone else, but to do something because the worst thing is, is having someone who is, who knows that they need change, but who are feeling powerless to do that. So for me, it’s really guiding them to make that decision to act one way or another, to get the solve and to, to get the burden or the challenge taking care of.

Ziv:

If someone wants to experience that, like to actually get into your email list, see what you do in the, and experience the, the level of awareness to the options for solutions that you have, and that exists in the world. What can people do? How they, how can they join this experience?

Irene:

So, one of these days, why is this to go on my website? And in the blog section, there’s a way to sign up, to receive basically announcements of new blog posts. And also I offer a free online training. It’s a three video training that’s called how to want sex and it’s designed and written for women, but I’m just amazed of how many men sign up for this. And I’m really odd by how many men are curious for men, how many men want to support their partners. And so that three video series, you get the videos themselves, and then you’re put into queue to receive then announcements for the blogs, for the writing and all sorts of valuable gifts and insights.

Ziv:

Sweet. Irene Fehr. Thank you so much for sharing with us, your business and the details of it. I think that I want to wrap up just with a little bit more value for the listeners whenever they are. So if there’s a female listener right now, listening to this and thinking that she understand that you help women with low libido, but basically she has a problem that is like, it’s her fault and that she’s broken because she doesn’t have the same libido as a partner. What would you like to tell Irene?

Irene:

Right. Yeah. As I hear you describe the scenario, of course, it touches me personally because I was that woman questioning my own, my own sexuality and whether I was sexually broken. And so for me, the response really deeply comes from my heart. And what I want to say is that there are good reasons why your body may not be receptive to sex or open to sex right now, and actually means that you are healthy, that you’re not sexually broken, but that your body is actually starving of nutrients. It’s starving of things that it needs to thrive. And so if I can actually get through to this woman that I want to say, yeah, you’re not broken, but listen to your body, listen to part of you that says that I don’t have what I need. I wish I could have this or that because that’s the part that has information. And I highly recommend the, the three part video training that I mentioned how to want sex again, because I go really deeply in, in helping women understand what women’s libido is, what traps we get. We fall into that actually have us lose our libido and really zoom in on this message of it’s actually a healthy response to lose your libido when something is missing in your life. It doesn’t mean you’re broken, but let’s get you fed. Let’s give you the nutrients. Let’s set up your relationship to give you what you need

Ziv:

When you do get what you need and follow your process to fill up your cup as you call it. Can you tell us, just paint us a hopeful picture of what happens on the other side, uh, with some of your success stories?

Irene:

Yeah. So, imagine having playful touch sessions with your partner and we are fully in the moment, and you are not worried about whether this is going to lead to sex, or will you be able to perform, or is this going to hurt, but really, truly enjoying each other and, and kissing and making out in a way restoring some of that energy from the beginning. Imagine also having sex grow out of mundane situations, not having to get yourself in the mood to have sex, but that having that ease and flow in your day and feeling connected to your partner, that you want to rush into their arms at the end of the day, and imagine feeling really heard and seen and understood by your partner. That again makes you feel close to them and allows your body to relax and then leads to more touch, more kissing or making out and more sexual connection. Ultimately, it’s having more, ease more sex is not something you work hard at, or you have to strategize or do things, but that it flows naturally. And that it’s rooted in connection. It’s rooted in being close with each other vulnerable heard, seen, and also desired feeling that desire from each other and having it be easy, having it be flowing, having it be literally an easy part of your life.

Ziv:

Wonderful, thank you for showing us like the berries, hoping that, uh, what are the, some of the results that people that work with you get, I really appreciate when someone not just chooses a niche or a micro niche or within it, something that is aligned with who is, and something like that, that has a good marketing strategy, but also if you actually solve a problem in the world that you actually help that on soul people lives. And that’s something that you are very passionate about clearly. And I’m

Irene:

Super honored to do this work too, because my clients let me into their lives into their hearts and to their homes and to their families. Even though we do all the work over zoom, but of course it’s a very intimate relationship because we talk about very intimate things. And I’m just so incredibly grateful to be doing this work, to be led in this fight, into people’s lives and to have this kind of meaningful role in creating love, really having them feel loved, sharing love and making love of course, in their relationships, which also extends to their families, to their children everywhere, work, everything right, the halo effect. So, I’m grateful, I’m humbled, and I’m incredibly privileged to have created this and to have this business feed me, nourish me both energetically and of course, financially as well.

Ziv:

Thank you. And, uh, if you want to learn more about Irene Fehr’ consultation and like all the things that she teaches for free on her blog, go to irenefehr.com and we’ll put the link to the site on the show notes. And I want to thank you everyone for listening for yet another episode in the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. See you next week.

Voice over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting at daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Niching down on one problem and one marketing tunnel in the intimacy niche, with Irene Fehr (MNM Season 1 Episode 11) appeared first on Daily Cookie.

Welcome to the tenth episode of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Azhelle Wade aka The Toy Coach, an entrepreneur, podcaster, and a 3x patented inventor who helps toy creators in designing, developing toys that the market will surely love.

Do you have that childhood hobby that you are passionate about? Azhelle’s journey might be the sign you need for you to work on it too! 

This podcast episode is fun and inspiring! Make sure to listen.

instagram.com/thetoycoach/

thetoycoach.com

toycreatorsacademy.com

dailycookie.co

Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro-niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he created the findability, breathability, and sellability test for micro-niches Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello, welcome to the micro niche mastery podcast. This is season one, episode 10, and I’m here with Azhelle. Hello. Hi, how are you?

Azhelle:

Hi, how are you? Thank you so much for having me here today.

Zivi:

Oh, that is so exciting because you chose for yourself such a specific role in this world, such as Micro Niche, which is to be a coach for toy makers. How did you find yourself in this wonderful war?

Azhelle:

Well, you know, I always wanted to work with kids and so I did a bunch of different things for kids. Like I was designing exhibitions for kids for a little bit. Then a teacher of mine saw what I was doing and told me that there was a toy industry. So I worked in the toy industry for 10 years after studying toy design at school. And then I just thought one day, I guess I could be a toy coach. It kind of all just kind of fell into, I didn’t mean to this pick such a specific niche, but I just happened to have all the skills to fit me into this niche and all of the experience. So, I just went for it.

Zivi:

So what type of skills do you need?

Azhelle:

Well, I guess it’s just, I guess the skills are probably just a knowing of how the toy industry works and what makes a product toyetic and understanding how kids want to see products. And our parents want to see products and how buyers want to see products and then having the skillset to be able to marry all of those things and create something that’s sellable. But I’m also like a very experienced and skilled graphic designer, product designer marketer. Now, because of my business, I had to learn how to do a little bit of that. So, it’s those skills combined with the toy knowledge that made me perfect fit to be the toy coach.

Ziv:

But when you started, when you decided, okay, you have the skills, but like how do you get your name out there?

Azhelle:

Right. I wasn’t. So, I actually got my name out there before I decided to be the toy coach. I was actually trying to get my name out there to just grow my toy career because I was a vice president of product and a brand and product at a toy company. And I just wanted to make sure that the industry knew me and knew what I was doing and knew all the great things I was working on. So, I made a podcast called making it in the toy industry and I would share it on my LinkedIn where people in the industry were following me just to let people know that I was there. You know, just to say, hi, I’m here. I have an opinion, and this is what it is. And then eventually what happened is the pandemic happened. And I started spending a lot of time at home and realized how important that time was for me and to be with my family. And then I started thinking about me like being as a woman, like, am I gonna want to have a family one day? What do I want that life to look like? So, I decided to maybe go out on my own. And I had built this. I had like subsequently built an identity because of my podcast. And I used that identity to launch, you know, my own consulting business as the toy coach.

Zivi:

And when you provide value through the podcast and people listen to it and find it out, it’s, you know, find your opinions meaningful and valuable. You start to see feedback coming in. What are some of the feedbacks that you got in the beginning of like your days when you started to like the listener ship growing?

Azhelle:

Yeah. People were commenting, oh, I’ve been waiting for this, like for 10 years. Thank you so much for creating this. Please don’t stop things like that. I think people realize how much work it is and how much it costs to produce this kind of information. So, they really appreciate that I’m taking the time to do it and they don’t want me to stop. So, I’m trying to do my best not to stop.

Zivi:

And what are some of the results people got from listening to you?

Azhelle:

Yeah, well, it’s not just from listening to me, but also, I have a Facebook group attached to my podcast, which is just called the toy coach podcast community. Um, that’s on Facebook. And so, in that group, because it’s people that follow the podcast, I share things. And so, people have gotten placed in magazines just because I’m telling them like, today’s the day to apply for this or submit your stuff for that. And here’s what you say. And so combined with the things they’re learning in the podcast, and then me keeping them up to date in the group, sharing like really timely information in the group. People have just gotten placed. You know, they’ve made partnerships with people that promote their products and Instagram they’ve gotten placed in magazines. They’re pitching the toy companies. They’ve improved their pitch styles and like through PowerPoints and sizzle videos, but I’ve only started like a year ago. So, I mean, I guess my, my success stories aren’t as many, but I hope bill I’ll have more as I continue to grow.

Zivi:

Speaking of growing, like going also an email list I presume. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do to grow that email list?

Azhelle:

Oh, I mean to grow my email list, I don’t really, I mean, I guess I should put more of a focus on that. I don’t, I mean, I have free resources on my site that you have to give your email in exchange for. I have some things on my podcast that like specific for episodes. So, I think for the latest episode was how to be a toy designer, episode 78. So, one of the free guides is like interview questions. You might be asked if you’re interviewing as a designer. So that’s something you can get by actually that one is available to my podcast insiders club members. So that’s something that you can get for signing up to my podcast insiders club, which is clubbed up the toycoach.com. But sometimes I’ll just have like free pitch templates that people will send their email addresses, give their email addresses and they get a free template or just to check off the product development checklist to get things like that. But for me, primarily, I think I do a lot of PR like grassroots PR, like I’m on a lot of podcasts and TV shows and I’m focusing more on visibility than, I guess I am on email. I am still collecting emails, but it’s honestly not my top top focus.

Zivi:

So, uh, tell me about how you make money.

Azhelle:

Yeah, my courses, my course toy creators academy is where my income comes from and then consultations. Like I’m still at the end of the day, a consultant. So, I will do one-on-one hourly consultations for people that need them. But I also have clients like bigger clients that I work with and I might either develop social media for them right now. I’m in conversations to do a curation for a museum exhibition. I might design packaging or help do product development. So, say they already have an idea and they need somebody to get them a designer and coordinate creating their product specification packet for China or find them a factory. Like I’ll do all of that. So, it’s a mixture of things, consultation courses, and then kind of contract gigs, which could be social media to museum curation.

Zivi:

What’s the cheapest thing that someone can buy from you as a toy creator?

Azhelle:

Yeah, definitely. My toy coach podcast insider. Well, hold on. I just, I have something new. I have a toy trade show handbook. That’s actually 9 97. That, yeah, that’s a great, it’s a great guide. It’s billed with the top 13 toy trade shows and pitch events in our industries together. That’s 9 97 right now. I would definitely grab that. You can go to the toycoach.com to get that. But the other thing I was going to say was the toy coach podcast insiders club, which is more of a membership. So

Zivi:

How much does it cost to be in

Azhelle:

1999 right now? But I’m going to be adding more things to it. So, I do see it growing in the future, the price point.

Zivi:

And what’s the, uh, like the flagship of, uh, like when someone is going to be warmed up and excited about what you can do for them, what would be like a more expensive investment into learning from you and being supplied?

Azhelle:

Yeah, honestly that would be working with me on a contract basis. Like that would be you come to me and you say, okay, let’s work together for three to six months and you tell me specifically what you want to accomplish in that time and I’ll make a custom packet for you. So that’s not going to be something that anybody can go and buy at any time. Cause that’s really a commitment of my time where I say no to things in my calendar to make space for you and your business.

Zivi:

How big is your team?

Azhelle:

It’s just me and a VA at the moment.

Zivi:

So it’s, you’re also very proficient with graphic design and with marketing, like social and stuff. So what does your do for you?

Azhelle:

Yeah. Any systems that I’ve built, she kind of helps run them. So mostly she’s focused on the podcast. So let’s say I’ll write an episode, I’ll record an episode, I’ll edit an episode. She will go in and, and listen to it and see if there’s any edits that I missed, that she will take the artwork that I’ve made for the episode and schedule it to go on the podcast platform that I use to sup to load up my podcast. She’ll put it on Squarespace, which is my website platform. She’ll just kind of do, I don’t know how, like the admin work, you know, putting the copy where it goes, putting the images where it goes. Um, but I really do the heart of the work for the business.

Zivi:

What is your estimate of the size of this niche?

Azhelle:

I mean, as far as what?

Zivi:

Like how many people out there actually are designing toys?

Azhelle:

I mean the toy industry is like a $97 billion industry globally and it’s 25 billion in the us. So, it’s big, it’s big, but it’s so funny. Cause like the, that those numbers are no, the traditional toy industry, that’s like target and Walmart and small mom and pops that are selling toys and probably some Etsy numbers are in there, but there isn’t the market that I’m really discovering is a little bit different from that market because these are people that have had an idea, but never had anywhere to go for it. So, there is no data on that. Um, it’s a risky thing that I’m doing. There is no true data on who these people are because even I’m still discovering them. Like my students are. I always say that as students are like bakers and clown, psychologists from all different walks of life. So, no one’s quantified it yet, but maybe I will be the first to figure out how big this new market is.

Zivi:

I think he will be the source of information after a while because they will sign up for your email list and you’ll know there’s a tool through where it’s not like a, the people that are designing toys as a hobby or even professionally as a side hustle, potentially. It’s not like that. They all are the out there in the open admitting it and saying it’s to everyone. They’re more like interested in these types of topics. So, you want to be out there, you want to do your PR and do your, I guess, SEO to make sure with the podcast as well, to make sure that if they are searching for something, how to do this and how to do that. And you’ve mentioned so many hurdles in the way that, uh, the story creators have, like from design through manufacturing. So marketing, social media pitching so many problems to solve, to help them. And it seems like you can help them with every step. Is there something that you say, no, I can’t help you with that.

Azhelle:

Yeah, of course like legal stuff. Number one, like that’s number one. When people will ask me, like, do I need to get NDA or do I need to get a patent before I continue? And I can tell you the reasons why and why not, and the benefits of, and I can tell you the toy industry, usually people are showing ideas that are not patented. They might be pending, but they’re not fully patented, but I can’t be the deciding factor whether or not you go forward and, and patent that idea. And I just tell people what I know. I don’t know everything, but what I know is the cost of defending your patent. You’ve gotta be ready to spend like six figures. It’s different. If somebody rips off this patent, if you’re going to really fight that you need a lot of money to fight that. So, you have to think about that. And then think about the investment of getting the patent, which is tens of thousands. Like, like a $10,000 investment could be, if you’re going to hire a lawyer and you’re not going to do it yourself. So yeah, the legal stuff, I have, my people who have come on, my podcast that I refer people to, and I say, you reach out to them. They’re an IP lawyer. They can help you. That’s not my area of expertise

Zivi:

Within the toy industry. I’m guessing there’s some electronics involved in some of the toys. Is that a distinguished that you also make, like I only do toys with fel comics or without, or whatnot.

Azhelle:

Yeah. I have done very simple electronic toys. So, there’s like a difference on if you’re going to just put a button in something and it’s an open market, open-source button piece that you just need to change the sound chip of. That’s no big deal. If you’re going to come to me specifically and say, oh, I want to create like a really intensely heavy, complicated electronic toy. Obviously, that’s not my area of expertise. And you would want, I mean, the only thing that I would tell you is you want a factory that specializes in this or, and, or an industrial designer that has experienced with this. And that’s what I do as a toy coach. Like I connect people to my network. So, I have many, uh, people in my network that have helped people develop just like doll, let’s say dolls with like several buttons or several ways to activate different play patterns.

Azhelle:

And by squeezing their hand, they might go on one play pattern route. And by squeezing their tummy, they might go on another electronic play pattern route. I would direct you toward, okay, this company can help you. Not only flesh out this idea so that a factory can understand it, but connect you to the right factory. Or this person has experienced working with Vtech. Let’s say, as a freelancer, they can help you. That’s what I would do, but I wouldn’t say, oh, let me develop this item. It’s all about connecting you to the right people. The toy industry is so specialized. You want a doll designer for doll products. You want a tech designer for tech products. You want very specific specs. You want a niche within a niche, even in the toy industry.

Zivi:

Do you have some toy shops that you visited somewhere in the world where you felt like, oh man, this is just the best toy shop in the world?

Azhelle:

Well, in the world, I mean, there was one in the U S that I went to and I thought was amazing. And that was the camp stores. It’s so funny. Cause when I travel abroad, I go to toy stores, but I don’t go to the big, like I never look up like a big, fancy toy store. I always want to go to the, like the target equivalent or the Barnes and noble equivalent. Because when you see mass market toys, you’re getting a real understanding of the society and the culture and the pricing of that area. So, I recently, I was in like Puerto Rico and we went to like the stores just to look at what toys are like in like Walgreens, because I like to see like what prices are fit here. But anyway, in the U S I saw the camp stores. They’re amazing.

Azhelle:

It’s about a whole experience. So, when I went, they had like rotating exhibitions. But when I went, it was like a summer camp theme exhibition. And they had like a tree house. And I mean, they had like a fire pit area. They had like a play Jeep and the way that they design it is so essentially the whole thing looks like a play room with like different sections and play areas that are like themed. And then on top of that, they have their product strewn without, so they’ll have like say it’s like a tree house. They’ll create shelves out of little like wooden tree looking limb things. And they’ll put products on those shelves, say it’s a spaceship. They’ll create shelves in the spaceship and put products on that. So, it’s like a fully immersive experience for the kids who get to run around and play and pick up products and then their parents pay for it. But I love the camp store there. It’s amazing.

Zivi:

Are you still these days designing your own toys?

Azhelle:

So, I did recently create one, well, two, a couple. So no, my own toys. I’ve created one little figure, which is going to be kind of like a Funko pop style figure. Um, but that is really something I’m designing so that my students can watch the entire process of it’s not necessarily that I want to sell a bunch of these, but I think it’s a great process study. So, we have, like, I just got the 3d files finished. I’m going to be ordering a 3d sample soon so they can see that whole process. And then aside from that, I still do freelance. So, it’s not my own product, but it feels like it is like whenever they say, okay, sketch this and do a turnaround drawing, and we’re going to create this in real life. It feels like it’s your baby. So, I’ve done a couple of those, but of course I can’t share what they are cause they’re not out yet. But yeah, done

Zivi:

Sweet. What’s your vision for the toy coach brand for, I dunno a year from now,

Azhelle:

Just, it’s more about my lifestyle, I think, than my brand. I would just love to have the freedom to help the people that I want to help without having to worry about, oh, am I going to be able to keep this business afloat? Am I going to be able to keep doing this full time? Because what I’ve had to learn is whenever I cut my prices too low, I’m actually doing a disservice to the people that I want to help because if my prices are too low and I can’t afford to maintain my business, then all the health goes away. All of the connection goes away, everything goes away. So, I just hope that I can keep maintaining it and that I price it just right, so that everything can keep going. And when I have, I have like students that come to me and I have this dream be able to help them in a way that I can only help them. Once I establish my business at a certain level, like I have to get to a certain level so that I can create the space to help my students really affordably. I really want to make sure that they’re okay. Like they’re just getting started in this industry and I want to make it easy for them, but you know, you’ve got to eat. That’s the thing you got to eat when you’re working for business.

Zivi:

So, if someone is hearing this and he’s thinking, oh wow, I want them to, I had a dream about this toy that I want to produce. What would you say the first step is? And how much do you think to the put money aside?

Azhelle:

Oh, well the first step I would say, listen to my podcast. I tell people this all the time and I would start with episode one. I would start with the very first episode, maybe one through like five I’d probably would say too, because I kind of those episodes, I started them very sequentially. Yeah. I would do that first. And then it depends, like, it depends on where you are in your life. If you have an extra 10, $20,000, you can set aside and you’re willing to start with like your less ambitious ideas first, like maybe you start with your paper products, which is what I always tell people. You start with your ideas for games. You start with your ideas for paper dolls or things like that, because that will keep your costs low. And you develop those ideas first, before you go into like custom doll mold and custom this and custom that like stay away from that when you’re just starting out, because you’re going to make mistakes.

Azhelle:

You want to, you want to give yourself room to make those mistakes and not feel like you just wasted your whole life savings. But I would actually say to start the very first time you get out there, try to start as an inventor because when you’re an inventor, you just have to tinker and play with a lot of things and experiment and you spend more money creating prototypes. But if you land a deal, you don’t have to spend any more money. You literally land this deal and you get royalties. And essentially all your money just goes into prototyping instead of investing in like $10,000 worth of samples or product, and then having to pay shipping fees and import fees. And you don’t have to do all of that and dealing with like customer complaints and refunds and all of that. So, I would start as an inventor first and I have a podcast episode on inventors too. So just search for that.

Zivi:

What’s your opinion about crowdsourcing for toy creators?

Azhelle:

I’ve heard great things. You know, I’ve heard really great things about crowdsourcing. It’s a lot of work. And I think a lot of toy creators don’t realize how much work it is, essentially everything I do for my business. As the toy coach, you will have to do for your toy product idea. As much as like I live and breathe being the toy coach, you need to be ready, ready to live and breathe, whatever your, if your ideas, this like wonder woman figurine, you got to like live and breathe. This wonder woman figuring like every post, every time you’re featured anywhere, every like outfit you show on Instagram, you got to relate it back to this, this figuring. So, I mean, crowdfunding only works. If you build yourself an email, you build yourself a following. And in order to do that, you have to be committed to your toy. Like your it’s your whole business, your whole life. And that’s, that’s tough for some people

Zivi:

Coming back to your podcasts. Is that a show that you often have interviewees in?

Azhelle:

I do. I do.

Zivi:

So how hard is it for you to find an interviewee on your podcast?

Azhelle:

Isn’t so far that hard, but I am getting more and more nervous about it now because I’ve interviewed so many people. I am getting a little nervous. Like when I first started my podcast, I actually never wanted to have interviews. And then I started doing a few interviews and I was like, oh, okay. I get, this is good. So now I’m trying to work on like every other or, or two, every two solos, one interview. I go everywhere. Like I might interview somebody who’s a student of mine, so we can so that my listeners can see their journey. But I also might interview someone who has had success on their own and never worked with me. Or I might interview ahead of a company, or I even like to interview people outside of this industry. Like people have like baby clothing brands or just like, I’m looking to interview like a couple of animators right now. Like I am very anything that I think will help. I think I’m open to the people that I will interview. So, it allows me more freedom and flexibility as far as who I interview. And I just am really strategic about the questions I asked to make sure that it’s giving information back, that can be applied to the toy industry.

Zivi:

Nice. If you were able to give yourself advice like a few years back, what advice would you tell yourself?

Azhelle:

Am I gotten by crypto? Is what? By crypto? Uh, no. Yeah, probably that’d be it. Uh, it’s like buy more stocks. I made, I bought a lot of Moderna, but I would’ve bought way more. Uh, yeah, no, like business wise, like just, I would do what to keep doing. What you’re doing would be the advice. Cause like follow your gut. Instinct has always led me well. So as long as I keep doing what I’m doing, I really believe that it will work out and anytime I don’t believe it will work out, I changed course. So, I would just tell myself to keep doing all of those things. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.

Zivi:

Nice. Where can people learn more about you?

Azhelle:

Yeah. So, head over to the toycoach.com or find me on Instagram at the toy coach. I hang out there the most and I hope to hear from you.

Zivi:

Sweet. Thank you so much. This was fascinating. And thank you for listening for the Micro Niche Mastery.

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Welcome to the ninth episode of The Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Our guest for today is Adri Angotti, the creative director of ICONscious Companies that helps conscious companies find their voice and grow into a seven-figure business in as little as 8 months.

Are you struggling to find who you are as an owner and what you want to do next? Find your YOU-ness in this podcast.

This podcast is mind-blowing and will expand your mindset.

Tell your friends about it!

ICONsciouscompanies.com

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Click Below to see the full transcript of this episode

Welcome to the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast, where we help you establish yourself in the perfect micro-niche. So you will get noticed and grow your business faster. And now your host, he believes that generosity is the key to any business growth, especially in micro-niches, Ziv Raviv.

Ziv:

Hello and welcome to Micro Niche Mastery Podcast. This is episode nine. I’m super stoked. Today I get to interview Adri Angotti from Iconsciouscompanies.com you help businesses find the niche. What’s special about them, the USP and position themselves for success. This is so exciting to talk with you. Hi, how are you?

Adri:

I am good. And I’m very, very happy to be here. And I might be a little controversial presence or bring some controversial ideas for us to discuss.

Ziv:

Uh, we love controversial stories. One of the reasons why I love your work so much. You have this natural talent identify big ideas and stories, but first of all, like you chose a niche for yourself for your after years in the branding and the marketing you chose to focus on conscious companies. What is that all about?

Adri:

Yeah, many things already in this question, it’s actually, I didn’t really choose conscious companies. I believe that there are different kinds of companies, companies that are there for profit only, and companies that are there with a mission and for profit as well. So I didn’t, I wasn’t born accompany and I wasn’t born at brand. So it goes back a long time. It can sound funny, but when I was a kid, my father was very strict. He was the son of two Italian immigrants that were very strict with him. So he was very strict with us. And I had to learn when I was very young, how to convince my dad to let me do things. So I didn’t really do. And this is the big distinction here. I didn’t really do anything. I didn’t really say anything that wasn’t true. I just took the truth and made the truth be seen.

Adri:

So I was, I would tell him, like I was a good girl. I was, I had very good grades. I went to the church and I was a good sister to my brother and my sister. So I would come to him with all this things that I had done. Good. And in the end, I would say, now I would make my offer. Right. I would say, now, can I go to this party? And he would align with the time, say yes. So I learned that I needed, if I didn’t say all of these things, I would not be able to do what I wanted.

Ziv:

Was that a natural thing for you? Or did someone teach you that?

Adri:

No, no, it was not natural. I had to learn, I had to learn by myself. I always loved TV and I always loved commercials. Actually, when people would start talking in the commercials, I would really come close to the television. Cause I wanted to see, because where I was brought up in Brazil commercials are very, very neared. Cause the Brazilian creativity is very high and we need to make a lot of things work with sometimes not so much money. So we needed to be good at creating of convincing with ideas. But the point is that when I was 16 and I needed to decide what I was going to do in college, and my cousin said, why don’t you go into advertising? And I never, ever, ever had thoughts of going into advertising. And I said, what is advertising? She said, well, you know, the people that create commercials and they create billboards, I was so fascinated with the idea that somebody was sitting there creating things.

Adri:

Cause I had never thought of that. And so I decided I was going to do that. However, and here comes the answer to your question. I was in the shopping center with very happy that I had decided what I was going to do and to be in my life. And I saw McDonald’s and I knew that McDonald’s was not such a, like a good food for me, you know? And also I started thinking of drinks and cigarettes that are things that are not good. And I started thinking, what if they, what if they want me to create commercials for cigarettes and drinks? And I said, I’m not going to do that. I’m never going to do that after all. I don’t think this advertising thing is for me. And I was for some time, really sad because of my passion that I had for advertising. However I needed to decide, I was very close to the date of deciding I needed to, to register into the schools, et cetera. And I decided to create a rationale for myself. I decided to go into advertising to learn how to do this craft and to propagate only good ideas and combat the bad ideas. I was 16 when I thought of that cautious companies. It’s not that I chose it. It’s almost like it chose me because I have been like this since a very young age.

Ziv:

I see. And, but uh, these days you actually like exclusively sell conscious companies. And over time you made some decisions too harsh in your criteria of what is a conscious company. So I understand it came from your heart, but you’ve made some conscious decisions about conscious companies. So can you tell us what is a conscious company from your standpoint.

Adri:

And why? I decided a conscious company essentially is a company that is, is doing well by doing good for people or for the planet. The reason I chose it is because when I went into advertising and I studied and I started working in big agencies, I worked in, in four different continents and, and all very big advertising agencies. And I was, uh, a big executive flying to different places and shooting commercials and winning awards for companies that I, they were terrible. And this was all against what I had gone in for. And what started happening is that after many years of doing that, I started getting sick. I started getting sick like every few days, like every 10 days I would feel I would fall sick. And I didn’t, I actually didn’t want to go to work cause I was not on purpose. And that’s when I started seeing that something deeper was happening. Cause my body was my body’s a big thermometer. And I started serving clients on the side, you know, and I started suddenly realizing that there was this whole arsenal of other brands and companies that are really good. It was almost like a paradigm shock for me, you know?

Ziv:

So what would you define these days? Like how do you know if a company is doing good for the world for people?

Adri:

How do I know if a company is doing good? What do you mean

Ziv:

You chose to work with companies that are more conscious? And that is something that is sometimes hard to tell from the outside. Like it’s easy to say, oh, they’re making this piece of food that is actually really bad for you. Right. But how do you know, maybe give some examples of companies that you work with and that you really appreciate how conscious they are.

Adri:

I don’t believe that companies that, that are born unconscious, they can do a few things and be called conscious because I think a lot of companies are doing that because there is a wave that is cool of companies that are doing good for the planet or being sustainable. So I personally believe in companies that are born out of a necessity to create this, do to make the statement that this is how the status quo is doing. And this is how we’re going to do sometimes even having less profits, but keeping a certain level of quality and integrity. That’s another big word in relationship to everything they do, their processes and their products and their services, uh, top top-notch quality. I think it’s, uh, top-notch quality is also, uh, a translation of elevation like spiritual elegance. I believe that companies that have something to say, they must be well translated in this sea of companies that are completely unconscious and not doing good and doing harm to the body, to the planet. But in our ocean of this companies, we need to create advertising that really communicates the real good, what they really do. Some of the examples that I have companies that I work with use cosmetics that are sustainable and that are completely fully a hundred percent natural, a natural medicine. I have a few clients that are in the realm of natural medicine that make unbelievable things to the body that create incredible health shifts to the body, all natural. So these are, these are some examples.

Ziv:

Thank you. I want to ask you, like, did your choice to be going into Micro Niche, like conscious companies and was that something that’s created a turning point in your business? And if so, like what was the turning point?

Adri:

Oh, that’s a really good question because this is a really good question. Actually. I’m just thinking, and it has to do with something I want to bring up here. I don’t know if it needs in one of your questions, but when I had my company and I was working, I liked working with conscious companies, but I would work with other companies as well. So if another company that was not so aligned with my values would come, I would work with them. But I believe that there is something energetic that happens when you position yourself. And when I say position yourself is like, when you tell to yourself who you are, who you want to work with, and this is your values and you want to people that are aligned with your values, there is something that happens that shifts your point of attraction. So you start attracting those companies.

Adri:

And I started attracting companies that when I positioned myself as a company that only works with conscious brands, I started getting a lot of traction and a lot of, how do you say a lot of clients started indicating other clients? Because I started really specializing. My method is very unorthodox. It’s not as something that you can get an agency, an agency to do because I have the background of big advertising agencies, but I have another background that is more connected to the human and to the spirit. And I believe there is a lot of fear of saying things that people call. There are some words that they keel the essence of the thing that you’re trying to describe. And this is where I think I am a little bit politically incorrect and I love to be politically incorrect because I’m saying the truth. Some words are used to describe things that, and at some point it’s so used that that thing lost completely the value.

Adri:

This is something that I encourage my clients to be aware of Jargons. Jargons, you go into being like a commodity. You’re not yourself. You are like everybody else. So the turning point is a happened when I decided that I, you know, you have to be gutsy to do this because I had to say no to companies that are bigger than the ones I was working. So what you’re going to say, what are you going to do? Are you going to be aligned or are you going to keep? But I have to say, when I said no to a big company, to other companies that were bigger, that work on showed up and I believe in taking a stand. And to me, the idea of positioning is positioning is taking a stand, taking a stand for, and I’m talking about positioning because positioning is what I do. I think positioning is the key is positioning. Is the key. When you stand up for something for our cause, or for an idea, people fly flock to you like bees to honey. When you stand for something, you will have people that are not going to be agreeing with you and the people that are going to be agreeing with you. But the people that agree with you, they really agree with you. They want to follow you. They want to come after you because you were gutsy enough to stand for your beliefs.

Ziv:

I love it. You have this expertise of finding alignment in businesses and, uh, some even call you misalignment because you, you have this skill of saying no. When a client wants to do something, that’s not aligned with the USP, the unique selling proposition. What exactly? How would you define USP and the power of it?

Adri:

I’m so glad you asked this question and I’m going to continue being a little bit politically incorrect. It’s not really politically incorrect. I just happened to have a very strong opinion about this. The idea of USP is exactly what I mentioned to you about jargons. USP is a jargon. So I don’t do USP. I don’t do niche, niching or USP for me. When you first learn about this word, you see the words spelled U dot S dot P for me, the way I work, my unorthodox method, I will describe USP U Y O U S P, because nobody can take from you, your U, nobody can take from you. So you might be doing something that so-and-so is doing and are so other people are doing. Nobody’s going to be doing the way you’re doing, and nobody’s going to be being you the same way you are.

Adri:

So you can be selling something that somebody else is also doing. However, that person is not you. That’s how I bring the idea of, I don’t even say USP, that doesn’t exist for me, but for me, what is different about you or anyone that is listening to this podcast? What is different about you is that there is only one you. There is nothing that can beat that. So when you are looking too much at what the competition is doing or what, the people that are selling, what they are doing, you are looking at the wrong way because you are a fountain. You are a source of new ideas and that you have inside of you, a mission. That mission is what you have to focus on.

Ziv:

So you help people focus on the YOUNESS, which is an amazing word combination. Instead of the unique selling proposition, the uniqueness is them. But what if someone is struggling with identifying what they are to this world? How can someone like get to clarity of what is the YOUNESS?

Adri:

Yeah, I think that’s a really, really great way and very simple way to define that thing that differentiates you from everyone else is what do you feel to do? What do you like to do? What is your deepest desire of doing or helping? And I am talking here with conscious companies that, because that’s all I do are conscious entrepreneurs. That’s all I do. So the people that are not so connected with the consciousness of the business, perhaps are not going to feel so connected to this, but to find your USP, you don’t need actually to find it’s just to own, what is it that you really love doing? There is no one that is going to be doing this the way you are doing. So I think that too much preoccupation about what is my days and what is my dad’s and what is, I think that takes the attention off of where it should be, which is your natural source of mission, your natural, why you came here. I think it’s more a revealing, an owning then a finding.

Ziv:

And I know that, uh, you also, you know, process help people, not just understand the stories and the beliefs, but you also help them understand their avatar, the ideal client. And why is that important to understand that and to define that and research that.

Adri:

Yeah, it’s very interesting because one of the things that I teach my clients, cause I, I teach my clients in group settings and one-on-one settings is that one thing that they cannot be cannot do when they are defining the people they are working with, or they’re the type of thing that they are different is they cannot be modest. A lot of this take kills the cat, as I like to say, because there’s this expression in quantum physics, but modesty kills everything. We are brought up to be modest. So you’re not brought up to do what I’m telling you to do, which is to own your mission, own the people that you want to work with. Your avatar is nothing else. The best way to find your avatar is like, imagine a person you would love to work with love, to work with a person that is your fan. That does everything that you say to them that has results and that Braves about you and bring their friends and a person that really idolizes you because they are naturally connect so much with who you are and what you’re doing, that is your avatar. And there is no reason to go after finding your avatar because your avatar is a big reflection of you.

Ziv:

Wow. It’s almost like your avatar is almost like a soulmate.

Adri:

And call a soulmate client.

Ziv:

Yeah. And instead of like looking for the ideal client, ideal customer entirely to define them because they are there, you look at yourself at your YOUNESS and you identify this client that will ideally want to work with you from your standpoint. It’s a totally reversed way. Yeah,

Adri:

You do that really well. It seems I first got in touch with your work. You do that really well. And you do have this part that is human. I believe that my work is to humanize businesses and you have already very strong and I really, really admire. So it’s great to be talking with you with somebody that already knows this from, from the beginning.

Ziv:

Thank you. And, but it, it’s definitely a refreshing, energizing, exciting notion instead of like choosing to work with someone just because they might need you to choose to work with someone because you will, it will be an ideal world. If you get to, to do that. And in finding that deep level of understanding of what , is that client need and wants, that provides an, a result of people, listening to you and understanding what you do. And I think that’s the main power of positioning, but not a lot of people actually know off positioning. They think it’s like, branding, can you explain to everyone at 1 cent for, or what is positioning?

Adri:

Absolutely positioning is occupying this space that you came here to occupy. So in a short way, we could say that. So if you’re not positioning, you’re not positioning yourself. You’re going to be a brand like others. You’re going to be a commodity. A commodity is a brand that is, there are hundreds of them. Their prices are leveled by the competition. If the competition lowers the price, they lower the price. If the competition is doing so, they have to do because so commodities are brands that are looking outside and the opposite of commodity is a value-based brand. And this is what I do to my clients. I don’t create that value. I shine the light in them and they see, they start seeing where their value really is. Cause for an owner of a brand is not so easy to see what you really do. You, we learned to be modest.

Adri:

You know, this world is like, we really learn not to brag, not to be great and not to, to shine. We learn how to be humble. And, and I’m not saying it’s not really about not being humble, but the modesty part is you’re not owning your light. You’re not allowing other people to see you as a reflection of source or God or the greatness of the universe. And this is convenient. This is convenient. Not for us. It’s convenient to corporations that want everybody to be the same and not people not to shine so much or to speak too loud.

Ziv:

It’s almost like conscious companies naturally because they’re so conscious. They already have done some of their work for positioning because they at least know what they believe in. They have a lot of other things to identify like who is going to be a customer that they will be ideally working with. And, but I want to wrap up with like finish this interview. We could talk for hours on this. What do you think a business should do first? Should they like identify the uniqueness, the uniqueness in them? Should they like, do the positioning move? Or should they first find a niche of people that ideal for them? But that is the niche. What do you think?

Adri:

Oh, I made darn this, this question to you. Let’s put it this way before you go talk to somebody, you have to know what you’re talking to them. And before you know what you’re talking to them, you have to know who you are. So does it make sense that first you have to know who you are, right? The YOUNESS and then you can position something. Cause you first you have to find who you’re going to position what you’re positioning. And then only then you can extend the call to that person that you are going to assist or help or serve. Does it make sense?

Ziv:

Basically, what you’re saying is that tiny Youness makes finding your niche way, way easier. And if you find your niche first and then find out that your uniqueness is not aligned with that niche, then you need to switch a niche, Adri Angotti. Thank you so much for taking the time and chatting with us. Your unorthodox approach that is focused on helping conscious companies, companies that actually care about humans and our people about this world. And you help them have a voice. You put them in a position where they are well-positioned to actually go. And some of the results that you’ve achieved through your unique system are just astounding, like growing a business to a seven figure business in metal months, like eight months. Thank you so much for sharing this with us. Where can people go to learn more about you?

Adri:

You see the name conscious companies instead of conscious companies. And so the first four letters are Iconsciouscompanies.com

Ziv:

And how clever, because you do help people in business become the icon in the field. Love it. Thank you so much, Ali. We’ll put the link in the show notes for I conscious companies. If you want to become an icon in your field and you are a conscious company, then you should go check that out. Thank you everyone. And see you next week in the Micro Niche Mastery Podcast.

Voice Over:

This show was brought to you by daily cookie.co, where you can finally feel supported daily email love. Now delegatable visit daily cookie.co for a collection of free resources on how to use copywriting at daily emails to grow your micro niche business today.

The post Finding your USP starts with finding your YOU-ness, with Adri Angotti (MNM Season 1 Episode 9) appeared first on Daily Cookie.