The Business Growth Blog by Rob Cuesta

The Money is **NOT** In The List

Have you ever been told that "the money is in the list"?

I hear it everywhere I go. And people fret over how many 10s or 100s of thousands of subscribers they have.

If you've been worrying about how big yours is, then fear not: in the world of professional services marketing, size doesn't matter anywhere much as you think.

There are people with lists of hundreds of thousands who are running out of cash, and people with only a few thousands of subscribers who have a fantastic business.

It's not how big it is that matters, but what you do with it.

And yes, this is starting to sound like a Benny Hill routine :)

But here's the thing.

UBC8: One mindset shift that will TRANSFORM your relationship with your tribe

You know already you need to build a tribe, right? I mean you may call it your list (I tell my clients not to, for a variety of reasons), your community (better), your army of raving fans, or whatever, but you know you need to gather a bunch of people around you who care about what you have to say to them. You'll have heard that over and over again.

You also probably know that having built your tribe you need to engage with them, and the bare minimum for that is an email sequence or "autoresponder series".

The problem a lot of business owners have is that it's easy to write 20 emails, but that doesn't make an autoresponder sequence.

There’s a key thing they’re missing.

So I want to tell you what that is.

I’m sitting in my room at the beautiful Radisson Blu St Helens in Dublin, a former stately home turned 5-star hotel that is quickly becoming my second home in Ireland’s capital. I have to run to get a cab back to the airport in a moment, but I had a blinding flash of the obvious that I feel I need to share with you before I set off.

You see, I just said that most business owners are missing a vital point when they write their autoresponder sequences.

It’s taken me a few years to get it, but it finally came to me this morning.

The mistake most entrepreneurs make is to write a bunch of emails in isolation and expect them to make sense as a whole.

What happens when you write like that, though, is that each email stands alone. So it’s easy for a reader to drop out at any point.

For some time I’ve been teaching my clients the secrets to creating successful products. And this morning I finally made the connection.

YOUR AUTORESPONDER SEQUENCE IS A PRODUCT JUST LIKE ANY OTHER.

 

When you think of it that way, everything becomes easy.

If you prefer think of it like this: when you write a 20-email follow up sequence, write it as though you were writing a 20-chapter ebook.

You see, the thing about an autoresponder sequence (just like your products) is that it’s useless if the reader doesn’t get ALL THE WAY THROUGH.

If they bail out (i.e. unsubscribe) they won’t get your full message, so they won’t get all the benefits, so they won’t take anything else from you, and they won’t tell other people about you.

And if you’re going to put calls to action in your autoresponder sequence (and you should!), then they won’t be there to see them.

So you need to write your autoresponder the same way as you would a product:

1. Top and tail it with an intro that tells the reader what you’re going to tell them, and a closing summary that reminds them what they’ve learned. And add summaries along the way.
2. Structure it. Follow your system step by step, and have a narrative thread that runs through it
3. Throw in case studies and examples. And exercises for people to do.
4. Tell people what’s coming up in future instalments (the next day AND two weeks from now) so they’ll want to stay—you can only do that if you’ve planned out every step of the sequence!
5. Leave a few cliffhangers to make sure people tune back in
   This is so key that I’m going to be adding a whole workshop on autoresponder writing to my Protégé program from February.

Now I’m off to the airport—enough travel time to overhaul at least one of my autoresponders!

Quick Growth Tip #12: Focus and Thrive

One surefire way of failing in business is to try to do everything for everyone, and for coaches, consultants, therapists, and other service professionals, the temptation is very string. After all, we have a toolset that is designed to solve problems - any problems - and to do it quickly and effectively.

The "problem" is, though, that no-one wakes up thinking "I have a problem, I must go and find someone to help me solve it!"

#PracExplosion New Dates Announced For Canada Practice Explosion Workshops

OK, after a certain Icelandic volcano put paid to my plans in April, I'm finally getting everything back in place to run Practice Explosion in October.

#PracExplosion Income Strategies For Coaches, Consultants and Professional Advisers - 2 of 7

Last time we discussed getting out of the time-for-dollars trap by setting up a group programme.

In this instalment I'd like to discuss another way to get away from charging by the hour.

#PracExplosion Income Strategies For Coaches, Consultants and Professional Advisers - 1 of 7

OK, so you make your living by selling your thoughts: your opinion, your advice, your creative ideas, your experience, whatever it may be.

The problem with that kind of industry is that it tends to be driven by trading money for hours, which means that most professional "thinkers" end up in a trap that says: "I have to work as many hours as possible, because when I'm not working I'm not earning". That's not a comfortable place to be. Trust me, I've been there!

So how do we get out of that trap? In this series of seven blog posts I'll be highlighting seven easy-to-implement strategies that will help you escape the time-for-money trap and release you to enjoy the lifestyle you want while being paid the rewards you deserve. Some will fit your business better than others - after all, we all provide different types of support to different types of clients, and I'd be foolish to try to suggest that "one size fits all" in every case

With that in mind, read on...

"Your account has been credited"

I'm fanatical about looking beyond words to the meaning behind the structure. It's something I picked up even before I got into NLP and marketing, and the study of the mind and motivation, when I was studying linguistics at university, more years ago than I care to admit these days :)

As a result I almost can't help myself when it comes to questioning everything that I see or read.

Which is why an email from my VOIP provider caught my eye a moment ago.

Why recruiters have it all wrong - part 2

Have you ever worked with someone who, on paper, looked like the perfect person for a job, but over time it turned out they just didn't have "what it takes" to be successful in the role?

In the previous post we looked at some of the pitfalls of the traditional hiring process, and why it can be fatal for a company that is hiring in order to grow. The reality is, most interviewers are great at spotting people with the right skills for a job, but not necessarily the few who have "what it takes" - especially if the interviewer hasn't, themselves, done the job they're interviewing for.

So what can we do to avoid those pitfalls? How do we know if someone will have "what it takes"?

Why recruiters have it all wrong

Whether you're an entrepreneur hiring your first employee, or a corporate manager filling a new post or backfilling a gap created by the departure of an existing memebr of your team, recruiting the right people is essential to growing any business. You need to know that the new person will fit in the organisation, and you need to know they'll be able to do the job. Hiring the wrong person isn't just a potentially expensive mistake: put the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time and it could kill your business completely (RIP Barings Bank!).

The problem is, most recruiters - even agents, whose job is solely to find candidates for other companies - have their focus all wrong when it comes to finding the right person. And the reason for that isn't hard to find.

Motivation, success and wealth 1

As anyone who has attended one of my courses or workshops knows, I'm a huge fan of personal development guru Tony Robbins.

Lately, Tony has issued a couple of motivational web videos around the subject of wealth and success. the first of them is notable not only because its a deeply motivational story, but because it's one of the best web videos I've seen. Granted, it was filmed during a break in the filming of something else more substantial, but even so, it's definitely raised the standard that anyone using video to build their brand should aspire to.

So watch it, enjoy the message, and learn from the production values.

Enjoy!