Lesson 3: Behind the scenes of a $32,000-per-month email list

Over the past few days made solid progress.

First, you identified your #1 goal.

Then you wrote down WHY you picked that goal.

And we’ve started working on the HOW.

But do you want the truth?

You will probably fail.

Why?

It’s hard to start a business.

Having an idea.
Validating the idea.
Building the idea.
Getting people to pay you for the idea.

All hard.

But you don’t have to fail.

It is possible to make it. To reach your goal.

Today, I’m going to show you how to drastically increase your chances of hitting your goal (and I’ll give you one exercise to work on over the weekend).

I am living proof that YOU can create a business that gives you freedom.

Honestly…

I’m just a random dude from Alabama. Grew up in the middle of nowhere. Dropped out of college (twice!). Was kind of weird in high school. And bailed out of my own wedding 6 days before it was supposed to happen.

I doubt myself. Get stressed out. And worry about money. Just like you.

But what we’ve learned together over the last few days is…

If you set things up correctly and avoid the FATAL mistakes, you can do it.

Just like building a house. If you try to wander your way through the process, you’ll end up with a jacked-up house.

A few days ago, I showed you four critical mistakes I’ve made.

Mistakes that have caused previous businesses to fall apart.

Let’s recap…

Mistake #1: Forgetting to set your #1 business goal and not clearly articulating WHY you want to reach that goal. As a result, you get off course and burned out and your business fails.

Mistake #2: NOT executing your idea quickly enough, then getting bogged down with the details.

Mistake #3: Asking your friends what THEY think about your idea. This is destructive.

Mistake #4: NOT getting help from other people. Trying to be a lone wolf is great… if you want to make the same mistakes every other entrepreneur makes. Get help!

After hearing from hundreds of you, I’ve found that most people believe they have to get lucky or have the perfect idea in order to start a business that allows them to have more freedom.

We create all of these justifications:

Maybe I just don’t have what it takes…
Maybe my idea is bad…
Maybe Bryan is just smarter than me…

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Instead, I’ve found that building a list full of people who trust you and are eager to buy from you is THE key to reaching your #1 goal.

To building a business that gives you more time, money and freedom.

Want to make more money so your wife can have the option to quit her job and you two can start a family? Build a list.

Want to have more control over your future (instead of your boss dictating it to you)? Build a list.

Want to make more money so your family can be debt-free? Guess what…

BUILD A LIST.

🙂

Now let me SHOW you why you need to build a list.

And how a list will help you reach your #1 goal.

Meet Tyler.

Everyone say “Heyyyyyy, Tyler!”

Last January, Tyler had an idea.

He wanted to sell websites and marketing services to real estate agents.

Being a Videofruit reader, he followed the exact process we’ve laid out over the past few weeks. He started making websites, cold-calling and giving them to high-value prospects.

After a few months of tweaking his approach, he finally started selling a few here and there. But he eventually hit The Wall.

He got stuck and couldn’t figure out how to get more clients.

Then in October, he decided to change his approach completely. Instead of cold-calling prospects, he decided to start building a list of people who knew him, liked him and trusted him.

Guess what happened next?

He got past The Wall!

Over the next few months, his revenue went from $4,000 per month to $32,000 per month.

All from doing one thing…

BUILDING A LIST.

Now, any time Tyler creates a new product, offers a new service or just wants to get more customers to his existing service, all he has to do is send an email.

No cold-calling.

No crazy pitches.

Just an email.

That is the power of building a list.

So how do you start building your list?

Building an email list is straightforward. You need two key ingredients:

Thing #1: Traffic (people seeing an invitation to join your list)

Thing #2: Conversions (some of the people who see your invitation need to actually join)

Here is the rub…

Most list-building advice focuses on conversions.

“Install this pop-up box here.”

“Put this widget there.”

That kind of thing.

But when you are just starting out, all of that stuff is a waste of time because you’re missing one of the key ingredients: TRAFFIC.

That’s why when I see blog posts like “How I Got 30,000 Email Subscribers in 2 weeks,” I cringe. Because they are ALWAYS written by people who have millions of existing readers.

OF COURSE all they have to do is put a basic invitation out and their list will explode.

What about everyone else?

When you try to mimic these same basic strategies, your results pale in comparison and you get discouraged.

Why?

You don’t have millions of readers!

So I’m going to give one strategy you can use today to fix that problem.

I call it the testimonial hack.

In the very early days of Videofruit I used this strategy to get featured on the homepage of AppSumo (which has over 750,000 subscribers).

And the best part?

I had never published a blog post before.
I had no product.
I was a complete nobody.

But I used this strategy to turn that opportunity into my first 250 email subscribers.

It’s super simple and you can do the same thing.

Tomorrow I’m going to give you the step-by-step instructions.

Today I want you to answer three questions…

Action Item #1: What 5 products or services have you purchased in the past year?

Action Item #2: What 5 blogs do you regularly read?

Action Item #3: What 5 podcasts do you actively listen to?

Fill out your answers to these 3 questions in today’s interactive worksheet.

The goal of this assignment is to identify businesses with people in their audience who would be a good fit for your list.

Don’t over-think this step.

Set your timer for 10 minutes and GO.

See you tomorrow.

…

In the next lesson, you’ll learn how to sell your first tiny product to your list without having to guess what people want. I’ll also show you several pitfalls to avoid. (These are things that really tripped me up.)

If you’ve already joined the Rapid List Building System, you’ll want to revisit the course sections “Doubling the conversion rate of your most important page” (Module 2 Lesson 10) and “How to create your upside-down homepage” (Module 2 Lesson 11). These will help you with the next lesson.

If you haven’t joined RLB yet, here is the link.

Here’s a recap of our training so far:

Lesson 1 – The very first step to building your list
Lesson 2 – How to know the exact product to build for your list
Lesson 3 – Behind the scenes of a $32,000 per month email list
Lesson 4 – How to get featured to 750,000 readers
Lesson 5 – Two examples of how to use the Testimonial Hack strategy
Lesson 6 – The exact technology stack you need to use to jump-start your list growth