How To Grow A Newsletter Business (From Scratch)

Hayden Bowles
22 Sept 202318:26

Summary

TLDRIn this video, the creator shares the journey of growing their newsletter, 'Profit Snack,' which targets online business owners, from its inception eight months ago to generating $17,396 in revenue. The discussion covers four growth phases, including organic marketing, influencer partnerships, and paid ads, as well as a rebrand that cost $30,000. Financial insights reveal a total spend of $140,000 with a current revenue stream, emphasizing the importance of engagement over subscriber count. The creator also offers advice for newsletter owners and their commitment to quality content and advertiser results.

Takeaways

  • 📈 The newsletter 'Profit Snack' has generated $17,396 in revenue in the last 30 days and has been built over eight months.
  • 🛠️ The creator took a 3-4 month break from YouTube to focus on team development and e-commerce business growth.
  • 🔄 The newsletter underwent a rebrand from 'Synthetic Mind' to 'Profit Snack', focusing on online business owners rather than AI-specific content.
  • 🚀 Four stages of growth were identified: organic guerrilla marketing, organic traction, automated influencer partnerships, and paid ads.
  • 💰 High initial growth costs amounted to $140,000, with team expenses accounting for $25,000 of that.
  • 🔄 A significant number of unengaged subscribers were removed, reducing the list to 65,000 engaged subscribers.
  • 📉 The rebrand led to unsubscribes and negative feedback, but also a more passionate and engaged audience.
  • 💡 The business model is based on selling ad space at a 35 CPM rate, tied to open rates, not just subscriber numbers.
  • 📊 Currently, the business does not require additional cash injection and is self-sustaining with a break-even point reached.
  • 👥 The team has been streamlined, reducing monthly team expenses to $5,000, focusing on efficiency and quality.
  • ♻️ The creator emphasizes the importance of organic growth, advertiser results, and audience engagement for long-term success.

Q & A

  • What was the revenue generated by the newsletter in the last 30 days?

    -The newsletter generated $17,396 in revenue in the last 30 days.

  • How long has the creator been building the newsletter?

    -The creator has been building the newsletter for about eight months.

  • What is the primary target audience for the newsletter?

    -The primary target audience for the newsletter is online business owners.

  • What was the original focus of the newsletter before the rebrand?

    -The original focus of the newsletter was on artificial intelligence with an emphasis on its business applications and the companies funding it.

  • What is the name of the newsletter after the rebrand?

    -After the rebrand, the newsletter is called 'Profit Snack'.

  • What was the first growth phase of the newsletter referred to as?

    -The first growth phase was referred to as 'Organic Gorilla Marketing'.

  • What platform was used to automate the influencer outreach process during the third growth phase?

    -The platform used to automate the influencer outreach process was called 'Spark Loop'.

  • What is the current open rate for the newsletter subscriptions not from Spark Loop?

    -The current open rate for the newsletter subscriptions not from Spark Loop is between 45% to 48%.

  • What is the average cost per subscriber acquired through Twitter ads currently?

    -The average cost per subscriber acquired through Twitter ads is about $1.30 to $1.50.

  • What was the total amount spent on the newsletter's growth?

    -The total amount spent on the newsletter's growth was $105,000.

  • What is the current team expense per month after trimming back the team?

    -The current team expense per month is about $5,000 after trimming back the team.

  • What is the repeat advertiser rate for the newsletter?

    -The repeat advertiser rate for the newsletter is around 30 to 35 percent, with a goal to increase it to 70 percent.

  • What is the payback period for subscribers acquired for two dollars on average?

    -The payback period for subscribers acquired for two dollars on average is about five to six months.

  • What is the newsletter's approach to selling ad space?

    -The newsletter sells ad space based on a 35 CPM, which is tied to open rates rather than the number of subscribers.

  • What is the estimated annual revenue if the growth spending stops?

    -If the growth spending stops, the estimated annual revenue would be about $140,000 to $150,000.

  • What is the main reason for the name switch and rebrand of the newsletter?

    -The main reason for the name switch and rebrand was to shift focus away from AI as the central theme and to create a more passionate and engaged audience.

Outlines

00:00

📈 Growth and Rebranding of Profit Snack Newsletter

The speaker discusses the impressive growth of their newsletter, 'Profit Snack', which has generated $17,396 in revenue over the last 30 days. Initially called 'Synthetic Mind', the newsletter was focused on AI in business but has since rebranded to cater to a broader audience of online business owners. The speaker outlines the four stages of growth the newsletter experienced, including organic marketing tactics, leveraging social media and influencer partnerships, and a significant investment in the Spark Loop platform. They also mention a name switch and rebranding that cost around $30,000 but was essential for aligning the newsletter's focus with their vision. The speaker took a break from YouTube to focus on their team and e-commerce company, emphasizing transparency and inviting viewers to subscribe to the newsletter for valuable insights tailored to their interests.

05:01

🔍 Analyzing Traffic Sources and Engagement Metrics

The speaker delves into the analysis of different traffic sources for the newsletter, emphasizing the importance of engagement metrics such as open and click-through rates. They discuss the shift from using Spark Loop for subscriber acquisition due to its low engagement levels, to focusing on paid ads on Twitter, which have proven to be more cost-effective and yield higher engagement. The speaker also mentions the removal of approximately 30,000 unengaged subscribers to maintain a high-quality, responsive audience. They highlight the challenges faced during the rebranding process, including unsubscribes and the need to refine the audience, but also note the positive reception from those who appreciate the new direction.

10:03

💰 Financial Insights and Team Dynamics

The speaker provides a detailed financial breakdown of the newsletter's operations, including the total expenses of $140,000, with a significant portion allocated to team expenses and growth strategies. They discuss the shift from aggressive growth tactics to a more sustainable approach, focusing on the quality of subscribers over quantity. The speaker also touches on the team's evolution, from a larger team with various roles to a more streamlined and cost-effective structure. They highlight the importance of advertiser satisfaction and the strategy of selling ad space based on engaged metrics, which has resulted in a 35% repeat advertiser rate and a healthy payback period for subscriber acquisition costs.

15:04

🚀 Future Outlook and Advice for Aspiring Newsletter Owners

The speaker shares their vision for the newsletter's future, emphasizing the long-term approach to building a community of engaged subscribers and delivering value to advertisers. They discuss the decision to focus on quality over quantity and the importance of aligning the newsletter's content with the interests of its audience. The speaker offers advice for those looking to start a newsletter, stressing the importance of understanding costs, prioritizing organic growth, and ensuring advertiser satisfaction. They conclude by inviting viewers to subscribe to the newsletter for a wealth of information on online businesses, marketing strategies, and entrepreneurial insights.

Mindmap

Keywords

💡Newsletter

A newsletter is a regularly distributed publication that is typically used to share information and updates with a specific audience. In the video, the creator discusses the growth and monetization of their own newsletter, which is targeted towards online business owners and focuses on topics like marketing, business strategies, and online courses.

💡Revenue

Revenue refers to the income generated from the sale of goods or services. In the context of the video, the creator mentions that their newsletter has generated $17,396 in revenue over the last 30 days, indicating the financial success of their content delivery platform.

💡Organic Growth

Organic growth in the context of a newsletter or online platform refers to the increase in audience or subscribers that occurs naturally without paid advertising. The video describes initial organic growth tactics such as posting on Reddit and Twitter, which helped to attract the first few hundred subscribers.

💡Micro-Influencers

Micro-influencers are individuals with a smaller but highly engaged social media following, typically ranging from 500 to 10,000 followers. The video mentions leveraging partnerships with micro-influencers in the AI business space to grow the newsletter's subscriber base.

💡Engagement

Engagement, in the context of email marketing, refers to how interactive and responsive the audience is with the content, such as opening emails and clicking on links. The video emphasizes the importance of engagement over raw subscriber numbers, as it directly impacts the value provided to advertisers.

💡Rebrand

A rebrand involves changing the name, logo, or overall image of a company or product to appeal to a new audience or market. The video discusses the decision to rebrand the newsletter from 'Synthetic Mind' to 'Profit Snack' to better align with the content and audience interests.

💡Paid Ads

Paid ads are a form of advertising where the platform is compensated for displaying the advertisement to its audience. The video outlines the use of paid ads, particularly on Twitter, as a strategy for the newsletter's growth, resulting in more engaged and higher quality subscribers.

💡CPM (Cost Per Mille)

CPM, or cost per mille, is the advertising pricing model where the advertiser pays for every thousand impressions of their ad. The video mentions selling ad space in the newsletter based on a 35 CPM, which is tied to the open rates, providing a more reliable metric for advertisers.

💡Subscriber Churn

Subscriber churn refers to the loss of subscribers from a platform. The video describes the intentional removal of approximately 30,000 subscribers who did not meet engagement criteria, as well as the loss of subscribers during the rebranding process.

💡UTM Links

UTM links are URLs that contain UTM parameters, which are tags added to the end of a URL to track the source of traffic and measure the effectiveness of different marketing campaigns. The video mentions using UTM links to track the growth in subscribers from Twitter ads.

💡ROI (Return on Investment)

ROI is a measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the profitability of different investments. The video discusses the payback period for subscriber acquisition, indicating that the newsletter can recoup its growth investment within an average of five to six months.

Highlights

The newsletter 'Profit Snack' has generated $17,396 in revenue in the last 30 days, showcasing significant growth.

The transition from 'Synthetic Mind' to 'Profit Snack' involved a rebrand that cost $30,000.

The four stages of growth for the newsletter include organic guerrilla marketing, organic traction, automation of influencer outreach, and paid ads.

Early growth strategies involved aggressive posting on Reddit and Twitter, attracting the first 300-500 subscribers.

Utilizing micro-influencers in the AI space for partnerships resulted in a steady subscriber increase.

Spark Loop was used for influencer outreach, initially spending over $60,000 but later optimizing for better engagement.

The decision to focus on Twitter ads for subscriber growth due to higher engagement rates compared to Spark Loop.

The importance of removing unengaged subscribers to maintain a high-quality, responsive audience.

The rebrand to 'Profit Snack' aimed to shift focus from AI to a broader business perspective, sparking more passionate feedback.

Financials reveal a total spend of $140,000, with a current revenue of over $50,000, indicating a path towards profitability.

The team has been streamlined to reduce expenses, currently sitting at $5,000 per month.

A focus on advertiser results and quality content production, with a minimum of 20 hours of work put into each newsletter.

The business model is based on a 35 CPM tied to open rates, providing a better pitch for advertisers.

The goal is not to sell the business but to build a scalable, engaged community of online business owners.

Advice for newsletter owners includes understanding growth costs, focusing on organic growth, and ensuring advertiser results.

The long-term vision for 'Profit Snack' is to create a consistent, scalable business that can't be easily disrupted.

Transcripts

play00:00

in the last 30 days my newsletter did 17

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396 dollars in Revenue I've been

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building it for about eight months and a

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few months back I did a video explaining

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how I had grown my newsletter up to that

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point and I did everything except share

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what the newsletter was and today that's

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going to change as promised so I'll

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leave the newsletter as the top Link in

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the description it would mean a lot if

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you subscribed it is built for online

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business owners so it's perfect if

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you're watching this video you will love

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the newsletter but out of transparency I

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want you to see it now today we've got a

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couple great things to hit on and I have

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my notes here we're gonna hit on these

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five core things the four stages of

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growth that this newsletter went through

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our name switch and the Rebrand which

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basically burned thirty thousand dollars

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the team the financials and then advice

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for newsletter owners of any kind so I

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have not been on YouTube here in the

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last three to four months it's my first

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time ever taking a break for more than a

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week in the last six years so I spent

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the last quarter just working with our

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team both in this company and my

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e-commerce company we've been doing

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really well just focusing on there so I

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stepped away from YouTube now my

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newsletter is called profit snack it was

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formerly known as synthetic mind and it

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started out as a newsletter built around

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artificial intelligence with a focus on

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business talking about not only how to

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use AI in businesses but also the

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business side of AI all the companies

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funding it the new startups like because

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that's what interests me I have a

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co-founder on this company a good friend

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of mine Jonathan we've both built

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multiple multi-million dollar companies

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and we love business all of our friends

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are pretty much in some format business

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people investors entrepreneurs those are

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just the conversations the the way

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people think in that industry I love it

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I feed off of it and naturally that's

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just who my circle is filled with so

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building a community of people that are

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focused on that has been a dream of mine

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for a long time and that's exactly why

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I'm here on YouTube so I got a lot of

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stuff to go through here the four phases

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of growth we have gone through number

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one was organic Gorilla Marketing

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tactics super aggressive this is how we

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got the first three to five hundred

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people early on dozens of posts spamming

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on all the different Reddit board

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towards posting a bunch of tweets trying

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to just grab attention any way we could

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and that costed us zero dollars a lot of

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effort High Sweat Equity but there was

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no money being spent originally right at

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the beginning now the second phase was

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organic traction this started spending a

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little bit of money but here's what I

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mean I did multiple videos on how to use

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AI on this channel I didn't say it was

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my newsletter but I mentioned our

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newsletter and so we got a couple

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thousand people from that we were also

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posting a lot on Tick Tock starting to

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grow some Twitter stuff that was

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bringing in five to ten people a day and

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I reached out to about a hundred micro

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influencers who were doing anything in

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the AI business space and because micro

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influencers don't have a lot of

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followers 500 to 10 000 I'm getting

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responses from pretty much all of them

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and so we partnered with about 15 people

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and told them hey some of these people

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were referring us people for free which

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was crazy but I did offer a one dollar

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per subscriber deal and about 10 people

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took us up on that so we'd get about you

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know a thousand subscribers a month at

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most from that for the first couple

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months so all of this started trickling

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in our early subscribers and at this

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point we're three months in we're

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growing by 100 to 150 a day we're not

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spending a ton of money all is really

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well we're building the base getting

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good feedback and so now we want to

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start scaling which brings us into the

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third phase of growth this is where I

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was able to automate the process of

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reaching out to all these influencers

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and getting other people to promote us

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for a fee there's a platform called

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spark Loop and if you watched the last

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newsletter update video you would know

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that we were spending a lot of money on

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there that budget got absolutely axed

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and chopped and it's currently been zero

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for a while and I'm gonna explain

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exactly why and show you how you can

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actually use it effectively and we are

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going to again but there's a lot of

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stuff here we ramped up and spent over

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60 000 on the platform very quickly and

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to this day in total we spent about

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seventy thousand dollars with spark Loop

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now as of recently we have not spent

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much on spark Loop what we did is we

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went into the partner program RAM and we

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were able to edit our settings to filter

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each person who is allowed to promote us

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you see there's pending partner

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applications so we would go here and

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only accept referrals that we would pay

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for from people that were approved

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audiences because what was happening is

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we were getting a lot of unengaged

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subscribers and you can set filters here

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under the engagement screening where you

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only pay for people that opened at least

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four emails or you know subscribers must

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take at least three unique click actions

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you can set up whatever parameters you

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want so we weren't paying for all of our

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subscribers but we noticed on average

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that the overall audience from spark

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Loop which has been a good bit of people

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this is just in the last 30 days we

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slowed it down are not the most engaged

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a 37 open rate and a 1.55 click-through

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rate we currently have about a 45 to a

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48 open rate through the subs we're

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getting now not on spark Loop and our

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click-through rate on that is about 3.5

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so these people are significantly worse

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and really the open rate rate is is one

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metric but the click-through rate is the

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primary one we're looking at you know we

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can get people that are 2.5 times better

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and more engaged and that is the stuff

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that drives results and when advertisers

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are paying you money you need to be able

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to get them results that's what matters

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so we just took a look at this traffic

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source and it didn't really make sense

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these people weren't engaging our list

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was continuing to grow but our clicks

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were staying the same and that brings me

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to the fourth phase of growth that we've

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been going through now which is paid ads

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I want to quickly say I didn't add this

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as a line item but we've also spent

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about fifteen to twenty thousand dollars

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in other newsletters and that's been a

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really effective source of growth just a

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lot of active work communicating and

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it's Hit or Miss but we found a few that

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are good those people are super engaged

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but we pay about three dollars a

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subscriber for them so we have that as

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some of our growth but not a primary the

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final one that I want to mention the

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fourth stage of growth is Twitter I have

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two UTM links so this number is a little

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more like 2500 but uh continuing to grow

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and right here we kicked off another UTM

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link so it is still growing but here has

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been the number members from Twitter we

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did pause for like two days there when

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we did the transition with the name

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because the link was broken and stuff so

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if you go down here and take a look the

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open rate 43 percent and the

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click-through rate 3.5 so significantly

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more engaged people of course that's

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because the intentionality is higher now

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here's the big thing on spark Lube just

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like how beehive has like a power boost

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thing or whatever people are getting the

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pop-up after they subscribe to

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newsletter with a recommendation for

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others okay and people are getting paid

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to do that and so spark Loop has two

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features a growth side and a making

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money side which is called upscribe so

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we actually get paid money to refer

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people to other newsletters when they

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subscribe to ours there's a pop up there

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and the whole thing is when we're

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growing through spark Loop those people

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don't go back through our spark Loops we

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can't make money off them which is fine

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but it's still a cost so we are bringing

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in on average about a dollar Thirty to a

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dollar fifty per subscriber that we get

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through Twitter ads so I'm paying about

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three dollars on a bad day for these

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Subs so we're out of pocket about dollar

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fifty I'm just going to say two dollars

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absolute maximum for a much higher

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quality more engaged person and that's a

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number we're very comfortable with now I

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want to point out before we did the

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Rebrand and the switch from synthetic

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mind to profit snack the ads were geared

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towards AI talking about hey if you want

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to learn AI like subscribe here that's a

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Hot Topic right AI is new AI is sexy and

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we would get subs for about a dollar on

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Twitter and going into the business

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niche in general now of course that is

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more expensive so that's why we're

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seeing 250 to three dollars some days a

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little bit over three dollars sometimes

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up to four so it is definitely more

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expensive I'm still working like this

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morning I launched another like 15 split

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tests on different creatives and

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audiences so still trying to work on

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that but another thing I wanted to

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mention on the Rebrand side of things is

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we lost a lot of subscribers going

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through that process and actually before

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I dive into that we have removed

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probably about 30 000 subscribers from

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our list because they don't meet our

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engagement criteria and they're not

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actively opening and clicking and being

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involved we don't want them on our list

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we because the subscriber number is just

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showboating like somebody has a million

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subscribers that doesn't actually mean

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anything if people are not engaged and

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they're not opening and clicking on

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Advertiser stuff and taking action you

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don't have a business and so that's the

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core metric that matters and So

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currently as I'm filming this we have

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about 65 000 people on the list we've

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probably hit 90 95 you know and we've

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removed a lot of people and so going

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through the transition especially we

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were getting you know three four five

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hundred unsubscribes per email in the

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beginning and that's slowly fading off

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we knew that would happen but it's just

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been an interesting thing so let me dive

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into some of the details on this growth

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stuff and then we're going to get into

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the financials the team and kind of

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where we're going from here so number

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one on the organic guerrilla marketing

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super high effort and like I would

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definitely recommend building an

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audience and being able to grow

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organically it's great but I would

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definitely do early partnering just like

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what we did micro influencers have been

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super beneficial and if you can get any

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sort of traffic Source yourself you know

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go viral on Tick Tock you know I

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definitely do Twitter like do that to

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get some subs is really beneficial spark

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Loop which is the third one very lazy

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way to grow it's hit or miss the reason

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it didn't work as well for us as we were

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just paying a lot of money for the subs

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had we been doing the same thing but

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paying a dollar or a dollar fifty right

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at the beginning we're paying 350. but

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most of our subs we paid about 254.

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um you know we still make money on it

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it's just a much longer payback period

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and we'll get into the financials in a

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second so at our Peak we were hitting

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about 2 000 new followers a day most of

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that through spark Loop so we decided to

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stop that again because the list was

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growing but the engagement really wasn't

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the clicks and so that was the big

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problem it was a huge red flag and then

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the fourth one me being in charge of

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marketing when spark Loop then stopped

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and our growth plummeted I'm in charge

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of marketing so I had to go back to the

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drawing board and that's where I tried

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to figure out paid ads ran Facebook for

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a little bit wasn't working too well and

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then got fired up on Twitter set up an

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ad account there took a week or two of

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testing and hit the ground running we

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were getting 100 to 200 Subs a day with

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the AI stuff and then had to again Swap

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and shut that down and then now go into

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the business which is doing less I'm not

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really scaling it aggressively and the

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cost is higher but we're growing like 50

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Subs a day right now there and I do plan

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on ramping that up to about 200. we're

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okay spending the money on that now to

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talk about our Rebrand which I love by

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the way go go subscribe to the

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newsletter if you're not already it's

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the perfect place for online business

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owners and stuff we have nothing to sell

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there the newsletter's free we just we

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have advertisers in there and that's it

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um it's really interesting because I

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love the new site I love all this stuff

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we gave away two thousand dollars of

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profit snack t-shirts for free didn't

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even charge shipping and you know did

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that to our most engaged people who

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clicked the link first before they sold

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out we tried to make it really cool and

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I want to point out here we did a

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transition because we weren't interested

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in AI particularly AI shouldn't be the

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center it was a thing it was a just like

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any marketing platform can be a thing

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any style of selling it shouldn't be a

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core I think that's a mistake and we saw

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about a hundred literally a hundred

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other newsletters popping up in the AI

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space now we were like the third biggest

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for a while and we were growing two

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thousand day we could have ramped that

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up to four we could be one of the

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biggest right now we could have 200 000

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Subs all day long guaranteed in the AI

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space we'd be like the third or fourth

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biggest and build that into business

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it's just not interesting and the goal

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here with John and myself was not to

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build a business to to you know make

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half a million dollars or sell it for a

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million that's not the goal like what

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I'm explaining to you here is not the

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most efficient way to build a newsletter

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to make money that was not our objective

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we will make money on it but we're

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taking a long approach with really

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building the audience and the

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relationship there so a lot of the

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little things that you're hearing us do

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they don't make sense to most people

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that's because their goal is different

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right so a couple of things here with

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the name switch is we definitely lost a

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lot of subscribers we got a lot of

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negative feedback when we did that

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transition but it's okay like we want

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people divided with the AI stuff

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nobody's really interacting with us it

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was kind of like people are indifferent

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like like we don't really care about

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other content it's good bad but it's

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it's all right like we weren't getting

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the feedback we wanted you know as we

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were growing we tripled our list size

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but the amount of polls and feedback we

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got which is a section at the bottom

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remain the same and again just like the

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clicks that's a huge red flag so we

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wanted people to lean in man the

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feedback we've gotten since we changed a

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lot of people saying screw you man but a

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ton of people are like this is the best

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thing ever and that's what we wanted

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because we didn't have either of those

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before so we wanted people to really

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have a passion towards it now to talk

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about the financials this is the hot

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part we have spent a hundred and forty

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thousand dollars in total stick with me

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here 25 of that has been in team

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expenses which includes sales commission

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we've spent a hundred and five thousand

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in growth okay and about 70 that was

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spark Loop and we spent about 10 grand

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in operational software buying leads for

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advertisers now currently we've done a

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little over 50 000 in Revenue give or

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take last month was 17. so we're on the

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right track I know minimum we can do 10

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12 15 000 a month so that's where we're

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at like last month we sold 90 of our ad

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space which was great finally starting

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to hit stride with the sales process

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currently I our overhead is much less

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than it has been for the last five

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months in the previous video I talked

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about spending crazy money that was the

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the point we were at mostly off growth

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for a very short window of time I'll

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talk about our team and how we've

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trimmed them back recently but we're no

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longer needing to add cash to the

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business right now which is great

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because me and Jonathan have fronted a

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lot of money for this business we sell

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our ad space based on a 35 CPM which is

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tied to our open rates not subscribers

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like most people so it's been a much

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better pitch for advertisers it's a

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higher CPM than other people charge but

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it's off actual engaged metrics so we

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can do a video more specifics currently

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just so you know on the business side of

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things we have a payback period of about

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five to six months on average right now

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for any subs we acquire for two dollars

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and on average we're probably a little

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bit under that because of organic and

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other stuff so that's really nice that's

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a conservative rate we're fine with that

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most businesses would be thrilled to

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spend money and they'd make that back

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within six months that's insane so this

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business right now if we were to stop

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spending money on growth we could bring

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in about 140 to 150 000 a year which is

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about what we've spent okay so for a

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business that could be run with just the

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two Founders like we could easily handle

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it ourselves we don't need a team we do

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have a team that's a business that if we

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just kind of stopped the growth and that

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means we'd grow very slowly and just did

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that for a year we could go sell this

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thing for half a million all day long

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that would happen easily and that

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doesn't interest Us in the slightest

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like not one iota and so we're in a good

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place we spent a lot on growth but we

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have a good base and so we went

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ballistic with the growth and lost a

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chunk for sure due to the transition and

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we've trimmed a lot of people off the

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list but it's still a good position for

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us to be in so the team side of things

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we had six team members in a VA at one

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point which was a lot of people running

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really cool meetings every week doing a

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lot of stuff you know designers for the

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Rebrand and really leaning into the

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content so there's been a writer two

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additional people helped me with product

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development and ideas underneath it and

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for the company itself and then two

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sales people actually at one point

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um and then a virtual assistant and so

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these people like we're not cheap

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employees on a lot of that so we had a

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bloated team a lot of expenses we've

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been training trimming that back right

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now our team expenses are about five

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thousand dollars a month because we

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trimmed it so significantly so the

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business itself is running nice and

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smooth but at a good point we have a

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base asset of our list with over 65 000

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engaged people the the advertisers we're

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working with we have like a 30 plus

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percent maybe a 35 repeat Advertiser

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rate we want to get that to 70. we want

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to double that number because if you can

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just advertise with the same 510 people

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and they just pay you for one or two

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spots a month it makes life so much

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easier and that's what the big

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newsletters do so we've had a couple big

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companies billion dollar companies

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working with us that consistently

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promote once or twice a month and that's

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been amazing because their results are

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good and so a lot of newsletters

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especially in the AI space are not

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actually getting people results and the

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problem is they're focusing on sales and

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it's this wheel just like any business

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it's like if people aren't coming back

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you're just turning the wheel of sales

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and eventually it runs dry or your lead

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source is screwed up or it's too

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expensive it's also annoying it's a lot

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of effort it's ridiculous and so

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you know it's just one of those things

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to think about um and that that pretty

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much covers all my notes on here here's

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something I have to say for anybody who

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wants to start a newsletter go for it

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understand your cost me and my friend

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Jonathan mapped this out from day one

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before we had one subscriber and we knew

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we'd spend about a hundred and forty

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thousand exactly to get to break even

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and that is exactly what happened okay

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we're not I mean we we've both built

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multiple businesses so I'm not going to

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let a comment on a previous YouTube

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video be like oh we're doing the wrong

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things that's what a lot of people said

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we're not even optimizing for cash in

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this business and so don't do exactly

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what we did if your goal is different

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definitely spend money on growth find a

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way to offset it definitely grow

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organically that's the best biggest hack

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you can ever do and they're the most

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engaged subscribers and on top of that

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get your advertiser's results if you can

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do that now just kind of scam people on

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the sales side and actually like get

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quality people and produce quality

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content like each newsletter we we put

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out minimum 20 hours of work that goes

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into that with two people that handle

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that full-time and so it's like a lot of

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research a lot of effort and a lot of

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fun so you gotta love what you're doing

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because the results are not going to be

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quick this is definitely the like most

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unprofitable and slowest building

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business I've ever built and I knew that

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going into it and it's also one of the

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most scalable and that's what I really

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like about it it's a very consistent

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scalable business I've built e-commerce

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companies that have crushed a million

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dollars in a month before the problem is

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Facebook can randomly take your ad

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account out for no reason and they have

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and so with email it can't really be

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disrupted and you're building a

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community of engaged people and bringing

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them value and again it can't be

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disrupted that's what I like about it so

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that's what I have for you today

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subscribe to my newsletter it'd mean a

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lot to me but I know you'll enjoy it if

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you like this video because we talk

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about online businesses marketing hacks

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you know building companies investing

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online courses we just we break down

play18:02

everything we interview note people we

play18:04

do a lot of fun stuff we do the stuff

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that interests us as business owners so

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if that's something that interests you

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go ahead and subscribe it's free free

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and it will always be free I hope you

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enjoyed this video it'd mean a lot to me

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if you just left a like on the video

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that's it maybe say hello down in the

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comments it'd mean a lot to me and uh

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with that being said I hope you crush it

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with the newsletter or whatever online

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business you're doing this stuff is just

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so much fun

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