The Newsletter Pro October 2018

The Newsletter Pro October 2018

#120 in the 2015 and #343 in the 2016 INC. 500 | 2016, 2017, & 2018 Best Place to Work in Idaho | Marketer of the Year | 24K Club Winner

10.18 208.297.5700 www.thenewsletterpro.com

As Seen On:

INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

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Marketing Lies That Are Hurting Your Business

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What Sklar Technology Partners Has to Say About Us Are You Using the Right Bait to Catch Leads? Jim Collins Charts the Path to Greatness USPS vs. Online Marketing How to Craft Emails That Clients Will Actually Read

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FROMBUSINESSOWNER WILL YOU MAKE IT? TO CEO

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Get to Know Maggie Thompson Proof Eyewear Sets a New Standard

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There is a massive difference between being a business owner and being the CEO of your company. At some point, you have to make the transition, or your growth will stall. The reality is that anyone can be a business owner. For years, that’s exactly what I was. I had a number of small businesses that relied heavily on my involvement. If someone called in sick, I was up. Something broken? Call Shaun. If a decision needed to be made, no matter how big or small, everyone knew who to call. If we needed a plan or a new system, good news: That was my responsibility as well. Can you relate?

With 26 million businesses in the U.S. alone, you really are in an elite group of entrepreneurs if you hit any of the above milestones. But revenue alone doesn’t mean you’ve made the transition from business owner to CEO. To make the transition, you need a skill set that is not taught by many. You need systems and processes for running a business. For example, I used to have a 60 percent success rate with new hires, meaning that for each person I hired, only 60 percent of them would still work for me in six months. It was much worse when we looked at the employee retention rate 12 months after they were hired.

You may even blow up at them from time to time. You hope they’ll get the message, but no matter how many times you get pissed, they never seem to pick up what you’re putting down. Finally, you’ve had enough, and you bring them into your office and proceed to laundry-list all the things they’ve done wrong over the last few months. You can feel your blood pressure rising as you list dumb mistake after dumb mistake they’ve been making. Seriously, how could they not know these basic things? The employee might fight back a little, but ultimately, they feel so bad about themselves that they start to cry, and that’s when you let the hammer drop and tell them they’re fired. They shrink into their seat. As they sit there crying, you feel super guilty. This is a small office, and you know they’re a single mom with zero savings. As the guilt of firing them kicks in, you need to remind yourself why you’re firing them, so you share with them a few more areas where they’ve messed up, done a poor job, violated unwritten company policies, and cost you money.

This is how nearly all businesses start and end: with the business owner doing it all.

My crap abilities at hiring meant I had to use another skill I sucked at: firing people.

Because of this reliance on the business owner, you get to a point where the business stalls. This inability to transition from business owner to CEO is why only 4 percent of businesses ever make it to a revenue of a million dollars or more, less than 0.5 percent of businesses ever get to $5 million in revenue, and 0.1 percent of businesses grow to $10 million and above.

Tell me, have you ever had this experience?

You have an employee who isn’t cutting it. They are frustrating you on a regular basis, you start to lash out with your comments, and basically, any minor mistake made by this person can put you in a bad mood.

Continued on page 2 ...

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BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS TO HELP SMALL BUSINESSES SUCCEED.

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... COVER CONTINUED Ultimately, you walk them to their desk to pack up their stuff in front of everyone else in the company. You stand there wishing they would hurry up because the whole company is staring. Of course, this single mom is a sympathetic figure, and everyone in the company is now upset and fearful of losing their jobs. After this single mom leaves, you call a company meeting to let your staff know why this single mom no longer works here. Your reasons are 100 percent valid for firing her, but guilt over the situation is starting to kick in, and now, in front of the whole company, you proceed to bad-mouth the single mom and laundry-list all the reasons that she deserved to be fired. The sad truth about the above situation is that I’ve done this. Yup, that is based on a true story. I was once the business owner who operated just like this. It’s embarrassing, but it is the truth, and if I still operated like this, our company would be a fraction of the size it is today. Our employees would never have voted us one of the best places to work in Idaho for three years in a row. To make the transition from business owner to CEO, you have to change. You have to grow. It isn’t about sales and marketing. It is all about you figuring out how to create systems and processes. It is about you developing the skills necessary to hire and fire someone without a 40 percent failure rate or the drama I detailed above. You’ll struggle to get to a million dollars in sales without at least starting the transition process, and unless you’re venture-backed and have money to burn, you’ll never get to $3 million, $5 million, or $10 million in revenue. “It isn’t about SALES AND MARKETING. It is all about you FIGURING OUT how to create SYSTEMS and PROCESSES.” Did I get close?

It’s amazing how much has to change as you scale. Recently I had to hire a CFO. A few years ago, that seemed like the last position I’d need, but here I am. The honest truth about this hire is that I needed to do it a year ago but was blind to that fact for two reasons. One was a lack of experience in hiring a CFO. The second was the fact that I’m really good with numbers and had a good handle on the basics for longer than many owners would have, but they still got away from me. So, I’ve got some more questions for you. Do you really want to grow and scale? Do you want to go from business owner to CEO? If you’ve already started making that transition, do you want to improve your skills? If you want to make this transition or shortcut your journey, I have a small training I’m holding in my office on Oct. 25 and 26. The first day of the training, we’ll go over some of the most important systems and processes you need in order to start or continue your transition from business owner to CEO. On the second day, we’ll talk about what is working in sales and marketing right now. I’ll show you real ways (no theory here) to close more deals and generate more leads. These two days If not, that’s okay. Own the decision and ignore the rest of this article.

are going to be jampacked with content. You don’t want to miss them.

Now, I have one piece of bad news. I only have about 20 spots in my conference room for this training. As of this writing, a dozen of the tickets are already sold, so it is possible this training will be sold out by the time you get this. On the off chance it isn’t, and you want to come, you need to register right now because I guarantee we will be close to sold out. Go to NewsletterPro.com/scaleup.

–Shaun

P.S. If we are sold out, I do have a few spots left in my mastermind. Go to NewsletterPro.com/apply and we can jump on a quick call to see if the mastermind is a good fit.

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BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS TO HELP SMALL BUSINESSES SUCCEED.

208.297.5700

MARKETING LIES BUSINESS HOW-TO THAT ARE HURTING YOUR BUSINESS

We have to have some real talk here. For YEARS, we’ve been told direct response marketing is all you need. We’ve been told that if you can’t measure it down to the penny, you shouldn’t do it.

I can’t measure the impact my videos have on speeding up a sale or know 100 percent for sure that new lead did or didn’t come from a single video, but I know that when someone starts quoting me from a video I made, they’re very likely going to become a customer — or at least a fan. I can’t 100 percent track the impact each newsletter I send has on retention, referrals, and new sales, but I know that when I’m even one week late sending out my newsletter (that doesn’t happen anymore, but a few years ago, it happened all the time), my sales are down that week. I do know that every time the newsletter hits and I’m promoting our Tesla contest, I get new leads. I know that without the relationship building the newsletter provides, my churn is higher. But maybe I should stop sending it? According to Tony Robbins, it now takes an average of 16 touches before someone will even think about buying from you — 16 times! But if the first touch doesn’t work, let’s give up. If they don’t buy right away, our marketing is broken or the media doesn’t work. The funny thing is that we have so many more tools now to track, yet tracking is more difficult than ever. Have you ever wondered why that is? There is so much competition for our attention. For example, I’m trying to get your attention with this newsletter, but I don’t just want your attention here for 10–20 minutes. I also want you to subscribe to my podcast so we can chat weekly. (Seriously, though, it’s an awesome podcast: ShaunBuck.com/podcast.) I also want to engage with you at another time in the week via the Weekend Reading emails. Heck, I’d love for you to come to Boise for my sales and marketing bootcamp. (There may or may not be seats left by the time this publishes, but here is a link, just in case: NewsletterPro.com/scaleup.) We don’t live in the same marketing world anymore, and we have to stop acting like we do.

Let’s look at it another way. Have you ever wondered how a company that has zero revenue can be worth tens of millions? It all comes down to attention. Right now, attention is the most valuable asset on the planet. You can have a million eyeballs, no revenue to speak of, and still be worth tens of millions of dollars. Stores track average time in store; they discovered forever ago that the longer you’re in the store, the more you buy. Websites have found that the more times you log on and the more time you spend on the site, the more valuable you are, even if they haven’t figured out how to monetize you yet. In real-world businesses like yours and mine, the more attention you have, the more time you spend with customers and prospects. And the more celebrity or expert status you can create in their eyes, the more money you’ll make. This is also why churn is such an important number; the lower the churn and the longer you have someone’s attention, the more valuable they are to the company. I’ve often been asked why I use newsletters and why I prefer print over email. It’s simple. With print, I can get the average person to read for 10–15 minutes; with email, I get eight seconds. With print, I can lower churn; with email, I actually decrease how much people trust me, according to numerous studies I’ve read. Why print over email? Because that is what works to get people’s attention. If it ever shifts, I will cheerfully shift with it. I’ll leave you with this advice: Stop fighting against the change and start working with it. You need people’s attention and time, so focus on media that gets you that. Need help finding a reputable vendor for whatever media you’re planning on adding? Email me. If I know one, I’ll get you their name and number. [email protected] –Shaun

Well, that’s simply bad advice today.

When we were talking only about newspaper ads, radio, and yellow pages, that was good advice. Today, that advice is business suicide. The reality is that you can’t measure it all. Even if you could, the measuring of all media would be a full-time job. The testing would be brutal and very slow going.

Here is the reality of the world we live in today.

I can’t measure the impact of good reviews, but I still do marketing to get them, and I know for sure they help. I also know bad ones hurt. I can’t measure the impact of much of my social media, but I know people look me up on it and that if I didn’t have any social media, I’d lose business. Yes, I know you can measure paid ads. Can you measure the click fraud, though? I can’t measure the exact impact of each email and each direct mail piece in my nurture campaigns (I think there are 40 or 50 steps now), but I know I close less business without them. According to the advice being given today by many “gurus,” I should stop those campaigns, since I can’t 100 percent track that ROI. That is crazy talk and bad advice.

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BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS TO HELP SMALL BUSINESSES SUCCEED.

208.297.5700

MARKETING HOW-TO

CLIENT SUCCESS

Something That Works A DIGITAL EXPERT TALKS PRINT MEDIA There are two things every business should have: a podcast and a newsletter. It took me a little while to get on the newsletter train, but I’ve been working with The Newsletter Pro for going on three years, and I’ve never regretted it. People might ask, “Why does a >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8

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