Day 1 - Attempting The 9x12 Postcard Side Hustle.

Auto-generated from the video, lightly formatted. Expect a few typos.

My name is Hunter Stevenson. I'm 23 years old. I'm active duty in the Marine Corps. I run an insurance agency outside of the Marine Corps part-time. And this is my first week doing 9 by12 postcard method.

I call it the 9x12 method. This is where you sell advertising slots on a large postcard to local businesses. And the card is 9 by 12 in, hence the name, the 9x12 method. It's actually a pretty cool community builder because it allows local businesses to actually be able to afford mail marketing because they actually split the cost of marketing. And at the same time, you benefit because you make around 4 grand profit just for coordinating it.

Once you've sold out all of the ad slots, the card is mailed to 5,000 households in the community. So, it's great for the businesses. It's great for you for coordinating it and making profit. And the community benefits because they get discounts for local businesses around them that they already love. I kind of stumbled across this.

Um, I was just looking on YouTube at how I can generate free leads, different types of marketings that I can do for the insurance side of things. Um, and I talked to a few different companies about digital marketing on social media like Facebook and YouTube and Instagram and stuff. And it was going to be anywhere from like $3,000 a month plus the ad spend. So, you're really looking at around $4,000 to $5,000 a month. And they're targeting all over the US or they could target specific areas, but it was super super expensive.

Um, and at the time I I wasn't ready to put that kind of money into it yet because they also were saying that it takes so long to be able to get those results. It takes two or three months to actually dial in with the algorithm. So then I was like, well, where can I control it where I know exactly who it's going to? And then I looked into direct mail marketing, which I've heard from other people have said that it works pretty pretty good. Um, but I I've never really dabbled too much into it, so I didn't really know.

Um, and then I looked into that and I was seeing that it was about $3,000 to $5,000 um for every run or every run that I decided to do. Um, and it was just super super expensive. So, I was while I was looking at that direct mail marketing, I came across one of Mitchell's videos um and he was just explaining how you could use this to promote your own business. And as soon as he said that, it just clicked for me and I was like, "Let me look more into this. It's direct mail.

I'm able to build with the community and I'm able to also add another stream of income on top of the insurance agency and then the military." Um, so let me check everything. Let me see if the numbers work out. I did my due diligence. I looked at the numbers.

I looked at how much I could charge for everything and how much it would cost me to outsource everything and it just made sense. So I that day I gave myself a deadline. I said I need to start by this day. I'm going to get inside of the the community and I'm going to learn as much as I can over a week. I'm going to do all the stuff I need to do to set it up as far as like getting my business account set up, um my QuickBooks account, everything like that.

And I was going to take notice and absorb all the information I could within my first week. And then by Friday I was able to I started on a Monday. By Friday I was able to get my first sale and then that Saturday I made another sale and here we are now um a weekend a full weekend. We started on a Sunday night and it is now Sunday afternoon a week later. Um so I'm just going to bring be bringing you guys along the journey while I I do this for my second week.

Um so yeah, stay tuned. So right now what I'm doing is I've already made two sales. Um, well, I guess technically three if you're counting the one that I'm doing for myself with the insurance agency, but um, so I made a sale to a local gym, uh, kind of like a personal trainer that has his own gym and he does like cheerleading training and all types of stuff. Um, he's like a tumbling school and I've also done one to a landscaping company. So, that was super super easy.

The good thing is that I knew these people and I just called them up and I said, "Hey, what do you think about the idea of this? Like, is anybody doing this in town?" They both said, "No, nobody's doing that, but we would love it." And I was like, "All right, cool. I'm thinking about doing it."

They asked how much I was going to be charging. I told them, and they just immediately, right away, I didn't even have anything set up. I wasn't even ready to take payments. And they were like, "Let us just send you the money and then when you get it all set up, you put us on the card. We don't care if it happens this month or next month.

We just want to be on there." So, that was super easy. Um, so right now what I'm doing is I'm going to kind of make everything official, right? So, I have I don't I'm not doing a website yet, just because I'm not going super big. figure.

I'll do that once I start scaling. Um I just feel like I don't need it right now from everything that I've I've learned. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to watch a video on maybe like designing ads. Uh learn how to do that. And I'm going to try to either design an ad for them or design a flyer for me so when I'm emailing people.

Um I'm not currently living in the state that I want to do the marketing in. I want to do the marketing in Georgia. I'm currently living in North Carolina for the next 19 days before I get out of the military and then I'll be back in Georgia. So, most of my stuff is going to be through email for now. And just in case they start asking a lot of questions, I want to have like a little flyer where I can just send them this um and they can look at it.

It looks nice, it looks professional, and it kind of covers everything that they would be asking as far as pricing and how everything works. I'm going to tailor it to make it look like it's as easy on them as it can be. So, it's going to be completely done for you where I take care of everything, including ad design. Um, so once I finish watching this video, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to design up an ad and then I'll let you guys see it and then we'll go from there. All right.

Well, that took a little bit longer than expected. Um, it took me a minute to find a good video on how to do ads, one that I actually like liked and that was interesting to watch. Um, but I did get some notes for you guys. It also took me a super long time to create my flyer. Like I am not very good with Canva.

I've used it for some super basic stuff before, but I can tell you right now, me personally, I will not be designing anybody's ads. I'm just going to outsource that out to Mitchell and his team and just pay the $25 per ad for them to do that cuz that is not worth my time in my opinion. Some guys, they might like it, they might be good at it, but not for me. All right, so the biggest takeaways that I got from the video that I watched was a 60 3010 rule. Um, I've never heard of this.

So you want 60% to be your main color, six or 30% to be your secondary color, which complements the main color, and then 10% to be an accent color, which is contrast to the main and secondary. Um, so you want a really good headline. You want to have your contact info somewhere on there, a QR code if you have one. If you have a logo, use that. Um, this is more for like the actual specific ads on the postcards, not necessarily the flyer that I did, but Google reviews.

So, if your company has Google reviews, then make sure to like add those in the bot, not like the actual review, but how many stars they have on Google. Um, you utilize whites space outline hard to read text or use shadows. Like I'll show that on mine in a minute. Um, where it's kind of like if I like my background was a light tan and I was using white as the wording and it was kind of hard to read, but when I added a shadow on it, it made like the letters just pop and stand out and it just looked a thousand times better. Um, and it added some really good depth.

um use shapes instead of straight lines. Um so that kind of comes into like instead of just having a straight line across a page, try to add a shape and then kind of like turn it however and add it'll make more sense when I show you my ad. But add like little wavy lines or whatever it is. So that way it's not just straight lines across a page that just looks boring over a while or after a while. But um also add depth with shadows and layers.

Again, that's what I did with a lot of the words. And then use pictures. Keep it simple. State your advantages. That's a big one.

Um, if you have any offers or promos, state that. And then consistent fonts. So, two fonts max. I think I only used one. But yeah, I'll go ahead and I'll show you guys.

That was really fast. I ran through that, but I'll show you guys my ad that I created. Or not even my ad, but like my flyer that I created. Um, I'm not going to lie. It took me like six hours to do this.

So, I'm pretty tired, but we got it done. It's a win for the day. Um, and yeah, you guys can see it. So, this was the first ad, or not even ad, but like the first flyer that I made. Um, I thought it looked good at the time.

I kind of followed some steps from the video, but it didn't really look too good to me. So, then I changed it over to this right here, which I think is honestly a thousand times better. Um, you can kind of see, I don't know how well you can see it on camera, but if you look at these words up here, um, I used some shadows to kind of bring those out from the background. I added some like not shadow, I don't know what it's called, but I added an effect to these letters up here so they're not just plain. I have the name with some shadows.

I added like a little bit of the outline texture on the edge of that shape. Added my picture here um, with my name on it. So that way it kind of builds a little bit of reputation, a little bit of trustworthiness. Um, why choose us? I have who we are.

So, I I state that I'm a veteran, so that way I might attract more veteranowned businesses. Um, the name of the business, I I mention 5,000 households multiple times throughout here. I offer three reasons on why you should choose us. And I put in bold like these sections that I believe that would stand out. So, at least if they're just scanning over this, they can see, oh, I'll be a community leader.

I'll have a target audience, 5,000 households at 5 to 7 or 5 to 18 cents per household. Then I have completely done for you over here. And I state that again up here on the top that it's going to be done for you. Um, so I just say we have an in-house design team. I I explain like the stuff on the dimensions, the marketing.

So 5,000 households a month, poster route targeting, residential, single family homes, bundling and shipping. I explain how we take care of everything. And then I created, this will be the back of the page. It'll be like the ad size options. Um, and I spent all week um, coming up with these prices.

So, I have my reasonings for them and everything. So, I'm not going to get too in depth. It'll make the video too long, but we'll say 1/2 in. I have up here like obviously 3x two, 3x4, 6x4, but I know that when the postcard comes out, that's not the actual dimensions. So, down here I put actual sizes for USPS compliance.

Um, and then I specify the actual prices. I have some promotions on here that I would be willing to do. Um, and it shows how many spaces I have per card. I I give a little bit of benefits for each size. And then again, my contact information down at the bottom.

And this will be the back of the flyer. This is just so when I do get to Georgia and I start showing up in person, I can show them these or even um I can just email them the pictures if they really want it. But yeah, I think it looks pretty good. Um you guys can let me know what you think in the comments. I'm not a professional designer by any means, but I think for somebody with basically no experience, this is pretty good.

Okay, I just finished going through a little bit more of the course um that Mitchell has. Um, by the way, like what is it? I think it's $40 a month. And it's like, dude, your first 30 minutes in the course, you realize that it's it should be more than that in my opinion. Um, you get so much value, not only the course material, but the actual like just a community itself of people asking questions.

You can go in there and you see where other people made mistakes, where other people did good. But I I really like the way he lays it out. But anyways, I went in and I did the email scripts and I kind of just rewrote I didn't like change the way they're uh written, but I rewrote them into my own Google Docs separate from the the thing. That way I can just have it saved to the email. Um, and I have that ready.

Uh, so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to start putting together an email list. I'm going to look up all the businesses in the area. I'm going to create a spreadsheet. I was thinking about just paying Mitchell to do it. Um, but I kind of want to go through everything the first time myself and do it all by hand just so I can get a better understanding of everything of what goes into it.

Um, so that way when they are as if they do ask me questions or if I go to teach somebody else later on, I actually know what I'm doing rather than I just paid somebody else to do it. Um, eventually I do plan on just doing that cuz I think to scale any business, you have to go to replace yourself as fast as possible, which means outsourcing and hiring other people. So eventually I will do that, but for the first go around I'm going to do it myself for like the first uh one or two cards that I do just so I have a full understanding. But I'm going to go ahead and start working on that list. I have no idea how long it's going to take.

I'm going to try to get 200 um total to 250 total. I don't know how many I'm going to get by the end of the night, but it shouldn't be too hard. Plus a lot of the people that I already know, so I don't think that will really be too much of a problem. But whenever I get some on the list, I'll let you guys know and I'll be back. All right.

So, it's been probably about an hour and a half, two hours. I don't really remember exactly the time that I started, but I have about 30 emails that I think are pretty good. Um, businesses that I think I could promote well. Um, businesses that I think would do good. Um, people that are kind of already doing marketing.

Um, it took a little bit longer than I expected, but, you know, I've never done this before, so it's a learning curve. I'm not too worried about it. I'll take all night if I really have to. Um, so I know that in one of Mitchell's videos he was mentioning how to do the emailing on how to do the 30 a day and then multiple accounts and all that stuff and then to be careful with the new account because it might be flagged in whatever system they have. So I have this account I've had it for about a week.

Um, so I have been emailing back and forth to kind of warm it up with different companies and stuff. Not for like the this part but for other for other things as far as like pricing and stuff like that. So, I feel like it is warmed up, but it is very late right now on a Sunday night. So, I'm not going to email I'm not going to email anybody yet. I'm going to send out all the emails later on tomorrow in the morning.

And then I'm going to do the follow-ups in the afternoon or kind of like around closing time. And then I'll probably email those over the course of the next week or so. That way I don't flag my account for sending too many a day. I'm going to stick to what he did where it was uh five emails at a time. Um, so I'm I'm going to follow that so I can warm the account up a little bit more.

Um, possibly create another email account and then start doing that tomorrow and then we'll see if we can get any responses. Um, maybe we can fill the card up in the first week. Maybe it's going to take us two or three weeks. We have no idea. But most important thing is that we're taking action.

I had a deadline set that Monday was going to be the day that I start shooting the emails and it looks like we're coming on right on time. Just in perfect timing for this. So, I'm excited. I'm excited. All right.

So, I took the template that Mitchell provides and I kind of changed it up a little bit to make it fit what I was trying to do. Um, so I have this is the front page where I have the the actual name of the town and I'm calling it spotlight marketing. So, I kind of did this with like a little neon sign effect. Support your local businesses. I have two small ads on this side, two small ads here, medium, medium, and then a large.

And then the next page is the same thing, just reversed. So, I just swap the top layer and the bottom layer around. And same thing, Coington Spotlight and then some advertising for me. So, if another business owner sees this, they can call to reserve a spot, too. So, get your business featured with my info on there.

Um, I think it looks pretty good. I'm still debating on if I'm going to keep the back the black background. I'm not too sure yet, but I think this should work well. And when they asked me what the card is going to look like, this is what it should look like. And I might even try to get a sample or something so that way I can show them the actual size of it.

But so far so good. This didn't really take too long. It was already a pre-made template, so I'm starting to like everything's starting to come together very, very nice. So, we'll see. All right.

So, for this being the first week, I think we have really, really good progress made. Um, I think me doing the knowledge on the on the upper hand kind of helped me be a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more structured going in to know exactly what I had to do. Um, not only did I create a plan, but I created a system to achieve that plan. So, obviously the end goal is to get 18 businesses on this card. And without having a system on how to do that, it's never going to happen.

So, the system was pretty easy. You create the flyers, you get the email list, you do all these things in a certain specific order, and that way everything just falls into place. So when you start losing your mind, everything starts going crazy because you're overthinking, you just fall back to the system, and the system will get you to the end goal. I think that's one of the main things that you need to do with business. And it comes like that with not only in the military, but also um with my insurance business.

Everything falls back on systems. And at the end of the day, no matter how much you overthink, just fall back on your system and you'll be fine. Another thing I want to leave you guys with is a quote from this book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. If you haven't read it, I I highly highly suggest it or suggest it, my bad. Um, let's see really quick.

Oh, here it is. So, in the very beginning of the book, or at least this version of it, there's somebody named Herbert Spencer that uh Dale Carnegie quotes, and his quote is, "The great aim of education is not knowledge, but action." And you can spend weeks and months and years learning about something, getting all this knowledge and all this education about something, but at the end of the day, especially in business, all of that education, all that knowledge means absolutely nothing if you do not take action. You're not going to get rich just by knowing about the business. You have to actually get out there and do it.

You have to fail. You have to succeed. You have to try. You have to do these things in order to become successful. So, if you're watching this video, I mean, don't sit here and spend so much time wasting your time by learning a whole bunch of education that you've probably already watched before before you came to this video.

Don't spend the next month trying to learn everything. Just take action. Go ahead and set the plan. Get the things in process. And every day you should be doing something that's going to get you closer to that end goal.

And that's following the steps of the system that you create. And with that being said, I mean, this is the end of the first day. Tomorrow we'll start the emails. I'll go ahead and track how that does. Maybe we get a couple phone calls.

Who knows? Um, so you guys are just along for the ride. Hopefully you find this enjoying. See you guys next time.