He Turned $100 into $2500 in 10 Days - 9x12 Method Group Training

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We just had another amazing 9x12 postcard method live call. And if you don't know what the 9x12 postcard method is, it's in my opinion the only side hustle where you can truly make 5,000 in your first month without any upfront cost. And here's a quick spiel about it. This is where you sell advertising slots on a large postcard to local businesses. And the card is 9x12 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 by bringing the businesses together because you make around four grand profit just for coordinating it. The card is mailed to 5,000 households in the community. But imagine if you do this in two separate towns. That's 8,000 a month.

All right, now let's get to the training. I I read somewhere on one of your pages about a guy that had tremendous uh luck with the Facebook groups. Yeah, they're definitely hit or miss depending on the group, but when you hit a good group, you you get a lot of messages. Um the the ones you want to focus on posting in are like the community groups where it's actually residents talking. There's there's like business groups that won't help you at all because it's literally just all businesses advertising to each other and none of the businesses are actually paying attention to the post.

They're just posting to get their name out there. So, you probably wouldn't really get much from that. But the community groups for sure. And someone else posted um a brand new member of our group posted this morning and he said he's been going on to Facebook groups like community Facebook groups and he searches in the group call or text and then you're going to see all the posts where like contractors and different businesses posted like an advertisement for themselves saying call or text us. So then you know it's a textable number and you could just text them.

Most of the time it's like a a smaller business where it's the owner that you'd actually get on the phone especially when they say call or text. So, you could probably call those numbers and those would be some some good leads. That's brilliant. Yeah, I actually sent out some texts using that strategy this morning. Test it out.

Have you been able to make any sales yet? I'm working on my fourth card, but I've done them like once a year. I don't mind when people call me, but for me to make outgoing calls and talk to a secretary, got to hate that. So, one thing that could make that a little bit better is asking for referrals. So, anytime somebody over email says no to you, maybe just send one more email to them, like that's okay.

Do you know any businesses that would be interested? And they might just throw throw business names out there to get you off to get you to stop emailing them. But then you can reach out to those businesses and say, "Hey, Johnny's restaurant said that you may be interested in this and like over the phone." And it's just way less of a cold call in that case. And they'll be way more receptive to it.

So, you might be feel better that way. and it makes it makes it sound like you're more local all around better, especially if it's a recognizable name. My plan this week is to catch up on prospecting because I have been way too focused on the group and putting out content. I have barely done any prospecting myself, so I'm behind on that. So, I'm definitely going to do the email follow up with the phone call strategy.

Unfortunately, the city that I'm falling behind in has no good Facebook groups. And Facebook groups have always been very good for me. But able to find outsource cold callers. I haven't tried. I have one person who kind of handles the sales in one of my one of my towns, but I haven't specifically outsourced any cold callers.

When I was doing tables, I hired girls from the Philippines. They work very very cheap and they're very very good. Yeah, I'm I'm actually trying to do that as well. Uh there's a uh it's online jobs.ph.

Um it's like uh basically Indeed for Philippines. So I'm trying to uh get that uh running. So yeah, I kind of had the same idea like let's just pay these people like $4 an hour, $5 an hour to to go for eight hours a day. And um you know it'll it'll help. They have a bonus.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And then there's a bonus bonus report. They love bonuses.

They you know and it's not it's not like they're they're wanting like an extra few hundred bucks either. It's it's really like a day's wage is is is enough. So um yeah. I mean I've I've worked with them. It's just kind of hard to find because there's just so many applicants.

But you just you have to you have to go through them. You have to interview them. Make sure they don't have a like a really bad accent. Some of them do. So definitely I would recommend being on like a video call or something like that.

So that you went on Upworks with Upworks. Guys, if you're enjoying this call so far, please be sure to comment what you've learned. And if you're not part of the group yet, check the link in the description. It comes with my step-by-step road map to sell out your first card. And you get access to 2600 9x12 winners in the group that you can post and comment and talk to.

And you also get unlimited message access to me. So we'll literally hold your hand through selling out your first card, making your first five grand in profit. It's a no-brainer. If you have any interest in the 9x12 method, be sure to join us. Now, back to the video.

Upworks is similar to Fiverr, but more advanced. Oh, yeah. Okay. And the advantage to Upworks is they have a recording. The person who you're talking to, they made a recording.

So you can listen to them before you call them and you can hear their accent or non accent. Okay, cool. Yeah. Do you would you hire them to do the closing for you or you just hiring them to set the appointments? Just make appointments.

Just set appointments. Yeah. Yeah. Setting appointments is probably like closing what should be done I feel like by by us. Yeah, for sure.

I would I would trust that more anyway just to make sure Yeah. you're not they're not making false promises. Yeah. Right. Right.

But you just want to swift sift through like all the all the business owners that are just not going to be interested and just not waste your time on that. So definitely. And then there's somebody else in our group. His name is Leland and he is killing it with Facebook ads apparently. Um, I think he spent like 70 bucks on an ad, made three sales within under a week, I'm pretty sure, which I mean, 70 bucks for one ad, and it was a really simple ad.

I pinned it to the top of our group. So, if you haven't checked it out, it's right at the top of the group. He's he's had everything that he wrote down in it, so you can literally copy it. But, he's been successful with that. Facebook ads.

And then one guy put a a flyer up at a McDonald's drive-thru and got tons of calls. I know like within 12 hours he had two sales from that just by putting a flyer up in a McDonald's drive-thru. So yeah, all kinds of creative things. Too bad I don't have any McDonald's around me or I would try that. But Oh, come on.

You got to have a fast food restaurant somewhere. They don't even allow them in my town. They're franchises aren't aren't allowed in my town. But I mean, if I went a couple towns over, I I could find some. Yeah.

I'm surprised they let him put it put the flyers up on the on the board or whatever. I mean, what do you mean? Where did Where did he put the flyer? Was it on the board or the window or what? It was right on the uh like where people ordered like right at the the thing where they talking to the speaker.

I'm sure McDonald's didn't know know the flyer was there. He put it up like during after hours. So, Oh, wow. I'm sure it didn't last very long, but it got him a couple sales. So, yeah.

And you can't get I I mean, I'm not This is not legal advice, but I'm sure you can't get in that much trouble for putting a flyer up on there. Yeah. They probably just take it down and maybe call them and say, "Don't do that again." Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. If that If that. Okay. So, I'm going to go way back here. I need to get some help.

Maybe you guys can give me some advice. So, I set up three emails. Um my my little my personal website, whatever, is threeex designs. It's just like to sell t-shirts and coffee mugs and stuff, whatever. So, I'm that business.

Okay. Um, so I set up three emails with three different names, my name and two other names. So, I am stuck on the warming up the email thing. I'm stuck on that. I I mean, I started way way back and then some other stuff got in the way, but now I'm I'm ready to focus on this again.

So, I can't seem to get any responses. I sent out over the course of about three weeks probably about 300 emails the first time around and got like three responses back. So, I feel like it's going into spam. So, I set up three new email addresses. So, I don't want to do the same thing again.

So, what do y'all suggest? How I I don't quite understand how to warm up the emails and I've looked everywhere. So, I I put a I actually put a video out where I specifically broke down exactly how to warm it up. Um, okay. But basically, you for two weeks, you're going to want to send like no more than 10 emails per day per email, per email address.

And you don't want those 10 emails to be at the same time. So the more spread out you can do that like five emails and five emails a couple hours apart or even better if you just really space them out and make them custom in the first two weeks with brand new email addresses that you're you're much more likely to go to spam because they're they're much more weary of brand new email addresses. You got to be careful for two weeks and then after that two weeks you can probably bring it up to 20 emails a day. But you still want to make sure that you're splitting it up over time. That's the that's the most important part, splitting it up and make them slightly customized if you can.

And then so don't just use the don't just use the script. Um, you could probably get away with using the script, but it's better if you don't. So like add their name or add their business name. Maybe change up the subject each time. Like question for you.

I've got a question. like little changes. Okay. It's just there's no it's not an exact science, right? But it's it's like Yeah.

Unfortunately, they don't give you the exact numbers. All all that Gmail says is that you're allowed to send 500 emails a day, which is obviously misleading because you can send 500 emails a day. They're just all going to go to spam. But yeah, so and then after after about a month, you should be all right to go up to 30 emails a day. And you should never go over 30 emails a day per email address.

30 30 is the the safe limit. And you should still try to split those up probably three times a day at least. Okay. And I'll put the link to the video that I I broke this down. I broke down all the numbers.

I used Okay. So then that that brings me to something else. If I get Dustin to set me up an a website. Okay. And then I I use that website email address.

Does this change or do I still follow these rules? Still definitely follow those rules. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. No matter what, you'll you'll want you'll want to in fact you'll want to be even more careful with your personal domain because you really don't want to mess up that domain because once that domain's reputation is destroyed, then then it you're you got to use a brand new domain or just move on to Gmail. So, okay. We call them throwaway domains. Yeah.

Okay. And I just I just pasted the link to that video where I broke it down if you wanted to watch it later. You can probably skip to like three minutes in. Okay. All right.

Yeah, I looked and looked. I mean, since I fell off the community, the school thing, it has just exploded. I spent like three hours last night just finding stuff. It was really cool. Yeah.

Yeah. There's a there's a whole lot going on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I just um you know, I ended up having to find a new job and then one of the family members got sick and then um I had this other little side thing that I do and it got really really really really busy. So, I wasn't able to, you know, I had to drop something and since this was still kind of new, I said, "Okay, well that this can wait, but I really want to get get this going because obviously it's going to be a good thing, you know? I mean, I have no doubt about that. I just got to get it rolling."

Yeah. It's good to see you back. I was glad you had this today. I almost forgot about it. Yep.

Every Saturday. Every Saturday. Oh, see there. Even that's new. Yeah.

Yep. Every Saturday. And I'm might start bouncing like one time on Saturday and then the next week on Friday, next week on Saturday. Still trying to decide just so that people can join that can't join on Saturdays just to split it up. But just it'll be in the group calendar no matter what.

and I usually post an update. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll be right back.

All right. We'll wait here. So, I I actually have a question about the uh like when you're on the phone with potential uh guess the the owners. Um how do you pitch? Like what what is it that you pitch?

Like how do you start? Cuz like it's it's been difficult for me and like I'm not very salesy. So like I can't I'm not very good at conversations. So it's like a little bit awkward for me. So I just wanted to figure out if anybody had something that um just like a a good just interest grabbing just simply sending this simple copy.

Who's that? Someone someone's playing my video. Um so do you do you own another business in your town by chance or is this your your one business? Um, I I do run another business as well. It's like a real estate investment.

Yeah. Nice. So, you have an advantage because now you can come to them from the frame that you're another business owner in town. So, you basically would say, "Hey, I'm I own this business in whatever town you're in, the same town. I own this business in in Boston as well and I'm I'm reaching out to other local businesses because we're trying to set up this this big mailer and we're all going to split the cost of advertising.

Um and yeah, it's just a way. So really, you're just you're framing it so that you're going to be one of the advertisers as well. I'm not sure if you you are or you're not, but you're you're splitting you're you're framing it that you're not selling them on the ad. You're just you're the one that's going around getting businesses to join you. So, it's like a team thing rather than you actually selling them on the ad.

If that makes sense. Gotcha. That's Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Yeah.

And there's Yeah, cuz like when when they when they start picking up, it's just kind of like I I I guess I I freeze a little bit and I'm just like kind of like uh Yeah. So, like I I I guess I just don't have that like set script to to start off on. So, that's kind of what uh what I've been running into. It's It's been a little difficult. Yeah, that makes sense.

There's um there was a guy named Ben Bradley who hasn't been on our in our group for a while, but he actually posted a video of like that exact script because he was I think a contractor and he was doing this for advertising his business. So, I'll try to find that post and and send it to you after this call. But but he he he posted a video of exactly what he says and it was it was spot on. That's he he sold his card wicked fast using that script. Let me just set a reminder.

That'd be awesome. That's what's great about our group. I don't know everything. So, if I just started a YouTube channel and tried to teach people everything, I would not be able to teach all that much. But because we have the community, everybody's teaching so many different things.

And then we can come together on this and spread it to everybody. It's great. so many great strategies that are way better than what I started out with, which was just emailing. So, Rich, are you familiar with Brevo? B reve I recognize the name, but I'm not sure what it is.

It's a mailing service. Okay. Out for um I used to do $10. I could send out I think it was about 2,000 emails a month. Oh, I see.

An email email service. 2,000 emails a month. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of those. Yeah, there there are.

I've I've been on two of them. Brevo, I think, is the best. But um you when you're filling out the form, you have to fill out a form saying where did you get the leads from? If you bought the leads, they won't take you. They want them to be your customers.

Interesting. That's interesting. Yeah. I guess they're they're just trying to make sure you're you're compliant. Exactly.

But as long as you do have the the un as long as they're they're public facing emails and you have an unsubscribe link or a way for them to unsubscribe, like you specifically say, "Please let me know whether or not you're interested in this, then you're compliant." Well, Brevo puts that on every email they send out and unsubscribe. Everyone Yeah. Good. But they still want you to have the list from somewhere else.

The list has to come to you somehow. Yeah. Are you are you when you're when you're cold emailing, are you sending from Brevo with a unsubscribe link? I've done it. When I did the tables, I send a lot more emails out.

Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. I personally I don't I just send it from like personal email or I send it you know one by one so that there isn't an unsubscribe link because as long as you have the language saying like let me know whether or not this is something you're interested in then that's equivalent um in terms of compliance to having an unsubscribe link and it's a lot more natural because as soon as they see an unsubscribe link they're they're just going to say remove me from your list because they just assume you're on they're on a list right everyone I've seen these a lot. CA means help me.

Are is anyone here already using the 9 by12 method CRM? No, I didn't I didn't actually uh get any update on that. Is it is it up and running? Were you on the wait list? I was not.

No. Okay. So, right now the wait list now. you can't I'll I'll message you the link, but right now we were just we only released it to the wait list um just because we didn't want to totally overload things at first and we had a pretty big wait list. Um but unfortunately I think half the weight list still doesn't know about it that we launched because my emails are going to promotions because the promotions like filtering is so good nowadays it's impossible to like send any sort of promotional email and not have it end up there.

So, people should start checking their promotions because my newsletters are going there. Everything's going there. But I'll I'll DM you that the link when we're done. Cool. Awesome.

Awesome. Sounds good. Yep. Also, yeah, I think you saw that Amy Amy posted that link to the to the cold calling video. Yeah.

Yeah, I copied that. I'll probably watch that about 10 times. Yeah. Yeah, you should. It's good.

It's good. That's exactly what you need. And you have an advantage. It's crazy advantage when you already have a business in town. As soon as you say you're a business owner in the same town, they respect you a lot more.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. And even if you didn't, I say it like if I didn't I I'm also a business owner in my town. I'm a realtor.

But if I wasn't, I would still say I I run I run a small business in blank town. Because you do. The 9 by12 business is a small business in blank town. So you're not lying about that. But Right.

Right. Right. Okay. So you wouldn't you wouldn't pose yourself as as like a marketing agency or agent of that. You would just be more like not personally.

No. Especially not when I'm cold reaching out. As I'm scaling, I would try to build a brand around it and try to come across as more of a professional agency. But in terms of cold outreach, I keep things casual. For sure.

Makes sense. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, cuz I as soon as like marketing comes out, they're just like, "Yeah."

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And you just really want to sell the the community aspect of it, you know, community aspect and the fact, I mean, obviously, it's so much stickier than junk mail because, for example, a roofer sends out mail. Nine times out of 10, the resident isn't going to need a brand new roof. It's not like a impulse buy type of thing.

So, that nail is going to go in the trash. But the thing is, when there's 15 other potential offers on this card, residents are going to hold on to it for that much longer, maybe even put it on their fridge because they can't use the offers all at once. So, despite the fact they don't need a roof right away, your brand is still in front of them for possibly a month, which is way more important, obviously. Right. Right.

And use, do you know Anderson Windows? Yeah. Yeah. Use their name. Whenever somebody says mail marketing doesn't work, ask them if they know Anderson Windows.

Just ask them the question. Don't tell them. Just ask them, "Do you know Anderson Windows?" And then when they say yes, say, "How do you know Anderson Windows?" And they can't not say that they get spammed in their mailbox by Anderson Windows.

Yeah. Okay. Start over. What did that mean? Oh.

We were talking about Anderson Wig. Yeah. I'm so glad you recorded these. Yeah, the one last week. We went for almost two and a half hours.

Yeah, I haven't watched that one yet. I'm excited about watching that one. It's been storming here. I'm in North Texas and it's been storming here like crazy. And so I, you know, I'm trying to get my garden set up.

I went out there earlier this morning to go out there and, you know, weed eat some and mow some and get it ready and everything. And I'm just sinking in mud. It's like a swamp out there right I can't do a darn thing out there today. So, yeah. Got another project going on here.

There you go. There you go. Yeah. To be good day to get caught up on everything. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I don't know if anybody's touched on this or not, but um is anybody um getting um I know Mitchell, I know you do this, but um also through um Fiverr, I've been getting um a list of email addresses and and businesses from some lady in Pakistan or somewhere. Um she's really good. She's she's got she always gives me way more than what I pay for. You know, I think I'm paying for 500 and I end up getting 700 from her or whatever.

And most of them are good addresses. I mean, and she gives me the name of the business, um, what, um, industry they're in, you know, realtors or construction or whatever. Um, she gives me their address, their physical address, their email address, a phone number, and if she can find a website for them, she'll do that. Um, not just a Facebook, but I mean like a website. She puts the Facebook in there, she can find it, but it's it's, you know, she does the website.

So, you know, I really feel like I'm getting a good value for that because she only charges me like 20 bucks. I mean, for that list. It's crazy. Yeah. And so, you know, that's that's what I'm using.

So, that's good. Your list is probably cleaner, but you know, for 20 bucks, I mean, yeah, it's not bad. How do you know that they're uh good emails? Did you check them with like Never Bounce or they're just not bouncing much? Um, no.

No. Um Um, what I Well, I don't know anything about NeverBounce. I'm going to write that down because that's first I've heard about that. Probably needed that information. Um, basically what I did was I just kind of went in there and just cold called some of them and said, "Hey, I just want to send you some information, you know, or you know, whatever nonsense I was saying."

And the handful that I checked were good at email addresses. Um, I did probably about oh, probably about 20 of those because I was kind of I was kind of worried that maybe it was just some random email address, but but I think there was only one and it was because the person who was on the email address wasn't with the company anymore. but she gave me the company like the info at whatever whatever. So, I was able to replace that one. So, that's good.

Yeah. Sounds like you have a good list and that's that's nice and cheap. I hope so. I hope so. We'll see.

Yeah, we'll see. See if I start getting stuff back. Joey, it's called Never Bounce and it's how you you can use it to test emails. You can test a whole list of emails. I don't think it's free.

There might be a certain amount of emails that are free, but you just test your list to make sure they're valid emails. Because another thing that can send you to spam is if you buy a a really crappy list of emails um and a lot of them bounce, like they're non-existing emails anymore. If a lot of those bounce, then you could get eventually start getting sent to spam. You get seen as a spammer. The never bounce is helpful for that.

And then people keep asking for the CRM link. So, I'm going to just You guys have exclusive access. I'm posting the CRM link right right in the chat right now so you can get it there. So there's there's tons of CRM out there and they're great, but they're also kind of like trying to fit a triangle peg into a circular hole. And I noticed that a lot of them just have a a crazy learning curve.

They have way too many features because they're trying to fit so many different business models. So I wanted to build something that is built for 9x12ers. It's built by myself and my developer who is also a 9 by12er in our group and it's just built specifically for the 9 by12 business. No bluff, no extra features and it's only going to get better. It's a lot less confusing to learn than like go high level which is what I was recommending before.

And you said I wrote down 30. Is that right? Don't ever go over 30 emails a day when I get started. When you get warmed up, even after you're warmed up. Yeah.

30 is the like the safe limit. Don't go over 30 per day per email address. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I put it.

I I created three mine plus one uh plus two. So, yeah. And if you have like I like your formula. Go ahead. Go ahead.

You go ahead. I was just going to say that you said somewhere in there I found an email that said 100 emails should get me 15 responses and out of 15 responses I should get three to five closes. Is that that seems kind of high. Is that accurate? I mean, you think that was my experience my first month.

Where did I write that? Did I write that in the course? Yeah. Some No, somewhere in the post. I saw that in a post.

Gotcha. So, that was my experience my first month. And I'll admit my first month went a lot smoother than when I've gone to other towns. And I'm not sure if that's because people know me a little bit more in my town or what it was, but that was my experience the first month. I'd say it's probably a bit less easy than that.

Um, but if you're doing proper followup with these emails, like if if you're following up with the people who ghost you, then you could probably hit those those number of closes, like three closes per per 100 contacts. But you got to make sure to follow up with them. And it's even better. It sounds like you're okay with cold calling. So, it's even better if you call them to follow up because they're probably ghosting you because you're just another salesperson on their email.

So, as soon as they hear your voice, it's way more personal. Okay. Okay. And Dalton said he he did email outreach this week and Facebook outreach. They reached 170 businesses and sold four spots.

That's awesome. That is sweet. So, so I have one one spot that's that's she's just waiting for a good card, you know, for for us to to get a card, you know? I mean, cuz I sold it sold it way early on, but I haven't filled up a card since at all. At all.

So, I just keep going back to her saying, "Okay, we're not there yet. We're not there yet." And she'll and she gives me referrals and, you know, all this. So, is there a a good plan for kind of those holdovers that that are ready to go, but they're it's just I'm not ready to go yet. What's the experience with that?

Yes. Did you say she she did or didn't pay yet? She has not paid yet, but she's just waiting until I say, "Okay, good. We've just about got this card filled up. You're up, you know."

Um, I would I would advise against that. Um, I would advise to at least get a 50% payment upfront. Otherwise, what you'll you might learn the hard way is a lot of people, you'll think you have a card filled up and then when it comes time to collect payment, you'll only have like 25% of the card filled up because now they're they're cold again. and they haven't heard from you in a month and it's just a lot easier for them to say no later down the road. So that would really stink for you because you think you have the whole card filled up and you tell everyone you try to collect the the money and then all your it seems like your work went down the drain.

So I wouldn't be afraid to at least collect 50% upfront so that they're somewhat locked in. Um, but and you a lot of people are really stressed about the timeline and what I've found out firsthand because I've put out cards weeks late. Businesses unless they've expressly like mentioned to you that they're trying to put out this ad because they have a specific event on a certain date, which is very rare. If if that's not the case, businesses do not care when it goes out. As long as you communicate with them throughout the process and let them know where you're at throughout the process and they know that it's going to go out eventually.

So, as long as you don't fall off the face of the earth, they they literally do not care. Most of the time they they forgot they even like paid you. Like it there's so many things going on in their life, they're not worried about us as much as you would think. So, don't stress about the timeline and but don't give like a specific day that you plan on putting out the print. Try to give yourself Oh, no.

I've always just said, "I'm trying to get it out for 1 of March. I'm trying to get it out for 1 of May or whatever." You know, that's that's kind of that's kind of what or I usually say, "I'm shooting for." So, you know, they know that it's not written in stone, you know. Yep.

And that's like I said, yeah, that's that's been the case ever since I got started on all this is I was shooting for shooting for. Well, now I'm not getting started all over again. So, yeah. What are we in May? So, I guess I'm shooting for first of June now.

That's all right. as long as you you just I'm sure if you reached out to that business and well in this case they haven't paid yet so I I would just honestly follow up with them make sure they're still interested and if they are interested um say just send them the invoice and be like okay I just sent over the invoice to officially claim your spot um okay and then and then these are the the details I'll need from you so you're actually getting the ball rolling you can ask them if they want their ad designed or if you're going to design it And okay, yeah, that's usually how I do it. I send the invoice as soon as they tell me that they're interested and ready. I send the invoice. I don't I don't ask if they're ready to pay.

I send the invoice and I follow up with another email because the invoice is most likely going to come from a different email address so they might not notice it. So, I make sure to follow up with another email in the same exact thread that we've been talking on saying, "Just sent you the invoice and to officially claim your spot." Yeah, nobody ever complains about having to pay upfront. Let's see. We got a lot of questions in the chat.

What's going on, William? Hey, good to see you. Amy has a good question about writing down on a paper calendar what their action steps are. I have to do that. I have to block out my time because I've got so much else going on.

Yeah. Um I've definitely I I've done time blocking. Honestly, my life has gotten so it's all over the place. It's hard to even plan out my day because it changes every hour. But I've definitely seen the benefits of time blocking when you when you just have to do the same activities every day like prospecting.

It helps a lot and it helps you stay accountable for sure. I've never done it on a paper. I'm working on the same I'm working on time blocking better and uh because you know trying to right now I'm so busy I I got to cut out time for prospecting and uh I've been you know implementing the time blocks. I do it in my code when I code a lot and stuff. I'm just transferring that over to this business and uh hoping it turns into more productivity for sure.

Joey says Facebook DMs has gotten the most responses. Good. I've I like Facebook DMs. I ended up You have to be careful with Facebook because you'll end up going to promotions just like email. So, that ended up happen to me which stinks.

And I know nothing about how to get out of that jail. Are you Facebook messaging from uh personal pages or from a business? Yeah, I Facebook message from my personal page. That way they can see I'm I'm a local. I'm in town and I actually like have a life and exist and I'm not a bot just spamming them.

That's my Yeah, that's that was my thought. Yeah. Let's see. Jay said, "Where do you post?" Um are you talking about like in Facebook like when we're talking about Facebook groups?

Yeah. Yeah. just cuz like where I am for some reason like they don't really have like a place for businesses just like small businesses in the area. So it's very like I don't even know where to post. Yeah.

Honestly, those aren't the groups you would want to post in anyway. The small business groups you're probably not going to get much response there because it's just it's all small businesses that are posting and leaving the group. There's no like interaction. They're just there to advertise for themselves. So it's kind of just like a dead group.

If you actually look at the group, it's like a dead group. each post gets one like maybe because no one's actually paying attention to the other posts. So, you'll want to go into like a real community group like like whatever city you're in, it's going to be like life in Boston or it's it's going to have like a it's it's all the residents that live there. And some groups will have like rules around you can only post ads on certain days or something like that. So, you'll just want to read those rules and get used to them.

But, there should be I'm sure there's at least one community group in there. Just look up the name of your town or city and there will be Sasha for sure. Cool. And you can even hit the the surrounding towns if they're close enough that there there could be advertisers like service businesses that would still push over to do work in your town. Yeah.

Yeah, I got you. And I' I've found a small business a small business depending on how small doesn't I mean constantly we it's out of our budget. It's not in our budget. It's not in our budget. But if you go to the bigger ones, then they don't talk about their budget, you know, as much as much.

But those because that's what I did in the beginning too. I I started joining those small business groups of whatever city and and that's what I was hearing. Don't it's not in the budget. It's not in the budget because they don't have the the money up front. You know, they're struggling dayto-day just like the rest of us are.

You know, they're they're just trying to to get their business up and going. So, they don't have even $500 to throw at a card like that. And and the way I also explained it to my daughter, she was talking about doing this as well. Um she said, "Well, I'll just go to my my my local hair salon or whatever." And I said, "Okay, but think about this.

How long will it take your stylist to recoup that $500 that she puts out? You know, because if she's only charging 50 bucks a haircut, she's going to need at least 10 new customers to make up for that $500 that she just gave you. How long is it going to take her for So, you know, when I kind of put it in that perspective for her, the bigger companies can afford the $500 better than the smaller ones can. You know, a fencing company can make up $500 in one customer. Yeah.

But like the hair salons, the nail salons, you know, some restaurants, you know, depending on the size, the mom and pop shops, you know, mom and pop restaurants might have a little bit harder time to do that. But, you know, that's kind of how I put it out there to her and, you know, it made it made sense to me anyway. I don't know. It's definitely easier to close companies that have higher ticket prices. Like realtors are Yeah, definitely try to get a realtor on your car.

They there's no way you can't close a realtor on this as long as you can get them to listen to you for 10 minutes. But yeah, but I I' there for the salon example that you used, it's more there's more to it than just getting one customer for 50 bucks because not only is it new customers, but it's also returning customers being reminded that they need a haircut. And it's also any new customer is most likely, as long as they have good service, is most likely not just $50 because they're most likely going to repeat. So, let's say on average they get two haircuts a year. Every year that's $100, but they could be there for years.

But also that one new customer can bring in three referrals when they tell their friends how fantastic their haircut was and remind their friends that they need haircuts. So, it's it goes deeper than just one sale, one level. So, that if you when you when you present it like that with the businesses who say, "Well, I just sell a $5 cup of coffee. How's it going to help me?" You can really sell it on how how much deeper it goes than that.

You also have um different sizes that you work with. Yeah. If you have a smaller one, I think um like I I have three different sizes and though the the one that's like 300 bucks, I I would just sell it as it's $10 a day. That's that's all you're you're really going to spend. So, even if it's one customer a day that you get, it's you're still making a profit.

I like that. I started out selling um one-third slots. So, like, you know, one of the normal mediumsiz slots. That's I call that a medium slot. And I started out with those split up into thirds as well.

And I noticed for some reason those little tiny slots were just as hard to sell as the medium slot. So, I just got rid of the small slots altogether. And so now I just do medium and large. But that was just what I noticed. And your large slots are just two mediums.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't I don't limit myself to like a specific template where like I only can sell one large slot.

However many large slots I sell, I'll I'll sell. Like if So if I sell eight large slots, I'm I'm happy with that. Less prospecting. a little less profit, but it's the amount of time saved is is worth the the loss in profit because then you can you have more time to fill up another card. Yeah, I I take I'm kind of taking the same approach.

um basically you know what the business wants I'm going to give I have a template and I use the sizes and say hey you can have you know this size or this size or this size and if they want you know I'm not going to limit it to just you know I say only one in my marketing material to create the urgency factor but if they were to say I really want a large one and like especially if it's a new card or it's like the last thing I need to sell absolutely um but also I kind of I kind of use a little bias as like what kind of business would you know is that business going to actually attract others to the card or you know you know what I mean like is it a high value business or you know um that sort of thing but yeah I know you know to me it's an ad space whatever my customer wants whatever 100% and I mean take what you can get if someone offers a payment find a way to make it work. You don't want to leave money on the table. Yeah, for sure. And Joey Joey said you can't get a realtor on the phone in the area he's hitting. Joey, try calling a real estate broker.

So, I think Keller Williams Realy is a big big franchise. Call just look up um Keller Williams Realy in your city. Go to their website and you'll be able to find their their broker's number or their team leader. Just some somebody who seems like they're important. call them.

They basically have to answer the phone and also they can spread the word to like the 300 realtor in their company. So you'll definitely close one just by reaching out to the broker and maybe the broker they might just want to advertise for the entire franchise. So they they have money to burn. So instead of reaching out to the realtors who don't pick up, reach out to my daughter put it on the front porch and maybe she if anybody is skeptical. Okay, so Dalton says, "Does anyone run into people being skeptical if you're not in their area and has that affected sales?

We're doing local first but want to do other cities next?" I'm sure people that people might ask if you're from around there and anytime there's skepticism, just try to get them on the phone and that skepticism immediately melts away because then they just realize you're actually a human. You're not part of this huge massive scheme. you're just person talking to them on the phone. And you can also mention that like you you did it in your your local town in blank.

You can be honest about where that is and be honest about your name. You should have a name, have a personality, be a cool person. Um we did this in my town and now we're looking to expand to here. Simple as that. As soon as you if anybody's skeptical about anything, just offer to get them on the phone.

I'll jump in on that. I definitely had uh I definitely ran into that issue. Um I'm sorry. I was uh All right, there we go. Yep.

I definitely ran into that. What's going on, man? What's going on? Hey, uh thank you for the calls. I've been listening in.

I've been missing most of them, but uh this has been really good. But I I did I was uh calling the other day and a lady asked me, "Well, what organization are you with?" And I was like, "Man, I'm not I'm not I'm not with an organization. Uh just me by myself." And I didn't necessarily know what to say cuz I was like, "Oo, this doesn't sound professional."

It sound like you're hustling and you asking these people to invest in you and they don't know you. You don't necessarily have an online presence or anything that somebody who has that mindset can say, "Oh, this is a legitimate person or this is a real business or this somebody just scamming or hustling." So, uh, I've been trying to really work through that in my own head or maybe it's just like, uh, not not allowing that perspect that perception to affect my my flow. So, I just want to know like, have you ever run into that or had any that type of situation where somebody be like, well, what makes you legitimate? Totally.

And if you don't have that brand recognition yet because you're you're all alone, then what you should use in that case is social proof. So instead of trying to answer their question directly, you can answer their question, be like, "Yeah, I'm I'm a it's a solo show or whatever." And and then just quickly sidestep and say, "And we already had Dave Pressure Washing um has jumped on board and Papa's Pizzeria." And just name businesses that have jumped on board that they're going to recognize. And you can, if you've already done other cards, you can mention other businesses that have been on your previous cards.

So that'll get easier over time once you have the social proof. But if you have one one business that's that's expressed interest, you could even leverage that. Like Papa's Pizzeria has they might be joining us as well. We're just trying to bring all the all these local locally respected businesses together to split the cost of marketing. So social proof if you don't have your own brand or anything for sure.

Yeah. I think just being up front is key. You know, don't try to Basically, tell them, you know, I'm getting going. You know, I'm in the process of legitimateizing myself. Like, you all start somewhere.

Remind them that they probably started somewhere that you're where they used to be and they want, you know, this is what you're offering. Um, I was I was talking to a local business, brand new business this morning. And I had a two-hour meeting with the guy and he was talking about doing a solo campaign and I told him about the mailer and I says, you know, you're going to spend thousands on solo, but I got this shared mailer. I says, you know, and he loved it. He was like, yeah, get me on this.

And it's just like, I'm just starting up this business. I don't have who am I, right? I mean, I met with a guy in person and, you know, because he just happened to be literally three doors down from my house. Um, which always works out well, but it's just like, you know, I just went in with like, yeah, I'm starting up this business. I've been doing, you know, work for clients for years and I build websites and everything.

We just had a great conversation. Just kept it real and ultimately I ended up with his business and it's going to be worth more than just my shared mailer. I've got a website coming out of it. I've got his entire marketing is going through my business now. All from this one lead.

So, it's just be real. Just be real. That's good. Thank you. And and don't overthink that.

I'm not sure if you're you're mentioning from experience that you're getting that objection a lot, but for my experience, that's not super common of an objection anyway. Most people don't care that it's a oneman show because I mean, a lot of the people we're reaching out to are a oneman show or twoman show. And honestly, something that my client had told me, my now new client told me is, and it it hit home and he was right. He's like, make sure you have a website, right, for people to because people will research you. they will find out about you.

Just have a I call it a brochure website. Just you don't have to be super detailed and try to sell them on the website. Just who you are, what you do, what you're offering, right? And get them, you know, the call to action. Call me or email me.

Um, simple. It doesn't have to be extravagant, but um, you know, people do their homework nowadays. And just make sure when they do the homework, they find you and they can learn about you. It's all there is to it. Yeah, that's legit.

For sure. It'll be helpful to have it an active Facebook group or active Facebook page, too. So, if you create a Facebook business page, post it in our school community, tell everyone to follow you. So, then you have a bunch of followers. People have been doing that.

Man, I'll do that. I So, I'm realizing uh last year around this time, I actually deleted all my social media. So, I'm realizing like, man, you should have just pivoted instead of delete everything. But I know gotta start back up for sure. Happens.

And back to the website thing. If you're going to have a website, make sure you have it. Make sure it's not horrendously ugly. So, I'd say no website is better than an ugly website. But, so if you're going to have a website, it doesn't have to be fancy.

Just make sure it's not like a really poor website, right? That's what I have to say on that. Because if if somebody looks you up and they find no website, that's one thing. But if they look you up and they find a website that looks like it's from the 40s, then that's not going to help not going to help your your reputation. Yeah, I I was wondering about uh one thing.

So, I was just thinking about doing a card site with a Stripe link and being able to shoot that link to somebody um if they want to move forward. Um I'm interested in in uh how anybody else goes through fulfillment to try to make it as smooth as possible. I personally I like to just invoice them personally. That way you can send like invoice reminders and things like that from Stripe. Um yeah, that's the way I like to do it.

Yeah. Right. So, you know, you get your email, you get your contact information. It makes it super easy to follow up. And for me, because I'm not just a 9 by12 mailer, you know, I have other aspects of my business.

My invoices work right into my accounting software. And, you know, for accountant and stuff, and it's a good record. It's just good records um than just having a payment link. But if if you're just getting going, I'd say payment link's fine. You know, ultimately, you know, I like to see, you know, validation of the projects and then worry about having the invoice and, you know, get that first card and then, you know, determine, all right, can I keep doing this or this was more than I anticipated?

Is it worth it? You know, that type of thing and uh take your actions from that. For sure. Thank William, how's the uh how's the directory coming along? It's coming along good.

I uh I keep switching the name. I uh I was going to run it under American Mailbox Mailer. Um my the way the branding I put for my mailer, but because I want I want to get others involved in it and build it as more of a just my business. I separated out as its own brand name. And um the website itself is pretty much just about ready to go.

Uh just a couple tweaks here and there, but yeah, it's kind I'm hoping by the uh by next month I can announce that it's part of, you know, part of my service. And then, you know, I was going to reach out to you, let you know what the deal was and and stuff. And same thing with Jake because I want to get the 9 by12. There's something special I want to do for 9 by12 sellers and local marketers himself. Um I don't want to reel too much details, but it's something special that will help adds value to their service.

So, look forward to hearing about that. Yeah, I'll be sure to reach out and uh I'm loving the CRM. I'm just gonna give you some verbal uh confirmation that I really like it. I think you did a good job. Um Awesome.

I I have some feedback for like features wise that I I plan on sending to you by next week. Um but otherwise, I think it's a pretty decent system. Um for sure. I appreciate it. I wish people would respond to my emails, but other than that, that's not your CRM issue.

But, uh, well, set up a task whenever you send off your your email that goes off in two days. So, if they hadn't responded in two days, you know, to call them. Yeah, that's basically what I'm doing. Yeah. Um, perfect.

Yep. Yeah. Um, and there is a there's a lot of a lot of people that just I don't know what it is. I you know I I've emailed market like affiliate marketing for years and I've never seen this level of ghosting before. This is a I feel like this is a new level like new low for me.

It's like what is because there's so much coming in. I mean we get so much crap coming into our email boxes. That's why. Yeah. And you know I have I'm working on the strategy I'm hoping to pan out.

I don't want to give too much details but I'm gonna be excited if it works. But uh I guess I'll share a little bit because maybe somebody else. So I I'm transferr I'm moving from email. I'm increasing the cost of customer acquisition. I'm literally because I'm hitting remote cities.

I'm sending a 9 by12 mailer in an envelope as a sample with a letter along with another service I offer as a package. I mail it. It cost me $1.77 per business to send. But I think it will help them re because what I do is I mail it and then 3 4 days depending where it's going like the distance from my house I'll email them and say hey did you get this?

I sent you this sample. Right? And they might you know I'm hoping to catch the the trigger say oh I did get that. Let me see what this is about. Right?

And and you know feed on the fact that they're business owners. They're busy. Maybe they were meaning to call me but it just slipped their mind because they're doing other things. Like I'm trying to be there. Um but yeah, so uh I got my first major campaign.

I got a hundred envelopes going out to two different regions to test different niches. I wanted to and I wanted to put together, you know, the stats on what niche responded, you know, and maybe split test contents of that. But yeah, so it it increases my cost, but I'm not just a 9 by12 mailer, right? So I have additional revenue already coming in for my business and you know, it's in my market and business to grow my business. So that's why I'm doing it and I do hope that it's something I can share and with the with the 9 by12 sellers as a val a valid way of going about stuff.

But uh yeah that's love it. What's what's the cost all together to put together that envelope? Uh it's like so it's 60 cents to mail this. No, sorry not 60. I wish 60 cents a $1.

77 retail postage and then it's costing me three or four cents to print and and you know put it together. Nice. Yeah, that's not bad. It's about $2. I figure I'm I'm budgeted $2 per lead and you know there's a little room there but at that rate I mean if I send theoretically I should have if I send 50 to a region I should fill a card of those 50s in my opinion because it's you know I've split niches that I'm you know I'm trying to cover each niche I want on the card in that mailin.

So I'm trying to do each the area. So, if I spend a hundred bucks and fill a card, that that's a win all day long. That's a great ROI. You know, I'm willing to even go up to 200. And if it pans out that I'm not selling, it's not worth it, then I just readjust and, you know, see what see what else I can come up with.

But, you know, I've done I've done mailing in the past. Like, I used to be a direct mailer. I've sold advertising in the mail before. So, it's not like I'm not new to this. Um my thing is that you know times have changed a little bit but the fundamentals still work and you know I've never done businessto business like this before.

I've always been business to consumer so this is that aspect is new to me and that's where that's the call it a challenge for me but it's something I'm I'm actually enjoying learning how to do the businessto business uh a bit. So love it. And I mean, if you could fill up a card, the thing about scaling with email is it's really tough to scale with email because you can only do like 30 emails per email address. You got to keep putting together new email addresses. Then you got to move on to different offices because they also track your IP address.

So if you're sending hundreds of emails from a specific IP address, you got to scale the different offices and go to the cafe and send emails. It gets crazy. But the thing is with if you're actually able to put together this direct mail and you're able to even sell out a card with that direct mail for a thousand bucks, you have a few grand profit and it's a completely scalable uh system. Like you just Exactly. Like there's nothing that could stop you from scaling that to multiple cities and you're obviously losing some profit, but you're actually able to scale way larger with that.

Super simple. I like it. Can't wait to hear how that goes. And I like when I I watched your interview with Michael and when he said it he he actually puts on like a this 8 by 8 by 8 and a half by 11 piece of paper just a paper print out of of the card. I thought that was genius.

I don't know why I didn't think of that. Felt stupid but it's a great idea. You know this is kind of what it looks like but bigger. You know I I can imagine that whole conversation in my head. That was awesome.

Yeah that was that was actually one of the things that I was like I I couldn't I I wasn't sure of because I wanted to I didn't want to put them off on the quality. Right. If I home print this, right, the quality is not going to be there. I ultimately looked at my numbers and said, "Look, if it costs me more to get a customer, but that customer comes for two cards, then that cost is worth it. I would rather send them the real deal with a note, a personalized handwritten note on each one I send, hey, you're ad here in my phone number on a little sticky note on the card behind my letter."

So, they get my letter. It tells them about who I am, what I'm doing, what they're holding in their hand. Call to action. Call me or email me. I'll send you a, you know, another sample or tell you how to get going on this.

And then reinforce that with a quick call to action on the card on a post-it note says, you know, I'll little quips sometimes as your ad here or I think I did a couple with like your ad plus my mailer or our mailer in a heart and then my phone number. Just something quirky, right? something to know that it's an actual human sent him this. And and my outside the envelope right now is just a large label with my business name and personal name and and then their name typed on a label and slapped on and mailed. Um yeah, so it was I thought about printing.

I was like, you know, I'd rather just either way I'm going to spend it on ink or, you know, go get the real deal. And I, you know, you're able to get, you know, I was able to get a thousand printed for a couple hundred bucks, you know, in the grand scheme of things, if it works out, it's a great investment. And if it doesn't, I didn't break the bank to test this, right? So, yeah. And yeah, Michael was killing it with doortodoor using that that info pack.

He like pioneered that and obviously killed it with that. And if you're worried about like showing them the 8 1/2 by 11 car uh sample, you could also bring an actual sample with you, but you you include the 8 and 1 half x 11 in the in the packet, but you can bring a sample with you if you don't want to just give away a ton of samples and so then they can feel the quality too, right? So, yeah, best of both worlds, but you save a little bit of money. Yeah, I would definitely if I wasn't so focused on the group and content and everything and had time to do prospecting the way it should be done, my strategy would probably be email, cold email. It would basically be Michael's strategy, cold email.

It'll be a com It'll be a combination of a few people's strategies, but cold email and then anybody who opened the first email, follow up with them a second time. If they opened again, call say, "Hey, I don't know if my emails might be going to spam," blah blah blah. Now they know I'm a human. They might be a little bit more interested. If I can't get them on the phone, I would show up at their door with the the info pack as a last resort.

That think that would be my strategy. But yeah, I got to be better about getting on the phone. um in prospecting. Uh it's one of the things I've I've been a little bit more hesitant to do. Um I think it's just out of false fear.

I don't know why. You know, it's just some people just I don't know. It's like this, you know, I think about like my business and like if somebody calls me during the day, I'm busy, right? I don't really want to talk anything. Like I just want to get my stuff done.

And I, you know, I may falsely apply that to how other businesses might feel. and be hesitant about disrupting that, right? Being an intrusive force. But on the other hand, how else, you know, other than the methods I'm already doing, how else would you do it, right? I mean, I don't I don't think going door todoor in my area is nec is really a viable option because of the the drive time between business and stuff.

I mean, it's Yeah, same here. You know, I'm very remote and it's very small. I'm surprised I was even able to fit a 10 10,000 person mailer in my region. Um, but it's very this Yeah, I don't know. Um, but I'm hoping like I had I have a a I'm gonna have a hopefully a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce uh executive director this week about possibly partner up with him and my mailer and I put together a pretty good proposal to do a unique mailer for the chamber.

Um, and yeah, I put a couple different options. uh you know, give the chamber, you know, a kickback on a full mailer to do whatever they want with for the community because they're very active. Uh discounts for community for the members of the of the chamber. Um or even, you know, some sort of free spot for the chamber on each on each edition or something. uh you know in turn for for an advertiser and stuff and stuff but just trying to work together because the chamber and I have pretty pretty common goals and what they've set out to do and what I want to do.

So I think if I can if we can nail down something it'll be pretty good um for for this and it gave me an idea to you know really look at hitting the chambers of the other regions I'm targeting you know as a call it a shortcut. I I don't like the word shortcut, but it's what it is. You know, if you're if a ch if a member of a chamber gets recommended to you by you by the chamber, you you're in, right? You you have a a step up and you're offering something good. These mailers are fantastic.

just to give, you know, for me, I'm only doing I'm doing only 3.99 for the 5,000 or I do seven for 10,000 in my area. Um, it fits kind of the the demographics of, you know, how much money is in the region and but the lowest cost like newspaper ad is like 1,500 a month with a contract. Like that's out of the budget for most small businesses, you know. The radio's another 225 $3,000 with contract, you know.

So like these mailers is just fantastic option. And I think once businesses know about it, you know, they're going to jump on, you know, it's about getting getting the word to them. Just do it, right? Just do it any way you can. Put get your mailer out and just even in random conversations, I find myself.

Oh yeah, I have this mailer I'm putting together. You know, what do you think? And I always tell them, you know, let if you know a business, refer them to me. I give referral commissions. I'll give you a kickback a little bit on the, you know, referring a business buys a spot, even if you can't advertise.

So, you know, I'm artificially trying to get the word of mouth going on the mailing as free advertising because the commission is just coming out of the sales of sale of the spot. So, you know, food for thoughts. Another food for thought item. Totally. And to touch on your your nervousness about cold calling, same here.

Um I hate cold calling. But a strategy I was talking about earlier to to make it a little bit easier for you is leveraging the referrals that you just talked about. So even if they don't want to like give the word of mouth for you, if they don't want to go reach out to their business friends and try to recommend it cuz they they haven't advertised with you yet, so they might not want to recommend it yet. Just ask them for a list of businesses. Just say, "How many do you what businesses do you know that might also be interested?"

And as soon as you have that list, now you can call those businesses and the first thing you say is, "Hey, Johnny from Johnny's Burgers just told me that you'd probably be interested in this." And then you're just you're just pitching what Johnny said they might be interested in. It's it's so much less cold, so it's a little less intimidating. Have you have you done phone calls or like um like do you find mornings or afternoons or nights better than I've only ever done it in the afternoon? I haven't split tested that.

Um I had to think about that for a sec. It's definitely going to depend on the business. If you're if you're reaching out to like a large business where you're going to hit the receptionist because that's the only phone number you can find, then obviously you have to do it in the morning or the afternoon. Um like realtors probably hit them in the afternoon. But like the oneman shows probably weekends or nighttime would be good time to call them.

They're done with their work and everything. Otherwise, they're they're busy putting houses together. So, Right. Right. Yeah.

It just totally depends on the business. And you know what I noticed is that that when you know realtors more than anybody have responded to my emails and those emails are dated 700 p.m. 8:00 p.m.

900 p.m. you know they're timestamped late in the evening. So yeah, they're out during the day selling houses, but in the evening that's when they check their emails. So I I know I definitely noticed that right off the bat that most of those came in late in the evening.

So that's obviously a good time to call them and always ask first. Do you mind if I call you? Do you have a minute or whatever? You know, that's good to know. Yeah.

The client I had a meeting with this morning, his first contact to me was at 5:15 in the morning. We were texting at 6 6:15 in the morning back. Yeah. And uh meeting him for 7:30 this morning. I was like, "Yeah, I'll be there."

You know, I'm up I'm an early riser, so I'm like, "Yeah, I'll be there. Whatever." I'll do business any hour of the day. I like that's the thing about me. Like I'm not I'm not trying to run my business 9 to5.

I'm gonna I stretch my heart to meet whatever the business can do. If the meet if it's top hour meeting whatever like you know my opinion is is that's where for for this in my opinion that's where we have to be like you know b businesses are busy I worked in a construction company the guy was busy all day long and you know he got home at night he was burnt he probably isn't a good candidate and I think that against you know con other you know for this that I have that to keep in mind that I'm probably going to want to reach out to those type of businesses earlier than later you know but But again, if you get too big of a construction crew, the guy that you need to talk to isn't doing the work anyway. So, you're probably getting a reception anyways, a receptionist anyways. But, you know, I think it's probably more of a an area like probably down, you know, how big are the companies in your area? What are the income levels that you're dealing with to judge how big a company might actually be?

You know, we have a couple good couple good construction crews in the area. I know there's a good concrete company in the area. Um, and they do a lot of advertising. So, I know right away that that's a good company to get to because there's validation they spend money on ads and Oh, yeah. I do that as I'm driving around and I see something on a bench or just a sign, a yard sign or whatever, I'm snapping a picture of it and they're going on my list.

That's yeah, I got I got I got yard signs in the work I'm getting printed because I'm that's one of my kind of like free advertising mechanisms I'm putting in is I'm going to go put yard signs around with you know big giant you know mailer ad for businesses call as a passive because you know having the inquiries is going to be great you know anything I can do that doesn't increase my overhead a month but drives traffic to my pipeline I'm doing you I've got in the pipeline. I'm working on businessto business newsletter for advertisers and stuff for businesses to learn about local marketing and advertising obviously call to action to the mailer and solo campaigns and that stuff. I've got other marketing materials. I got my mailer um the package I sent. Um I got I'm working on my podcast.

Again, kind of ties in with the newsletter a little bit, but it's focused on educ helping local businesses thrive and find ways that they may not even know exists to make their business more profitable and ultimately probably lower their marketing budget based on my area because like I said, there's nothing low cost in this area. I can't I have no mechanisms because I have to do those my options of marketing are the same ones they have, right? the the $1,500 a month contract on a newspaper that gets published twice a month or uh the radio ad that's a contract for 20 25 grand. Like there's no no options for me other than to do this direct mail. And I tell every business I've talked to so far, this is why the mailer exists because I'm going to put your ad into the every house in this county for 700 bucks and it's not contract.

You can do it as you please. And if you do commit to multiple mailings, I'm going to lower that a little bit more for you. Like, I want your business to succeed. I'm not here to make millions off of the back of you guys. I'm here to make your businesses grow.

Ultimately, that's what we're doing, right? We want to we want to be almost like a partner for them. You know, the guy I talked to this morning, his main reasons to wanting to hire me, he doesn't have time running his business to deal with social media and marketing. That's what I'm So that's like that's why I'm here, bro. Let's do this.

You tell me what you need on your website, I'll do it. And you need a new post, here you go. You know, and I, you know, I somehow ended up with a digital marketing advertising budget out of this conversations. But it's just like it went just having the conversation. And I think that's why, you know, for me, all the call to actions, as much as I hate the phone, are all for people to call me.

get me on the phone so I can show you I'm real. I'm here. I'm a small business. I understand the struggles. And that validation this morning proved to me that's the right approach.

And I think it should be I don't think you should worry, you know, be afraid to get on the phone in your and have that call to action to call have people call you because it's going to do wonders for for everything. 100%. So much easier to close over the phone. so much easier. Will will ask if there's a certain email we use to track if they open it.

It's not a certain email. It's a Google Chrome extension. So, you would probably have to use it with a Gmail account, but uh it's a Chrome extension called snov.io. and you can use that to it's really quick to set up and it'll tell you exactly who has opened your emails.

Probably tells you when they open the emails and everything like that. So, that's very helpful and it's free. And I'm I think I'm going to I just set a reminder. I'm I'm going to make a tutorial video on how to set that up because I think that's helpful. What's up, Dylan?

Hey, speaking of email deliverability, I've got um I've got a a new a new business and I'm working on deliverability for uh for mine. Um I've heard that that method that you're talking about where you like embed a JPEG or whatever into the um uh into the email that you send out uh that that negatively affects deliverability. Is that true? Yeah. Yeah.

if you attach if you have attachments on all of your cold emails, that's that's very bad for your deliverability over time. So, definitely save the attachments for the second email if you can. Although, the person I just interviewed the other day, Michael, said that he put a picture of his postcards in most of his cold emails and never ended up going to spam. So, it's there's no exact science, but it's it's not specifically about having an attachment or not. It's about the content.

So if you just send an image, it's going to be spam, right? So it's it's like the ratio of HTML markup, which will be your mark the the the code that generates the image or attaches it, and then how much text there is. You want to make sure you have more text than your HTML. So all that really is is send your file, but make sure you have a, you know, a good email like Paul. Um and always watch um I posted in the group a free service is dime a dozen out there that you can use.

Always continuously test your email develop deliverability and spam score. Um I subscribe that email that I posted to my list and I will I set reminders for myself to check it every you know every couple weeks and make sure my score is not below eight. Um, I usually score about 10 out of 10. Um, well, I use Mail Tester for that. The problem is I think there's a discrepancy in how Mail Tester does its testing and actual realw world results cuz I got nine out of 10 from Mail Tester, which means I should be I mean, I guess 90% of the time, but that's it's still going to spam like uh I'm I'm having a developer do some extensive testing from my business email uh and see what what the problem is.

like I'm I'm trying to diagnose it and once I do get it diagnosed, I'm intending to start doing this uh this this have that um because the thing that any of the scores can't really account for is the algorithms of the email that you've sent to and the service that determines if it's spam or not. Right. So, well, I would think that what they do is they just send they send they send a test email to Gmail to Outlook to Yahoo. Uh and then if it lands Yeah. It's not it's not re it's not reliable.

So it's it's we it's almost unfair how they calculate that. So what what will happen is so let's say you send to a list of Gmail accounts, right? Gmail is going to know you've sent to a huge, you know, that many Gmails in a certain time frame and they're going to analyze that and then they're going to possibly put you in either they could put you in the promotions or write to the spam because you've hit so many Gmails accounts at one time. So, so the solution to that it sounds like and and what I didn't do because I didn't know at the time, but what Mitch has talked about in in his YouTube videos is you should be warming up your inbox and only sending 20 emails a day and just space it out like uh so would that be a solution to this problem I'm having? It's it's approach.

Um the way I approach it is I actually use several different emails. So I have my main domain and then I I never email from my main domain but I buy the other domain extensions and set up email. So like I have u my main I'll buy thenet and set up an email box that's completely valid and but I redirect that domain to my main domain. But the thing is is now that email is used and I rotate my emails and the from email is always from me. same headings and stuff, but the IP in the reputation score will vary from each email because they're different.

They have to be treated different. Even with the same message, they're different domains. So, they can't get scored as your other domain. So, you just emails, you're making it to where it shows up the the what they see is it's from uh William Trajano at whateverinbox.com.

Even if I set up the headings and everything to be the same. Yeah. And I just rotate them. All right. All right, I'm I'm going to ask you how you do because I I was I was thinking I could do something like that and I was told it was not possible, but Well, it depends how you're sending emails.

So, I use um I set up my system on um I use Fluent SMTP in my WordPress site and my default senders to my.net and then each campaign that I set up, I'll actually change the the email. So, I'll use like the.info info or you know.xyz or I'll just change to a subdomain mark it in one at you know domain.

net and then what I do is I use a automation that some days I'll switch the sequence to a different sender so it's a little manual because there's nothing that autos it but I also manually send my email so I just switch the from to the other domain and it automatically uses that SMTP server. So, it just switches and I don't that's all I have to change is the from the way that my system works. Um, what do you use to to send your emails? Uh, I use Moose send as a email provider. I I can't imagine you can't switch a sender.

I can't imagine that you can you set up your domains like most set up a domain, valid uh verify it then. So, you only need one domain, right? One domain to do what you're talking about. Um you can because you can use subdomains. Subdommains are also created separately.

So, so you could set up, you know, email one at domain.com, email two at domain.com and it will help you stay out of this, you know, obviously you don't want to go sending thousands of messages at the same time still because from those services um your from your uh moose send they actually send from their server, right? What I do is I have each email at like a different service provider. So I use Proton Mail for one, Titan mail at another.

So those SMTP servers are different. So the the sending is a different IP from each IP. So it rotates everything. Everything's just different. But when you get to using just one provider, you know, you're using the same you're using their IP.

So it doesn't matter what sender you send, the IP is going to be the same. and the and the ptr record is always going to point back to moose send which is going to link it to your domain. I believe that that's how some of these spam filters work is they do the ptr and then the platforms have a role in who sent it and there's like a general score for an account. So you could spread it across several accounts. You could do what I do and just set up different email accounts at different SMTPs like, you know, Titan mail.

Um, and even G. I even have a Gmail uh SMT set up and just off select it, you know, like Monday, Tuesday, Friday, use one uh Wednesday, Thursday, another, Saturday, Sunday, you know, just kind of offset and it just it might help. It should help because I I can't tell you I'm not going into the spam, but any any of my own emails, they score 10 out of 10 in my test emails that are on my list never go to spam. And I use a Gmail test, Outlook test, and a Yahoo test. And none of them land in the spam box.

So, it seems to work. All right. If this is being recorded, I'm going to have to relisten to everything you just said because almost none of that made sense. But I'm gonna have to look into Fair enough. I I I am a master class.

Um, it's recorded. It'll be on the YouTube channel later. Ask me if you want. Um, didn't hear you, William. Sendsmails.

io. Uh, it's a bring your own SMTP, but it's it will allow you to set up unlimited domains and basically SMTP credentials and you can use, you know, Amazon SCS or other any other SMTP. But from my looks, it makes it pretty easy to switch sender kind of like what I'm doing. So, I'm moving I'm going to move everything all my emails to that and you know accomplish the same thing I'm doing. It might be a little easier than to do for you than use uh Moose send.

I'm not familiar with the platform. Um just uh if you want to check it out just to you know see if it's something you can use. All right. Thanks. Yep.

William, have you thought about doing Facebook ads? Yeah. Um, a little bit. I I tried uh I ran one and uh it wasn't wasn't good. Uh at all.

Um I'm kind of 50/50 on social media ads and in general. Actually, probably less than that in general. Um my thing is you know this for me right now I'm trying to be focused on the local businesses well test market and you know external to me you know not local. Um just seems like I need so much money dedicated just to cover that ad spend. Uh I ran a test campaign for 14 days with my mailer.

basically the same ad flyer that I made for posting around town and it I targeted businesses, business owners, everyone in their area within I think it was a 25 mile radius. Um because that's probably about the target market for any businesses anyways. and it didn't farewell, but to say it was a a a decent attempt might be dishonest. You know, I didn't spend a lot of time on it. I knew what I was kind of doing, but I didn't like try to optimize it or anything.

Um, I want to put I want to get more video content and run actual video ads than image ads. So, and through my podcast and stuff and just getting I'm going to start to I almost prefer to run that my Facebook ads to get them on my like email list whether it's in my newsletter or subscribe to my podcast or something and then go try to market to them rather than try to market right from Facebook or another social media platform. um build my audience and then worry about