In his book The Ultimate Marketing Plan, copywriter and marketing consultant Dan Kennedy said:
“Personally, I detest planning. I’ve got the classic entrepreneurial nature—‘Ready? FIRE! Aim.’ Plan? Geez. Let’s just go sell something.”
I can certainly relate. That entrepreneurial spirit has always been in my blood, too.
Sure, I had the standard lemonade stand when I was a young child. But I later opened a stamp and coin “shop” in my basement at the ripe old age of 11…complete with “billboard” signs across my neighborhood. Once I cleared my “inventory,” it was onto the next project.
For Halloween, I’d stage my own haunted house. For a dime (later a quarter), kids could wander through my labyrinth of terror, complete with props and “actors” in costumes.
Sometimes when I was bored I’d do things like set up an obstacle course and dare the neighborhood kids to try to get through it. They’d win a prize if they could do it, but it would cost them some spare change up front. In retrospect I was pretty lucky no one got hurt.
When I saw the older kids selling candy for their school or some other event, I came up with the bright idea to buy a bunch of candy at the store for cheap and sell it at a higher cost, earning a profit. That might have worked, except I ended up eating most of my “profits.”
I even learned how to borrow money at zero percent interest. My father still tells the story of when he gave my brother and I each a dollar for the penny candy store. After we emerged from the store, my father asked me how much money I had left.
“None,” I replied.
He then asked my brother Jim how much he had left?
“A quarter.”
“So you spent seventy-five cents?” my father asked him.
“No, I spent a quarter and loaned fifty cents to John.”
I guess I liked my candy back then!
As a young teenager I sold shoes door-to-door for Mason Shoes. I published my own neighborhood newsletter around the same time. I eventually saved up enough money to buy a paper route (I don’t know if it’s the same today, but back then if you wanted to be a paperboy, you had to buy an existing route from someone who was selling theirs).
Since then I’ve sold toys, cars, siding and windows, advertising, electronics, software, hardware, books, info-products, the list goes on.
I’ve held all kinds of jobs, from telemarketing to sales to marketing to IT. And through it all, I’ve always come back to being an entrepreneur.
I’ve owned several businesses, from part-time “on the side” companies (while holding a “steady” job) to full-time “slit my wrists and pour out the blood” businesses.
To me, there’s always been a certain allure to being in charge of your own destiny, even if it means temporarily being a slave to your business.
I suppose I’ve always been drawn to the “elusive” lifestyle of having more time with my family. More time to spend on leisure activities. More time to do what I want to do, and not what some boss tells me I have to do.
I say “elusive” lifestyle, because until recently, the freedom to have more leisure time always seemed just out of reach. But once I learned the strategies and systems used by some of the top marketing insiders, I finally started getting to where I wanted to be.
I should point out that I didn’t study and learn from MBAs and college professors preaching theory. I learned from people who’ve used these strategies to make themselves a very comfortable lifestyle. In short, I learned from doers.
And by modeling and adapting the most successful systems they’ve used, I’ve been able to build my own. But I didn’t stop there.
Before we go any further, however, let me take a moment to talk about what I’m going to reveal here.
The core content of this book is about your list. It could be a physical mailing list or an email list. I’m going to talk about some ways to build your list, and ultimately I’m going to discuss specific emails you should DEFINITELY include in your autoresponder email lists.
But before I get to all of that, I’m going to start with the bigger picture: the system you use and how the marketing funnel will benefit you once you set it all up. This is important, because many of the concepts I’ll cover will have their roots in the marketing funnel concept, which I’ll get into.
After that, I’m going to show you actual emails I’m using in my autoresponder (AR) sequence for my latest product, the Copywriters Toolkit, and more importantly WHY I’ve included them (and best of all, how you can tweak them and use the same formats to gain all the benefits I do).
So, that being said, let’s dive into the core concepts…
[next]