Jordan: [00:00:04] What’s up, Michael?
Mike: [00:00:05] What’s up Jordan and what’s up Pat?
Pat: [00:00:09] What’s up guys? Good to be with you.
Jordan: [00:00:11] A quick announcement — we’ve got a very special guest on today’s episode.
Is this your first time meeting, Mike and Pat?
Pat: [00:00:19] Yeah. This is our first formal connection. And it is wonderful, I have to say.
Jordan: [00:00:24] So I’ll give a brief introduction.
Pat, when did I meet you? Was it 2015?
Pat: [00:00:32] I would say, yeah, around 2014-2015, probably sounds right.
Jordan: [00:00:36] You know what, I think it had to be 2014. Yeah, I think it was 2014 and I remember, so I had hired three business coaches prior to hiring Pat and I had hired three business coaches and, you know, some of them very well might be listening to this, but regardless, they were all awful prior to Pat. They were just all terrible, really, like, remarkably terrible.
And maybe partly because some of them just didn’t know what they were doing, and some of them just did not have good morals or ethics at all. But either way, Pat was my fourth business coach that I ever hired, and he completely and utterly changed my life for the better.
Not only very moral and ethical in how he conducts his business, but also just a tremendous genius in the way he goes about it. And I remember– you might not remember this, Pat, actually, you definitely do, ’cause he’s spoken on it before. But you said, “what’s your main goal?” And I remember saying, I was like, “my main goal is to get out of the fitness circle jerk,” which was basically like, there was a group of people in the fitness world that if you’re on their good side, you’re great, and if you’re on their bad side, then you can’t succeed.
And that was just a very small bubble in the fitness industry.
Pat: [00:01:51] And it’s gone. The circle jerk dried up. So smart move and get out of it, right?
Jordan: [00:01:59] Yeah. So, I’ll start off by saying probably the biggest thing that you gave me was insight into email lists and how emailing works and the benefit of email lists and how to use your email properly.
And we’ll get into that, but welcome to the show, Pat. We are very excited to have you.
Pat: [00:02:18] Well thanks man. I mean, flattery will get you everywhere with me. So, I really appreciate those kind words, Jordan. It means a lot.
I’m excited. I actually haven’t gotten the chance to talk business on a podcast in a while, so I’m excited to revisit the topic. This will be fun.
Jordan: [00:02:34] So how is everything going right now with you and your business during the pandemic that we’re all going through?
Pat: [00:02:41] I mean, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns, but pretty good. It’s always depressing to see your investments just take a nosedive like they have, but that’s just the state of the world right now.
But I’m still chugging along. I’m still selling, I’ve still got customers. Obviously, you have to adjust things to the current situation and strategies have to change, but there’s no reason that you can’t continue to grow your business even in difficult times.
Now, we’ll see if this continues to go on for however much longer. Who knows, right, in this situation? The only thing that we can do is just try to make the best of it wherever we’re at at any given time.
So, is it ideal? No. But is it cause for just absolute panic and desperation? No. I think that there’s still a number of smart moves that any business owner can do to try and keep ahead.
And also, just, you know, being a prudent person in general. I think we’re seeing that a lot of people just never had anything tucked away for a rainy day. And you always hear that. You always hear, “tuck something away for the rainy day.” Well, it’s the rainy day. The storm is here. And you know, it’s one of those things where if you would have, little and often over the long haul.
And, you know, I don’t think I’d be able to survive– my business would be able to survive a huge, like economic depression. I don’t think any business would. But because of the moves that I’ve made throughout my business and my career, I had that cushion. And having that cushion really helps. If nothing else, because you don’t panic and you never want to make decisions when you’re panicking because nobody thinks straight in a panic and you just start making stupid decisions.
And being able to take a couple of deep breaths, evaluate the situation, be realistic with what it is, and say, “okay, what are my options here?” And then just, go with it. So, happy to discuss the things that I’ve been doing, but yeah, realistically, certainly not the best of times, but we’re doing all right. We’re doing all right,
Mike: [00:04:39] Pat, can you tell us a little bit about your business? Like what you do on a day to day basis or what it is you offer?
Pat: [00:04:46] So I am a classic direct response email marketer. So, my whole business really does come down to my email list. I’m on social media and sometimes people get the impression that I’m a social media guy. I’m really not at all, as I’m sure Jordan will, will attest.
I am your classic direct response marketer. That was kind of the school that I really studied in. I believe that that’s right. I think that’s one of the best ways to really go about building your business.
And I’m primarily in the fitness space, so I have a kind of hierarchy of different offerings. I have a membership website– and even more specifically, in the kettlebell space. So that’s where people will find me, with kettlebells.
I serve people who are looking for efficiency. You know, my kind of brand is “fitness minimalism,” people who want to get more done with less equipment and time.
I’ve got membership sites, I’ve got challenges, I’ve got coaching programs. Probably similar to a lot of the stuff that you guys have, at least in the broad strokes. And then kind of various promotions that I do here or there. So, some stuff that’s very intimate, very high end, and expensive; other stuff that’s a lot more general, but accessible and affordable.
Jordan: [00:05:53] So do you want to talk about, not even necessarily related to current events, but more just direct response email. Like, you just want to talk about that? Either just your view on the principles of it, why it works, why you’re drawn to it, and how do you use it, and then we can get more specific in regard to maybe how we could use it now.
But I think understanding the basics of it overall first is most important.
Pat: [00:06:18] Yeah. So, what is direct response? Well, we’re trying to get a direct response from somebody. I know you shouldn’t use the word in the definition, but it really is as simple as it seems — that we’re, we’re actually not as interested in the long game, right? We’re trying to go for a sale.
Now, it doesn’t mean that there’s no long game, but direct response ultimately in my mind, comes down to building your skill as a copywriter. And when I first got into the world of copywriting, which is salesmanship in print, one of the things that really struck to me, this came from Gary Halbert, who’s a fascinating character in his own right.
He went to prison for a number of years. His whole life story is just is wild and really interesting. But he was a brilliant copywriter, and one of the things that he said that always stuck with me is, “if you get the skill of copywriting,” which then kind of turns into the skill of direct response, “you might be broke. I’m occasionally broke,” because he was wildly irresponsible with his money, “but you’ll never be poor,” is what he said. “But you’ll never be poor.”
And his whole argument was that because he has a skill that is so fundamental and so repeatable, that anytime that he really needs to, he can put pen to paper and he can get leads and he can get customers. And he knows that the fundamentals of salesmanship and persuasion and how to put it in writing.
So direct response has had different channels through which it’s operated. Before email, it was largely, and still is, direct mail. So, you would literally just mail people letters promoting something and try and get some type of response. And that response would typically be just direct orders, right?
Then email comes along and this kind of takes over the direct response world. So, anything that was being done through mail before is now being done through email, but often in a different way. Because now costs are different, technology makes it super efficient. So, whereas before you might’ve had to send a couple of different letters, with emails, you can now send multiple steps of follow-up very cheaply, very frequently.
So, the game is played a little bit differently, but the principles are all the same. And so, I came in, obviously, when email is already off and running. I remember when I first came in to direct response in the email world, people were already saying that email’s dead. It’s dying. And this, this was over 10 years ago, right?
Like, “it’s on its way out. It’s going. Nobody’s going to be doing this in the next six months.” And people are still saying that nonsense today and yet I’m still here. I’m still doing the email stuff and all those people who were saying that “emails out, but this social media is going to be the new big thing” — who would always promote it through email, interestingly enough — those social medias are gone, right? And social media changed its game, it changed its algorithms, and they’re washed away now. But the people who have really kind of doubled down and focused on the email direct response tend to be the survivors.
And I’ve seen that consistently. I think in the industry, I don’t follow too many people in the industry anymore, but the people who are really good at email are still around kicking and doing well. Whereas the people who were kind of in a lot of the social media places, they’re gone.
Like, people who are really big 10 years ago or whatever, just on social media, I haven’t heard from them in like 10 years. They’re just, they’re disappeared.
Like, goodbye.
Jordan: [00:09:27] It’s so interesting how accurate that is. I think there’s a lot of reasons for that, not least of which, I feel like when you’re big on social media oftentimes there’s a lot of pressure, right? There’s a lot of eyes on you. There’s a lot of opinions being said about you, and I think it can create a lot of pressure and an angst in and of itself.
But when you’re via email, that doesn’t exist as much. You can sit there, you can write a great email, you can edit it, you can make it great, and you can have individual responses with each and every individual, but it’s not like you’re getting all of the likes or dislikes or comments or hate or whatever.
It’s literally just a conversation between you and another individual, which also happens to be going out to however many people on your email.
Pat: [00:10:12] Yes. You control the environment a lot more and it’s also an asset. And this is, you know, you live or die–
*coughs*
Excuse me. Here’s the Corona acting up again.
As I say, “live or die,” as I’m about to croak on your podcast.
You live or die by the coronavirus OR by your database. By the assets that you have, your contacts, your contacts.
Social media doesn’t allow you to own your contacts. They own your contacts. That’s a fundamental difference, right? So, you need that asset. And the way to get that asset is to build an email list.
The goal for me for social media is as quickly as possible to get people off of social media and onto my email list. The social media are merely outposts that point back to my email list and to the extent that they can serve that purpose and serve it well, I will use social media in that way. But I spend almost no more time on social media than is necessary to fulfill that purpose.
But to your point, Jordan, you can also control the environment and the impressions better. One, there’s just less distractions when people are reading an email, right? They’re not swiping through stories constantly.
It’s a little bit more intimate. There’s a more intimate feel in email. And intimacy is important in selling. Obviously, we know that the best way to sell somebody is face to face, but that’s limiting. There’s an obvious physical limitation to how much we can do that, but can we increase intimacy in other ways? And email is definitely a degree of intimacy higher then social media. That helps.
You can also control impressions in the sense that– and I’m not saying lie or be manipulative, I always think that lying is always wrong, but people on your email list don’t know whether you’re talking to 50,000 people or one person.
Whereas on social media, people will often just skip a post if it doesn’t get a certain amount of likes. “Oh, it must not be that important.”
Now, it may have been a great post. And that’s one of the things that infuriates me about social media is like, I’ll put up a stupid meme that’s absolutely pointless — hundreds of likes, hundreds of shares, blah, blah, blah. I’ll sit down and write something super thoughtful, like, “this is going to change the world.” Total crickets, right?
But not the case with email, I found. The people on your email list tend to be generally more interested in what you actually have to say substantially. And when that’s the case, they tend to be generally, more likely to become serious customers as well.
So, it’s a different type of engagement on email, right? ‘Cause one, they’re giving up something, they’re giving up an email to engage in a deeper relationship with you. And it’s not super intimate, but it’s a step. It’s an extra step of seriousness in that commitment. And so, there’s a qualitative difference in the type of audience that you probably won’t get as much “engagement” as you do in social media.
In fact, I often get– and people might not believe me, but this is absolutely true: I will get more people to buy something than I will sometimes to get them to reply to an email. That’s the type of qualitative difference that I’m talking about, right? That I will get more response with actual people spending money sometimes than I will just replies to my email.
And I think, if you’re a serious business owner, that should be of serious interest to you. If you’re just chasing likes and hearts and shares and you’re not actually engaged in economics, you’re just not a business owner. You’re just something else.
You’re just, I don’t know. I’m trying to be charitable in my description here, but you’re not a business owner, right?
Jordan: [00:13:31] It’s interesting, I think a lot of people– it’s so funny, I don’t think logically many people would agree with this, but on a behavioral level, what you’ll see is many people do things that are more for likes as opposed to actually growing their business.
100%
their behavior aligns more with, “I would prefer to get more likes and more comments and more shares.” “I would prefer to look more popular than I would be to actually create a more successful business,” and you can see that in how people’s behavior lines up.
Pat: [00:14:06] Yeah. And part of it comes down to some deeper existential questions, most certainly. But for me, my business is just a means to an end. It’s not an end in itself. You know, I’ve got four kids, I’ve got a wife, I have things in life that mean far more to me than social media attention, or even my business itself.
So, I want a need my business to do well because I genuinely care about serving my customers. I really do care about that, but also because it’s support. It pays the mortgage for this house. So, I think people just need to do some deeper soul searching sometimes. And that’s probably beyond the scope of this conversation, but it is important to reflect on that.
And I also think about myself, too, and there’s obviously different types of customers. Like I almost never engage on social media. I’ll like my friends’ stuff just because they’re my friends, but I’ll buy everything, right? So even my behavior is, I’m far more likely to buy something from an email than I am to reply to an email.
So, there’s people like me out there and that’s what I want, right? I would rather have that type of person, than the person who will constantly like, reply, or comment, but we’ll never buy.
Jordan: [00:15:12] Oh my God. Absolutely.
Pat: [00:15:14] And it’s not to be rude, it’s just like, look, it’s nothing personal. It’s business. We gotta do business here, right? And at the end of the day, the economic matter.
Mike: [00:15:25] Pat, you talked about selling and being really good at copywriting.
Can you talk about the types of emails that you write? Are you selling in every single email that you write or are there value emails and then sales emails or are they combined into the same email?
Pat: [00:15:44] Yeah, the answer is: it’s all of the above.
So, I always have some objective for the email. And you mentioned kind of value emails, and I think these are important because a lot of the people in the direct response world, and it goes at least back to Kennedy and some people before him, talk about this kind of bank of good will that you have with people.
And the idea there is, this is kind of like, what is the quality of your relationship with people on your email list? And if you’re just pitching all the time, then you kind of diminish that bank of good will and response will start to go down and people will get annoyed.
Now there’s, there’s qualifications even to that, because there’s people who are so skilled in copywriting– and I don’t think I’m one of these people, or sometimes I can be, but I’m not the level of genius as some people.
Jordan: [00:16:28] Yeah, you are.
Pat: [00:16:29] Like I said about flattery, Jordan…
But they’re so skilled that their copy is so enticing, so funny — humor is a good device, too — that they can actually pitch and get you to like them more.
Now that’s like, that’s meta level, right? And that’s what you should strive for: to be so good, so charismatic, so persuasive that you can sell every single email and people actually like you better for it.
Jordan: [00:16:54] Yeah. They enjoy it when you pitch them.
Pat: [00:16:58] So it needs to be qualified because there’s strong exceptions to what I just said.
And you should strive to be that type of person where if I pitched every email, I should hopefully even increase my bank of good will. And that takes years and years of practice, but there’s value certainly in saying, “okay, I have promotions lined up here, here, and here throughout the month, and I’m going to be pitching in these emails. And before those emails, I’m going to kind of pre-pitch.”
So, I call them pre-pitch emails. And these would be where I kind of mention that something’s coming up, and I’m looking for some type of response, some type of, like, a hand raise of halfway. And this is where I will provide a lot of value, a lot of content, and if you want to get somebody to kind of move to a sale, a good technique is to kind of like move them at least partway through the process of the problem they’re trying to solve for free.
And this builds a lot of good will. It also builds trust. “Oh, if he got me from A to B, and I really liked how he did that or how she did that. And now he’s offering the same to get me from B to C. I’m that much more likely to take him up on that now,” right?
So, kind of like little nudges of value along the course of whatever problem you’re helping them to solve, but leading up to a series of pitch emails.
So, I would say, Mike, to answer your question, I always have the greater context of, “okay, what is the general promotion that’s going to be done?” Like, it’s always in relation to some promotion that I’m working on or that is coming down the line, but there might not be a link in every email, for example, where somebody can directly buy something.
But very frequently there is.
Jordan: [00:18:35] So, I mean, there’s a couple of things I’m thinking about right here. One of which is if we’re just going to sort of put, like, a face to the name type thing, when you’re talking about actual advice, we’ll call it “value.”
Let’s say you’re going to be selling a workout program, then one email might be, “Hey, try this workout. It’s a new type of workout, it’s a new style,” so that hopefully they’ll try it and then they’ll know, “Oh, so this is the style of workout. I actually really enjoyed that.” And then you can say in subsequent emails, “if this is a type of workout that you enjoyed, there’s more of this in so-and-so.”
Is that right?
Pat: [00:19:11] Yeah, that would be one good way to do it, and that kind of works at the law of reciprocity. So, when people get some type of favor, they have a natural inclination to want to repay that favor in some degree. And we can kind of build up the force of that approach by adding in other layers of other kinds of psychological techniques.
So, one would be a law of consistency where people typically don’t like to move in the direction opposite of what they’ve already confirmed. So, for example, you send out, say, “Hey, I’ve been working on this kind of new type of workout. I think you might enjoy it. Here it is. Oh, by the way, would you be interested if I put together a 30-day challenge around something like this? You know, no commitment, but just click here to let me know if this is something that might interest you.”
And so, you’re actually still asking me for a response. There’s still a direct response there, but now you’re getting a degree of both reciprocity and consistency. And what happens there is if people give three yeses in a row, they’re not going to want to immediately shift gears and then say no. Right?
There’s also this idea of kind of being involved in the process, too. People love when they feel like they’re involved in the process, to create a process, that you’re working on something together. This was a collaborative effort rather than me just out of nowhere blindsiding you with, “Oh, Hey, here’s the deal today.” Right?
And this is just Salesmanship 101, right? This is anything that any good face-to-face sales person should understand as well, but now we’re just applying it in the context of email. So yeah, like you said, giving them something that’s relevant to their problems — that’s key.
It shouldn’t just be like any old workout, but it’s addressing something specific to them, and then trying to get them to move in a direction with you towards the promotion that you have in mind, and you have that promotion in mind in advance, but you’re trying to make it a collaborative effort so you feel like you’re working towards it.
And that just gets so much more buy-in, so much more pre-commitment. By the time you open the cart, hopefully you don’t actually have to do a lot of selling at that point. They’re already there.
Jordan: [00:21:10] That makes total sense.
What do you say– let’s say someone is listening and they don’t have an email list yet. Like, they don’t even have an email list, or maybe they do, but they don’t know how to use it. What would your beginning steps be for people who haven’t even started with email yet?
Pat: [00:21:31] Yeah. I guess to make a few assumptions let’s say that you just have like an Aweber or a MailChimp or Infusionsoft or something like that.
If you need like help on the technical logistics, just go to Google. Don’t waste your time with a business coach with that stuff. I mean, there’s so many more fundamentals that often gets skipped with this, right?
One of the core things is you need some type of philosophy for your business. You need some type of unique selling proposition, as we call it in direct response, because before you start getting people on your email list, you got to know, what is my business and what are the types of people or who are the types of people that I’m going to serve, that are going to be my customers? What makes me unique? And can you say that in, in 30 seconds or less? Can you make that into an elevator pitch?
So, I’m the fitness minimalist. I’m the guy who helps people get from A to B in the straightest, shortest line possible through high intensity kettlebell complex, combos, and chains.
And a good business philosophy, a good pitch should be concise and it should make a strong promise and it should arouse curiosity. Concise, promise, curiosity.
And it should also have a very clear avatar in mind. And these are like the fundamentals that everybody loves to skip. “It can’t be that important.” It’s like doing your scales on the guitar or analyzing your propositions in logic or any of those things.
Everybody skips something and everybody sucks, and then they complain they don’t know why they suck. Because you didn’t do the basics, right?
Or, I should have used a fitness analogy, which is more apt: just doing the fundamental movements; engaging in progressive resistance training.
So, you have to do that first so you kind of know what stuff to put out there in vision of the whole of what your business is going to be. So, I know that most of my customers are over the age of 35, they’re busy, they care about fitness, but they don’t care about being a bodybuilder. They just want to work out, feel good, maybe drop some weight, be able to wrestle with the grandkids at a certain age. And they want efficiency, they want efficiency. And a lot of them work out at home. And it’s important for me to keep that in mind because that’s gonna affect a lot of my messaging and growing my email list.
Now, once you have that, then it’s a matter of, okay, got my home base, which is my email list. Now I do need to set up outposts. I need to find ways to get the types of people that I know I can serve and serve well back to the home base. And there’s all kinds of different outposts you can use, but it comes down to two fundamental categories. You can either spend your money or you can spend your time, and I recommend at least both. Certainly.
Now I’m at a point in my business where I have a decent marketing budget, so I spend a lot less time and a lot more money. Most of my new customers and leads are all through paid advertising at that point. So that’s one method, you advertise some type of incentive to get on your email list.
People often call this a lead magnet. This could be any type of free opt-in — it could be an eBook, it could be a course, it could be a webinar, something that speaks directly and specifically to the problems of your target customer and is going to be inherently attractive and a no brainer.
So, one that I’ve been using for years is just a PDF of 101 time-crunched kettlebell workouts, and it’s just a buffet of workouts for, you know, blasting fat and boosting muscle and just, you know, 15 to 20-minute sessions. And when I target the types of people that I’m after, it has really strong appeal to them because it speaks directly to their problem and it’s free.
And I’ve been using that for years. That has had an enormous lifecycle in terms of lead magnets. So, one, in terms of paid advertising is very effective and Facebook still is very strong for me. It typically outperforms the other outlets, but Google does okay. It’s worth testing, but Facebook is definitely a strong place for that, no doubt. And you can be really precise with your targeting.
And look, you can spend not a lot of money and still get results from this, so don’t feel like you need an enormous budget to get started. And even if you have an enormous budget, I recommend don’t spend more than you need at first because you’re probably going to suck at first, and you might as well not waste your money.
Spend some money, get some data, and you need to polish your copywriting skills and test different images and all these different things. And then once you’re kind of rocking and rolling, then you increase your budget.
In terms of organic stuff, you guys could speak a lot to Instagram. That seems to be still be a pretty viable organic platform.
One thing that I did originally in my business was, before social media, forums were really big. And the idea there, especially the old kettlebell forums, is you become a valued member of a community, and you get in and you engage, you answer questions, you just be helpful. You don’t go and plaster your stuff because that will just annoy people.
But you ask questions, you provide content, you help people, and then you just always have some way that people can check you out and get back to your site. And I got thousands of subscribers over the years that I would do that, especially on the old kettlebell forums of just daily interacting on there, and then in my signature, I would have a link to my free eBooks and stuff.
And then eventually it came to a point where I was really a valued member of the community. When people would ask questions, people would post my eBooks as responses, right? But that’s something you have to earn by spending time and being a good member of a community.
Now, what’s the equivalent? Forums are still around. That’s still an option, like Reddit, but Facebook groups are kind of that now and joining relevant Facebook groups, engaging — and this is where you just have to roll up your sleeves and put in the time. Nobody’s gonna know who you are first, deal with it, but if you’re persistent and you’re consistent and you’re providing good content, and you’re helpful, you’ll become– you know, I think they even have like the badges now, of “valued member” or something like that on Facebook, right?
So, earn those and use those. And then keeping up with what social– and I haven’t done this as much anymore because I have not done much of the organic stuff anymore since I’ve been more on the paid side, but whatever the best organic platforms for social media are these days, consistent content there.
For me, back in the wild West days of social media, it was YouTube back in the days where you could just put up a YouTube video and thousands of people would see it no problem. Now, as I’m sure you will attest, Jordan, it’s much more of a grind to do that. But there’s still platforms where you can still make it work organically, and if you don’t have a lot of money to spend, then just be willing to spend the time to do it.
Jordan: [00:27:54] There’s a lot there that I agree 100%. The one thing that is actually really interesting that’s continued to hold true for me is if you have a strong email list, then you can send them anywhere you want and it becomes much easier to grow whatever platform. It’s one of the reasons my YouTube has been able to grow so much over the last year.
It went from. 20k, pretty unengaged, just from people randomly finding my videos over the years that were not very deliberate. It was more just random people finding exercise videos that I started in 2012/13/14, to, between a combination of really pushing it on Instagram and also pushing it on my email list, growing it to over 100k in the last year, very, very engaged.
And I think it’s one of the most overlooked components of a strong email list is you can send that attention wherever you’d like.
Pat: [00:28:50] Yeah.
Jordan: [00:28:50] And we sort of spoke about this — whatever platform you’re on, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, they own your audience. They own the algorithm and sometimes people won’t be on social media.
They’ll delete the app from their phone, they won’t be looking at it or the platform will not show your stuff, whatever it is. But when people are on your email list, they’re getting your email. They will be in their inbox, and maybe they won’t look at it in the first hour that you send it, but maybe within the next day or 48 hours, they’re going to see it.
And you can take that and use it to build whatever platform you want.
Pat: [00:29:26] Yeah, 100%. So that’s a really good point is you can bounce your email list to build momentum on other platforms as needed. And I’ve done that a number of times. I’ve done it to win blog award popular vote contests, back in the days when I was into that sort of thing.
Recently actually, very recently, a new promotion I’m doing that’s worked out pretty well for me is the $1 eBook on Amazon. But what I did early on, when I first launched, it’s called “Introduction to Kettlebells,” it’s $1. It’s still got a ton of momentum by itself, but I just sent my email list there and I hit number one in three categories. One of them was the major category of “fitness and exercise overall,” so that’s not some minor, silly sub category. This is a major category. I was number one for about 30 days and that built a ton of momentum there.
And now it’s still bouncing on top five of some sub categories by itself, but that was really helpful to have the email list to help build that early momentum to get the number one best Amazon seller stamp or whatever cause then it just pushes it up in everybody else’s feeds.
I couldn’t have done that without the email list.
Mike: [00:30:36] Pat, I’m a math guy. Can you talk about what would be a good number to shoot for 1) when you’re talking about paid ads: cost per email, and then 2) say someone has 500 or 1000 people on their email list, or even more, what’s a good open rate for those people in the fitness industry?
Pat: [00:31:00] Let me take the second one first. If you’re a frequent, aggressive e-mailer, which I think you should be, somewhere around 20-30% is considered in the healthy to very good range. If you’re over 30% I actually get worried in the opposite direction that you’re not emailing enough.
Somebody called me the other day and was like, “I have a 47% email open rate.” I’m like, “let me guess, you’re emailing once a month.” He’s like, “yep.”
So that’s a problem, right? If you start dropping below 15% or get in around 15%, I would get concerned. Now, of course, this is all qualified by, “what’s the bottom line at the end of the day?” And I’ve known people who’ve had lower open rates, but they’re just crushing it, so they don’t care, but if you want a general starting temperature, that’s probably not a bad place.
The other question is much, much more difficult to answer because this is where you kind of need that bottom-line data. It’s like a chicken and the egg problem, right?
Where it’s like, “okay, how much should I spend to–” essentially the question you’re really asking is “how much should I spend to acquire a customer, ultimately?” Not just an email contact, but a customer. That itself is a very difficult question to answer because you might intentionally, and sometimes I do this, want to lose money to get a customer because once you get a customer and you do a good job, they probably will stay a customer and become a customer again.
So, a lot of direct response marketers are willing to take a hit on that initial front end because they understand the long-term value of a customer. And you have to base your calculations off the long-term value of a customer.
But how do you base your calculations off the long-term value of the customer if you don’t have any customers?
That is a problem that I just cannot give a solid answer to. The thing is, you just have to do the best you can at first to manage costs in a realm that is acceptable to you, that you’re not going to cry in the shower every night if you just lost it completely, until you start to get some customers and data over the course of time when you can say, “okay, when somebody buys this, they’re a customer for this long. So how much am I willing to spend to get somebody into that program?”
So, it’s unfortunate, but we can’t really make those types of assessments until we’re kind of rolling with things. And then honestly, once you’re rolling with things, you might not even be inclined to make those types of decisions.
I think you should because it helps you to fine tune, it helps you to optimize. And then it also depends, right? So, people sell different things. You might have really expensive products, which means I might be willing to spend a lot to acquire an initial lead or customer and that’s justified. On the other hand, I might have more lower-end products, so I might not be able to spend a lot.
So, I really appreciate the math question because it’s important. But yeah, the chicken and the egg problem first, and then you just have kind of the hierarchy of goods and different services. So, it’s really hard to give a number on that one.
Mike: [00:33:52] That’s fair.
Jordan: [00:33:53] So, let’s say people get Aweber or MailChimp or Infusionsoft, or– if you’re just starting out, do you not get Infusionsoft.
Pat: [00:34:05] They make me unhappy, but they all make me unhappy.
Jordan: [00:34:08] I will say, I tried Infusionsoft for maybe a month back in 2015 or something. And at that point in time, I know Aweber did not have the ability to tag people, or they didn’t really have the ability to track behavior.
And now I think they all do, unless I’m mistaken, but I know Infusionsoft is much more complex and much more advanced in how they do it, but I will say, man, their customer service really sucks.
Pat: [00:34:39] It’s still bad. So, with this whole pandemic, there was some issues with our payment gateway and this or that, and they just dropped the ball in every single way.
So I don’t recommend Infusionsoft, but it’s like one of, “okay, well, what’s the best of the worst?” kind of question, but to your point, and I’ve been using Infusionsoft for so long that I haven’t really kept up with the other platforms, but my understanding is that Aweber or MailChimp can pretty much do a lot of what Infusionsoft can do now.
Jordan: [00:35:10] Yeah. I use Aweber mainly. I use a little bit of MailChimp, but I like Aweber a lot, the customer service is great. If I ever need to get on the phone with them, literally within 10 minutes I’ll be on the phone with them and they’ll fix whatever problem I need.
But let’s say someone gets their email list — number one, we’ll talk about how often you recommend actually emailing your list. And number two, I would love, and I know you and I did an entire course on this eons ago now, but let’s talk about some writing tips. Let’s talk about like, what’s good writing for an email, and we’ll go into that.
Pat: [00:35:44] Yeah. So how often should you email? Every day. I sometimes email two to three times a day. Now people are like, “well, that’s insane,” but it actually goes to your second point. I mean, think about this, right? When you really like somebody, do you want to hear from them less or more? And the answer is, when I really like somebody, I want to hear from them all the time, quite frankly.
So, the question isn’t “how often should I email?” The question is, “how do I get people to like me?” You have to seriously ask that. And the answer is, well, you get people to like you by becoming a better writer. Steve Martin has great advice, you know, “be so good that people can’t ignore you.”
I would say “so they don’t want to ignore you” is even more fundamental — so they would be sad if you didn’t email them every day. And it’s funny ’cause if I don’t email for a day or two, I’ll get people replying, “did I miss the email? Where is it?” And that makes me happy.
I missed a podcast the other day and somebody sent me a very concerned message, he’s like, “I heard you coughing on your previous podcast, is everything okay?” I haven’t replied to him yet. I want the tension to build just a little bit more.
So yeah, it’s an important question. Top of mind, awareness matters. And just matters on social media too. So, being frequent has an impression, right? That being at the top of somebody’s mind, kind of always in the conversation when they’re ready to become a customer, you want to be one of the first people they think about.
So, frequency matters, but it shouldn’t be at the expense of quality. You gotta be a master of both. If you have high quality people will like a high frequency.
To your second point, writing, I think the best way to become a better copywriter is to not become obsessed with copywriting, but to study the mechanics of good writing in general and to be diverse in your study of writing — studying fiction, nonfiction.
I’ll give a couple of books that were very helpful for me. I’ll give maybe two general writing books and then one or two copywriting specific books that I think people should start with.
The two general writing books would be “On Writing Well,” by William Zinsser.
I think he was a professor at Yale for many years. He was a great, great writer, and he’ll teach you how to have a really concise but warm style. A style that connects with people.
The other one would be, “Elements of Style” by William Strunk and E.B. White.
E.B. is famous for writing “Charlotte’s Web,” and what he did is he took William Strunk’s former book– he was White’s professor in college, and then White went back and took this little book of his and revamped it. And that’s the famous texts called “Elements of Style” now. It’s a classic writing book, so everybody should have that.
Study those two and do the exercises and we’ll talk about exercises here in a minute if we want. That will just make you a good writer generally, ’cause you can be a good writer, but a bad copywriter. You can also be a pretty good copywriter, but a bad writer and preferably you want both, right?
The masters of copywriting are both good writers and good copywriters. And I’m just echoing a lot of the advice that I absorbed from them.
For copywriting, I would say go to Gary Halbert. He’s got an interesting collection of letters that he wrote from his son from prison. They’re called the “Boron Letters”–
Jordan: [00:39:10] Still one of my favorite books of all time.
Pat: [00:39:12] It’s so good. And, you know, he intersperses it with various different pieces of life advice. He’s very reflective and he’s just a fascinating guy, he really is. But he talks about the core fundamentals of copywriting, as well. So, it’s really good.
And then I would say probably Dan Kennedy, who’s a student of Halbert, his book, The Ultimate Sales Letter” is a really good one on just the nuts and bolts of copywriting. So those four books, I would start with that.
And then you just have to practice and there’s different exercises you can do. One is to set a daily minimum of, I’d say like a thousand words a day. You just have to write a thousand words a day. Other copywriters say, write one sales letter a day. If you do that for a year, you will be a better copywriter at the end of the year.
And try and sell different things and try and sell trivial things like try and sell your water glass. Try and sell your mailbox. ‘Cause it makes you think in terms of features and benefits and what types of problems am I solving, and there’s a lot of other creative exercises that go into copywriting rather than just mere description. Like, “how do I make this exciting?” I don’t know off the top of my head, but that seems like it would be a good exercise.
Jordan: [00:40:25] Let’s talk about that. ‘Cause I remember one of the things I struggled with at the beginning was understanding the difference between a feature and a benefit. I remember one of the ways that– I can’t remember if you explained it or if I read it in “The Ultimate Sales Letter,” maybe both, but the example that I remember is like, “all right, so you have a car, right? The car is red. The car has four tires. That car has whatever this engine is,” versus the, “this engine is going to go this fast.” Sort of like the, “so you can” marketing, right?
Pat: [00:41:01] Yeah. Feature is what something has, the benefit is why it matters.
So, for example, “this is a plastic cup and that’s great because you can give it to your kids without worrying about them throwing it against the wall,” which appears strongly to me as a parent, right?
And you mentioned the classic copywriting technique is the three words: “so you can.”
Okay, you talk about the feature, so you can, why does it matter? And why does it matter to that person? So, when you’re going through the features of something, always list of features, but then follow up those three words “so you can,” and then that tries to help you enter into the mind of your customer.
And they’ll go, “well, why does this matter?” And that’s always going to be case-specific. It might matter for different reasons to different people, but people are buying because of the benefits primarily, and we can’t expect that they’re going to always be able to explicitly draw benefits out from features. So as copywriters, we have to make sure we’re doing that for them.
Jordan: [00:41:58] I think it’s such a good exercise. One thing I used to do, I remember when I worked with you when I was living in Israel, one thing I used to do is I used to just take a sheet of paper, draw a line right down the middle and whatever it is I was selling– or even just like randomly taking like a bottle, whatever it is, and I would write the features of it and then I would write the benefits of each feature.
And when I look at what other people are doing, oftentimes in the fitness industry, because that’s where I am, I see one of the biggest mistakes being: when they’re selling, they’re expressing a feature as though it’s a benefit.
Pat: [00:42:29] Right.
Jordan: [00:42:29] And it’s not. It’s like, “in this program, you’re going to train four times a week.” Period. So…
Pat: [00:42:36] And we understand it, as fitness professionals, like the benefit is implied in the feature. But that doesn’t mean that our customer understands it.
So, we have to make it explicit.
Jordan: [00:42:45] Yeah. The other word that really– so you have the, “so you can” marketing, the other word that I found, and this is not from me, I forget the guy’s name, you might remember the guy’s name. They’re like, “the magical word in marketing is ‘because.'”
Pat: [00:42:58] That’s from Benson Venga.
Jordan: [00:43:00] Yes! Yeah, he has some amazing articles that I remember. I saved all of them, but I think one of the easiest ways to explain it is because when you say, “because,” when you explain why, now all of a sudden you are required to give the benefit. It’s a very simple way, and one way that I learned from you that is a very simple way of doing this is through bullet points.
In the email, just listing out the bullet points. You can say, “and this is good because…” and bullet point, bullet point, bullet point, bullet point, bullet point. It makes it very easy for them to read and see the benefits.
Pat: [00:43:34] Yeah. Another one is just to put the words “you want.” So, “this is good because bullet point,” “you want this, you want this, you want this, you want…”
Sometimes the best copywriting the most obvious. It’s almost obnoxiously obvious to us, but it isn’t the case to the people reading.
Jordan: [00:43:56] Right. Right.
Mike: [00:44:00] Jordan, if you have anything else on features and benefits, feel free to ask. I’m gonna take us a little sideways here.
So, you’re philosophy major? Do I remember that correctly?
Pat: [00:44:13] Yeah. So, I have an interesting and eclectic background, but undergrad was economics and then a philosophy for masters.
Mike: [00:44:22] Could you talk about, and this might not have been an issue for you at all, but I’m personally curious, did you ever have to reconcile selling with your moral compass?
Pat: [00:44:36] Yes. Yeah, actually, and there’s a lot to that. I would say that’s something that’s changed for me over time.
When I was younger, I was quite different than I am now. Now, I think that I always had a pretty firm moral foundation, but it might’ve been more lax in some ways than it certainly is today.
Like Jordan. I was always kind of repulsed by a lot of the marketing that I saw, especially the kind of pay to play, quid pro quo type of stuff. And also, the really weird justifications people would use — the mental gymnastics people would perform to make it seem like what they were doing wasn’t just sheer lying or immorality.
When it was. It just clearly was. You’re just rationalizing this poor decision.
But in principle, certainly, there’s nothing wrong with selling, right? There’s nothing, in principle, wrong with that, right? We have a natural right to private property, we have the right to free exchange with people, and that’s a good thing, you know? Within certain bounds that creates benefits for everybody.
That’s a large reason that wealth is created in society, from private property and free exchange. So that’s a good thing. But you know, there’s certain moral constraints that have to be considered. And a big one is lying, you know? That’s a big one.
I think lying is always wrong. So, you shouldn’t do it. But a lot of people in marketing are lying, or at least grossly exaggerating, which is a form of lying. Now, I would say that’s something that I was probably more okay with starting out that I’m just not okay with now. And I found that it’s not an issue, that you don’t need to– you certainly never need to lie, but you don’t even need to exaggerate. If you’re just very straightforward with people and honest about what the expectations are, people really appreciate it.
And I think part of it is because they’re so sick of things being so grossly exaggerated. They’re so sick of being lied to that honesty is so refreshing to them. And I understand, having entered the industry, of the temptation. You see all these bombastic claims from people, it’s like, “well, I don’t believe any of that’s true, but how am I going to keep up?” Right?
And I would say you can keep up if you focus on everything else that I’ve talked about. And if you’re going to build your business only to the ruin of your soul, then you’re just doing being a human wrong. You’ve just got it all fundamentally wrong.
But the reverse can be true — that you could build people, serve them in a very ethical way, create real value in the world, and make sure that you’re taking care of yourself and that you’re providing for your family if you have a family or whatever.
So, I think there’s often a superficial conflict that people realize when they first get into the industry, but I would say there’s deep harmony in the best business life between an ethical life and being an entrepreneur.
Mike: [00:47:34] Well said.
Jordan: [00:47:37] One of the interesting things that I like about social media is that you can see common trends.
I know one thing for me that was difficult when I was mainly on email is, I like to look at what other people are doing, what other people are saying, just to like get a feel for where people are at. And there are different ways to do this, but one of the things I’ve noticed, the trends on social media is, especially over the last year, there’ve been a lot of trendy words: “vulnerability,” “authenticity,” all that stuff.
But there are some words that have really stuck out to me that it’s been very interesting to see in terms of saying like, “real,” “you’re very real.” And you can sort of see this in, the commercials that were around or around in like the late 90s-early 2000s they wouldn’t work anymore. The outrageous, crazy claims that they would make, but now generally what I’ve seen is the best marketing is the most “real” marketing.
It’s the most truthful, the most honest, and yes, there’s still nonsense and crazy stuff out there, but even looking at something like the Kardashians, where they push something absolutely ridiculous on their page, you look at the comment section, they’re like, “what are you doing?” The vast majority of comments are just trashing them.
And so, I think one of the cool things about social media that social media has done and more and more platforms have done is that it’s allowed you to succeed.
It’s allowed you to succeed without sacrificing your moral compass. It’s allowed you to succeed, actually, oftentimes because of you following what you believe to be morally and ethically right. And people appreciate it now more than ever.
Pat: [00:49:27] Yeah. It seems like social media has woken up in a lot of ways and you know, maybe it was always that way. It’s always hard to say like, “is this new or have I just shifted?” You know? Just surrounded myself with less scummy people, quite frankly.
So maybe just changed the environment, but either way, what you say is absolutely correct. And it’s funny you bring up the idea of, you know, Mark Twain always would kind of lampoon the whole “person who announces themselves,” right? Like, “how do you know somebody definitely isn’t authentic? ‘Cause they always announced themselves as being authentic.” “How do you know that somebody isn’t a writer? Because they always start every Facebook post off with, ‘as a writer…'” Right?
Twain would just say like, “you know a writer by their writing. You don’t have to announce it. You just write. People are going to know that you’re a writer.”
I’m not saying there’s no exceptions to that, but it is a funny thing to make note of. You don’t need to announce yourself.
Jordan: [00:50:27] It’s like people start off, “I’m going to be very vulnerable right now.” It’s like, you just made this whole thing up, didn’t you?
Pat: [00:50:33] Yeah. Yeah. Right? And you try not to be a crazy skeptic about it, but it’s just– and you see a lot of parroting of that on social media. ‘Cause they’ll see that somebody will say, in an inauthentic way, that that worked for somebody, right? And it’d be like, “Ooh, now I’m going to be vulnerable,” right?
And it’s just a different kind of lying. It’s just a different kind of bad. It might not be as visible as preposterous weight loss claims, but it’s still lying. And so, you still shouldn’t do it.
Jordan: [00:51:10] It might be easier to convince yourself that you’re telling the truth or that you’re not lying than actually outright saying something that you know isn’t accurate, but it’s still a form of deceiving and not actually telling the truth.
Pat: [00:51:24] Right. Yeah, it’s a weird thing. That’s all I’ve got to say about that.
Jordan: [00:51:32] Your emails are among — and I’ve been on many different people’s email list just to study over the years — your emails consistently have always been the funniest that I’ve read. And you’ve always done it in a very subtle way without going over the top. And I remember, I think it was you who said this, oh no, maybe it was Williams Zinsser who said something to the effect of “if you have to say that it was a joke then it wasn’t funny,” like you already ruined it. And there’ll be people who will read your emails and maybe they don’t get the joke, but just because someone might not get the joke doesn’t mean that you have to announce that it was a joke because if you’re a good writer and you’re good joke teller, then they’ll know it was a joke. And if not, then you need to improve your writing. Don’t say, “JK” or, “that was sarcasm” or whatever it is.
Do you have any rules or principles or guides that you follow to include humor into your writing? Because to date, I mean, I could go back into your emails that I used to get from like 2015-2016 and still just laugh and laugh and laugh because you’re so captivating and so humorous in a very subtle and effective way.
Pat: [00:52:49] Well, thank you very much. Yeah, so, E.B. White talks about this in one of his famous essays, it’s not in the book I recommended, but it’s in his book of essays, which I would also recommend that you can try and dissect humor, but it’s not very pretty when you do it. It’s not something that gives way to any type of technical analysis.
It just isn’t. It becomes disgusting in the process when you try to break it down too much. So, it’s not like a frog. You can’t really pull it apart like that. But there’s some general tips and you can study types of humor like absurdity or sarcasm or puns and get a lay of the land of, “okay, what are some humor devices? How are they used?”
And Mark Twain would always say this, and I think this is kind of to your point too, is humor can ever be affected. If you try to be funny, you’re not going to be funny. Humor has to arise naturally, it has to invite itself, Mark Twain would say.
And a lot of that I think has to deal with, you have to always consider environment. If you want to be funny, you need to read funny writers. You need to read people like Mark Twain and Ring Lardner and some of the funniest of the funniest. And E.B. White, as well, who mastered a very subtle type of humor. It’s a sophisticated humor. It’s not in your face, and it builds. It has a crescendo to it. And then when you finally get to that point where the joke is made, but you had to be paying attention, it just kills you in a way that most modern humor completely falls flat.
And that’s the humor I always respected the most because that seemed like the most sophisticated.
Most comedians today, I think suck, but go back and read Twain and Ring Lardner is a hidden gem. He’s not perennial cause he was a sportswriter of his time, but his stuff is so funny. There’s an essay for him called “The Golden Honeymoon,” everybody should read that if you want to read something really funny.
And so, if you want to write funny, you have to read funny. You have to read funny writers. You have to kind of try and dissect, but not too deep, how their humor invites itself. And I think what you can tell is if you get in the habit of writing and you’re having fun, humor will invite itself.
But you cannot force it. You cannot say, “I need to be funny.” ‘Cause as soon as you do that, you’re not going to be funny. You’re just not. Instead focus on making a message. Say “here’s the point I want to make,” and then I promise you, as long as you’ve been reading funny stuff and you at least have a decent sense of humor yourself–
Some of this is an eight, right? There’s some people who just seem congenitally incapable of laughing ever. And the funny thing is those people were actually really funny, but they’re not trying to be, in some ways. But yeah, you focus on the core message and then when the humor invites itself, you just let it in.
And then by studying the different devices and reading good writers, it’ll just polish itself up over time.
Jordan: [00:55:34] One thing I’ve noticed about your writing and humor and others like you– and I think one thing I try to emulate in my writing is using a story, a true story to lead the way through your message.
But oftentimes what I found — and this is just through the process of becoming a better writer — when you write whatever your first draft is, if you want to call it a “first draft,” you’ll cut it down a lot. There’s a lot of just nonsense that you can cut out, cut out, cut out, cut out, cut out, and when you are telling a story and you finally eventually cut out all the nonsense, oftentimes just telling the truth about what happened you’ll find humor within it.
And if it’s your story, you might not even necessarily see the humor in it very much, but other people reading your story, telling a story about what happened — a field trip you went on, a drive you went on, a sign you saw, just through the process of telling the story in a very brief, punctual way, oftentimes it comes across hysterical at these intermittent times.
I think only through the process of practicing it and sort of reading that writing. That’s one of the reasons why I love your writing and I love reading these other styles of writing that are very similar and very punctual and brief. One-word sentences, and one thing that you taught me is breaking the rules of grammar that you learn in high school. Sort of breaking the rules of writing that you learn. You don’t need these structures that you were taught.
Oftentimes writing in the way you would speak in these very brief, punctual ways, and telling a story is more than enough to really make people laugh just through the process of telling that story.
Pat: [00:57:16] Yeah. Good humor always plays close to the truth and hopefully close to home as well. And you’re right about that — one of my music theory teachers in high school, she always used to hammer this into us, but it seems true to me still today that you do first have to know the rules and you have to master the rules, but then you can find ways to intelligently break them.
If you never know the rules then you’ll never intelligently break them, you’ll just look like an idiot, but if you do know the rules, then you can find ways to intelligently break them. And that seems true for pretty much everything, at least artistically, whether it’s music or writing.
And the best people in any of these categories really did have a pretty profound mastery of the basics and the rules, but then found interesting ways to break the rules occasionally. ‘Cause if you break the rules all the time, then it becomes incoherent, but sometimes you find ways of breaking the rules and it leads to novelty and creativity.
Certainly, in copywriting you sometimes have to break the rules, and it can agitate the trained writer at first because you’re like, “no, I was taught that this is wrong. I should never break up paragraphs arbitrarily,” right? But sometimes in copywriting we care about ease of readability — white space and room actually makes it easier for people to scroll through a page.
So, we understand why those rules were there for technical writing, but in copywriting, we can understand there’s intelligent reasons to maybe break some of these rules, would be just one of those examples.
Jordan: [00:58:44] Anything you want to ask or add, Mike?
Mike: [00:58:48] I’ve really just enjoyed listening to this as someone who’s email lists could use a lot of work and yeah, this was really enjoyable for me.
Pat: [00:58:57] Thanks guys. This has been awesome.
Jordan: [00:59:00] You want to tell people where they can find you, follow the podcast, email, whatever?
Pat: [00:59:04] Yeah. Primary website is still chroniclesofstrength.com and you can get on my email list right there.
Alternatively, if you want to see one of my sequences, the website 101kettlebellworkouts.com.
And that would be one of the lead magnets that I have that I talked about before that’ll put you on my email list.
I forget what sequence that is, but you’ll start getting a lot of emails from me and I hope you like them. That’s the, that’s the best place to go, ’cause then my email list will automatically bounce you out to different hubs like my podcast, “The Pat Flynn Show.”
I would say those are the two main ones, my email list and my podcast.
Jordan: [00:59:42] So I know you have sequences that obviously go out all the time, all over the place, do you send daily emails as well to your main list once people get through all the funnels?
Pat: [00:59:51] I do, and sometimes I will send the daily emails to people who are in certain parts of the funnels, as well. So sometimes when people are in sequences, they might be removed from the broadcast, but at certain times they might be brought back into the broadcast.
Jordan: [01:00:03] Do you have a way to just get straight onto your broadcast list or no?
Pat: [01:00:08] That is a good question.
I don’t think so because I always want to put somebody through a sequence.
I have some small sequences, which are just expectations. And I think that’s really important for email marketers. This is important for anybody, any coach, right? You need to set expectations at the start. And so, an expectation, email, and here it could just be a welcome email, serves as a sort of filter.
It will get people off your list pretty quickly who you know will not be a good fit. Just by being upfront and saying, “Hey, look, I’m going to pitch some stuff.” And that’s fine, I think you should be up front about that.
Now, it should also be in the context of, “you’re going to love my emails ’cause they’re going to have awesome content,” but, you know, however often I have cool deals going on. I’m gonna let you know about it. And so that expectation is there so people aren’t surprised when you’re sending pitch emails is really important.
So, for people who are listening to this, my takeaway would be: don’t just let people dump onto your broadcast list. At the very least, have some type of welcome email where you set the expectations of what people can expect on your email list, but also introduce your core brand, your philosophy, what are you about and why should people pay attention? And then you can build a longer, more extended sequences from there, but at least have something like that.
Jordan: [01:01:23] Amazing. Awesome, man. Well thank you for coming on, we appreciate it.
Pat: [01:01:27] Thanks dudes!
Mike: [01:01:28] Thanks a lot, Pat.
