Angie Colee (00:01):
Welcome to Permission to Kick Ass. A podcast about leaving self-doubt in the dust, punching fear in the face and taking bold action toward your biggest dreams. I'm Angie Colee, and let's get to it. Hey and welcome back to Permission to Kick Ass. I have an exciting one today. I, this is my first time interviewing two people at the same time. So welcome to the show. Rob and Kennedy from email marketing heroes.
Kennedy (00:32):
Hello! The surprise is we're interviewing you.
Angie Colee (00:37):
That actually would be funny if like it turned the table on people one day and just didn't tell them
Rob (00:42):
If we all interview each other in a circle?
Angie Colee (00:44):
Yeah!
Kennedy (00:45):
I don't wanna interview you, Rob. I can't be bothered with that. I know far too much about you
Angie Colee (00:49):
Or, or I just sit here and watch you two interview each other. I think that would be hilarious too. So tell me a little bit more about email marketing heroes.
Rob (00:59):
Yeah, so we have a really bizarre story. I'm Rob, by the way, uh, with I've got the red hair of the two of us, Arthur, Rob Arthur red, no more clues Kennedy is the, um, the one Kennedy's one. We'll say that Kennedy's the other one. Um, I, I, Rob, I've been a, I'll be using this voice for the rest of the episode that I know. Um, I have been a, a hypnotist for the past 18 years now. I've been lucky enough to travel almost all over the world, performing my show as a comedy hypnotist, getting people on stage, hypnotizing them, making do crazy things and sending them back to the audience. And Kennedy is a mind reader. Folks in the states would know that better as a mentalist, uh, gets people on stage uses skills like psychology and body language at reading people in statistics to make it look a lot like he can read people's minds and you might think, well, what's a hypnotist and a mind reader gotta do meddling with email marketing. And basically what happened was when we started our first businesses as entertainers. Like I think a lot of people have this misconception that you just like stick an ad in the yellow pages. Remember that stick an ad in the yellow pages and then just wait for the phone to ring. And that's not true. We realized for me straight out of school for Kennedy, just out of university, when we started our separate businesses as entertainers, we were just two pals, both wanting to be entertainers. Uh, we realized we now had to figure out branding, pricing, positioning, marketing. How do you do your accounts? Uh, how do what's insurance? What insurance do you need? How does it all work? How do you not get ripped off? And so very quickly we fell upon email marketing as a method of getting booked for gigs, getting repeat books and then getting referrals to other, other clients as well. What happened was very quickly and I can't really say it was anything other than just dedication. The fact we started early, you know, emails changed a lot in the last 18 years. And so like when you look at it back then not everybody was on a million lists, but just through doing it a lot and becoming obsessed with it. We found that we were two things that most entertainers and most business owners think you can't be, we were expensive and busy and most people think you're either expensive with no work or you are busy, but you're really cheap. And we, we sort of got that, right? So other entertainers very quickly started saying to us, what are you doing? How are you doing it? And we started coaching them. So like different types of entertainers. And then that led to about five years ago, we finished up being, um, asked to go and speak at a marketing event in the UK, uh, about email marketing for loads of business owners. And these were people who were like making and selling jewelry through to accountants and everything in between, and big B to B, big B to C everything and little businesses. And we had a blast. And so since then we've started a membership for those people. And we've helped thousands of businesses of every type all over the world now to just sell more stuff with email marketing that doesn't make you wanna be sick in your mouth. So if you were about to switch off thinking, well, I'm not a hypnotist or a mentalist. This won't work for me. Sit back there.
Angie Colee (03:39):
I love that. You've been told, sit back down unless you're walking and listening at the same time, in which case people.
Kennedy (03:44):
Yeah, that'll be so funny if someone like half around a marathon and they're just like sat on the floor. not going,
Rob (03:50):
I've heard podcasts are a great way to get you through a marathon.
Angie Colee (03:53):
Yeah.
Rob (03:55):
Especially this imagine.
Angie Colee (03:56):
That's awesome.
Rob (03:58):
Well, we should do mile markers. Shouldn't we all the way through one mile to go.
Angie Colee (04:02):
Yeah. And if you haven't hit it, you're not moving fast enough. Pick up the pace. No, I am the last person that is ever gonna judge anybody on running, cuz I'm sitting on my butt most of the day. So it's interesting. Cuz one thing that you mentioned, uh, really stuck out in my mind, Rob, and I wrote it to down, it was hope marketing and I think that's what a lot of newer business owners get into. It's like, all right, well I put my, I put my website up, I got my business cards and now we just wait for the money to roll in. And it was like, that was the first bitch slap that life served me as an entrepreneur.
Kennedy (04:37):
It's it's tricky because I think we live in a world now where it just takes so much longer to build trust with somebody, you know, how many different scam Instagram profiles have followed you this week? You know, I was like, oh, it's that really famous person? No, no, it's not that really famous person. They're just trying to sell you Forex Trading. You know? Um, so I think what we have to do is realize that marketing needs a bit, it more than just, Hey, you're seeing my website. Cause how many websites have you even forgotten about this week? The loads of, and it's so easy to get forgotten about because we're all scrolling through everything so quickly. We need to do something for people who are trying to solve the problem that we all solve. You know, your problem that you solve for other people, we need to do something to show up. We need to do something to nurture that relationship, deepen that relationship, deeper, their understanding, earn their trust, not just build the trust, earn it like for real, with value, with help being actually helpful for the people who do buy that square. And for the X percent of people who don't buy, that's fine. You help people. That's cool.
Angie Colee (05:44):
Yeah. You know, like it, it drives me nuts that there is this big trend, right? We are, we're all skeptical of LinkedIn ads these days. I think. Somebody add me,
Rob (05:53):
Absolutely, LinkedIn from start to end to be honest. But yes,
Angie Colee (05:56):
Like I, they, they add me and I am skeptical right away because they're promising me, the sun, moon and stars. They can grow my business. They work with coaches just like me. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure that you're just searching for coaches and you don't actually know my name.
Kennedy (06:10):
Absolutely.
Angie Colee (06:11):
It's like value is so easy to provide, but most people won't do it because they're taking that spray and pray approach that it's a numbers game. So I'm just gonna reach out to as many people as possible. And somebody's gonna say, yes,
Rob (06:23):
Great example of this. Literally just yesterday, I got a guy slid into my Facebook DMS and it went the filtered messages thing as we're not friends on Facebook. And uh, it said, Hey, I saw that you were in X group that we're both in. Um, the last time I was active in that group probably three years ago, like, uh, and, and he said, you know, I've been talking to at least other 13 other people in that group. And they were really struggling with their email marketing. So now they've hired me. I write their emails for them and they're getting open rates of this and sales of this. Would you like me to help you with your email marketing? I was like, I mean, you couldn't find a more ironic example of someone who's failed to do any research on the person they're reaching out to.
Angie Colee (06:59):
And that's what, like, that's something that they could have figured out with 30 seconds of research, cuz in the group's function, you can just click on somebody's name and see their activity in the group. So there's one, you know, strike one, strike two. If they had actually just looked you up and saw that your business is called email marketing heroes. And they're offering to help you with your email. Like I don't add mine isn't as obvious, but I am a copy chief for an email marketing agency. And so I know that people haven't really done their research when they, they tell me that they can help me improve my emails. I'm like actually I help the writers on my team improve their emails. So like you might bring me fresh ideas that I'll be impressed by, but it probably gonna be pretty hard to improve my emails.
Kennedy (07:42):
Yeah. And obviously we're all, we're all open to learning. Like do we know everything about email marketing? I mean, no, but do we obsess about it and think about it and talk to more people than most about it? Yes, of course we do. Which means we know more than some and we're always willing to learn, but for me, like somebody who's DMing you cold. I'm like, if that's your client attraction method, I'm not down. I actually don't think you go a business personally.
Angie Colee (08:05):
The only people that have ever caught my attention that way were people that took the extra time. Like you mentioned, um, I had somebody right after I was on a panel discussion at some presentation, reach out to me, offered a connect in a couple different places. And then she sent me a PDF that she had made of the quotable quotes that she thought I had from it, and I was like, yes, I wanna be your friend. Please give me that document. Yes.
Kennedy (08:29):
If you wanna go that far, like that's amazing if you, you know, if the person is, um, is influential enough for you then go that far. That's amazing. We've I don't think we've ever done anything.
Rob (08:41):
No, but again, I mean, it, it comes back to the thing you said before Kennedy about this idea of, you know, trust is trust is built and it's earned and it's stuff. And, and like, if you put in the work, like I remember I was talking about that about something and he said about something, know somebody could break into Harrison, do this and steal the thing. I was like, dad, if they do that much work, they can have the tele, like as far as I, they haven't stolen it, they've earned it at that point. So like, and I think, you know, to a certain extent, if you do that much work in order to get somebody's attention and like give them something impressive, you've earned their trust. And that's, that's what
Angie Colee (09:10):
Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's really funny that especially in this day and age with so much information flowing around that there is this tendency to think that you can actually shortcut that process. Like if I just build the right funnel and if I just have the right lead magnet, I'm just gonna like go straight to their trust folder. And they're gonna know that I'm legit. It surprises a lot of the cause I work with a lot of copywriters. So it surprises a lot of the new ones that I I'm like. My favorite way of getting clients is being at the bar at an event and just talking to people and we talk about everything, but, copy, and email marketing strategy. We actually like each other.
Rob (09:50):
And do you know what you, you talk about? You say that and it's really interesting cause that totally aligns with the way we teach. One of our strategies in email marketing is that if you are showing up whatever kind of email marketing is right now, whether it's a lot or non, you know, whatever, here's the little thing that will help you make it easier and also make it better. If you only show up at that bar, imagine like your email inbox, like the bar. If you just show up and talk about I'm a, whatever it is you do every single time in that email, then you are boring. Guess what? You're that boring person who only talks about themselves, who talks about, uh, just, I think, you know, other people you laugh about you go, oh, I think they might do a bit of email marketing. Cause all they talk about is email, you know, is that thing. Whereas if instead you should show up in people's inbox and you talk about stuff that is relatable, that they care about. That's about their world, the stuff they can identify with and then you relate it to your product or service. Now you are actually using email the way it should be used today, which we strongly believe that email is no longer the sales channel than it was for ages. It's a content channel. Email is a content channel. It should be giving value. It's another app that's on people's phones, snuggled in between Tinder and TikTok that people are clicking on and consume on their phones. Right? So you wouldn't just go onto your, your TikTok, your Instagram, and be like six reasons to buy my thing. And then the next thing, six new reasons to buy my, but we wouldn't follow you on Instagram. You don't do it anymore. People are consuming your emails on their phone the same way don't do it by email either.
Angie Colee (11:34):
Oh, that's so funny. There's an interesting parallel there with, you know, my, this is not the hugest podcast out there, but it has gotten to the point where people are starting to pitch me. And I can immediately tell people that have actually listened to the show and want to come on because they dig what the vibe is about versus people that are just blanket pitching, just like they would with these spray and pray people that we're talking about. Um, and I, I have a blanket response that I send to those people. I'm like this show is not X ways to Y your Z. There are plenty of marketing podcasts for that. Like, I wanna hear about the times that you have at that you fell on your face, that you learn something really weird and cool. And like what really gets you jazzed up about this to keep going beyond all the struggles and the people that reply back after I tell them that I'm like, okay. Yeah, you're definitely coming on the show. You sound like fun. Yeah. Oh man. So tell me, uh, I know that we talked a little bit before we started recording about, there was a point that you got to in your business where it seemed like all hope was lost. You wanna go a little bit more into that?
Kennedy (12:38):
Yeah. So we didn't start off, um, with email marketing heroes actually. So we basically had this idea for a piece of software oh, eight years ago, something like that. Right. Well, was it, well, yeah, we'll be on that right now. And the idea for this bit of software, which we launch and, um, have still, um, so it, we had this with a name. It was called response suite. It's great. What the idea was was we wanted a piece of software, which was a survey tool, but which integrated with your email marketing platforms so that you could, depending on people chosen the, and the answers to their survey, you would tag them differently and say them differently and sent 'em to different, thank you pages after, depending on what they said, like basically surveys that had marketing superpowers essentially. Right? So we were like, this is good. Everybody needs this. Cause we, the reason we came up with it was cuz we were hoping that the big survey platform in the market was gonna do those things and they don't. So we, how hired a full-time developer bear in mind, Rob and I have never had a job. So we've never been in a job interview. We've never been employed. We've certainly never been employers either. So I remember we sat down with our developer, well, he was, we become our developer and we sat in the same room and was the first interview. And we said, right, then how's this supposed to go? Cause we didn't know how to do an interview, how to be employers or anything like that. So anyway, we, we did that and then we hired a content marketing person and we have this office and you know, we're paying a few thousand a month to have this office space. We're paying over 10 grand a month in, um, in, in weight, in the weight bill alone, like all of this stuff, we're putting our personal money into it. Like we don't have investors. Like everything's like our money that we've earned from doing these gigs from Rob being a hypnotist, me being a mentalist. So we're putting our personal money into it. And we got to a point, I think it was in like September or October of 2019. So not that long ago, 2018 or 2019, something like that. Right. Um, and not how long ago. And we had both run out of money. We were like, we put all of our savings, everything we work for, being away from our families to earn all that stuff that we'd saved up. And we put it all into this business and we just couldn't get the customers in. We couldn't break even, we were still plowing money in. So I remember it was gonna be, it was the first Monday of, of the October. And um, Rob, I had been on the, on the phone all Sunday saying we don't have the money to pay these two lovely people at the end of October. And because it's a tiny team and we spend five days a week together, we're like a family, like the fact that they're paying their mortgages, their car payments, their children for university, all this stuff because of what we pay them. We take that really, really seriously. So we decided like we took advice from friends and they said, you can't tell the staff because they'll get demotivated. You have to just keep going. We were like, I can't do that. We can't do that. So we sat with, with them on the first Monday in October and we said, and you know, we were absolutely, you know, gotta, we completely upset. It was awful. We hadn't slept very well. I was on the phone to Rob, like till late. And we said, look, we, we felt like we failed. Like we've, we've tried so many different ways of, of doing this. We just can't pay the wages. So at the end of this month, there is a really good chance you'll work all month and we won't be able to pay you. We won't be able to stand up to our side of the bargain. You'll do your work and we won't be able to pay you. We're not comfortable with you working and not knowing that. So you've got a choice you can leave right now, not do the work. We totally understand go find a job or you can stay. And if you stay, it's just another plan. Like all the plans we've had, but here's, here's another plan. This is what we think. If anything is gonna fix this, this is what we think we'll fix it. But we also understand if you wanna leave and amazingly, for some insane reason, these two lunatics decided today and said, no, this sounds good. I was like it sounds shit. So like what? Doesn't sound good at all, but okay, let's be in this crap together. So, um, and that's when we decided to really look at what we really passionate about, what all of your experience and doing, and that is teaching people stuff. Cause we'd been helping other entertainers to do their email marketing. Can we help other people, um, after we'd done some keynotes and stuff. So that's when we founded email marketing heroes and uh, a membership, our email marketing show podcast, our, everything that we do has been born out of that. And now, um, it's just this incredible movement of, of people, um, wanting to fix email marketing the world over.
Rob (17:34):
And it was partly a reverse engineering of we've got this piece of software and we literally said, we wanna, we don't wanna like start a new business for the sake of just saving the business. We wanna figure out how to also make the software work because we've invested hundreds of thousands of dollars at this point into making it work. And so, uh, hundreds of thousands of pounds that's even more. So what we decided we would do is we would really focus on that. And so, um, what we did was we said, well, who's the people who might buy the software. And we said, people who do email marketing. So that's sort of who it's built for. That's why we built it for ourselves to do. Uh, and then we thought, great, well that is, let's create stuff that we can use to acquire those customers, not lose fortune. Uh we've we were good at selling courses. We'd sold courses to entertainers before we were like, cool. We can sell courses. We'll do that.
Angie Colee (18:15):
Yeah. I love that. I think that's a really creative and innovative solution to something that a lot of people would be tempted to be like, well, I've sunk hundreds of thousands of pounds, hundreds of thousands of dollars into this. And I haven't been able to make it work. So clearly that's a sign that this is a failure. I really like the fact that you went okay, so who would buy this? How do we pivot this so that we're attracting those people and it's kind of natural instead of uphill. Um, somebody that I work with that you guys both know Chris Orzechowski, uh, you know, in one of our training programs, we talk to people about uphill battles versus downhill battles. And like we try to structure all our client relationships and, and advisory situations to where we're fighting downhill battles. Cause that's easy and it still gets a lot of wins and it's a hell a lot harder than fighting uphill.
Kennedy (18:59):
And I think it's a, it's, it's a really interesting idea because I think everybody has a point with one of their products or one of their services, part of their offer, which you go, it's really good. It does a great job of what it's supposed to do. I just can't get people to buy it. So what they do is they go and they come up with another thing, which I think would be easier to sell. The problem is you just create yourself a new business, basically having to sell that product or service. Instead, what we did is we said, how do we make a business? Which will much more quickly pay itself, allow us to eventually get paid, get some of the money back out that we've invested, but also tease up a perfect market to buy the thing we want 'em to buy. So we end up with a business called email marketing heroes, which helps all these businesses, which is great. And we know that also the perfect prospects for the other things. So we don't have to end up starting a new business and feel like you're starting over and over again, all we're doing is moving slightly more towards the market, up the funnel in the, in an earlier stage of awareness or however you wanna think of it.
Angie Colee (20:05):
I think that's fantastic. And I like, I was writing notes during when you were speaking. Cause I thought you said so many things that were great that I wanted to circle back to. Like, first of all, the, the whole idea that you can't tell the staff when there's something hard going on. Like I think that that's a perfect parallel to these people that really aren't doing their research and they're doing this spray and pray. They don't give a damn. They're in it for themselves and growing their own business. And that shows, and I think, you know, your approach to this is the perfect. Nobody likes having hard conversations. It's not so like I'm
Kennedy (20:37):
They're called hard conversations.
Angie Colee (20:38):
Yeah. Nobody likes having them. I'm I'm particularly skilled at doing them in a way that winds up being win-win. But that's not something that I enjoy getting up and being like, oh, whose heart can I break today?
Kennedy (20:50):
I think it only leads to a harder conversation a little bit further down the line. When you say, you know, all that work you've just done. I can't pay you for that. I mean,
Angie Colee (20:56):
Yeah. Well, and then that trust is broken too, because you had the contract and you chose not to have the conversation so that you could get more out of them. Right. That's like self-driven but you guys turned it around and, and got them in your corner on the crazy decision. Like you were saying, like, this is nuts. This is not actually, why are you, why are you doing this? I gave you an out, you say
Rob (21:16):
Yes, sit out, think about it. You know,
Angie Colee (21:19):
I'm giving you an out, why aren't you running, screaming for the Hills? Um, but I think that's like giving somebody a choice and showing that you trust them and you value them enough to just be straight with them and let them make their own choice. Like, wow, that's, that's incredible.
Kennedy (21:35):
One of the things we have in the whole business is this policy of radical transparency, which is everybody in the business knows it exactly what we're doing, why we're doing it, what the numbers are like, everybody knows pretty much everything. And that means you don't end up. We're a tiny, tiny business, obviously. Right? But like you get into these large corporations and, and somebody who's like working so far away from the Csuite or the, you know, the large part of the organization, like the, the chief execs and board and all that malarky and um, they all go, oh, I'm working really hard just to fill those people's pocket. But actually, if you just look, if they just understood how a business works, why you're doing the things and they can all get on the train and drive the train with you. If you get everybody on board, that's the whole thing. Like get every your customers. Like we, we, we talk to our, we talk to our members, we have a membership called the league of email marketing humans. Right? And, um, one of the things we, we, we talk about is look, our job is absolutely we're quoting somebody else, but our job is to extract as much money as possible from you. That's our job as our business, but we can only do it if we give you more value than we take.
Angie Colee (22:48):
Yep.
Kennedy (22:49):
That's that's the game. And because we're like, our whole thing is about demystifying D BSing, email marketing, making it, not that scammy stuff. Cause people find out, okay, we teach psychology driven, email marketing. We're not about manipulative email marketing. We're about giving people the choices and helping them make choices by going well, that's the thing I wanna do. Well, that's the thing I don't wanna do. So there is a huge difference between psychology and manipulation. You definitely don't wanna be doing manipulation because what happens? You get caught out. You can't look at yourself from the mirror. You can't sleep at night. You feel terrible. That's not why you got into business in the first place. You've got the business to do your thing.
Angie Colee (23:28):
Oh yeah. I I've long thought that my job, especially in marketing has been okay to, to find good products that I think will help people and then find the people that I think need this thing and then just put them together and see what happens. I've never like bought into the whole high pressure artificial scarcity. You've gotta show them that this is the thing. And there's only a limited time act now, like I get urgency and scarcity as a sales tactic, but if it's gonna be here next year, the next 15 years, I'm not gonna tell them. You'll never have another opportunity like this again, you know?
Kennedy (24:03):
Yeah.
Angie Colee (24:05):
I was actually one of the, um, better closers on one of the teams that I worked for because this, uh, this person would launch a training course every year consistently. And it was usually like 2000 bucks to join. And there were per people that weren't at that level and they weren't quite ready and that's a really big, risky investment. And I would tell them, well, we've been doing this for 15 years. Um, barring some major catastrophe. It's reasonable to assume that this is gonna be here next year. And now you know what it's about and how much it costs. So if you are still around and still interested next year, and you've managed to save up the money, we'll be happy to have you. Although I like, we're not gonna take the rents outta your out of your pocket. We're not gonna take the food outta your mouth. Yeah. We'll be here when you're ready.
Rob (24:50):
Yeah, exactly. And that's what it's about. It's about giving people those choices. Like we actively say, like, if you need to put this on a credit card to afford it, do not join the program. Do you not like, you know, that's not what we're about. Helping people do more ands, think what you should all be about that. Really.
Angie Colee (25:08):
Yeah. I love that. And I love that you brought up like I, the whole point of business is to make money. I started a business to make money. I don't think there's anything wrong with making money. I don't think there's anything wrong with telling the clients I'm here to get as much money out of you as possible. I'm only gonna do that. If you feel comfortable with the amount that I've given you in return for that, I love that you said that
Kennedy (25:29):
And it all just has to fit into your personality. You know? So some of the stuff we are quite brash loud in your face people and, uh, people, some people like that, some people don't, you know, we're gonna make jokes and use Nuendo and swear. And, and uh, if they're not okay with that, that's fine. That's not a problem, nothing wrong with that. Doesn't mean we are right. And they're wrong. Uh, you know, nobody's right. Nobody's wrong. It's just about, you know, uh, having customers and our customers love us for taking as much money off them as possible because of that arrangement. And, you know, I think it's, I think it's cool.
Angie Colee (25:57):
I love that. And I love that. You, you mentioned value because I think that's something that a lot of entrepreneurs, especially in the early stage, get hung up on too. This idea of value. And a lot of people equate it only to, to sales. Like I can only charge you X amounts of money. If I can deliver you Y amounts of money, but there are, would you say that there are a lot of other ways to deliver value?
Rob (26:18):
Yeah. I mean, remember that the reason that people think that, Hey, I can charge you 10,000. If I can make you 20,000, for the sake of argument I is because that's a pain point, like you're solving. But like, all we do is buy stuff that solves pain points. Like my TV was absolutely driving me crazy. So I was sick of every time I pressed the button, it was like, Hey, I can't find an internet connection. I was ready to throw, you know, throw it out the window. So I had a pain point. So I go to the nearest, uh, electrical shop and I go, Hey, I'll, I'll have that to TV. And I might spend a thousand pounds on a TV or whatever, but did it make me more money? No. It solved a problem, it made me less frustrated. It, it removed a pain. It, um, it, it made me feel good cuz buying stuff feels nice. Doesn't it? I mean, you are in Las Vegas right now. That's the, that's the absolute capital of spending money because it feels lovely. Right? So,
Angie Colee (27:14):
Oh yeah.
Rob (27:15):
What, yeah. What you do helps people in some way. And there is a, an amount of money that some people will pay a to feel that or to relieve that pain or whatever it is. So if you are a therapist, then someone might have a pain of some description. If you are a creative person, their pain point might be they're embarrassed of their website or their brand looks like they made it up in the nineties or we're all, we're all solving problems. And some people are solving monetary problems, but you'd be surprised at how, how few times we talk about, even though we sell email marketing and we talk about email marketing, we don't, as often as, as you might think, talk about, oh, and we'll make you this amount of money back actually, because what, what else do people want? Even from a B to B sales driven, ROI focused activity like email? Well, actually we don't talk about sales as much as you might think. So you don't need to either. We'll talk about things like making sure people aren't falling through the cracks, making sure everyone gets a great experience, making sure you know where everybody is. You not in a, you're not on a mess. You are marketing, doesn't look like spaghetti junction, make it like all of these things. Um, are you giving value? Do you feel good? Do you get replies to your emails from people telling you how much they love them? Like all these much more emotional things. Because if you just say, I'm gonna make you 30 grand next month. Well actually that's not emotional. And people buy based on emotions, don't they I'm already annoyed at my TV. I buying new TV. So instead of actually the worst thing we could say is, Hey, I'm gonna make you 30 grand next month. What you can say is you'll be making sales. You could be making sales more marketing while you are taking your kids for a walk along the beach, or you are flying off to Las Vegas and living and living remotely, or you are, you're doing these things and people go, oh, that's what I'm gonna spend X amount per month with Rob and Kennedy's the league membership because I want to go to Las Vegas. I'm buying that for that. And that's all this is. We buy chocolate bars because they taste yummy. And they obviously there's regret later.
Angie Colee (29:23):
Oh yeah. I love that. Yeah. I, I love this idea of value cuz it actually took somebody pointing it out to me when I was in the early stage of my entrepreneur journey that like, it's not about value and, and especially the money because it's hard to prove that when you're in early stages that you can generate some sort of return if you're in a marketing or sales environment. Um, but refocusing on like what pain point do you solve? What do you deliver to them that makes them feel good. That shortcuts a process that makes a pain go away. Like we were talking right before I hit record about the fact that I'm in the, in the early stages of planning, my first live event and that I just bought a bulldozer and backhoe company because I was looking for weird things to do to kind of lower the resistance and get people, just being silly, acting crazy out of the traditional business environment. And so they're, I'm paying them a lot of money to drive bulldozers and backhoes because it's a once in life time experience and it's ridiculous. And it is about as far from a business event as you can get. And that's valuable to me. I love that.
Kennedy (30:30):
It's about how it making people feel. Isn't it, it's about how we make them feel.
Angie Colee (30:34):
I need to send out an email. That's uh, got a subject line of ditches and hose though. I need, Oh, this is fantastic. So, I mean, I imagine after you had the hard conversation with your team about like, look, I, I can't even guarantee you that we can pay you at the end of the month that it wasn't like an overnight we pivoted and suddenly like we found the miracle solution that helped us at the end of October. Can you tell me a little bit more about what that journey was like?
Kennedy (31:03):
Yeah. So what we did was we, so the, the reason we ended up in this pickle incidentally is because we were, I guess, uh, confident enough, um, falsely that because we'd spent quite a lot of time selling our services as, as entertainers using email and cuz we'd spent a lot of time selling, uh, our courses to entertainers and stuff that that was all gonna be the same to sell speak software. And that turned out not to be true. So what we did was we did this reverse engineering thing of, well, how do we solve the problem? And so what we decided to do was, well, first of all, we acted really fast. Um, because there's, there's no time to do anything else. So like I think this conversation happened and by the Friday of that week we had the plan more or less in place and a few things. We was, first of all, we used stuff that we already had. So we actually pulled together a product that was a collection of, um, email campaigns for like a live event and for a flash sale and for stuff like a webinar and things like that. We pulled them together into a little product, ended up being called the email marketers game plan. And we pulled it together, not by creating it to sell, but just by pulling stuff off the shelf that we actually used as an internal resource. So it's actually a thing that our team used that we wrote ages ago that said, if you like, here's like the playbook of stuff that you can use, just swipe the campaign and, and run with it. So the first thing is we used stuff that we mostly already had. We didn't have to create a lot of new stuff in order to get this up and running. Uh, likewise if yes, somebody who doesn't have a lot of stuff to use, like the, our backup to that, would've been to sell stuff before we create it. Like, know what we're gonna sell, know we're gonna teach this class or we're gonna run this event. We're gonna do this thing, um, and sell it first and then, and then deliver it afterwards, which is what we've done a lot since then. So we pull stuff together very, very quickly. And then we looked at, okay, great. How can we, what's the next step to that? The next step is to leverage other people who already have our crowd of people. So we just said fine, in that case, let's do this whole thing. Driven by affiliates. We went out, found a bunch of people who had our audience. We said, Hey, we've put together this little funnel. Hasn't had a ton of testing. Um, you're just gonna have to either go with it or don't we, we don't have time for testing, like, uh, done is better than tested. Um, and so we just said, okay, let's have a go. And so that was it. And we ran it. And, but by the end of that month, we did do two things. There is one thing we admitted from the story earlier on, which is, um, one of the reasons we had this tangle is that we'd also thrown in some bad accounts we'd finished up with a 26,000 pounds of probably like $40,000 tax bill that the tax man wanted. It's a very specific type of tax to do with like national insurance and income tax that, that bit for the staff. Um, and we, they wanted it now. It wasn't like you can pay off in 12, monthly installments of 2, 6 99 or anything like that. It was like, we want it. This is not a silver, this is a tax bill. Uh it's like, we want it now. And so, um, yeah, that was part of the problem. So we did clear the tax bill and pay the staff and pay the office rent and pay everything else by the end of that month. And it was literally just by saying, done is better than perfect. We'll just have to use what we've already got. Or if we didn't have that, the backup, as I said, would've been to sell something first and then leverage the leverage people who've got the audience. So I guess what we do is we look at, um, we look at what the constraints on us were. We look at what the, the, you know, what, what, what had our, our hands nailed to the desk? What was the stuff that we just couldn't change? We didn't have an audience, so we can't do anything that requires us to have an audience. We didn't have time to create anything new. So we didn't ha we have just use the stuff we got, um, like. We didn't have any money. So we couldn't buy traffic, uh, nor did, did we have the time to like optimize and test and refine traffic purchasing either? And so we just said, okay, great. In that case, the only solution is this bit, like, you know, there little puzzles that used to come on cereal packets. So you have like little mouse on one side, little hole on the other side. And the others have got at traps and cheese and you've gotta get into the hole. There's only one solution gets you to the hole. Um, and that was, you know, the get, getting to that end result was our only option. So yeah, you know, we just had to, we had to live within the constraints and thrive within the constraints. And that, that led us to this place where I think it was probably something like maybe 40, $40,000 or something like that in sales that allowed us to like pay everything off, do what we needed to do.
Angie Colee (35:08):
Oh, that's like, that's so funny too, because I started that off being like, I imagine you didn't turn it around by the end of the month, and then you did.
Kennedy (35:14):
No, we were, we were, I lucky, fortunate pushed it.
Rob (35:17):
I mean, it was, it was lucky. It was, it was luck. Um, and it was just, unfortunately it was the last chance thing. It was like, this is like, when we sat down and said, look, if one thing is gonna work, what is the one thing that's gonna work? Not like, oh, here's another idea that might work. Here's another idea which is gonna, which might work, which is what we do at that point. It was like, and if you ask yourself this question, as you're thinking about that, your business right now, you just think if one thing is gonna work, what is the thing do that if you are gonna, if you imagine, and I hope to goodness that you're not in this position that we were in, but if you are business was like, I need to make the money by this time next month otherwise I'm out, what's the thing you have to do? What is the thing, the one thing, and you have to just do that thing and you have to just go all in and keep focused. The problem with most of us is the shiny object I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this and now I'm gonna become a tik tok person. Now I'm gonna become one of them. And know what about that thing? And clubhouse is, that's a little thing. I don't know, like all these things, um, you, you just get distracted. You have to just say, no, this is the thing. And if you can put one or two people around you, maybe a friend, maybe a partner, maybe anything, you know, people in your business just to not allow yourself to go off track while you wait for things to work. No, if they're not. And the big question to ask, we ask this on our group, coaching calls inside our membership. We do, we talk about this actually on the email marketing show podcast too, which is this, this question, what are you gonna do today that's gonna make a sale? Because most people go, oh, I'm gonna put some new stuff on Instagram. Is that gonna make a sale. No, have you got no money? Yes. What do you need to be doing then? I need to be making sales. Great. What you do in that make sales. Nothing. I think that's a problem then.
Angie Colee (37:09):
Yeah, I think, oh gosh. That's just, that's one of my big frustrations too, with a lot of folks that I'm dealing with. I was talking with, um, a group that I coached with yesterday and we were talking about how to get people in that group, some, some better results. And I was like, I think we need to challenge the mindset here because right now we've got a lot of folks in the group that are, are thinking a, is for studying all of the modules and doing all of the exercise. And I was like a is for action. Take some fucking action. You get an a, when you go out there and you do things, don't study everything. This isn't school anymore. And I'm not your professor.
Kennedy (37:47):
Look, let's remember like Facebook is, you know, and meta who are all behind it is, you know, the, one of the biggest businesses in the world, how many times do we go on one those platforms, any of the platforms own by them and go, it's broken that thing's not loading. Guess what they're doing. They're busy making money. They're not making a perfect product. They're making sales, they're feeding their families. They're growing as a business now. And not saying, I agree with everything that they're doing, but by far, but they're, they're not obsessing over having a perfect product. It looks like shit. It has problems. It, it, that thing's gone now. Why is that thing gone? You know that bit's broken now. Guess what? It's just pro it's just progress. It's just progress. It's just taking action.
Angie Colee (38:35):
Yeah. And I love there was another thing that you mentioned that, you know, there's a certain kind of magic that I think that happens only when your back is against the wall or at least if you like visualize having your back against the wall. And it's suddenly not about look at all these options, which one is the best one. It's like, all right, what's the fastest path to solving this problem? What assets do I have? What liabilities do I have? And just going into problem solving mode versus pandering mode. Like woe is me.
Kennedy (39:01):
Like, what's easy. Not like what's hard.
Rob (39:05):
Everything changes when you, when, when like, when things are fine. And I don't mean great. I mean, just when things are fine, you know, we're ploding on, we're doing things. That's probably, um, one of the most difficult places to be in business, I think because you have, uh, comfort enough, like enough comfort, not luxury, but like comfort. Uh, and then that, that means that you've got choice when you've got comfort means you've got choice. That means I'm sat in this lovely arm chair. There's, uh, lots, anything I can have from the kitchen. I can just have, I can just sit and pig out. That's fine. You've got choice. And choice is choice is dangerous. You know, when, when you are in that, when your back is against the wall, it's uncomfortable and, and it's not a place to live for sure. Um, but you have to try and you have to try and take some of the mindset stuff that you, you gain from being in that dangerous place. Uh, and, and, and use it when you are in a place of comfort, cuz that's, that's how you progress us.
Angie Colee (39:57):
I love that. And I think, you know, if I'm reading between the lines too, part of what made you, uh, you know, really dig into that and go into problem solving mode was that you had high stakes, right? There are these two people in the relationships. It is a lot about supporting yourself and getting some money outta this thing that you've invested so much in, but now you've got these people, the, it feel like family, like you said, and I don't wanna let them down and they wanna keep working with me. How do I solve this problem for all of us?
Rob (40:24):
And I think there's a point at which you go, well, Hey, we can keep putting money into this. That's okay. At one point they'll, they'll be fine. They'll be fine. And then when you realize, hang on, I can't, which means, yes, I can't pay these amazing people, but also that means I have failed. Not that I just wanna get the money out, cuz I haven't got the money. I haven't had the money for a long time or whatever, like whatever, but which is, I mean, terrible of course, but um, but I failed and that's that doesn't feel very nice.
Angie Colee (40:56):
Oh no, it never does. And we have, and as a society, we have a real big problem with failure. Now I think that kind of failure that you're talking about is definitely one to avoid at all costs. Right. But then there's the little failures that happen on a daily basis that we almost get like super paranoid to avoid and wanna do everything. Right? Like, uh,
Kennedy (41:17):
I think you can put them perspective though as well. Like even that, that kind of failure. If, if it had led to that, you, you could reframe that and go, oh, well we work out that doesn't work and we won't put our money into business again. And we like, but at the time when there's like the tax man knocking on the door, going give me all this money and your staff are looking at you going, Hey, can you pay me so I can pay my, you know, my wife and kids and keep the house, the roof over their head. And um, you know, that that's certainly a level of failure that I never wanna experience again. But what does it do? Like, like, like all of these lessons that you talk about with, with folks is it makes you a better business later and you prioritize things differently. And how do you prioritize paying yourself? Like how bad are we all of that?
Rob (42:02):
I think the other adjustment to make is just, I mean, what's the alternative. The alternative is go and fail things every day in a job that I don't like for somebody I don't like very much like the, the alternative is go and be shit somewhere else. I might as well be shit at doing the thing I wanna do that if it all works out, I'm gonna have a much better outcome rather than cuz I think, I think it's a, there's a myth that entrepreneurs and business owners tell ourselves that if we just went and got a job and I, I say, just, I don't mean that in the derogatory sense. But if we just went and got a job, stacking the shelves in the local supermarket that we don't fail. Well of course you fail, you still crash car into a tree. You still, you know, um, you know, your kids naughty and you handle it wrong. Like you still fail everywhere else. And you, you know, you, you don't get the promotion you go for like stuff happens. Shit happens. Whether you've got your own business or whether you are working in somebody else's business. So like I'd much rather be failing here than failing over there.
Angie Colee (42:51):
Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a big difference failure, uh, in the approach too, because if you're playing not to lose versus playing to win, like there are very different results that come from each of those strategies. And to be clear, when I say like playing not to lose, I'm talking about like, okay, I've only got this amount of stuff and I'm just going to be a dragon. I guarding what I've already got instead of being out there fighting for even more like, Ugh.
Kennedy (43:20):
Yeah. And I, and I think, I think we used to very much see it as you could be one or the other, you can be like, Got, what you've got or you can be risking what you've got. And actually I don't think you need to be, this was a limiting belief I definitely had until I think you'll only like over a year ago, I think you need to, we all need to like have that stable place of the business is making this, I'm making this great. And then I have this amount, this budget, this amount of time, not just talking about monetary wise, all my time. I'm talking about effort, attention, all these different things that I am going to risk. So you don't take your entire income and go to the roulette table at the Mirage. That would be insane. But you might take a portion. You might take some money, which you can afford to lose. And that's the being important thing. The bit you can afford to lose. And that's what you spin the risk in the new business of, uh, in the business, um, on the roulette wheel, you don't risk the whole thing. So how much do you need to pay yourself? Pay yourself it, do it, take it out of the business. It's not in the business doing anything. Is it? No, take it out. Put some profit over there. Put some things for your taxes over there. Put your expenses there. Good. What's left. Okay, good. Lovely. What, what am I gonna, what am I gonna invest that in? What's gonna be, what am I gonna play with within that? So I think we don't necessarily have to think we're either risking it or we're saving it. Um, I think we can be doing both of those things, but without actually having risk.
Angie Colee (44:51):
Yeah. I love that. You have thoughts on that, Rob?
Rob (44:55):
Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things where, when, when, when we had no money in the business and we had to solve that problem, that keeps coming up when we had to solve that problem, we talked about before we did it without any money. And so I think this idea of, um, again, if you, if you pay yourself first and put some aside to taxes and all the rest of it, when you have got some cash coming in and business is okay, uh, like if we could save our problem, dig ourselves out of that massive hole without any cash. That means you can continue to do what you're doing without any cash and therefore prioritize yourself and your family and stuff that you need to do. Uh, and, and then you're in a much happier place. So yeah, I think, you know, our story and our struggle is evidence of the fact that actually you just cuz the money's there doesn't mean you've gotta spend it on something to grow the business like,
Angie Colee (45:35):
Oh, I love that. You know, and that is like the perfect note to end on. So tell us more about Email Marketing Heros and your coaching group. I wanna, I wanna make sure that they have clickable links so that they can check you out.
Kennedy (45:46):
Ah, thank you. Yeah. I mean the first thing is if you like podcasts, which I think you do yes. Cause this one. Right? Uh, but if you wanna hear Rob and I talk about email marketing in an irreverent quite offensive manner every single week, um, um, go, go and listen to the email marketing show. Wherever you get your podcast from, I will warn you. It has the single most annoying jingle music in the world of podcasting. It's called the email marketing show. You'll see why, um, as, so there's that bit. Uh, and there's also, if you, um, if you wanna really dial up your email marketing, right? If you wanna make it better, make it easier. One of the things we've all gotta do is we've gotta get more people to click on the links in our emails. If they're not clicking the links, they can't buy anything, right. It's impossible. But getting you to click the links to your emails can be tricky. That's why we thought we put together a little, little gift for all of your listeners. So if you go to email marketing heroes.com/kick, email marketing, heroes.com/click-tricks, you'll be able to download our book, which is about the 12 different ways you can dress up your links to get more clicks than the very next email you send. We call it click tricks. Cause we're good at email marketing, but not very good at naming things. So it's called click tricks, got email heroes.com/click-tricks, and you'll be able to download that for free won't cost you a thing.
Angie Colee (47:00):
Excellent. Well, thank you both for being on the show. I would say my experiment with having two people on the talking at the same time was a massive success.
Kennedy (47:10):
I think you rocked it.
Angie Colee (47:12):
This is fantastic conversation. Again. I wanna make sure that they have clickable links in the show notes and thank you so much for being on the show.
Rob (47:18):
Thanks for having us.
Angie Colee (47:23):
So that is it. Another awesome episode of Permission to Kick Ass on the books. If you want to know more about the show or if you want to know more about me, Angie Colee and the mission I'm on to help entrepreneurs punch fear in the face and do big bold things, then head on over to permissiontokickass.com. That is all one word together, permissiontokickass.com. Make sure to sign up for my email list so that you know whenever there's a hot, fresh and ready podcast episode out for you. And also on Mondays, I like to send out a little newsletter called Kick Monday's Ass. I'm sure you're totally, totally surprised by that. So thank you for being here with me today. I'm Angie Colee. Make sure that you share this with a friend that needs to hear this message today. Like it, share it. Comment wherever you're listening to this today and let's go kick some ass.