"No One Wants Your Email Newsletter"

"No one wants your email newsletter. No one. Get a blog instead."

First off, apologies to my anon friend in advance for riffing off of his skewed thinking. He's not wrong necessarily, because he was probably addressing a specific client-case, but then again, he did not make that obvious in his tweet, so I feel the need to correct it. 

Open Season

The key is to deliver clear value in an acceptable format. It is possible to create a 'newsletter' in a solid format with content that no-one cares about. But, its also very likely that lots of people would signup for "One solid piece of actionable advice that can change the trajectory of your business, delivered once a week." It is also true that people respond to incentives. Even otherwise lame newsletters can reach an audience if they trade something of value for the privilege to spam your inbox.

Its easy to start feeling this way about email newsletters because we see lots of clients doing it wrong and offering things that people don't generally care about, and then not lifting a finger to promote it. But, even in these snowballs-chance-that-someone-cares situations (oftentimes our perception), keep in mind that there is an audience for just about everything, and early success is tied more to tactics employed to capture some of that existing audience than it is about creating the most whiz-bang content ever. You have to start somewhere, and the content can improve over time as you learn what people react tp.

I, for one, am glad that the expressed perspective exists. Because it means that less and less people are likely to take email seriously as a platform. This means there's more time for you and I to actually capture an audience.

Email & The Drums In The Deep

The Drums in the Deep

Believe it or not, 'email' is a white-hot buzzword in the bootstraposphere right now. It has spread at the speed of sound from camp to camp, and the whole small software business community is beating the drums deafeningly loud. And its a good thing too, because email is a very effective way to engage with and convert customers. But, it doesn't seem much like news does it? This is why a lot of people are plugging their ears because they think its just noise. That's too bad for them, because its pretty foolish to pass it off as useless just yet.

Today, as the drum beat rolled on, another incredible boom might have shattered your quiet morning coffee when, if you were among a few dozen denziens or so, you got an email from the Micropreneur Academy. It asked you non-chalantly if you'd like to have a Micropreneur.com email address to use for your correspondence. It was just a chance event. Of all things, why would this be the one that changed your world? The email address being proffered is good as long as your account is active. If you were sipping your coffee that moment, you may have spat a bit on your keyboard. This, of course, has the makings of one of the best customer traps in play on the web today, because if you accepted this offer, dear reader, you were allowing someone new to gingerly place themselves between you and the people who want to give you  money. 

{Forth rumbles the echo of the drums in the deep}

"Thanks Rob, but no thanks", you might have said quietly to yourself, not really understanding what just happened, and a little annoyed "I don't want to be locked in as a Micropreneur forever. I love your brand, but I know that I won't always be able to justify the cost of the Academy." But, it is perhaps at this moment, the sound still echoing in your office, you look up as the camera zooms tight on your face with its wide-eyed expression of disbelief. "Its beautiful", you mutter, as you begin to grasp the depth of the change that has come over you. 

For, you see, email, to your small business customers, is the most valuable thing in the world. Its the lifeblood of their business today. It has such value that people will open up their wallets and spend wads of cash to hang on to that email address that they've put on every business card and given to every contact from church, to the gym, to the guy they met at that business meeting last week. That email address contains the SUM TOTAL of ALL THEIR AMBITIONS. They watch that email, waiting for the contact-lottery to strike, ever clinging to hope, ever scheming to leverage its power to gain more business. That email address is their goldmine from which they delve and extract value.

{The ground shakes beneath you}

The forshadowing should be clear. The next wave of permission marketing is to place yourself in the exchange between your customers and their customers by leveraging email. We're talking carefully crafted ownership of a channel. This is dangerous and brilliant and fun and foolhardy.

Its not for every situation of course. As a SaaS provider you can't convince every signup that waltzes into your door to accept the offer of a nice email address containing your brand. Its impractical, even if you have a strong brand and a cult-like following. You can, however, create an email address for them and promote the heck out of it on their behalf. Every correspondence to/from them through your app could default to sending from their @yourbrandname email address, of course, you should give them the option to change that. But, lets say you go the extra mile and send your customer some really nice business cards that contain that email address? How nice of you! Maybe they use them, maybe they don't, but you may have just created a fan and squeezed yourself carefully between them and the people that want to pay them

So, what it this worked? If it worked, your CLTV's will shoot to astronomical heights and it will fundamentally change your business. If it didn't work, well, you could have always gone back to audience-building and information-packaging (you needed to anyway). You've heard that's really popular now. Heck, you're doing it now, you sly dog. But, what have you got to lose if this really is the next level? 

Listen to the drums in the deep.

{echos in your head for months to come}

Routines for Employed Bootstrappers

Edit: I've setup a page to keep this up to date. Hopefully you can glean something from it.

Here's my current daily routine. Maybe it helps someone come up with ideas for squeezing more productive time into their day.

M-F

Wakeup, shower, dressed... out the door at 7am.

Driving for 60-minutes

• Dictating content for target keywords
• Watching saved videos
• Catching up on world events via NPR

Arrive at work, working ~4 hours

(Incl. 10-minute morning walk around the block during which I capture ideas)

Lunch

• Compiling keywords for targeting
• Compiling ideas for drip marketing channel
• Coding up a small feature, or getting it started 
• Meeting with other entrepreneurs
• Generating content

Continue working ~4 hours

(Incl. 10-minute afternoon walk around the block during which I capture ideas again)

After work, preparing to leave - 15 minutes, downloading OTR content

• Anything from Rob Walling
• Anything from Business of Software
• Anything from MicroConf
• Anything from RailsCasts
• Stanford classes via iTunes

Drive Home, 60 minutes

• 15 minute call with co-founder (2x weekly)
• Watching downloaded content
• Compiling list of evening action-items

Arrive home, dinner, evening activities, playing with kiddos.

Evening working hours begin ~9:30

• Acting on any items started at lunch or discussed with co-founder
• 15 minute break to get my wife a soda before the store closes
• Wind down, maybe a game.

Secret Sauce: Friday nights, you have to hit them hard. If you do, Saturday and Sunday will tend to be more productive. If you start off Friday nights with lazy activities, it will color the entire weekend

Saturday, Sunday

Hit and miss, primarily due to how I handled Friday night. My routine isn't quite up to par there yet, regardless. Working on it.

Automating Interactions

I run a website for my home town. Its basically an events calendar plus some basic community information. I'm trying to raise awareness of events and opportunities there. The the least I can do for the town I grew up in, a town that has interesting things to offer, but a town that faces a steady, continued population decline.

Quick aside: population decline is a very tough nut to crack, but I think I'm onto something here. In my (as yet) unqualified opinion you can stop the bleeding by carefully controlling perception. Its non-trivial, but possible, even for a small group. Point being, I should write more about solving this. I think I will.

A few problems arise when you want to raise visibility of things already in motion.


1) "You Shall Not Pass!", Gatekeepers are suspect to your activities.

That's a nice way of saying that there are people out there with vulnerable fifedoms that they'd hate for you to wreck. Suggest a technology solution that has even the chance of undermining their tiny kingdom, and they'll balk and label you a trouble-maker.

Solution: become the secretary of the gatekeeper. That is, let them stay hard in the loop.

In my case, the gate-keeper tried to come up with lots of reasons why technology wasn't the answer, though clearly, it would improve things quite a bit.


2) "Not Invented Here", No one wants another solution to a problem that they feel like they have already solved.

Basically, if pen and paper are working, then why mess with it? Lets ignore that vital information is locked in there and cannot be easily distributed without leveraging technology.

Solution: Involve the process they are already using.

Are they using email to communicate/coordinate things? Maybe if you involve that medium, you can take advantage of that.


3) I don't want to be YOUR secretary.

Even if you have a whiz-bang app that gives joy to millions, very few people within existing groups are going to want to commit to funneling the bits of joy into your system on a regular basis. They want you to have to work and earn the flow of information you've started, and they aren't going to be the one that milks your cash cow for you.

Solution: Automation.

If I'm honest with you right now, I will admit that I don't have the time to spend supporting even this little website for my hometown, but I need those gatekeepers and knowledge-holders to believe that I believe this is important enough to devote a considerable amount of time to.

So, I've automated my interaction with these folks. They (hopefully) believe I am in the loop, constantly nagging them for information, spending my sweet free time to extract very small amounts of value from them.(small value, that is, in the grand scheme of things). In reality, they reply to my automated emails and I automatically ship the grunt work off to very helpful people elsewhere in the world (in the US, even) who are putting in the information I need in exchange for a few nickles. It works for them, it works for me.

Are those folks clever? Yes, they are, but we often take at face-value the reality we are given unless we have reason to believe that there is something wrong. That's why I have to keep the automation very fresh, even at scale.

Lots of developers automate data collection by scraping content from websites. Some of the best data, however, is still under lock and key. You must be willing to do some social engineering up front to unlock the data, and after that, you can automate.

Ship Everything, Charge for It

So you started making a product. Your initial vision seemed good, you slept on it, you mulled it over here and there for weeks before diving in. You did some rudimentary competitive analysis, and then you got to work.

So, you're still building. You performed a sanity check and your market still seems to be able to support the kind of business you want to build. You don't know how you're going to promote this or find paying customers, but you think you'll find a way.... eventually. You just keep building.

But, then you get to a point that makes you reconsider it all. Maybe first-contact with customers went badly during the pre-alpha phase. Maybe you ran into a technical sticky-bit that you can't seem to get past. Maybe all progress has well-and-truly stopped. Or maybe you're discouraged because you haven't found a go-to-market strategy that will work for you.

No one will blame you for quitting here. This is the valley of the shadow of death. Many good intentions have passed this way and fallen victim to human nature's siren call to give it up. Only the most determined people will push through this valley. But, push you must if you hope to ship.

It turns out that there are many such valleys that lie beyond even this point. Shipping is only the first milestone of any significance that you will meet. There is a second, greater valley that lies beyond. Its called the valley of the shadow of "Well, I shipped, now what the heck do I do now?" Beyond that, are the valleys of the shadows of

* "So few people want to pay me, so few"
* "There are so many fun things I could be doing now"
* "I am making enough to be frustrated, but not enough to do anything about it yet"
* "My overhead is eating me alive,  I should refactor this platform to save money"
* "No one wants to invest"
* "No one wants to invest without taking a serious chunk of this play"
* "Hey, look at that other startup idea over there. Great idea, lets do that instead!"

There are more still, I'm sure. I'll tell you when I've crossed them.

But you, you can't slow down and rest in these valleys. You have to ship, and you must put a price on it.
If you put a price on it, then people can pay you. If they pay you then you can re-invest in your product and make it great. If you can make it great, you'll find more people willing to pay you. Move up market, rinse repeat.

If you started out on an idea, what does it hurt to ship it and put a price on it? Only one thing can prove it is a viable idea, and that's with paying customers.

Beware, however, of entangling yourself in too many idea/starts. That is a bad move. Choose your top idea, and go make it happen. Then, move on to the next. Observe your outcomes closely. Automate what you can. Before long you can pick your winners from the lot and double-down.

Imagine, create, dabble, build, ship, charge.

Corollary: Sometimes You Have to Go Heads Down

Heads Up Mode:

You're paying attention to the market, you're watching what startups are doing, you're engaging in the conversation. You're reading GigaCrunchInsider every day and your head is spinning with all the opportunities you could take advantage of.

You're networking, meeting new folks, attending conferences, writing blog posts. You're part of the chatter, great. You're forming partnerships, starting new projects, being ambitious, and trying new things. Terrific.

You've signed up for ideas, made commitments, met people who believe in you, who want to invest in you.

Its time to go into Heads Down Mode.


Heads Down Mode:

People are inviting you out for lunch. "Sorry, trying to ship."
New article just came out about TangentialCrap. "Looks interesting, but no thanks, trying to ship."
Business partner thinks you should consider tangential path. "Hey, lets just ship the original idea first, okay."
Friend sends you a funny video. "No time, trying to ship."
Lets play League of Legends tonight. "Sorry man, really want to, but need to ship."

Headphones on.
Email off.
Phone off.
IDE open.
Productivity happening.
Door closed.

Heads down, trying to ship.

"Learning" Is Not Forward Motion

So, you're listening to Mark Cuban's advice, you're reading everything you can to get an edge. Congratulations, you've joined the Heads Up Club. You're paying attention to new trends, and you can talk at length about the pros and cons. You are probably better informed than lots of other folks out there in a similar position to you.

You have the edge in knowledge. Now how about the execution?

You know you're not really moving forward. But, do you know why? Its because you're still playing the part of a student, or worse the "idea guy"...  even if your skills are at the apprentice or master levels, you're defaulting to the same mode you've been in all your life: absorbing knowledge without acting on it.

"But, I have to learn more before I can do anything!!!"

Baloney.

You're in the dangerous position of potentially looking back 5-10 years from now having gained a lot of knowledge and nothing else to show for it.