How do you run a business with profit? Because let's face it – a business is there to make you money. And yet, there's so much ‘advice' out there that we think is probably holding you back from making a profit. 

Basically, you've been lied to.

And we're here to expose these lies and tell you exactly what's stopping you from making money in your business. 

Ready to have your mind blown? 

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 

(0:14) Check out our Black Friday sale here (offer valid between Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2022).
(3:53) Lie 1: The job of your business is to make SALES.
(7:21) Lie 2: You need to stop being salesy.
(11:36) Why you should sell hard.
(14:25) Lie 3: Bro marketing is the way forward.
(16:47) Why deadlines, bonuses, and novelty work.
(18:33) Lie 4: It's too salesy!
(20:50) Measure your EPSPM.
(22:50) Lie 5: People leaving your list is a bad, bad thing!
(25:51) Subject line of the week.

Check out our Black Friday deal!

If you're reading this between Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2022, go and check out our amazing Black Friday deal!

Lie 1: The job of your business is to make SALES

We know a lot of people who start their online businesses based on a hobby or passion they have. The intention is maybe to be able to work less and spend more time with family or retire early. But what a lot of people don't anticipate is that once you start the business, you actually have to run it. 

That means ensuring your business makes a profit, which is the one and only job your business has. And the only way you can make a profit is by offering products or services to your marketplace of higher value than what they’ll pay. In other words, you have to offer something really valuable.

Because your business needs to make a profit sustainably. And to do that, you need customers who love buying from you. They know that every time they spend money with you, they’re going to feel good and have a great outcome. And if at any point that stops happening, they’ll stop buying. So your job is to treat your customers well and give them value.

But the key thing to remember here is that the job of a business is not to make sales – it’s to make a profit, which means you have to sell things for more than they cost.

Lie 2: You need to stop being salesy

We see this piece of advice all the time – stop being salesy! But if you’re not selling, what are you doing? Because everything you share (your content, your emails, etc.) needs to always be moving people towards buying.

Of course, you don't want to send the same emails over and over asking people to buy your stuff. But what you do say in your emails needs to move your audience towards the product you're selling. Otherwise, it means your emails are just a distraction – a shiny object that’s distracting people from buying from you. And if you’re a business (and not a hobby) you need to sell.

Take us, for example. We truly believe that what we offer inside our membership The League works. If you stopped doing anything else and only used what we teach you, we're confident you’d make more sales more predictably and generate more income. That’s the reason we sell – because we believe that our product makes a difference.

And this is important. Because you definitely shouldn’t do any selling or marketing until you’re confident that what you’re selling is good. But once you know that your product or service solves a problem and is more valuable than the price you're asking people to pay, then sell and market as aggressively as possible. If you believe you have the answer to someone’s problem, then sell!

We know that people who buy from us value our products more than those who download our free lead magnets, for example. Because when people pay for a product, they hold it in higher regard and think it’s going to be better and of higher quality.

Why you should sell hard

We believe that often the unwillingness to sell comes from the fear that your product isn’t that good – it's a lack of confidence in what you’re doing. If implementing our campaigns can earn you as much as $50,000 in sales in three months (this happened to real people inside our membership!), and you only spend a few hundred dollars to have access to our resources, then it's a no-brainer. We know that you’re better off being a League member than not, and that’s why we sell as hard as we do. Because if didn’t, people wouldn’t take a chance on us.

And it's the same for you. If you put your heart and soul into something and know it's the best it can possibly be (that it'll help people in their journey) then you have to show up and use every ounce of enthusiasm to passionately tell people about it. Because if anyone's telling you to stop being salesy, they're stopping you from growing your business. Selling is the thing your audience is trusting you to do because a business without a profit won't be around to help people for long.

Lie 3: Bro marketing is the way forward

Have you ever seen business owners sharing photos of themselves in front of their Lamborghini or private jet? That's known as ‘bro marketing', and you'll never see us do any of that.

But we do use screenshots of our students making thousands of dollars from implementing our campaigns. And we do that because we don’t think it’s grubby, filthy, or weird, but because it works! We use the genuine psychology of what excites people and causes them to make decisions. And as long as your product does what it says on the tin, and you’re selling to the right people, then you’re good.

We don’t want to use this hype marketing to sell to the wrong people – people who, for whatever reason, shouldn't buy from us. That would be a waste of their time and money, and wouldn't work in our favour. We just want to sell the right products to the right people. So instead of using these bro marketing tactics, you want to tap into the psychology of what genuinely helps people make decisions. Because if people don't buy, you end up with no business. 

Why deadlines, bonuses, and novelty work

We know that telling people there’s a deadline on an offer (just like our Black Friday offer) works because it means you have to buy before that day. Adding bonuses also works because psychologically speaking, we all want to get a bit more for the same amount of money.

Plus, different people respond to different hooks – some more direct and others more subtle. What grabs people's attention and imagination can vary. So we always test different hooks to see what makes our prospective customers pay attention. 

People also respond well to novelty, so always think about unique angles and different strategies (such as bonuses, deadlines, or different hooks) to share your offers. Because these are the strategies that get people to your side, especially with email. We use subject lines that some people might be uncomfortable with, for example, but they do get attention and amuse the right people – they reel the right people in. And anyone who doesn’t like those subject lines is wrong for us.

Lie 4: It's too salesy! 

We’ve had examples of people joining our membership and trying to run a particular campaign but telling us it feels too salesy for them. And yet, when we look at what made those people buy from us in the first place, it tends to be either that exact campaign or something very similar to it!

This is to say that we use the same campaign we teach our clients. And sometimes when our members look at them in the context of their own business, they can feel a bit uncomfortable implementing them at first. But they work! 

Also, people love our products. We very quickly turn subscribers into not just customers but fans – people who love the way we do email marketing and want to learn it from us. And the reason for that is that if you do all of this in the way we teach, you'll soon realise that none of it is hyping, pushy, or over the top. There's no need for bro marketing here!

Yes, some people will always be offended by what you do, but that's going to happen regardless. So make the offer you’re going to make. If you run a discount that ends on a specific date, for example, people will buy because they’re excited about your product. And they will want to buy it right now before it disappears. So if you’re not embarrassed by what you sell and the price you sell it at, just sell it!  

Measure your EPSPM

Let's say as an example that it costs you $10 to get someone on your list, but they don’t spend $10 in the first 30 days of being in your world. That means you're down $10. Multiply that by the number of subscribers that join your list every day or every week, and you’re not going to be around for long unless you sell! In order for your business to make a profit, you need to get your money back quickly by providing something of high value so you can continue serving more people. 

You can tell we’re proud and passionate about showing up every day and telling everyone about The League and encouraging people to join because we know the types of results our members get when they use our teachings. That’s why we can proudly say this and know it’s true.

We also measure our business, our success, and our growth based on something we call Earning Per Subscriber Per Month (or EPSPM), which is a metric that measures how much money you make for every subscriber on your list.

And when we use marketing strategies such as countdown timers, discounts, and bonuses (stuff that others might consider to be pushy or too salesy), we make more money per subscriber per month! That translates into more profit for us and means we can help more of our subscribers. 

Lie 5: People leaving your email list is a bad, bad thing!

If what we sell isn’t right for your subscribers, they shouldn’t be buying from you in the first place. In fact, we don't want to be selling to people who aren't right for us. If people are offended by what you do, that's fine – they can leave. That works for you because it cleans up your list, and the people who stay are the ones who are right for you. If they stay and don't buy, you're still losing! 

Of course, you want to have a good relationship with your subscribers and do the best job you can. But let's remember you're sending emails at scale. You can’t be emailing your subscribers one by one, and when you send emails to everyone, the system is always going to be slightly imperfect. It might not be right for every single person, and some might leave. But the money you make from those who stay and become customers and fans should outweigh the problem of those leaving.

In other words, remember to measure your business by the metrics of a business. This isn't your friends and family! If you're enjoying the work you're doing and making a profit, don't listen to the advice that might be holding you back. 

Subject line of the week

This week’s subject line is “CRUSHED”. You will have probably heard people say that if you send a subject line all in upper case, the email will go directly to spam. And yet, this subject line got us an enormous spike in click-through rates. This goes to show that, as we always say, if you do everything else right, you can break some of the so-called ‘rules’ that are meant to wake up the spam triggers. And you won't have any problems! 

This email had to do with crushed ice by the way, but the word itself is quite emotive, and we think that's why it worked. So try it out!

Useful Episode Resources

Related episodes

The Little-Known Right Order to Make Your Offers (For Maximum Sales)

How to Do Deadlines Well and Ethically

Why You Shouldn’t Worry About Your Unsubscribe Rate

FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketing

If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. 

Join our FREE Facebook group

If you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.

Try ResponseSuite for $1

This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.

Join The League Membership

Not sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.

Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcast

Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about the lies that stop you from running a business with profit) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.

Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. 

And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!