
Next Level Human
As humans we have a job to do. In fact, we have four jobs: to earn and manage money, to attain and maintain health and fitness, to build and sustain personal relationships and to find meaning and make a difference. Your host, Dr. Jade Teta, is an integrative physician, entrepreneur and author in metabolism and personal development.
Next Level Human
Email & Social Media Marketing For Health Coaches with Mike Milner- Ep. 271
Summary:
In this episode, Dr. Jade Teta and Mike Millner discuss internet marketing strategies for health professionals. They emphasize the importance of owning your audience through email marketing and using social media as a testing ground for content. They highlight the need to create gravity in the marketing funnel by building trust, providing clarity, and offering certainty. They also discuss the process of growing an email list by offering resources that solve micro problems and using paid ads to accelerate email list growth. The conversation covers topics such as email strategy, social media usage, and managing email flows. Mike Millner shares his approach to email marketing, including his daily email strategy and the frameworks he uses to create engaging content. He emphasizes the importance of open conversations and providing value to subscribers. Mike also discusses his belief-shifting framework, storytelling framework, and offer framework, which he uses to structure his emails. He offers a coaching program that provides templates and guidance for coaches looking to improve their email marketing.
Keywords:
Internet marketing, health professionals, email marketing, social media, marketing funnel, trust, clarity, certainty, micro problems, email list growth, paid ads, email strategy, managing email flows, email marketing, daily emails, open conversations, value, belief shifting framework, storytelling framework, offer framework, coaching program
Takeaways:
- Owning your audience through email marketing is crucial for health professionals
- Social media should be used as a testing ground for content and to attract attention
- Creating gravity in the marketing funnel requires building trust, providing clarity, and offering certainty
- Growing an email list can be done by offering resources that solve micro problems and using paid ads
- Email strategy should focus on delivering value, building trust, and nurturing relationships
- Managing email flows involves segmenting the audience and providing relevant content Send a welcome or indoctrination sequence before adding subscribers to your regular email list to avoid overwhelming them
- Open conversations are valuable for helping people solve problems and building trust
- Daily emails can qualify subscribers and build a strong connection, but it's important to provide real value
- Use the belief shifting framework to align with the prospect's problem, explain why conventional wisdom doesn't work, and offer a new solution
- Balance belief shifting emails with storytelling emails and make direct offers once a month
- Consider using structured flexibility in your email marketing to provide consistency while allowing for personalization
- Mike offers a coaching program with templates and guidance for coaches looking to improve their email marketing
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
09:15 Owning Your Audience through Email Marketing
14:42 Using Social Media as a Testing Gr
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Welcome to the Next Level Human Podcast. Everyone, my name is Dr Jade Tita, I am your host, and today I have one of my friends, actually, who we've been on podcasts and talked several times before, so you may know of Mike. This is Mike Milner and, mike, I'm going to let you tell everyone a little bit about your story. But one of the things Mike and I are going to talk about today a lot of you who listen to this podcast are professionals. You are in the personal training space, or nutritionists, or functional medicine practitioners.
Speaker 1:I've got MDs, dos, mds, personal trainers, nutritionists, coaches who listen to this podcast, and one of the things that oftentimes I get questions about is in the entrepreneurial realm what do we do to market, how do we talk to our clients, those kinds of things and so this episode, mike and I are going to help you unpack that a little bit. Mike is going to help us unpack that a little bit, and hopefully this will be helpful for you in terms of just basic internet marketing and more around copywriting, email marketing and other things. Mike, that I know you're now really helping people understand, so why don't you get us started? Just give us a little bit about your background for those who don't know you, and why you've made the pivot into helping coaches and health professionals with their marketing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate it and I appreciate you having me on, so I'll try to keep this as concise as I can. I started over a decade ago in the industry, began as a personal trainer after my own fitness transformation. As it tends to be, we have our own experience and then we want to pay it forward, and that was definitely the case for me. I had no plans to do what I do now and it just kind of happened. Because I was an athlete growing up, gained a lot of weight after college, my senior year and after I graduated, gained about 80 to 100 pounds, had a really hard time losing it, went through all the chronic dieting you know fad diets, extreme dieting and ultimately found a sustainable way to be healthy and fit and wanted to help other people avoid those mistakes that I made. So I became a personal trainer. And then I found that my own struggle was more on the nutrition side, and I noticed that a lot of the people that I was working with in the gym had the same. They would show up to the gym every day, but it was really nutrition that was holding them back. So I got into nutrition coaching and then, six years ago almost to the day as we're recording this.
Speaker 2:I started my own nutrition coaching business and it grew very quickly. I was really fortunate and I had no business or marketing background. But the one thing that I did from day one of my business was I started a newsletter because maybe it's my age, I don't know I didn't know about social media's my age, I don't know but I just I didn't know about social media at the time. I wasn't on Instagram, I wasn't trying to grow a huge audience. All I knew was this is how I communicate with people. I'm just going to send a daily email. So I've been writing an email every single day for the past six years and when you put in that many reps, you tend to get pretty good at something. And through that experience I scaled very quickly because my clients were sharing my emails with other people and I would get new subscribers. And this was before I even had like an opt-in or a lead bag or anything like that. It was just through word of mouth and I would notice, oh, I got 10 new subscribers today and this is so cool and, you know, ended up, you know, having a lot new subscribers today and this is so cool and I ended up having a lot of coaches asking me what I was doing and how are you doing this, how are you growing your business so quickly? And I didn't really have an answer at the time. It was just I'm writing daily and I'm putting out content, I'm telling my story, but I didn't really have a framework or a method to it and ultimately I went into a different direction with with marketing. I wanted to learn real marketing and I got some. I hired some business mentors that weren't the best fit for me, but it was a really valuable experience, even though it was a costly experience.
Speaker 2:I realized that a lot of what was being taught on the marketing side just didn't align with me morally, because it was a lot of gatekeeping it was. You know, tell people that you can help them, but don't tell them how you can help them. Tell them how bad their problems are and make sure that they feel that pain really deeply and if they don't solve the problem, it's going to be, you know, the worst situation ever, and then you kind of dangle the carrot and then make them pay to get the answer, and that just never felt good to me. It was always something that just I was like well, I guess this is what I have to do, if this is what marketing is, and it led me to a point of burnout where I almost quit my business and shut it down. It was at the end of 2020.
Speaker 2:I had a conversation, in this exact office that I'm in right now, with my wife, and I said I can't do this anymore. I don't feel like I'm acting in alignment. And she said well, why don't you just do the opposite of everything that you're being told to do? And I was like, yeah, that's good, I'll give it one more shot. And I started being the person that was oversharing everything the process and how we do everything, and the price. They always say don't tell people your price points.
Speaker 2:I started sharing everything the price and the process and everything that I was told not to do, and that was what took me from a six-figure business to a multiple seven-figure business. And that was when my wife who's a lot smarter than me she said you got to put this into a framework. You got to teach this and show people what you're doing, because there's actually a process that you're following that other coaches can learn. And over the past couple of years, that's what I did. So now I'm helping coaches with their copywriting, with their email marketing and some of the things that I've learned over the years that have worked really well for me. I'm now seeing the coaches that I'm helping have a similar trajectory, which is really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and Mike, I'll share something with you. You didn't know this when you popped on. I mean, I know you and I know each other, but a lot of people don't know this. My business over the last 18 months, back in April of what 2023, essentially collapsed. So close to $100 million business. I had two business partners basically gone overnight and one of the things I want to share with you. So I started way back in 2004. So, from 2004 to 2014, I built my own business this business is called Metabolic Effect and I brought it to seven figures just barely and very similar to the approach that you're using. Then I hooked up with these guys. By the way, they become my best friends. So if they're listening to this, no throwing any shade on them or anything like that they became two of my best friends.
Speaker 1:I learned a lot, but the interesting thing about this is that I, like you, in telling your story, felt slightly out of alignment with what we were doing, and I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I'll admit this to you and all the listeners. One of the things was that we were slowly making progress and I was making really, really, really good money, right, and I think one of the things that happened for me was because I was making such good money and I could see the future and had this hope of changing the health and fitness industry. In this sort of like dream scenario, I allowed myself to feel out of alignment with the marketing that we were doing for far too long and one of the things happened. Well, of course, I told you the end result this business essentially collapsed, I believe, partly because of the way we were doing things. I think my business partners would completely disagree with that and, by the way, they might be right, but at least for me, energetically, I felt that I was not completely authentic in alignment and wanted to do a different style of marketing. Now let me just say a couple more things, because this will lead us into me wanting to learn from you, because now what I've done is I've had a company called Next Level Human for a while now, but it's really never been a company. It was a side project, something I was interested in all psychology stuff, philosophy, living a good life, using your purpose to make changes in health and fitness, finance and personal relationship, leading with purpose and this forced me into this realm.
Speaker 1:And so, as you and I talk today and on this podcast. I am smack dab in the beginning of having built a business myself 10 years, taking a 10-year hiatus and now coming back into a place of what actually works. And this is funny because you and I haven't had this conversation yet, man, and I love sort of the synchronicity that's happening here, because I am in this place where I am just beginning the strategy, putting everything together, and so this actually is very useful for me, and so, as I began to start, I've been thinking a lot about email marketing and that kind of stuff, and I'm just interested on where, since, since I'm actually dealing with this and starting over after huge success and then huge failure, I want to see this formula. I want to hear how you're viewing this, because it is really really interesting for me and very important at this stage of my new business. So let us have it, man, like walk us through how you see this. I'm actually really excited for this conversation now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll start with that's really cool. I appreciate you sharing that. I'll start with why I think email is so valuable. The first part of it is that it's an asset that you own and have control over. Where social media is a great platform for audience growth and gaining attention, but it's not yours and the algorithm can change. Accounts can get shut down. I've had colleagues of mine who have built up hundreds of thousands of followers and overnight it's gone. They wake up one morning, they go to log in and account was shut down with really no explanation, no way to recover it. Now sometimes you can pay a lot of money and get the account back and hopefully that doesn't happen, but that it is a risk and you are essentially leasing that platform. So with email, you own those contacts, and same thing with a text or SMS list. Those are assets that you own and have control over. So I really like that as kind of insulation in the business and I'm not saying it should be one or the other, we should be doing both.
Speaker 2:Content to me, which email podcasts would be long form platforms. It really does an effective job of allowing you to articulate and explain your process and helping somebody make a more informed decision about whether they want to work with you or join your program or, you know, enroll in your course or whatever your flagship offer is. So I look at it as you know, we we kind of been sold this idea about funnels. You know it's a marketing funnel and you probably heard the line you're, you're one funnel away, and I think the one thing that we we tend to overlook about the process of a funnel is, in real life, when you have an actual funnel, when you put liquid in, it really has nowhere else to go. The only place it can go is through the funnel and out the bottom. And when you're marketing, you know it sounds good in theory. Just get people into the top of your funnel, which is why there's a lot of focus on, you know, growing your audience on social media, which I would consider the top of the funnel, how somebody first learns about you.
Speaker 2:The problem is that humans don't act like liquid. Humans are irrational and erratic and sometimes you know they'll they'll find you unfollow you or they opt out or they, you know. So we need to actually create gravity through the funnel and that's where I think you know really I look at it as three things that we need to create gravity through the funnel. The first thing we need is trust, and this is in no particular order. We also need clarity and we need certainty. So if we have those three things throughout each step of the funnel, top of funnel is attention.
Speaker 2:I just learned about Dr Jade and I know who you are and I hit follow. Now I'm in your world to some extent If you can show me that. Create clarity on what problems you solve. So I know without a shadow of a doubt that these problems I go to Dr J and you create trust in that what you're saying is accurate, I can believe you. I've seen enough of your stuff to know that I can trust you.
Speaker 2:And then certainty is to me, that's the part that most people miss, which is how do you do it? And that's the part that I was always told to leave out of marketing. Don't tell people the how. They don't care about the, how they just want to know. But more now than ever, the marketplace has become more sophisticated. Skepticism is higher, trust is a bit lower.
Speaker 2:So I think we need those three components, and the one that is often missed is the certainty. I need to know what your process looks like. So I can be sure that there's a system or a framework that you're going to take me through a step-by-step process that I'm going to follow. It's not you know enough to say I can help you lose weight and keep it off, or I can help you make more money or, whatever it is, find love, or, you know, whatever the thing is that you're doing. I really need to know that there's a process in place. So, every step of the way, my, my process is when somebody first learns about you let's say it is through your social media how are we pulling them through through? You know creating that gravity through the funnel by you know inserting clarity, certainty and trust. Once we get them into that next step, like the relationship has progressed. They've given you a contact info to be able to email them or they've subscribed to your podcast.
Speaker 2:Now the long form content is really where the magic happens, because that's when we can deliver a high degree of certainty and trust and clarity in what we do and the problems that we solve. We can be more thorough. We don't have to condense it into a 30 second reel or a 90 second video. Now we can really begin to explain the work that we do with our clients on a deeper level. That allows somebody to really make an informed decision and it places a high degree of value on the services that you're offering. So you get less price objections, less objections in general, because there's so much detail that you can do with a long form channel like a podcast or an email list. That's just not really suited for social media and our attention spans that we have on channels like TikTok and Instagram. So I'll see if you have any, we'll start there and see if you have any follow-up questions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I love it. And if you don't mind, mike, what I'll do is I'm going to try to repeat what you said, right for myself and the listener, and you can kind of correct me if I get anything wrong here. So one of the first things you're pointing out to us is that you want to own your audience, right, and so one of the first things I heard you say is social media is more renting your audience, email is more owning your audience, and so you really like this idea of owning your audience. And then it sounds like you're making a distinction here between the way most people think about funnels this idea that you just create a funnel and people automatically drop in it and what you're essentially saying is that's not necessarily the case. We need to attract them through attention, but then we need to create gravity, and so it sounds like you're saying that the attention is sort of the content we're putting out on social media and things like that, but then we have to create gravity, and that gravity correct me if I'm wrong is trust, right, and it's clarity and it's certainty. And I'm very clear on this idea of clarity and this idea of exactly what Jade Tita does, or exactly what you, the listener, does. That has to be very clear. So this would be in social media profiles and all that kind of stuff, I assume. And then the interesting part here is this certainty piece which you're saying and I agree with you, the marketing wise, you almost tease it, you never actually show it, you never actually tell people what's going to be happening until they pay the dollar. But you're essentially saying put all that out front, this certainty piece like here's the framework, here's the process you're going to be going through.
Speaker 1:Now just a couple of questions here. So I was very clear on clarity and certainty. Trust how do you get this trust piece? And the second part of that question is this gravity? I assume is all being created inside of social media and email, or is this gravity? Where is this gravity happening? In both places, one place. So first question is tell me a little bit more about trust. And the second place is where are we creating this gravity? I'm assuming it's in both places, but most importantly in the emails, and maybe that's where we'll go next.
Speaker 2:Yeah, completely Great question. So first part, on trust One of the easiest ways and fastest ways to build trust is when you say it's going to take you to a video that's three minutes long where I will explain X, y and Z thing. And you click on the video and it's exactly three minutes long and I explain exactly what I said it would. Now I'm conditioning my audience that I'm the type of person that when I say something's going to happen, it happens exactly as I said it would. A simple thing, like on a landing page where you have a lead magnet or a resource and somebody opts in and they put in their email address and they hit submit On the thank you page. I can say check your inbox. You're going to get an email from X blank email address, the subject line is going to be this and it's going to have your resource. And then, sure enough, they go to check their email. They've got the exact email, the email address, the subject line. Again, I'm conditioning my audience over time that when I say something is going to happen, it happens exactly as I said it would. So now we can even take that a step further where I can explain problems that we've helped solve for clients, and I can show testimonials, I can show screenshots, I can show proof that this happened exactly as I explained it, and here's the video testimony or the text screenshot or the before and after and over time of doing that. Enough.
Speaker 2:Your audience, without even knowing it, just starts to believe that when you say something is going to happen, it happens exactly as you say and they trust that your word actually means something. So I try to always think about that when what's the next step? Or kind of answering these questions like why am I here, am I in the right place? And what should I do next? And if I can answer those questions for them, I'm building trust because now I'm getting them oriented to where they are and you know, are they in the right place? And what happens? What's the next step after this? And people like you know this from studying psychology. Our brain doesn't like the uncertain, the unknown. We like to know what's coming, we like to have that degree of you know. Here's what's going to happen, you're going to, you're going to take this step and, uh, you know it's. If you see, like the dark room. We don't want to go into the dark room, but if you say uh, you're going to take one foot into the dark room and then the lights are going to turn on and you'll be totally fine. And then it happens Even when we're in a messenger conversation.
Speaker 2:A lot of times what I'll do is I'll give somebody a before I. You know, a lot of times we want to take our messenger conversations and we want to move it to a sales call. But what I like to do first is just show that I have a solution for you. Let's let's find the most immediate constraint that you're dealing with and let's solve that together. And when I give you an action step, not only am I going to tell you what to do, but I'm going to tell you the potential of here's what might happen.
Speaker 2:So you know, somebody struggles with cravings. Let's say I'm going to say, hey, why don't you try this? Like if you notice your cravings hit at night? We're going to try this dinner where you have a high protein, high fiber dinner. I'm going to give you some. You know some simple things you can do when you go eat that meal.
Speaker 2:One of two things are going to happen. Number one you're going to notice that your cravings completely disappear, which is great, because that means it's probably physiological. You might be under eating protein or fiber, and we've got an answer. Number two you might find that your cravings are still there, which is perfectly normal. It might be more behavioral or habit, or a stress response or more emotional. If that's the case, just come back to me and let me know and we'll work through that together.
Speaker 2:Now they go off, they do the thing, they take the action step and, oh my God, my cravings went away, just like you said they would.
Speaker 2:Or the cravings were still there, like you said they would. Now let's talk about the next step. Either way, I've built up a high degree of trust because I'm future pacing exactly what's going to happen before it happens. So that's one of the best ways to build trust with your audience. In terms of where gravity exists in the funnel, it's every step of the way. So, from the time that they follow you to the subscribe, to the email, to getting your emails, to the sales conversation, to the conversion, every step of the way, we want to deliver a high degree of all three clarity and what we're solving for certainty and how the process is going to work, and trust that you know we're going to future pace. When we say something's going to happen, you can believe that it's going to happen, just just as we're outlining, and if, if we don't know, we give potential scenarios so that way they feel at least a little bit more situated through the entire journey. That includes fulfillment as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, love this. Mike. Let me ask you a little bit because I imagine a lot of people listening to this right now. Obviously we're going to get into the email stuff and I want to hear all about that. But I imagine and I would love your take on this because I imagine what a lot of people are thinking we are in still deep in the world of social media. It's not ending anytime soon, even though there's changes all of the time and people are vying for attention and in fact, gary Vaynerchuk has a great new book out called Day Trading Attention that talks an awful lot about where social media is going.
Speaker 1:Let me get your take on how you're using social media.
Speaker 1:You know we all have varying degrees of social capital in terms of followers and I would say and I want to get your opinion on this that more of the amount of followers you have, in my opinion, is less important than it's ever been and that, to a large degree, there is more democratization of content and we can essentially pull people in.
Speaker 1:But I want to hear your take on how important this is. Obviously, you alluded to the fact that it's far less important than having the email list, but I want to know, just briefly, how you're using it, because I imagine this might be one of the best places to grow the email list, and I just want to hear from you briefly how you're using social media to get people into your. You know this funnel and create gravity inside the funnel as a result of that. For example, things like you know what are you using when you talk about in the DMs? What are you using there? Are you using bots? Is this like? What is all this stuff? If someone did not know, how should they be thinking about social media in this whole process you teach?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I look at it as the top of the funnel. This is where people learn about it, gain attention. Somebody comes into your world. Usually that's going to be the first entry point. So it is still important and right now I think it's still the best channel and opportunity for gaining new attention and growing your audience. There's partnerships, there's in-person stuff that we can do, but for the most part, a lot of coaches and practitioners. There's no way around it. It is what it is and we have to utilize it to the best of our ability.
Speaker 2:The way that I view social media is a little bit different. This may be strange to hear, but I look at it as a testing area. So what I do with each piece of content to me, every single piece of content that I create is a test, and what I'm testing is how's my message resonating with my audience? What do they want to hear? What hooks and headlines are connecting? What problems and situations that I'm talking about are deeply resonating with them? What format do they want on a certain platform? Is it the more video style? Do they like more written? Do they like more aesthetic? Maybe carousel pictures, that type of thing? I look at every piece of content as a test and it helps me to refine my messaging because when I get them through the funnel to the next step, which I would consider email more middle of funnel, where a lot of the nurture and the warming up process happens to ultimately convert. Now I have all of this stuff that I've tested and I know specifically what problems resonate, what message resonates more deeply with my audience, and I can take that many layers deeper when I'm doing a podcast or when I'm writing an email, layers deeper when I'm doing a podcast or when I'm writing an email.
Speaker 2:So I look at it as a lot of times we hang on the number of likes or video views or comments that we get and we look at those vanity metrics and we put a lot of weight into them and stock into them, when reality it's just a test. You just want to see what your audience resonates with, what's working, and that really helps you to refine it. If you just view it that way, it takes a lot of pressure off. You don't have to get so hung up on how many people shared my post, but just look at the metrics, look at the analytics. We have to become a little bit more data-driven when it comes to social media, and at the end of every week, I look back and I see my analytics for the week and I notice, oh look, these, you know several posts outperformed everything else, and sometimes it's just one. I'll go a whole week and I'll look up this one single post outperformed everything else.
Speaker 2:Well, what was it about that? And I'll try to break it down. What was it about the message, the way that it was delivered? You know what was the pain point that I talked about, or the situation and and, and I just make notes of that every week, and that sets me up for the next week ahead and can plan things accordingly and try out different things with really no stress, because all I'm doing is testing it out and when I find something that connects, I try to. Did it still outperform? You know my standard, or my average, because now I know that that's a really strong concept that my audience wants to hear more about, and I can use that again for my long form content.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that approach and I do a very similar thing. Where I'm really looking at, you know, is it the topic that I chose? Is it the style? You know, and you can begin to get a lot of different sort of information with that. Some people even and I've done this too, some of my best ads that I've ever run come from this organic sort of testing of email. Okay, so let's talk about then. So now you've got attention, You're sort of doing your social media thing. You're using this testing. You're essentially figuring out what resonates. I imagine this informs you an awful lot of what happens in emails as well. Let's go how do you get these individuals on your email list Best practices there and then let's dive into your email strategy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the easiest way that I've seen to grow your email list is you take what's already performing well for your organic content and you position some kind of a resource that would expedite the solution. So my opinion is, with most of your content you should be solving problems and I have a whole process of you know you take, let's say, the macro transformation or the macro problem that you solve. That's kind of the overarching. You know I help. You know women over 40 lose 30 pounds in six months and you know, eliminate food, noise and whatever else you do. That's going to be different for each individual, but there's that macro transformation that you create. What we want to do is we want to chunk it down into smaller micro problems, smaller problems. It's like we don't want somebody standing at the bottom of a mountain just staring at the top and thinking how overwhelming it's going to be to climb that mountain. We want them to look at the next step and that's the micro problem that's standing in the way. And if we can solve those little micro problems with our content, that's going to help create the gravity, the clarity, the certainty and trust. And once you find those concepts and those micro problems are even better situations, if I can present a real life situation that I know is keeping my clients up at night you know it's instead of saying you know you're, you're stuck and frustrated. What if I say you know, have you ever found yourself, after a busy day, uh, raiding the pantry? Uh, you know, and you find yourself with an empty bag of chips without even knowing it, like if somebody went through that experience. That really resonates because it's so specific, the situation is so specific. Then, if I can give them a solution now, all of a sudden, I've got their attention and they're interested in learning more. So what we do is we find those pieces of content that are performing really well and we position a resource or a lead magnet. There's a lot of different terms for it freebies, opt-ins, lead magnet, whatever you want to call it. I look at it as an acceleration of the solution. So, instead of going through this whole long-winded journey, I'm just going to give you a resource that helps you solve this micro problem within the next 48 hours, ideally, and the faster the better, because I want somebody to be able to go, take action and then come back and tell me what happened right away, like the example I gave with cravings. So we take all the content that's working, that has outperformed everything else, and we just reposition it with that call to action for the resource to accelerate the solution. And now we've got a bunch of people raising their hands saying, yes, I'm interested, yes, please send me that, and that's how we get them to then opt in to our email list.
Speaker 2:Now you mentioned paid ads. Paid ads to me, it's nothing more than organic content with with a budget behind it. Instead of thinking about having to create native ads, just look at the organic content. If you have a budget for ads and it can be a very small budget same exact concept works really well. You take the organic content that worked well for your lead magnet and you just put a small budget behind. It could be as little as a dollar a day, but now you're getting people who are consistently opting in through that organic content. You've got a budget behind it and now you're going to grow your email list a little bit quicker with. If you have anywhere from one to five dollars a day, this can be really effective to just kind of put a little gas on the fire for your email growth.
Speaker 1:OK, yeah, this is great. Ok, so now they're getting in the email, and I have a question that I know is going to come up for a lot of people. So, obviously, when they get your sort of freebie, this micro solution, you have to communicate with them. So you're sending them emails and you also essentially have your regular email list, and so how do you manage that flow? Do you essentially send them both emails at the same time? Do you let them get through your micro content emails and then drop them into your newsletter? What's happening at that stage?
Speaker 2:Yeah, good question. So I like for them to go through the welcome sequence or the indoctrination sequence whatever you want to call it first, before they go into my normal daily newsletter. I don't want them getting too many emails at once or being pulled in too many different directions newsletter. I don't want them getting too many emails at once or being pulled in too many different directions. I also like to have the people that are opting in. I also like to have open conversations and I do this myself. I don't use a bot or anything like that.
Speaker 2:I think that open conversations are one of the most valuable things that we have that a lot of times we look at conversations as an opportunity to close sales, which it can be, but to me it's more an opportunity to help people solve problems, and most of the time I don't offer up a call, I don't say anything other than we're going to figure out what your roadblocks are.
Speaker 2:We're going to work through it together and most of the time it's the individual, the prospect, that says how do I learn more about your program or how do I work with you, and they're the ones that are initiating that.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I'll have open conversations and then maybe I'm doing a workshop or a live training and I'll just pop in and say, hey, you know, I have this opportunity, I'm doing this live training. I thought of you, since we've been chatting, you know, and it's very natural because we've actually been chatting, and so it comes across as very authentic because it is. You know, we have all these open conversations and I can go through and just say, hey, I've got this workshop I'm doing I thought you might be interested. Thought of you since, since we've been chatting and you know, here's the link if you're interested. Um, so, I like to have the one-on-one conversation going while they're also going through my email sequence for whatever they opted in for, and then, once they get through that sequence, they're going to get my daily emails, which are going to continue that warming up process, that nurture process, and also offer them opportunities along the way, little checkpoints along the way, to see if they're ready to move forward.
Speaker 1:Okay, and so let's get into the email stuff now. So from my perspective, right, this is really interesting. So you send an email a day and you've been doing that pretty much for six years, and I know a lot of people are going to have different takes on this, and you probably heard this before, mike, but a lot of people would be like, oh my God, that many emails. Aren't you going to lose subscribers? Aren't you going to have a huge subscriber unload? And I imagine if it were me answering this question, I'll answer it for myself first, and I want to see what you'd answer To me. I would say, probably you're going to get a lot of people unsubscribing, and that's what I would want to have happen, because I want the people who really really want to hear from me. It sounds like by emailing every single day, you are essentially really really qualifying these people. These are only going to be the people who really really love Mike.
Speaker 1:And but I want to hear your thought on this and where, where and when you decided to do a daily email, because you know a lot of people might say email once a week and other people might say no more than three times a week. Some people might even say don't email your list more than once a month. You're emailing every single day, which is a really cool tactic. It's obviously working because you've been doing it for so long. But walk us through how you figured out this work and I'm wondering if, in the beginning, you ever questioned that tactic, did you lose a lot of people?
Speaker 1:How long did it take that tactic to? Because, as entrepreneurs, you know how it works. Man, you're doing something and you're like, oh my God, all these people are going out. Is this the right strategy? I want to know did you know this was working right away? And give us all the insights on why this particular strategy? Obviously it has been hugely successful for you. So I want to know why and what, if any, are the techniques and tactics and tools we must use if we're going to email daily to keep people engaged.
Speaker 2:Yeah, completely. So I started it from day one and I always explain it as a happy accident. It wasn't a savvy business move, I didn't have any strategy, it was just. This is what I'm going to do, and I was very fortunate that I got positive feedback right away, because I think if it was slow in the beginning, I don't know if I would have continued a daily email. But I mentioned that I started to get a lot of people sharing my newsletter and I started to notice new subscribers coming in without even having any systems in place. In the very beginning I was just sharing my story. I was just sharing my own journey, the things that I was struggling with, the things that I was going through, and people were resonating with my own personal story. So that's really where it all began and I started to get a lot of positive feedback from that.
Speaker 2:I never questioned the daily email until others started hearing what I was doing and then they would say wait daily, don't people get annoyed, don't they unsubscribe? And I said I'm sure they do, but this is what's working. So the way that I explain it is not everybody has to do a daily email and in fact I think more of the sweet spot would be somewhere around three to five times per week. However, just like anything, we start with what we can consistently do. So if that's once a week, it's once a week. If it's once a month, it's once a month. So we want to start with where you can stay consistent. But the cool part for me was that I started to notice that on the days where I had, let's say, there was a tech issue with my CRM software, my email was delayed even two hours. I would have people messaging me saying where's what happened to the email?
Speaker 2:this morning, and so that was the light bulb. People Not only do they know what's coming, but they even knew the time that I was sending, because I was sending the same time every single day, and they started to expect, like Mike's going to show up in my inbox. And the reason why, to your point, it's qualifying, it's building more trust, it's connecting them to me and what we do and our whole philosophy. And the analogy that I like to give is if you were, this is a relationship that we're building. When you are working with a client, it's a relationship that we're building.
Speaker 2:So if you were trying to build a relationship with somebody and they only heard from you once a week, it's pretty tough to get to know that person. It's pretty tough to know if this is the right fit, are we right for each other, which is what we're trying to do. I'm trying to see if they're right for me, they're trying to see if I'm right for them and if they only hear from me once a week or once a month, that's going to take a long time to build that connection and to see if it's a good fit. But when we have daily, even if it's just, you know, if I talk to somebody on the phone for five minutes every day, we're going to get to know each other a lot faster and so we're condensing that time of knowing if this is a good fit and you're right, I want them to unsubscribe if they don't feel like it's the right fit. And what I always say is if you are delivering real value and I don't a lot of people throw that word around, I want to just define it To me, value is when you can solve a real problem for somebody that they're facing.
Speaker 2:If you can solve a real problem that they're facing and you can do that every single day, they're going to look forward to those messages.
Speaker 2:They're going to get excited about opening that up and knowing that I know what to expect because again, you start to condition your audience that when I open up one of Jade's emails, I get valuable insight into a problem that I'm facing and I get a real, tangible solution. It's not hype, it's not fluff. I get a tangible solution that I can go and implement right away and that's a really cool thing. So that's kind of how you know I've kind of my own philosophy is we condense the time to build that relationship and we can deliver real value on a daily basis. That, you know, helps me stand out. Who's going to be top of mind? When they're ready, I say you know what I really need a coach who's going to be top of mind? The person that's showing up consistently every day? Or the person that they maybe saw on Instagram and then maybe got an email from and didn't hear from for another week or two weeks, like I'm typically, they're going to think of me first before anybody else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and not only are they going to think of you first, but when they're having conversations out in the real world and someone's like I need a coach, they're also going to be thinking of you and saying, oh, you need to check out this guy, mike, who I follow. Let me ask you this when you write these emails, does it go into a sequence? Are you writing these from scratch every day? I imagine that if I was going to coach someone on email marketing, I would essentially say you can write a year's worth of emails and you know, essentially, have those things all queued up and ready to go. But I'm wondering how you see that. Right, like, if it was me, I might simply go. I'm going to write emails for a year, right, and I'm going to have people drop in from that first email. But I'm wondering if that's how you do that or you prefer for it to be. You know you today and the stuff you're going through today, and if that is the case, then are you? How are you managing sort of the consistency of the education?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I actually do it every single morning. I don't do any. The only time that I'll preload emails to go out is if I'm traveling, if I have a vacation or trip plan. I'm going to be in Italy at the end of this month, so my emails for that week will be preplanned. That's the only time Every other day I wake up. It's part of my morning routine. Before anything else, I get myself together, I pour some coffee, I sit down and I write. That's every single day how I start my day, and some coffee, I sit down and I and I write.
Speaker 1:That's every single day how I start my day, however. And how long are these emails? Sorry, but how long are?
Speaker 2:the emails. They're pretty long it's. You know I can go anywhere from. I've had, you know, 2000 word emails, all the way to 250 word emails, but I would say on average we're probably in that 500 to a thousand words. They're pretty long. So I like to. I have a framework that I use for most of my emails, that that we can go over. But it comes very naturally to me. I've been doing it for a long time. They take me about 15 minutes and I I write one to my kind of nutrition coaching audience for people who want to, you know, get healthy, lose weight, improve body composition, health markers, and then I write one for my coach audience who are you know, nutrition coaches, fitness professionals who are trying to improve their messaging and, uh, grow their businesses, and things like that.
Speaker 2:So I write to every single morning and they take me about 15 to 20 minutes each and, uh, I prefer to really be in tune with what's happening today, which is why I do it that way. I'll pull from real conversations, from DM conversations that I'm having or client. If I have a coaching call or something comes up and I start to hear a recurring theme like, ok, I'm going to write about that, I'm going to help them solve that problem. So that's why I like it that way.
Speaker 2:For other people, they prefer to be more, you know, structured with. I want a week's worth of emails or a month's worth of emails, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think the only downside is not being able to have the immediate like. If you hear something today that three different clients mentioned, you know that might be something that's more urgent, that is worth an email, you know, versus something that you had planned out for. You know that might be something that's more urgent, that is worth an email, you know, versus something that you had planned out for three months ago or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2:So that's the way I prefer to operate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love this man, so let me ask you a couple questions so you can tell my mind's going just from the business point of view. So I'm actually learning in real time and really enjoying this conversation. So one of the things I would think of is we all do launches. When I launch, I do launch to my email list. So one of my quick questions is I assume then, if you're just doing these in real time, you just know you're doing a launch and so that week it's all about the launch. Are you doing two separate emails there? I could see two ways of doing that. Right, we'll be like hey, a launch is coming. For those of you who are interested, click this link. It puts them on another email sequence. Or I just include that launch during that week of emails. I'm curious how you manage that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's actually a combination. So what I'll do is typically I'll pre-frame the launch and let people know what's coming and I'll have a early bird or like a first dibs list, and then those are the people that get some kind of an advantage or benefit from being on that list the first movers. But I'll still launch to my entire list and so for. Typically it's going to be anywhere from like three to seven days. I've extended launches a bit longer, but that's typically where my launches will go, and that week, if it's a week, I'm just doing my launch. Emails and kind of the daily nurture stuff that I usually do gets you know, put on pause until the launch week is over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. So, yeah, and so, and during that launch week, if I'm hearing you right, you essentially just write the emails. For that you go right back to the sequence. But these early adapters are they then getting a separate email in addition to the sort of pre-launch stuff? Did I hear that right?
Speaker 2:Yep. So they're going to get some kind of a special incentive-based early adapter email that tells them all the advantages if they sign up, let's say, within the first 24 hours or the first 50 people, or whatever the incentive may be, or there's some kind of a timeframe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'm also wondering how often do you launch? It's a pretty interesting model, right, because some people would be like, oh well, they're just used to me, I launch once a month, or I launch quarterly, and so they're just used to that coming. And I guess, if you're giving value I certainly have done this in my emails before where people actually feel like they're getting even more value during the launch sort of this launch, you know, sort of lessons and value while you're launching. But yeah, of course we're doing that and you're solving solutions all the way along. But I'm wondering if you're planning these launches out and, if so, how often are they coming? And so you know, is it basically one week every month is essentially, for all intents and purposes, launch emails.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have a interesting way of structuring and I do a direct email offer once a month and that's not really a launch.
Speaker 2:It's more I've been building up goodwill for the entire month and now I'm going to just offer you the opportunity to enroll very directly. So it's not a soft launch, it's not a kind of indirect ask, it's a very much like hey, this is your invitation to work with us in our one-on-one coaching program, and here's who it's for and here's how it works and here's what you can expect and all the details and it's very, it is very detailed and it's you know, uh, does a really good job of pulling people. I I say like when I use the analogy, the baseball analogy so all throughout the month we've been moving people around the bases. Right, we got them on our email list. They're on first base, they've been nurtured, now they're on third base and they just need to know what the opportunity is. So every once a month we're just going to remind them here's your opportunity to come home and score. And this is the. You know, we put it right in front of them very detailed, and that works really well. So that's just once a month.
Speaker 1:Okay, so it sounds like once per month. You know, it sounds like once per month. You do have an email. It's sort of an off the shelf email that's an invitation that you send. That's great it is Yep.
Speaker 2:And then there's the more traditional launch, which is probably I do one a quarter which I'll plan, you know, whether it's a challenge or some kind of a group that I'm running or you know a beta group or something like that. It probably averages out to about one a quarter, maybe three a year that I do, which are more traditional launches. That's, you know, I'm planning that out. I've got my you know my pre-frame, I've got the early bird list, I've got all my launch emails ready to go, and so that's kind of more structured and less frequent. So people typically aren't expecting that there's going to be a sequence that they can kind of predict, but it's. It is with relative, you know, consistency.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's great. So once a quarter, then there's sort of this you go into this launch sequence. That's basically interrupts the normal regularly scheduled emails and that's your launch into your program. All right, so I have, essentially I mean, I know a lot of people are probably going to want to work with you I certainly am already going to probably be like yo man, how do I, how do I coach with you as well on this, with my new business business? So walk us through the framework, though so you know, I know we're coming up on the end. Walk us through how you see this Cause.
Speaker 1:Honestly, my, my main thing, mike, I'll tell you sort of how my brain's working as I'm looking at this as I go.
Speaker 1:Okay, so if you're doing this off the cuff every morning right, and it's sort of just part of your thing, and you're doing it as part of your daily thing and it's it's fresh and it's recent and it's based on recent conversations and all this kind of stuff, there must be some kind of structure that allows you to give a consistent introduction into Mike and his coaching that you're somehow using, that's weaved into these emails, correct? And if so, I would love to know what that is, because to me it makes it a little bit, it makes it fresh and it makes it interesting and they never know what's coming, which I really love. It also seems that it can make it difficult if you don't have sort of a structure that you're working within so that everyone gets a consistent. You know they get Mike's story and they get you know, like so every month or something. You know there must be something you're doing that within a certain amount of time they know you, they like you, they trust you, they're ready to act.
Speaker 2:Yeah, completely. So I have three frameworks that I teach is kind of the majority of every email that I send. The first one is a belief shifting framework, so that makes up the bulk of my messaging. And the belief shifting framework is essentially where we open up by aligning with a current client problem or situation, and that's getting into the micro problems. And when I say aligning, that's intentional word choice there, because I think a lot of times as coaches we like to jump in with our expert opinion right away and we try to give our own diagnosis of the problem.
Speaker 2:What we want to do is we want to communicate it and articulate it the way that our prospects and our audience articulates it or perceives the problem. So you know, an example might be a coach would say you know you shouldn't be doing cardio if you want to lose weight or something like that. It starts to diagnose you You're not working out the right way, you're not training effectively. But the client might not be thinking in those terms. The client might be thinking I'm running all these miles every week and my body's not changing. That might be their inner dialogue why am I putting in so much work and I'm not seeing the scale change. I'm not seeing the changes in the mirror. So we want to align with the way that they view the problem. So your opening to your email might be if you notice that you're running a lot of miles every week and you're not seeing the scale change, I'm going to tell you why that might be happening. Or you're putting in a lot of work, you're exerting a lot of effort, but you're not seeing your clothes fit any better. I'm going to explain exactly what's going on. So now, all of a sudden, they're hearing their own words or reading their own words, and now we've got their attention. So, after we align with their version of the problem, we want to help them understand that we know that this is normal. So we kind of normalize that this is something that many people experience. You're not a unicorn, you're not alone that this is something that many people experience. You're not. You're not a unicorn, you're not alone. There's plenty of people that have the same thing.
Speaker 2:We also want them to know that we understand what they've been told or what they've already tried. So you know you may have seen, you may be following, you know certain people that tell you that cardio is the most effective tool for weight loss. You may have already tried, you know, running 20 miles a week in order to lose weight, but you're just still not seeing the results that you want. Now we want to explain why that's not working. So we show them conventional wisdom or what they've already tried. We want them to see and be able to connect the dots as to why that isn't working. And then, most importantly, we want to show them and explain what to do instead. So now we've got them. They know that we know their problem, we know that we, that they know that we know what they've already tried to solve it. Now they can see for themselves why that's been ineffective. And then, most importantly, they have an action plan on what to do instead. What will work instead, zoom out and we can show them how we take that micro problem and how that fits within the big picture solution that we provide to our clients. So once we solve this problem now we can go through our framework of a big picture solution and who we work best with and what our clients achieve.
Speaker 2:All that's packaged in one what I call belief shifting email.
Speaker 2:The belief shift is they used to view the problem through this lens cardio for weight loss and now we've kind of shifted their belief that it's actually this thing over here and the conventional wisdom, the things that they've been told.
Speaker 2:They can clearly see, logically, that that's why it's ineffective.
Speaker 2:And now they have a new way of viewing the problem and or the solution that excites them to say you know what? That's probably what I've been missing and the belief shift happens and now we've aligned them with our methodology and our way of doing things, and over enough time, because we know that beliefs are difficult to shift. So, over enough time of shifting the belief, we get them really indoctrinated into our philosophy and our methodology belief. We get them really indoctrinated into our philosophy and our methodology and then when we present that opportunity for them to work with us, it's an easier yes. So that's the main framework that I teach is the belief shifting framework. I also do a storytelling framework, which is more client results, testimonials, your own personal story, really inserting yourself into your emails and copy. And then there's the offer framework, which is that once a month where we're really detailing everything that we do and who we help and how we do it, and it gives them all the information they need to make a really informed decision.
Speaker 1:Okay, so now I'm seeing as well. What percent would you say are belief shifting versus storytelling versus offer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so belief shifting it depends on how many you're writing. Let's say, on average, most of the coaches I work with we get them to at least three times a week. Two out of the three are going to be belief shifts and one's going to be more storytelling, and then there's going to be the offer once a month. So that's kind of how we would balance it out. So it's kind of two to one in favor of the belief shift Very powerful framework. It's worked really well for myself and for the coaches that I've helped, and so that's what I really took. Make sure, like from a messaging standpoint, if you can nail that framework, it goes a long way. On every play. I started doing the same thing with my podcast, which helped with people reaching out and inquiring about coaching and a lot of the things that I do with even video, spoken word, written a lot of it follows that same belief.
Speaker 1:Shifting framework. Love it, man, I love it. And actually this answered my main question, because it sounds like what you're doing is I use a term called structured flexibility in pretty much everything I teach and that's how I individualize my treatments for people. I essentially have this structure, but built within the structure is a flexible sort of different frameworks and tools that match to the individual, and it looks like what you're doing is a structured flexibility approach. Here. You're basically using these three frameworks, which essentially deliver the gravity that we talked about over and over and over again, so that it doesn't really matter that you're not sketching it all out ahead of time, but because you're using these structures, you hit all these pieces all of the time. It's really genius and it's really been effective for you. It looks like. So let's wrap up, man. Anything else you want to fill in the gaps for us? And of course, I know a lot of people are going to probably want to get some of your coaching. And this is what's beautiful about this All of us listening, and Mike knows this, and of course, I know this because we've been in business a while.
Speaker 1:Isn't it interesting how much value Mike has given us? He's pretty much opened the book and said, hey look, guys, here's exactly what I'm doing. I'm asking very pinpoint, exacting questions. He's just giving it all to us, and isn't it funny that already a lot of us are probably like, oh my God, I want to work with Mike Because, in a sense, it does not matter how much he gives. We still need the accountability we're still going to have questions.
Speaker 1:Being told what to do isn't the same as actually doing it. We know this, and this is why this is so powerful, so that we can give, quote, give away everything, because really it's impossible to give it away because it still needs to be done by the individual. And we individuals, who are not the coach, can't hold all this in our head. And so then we need someone to keep us accountable. With someone like me who knows a lot of this, I still would want to hire someone to keep me accountable. And just look over my shoulders.
Speaker 1:It's very similar in nutrition, right, mike? It's like you know, even though I know what to do, it's really nice if I could hire someone to actually just send it so I can remove some of that energetic entropy there that is in my head, so I can be more likely to actually do it right. Information is not transformation. We have to act for the transformation. So what I would love to hear is just anything else you want to add, man. If there's anything you left out that you feel like we need to be aware of, and then just let us all know where we can get your sort of formula and get into your system, I immediately want to go up and sign up for both your lists so I can see what you're doing real time. But anything else you want to add?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think you nailed it. I think, the way that I look at it is, there's one of two situations that'll happen. Number one the individual takes all the advice and everything that you're giving away and openly sharing and they go do it and they see an amazing transformation. And, like some of the most, you know, the moments that bring me the most amount of joy is when somebody says hey, I listened to your podcast, I took your advice and I'm down 40 pounds or 50 pounds or whatever the case may be. That's great. You know, the fact that they could do that on their own is amazing. And the other situation exactly what you said, where they're like this all makes sense and I really want you to lead me through it. I want you to guide me, I want to be able to ask questions and make sure that I'm doing this the right way. So, either way, I think that's typically the two outcomes that we see.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I started doing was I had a lot of coaches where I would teach them my frameworks and they would ask me if I had any sort of cheat sheets or guides or templates that they could use to kind of plug and play everything and it took me well over a year, but I went through 3000 emails that I've written over the past six years and I put everything into a template form that you can look at the belief shifting framework and have done for you templates every single month that you can use your own personality, personalized to your own audience, and that way you're not staring at a blank screen. And that was the biggest sticking point. A lot of coaches would say I go to write my emails and I'm just staring at the blank screen. I don't know how to start, and so I kind of wanted to solve that problem of never staring at a launch templates, welcome sequences you know the offers, the belief shifting emails, storytelling and it puts it into template form and it prompts you on how to personalize it, how to make it your own. And then you have stuff that you can send. It's 12 nurture templates every month to offer templates every month, and that way you have at least got the minimum effective dose ready to go to be able to send three emails per week and make an offer every month and consistently enroll clients through that process. So it's a $97 a month program. It also comes with my coaching. We do calls every single week, so that's the best place to go for anybody that's interested.
Speaker 2:It's five minute emailscom is the website. Five is spelled out F, I, V, E. Five minute emailscom. Um, and then you can follow me on Instagram. It's at coach underscore Mike, underscore Milner. If you have questions, it's it's always me and my DMS. I don't have any uh any appointment setters or or uh VAs or anybody doing that. It's all me. If you have questions, I'm always happy to answer. But that email coaching program is really my flagship offer now for coaches and helping them know what to do and how to grow your list, how to nurture it and how to enroll new clients.
Speaker 1:Mike. I so appreciate you, man. It's great to know that you're doing this work and helping us all out. Thank you for, I mean, amazing podcast, ton of value, and really appreciate you and you guys make sure you check him out. You can Looks like you have a really cool service there for everybody. I'm probably going to check that out as well and I appreciate you, man, and for all of you listening. Thanks for being on and, mike, I'll see you soon. I think I'm gonna be on your podcast in a little bit again and we'll be able to talk soon, but do me a favor, hang on the line, just so I can make sure.