- Duration: 19 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01J9PJN8XN6XNAQ731AFQWR2W0 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01J9PJN8XN6XNAQ731AFQWR2W0)
Transcript
[Michael Houck]: Um, cool. Well, excited to chat. Um, uh, is like next steps on this. Um, now it’s still a good time on your end. I see you on your phone. So just, just confirming. [+1 610-**-90]: Oh yeah. Yeah, this is good. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Okay. So, um, let’s see, to summarize what we had talked about, basically you had said you wanted to get started at the one case ups per month, uh, threshold, um, and on the same page about targeting. Um, in the original message I had mentioned, obviously founders, um, also going to pose the question about if you want us to include other execs, maybe like, uh, chief growth officers or like heads of growth and things like that. Is that something you want us to include or do you want it to specifically be, uh, be founders? [+1 610--90]: Hmm. Good question. I mean, definitely founders in terms of other C suite. I think, um, let’s think about that a little bit more on like who I really want to make sure that we’re, that we’re targeting who’s like the right person. Um, yeah. [Michael Houck]: Cause I mean, if, if our goal is to drive venture scaler clients, it’s like we want to get people into the newsletter one, but the real goal is kind of two steps down the funnel, which is convert clients. We could expand it to like anyone who’s doing a lot of hiring, but the newsletter content itself might be more targeted towards founders. So I think there’s like points on both sides of the fence here. [+1 610--90]: Yeah. I think a lot of the stuff that we’re doing is focused, it’s focused on founders, but it’s also like, um, you know, anybody who’s that and at that leadership level, startup, they’re going to care about these things and these topics. Like we just wrote newsletters on like onboarding talent, retaining talent, and like delegating and all these things. So I definitely think it could make sense to add some like other role types. But yeah, focus should be on founders for sure. That’s where I like love to build, build an audience. I’d say, I don’t know, let’s start with founders and if we find that it’s hard to get that many email addresses for folks that aren’t founders, then we start to explore maybe other titles. What do you think, though? Let me get your take on this. [Michael Houck]: I mean, my recommendation would probably be let’s start with one archetype because we’ll of messaging, a little bit different messaging archetype. And so my recommendation would be let’s nail it with one and then replicate that, what works about that with appropriate changes for the other ones. [+1 610--90]: Yeah, I think founders then makes the most sense to me. And they could be like, you know, co founder and whatever, you know, right, right. Whatever it is, but they have founder in the title, then at least they they self-identify in that way. They have that as part of the title that they decided they wanted to have. And those are the people I’m trying to talk to and trying to reach. [Michael Houck]: Okay, cool. That all sounds good to me. And we should be able to get those emails. I feel pretty good about that. So immediate next steps would be we’d go out we’d start getting the infra set up. So we’d probably buy two domains and probably two inboxes on each of those domains. We’ll probably only need to, just based on the volume, we’ll probably only need to send from one domain and then the two inboxes on it to start with to hit the 1K target per month. But I want to have a backup just in case we get flagged or something. We don’t lose any time that way. So we’ll probably do that. We can probably get started on that today. And then I’d add my chief of staff to our existing Slack channel. His name is Max. And basically we would collaboratively write the copy with you, because I want to make sure that you’re happy with the copy that we’re sending out. So we’d collaborate on that. And then basically during these next two weeks, we’d be warming up these inboxes. And so let’s say we start that today. What is that then? That’s the 22nd. Yeah. So the 22nd, we’d target going live with the first campaign. And we’d probably do a small test for like the first few days to see what our open rates are and all that. And then if that goes well, then we’d scale up. From that point onward. So the one thing that I would say is for the copy itself, we probably like the best copy that we see work is trying to encourage replies as much as possible. And the best way to encourage replies is to offer something. And so the recommendation I would make is that if we can put together some sort of very simple notion page air table database that can be packaged up as a resource that we can offer to these people, that would encourage the best reply rates, which would encourage the highest health and deliverability for the domains. Got it. [+1 610--90]: One thing I’ve been thinking about in terms of a resource is part of the newsletter, every issue is to put part of the, one of the sections is, is like how to scale as a founder. So I was thinking already about kind of like putting that all in one place. Like here are all the like resources for a founder to scale yourself. So that could be one and just like, you know, also just add a bunch of like different like frameworks and templates to it. And if it’s a Notion page, then it just, we just keep on, they just keep on adding to it over time. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. It’s like the scaling OS, right? [+1 610--90]: Oh, I like that. Yeah. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [+1 610--90]: So that was one thing I was thinking about for, for newsletter. I have a few other like lead magnet resources, but they’re more focused on hiring and I don’t, I don’t want to like miss a founder just because they think, Like, oh, well, I’m not hiring, so this isn’t relevant to [Michael Houck]: me. Right, right, right. [+1 610--90]: What’s worked for you in the past? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I mean, what we do is we have an investor database. We have a pitch deck database. Our stuff is mostly targeted towards fundraising, so it’s like a pitch deck template also. Those are really our main three. [+1 610--90]: Nice. But yeah, I wouldn’t want to focus on fundraising. I don’t want to position myself as the fundraising guy. [Michael Houck]: But I like that. The scaling, that aligns well, I think, with the type of founder who will eventually become potential for a Venture Scaler client. So I think that makes sense. [+1 610--90]: Yeah. OK. Scaling OS. I like that. And just, yeah, I can start with like a lot of the resources I already have, that we’ve already done for the newsletter too. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: So, okay. So we can get started then on the domains and inboxes and getting them warmed up. I’ll add you to our, like the tool that we use, you’ll have access. There’s, I’ll probably just keep you server. Basically, if we do scale this up, to be, you know, larger scale, then we would just set you up with your own dedicated server for all these, this stuff to that would have its own reputation and all that stuff. But just to make it a faster setup. And also just because the size of these isn’t too big. We’ll just include you on our existing server that we use for my stuff. So there’s some good reputation built in there already. [+1 610--90]: So how does that, I’d love to like dig into this more, like how does this whole thing work nowadays? It didn’t used to be this complicated. At least I still remember it being this complicated. [Michael Houck]: No, no, yeah. Basically, there’s like a whole new kind of suite of tools that are optimized for like how hard it is to escape these spam filters and promotions tabs and things like that. And the newsletter tabs, gets me so much. Basically, what we do is we add the inboxes that we buy to warm up pools. And so they start sending usually 30 messages per day to other inboxes that are also in the warm pools that these platforms have set up. And they start with zero and they scale up to 30 over the course of the two weeks. So by the end of the two weeks, there have been a lot of signals that these are real emails because they get opened on the other end. In some cases, the other end auto replies to them and things like that. And they’re also like a specific cadence, like not all at once and spread out throughout the day during like the right hours. And there’s no HTML in them whatsoever, like not even links or tracking or anything like that. So that’s how we sort of get something off the ground. Uh, and then that builds the reputation of not only that inbox, but also the domain. Um, right. And the reason we need to keep it to two inboxes per domain is because if we do more than that, there’s like specific blacklists that you can get flagged on. If you’re trying to warm up too many emails from a brand new domain at the same time, like they can, they can see the patterns at that point. Um, so Basically, we try to do just enough to not get flagged on any of these types of blacklists, either the inbox specific blacklists, the content specific blacklists, or the domain specific blacklists. [Michael Houck]: So I can share more notes that we have with you on what we try to avoid. But yeah, happy to get in the weeds with you on that too. [+1 610--90]: No, that’d be great. I just love to learn. Something that I’d probably eventually like to start with Venture Scaler. I’m just not at that. I haven’t figured out how to make it work. I really like the idea when we talked about doing this for the newsletter, it’s an easier pitch. It’s not as salesy. That I can see converting and then bringing them into Funnels. That’s where I want to start. [Michael Houck]: But I’d love to, yeah. [+1 610--90]: learn about this, whatever notes or documentation you have, I’d love to be able to just understand it just so I can wrap my head around what’s happening, how it works, all that, that’d be great. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, for sure. And there’s definitely a play to do this directly for Venture Scaler as well. But I think just for immediate ROI and also, I don’t know, just getting our feet wet here there, we’ll do it for the newsletter. And that way, you’ll have sort of unlimited shots on goal with these people to get them to just remind them Venture Scalar exists for when they’re ready. [+1 610--90]: Yep, yep, that’s my thinking, too. [Michael Houck]: Cool. [+1 610--90]: Oh, the other thing I do have already is, in terms of a lead magnet, I’m using it like on the page for the newsletter itself. So I have a database of interview questions. I don’t know how valuable that is. But I do have a library of about like a dozen playbooks that I wrote around different topics of scaling, like scaling your team, scaling yourself, scaling your venture. And I have, I just have that all loaded up into Gumroad. And I have it all, I think I’d like priced out, but I give a code in the Like here’s your code and it’s free. You get everything you can download everything for free. So if you think about, if you’re presenting like two or three different, like kind of like lead magnets in an email, you can definitely put like a little bundle together. Playbooks are definitely one. Like I said, I have about like 12 or those 13 already up on my Gumroad page. And yeah, I can start putting together like, other materials to like round this out and make this seem a little bit more attractive? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I would, I would totally recommend experimenting with that in, uh, in the newsletter as well. And what I would say is like, if someone uses that code on your gumroad page, then have that trigger a separate like email sequence afterwards where you like, you know, try to pitch them, um, venture scaler. Basically they downloaded this. They’re obviously a high intent reader, high engaged reader. Um, So maybe there’s some other messaging that we can spin up around, um, turning those into, into clients as well with like just a traditional marketing funnel. [+1 610--90]: Yeah. I like that. [Michael Houck]: Cool. Okay. [+1 610--90]: What do you need from me? Like things moving. I’m, I’m excited about this. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I’m pumped too. I’ll shoot you a Stripe link. Um, and then all we really need is the lead magnet, uh, whether that’s one of these ones you already you have or whether that’s the scaling OS. If you have time to put that together over the next two weeks, we won’t need anything from you until we’re ready to go live. So no rush on that. But then just keep an eye in the Slack channel and Max will start sharing some copy ideas with you later this week. [+1 610--90]: Great. [Michael Houck]: Cool. [+1 610--90]: All right. Sounds good. [Michael Houck]: I’m pumped. Let’s start growing this thing now that we’ve got the content going. [+1 610--90]: Yes. Yes, please. [Michael Houck]: Cool. All right, man. Talk soon. [+1 610-*-**90]: Yep. Thank you. Take care.