In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Dan Bagniuk to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover the power of email marketing for your business.
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Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Dan Bagniuk to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover the power of email marketing for your business.
Connect with us on social media:
- Facebook: Thomas Bennett
- Instagram: @Thomas.mbennett
-YouTube:@SmallBusinessMoneyConnector
- LinkedIn: Thomas Bennett
Subscribe to "Small Business, Big Moves" on Your Favorite Podcast Platform for more inspiring episodes on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses!
Welcome to Small Business Big Moves, the podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Tom Bennett, and we'll explore all things business growth from business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses. Welcome to the show. My guest today is Dan Bagnick. Dan, I'm excited to have you on the show and I'll let you introduce yourself. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Yeah, so my name is Dan. I run an email marketing agency called Hidden Profits. io. The whole point is just to create infrastructure that help people uncover, or business owners specifically, uncover hidden profit centers and sales channels inside their businesses. Typically these are just completely underutilized and they can add a good chunk of cash anywhere between 500 K to an extra million dollars a year. Yeah, that's what we do in a nutshell. Well, you know, and that's huge for, I think any business, especially the small business and entrepreneurs out there. Right. So that's why I really wanted to get you on today to kind of go through that a little bit. Right. And I know you obviously just re recently landed a pretty large client. So I wanted to talk on that. Then really before we jump into it though, I really wanted to take it back to the being at time. Like what what got you into into what you're doing now, and I guess how, how did you end up there? Yeah, I mean, to keep it fairly short my entire plan was just to always become just a physiotherapist. I had no desire, no ideals to become an entrepreneur, ever. I never had my own little lemonade and I never. I just was following the same path as everybody else, but I ended up getting an opportunity at a very young age to become a franchisee. So I got to, it was basically just a painting company. So I ran my own franchise. He hired a bunch of people who managed a bunch of people being the 18 year old I was, I was a very bad leader. So yeah, I got through that year. Barely was the hardest year burned out really badly. But during that year I found out about like just the online space in general and how you can. So I transitioned over there and sort of through a series of a couple, just lucky events I was able to get into sort of the internet marketing space and then, yeah, try to once again, set up my own agency at the time, didn't know it was an agency and then the only sort of opportunity that did work for me was high ticket sales. So I became an affiliate of this company selling Instagram growth. And yeah, I would just. Do my own outreach, set my own appointments, actually closed my own appointments, made a little bit of money there, dropped out of university. And then, yeah, I invested in a sales coach that had some good things to teach, but he had his own agency that he was building out. You know, he made it sound like it was already built out. I have this grand vision, but he hired five young 20 year olds. I was one of them and expected us to build out the entire business for him, lead the entire business for him, despite us having little to no experience. So he truly stepped into that sort of visionary role without actually. Proper leadership or proper training, let alone. So yeah, after five months I was about, I was the second last person to leave, but it was tough because I had to get counseling. I had like crippling anxiety working there. It was just not a great place to work. A bunch of people asked for refunds and yeah, that whole business kind of crumbled. But. What ended up happening is during that period of time, I actually was introduced to the whole idea of email and, you know, email marketing. So I practiced it even after I left the sales side of things. I just kept sort of practicing reading up on it and I decided to go all in. So I, yeah, took out all the money that I possibly had invested in like stocks and whatnot and invested into a program. And then, yeah, like I said, again, through a series of just, you know, different events. I ended up being a agency copywriter, just writing ads and other types of copy. Then I became a freelancer working with some pretty big names. And then, then she got to a point where I just figured the next logical step was to build a an agency myself since there was the demand was there and I just didn't have the time myself to do everything. Awesome. Exciting. Yeah, I know. I appreciate you sharing that. And that's really what I wanted to jump into today. I know you mentioned it a few times, but obviously the main thing, just kind of unlocking some of those hidden profit centers. I know we've touched on the the email list and some email marketing a little bit. So wanting you to really kind of jump into that. I know it's a huge opportunity and I think there's a lot of people that are missing out on that on that hidden gem right there. Yeah. So I'll start off with more of like a story slash case study that we recently just developed. So back at the end of September, we got introduced to a, a figure client very recognizable name in the industry. You know, it was sort of in the real estate space. So friends with people like Robert Kiyosaki, Grand Credo, that kind of, that kind of name. And what, so they had a successful sort of coaching company online and they were collecting a bunch of names throughout the years of just selling running ads. all that sort of good stuff, but they were not actually leveraging that list of names. So they basically built out an entire asset, like a sales asset, just never touched it. So they, they use it for like affiliates here or there but they never actually used it to promote their own offers, which was a little bit shocking to me, but nonetheless we came in to sort of help them monetize and add a new sales channel into their business. Because when you're that big, like singularity of focus and focusing on just like one platform, one channel is that, you know, that's kind of like the sort of the beginner advice that you get. But as you get bigger, you want to expand and add as many acquisition channels and sales channels as you can to sort of be able to weather the storm, depending on what happens. So one of the things that we're missing is own media. They, well, they own the media, but they weren't monetizing it. So. We ran them through our own little, you know, re engagement sequence, warm up sequence, since these people haven't really heard from them. And just during that process, the very first email that we were sending out was literally 13 words long. And within either five or nine days, I don't remember, I think it might have been actually five. Between September 22nd and like September 27th, we generated 67 and a half thousand dollars collected just from sending this 13 word email trying to, you know, reengage with people. We didn't really have an expectation to generate sales. The whole purpose was just to get people. To understand and know like, Oh, this is who these guys are, you know, just to warm them up and get them used to us actually sending emails to them. So it was a nice little bonus. And then as time went on, like results just kept picking up. I think we did, we did north of 300 K November. So just a couple. Months later, and we didn't even run a Black Friday offer. So that was the other crazy thing too, is, you know, they did close, I think it was maybe 340 K collected from just that email list, December, usually like a very slow month for the online coaching space and same thing, like about two 50 K from that. And within 100 days, so between September 22nd and December 30th, it's actually 100 days apart. They generated 686, 000 and some change on the side just by monetizing that sort of own media. And then, yeah, a couple of months after that, five months after us starting to work together, they crossed a million dollars collected from just that one asset. So it's pretty, and it's pretty crazy to just think that. You know, this company probably could have collected that million dollars within five months, much faster, but like, they've just been sitting on this asset that, so it was basically just like a million dollars in potential just sitting there, but they, it was never collected. So yeah, we came in and helped them monetize it and now things are. Going crazy. I haven't necessarily checked the results that we've gotten in March, but yeah, we're averaging anywhere between 200 to 300k a month just from this one. That's awesome. With Vision Channel sales channel that we helped to monetize. So yeah, it's been it's just like a great testament to show that, like, this is what works when you focus on the backend. Because so many people are so focused on just acquiring attention. Getting people in the door, but it's like, cool. You don't sell them right away. So what do you do with these people? You've already spent your time or your money trying to acquire this attention. And then you just kind of let it go only to spend that same time and money again to acquire the same attention. So, yeah, that's, that's huge. That's what we've done now. Yeah, no, I'm glad you, I'm glad you pointed that out, right? I know email is a huge opportunity. I personally know it's something that I'm missing out on. I utilize it, but not as much as I should. I, I've read all the books, I've listened to all the trainings, talking about how powerful email is, and it's just one of those things I get to go to make it happen. So, I mean, just obviously hearing things like that, that's a lot of money for any business. And like you mentioned, it's now like 200 to 300,000 is what it's like averaging out a month. Right? So you're also almost essentially getting that recurring revenue now because you're picking up a hole. New stream of income that you weren't even really leveraging before. Yeah. That's the key thing that you just mentioned, like recurring revenue. Cause in the online space, space, especially it's so common to see coaches just kind of grind month in month out, trying to hit a new record or trying to, you know, just set a new standard. But it's like with the, in the online space, you're every single month as a coach, you start at zero. And like, that's just the reality situation. New month. You're now supposed to resell a bunch of people and it gets to a point where a lot of coaches just Focus on at least matching the month before so instead of focusing on growing the business They try and match the month before because that's like that's just the reality of the coaching business So and that's once again, like I said that's what happens if you just focus on acquiring attention but not actually like nurturing and educating it because Only 3 percent of your leads will ever buy right away. That's you can look at webinars. You can look at ads. Like usually it kind of averages out around that one to 3 percent range where people buy right away. And that's because they're in enough pain and they have enough certainty. To buy into your solution, but then the other 97 percent of people need a little bit of extra time. They're not at that desperation stage or that, you know, stage where they have enough certainty to pull the trigger. But that's where your responsibility lies is to actually nurture them and educate them. Like I said, you know, what's the point of spending that time and money again, when you can just own the media, the attention that you just acquired, but then repurpose that time in a better use or even money by hiring someone else. To just nurture that audience because they're already warm. Like that's the thing they've already raised their hand and they've already micro committed to being part of your community by opting into the free trainer, being part of the list. And now you just need to take them through a series of other micro commitments where you educate them on your offer, educate them on your solution, educate them on their problem. And why do they need the solution right away? But then more importantly educate them on why like they're able to do it That's that's also the key thing is like you can have the best offer in the world But then if they're not confident that they can actually make use of this or make it work They're still not gonna buy and that's what you do in the emails you educate them throughout that entire time So Instead of just relying on basically 3 percent of cash that you collect up front, you create that recurring revenue by tapping into the 97 percent of attention you've already acquired with just educating and nurturing them. And that's when sales start to really triple in over time. Yeah, that's huge. And I know you mentioned that other thing I wanted to touch on was that, that 3 percent that you mentioned. I think whether it's Whether you're leveraging Facebook ads cold calling different other options out there, right? A lot of people are really just getting that 3 percent you're talking about. We we've seen all the statistics that you get to be in front of people, like at least eight to 12 times now. And I think it's probably even gone up. So like you said, just really being able to nurture that, stay in front of them, provide value, and I think email is probably the best way that I can think of to do that, honestly. Yeah, it's one of the things that a lot of people that's a good point that you mentioned is that yeah, it does take like 8 to 12 times to show up in front of someone to actually get them to pull the trigger but that's Like that's the thing is I'm also noticing that the pendulum is shifting like short form content is massive right now And i'm not saying that it doesn't work like it still works It's a great way to acquire attention But short form content is so surface level like you're not going to really build that much trust like the whole point of it Is just to acquire attention. You're not going to turn someone from complete cold lead to like a high ticket buyer with just your short form content You have to like I said before nurture them and educate them through longer form pieces You But I'm noticing that the pendulum is swinging the other way where people are actually craving more of that long form in depth content. Like they want to actually learn more about the problem, the solution, whatever it is, like it's not enough for them to just scroll on TikTok or Instagram and see a bunch of the short form content. And that's the thing. Like you'll notice that a lot of these brands that are big right now, it's no coincidence that they have things like YouTube channels, podcasts, that kind of thing, but once again, like, that's not, you're not owning that media. You're just renting it from these platforms using your time or money. But then as soon as you transfer it away and start to actually take control of it by owning your own list, that's when you're able to control when you get to monetize it, when you get to access it, that kind of thing. And by appearing on the front end channels of social media, sure, you're, you know, appearing multiple times, but even with short form, like it might take, you know, one touch, like if it's going to take H12 touches to get them to pull the trigger, one touch might be three, four pieces of short form content, maybe more, I don't know I don't have the math on this, but it's like one podcast, one YouTube video, even one email is going to be enough to count as that one touch. But the key here is to create like army presence. Which is you're showing up, for example, on Facebook, you're showing up podcasts. Cool. You're showing up on all these social media platforms, but there's so much noise around with everyone else posting. So you're constantly competing for attention with all your other competitors, all the other people, cat videos, whatever it is. But then on email, it doesn't matter if you're on the, like in our marketing space, which is like brick and mortar. Email is always used as more of like a, Personal approach for things like SMS is even more personal. Like everything is now used for advertising, but for email, it's people just hop on there to get some of their daily errands done just to check if there's any important notices, but then it's like you pop in and now you show up outside of social media where it's like a little bit more quiet in the email space. And that's where you're able, once again, to shift those beliefs and create that certainty, because like I mentioned earlier, these people micro committed to be part of your brand. They want to learn more and get deeper. And that's what your email is is about. It's. I always call it kind of your inner circle because these people actually care enough to hear more about you or from you And that's where you get to share those deeper stories Whether it's client success stories your own personal vulnerable stories Whatever it is You create that deeper connection and deeper relationship with people and it creates that trust and that certainty and that's really important why they'll pull the trigger on the back end instead of just watching your front end content and never buying. Absolutely. No, that's huge. Yeah, I know we get a I know we get a weekly newsletter that goes out and we send a few other clips like throughout the week, different different emails that I know that's been, Super helpful. And then that's from the company. And then I said, like me personally, I know I can be leveraging a lot of my data much better when it comes to email. So this is definitely motivates me a little bit. So I appreciate that. And then the other thing I wanted to touch on too, that you mentioned, and we've said it a few times, but the you referred to like the owned media versus the rented media, right? Like we, I've read and heard the horror stories of people that, rely solely on Facebook, and then they've had issues or glitches where they think their business is going to shut down because of different things that have happened. I know there's been issues with TikTok, and I know there's people that rely solely on Tik Tok, things like that. I think like you mentioned obviously YouTube is huge right now. But, but what would, can you talk about that a little more with kind of the benefit of owning the media instead of just kind of renting and rely, relying solely on some of these social platforms? Yeah, so there's multiple factors to it. One of the, like, the obvious one is that if, like, these platforms, they make mistakes, they go down. Meta went down twice, I think in the last year, maybe the last year and a half, whatever it was and Like it's always just, even though the sort of blackout periods only lasted maybe an hour, a few hours, it's still so stressful to like, have to go through that as a business owner, where you're relying on Facebook ads, you're relying on your organic, you have all those leads in your DMS where your setters or your team is just talking to them. And then it's like, all of a sudden it gets cut off. You don't have access to them. It's like, well, shit, like how am I supposed to actually book these into the calendar? I'm actually supposed to sell people. And especially now that like meta is not just Facebook, it's, it's It's whatsapp. It's instagram as well. It's like those are massive channels for communication for lead generation So if that cuts off if they do another blackout period your business completely stalls unless you have another format like sure maybe x twitter, but that's okay cool like one out of two three platforms so that's the obvious risk there is that they can shut down the other thing too is like they're cracking down a lot on You I guess compliance, you can call it, you know, after the pandemic, you know, you kind of have to almost like sometimes walk on eggshells around certain things. I remember like for me myself, I was, you know, just commenting on a few posts. And I, I don't know what I said. I think this was bomb or something like that. And I got like, I, I got restricted for, Like for the month where I got like not shadow banned, but I don't remember what the term actually was, but basically like I got, yeah, I got restricted where lots of people were going to see my stuff. I wasn't able to, you know, make certain posts or make certain comments. And it's just like, really, like, like I had, I know and I wouldn't have posted that, but that's like, the thing is like you can either accidentally or on purpose. So you can just say something that completely disrupts the idea or, you know, that they, their quote terms of service or their privacy policy that they don't like, they can just shadow ban you. They could just remove you, whatever it is. And once again, like you wouldn't know, or the same thing, like if you're relying on those platforms, your business stalls once again. So like I said, that's the, the obvious side. The other one is just like, like I mentioned, is. To make these platforms work, you always have to pay in the form of time and money, and sure it's the same with email, but at the very least, like that audience is completely yours. Like you took them off the platform meta and whatever all these other social media platforms They're in control of the distribution of attention. They're in control of the supply. They know that demand is super high They're in control of supply So obviously it's going to be super expensive to if you're going to pay for it to acquire the attention But also it's going to be very, it's going to take a long time and it's going to take a lot of time to actually create and acquire that attention if you're just going to focus on free. So if you want to create your own quote supply and just, you know, not have to deal with the BS of like this fine demand and having to pay for all this, You're going to be able to actually leverage that, uh, your own media a lot easier. And if you do get banned or if they do have another blackout, no problem. Just send a few emails to your list. Be like, Hey, they did it again. But don't worry if you guys wanted to book a call with us, you know, here's the link. There's so many different things that you can do. So you're, it's almost like an insurance policy where you're not relying on one medium, one source. You actually have something that you're in full control of that no one else can touch. And that's sort of the key is like, That's when you're in true control of your business. At the end of the day, like a lot of people, like, for example, all these YouTubers, their entire livelihood is based on YouTube. And it's like, if something goes wrong, whatever, like their entire livelihood is dictated by what YouTube, their terms of service or policy is like or whatever their infrastructure or any of the like, if it stops, their livelihood stops. And it's the same thing. If you actually want to have real control of your business, then it's key to actually take control of the source of your cash, which is the people. Absolutely. And then I know I know we threw a lot at him, gave him a lot of value, anything that we might've left out or that you wanted to leave them with today? I mean, that's like the big thing. It's just, with email, there's a, there's a certain person that email is going to work really well with you can never go wrong with starting it early because you might be able to monetize even sooner. And like I said, like, it's such a tighter relationship with your audience than it is on social media. So it might start to outperform some of the other sales channels. I mean, for one of our clients, like it's. Either the top sales channel or the top two every month and the one that maybe beats us Sometimes is like web apps, which okay cool. But it's the same thing It's like if you just get started with emails and just start the ball rolling like you can't go wrong with it Because by the time that your business does grow to a certain you know size It's just going to pick up like a snowball and like with our client, for example, even though we saw big numbers, same thing, you know, it picked up like a snowball or with another client, we maybe started making like 20K, 30K a month from emails. Now, about like a year and a half later with some changes to the systems, we're generating over a hundred thousand dollars just from the email list itself. So yeah, it's going to work better. You know, the bigger your business is, of course, but you can't go wrong with starting it sooner rather than later. Especially if you just want to sort of, like I said, have that insurance policy and actually have real control of the business and the attention that you're acquiring. No, that's huge. I appreciate you sharing that. I know we gave him a lot of value today. That's going to be a wrap on this episode of small business, big moves. If you enjoyed this episode or know someone that could get value out of it, what we ask you is that you share that or like and review the podcast, and then in the meantime, you can hit me up on all social media at Thomas Bennett, and we look forward to seeing you all in the next episode.