Justin Goff 0:00
Businesses always need to make sales. You need copywriters to make sales. So unless selling somehow goes away, copywriters are always gonna be relevant. The thing people get wrong with email is they think it’s about information, and information is boring. Nobody really wants information. The bottom 40% of copywriters got wiped out because they were not as good as chat GPT. I’ve trained a bunch of people who were hitting six figures within a year, 18 months with
Brad Weimert 0:27
AI where it is today are copywriters irrelevant? Congrats on getting beyond a million. What got you here won’t always get you there. This is a podcast for entrepreneurs who want to reach beyond their seven figure business and scale to eight, nine and even 10 figures. I’m Brad Weimer, and as the founder of easy pay direct, I have had the privilege to work with more than 30,000 businesses, allowing me to see the data behind what some of the most successful companies on the planet are doing differently. Join me each week as I dig in with experts in sales, marketing, operations, technology and wealth building, and you’ll learn some of the specific tools, tactics and strategies that are working today in those multi million, eight, nine and 10 figure businesses, life can get exciting beyond a million. Justin Goff, it’s so good to see you, man. Thank you, Brian, thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for carving out time. So I know you as a copywriter, I did not know, actually, until digging into this, that you have built five different multi million dollar companies, two of which you’ve sold. One was a crazy fast ramp in supplements, which we have easy pay direct has tons of supplement companies as clients. So know the model, but most of them don’t go from a million first year 7,000,002nd year, 20,000,003rd year and then sell. Now most of them collapse. So I want to talk about kind of that journey, because you’ve also worked with these like massive brands for copywriting, golden hippo and agora, and just like these huge empires and copy, clearly, is an interesting skill set, but it’s particularly interesting today with the rise of AI, with AI, where it is today, are copywriters irrelevant?
Justin Goff 2:15
No, definitely not irrelevant. I think there’s a lot of panic and fear from copywriters right now because of that, the reality is, though businesses always need to make sales, you need copywriters to make sales. So unless selling somehow goes away, copywriters are always gonna be relevant. Copywriting has definitely changed, though, where it’s more strategic now, so it’s not like you’re much better off if you’re able to write copy, but you can also do marketing along with it and strategy, then you’re going to be actually very useful if all you can do is write copy that, I think that’s going to be a pretty limited skill. Do
Brad Weimert 2:53
you know Alex cattani? Yeah. So Alex has this channel on copywriting right functionally, and a big part of her audience are independent people that are trying to make a career copywriting. Do you think that creating a career around copywriting makes sense right now? One It
Justin Goff 3:13
depends. Do you really want to do it? And actually are you? Do you enjoy writing 567, hours a day, because a lot of people get into copywriting from like, oh, I can make 10k a month doing this and like, I’m a My first question is, do you actually enjoy writing? Because that’s what the job is, yeah, sitting on a computer by yourself and writing, like I said, I think it’s headed much more in the path of a strategist who is also using AI with it. So, like I said, if somebody just hires you and like, we need you to write 10 pages for this that I think is gonna become increasingly not as desirable as someone who’s coming to you and says, Okay, here’s what we’re thinking of doing. We want you to come up with the product. We want you to come up with the big idea. We want you to come up with write the copy like the whole thing together, that’s going to be increasingly where copywriting is going. I think,
Brad Weimert 4:07
yeah, I mean, I think that in a lot of ways, I always look at, I look at lots of roles in my company through the lens of, what are the other supplemental skill sets that the person has that are going to be of value. And when I’m bringing people on, I want specialists at this stage, but you know, a marketer that has a strong background in copy or a tech person that has a marketing background way more valuable, right, like the we have. You know, there’s this consistent narrative on the planet about developers doing literally what you tell them instead of understanding the idea behind it, which is super frustrating. So when you have a developer that knows marketing, it makes total sense. So copy, great. You can write the hook. You understand the fundamentals of how copy works, but you today, you think that they need to have a deeper understanding of marketing in general to be able to facilitate. More of the process. Yeah, that’s definitely
Justin Goff 5:01
where it’s going. And the floor is much higher than it was even two years ago, because the floor now is whatever chat GPT could write, right? And so the bottom, I don’t know, 40% of copywriters kind of got wiped out by that because they were not as good as chat GPT. So now that’s, that’s the floor now. And also the pace now is so much quicker now, whereas before it was like, I’ll get that to you in three months, and now it’s like, we need this in two weeks. And the kind of expected to do it, because you can cut a lot of that out with the
Brad Weimert 5:33
AI, I’m much better without a blank page, right? If I can start with something and then
Justin Goff 5:39
modify blank page is the worst. The blank page is the worst, right? So
Brad Weimert 5:43
AI has been a godsend for that, right? It’s like, this beautiful. It just gives you something to start with. Also, though, if you start with something that shitty, yes, you have a that’s really hard, because you kind of look at it and you’re like, I actually at you pick it apart for 30 minutes, and then you think, this is the wrong fucking framework anyway. Like, damn it. Why am I modifying this? The whole thing needs to be different, right? So I guess, I mean, I guess you can just tell AI to redo it. But, well,
Justin Goff 6:13
I mean, one of the things you see is, like, the copywriters, I know that are getting the best results with AI. Are all the best copywriters. It’s because they understand what goes on behind the copy and can prompt the AI to think like that, whereas someone who doesn’t understand the the all the stuff going on underneath, yeah, doesn’t know how to tell the AI how to do that.
Brad Weimert 6:35
Yeah, yeah. I think that’s going to be a super interesting part of education moving forward. Is, do you understand the fundamental principles behind what’s happening? And if you don’t, then you’re going to be totally reliant on the robots, and if you do, you’re going to have influence and control over the output from the robots. Yeah, I would agree with it if you wanted to be a copywriter today. What’s the fastest path to make 10 grand a month?
Justin Goff 7:01
I so from what I’ve seen, I’ve trained a bunch of guys who have gotten there pretty quickly. So give you a good example. So like when I learned copy, what took me, probably, I don’t know, five, six years, like I’ve taught other people to do within a year at 18 months, and the process they followed was simple. Simple does not mean easy, but simple was literally right, every single day, usually for at least an hour, sometimes more than that, and then have someone who’s better than you at copy giving you feedback on it. So, like, if you just do those two things where it’s like, let’s say you want to get really good at writing emails. Write three emails every single day. Try just find a product that you want to promote and be like, Okay, I’m gonna promote this product with these emails. And then you write those three emails, you either have a coach, you have a mentor, you someone who’s ahead of you and copy that can actually explain what you’re doing wrong, and you’re getting feedback constantly from them. That is the quickest way to get good. I mean, you can get really good, really quick. Like I said, I’ve, I’ve trained a bunch of people who were hitting six figures within a year, 18 months, doing that kind of path.
Brad Weimert 8:09
Do you think that the robots can guide you on how good your copy is? Yeah,
Justin Goff 8:14
I think you could definitely get, you can definitely get good feedback from from Ai, for sure. And you can have it. You can have it. Take something that was written that wasn’t that great, and have it. Okay. Let’s dumb this down to a fifth grade reading level, like things like that. Let’s eliminate extra words in here, the fat that doesn’t need to be in there, like stuff like that. Or let’s add more excitement and energy to the copy, like you can do all that.
Brad Weimert 8:39
One of the things, one of like, my the best things that I’ve figured out in AI in the last six months has been asking it why it did what it did. So if it is, if you’re aiming for sales copy, for example, saying, you know, why did you alter it this way? And it will give you the reference point and say, oh, you know, based on so and so’s philosophy of this framework for selling, this is how we approached it, but that gives you the process, and sometimes it gives you some dumb ass shit where you’re like, Well, don’t do that. Why did you pull it from there? You know? But that’s a helpful tool. So okay, let’s back out. You had a whole bunch of other things going on in life. You’ve created a bunch of different companies. Of different companies, but the one that I knew you from was Patriot Health Alliance, and that was the one to 23 million in three years. Walk me through as a copywriter, walk me through the mechanics of how you built that company, because I know that you’ve spent a lot of time, and I’ve heard you talk about sort of building through email and selling through email and limited staff automation email and converting Is that how you built Patriot health? Yeah, it was a very email
Justin Goff 9:51
based company, so our first offer that kind of really took off. I’m a big, big fan of study what’s working. In the marketplace and then create something similar that’s 20, 30% better, with your own kind of unique hook on it. At the time, greens powders were not like popular, like they are now. So this was 2014 ish. There was one that I kept, kept getting in the mail on all these direct mail lists, so I can kind of watch what competitors are doing. There’s one I kept getting in the mail all the time, is this greens powder. If you keep getting stuff in the mail over and over again, you know it’s working. That’s like a good sign that, because it’s fucking expensive, it’s expensive for the mail. They’re not, they’re not wasting money doing it. So I kept getting this one. I was like, Man, this thing, it must be working. I like this idea of the greens powder. My big thing with it was, I was like, it doesn’t really have, like, a there’s nothing unique. There’s no unique hook on this. Like, it’s literally just 38 fruits and vegetables in a can kind of thing. That was their whole hook. And I kept seeing it, I was like, we could create something like this and find a much better hook for it. So at the time, we’re buying a ton of traffic in conservative email lists. So in the conservative kind of political sphere, there’s just massive, massive email lists, like Newsmax, Glenn Beck, like all those guys have just huge email lists, and you can buy all kinds of ads, and you can do affiliate stuff, you can run your own products, and so we were doing all that, and I was like, there, there’s a there’s something we could do here, because the conservatives have such an affinity for the military. I was like, let’s somehow attach this to the military. And at the time, I was like, my cousin was in the in the Coast Guard at the time, and I was so I sent out his unit like a bunch of our greens powder. So we made this greens powder, we sent it out to his unit. I was like, just test this for us. Give us some thoughts on it. We got a bunch of results back. Honestly, there was not like, anything like, interesting in there. They’re like, Oh, it tastes great. Like, I feel better, blah, blah, blah. But there was one guy in there who was, like, the older dude in their unit, and he was like, I’m, like, beating all my PT times now, he’s like, and I’m beating some of the young guys. And like, I’m basically, I’m keeping up with the young guys. And I was like, Ooh, that’s a great hook. Like, the older dudes love being able to, like, beat up on younger dudes. Like, for sure, yeah, especially in the military, I would imagine, yeah. And so we basically came up with a unique hook that it was this kind of elite greens powder that units of the military were using to help older guys keep up with the young bucks was kind of the whole hook. And our whole market, that whole market, is basically like 5067, year olds. That’s who’s on all the email list.
Brad Weimert 12:33
Yes, let me ask you about that. So you today, if you want to start a supplement company, the path for a lot of people is basically you white label some shit. There are all these companies out there that just make generic stuff, and you can brand it and sell it back then. Did you go that route? Or did you formulate something?
Justin Goff 12:52
No, we kind of took, what were the popular greens powders on the market, removed a bunch of the ingredients we didn’t like, and then we worked with a doctor who he had a couple other ingredients that he wanted to add, and then kind of worked with the formulators. And awesome, yeah? I mean green, well, green spot is a little different than supplements, because the taste is a big deal, whereas supplements, that’s obviously doesn’t really matter, yep, but the the taste is obviously huge, and getting that consistently to taste the exact same is not easy. Yeah.
Brad Weimert 13:21
So the main reason I asked that is speed to launch. So the I love the idea of create something and then test it and get the hook. That’s a amazing construct, because most people don’t bother doing that. Most people, it doesn’t occur to them to do that. How so were you? Were you doing that just to get the hook? So
Justin Goff 13:43
a lot of what I did was I would run affiliate offers on all these conservative email lists where I’m paying for the traffic. And then, I mean, if it works, I’m making money. If it doesn’t work, I’m losing money. So I’m putting my money on the line. And I just noticed over and over, like, which angles, which hooks, like, what are working and I’m like, you just see something to see the pattern. So many times it’s like, okay, we could easily do this with, like, a better version of it, or like, they were only paying us, I don’t know, $100 CPA on it. I’m like, Okay, well, if that was our own product, and we’re making 200 bucks like this would crush so I basically tested everything with other people’s products as an affiliate, figured out what worked, and then, based on what worked, kind of created our product,
Brad Weimert 14:28
got it so for people that aren’t having the affiliate game, basically there are these, and you can tell me where this didn’t fit your model, but basically there are these marketplaces out there of people that have their own products, and they say, Hey, go promote my product, and we’ll pay you. You said, CPA, cost per acquisition. So anything that converts, anybody that buys shit will give you whatever, whatever percentage, right? Yep. So you were just looking at all these other people’s products, putting your copy and your affiliate link in an email, and you were paying for the placement in the email. And. What would convert and so you’re basically just doing affiliate marketing through email. And then you’re like, Okay, I can make my own product. Make more. Yep, love it. Pretty simple. What was the lever that took you from, you know, like, a million the first year to seven the second year?
Justin Goff 15:13
So once we got the Greens powder dialed in, it was really just scaling it up on more email lists. So once it worked out one email list. It was like, Okay, let’s get it on another one. And then with email, one of the interesting things is those emails. So like, if you’re going to, let’s say Glenn Beck’s newsletter list, if you keep using the same creative let’s say you’d send it every Saturday. It’s going to burn out, because same people are reading it every every day, every week, and sooner or later, just gonna the sales are just going to tail off. That’s not that your offer. A lot of people are like, Oh, my offer is done. It’s like, No, just the creatives, the emails dying because they’ve just seen it too many times. So between just getting on more email list and then also, we started rotating more creatives in. So like, I think at our tip top point, we had three, like, really, really solid creatives that were just working, bang, bang, bang. So we just keep rotating all three of them, so that allowed us to buy way more traffic. Where do you go to get the emails? There’s like, agencies that represent all these, like the conservative list, like some, just some guy you’ll find, and he’s, he literally represents 100 different
Brad Weimert 16:19
lists. And give me the the ballpark for the economics of this. So like, if you want and it, is it a dedicated email? Is it placement in an email? How does that work both?
Justin Goff 16:30
So, yeah, we would do both. A dedicated would be just, literally, just your copy. There’s nothing else in it. A placement one would be Newsmax sends out a thing with a bunch of news links and whatever news of the day is, and then you have like, an ad underneath it, so you don’t really get to control the subject line or anything like that. But like, those are cheaper. Usually because you’re just buying you’re not getting a dedicated placement. The economics we were always shooting for break even. If we could acquire a customer a break even, then we could just keep building up our list and make all my all the money on the back end. Like especially with supplementary, is great, because they order it once, they’re going to order it again, usually if they like it. So our thought was always just try to break even on the front the thing with the Greens power, that was interesting, and we knew it was a home run. I remember one of our first so the first couple we tried didn’t really work. It was, it was, wasn’t because of the offers, because of the email creative, just it wasn’t really connecting. Then I wrote one that really connected. And we spent, like, we spent like three grand on this email drop on Newsmax. And I remember we’re, like, checking the stats, and like, the next day, we had already made like, 15,000 bucks. And I’m like, I found it like something, something’s either broken or we just hit an absolute home run, one of the two, because I’ve never, out of anything I’d ever promote. I’m like, I’ve never seen like a 5x this is insane. So then, like, the next weekend, we ran the same thing, and it did, like a four and a half X. I’m like, oh my god, we got an absolute home run here. So
Brad Weimert 18:00
what was it about that copy that sold?
Justin Goff 18:03
It was the military angle. It was basically like old guys in the military feeling young again, literally, that’s, that’s kind of what it was that was an interesting thing that took me a while to understand, because I actually tried to do a lot of copy about living longer. And I realized after a while, I was like, oh, old people don’t want to live longer. They just want it. They want to be young again. That’s a slight difference, but it made a huge difference in conversion rates and sales and all that. Like, we were trying, I was trying to hit a bunch of stuff on, like, living to 100 and like, stuff like that. And it took me a while. I was like, Oh, they just want to be young again. That’s what they really want.
Brad Weimert 18:39
That’s, uh, I asked my father the other day. I was like, how’s it going? He’s like, I’m old. He was like, things are breaking. And I was like, yeah, how do you feel about that? And he was like, it sucks. But I was like, yeah. I mean, thank you for your honesty.
Justin Goff 18:55
So funny thing is that took me a long time to so when I was writing this copy, I was probably 3030, to 31 so I had not experienced anything of like, knees hurting and not having energy. Like I felt great all the time. You’re feeling it now, though, huh? Yeah, I’m 41 now. I’m starting to understand it. I’m like, starting to see my own mortality, and, yeah, things hurt. But I mean that to me, that’s obviously, that’s the biggest part of copywriting. And like you could talk about hooks and headlines and big ideas and all that all day, but whoever understands the customer the best is usually who’s gonna win. It’s
Brad Weimert 19:33
a good takeaway. How do you figure that out?
Justin Goff 19:40
So I mean, a couple of things I give to people that I feel like are great shortcuts, a like I talked about studying the other stuff in the market, without a doubt is the best, because if you find like, a video, sales letter or a sales page that’s been crushing it, you can figure out all the like emotions they’re targeting, what’s the big desire they’re hitting on, what’s. Fear, the pain point, like, what’s all the stuff they’re hitting on? That’s just like a straight cheat sheet for you to know. Okay, well, let’s
Brad Weimert 20:04
talk about those things, though. Because I think the difference between somebody that knows what they’re doing and what they don’t is you can study somebody else’s stuff, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you don’t have a criteria to say, what’s the hook, what’s the emotion, et cetera. It’s like, what’s the punch list of things that you want to look for when you’re looking at somebody else’s email copy and say, This is what I want to transfer over. Yeah.
Justin Goff 20:27
So I would say, like, the big thing would be, like, what’s the big promise? So, like, with our with that greens powder, it was like, basically to feel young again. Like there was all kinds of secondary promises, but the main promise was how to feel young again. So if you would have, like, broke down that whole sales letter that I wrote, and you’re like, Okay, I want to enter the Greens powder market. I want to see what’s working. Let’s watch what he’s doing. You. That would be something you’d write down right away. Okay, feeling younger is kind of the big, this is the big, the big thing that they’re going for.
Brad Weimert 20:56
And by the way, it’s not necessarily a feature of benefit of the product it is, but it’s one that you are creating based on what the product is. And it could be a whole bunch of things, right? And that, like that example is not like, if somebody says, What are greens powders for? That’s not actually, probably, normally what somebody would take
Justin Goff 21:17
away. No, like, because if you look at something like, AG, one that’s super popular now, yeah, it’s kind of promoted as a health insurance to get all your vitamins, minerals. They don’t really use that language of like, feeling younger again, yeah, but yeah, really, really, kind of diving into what other people are, what has worked in the market before, what’s working in the market now is probably the biggest shortcut you can find. Another thing I’ve I’ve been a huge fan of, and I’ve probably told this to, I don’t know, 1000s of 1000s of marketers, and maybe three of them have ever actually listened to me and done it. Every Friday, I would call three of my customers and just talk with them on the phone for usually about hour and a half total, between all three of them, the things that came out of that, that I learned, that I was not aware of, was just shocking. One of the things you learned really quick is you’re usually talking way over their head. That is usually becomes very evident where you’re like, oh man. So one of my friends, Brixton Albert, who runs a big golf company. It’s a fantastic name, Brixton. Is like, was, like, a good, really good golfer. And so he’s got this company, and like, he’s talking to his golfers, like he think, like, he shoots, like, in the 70s, like he’s a good golfer. And he said he, like, took, he took his advice, got on the phone with, like, I don’t know, 30 of his customers, and he was just like, mind blown, because, like, they’re all shooting 115 and it’s like, guys with bad backs and, like, their biggest problem is, like, just making contact with the ball. And he’s like, it was just mind blowing. He’s like, I was talking so far over their head, compared to, like, where they’re actually at. You can’t, you can’t connect with them like that. So that, yeah, so getting back to, like, just understanding the customer, like I said, I’ve told this to, I don’t know, 1000s and 1000s of people, and, like I said, three people probably have ever actually taken the advice and done it. But it’ll change. It’ll change everything you see about your customers. You’ll learn so much more about them.
Brad Weimert 23:16
Yeah, that’s super interesting. I have a, I think that’s like a a discipline to say, how do we actually not scratch our own itch, meaning not produce content that is at the level that we’re actually interested in, and focus on distilling it to the lowest common denominator for the outcome? And as a copywriter, of course, that’s like the goal, right? But I think, for certainly me, when I think about, like the conversations I want to be having, I want to be talking to people about things that are interesting to me, right? So when you produce stuff, I want it to be interesting to me, but the game is figuring out how to hit the most fundamental elements and not talk over them,
Justin Goff 24:01
and it’s if you’re good at what you do, you’re probably so far ahead of the people you’re selling to. Like, I even noticed that when I had my mastermind with copy accelerator, I even had, like, wake up calls in there, and I like, people running 50, 100 million dollar businesses, and I realized, like, I was talking over their head and certain things, I was like, thought for sure you guys knew this stuff. So, yeah, you really got to understand, like, where they’re at, and you’ve got to meet them where they’re at. Yeah, I think that’s
Brad Weimert 24:28
a great takeaway. So same was the was the growth of that business all just about scaling up more email lists sell more because you went one to seven to 23 in three years and then you sold, was it the same playbook the whole time, or did something change for seven to 23
Justin Goff 24:46
so, I mean, yeah, really, it was honestly all, all email. It was email between us buying email and then bringing on affiliates who were doing email that pretty much all grew off of one product, like we had back end products that we. Sold. But like, our front end that actually brought people on, put them on an email was the same thing. Yeah, it was pretty much we knew what we’re good at, which was email. And I was like, that’s a good lesson too for people to take away. Because, like, if you’re trying to be really good at Facebook and email and YouTube and Tiktok, you’re probably gonna be mediocre at all four of them. But if you can just, like, focus on one and get your business to 20 million bucks, then you can kind of start expanding and bringing on other stuff. Like, you don’t want to grow to 100 million base with one, like traffic source, you probably not gonna be able to do that. But that first part, when you’re kind of growing, though, like, it’s much better just find one and just get really damn good at it. So
Brad Weimert 25:44
when you went to the critique with that statement, will be, when you go to sell the company, if you have one traffic source, that’s probably not what the buyer wants, maybe
Justin Goff 25:55
for sure, yeah, oh yeah. So yeah, that would be a caveat. If your plan is to sell within that couple years, then for sure, you’d have to expand it and have more traffic sources.
Brad Weimert 26:05
So tell me about the exit, how that happened. So
Justin Goff 26:08
both of my exits I’ve had are not like a traditional exit, where you’re selling to someone outside. Both of mine, I sold to my partner, so lot different than selling to outside company. Realize that, yeah, cuz sounds of the partners. I mean, they understand the business. Obviously, there’s really not, there’s not, there’s not a whole lot like that goes on between just kind of the negotiation of how much you’re gonna get paid and what you guys think it’s worth. And
Brad Weimert 26:36
so how did you, how did you come to those numbers and that agreement with the partner, and why did you want to do
Justin Goff 26:42
it? So with Patriot health, they actually came to me. So one of the issues was they had a survival company that was like their main company, and we were sharing employees and just paying, like a monthly fee for the employees. They kind of realized we’re putting all of our time and our employees time into this health company, we only own 50% of it, whereas this other company, we own 100% of and not really worth our time, just keep it all so they’re like, we either want to buy you out or you buy you buy us out. So, yeah, we had, like, a, I don’t know, four month negotiation kind of came up with the numbers. And it’s funny looking back now, because I was probably 33 at the time, that I was like, such a fucking asshole
Brad Weimert 27:33
in what way? What do you mean? Because I wrote
Justin Goff 27:35
when they brought that idea to me about like, my initial thought was just like, fuck you. Like, I’m not selling anything. Like, I built this. Then I had a couple of good conversations with people who had sold companies, and they were like, Are you, like, super passionate about this? You want to keep doing I was like, honestly, I’m kind of, like, losing my flair for it. I’m just not that into it anymore. They’re like, why wouldn’t you just sell it and then you can have much money and figure out what you really, really want to do. And that’s eventually kind of what I what I settled on. But yeah, just my, the ego of me at that age was just like flaring up big time I
Brad Weimert 28:15
well, so you use language just now, that leads me to believe that I’m gonna, I’m gonna take a stab at it, but you use the language of them and they, and we’re not talking pronouns right now specifically, but we’re talking about the positioning of that leads me to believe that, basically, you, you had equity in the company because of your skill set as a copywriter, and they had something else going on, and so you forged a relationship around that. That’s what it sounds like. What was the relationship between you and the partner in the business?
Justin Goff 28:47
Yeah, so I originally built it to a million dollars with a different partner, and then my partner, Alan and Aaron came in, bought him out, and we grew it from there. And I partnered with them originally because our skill sets fit really well. I was great at marketing, products, copies, stuff like that, and they were great at ops and scaling. And I suck at ops and scaling. Not only do I suck at it, but I have zero interest in learning anything about it. Yeah, so it was a rose, a really good fit. And it obviously worked out because we scaled to 23 million pretty quickly. But yeah, once we once, we kind of went through the negotiations, then everything’s great with us now. And also, after I talked to a couple other people, they’re like, this is a very good negotiate. Like, it’s usually like an ugly divorce, and you’ll never talk to the person again, and you’re gonna hate them for the rest of your life. And I was like, we didn’t have any of that. So do
Brad Weimert 29:44
you want to share numbers on it? Oh, what I made off it? Yeah, yeah.
Justin Goff 29:49
I made a it was like, 3.9 4 million somewhere in there. Got it, which for a director. This is the thing, like people here, like we were making 23 million a year revenue. You’d. You get a lot more than that, but direct responses, because the company wasn’t really sellable, right, just to an outside buyer, right? And so it basically got, I think I got, like, two years worth of profit, yeah,
Brad Weimert 30:13
yeah. I, I, I have so much value for knowing the structure and the numbers behind these things, because people are delusional. And so, like, legit though, you know, there, there are people that have billion dollar companies, but they diluted themselves to 5% ownership or something. And so that’s a very different number. You know, 50 million or a billion is a very different thing. And every industry has different multiples and different ways they’re valued for exit and an offer, which is what one green product is versus a brand. Very different things, very different things, right? That’s awesome. So that’s like enough money to buy you some time and say, Okay, let me think about what’s next.
Justin Goff 30:58
Yeah, I took a year off after that. That that was actually one of the things I so I talked to a couple of people who had sold their companies and asked them, like, what should I do? What should I expect? And four different guys who all sold for a lot more money than me and smarter than me, they’re all like, they all had one thing in common. They were like, I’m either super grateful for the time I took off after or I wish I would have took more time off. I was like, Oh, that’s interesting. And I didn’t want to. I, like, I had a whole nother business plan, like, ready to start the next day, of, like, what I was gonna do. And they’re all like, No, you should take the they start me slowly, like, take like, four to six months off. And I was like, okay, ended up taking about a year off, which was, it’s really weird. So I’ve done this twice in like the first, like six to eight weeks. Is really, really hard, because you realize how addicted you are to work, yeah? Because you just, I kept getting up at like 730 next morning, standing at my computer. I’m like, I know I’m supposed to be here. What am I supposed to be doing? Yeah,
Brad Weimert 32:00
writing or checking emails or some shit. Yeah,
Justin Goff 32:02
you’re trying to stay busy. And then I would say, after about two months, I kind of got used to it of just living what I would call a slower life. Was like, I’d wake up an hour later. I would like, take an hour to make a cool breakfast. I would go to the dog park with my dogs. We just hang out for two hours, whereas before it’d be like, No, we gotta go for 20 minutes. We gotta get home because I got stuff to do. Mm, to do. Yeah, it’s really kind of eye opening when you realize, like, how how addicted you are to work, and how much your identity comes from the work. Because that that’s a big thing too, because you start to feel super, super lost where you’re like, this thing that I’ve been doing my whole life, that everybody knows me as that I’ve gotten all this status and self worth from is now just gone. That’s a weird, weird feeling I can
Brad Weimert 32:49
imagine, and I am. I am both self aware that I’m in that trap right now and in denial that it’s not important. I’m like, Just keep fucking going. Keep going. But I also think that there’s a lot of value. In when you’re in that moment and you are expanding and growing. For me, in the absence of some master plan, the plan is to learn the lessons that I can from each new stage and so and each new stage has crazy lessons, you know, like you can work yourself out of a seven or eight figure business and have somebody else run it, but it’s not going to go to nine or 10 if you just try to delegate it out to Oh, you do it, you know. So the lessons through each of the stages are new and different and can cause new identity, new work, new focus and fucking intensity, where you’re like shit. Now I don’t know what I’m doing at this stage. Let me figure it out. What was the criteria for getting back into work?
Justin Goff 33:50
Yeah, so it was, I’d say, probably around month nine, I started to feel itchy and wanted to get back and doing something. During that break, I had mentored two of my buddies who knew nothing about online marketing. One was a financial advisor, and one, it’s like a journalist, kind of sports writer type thing. And they both wanted the like, freedom of being, like, make money online. They had, like, looked at it, heard about it, and I was like, I’d never, like, really taught anybody anything. I was like, just kind of took it as a challenge. I was like, I kind of want to see if I could. I feel like I could teach you guys how to write copy and you could, you could do it. You’re both smart, you’re both hard workers. I feel like I could do it. So while I was kind of taking my break, I did that, and I realized pretty quickly that I really enjoyed the mentoring aspect and coaching and kind of seeing the transformation in their life. And both of them ended up being really successful. I mean, both of them today make like, 300 grand a year as copywriters, and they’re doing that’s really cool from my point to see I had that effect on them, just from. And teaching them how to how to write copy, so that the actual like transformation was was really impactful to me. So I started doing a little more coaching right when I came back, and I realized pretty quickly that that’s kind of the the area I wanted to go. And I started the copy accelerator mastermind with Stefan Georgi, and we grew that to, like four and a half million lower obviously a lower revenue business, but much higher
Brad Weimert 35:29
margin. Yeah, yeah, what was the margin on the supplement
Justin Goff 35:34
company? So like when we hit 23 million, I think we were taking home four or four and a half,
Brad Weimert 35:40
so I’m like, Okay, so 20, 25% something
Unknown Speaker 35:44
like that, yeah, somewhere, yeah.
Brad Weimert 35:47
And the margin on the coaching. Coaching is interesting because obviously it’s like 100% kind of and you’ve got some maybe 9095, like, you’ve got some tech tools and shit. But you can also do coaching with, like, high end masterminds, where you’re actually spending a shitload on the venues and stuff.
Justin Goff 36:03
Yes, for sure, we made that mistake later. For sure, it was actually really a big learning lesson for me, because I thought I was just going to walk right into the coaching mastermind stuff and, like, crush it. And I was working with my coach at the time, and, like, he kind of just laid it out for me. He’s like, like, at first I was kind of struggling with some stuff, and he’s like, he’s like, I know you were very successful with like, supplements. He’s like, understand this is a very different business. Like, I know you’re in the same like world and doing kind of similar things as you did, but he’s like, this is, like, a relationship business. This is like, people you were doing, like, much more behind the scenes with copy and like, this is so different. And now I’m the face of the company with Stefan too. So it’s like, very, and I that honestly didn’t even, like, click in my mind. I was like, he’s actually very right this. He’s like, it’s, you’re not just gonna come out the gate and be making 3 million bucks a year, like, you’re gonna have to build it up for like, a year or two, and that’s gonna get there. And that’s kind of what happened. But yeah, we kind of ran into that where team needed to get bigger, costs started spiraling, doing stuff at nicer venues, and then where we were, like, in the first, like, middle of the second year, when we’re taking home, like, million and a half each, then the next year, it’s like, Okay, now we’re taking home 500 grand, and it’s like, I feel like we’re doing better now. How are we not making as much money? But yeah, it’s and that
Brad Weimert 37:34
was just cost control, pretty
Justin Goff 37:36
much cost control. But this is all during COVID, too, and that that really kind of threw a wrench into everything, because we were originally working with mostly just like high end business owners, people own direct response, kind of businesses, all the people you probably work with. But our main way of getting everybody into the mastermind was we would have live events. People come to live events, and then we’d pitch our mastermind at the live events. People sign up. Now we’re great, and then COVID hit, and we switched to virtual events. And we did not realize this at the time, but you’re not going to get some guy who’s making $20 million a year to sit in front of a computer for three days and watch an event on Zoom. Yeah, the person that a lot of the copywriters would do that, like all the copywriters were down, but the high end business owner just was not. So the whole demographic switched. That really changed our business, kind of, in a way, looking back now is a massive change, but like, while we’re going through it, like I didn’t, I didn’t realize how big of a change it was because it and even in my head, I was like, well, we’re literally teaching the same stuff to the copywriters and the business owners, like, we’re teaching them how to write better copy, how to get offers, to convert, how to increase average order value, all that type of stuff. But the business owners what they want and what the copywriters want is like, so different, because the business owners are like, give me a couple things that work. Give me a couple connections. I like the live in person stuff. Anything more than that they see is usually like, a bad thing. It’s like, they don’t want to be on weekly calls, they don’t want to, like, be doing all this other stuff. Yeah, the copywriters are like, the exact opposite, right? Like, the more hand holding you can give them, the more encouragement you can give them, the better. So it’s a very, very different, yeah,
Brad Weimert 39:29
well, it goes back to the messaging consideration, right? It’s like the if you’re targeting 50 to 70 year old men for greens powder, is the message live forever, or is it pretend that you’re younger, yeah, right. And the same thing is true with the copywriter versus the business owner, which is what’s the message behind it? And of course, the deliverable is different too, I suppose, or could be, but the messaging certainly different.
Justin Goff 39:52
The messaging is definitely different, and the the delivery, their deliverable, is very different. That’s what I wasn’t. It wasn’t ready for
Brad Weimert 40:01
and you sold out of that also,
Justin Goff 40:03
yeah, so that one, it was in summer of 2022, Steph and I just had very different kind of visions for how it should be ran. We were talking about bringing on another partner. We had all these discussions about that, we were kind of making decisions, 5050, and then Stefan wanted more control. I kind of just, like blurred. I was like, Well, if you wanted more control, like, you just buy me out. He was like, Oh, really. Okay, yeah. And so we kind of started thinking about it, and I was like, Yeah, honestly, it was the quickest, probably the quickest sale ever, because we we mentioned that on like a Sunday, I gave him a number on Tuesday, and I think by Thursday, we had signed the contract for, like, it was that quick. It was just,
Brad Weimert 40:54
had you had any plan for that? I mean, like, the the idea of being so it’s weird, man, because for me, I started easy pay direct in 2012 it’s, you know, 2025 so I’ve been going for a while. I’m the only owner, right? No outside capital, and just building, building, building, building. The idea of, like, one day being like, oh, yeah, sure, I’m gonna be gone, and then three days later just being out, yeah, is jarring, right? And it some of its identity. Some of it is just, is it pragmatically, a quote, unquote, good decision, right? Should I ruminate on this further before making a decision? Did you have things in your head before you decided to get out? Or was it just, were you not enjoying it.
Justin Goff 41:41
It was much more. I kind of saw that Steph and I were really good at getting it to the point where it was, where we grew it to like 200 members. Both of us are marketers, though neither of us are operators. And I was like, in order to bring this to the next level, we need to bring in a real CEO who’s an operator me and you can still obviously be the face of it, but we need to bring in an operator, because me and you aren’t This is not our specialty. It was not what we’re good at. He disagreed with me on that, and so I was like, I mean, that’s fine, but I I don’t want to keep going with this, if it’s going to be me and you trying to grow it, because I, I don’t think it’s going to work. It was really just a pragmatic thing. I think for me, because it’s like, kind of like being, I mean, having a partner is like being a relationship where it’s like, a lot of this stuff is good, but then there’s things where it’s like, if she has this, we’re probably not gonna be able to be married if this is going on, or if this is what she wants, and I don’t want that. Yeah, 80% of it’s great, but the marriage probably ain’t gonna work. That’s kind of the way I looked at it.
Brad Weimert 42:52
Yeah, sure. So you’ve been through a number of partnerships, will you get in another
Justin Goff 43:00
one? So I actually operate much better in the partnership. And even when I do like little things, like I did a copywriting retreat and say, lead to Mexico for like, two years with Dan Ferrari, who’s another really good copywriter and nickname. And even like that, like, I love doing it, doing that retreat with him, because it was, like, a one plus one equals three kind of thing. And like, he would bring up stuff for the for the people at the retreat that, like, I was like, shit. I would never even thought of that. And then I would bring up stuff, and he’s like, God damn. He’s like, That’s a great idea. So I love that kind of bouncing back and forth that you have with a partner. I don’t know. I mean, I’m definitely, if I’m going to build something that has to have operations, I think I probably will do it with a partner, just because that’s, like I said, it’s not my not my strong suit.
Brad Weimert 43:57
Okay, this is the interruption where I’m supposed to take money and let somebody else advertise on the podcast, but I don’t really want to do that, so I’m going to remind you that I also own easy pay direct.com and if you’re a business that’s accepting credit cards or needs to beyond the fact that we can do a rate review to save you money, beyond the fact that we give you dedicated account reps, world class customer service, world class technology, and can actually optimize the way you accept payments online. You should understand why we have 1000s of people a year come to us off of platforms like Stripe or PayPal, and why they prefer easy pay direct. You can check us [email protected] forward slash b, a, m, that’s epd.com forward slash bam. I kind of want to dig into some of the granular things about email. And then I want to talk about, and that’s really just because I want to be better, okay,
Justin Goff 44:49
personal consulting session, yeah, exactly, personal.
Brad Weimert 44:53
And then I want to talk about, kind of how you think about the next stages of life, because you’ve navigated. Through a bunch of companies you’ve exited a couple times and taken some money off the table. And I know that you think about lifestyle design and how you actually like what you get into and how it fits with your life. And I think that that’s a it’s just a it’s a really important element of things. I think it’s far more important after you have made some money and done something. I think there’s a heavily distorted view from the youngest generation right now of that being relevant or important, and I think it compromises work ethic and quality my take. You know, people have a there’s a sense of entitlement around what their day to day lifestyle should be and and I just think that you miss a lot of good lessons about hard work and focus before we get to that email. So you build the whole company on email. For most people, email is a part of the company, most brands, big companies, obviously, direct response is this unique space where, who did you come up under? Who did you learn copy from? Like, what were some of your role models early on,
Justin Goff 46:05
I mentored under David Deutsch for about a year and a half. That was around 2014
Brad Weimert 46:13
I was mostly self taught until then, yeah, I kind of, I was in a Dan Kennedy mastermind through another venture in like 2010, before easy pay direct. And that was kind of my intro to, like that stuff. And then before that, I was looking at, you know, the sort of, the I look at them as, like the OG internet marketers like Phil same and John Reese, John Reese and Frank Kern and those guys today, email has to be a part of the game, but there’s a shitload of noise too, so, but clearly, email can still be super effective. What are the what are the elements of selling through email? Like, what’s the how do you think about like, let’s say, let me give you a for instance, because I think it’ll be more helpful. You have a company and you have a website, and you’ve got cold traffic, and you’re you’ve got ads running, and, let’s say, a supplement company, and you’re selling on like your website, or on Amazon or whatever, and you’re driving ads to get there you sell. What does the email follow up sequence look like? What’s the point of it, and what are the elements of the emails, and how long does it go? What’s the cadence? What do you do with that?
Justin Goff 47:25
So yeah, let’s use an example like because it really depends what the company is, because I because there’s a lot of ways that work and a lot of ways that make a lot of money. So like our friend Mike Geary, he crushes
Brad Weimert 47:36
same shit over and over and over. It’s like 10
Justin Goff 47:42
million bucks a year, like killing it, but like, Mike basically does all kinds of low cost ebooks, physical books, stuff like that, gets them on the email list, and he’s just a wizard at email, but he’s just pumping out affiliate offers. That’s affiliate offer, like, there’s no branding, there’s no face of the brand. There’s not like, it’s literally just hammering offers. And he said some content out too. Let
Brad Weimert 48:06
me clarify that for a second, because he works with big brands. He works with brands. But I think what you’re saying is he will then take the brand’s list. So here’s the business model for Geary. He’s so weird, too. I love him. His business model, basically is he finds people with huge lists, and then he will monetize the list on the back end. And He does it by just pumping affiliate offers through really good email copy. But I think what you just said was basically it takes the list and he drives them to opt in for some lead magnet.
Justin Goff 48:41
Yeah. So we’re kind of talking about two different things. So he has two different businesses, but, like, his main business, so that’s his where, like, he has an offer to a $10 ebook or something, and then people buy, get on his list, and then he’s just hitting them right away with other books, supplements, like those emails too. They don’t. They don’t have any type of like, there’s no storytelling, there’s no personality behind them. There’s no brand. It’s just pretty much affiliate offers. Oh, interesting. I’ve always that way works great, like, there’s a starting point.
Brad Weimert 49:12
So who, who is, where do the ebook opt ins come from?
Justin Goff 49:16
They come from like him running ads on Facebook. Oh, and then them buying his $10 eBook about apple cider vinegar. And then I get a bunch of Health offers sent to him. So like, I think Mike’s a great example of that, because he he’s been running that same playbook for a long ass time, and it’s still crushed. And he’s got, I don’t know, seven, eight different businesses. And then, as you said, he runs 50 other email lists for other people, yeah, and does the same thing. Well, those are
Brad Weimert 49:44
the ones I’m interested in, because I think that, like, there’s, there’s the independent business model of what you just said, which I can’t believe that it works, and I think that, I think it’s hard to get it to work. Like, there aren’t that many Mike gearies, right? No, he’s very good at, he’s very good at what he does. And so. Selling an e book and then monetize and getting that to consistently convert and self liquidate, right? Pay for the cost of ads, and then sell them all their shit on the back end. People try to do that all the time, and they might get it to work for a second, and then they fail. And so it’s very spiky, and we see this in the numbers with easy pay direct right? We see that business model. But the other side of it is he takes somebody else’s list. Somebody else’s list to increase the value of the list, meaning take and so let’s say there’s a supplement company and they have a dedicated brand and dedicated product set, and he will then take the list and sell them affiliate offers. My concern with that model in general would be that it would dilute the brand or dilute the list? Is he segmenting off the list? And this I’m trying to get to, what does that email thing look like for a standard business that wants to be better at email marketing? So
Justin Goff 50:51
I would say for like, your standard business, like, if we took like, a DR Gundry kind of type thing, which is a golden hippo brand that, like, if they put me in charge of that email list, I would do a very different style than Mike’s, because Mike’s is more of what I would call like a churn and burn where it’s like he’s adding 1000 2000 5000 new names every day. So like, he doesn’t really care if people leave within 60 days or whatever, yeah. Like, he just wants to sell them as much stuff as possible, right? Someone like Gundry very different, because he has a face and a brand and doesn’t want people to hate him. So, yeah, that’s going to be operated very differently. So like an email list like that. I would do much more telling stories from Dr Gundry, his voice like it would be literally an email from Dr Gundry, him talking about how, I don’t know, he has this 83 year old patient, and she had, like, one foot in the grave, and now she’s like, running triathlons. And then you tell this whole story, and you’re like, at the end, you’re like, I just want you to know it’s it’s never too late to, like, to make a change, something like that. And then you can plug some of your products in there. Or you could have like products at the bottom of the email. You can do like soft kind of pitches. You can do harder pitches, whatever you want to do it. That’s more of what I would call like a personality based email. I’ve always written my emails like that, where it’s much more personal stuff from my life, storytelling to get them to bond with Me. And if you have someone that’s the face of the company, that’s always a really good way to do it, yeah,
Brad Weimert 52:25
there’s, there’s a consistent conversation that I have around an individual versus a brand, right? And I think that there are benefits to both, or there seem to be. So is the when I hear that, I think, like, this is a dedicated newsletter, so if I look at a any given supplement brand, and it’s a brand, not an individual, do you take that and sort of push people into a newsletter and say, Hey, if you want more information on this, we’ll teach you about health. Or do you auto enroll them and like, how do you parse that into this narrative email thread. I mean, so I’ve always done is, like, is just our buyers. So if our buyers bought, somebody bought a supplement from us, they’re automatically on the daily newsletter. Now, got it, and you just manage the newsletter as a separate list. What do you mean? Well, I mean, like, you know, for for us, for example, somebody signs up for a merchant account, and we have dedic, and we’re a little unique, because, like, we have shit that they need to see, right? There’s financial stuff that, like, you can’t opt out of these, like you need these emails, right? But then there’s the other side of it, which is, maybe want to educate you further ongoing. So we have the onboarding flow, which is, you want to get set up and work with us, and we want to optimize your initial accounts, and then we have sort of this idea of a newsletter, or you want to learn more, or have other product interests, right? And we branch out. But that’s what I’m getting at, is it, is it like the primary follow up sequence that you’re doing, and there’s just one follow up sequence, which is like, you clearly expressed interest in greens, so we’re just going to teach you about health, and that’s what the email is going to be. Email is going
Justin Goff 54:03
to be. So I’ve always kept it you can make this as complicated or as simple as you want. I’m a keep things simple person. I love that. So I actually have never done like, follow up sequences for buyers. Like, as soon as they buy, they get the whatever, the main like email they get that they bought. And then there’ll be some mention about, like you’re now on the newsletter. You’re gonna get a daily email from us about this, this and this first one you’re gonna get tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, and then they’re just on the normal broadcast email that goes out every single day. And you’re writing those in real time. Yeah, yeah. I would write them the morning of and send them out.
Brad Weimert 54:39
What’s the what’s the cadence? How often you send me every day? Jesus.
Justin Goff 54:45
How long are they I’ve honestly never even looked at I would say somewhere between 500 and 1000 words. Probably okay. I’m not a writer. I don’t know what someone I mean. How much do I scroll?
Brad Weimert 54:59
Like? How. Any paragraphs. Your average
Justin Goff 55:00
email that I wrote, When do you think people are reading is gonna take probably five minutes to read. Okay, so it’s, it’s, it’s not like three little sentences, like, it’s usually a big story. The way I’ve always done mine is usually stories always work the best, so some type of story, and then whatever the point is. So the thing people get wrong with email is they think it’s about information. And information is boring. Nobody really wants information. People want 80% like entertainment, and then they want, like, some point to take away, like the one I told you, like you tell the story of the old lady who had one foot in the grave and her doctor told her she had a month to live that could be a super entertaining story. And then how, a month later, she went out and ran a 5k and like, here she is, like, showing everybody how this great turnaround she had. And then the point of, you always gotta have a point. You can’t just tell a story with no point. The point of the email is like, and they don’t have to be a big thing. It’s like, it’s never too late to get started. So if you wrote that to a bunch of 6070, 80 year old people like, you get an amazing response. Like, oh, that’s so inspiring. Thank you. I love you. Like, thanks for sending that. So that’s like, when I had my health company, that was the type of stuff I would send. And then when I did stuff for like, copywriters and marketers, I would tell stories that are more obviously like same thing, though, like stories from my life, or clients I’d worked with, or stuff
Brad Weimert 56:25
like that. So we’re living in an age of very short attention spans. I know even me personally, a five minute read an email, I find myself archiving newsletters left and right, is there a target demographic that works well in one that in a demo that doesn’t work well with email marketing?
Justin Goff 56:48
The thing I found is, if it’s if it hooks them right away, and if it’s entertaining, people are gonna gonna read it, that whole idea of like people not paying attention anymore? I think there, there is truth to that. But then it’s like, how does Joe Rogan have a three hour podcast episode like that completely obliterates that narrative. Yeah,
Brad Weimert 57:13
it kind of except that listening and viewing is different than
Justin Goff 57:17
reading. It is but and also with, I mean, once someone, when someone’s, like, a fan of yours, though, like, and like I said, this is all about too, like, hooking them quick. It’s like, same thing with, like, a TV show. Like, if I try to watch a new TV show and it doesn’t, like, grab me in the first five minutes, the rest of those episodes went to waste, because, like, you’re not getting me in. But if you hook me in that first like, I might watch four seasons of it. Yeah? Emails the same way, whereas, and this is probably one of the biggest problems I see with copywriters, where it’s like, it takes them six seven sentences to, like, get to the meaty part. And it’s like, Yo, this is what you should have started the email with. Like, that was the best part of the email. And it’s like, you did all this build up and, like, clearing your throat to get to the part that really matters, yeah, so really, like grabbing them right away. And, yeah, I mean, the consistency, though, of the daily email makes a huge difference, because it’s kind of like, I used to be a really, really big Howard Stern fan, and so I would turn it and tune in every single day to listen to Howard Stern, and it’s like, when it’s something you like and you enjoy, you want it more, right? Like, if Howard’s like, oh, being on the radio every day is like, too much. I’m just going to do twice a week. Like, people are actually fans of the show, be like, No. Like, we want to hear from you every day. And I kind of look at email the same way, yeah. That’s interesting.
Brad Weimert 58:42
It’s also interesting that you don’t build follow up sequences and they’re all broadcast because the Do you have a through line through all the broadcasts over time? Do you call back to other emails, or are they all like silo, direct response emails that have an intention of selling
Justin Goff 58:59
so like with my copywriting business that I had, and I was writing same thing daily email every single morning and wake up, write for 45 minutes, send it out. There would definitely be stories I would tell, and might refer back to another thing, but, like, even new people on like, they get my main like welcome email, which is super long, it basically just tells my entire like, origin story, and a whole bunch of like Bucha like bonding points in there. But yeah, once they’re on the list, it’s like, I’m trying to, like, just grab them right away and entertain, like I said, entertain first by far, 80% entertainment, and then 20% just kind of teaching them some kind of lesson that that they can take away. Like I made the mistake when I first started doing email, like, I don’t know, 15 years ago where I was that guy who was, like, really trying to teach, like, super tactical stuff, or I try to teach, like, multiple things in one email, and people just don’t have the capacity to understand that. So, like, if you try to teach three different things in one email, you. It never works. Like, you can’t really, people just can’t comprehend it. Or if you try to teach, if I try to teach some super in depth thing about the best upsell framework, though, like, people just tune out. It’s not, it’s not really interesting. There’s a small minority of people who will kind of, like, turn it, tune into that. But if you want, like, people to stay and read your stuff every day for months and years, it’s got to be about the entertainment.
Brad Weimert 1:00:22
How many, how many of these emails, when you have somebody analysts like this are actually have an embedded call to action that’s trying to monetize versus just trying to engage them, keep them on the list.
Justin Goff 1:00:35
So it really depends, like, when I’m a supplement company, every email sold in one way or another, whether it was a soft sell pitch at the bottom or it was like a direct, like promo, kind of hard pitch. When I had my copywriting business, that one was usually half and half where, like, I would do a launch for 10 days. And those would all be pretty hard sell, but there’s literally the same format, though, like, I tell a story, or do some type of proof in a story, and then, like, pitch, so, like, they’re really not that different than, like, the regular emails I would send, just like the regular emails just wouldn’t have anything to buy. Yeah, so, I mean, there’s the same thing. There’s really no one way to do I know other people who sell every single day. Works great for them. I know other people who just kind of pick their spots. That works great. So it’s kind of like anything. It’s like, I don’t know there’s, there’s more than one way to skin it. Yeah, I know
Brad Weimert 1:01:34
the I have a somebody. I know that operations guy, and every time I talk to him, his response for years when I talk to him would be like, Well, it depends. And I’m like, Yeah, motherfucker, I know it depends, but like, you still have to make a decision to move forward. So what are we doing? The, I think that the, you know, the one of the big takeaways there is daily, a couple couple takeaways, daily consistency, narrative, emails entertainment first instead of information, because you have to keep them engaged.
Justin Goff 1:02:08
Yeah. I mean, because you talked about the attention span, attention spans, attention spans are harder in the sense that you have to be more engaging now, because you’re competing with Tiktok and Instagram and the text that they’re getting and whatever else is going on. So if you’re writing boring, dry, vanilla emails that put people to sleep, they’re not gonna not gonna hook they’re not gonna keep reading. But if you’re writing stuff that’s entertaining, they’re gonna come back.
Brad Weimert 1:02:36
Okay, so, God, I’m going so granular with this. But like, this is so interesting to me, because I think about and I look at the data behind engagement with these different mechanisms. So I see people today doing newsletters that have I see what you just said, which is like a narrative where you’re tuning in to hear a story, right, functionally. And then I see people that do newsletters that are just, like, different blocks of like, hey, what of the five topics do you want to read today? And then it links out to some other shit. What’s the place for each of those?
Justin Goff 1:03:13
Like I said, they both can work. So, like I was talking about with Mike Geary, some of his health stuff, he does that format as well, where there’s, I don’t know, three articles he’s linking out to, but he also inserts, like some ads within there, and as a like content email that does well on both engagement and make some good money.
Brad Weimert 1:03:39
So who fucking knows text tested, is that what you’re saying? I mean, the
Justin Goff 1:03:44
answer no one wants to hear, right? It depends. But yeah, like I said, a lot of it really depends on what type of company you want to run. Like, the one thing I love about Mike, and we’ve talked about him a lot now, yeah, he’s very clear on what he is. He’s, like, I’m a direct response marketer that builds email list, and I’m really damn good at monetizing the list. I don’t give a shit about the brand. I don’t give a shit about these emails looking pretty I don’t care about any of that stuff. I don’t want, I don’t want to be like, the face of this, like, that’s not. None of those are like, his motives. His is, like, making the most amount of money from each email he sends out somebody with a more, like, if you did, if you’re doing a business with, like, an influencer, they would probably have a very different motive, because usually they care a lot less about money, and they care way more about the reputation of the brand.
Brad Weimert 1:04:37
Yeah, and if you’re, if you’re being protective of brand, what shifts would you make?
Justin Goff 1:04:43
I would do much more personality based stuff. Like, I said, like, if I was writing for Dr Gundry, who is a well known doctor and has a brand and has real patients and people who see him and he’s doing media stuff, like, I would do a bunch of storytelling. Of case or success stories with patients, I would be telling stories from his own life, of how he used to be fat, and how he’s gotten shape and stuff like that. Because that’s gonna, that’s gonna bond with people. I mean, when you tell, when you tell the personal, vulnerable stories, those are the ones that get tons of responses. It’s like, oh my god. Like my main email, when you get on my list. I don’t know if it’s still like this, but it used to be. It tells the story of how my mom called me a scammer, which that’s literally the subject line. It’s like, my mom called me a scammer and like that. Gets a chill out of opens, obviously, but it’s really a story about my mom not believing in me as an entrepreneur. And that’s a common feeling that pretty much every entrepreneur Freelancer has had. Might not necessarily be their mom, but like someone around them, thought they were an idiot, thought there’s no way this is gonna work, didn’t believe in them. And so like, when I send that out, the responses I get is just like, overwhelm. It’s everybody’s sharing their story. Back to me. It’s like, oh my God, dude, my dad the same way. Like, just like, shitting on all my dreams I thought I was the only one. Or like, I’ve been trying to start this business now, and like, my wife doesn’t believe like, they relate to it, and so it’s a very common finding those kind of touch points that are like very common experiences work
Brad Weimert 1:06:29
really well, beautiful. So what’s next? So now you sold out of these things, and I know that you are focused on designing life. So how do you think about what you spend time on now, where business fits into life, what the whole picture looks like?
Justin Goff 1:06:51
That’s a big question. Yeah. I mean, for me, I would say I was texting you a little bit about this. I feel like in my like, 20s and 30s. Out 20s and early 30s, it was much more money and, like, growing a business was my main focus. I didn’t really care how often I had to work. I didn’t care what I had to do, if I, like, didn’t enjoy doing it. It was like, This is what I’m gonna do. Yep, I would say, the last couple years I’ve, I’ve turned the corner much more towards, is this fulfilling for me? Do I actually enjoy it? And does it fit in with kind of like, how I want my life to operate? Because I don’t really have any interest in working 12 hours a day, seven days a week anymore, whereas there was points, like when I was building Patriot health, where I was doing that, I feel like I learned pretty good lesson without a couple couple different times where it’s like, if you’re doing that, it’s not really a matter of if you’re going to burn out. It just when, yeah, like, at some point you’re going to burn out. And when you’re like, in the 20s, though, like, you can get away with it, at some point, though, you’re going to hit the wall. And I had that happen, I would say multiple times, and had to be reminded of it. So I feel like nowadays I’m much more like, here’s I want to work a couple hours a day. I only want to work on things that, like I truly care about. I want to do stuff that I actually enjoy, not a bunch of the like grunt work that has to go on in a business. So I try to fit everything into that. And it’s like, even when, like, good opportunities come up, if they don’t kind of fit into that, now I’m much more apt to say no. And I mean, I’m sure you’ve realized this too, like, the more successful you get, the more you’re going to have to say no, because this stuff just keeps the good stuff starts coming up more and
Brad Weimert 1:08:43
more well in the bitch of that is that all of the the opportunities get better and better, and they get bigger and bigger and they get more and more frequent. So it’s harder and harder to say now, love it. If people want to find out more about you, where do you want to
Justin Goff 1:08:58
point them? I’d say just go to my website, Justin golf.com one of these days, I’ll update it, and I’ll probably start I’m actually not. I’ve been on sabbatical for the last year, so I’m not doing anything right now, but I will get back into writing daily emails, probably at some point this year. So I’ll get back on that train. Love
Brad Weimert 1:09:16
it, man. Well, I appreciate you scratching my itch and geeking out on email. And, yeah, let’s go do something fun. Sweet. Thanks, man, thank you. All right, that’s a wrap for this episode. I’m supposed to tell you that you should subscribe to the show and you should leave a review. I really want you to leave a review, though, because it makes like a radical difference in the algorithm and getting other people to be able to see the show. So can you please go loop a review? It’ll take you like 30 seconds. Also, if you want more episodes that are amazing, you can check out the full length video versions at beyond a million.com, or youtube.com. Forward slash at beyond a million. You won’t regret it.
