Your First 100 Subscribers With Matt McWilliams

Hi I’m Igor Kheifets and this is the list building lifestyle. The podcast for anyone who wants to build a wildly profitable email list working from home. If you’d like to make six figures travel the world and help people improve their lives in the process, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to claim a free copy of my bestselling book, the list building lifestyle Confessions of an email millionaire at www.igorsbook.com. Get the free book plus $3,000 bonus package that includes my best capture page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints, visit www.igorsbook.com for details. And now it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

00:50

Welcome back to the list building lifestyle. I’m your host, Igor Kheifets and today I’m hosting the author of turn your passions into profits, Matt McWilliams. And we’re going to talk about some of the aspects of finally stepping into your true potential and taking what you know, and the skills you’ve got and turning them into a profitable online business. Matt, welcome to the list building lifestyle.

01:18

Thanks for having me, Igor.

01:19

Yeah, my pleasure. You know, getting ready for this interview, I got my hands on the unpublished manuscript of your book, you know, kind of made me feel like an insider. You know, like in that movie, The Devil Wears Prada, where this girl was chasing the Harry Potter manuscripts, I kind of felt like that. It’s awesome. Just tells you how unexciting my life is. I guess. So anyway, my, what I really liked about your book is you start off, and you talk about leadership. And I think it’s a topic, so sensitive, and a lot of people try to avoid it, because of just the general culture and vibe in the media, you know, people are just afraid of stepping up, they’re afraid of voicing their opinions, they’re afraid of offending other people. And there’s very few true leaders. And of course, whoever’s listening to this, I don’t know their industry, their niche, their skill, their interest, but I’m pretty sure their industry is lacking a leadership. So in your book, you encourage the reader to step into their domain and to become a leader. And you talk about how a lot of people avoid that, how it tends to be difficult for people and they don’t really recognize the importance of doing that. So why is that? Why do you think, is it so hard for people to go from just having an opinion and keeping it to themselves to becoming a true voice and a and a someone to follow? Well, I

02:53

mean, the word the word leadership is just has a lot of misconceptions. You know, we, so we think of, we think of leaders, so we think of Steve Jobs, you know, who can, who can get a company to do you know, he can get his employees to do anything, right? And he could be up on stage and be charismatic, I think, you know, Martin Luther King, Jr. Right? The ability to oratory ability to move, you know, millions to take action, right? We think of all these people, and then we’re intimidated, right? Or intimidate. So we think of, we think of people, you know, politicians. You know, Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill took Britain through World War Two, you know, how do you compare yourself? I have a mission to teach people had a garden, not me, but I’m saying if you if that’s your mission in life, or you know, whatever, how do you compare yourself to Winston Churchill? We think of our parents, we think of our teachers, we think of coaches, bosses, these, these people who they have a built in advantage over their followers in terms of authority and experience and credentials and the letters behind their name and stuff. And so, you know, we ended up we just we think of ourselves, you know, whether you’re young or whether you we think of ourselves were either too young or too old, we’re not smart enough, we’re not qualified enough. We’re not worthy of that title of leader. And so we ended up just shrinking back from the ability, you know, this innate ability. And so we see, we have a voice we have a mission, Igor, but we diminish our own qualifications, we consider ourselves unworthy of that title. So we ended up playing small, and I think we just we shirk, from that, that that title because of a feeling of unworthiness.

04:37

Now, it kind of smells like impostor syndrome, almost were a little bit yeah, although it must be syndrome is I guess it’s when you’ve succeeded, but you still feel like you’re unworthy. But for people who don’t really carry lots of credentials, I mean, someone might say, Well, Matt, it’s so easy for you to say that because you worked with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi and Jeff welcome Ryan Levesque, and Michael Hyatt and Kevin Harrington. And the list is, you know, it’s an arm long, right? But they’re coming into and they’re like, Well, I have an idea. I know I’m pretty good at something. People might want to follow me, people might want to listen to me, people might want to hire me. People might want to give me money in exchange for this. But I don’t have any proof item. I’ve never done this before. I’m not like you said, I’m not qualified. So how do you? How do you get over that hump? I mean, what how was it for you? Because I know you’ve been doing this for 20 years, and you’ve had the time to refine both your message your skills, and you’ve produced so much. But for someone who didn’t, like how do you get over that hump,

05:48

because I never forget the day when I was there. I never forget the day back and you know, Memorial Day 2005. When, I mean, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. You know, we started a business, we were almost out of money. And we needed a miracle. I never forget that day. I never forget, you know, starting my blog, six years later, and waking up every day at 5am, making nothing. For two years, I made no money, I was spending $500 a month, I don’t forget what it was like to be that person. You’re a leader, because you’ve already been where your followers want to go. That’s really what it comes down to. You know, there’s something that people are always asking you for help with. That means they see you as a leader, there’s something that people tell you is really interesting about you, I write about this in the beginning of the book. The first chapter is all about clarifying who you help. And I walk through this, like, if you’re not sure what your niche is, you don’t know, you know, like, who are your people, right? What is something that people tell you is really interesting about you? What is something that people are always coming to you asking for help with? What’s a struggle that you’ve overcome, and now you can share with others how to overcome that same struggle. So it’s usually one of those three things. And so if you can find something like that, that by definition, if people come to you, that makes them followers if they come to you because you’re the expert that makes you a leader, if people say man, that’s really interesting about you. You know, Dan Carlin is a he’s a he’s a podcast, my one of my favorite podcasts, one of the only two podcasts I really listened to called Hardcore History. Thing is Dan is not a historian, but he has the number one History podcast on iTunes effect as the number one for days out of the year. It’s the number one podcast in all of iTunes. The only reason that is because people said Man, the stories you tell the stories that you tell about history, they make history come alive. So Dan’s a leader, he doesn’t have letters, he doesn’t have a history degree. He, you know, he goes on TV, it doesn’t say Dan Carlin historian is a Dan Carlin podcast host, you know, but he’s a leader by definition, he’s a leader. And if you think about it, like Ken, maybe it’s something that you struggled with. I always go back, I’ve memorized this definition, because it just sums it up. It sums it up. So clearly, for me, I looked up the dictionary definition of leader and it says a person who guides or directs the group. That’s all it is. So who better to be a leader than someone who’s been there and done that? Who better to lead others who are struggling with a problem? You know, then then you been through this already, people are coming to you for help. They know that you overcame something. I think my friend Alan Thomas, and I talked, I guess, share his story in the book. And I actually texted him the other day, because we finalize the manuscript with the publisher, like I signed off on the official final manual manuscript. So the version you saw is probably like, 98%. Accurate, right? But I signed off on that final 2%. And I was like, Dude, you’re in six pages on the book, you know, and he’s a weight loss coach. Helen’s not a nutritionist. He’s not a physician. He’s not an exercise physiologist. He doesn’t have a degree, I think his degrees in like, communications or something, you know, something completely unrelated. But Alan, at one point, about five years ago, six years ago, weighed 304 pounds. A year later, he weighed 175 pounds. And then people were like, well, how’d you do it? So he started helping him. He didn’t do it on purpose. He just started coaching them. And then they were like, well, you should charge money for this. So he started charging money for it today. You know, he’s one of the best weight loss coaches in the world. And it’s all because he sucked at something and figured out a way to get better. So this is like this misconception with leadership. Alan is not lightyears ahead of the people. He helps. In fact, that’s something that people when they come to Alan, they’re like Elon, the reason why I came to you is you’re not that guy. You’re not the 38 year old guy that’s been fit his whole life. Who like you know, always walks around wearing the tight tank top and biker shorts. Smells like soup mix. Nobody understands why. And you’re not that guy. You’re the guy who knows exactly what it was like to struggle with this for 30 years. He was is always the big guy. And he finally figured it out. So he has these people who are successful in other areas of life, they’re successful in business, they have a successful marriage. They you know, they love their kids are great dad, there, they lead in the community, but they weighed 300 400 pounds. And they come to him because he can relate to them and, and the vision that I give to people have so often like this, the visual is imagine you’re on this hike.

10:24

And you’ve got this super fit friend, the one I’m just talking about, you know, for no reason he’s always jogging in place. And he’s wearing biker shorts to a barbecue and he’s just like, he’s this guy. He’s you’ve never seen, like anything, but chiseled muscles on him. And he’s two miles up ahead on this hike yelling at you. Like, come on, come on, man, hurry up. That’s not leadership. Leadership is that same friend, the same one, the same biker shorts, the same jogging in place guy who’s two steps ahead of you reaching his hand back and guiding you along the path. That’s what leadership is. So we think there’s this thing that’s like, well, that guy has letters behind his name. And he’s the expert. And he’s two miles ahead. So that’s a leader Steve Jobs is two miles ahead. You know what kind of back out and be like that you really don’t not in today’s world, not in the world that we live in today, when it’s easier than ever to reach the masses. You just got to be two steps ahead with the right people.

11:21

Yeah, yeah. There’s, there’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying. And, you know, one of them my most favorite quotes that I heard Dan Kennedy, then I’m a big Dan Kennedy found in one of his seminars, rubdown. He says something to the, to the tune of the one of the, like, the most important prerequisite to being a US president is the audacity to believe you can be right, something like that, basically saying that, you know, you have to just step into it. There’s, no one can give you the credentials. No one can give you the diploma, or put letters behind your name that will make you automatically qualified. I completely agree. And, you know, for so many years, I’ve been, you know, considered to be one of the top list builders in the world simply because I said so. Right. There’s that old Gary Halbert thing, you know, when, you know, when he was speaking to somebody, and he’s like, you know, why people, you know, you know why I’m like the best marketer in the world, the best copywriter in the world? And it’s like, no, why? Because my newsletter said, so, yeah. So he kind of step into it. Now. It does require a bit of courage, I’d say, to do something like that. And for me, personally, when I realized that I had to be that way, and I had to step in. I was scared to do it. But I did it anyway, almost pissing my pants while I did. And over time, you know, I kind of grew into it. And I became a bit more confident when I was sharing my message. And you know what, I remember this one moment, because back in the day used to blog a lot, I used to publish at least one article per day on my blog, it was located at Igor helps you succeed.com That website doesn’t exist anymore. I also realized now just how, how bizagi have a name that was a but I had like a proper blog there. And I remember one day, someone submitted one of these contact forms. And they’re like, Igor, I’ve been following you for however many months and you’re so inspiring this and that. And I felt like such a hypocrite when I read that message, because even though the appearance on my blog, was that I was going places, I still haven’t really made any money with it. Right. So, so that felt almost dirty to me. But I realized now how important how that was an important part of the journey. Now, I want to throw in a bit of a curveball. And, and express a contrarian idea. Something that I’m pretty sure at least one or two people are wondering and I think it’s important, we discussed that we’re bringing up this elephant in the room. And here’s the deal. I’m passionate about many things that I believe people will simply not want to give me money for. I’m passionate about playing FIFA. I’m passionate about you know, a lot of different things honestly a lot like I’m passionate about watching movies on my couch. Right? I don’t think I’ll find 1000 people who will be willing to pay me for that. So the whole idea for me personally have passion to profit right? Can trigger that that friction emotional friction for me because like passion Well, I got passions, but no one’s gonna give me money for that. You know.

14:55

You know, we talked about this in the first chapter that the idea of to have, the passion that we’re referring to is more the message. You know, it’s that you have a passion to serve people with passion to help people with a certain, typically a problem, you know, or to achieve a certain solution. And the problem doesn’t have to be like people think, Oh, well, I had a guy there day. He’s like, Dude, I help accountants, you know, and I’m, I’m passionate about helping accountants, you know, to, to work less and his folks so funny, as he was talking, he was realizing, oh, that really is like serving people. You know, he’s like, I help them build a business that helps them to work less and not have to work 90 hours a week during, you know, the busy season. And he’s like, I hope accountants, how is that something you could consider a passion? And I’m like, Well, I look at it as you’re helping moms and dads spend 2030 hours more a week with their dads, you know, their kids, their family? How can you not be passionate about that you’re working in the most boring industry in the world to me, like, the bane of my existence is when I have to talk to my accountant, I love our accountant, he’s a great guy, he’s a wonderful account, I don’t ever want to have to talk to him, because it usually means I’m talking about something that is going to bore me to tears. So for me, that’s not me. But if you’re an accountant who’s stressed out and somebody comes along this is I can help you work 20 hours less a week. Don’t write that there, you know, you better be passionate about that. But it could even be about gardening. You know, like think, well, is that really changing the world? No, maybe not. But it could change that person’s world. You know, I mean, if they if they’re frustrated by their inability to grow certain vegetables in a certain climate, and you teach them how to, that brings joy to their life, that that changes things. But I mean, we’re talking all kinds of things we’re talking about, you know, this one lady, I was on a phone call with her. And, you know, she had that same thing we’re just talking about, right? The mindset that she had, and I write about her in the book, but like, the mindset that she has, was, I don’t have the letters behind my name. She wants to help parents who have autistic children, just two autistic children, two of her three children are autistic. And she wants to help them. She wants to help these parents. But she’s like, there’s so many experts out there that are all PhDs and whatever, you know, have all these letters and certificates and things like that. And they know the neuroscience and all the latest technology. And she’s like, I don’t know that stuff. She’s like, so I would feel I would feel disingenuous if all I did was just read their book, and then regurgitate it to an audience and ask them for money. And I said, let me ask you a question. And I just remember going do I really want to ask her this question? Because when I say this out loud, it’s like, oh, my gosh, well, you’re a psychotic person, right? And you said, Do you ever feel like killing your children? She said, every day, I said, is that a common feeling of parents with autistic children? She said, if they’re being honest, most of them every single day, you know, not literally, like thinking of ways to murder your children, but like, sometimes you just want to. And I was like, then why don’t you talk about that. So you’ve raised both of her children that are autistic, one of them I, at the time, we talked, so he’s probably 21. Now she’s, he’s above was 18. At the time, the other one was already they’re both in the workforce. You know, the one was working part time, the one actually graduated college early from a really good College, University of Virginia, graduated college early and is in the workforce, you know, why don’t you just share those stories, talk about what life was like, and the things that you did specifically, because all the neuroscience the, you know, that this that that the studies done by people whose names you know, you don’t even know it and you know, at some prestigious university, and all the all that stuff, while it’s useful, that doesn’t tell the story of the time that you got on an airplane in your autistic child disrupted the entire flight, and how you handled it. Because in that moment, that’s all the parent cares about. That’s all they don’t care about brain science, neuroscience studies, white coats, Doctor such and such, they want to know, how do you get the kid to stop, you know, being a pest on the plane, so that you could just get through the flight with some level of peace, and not feel like you needed a Xanax afterwards is this to quote this lady, I said, then talk about that, and use that she’s built a very successful business for her because she’s working part time. And she’s running a low six figure business, she has no desire to run a seven or eight figure business, you know, and that’s not her. She just doesn’t want to. She’s making a couple $100,000 a year working from home 20 hours a week helping people you know, to overcome the same struggles she had. There’s no amount of letters degrees or anything that could that could be better than that, you know, that her experience. So that’s what I mean by pasterns. Just to be clear,

19:54

yeah, that makes that makes a lot more sense. I think having practical experience in the matter Having gone through the journey because seems like the common thread of all the examples you’ve provided so far is that nearly all these people went through the transformation and experienced the same problems as their target audience.

20:15

And you go, if I can real quick, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but like, I forgot, this is something that was on my mind. I would push back that you’re passionate about sitting on the couch watching movies, I would put, I would push back that you’re passionate about playing, you know, video games. Now, there are people that are passionate about playing video games, they want to know the psychology behind the video games, or they want to, you know, they literally want to practice 12 hours a day. And that’s fine. Like I, I don’t, I don’t argue with kids playing video games all day, if that’s actually genuinely what they want to do, especially today, when you can make a lot of money doing that. What I do argue with somebody playing video games five hours a day, six hours a day, and they say that they also want to be an author, or playing video games five, six hours a day. And they say they want to be a veterinarian, there’s a disconnect between those two things. You play video games for an hour a day, and be a veterinarian, you can play video games for an hour a day and be an author. You can’t believe video games six hours a day, and be it’d be one of those things. You can’t play video games six hours a day and be an athlete, you know, so like your, your, you know, I got off on a tangent there, but there have to be congruent. I don’t think you’re passionate and passionate about sitting on the couch watching movies. There’s something one or two things that you are clearly passionate about helping entrepreneurs. These are things that wake you up in the middle, and I don’t wake up in the middle. I love watching movies. So I would say I enjoy watching movies. Have you ever woken up in middle night going ka li tonight? I cannot wait to sit on the couch and watch a movie. I mean, I’ve got it. Oh, you know what if I adjust the couch this way, and do that, and oh man, if we try that new seasoning on the popcorn man that’s going to make movie night so much better. I don’t think about stuff like that was buttered popcorn with some salt. And we sit down wherever and we put the movie on. And it doesn’t have to be the greatest experience in the world. Like, I don’t need surround sound and stuff like that, because I don’t care that much. You know, I’ve been in homes where they have the surround sound, and it’s really cool. And then I’m like, it’s really fun going the effort to do that, you know, but like, that’s not a, that’s not a passion. You know, so I am passionate about there are things I’m passionate about, like, I am passionate about helping my children to achieve their dreams, that is something I’m passionate that I’m probably never going to build a business around. But here’s the thing, if I can, in a way, if I help entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, to live out their passion and turn it into a profitable business, one that actually serve their lifestyle, and help them you know, like build a business that they can be proud of, and that changes other people’s lives, then maybe they in turn, will have the time to devote to their children’s passions. Like I’ve never missed one of our children’s soccer games, you only soccer games I ever miss, are when they’re playing at the same time. So I shouldn’t have never missed one. When one of our kids is playing in one part of the state and the other is playing in the other part of state, I missed one of their games, you know, but otherwise, I’ve never missed a game I take him to almost every single practice, I’ve probably missed even like five practices over the last seven years. You know, I’m there, like I’m in their lives, I can only do that because of the way that my business is like their practices, some of them starts at five o’clock. That means we have to leave the house at 415 425 at the latest. Most people can’t do that. If you’ve got a full time job that says you have to be here till six o’clock 530. You can’t do that. So I’m passionate about helping other people to be able to live that same kind of lifestyle. And that’s the kind of passion that we’re talking about. I push back a little bit on the word passion. I’ll be contributing to your contrarian.

23:50

Well, I can appreciate that if you define it that way. I’m not passionate about watching movies. But I’m still passionate about video games like I can actually play. I can play for 12 hours straight every day for seven days. I’ve done that. Wow. So I’m definitely passionate about that. I just, you know, have to I the way I look at it, I have to prioritize different things, right, I prioritize my business, jeopardize my family, for ties my children, and it just feels wrong to me to put 12 hours into a video game. You know what I mean? Like I feel I feel that 10 years from now when I’m divorced. And alone. I would be regretting playing video games versus spending time with my kids in my in my wife. But yes, I do. I do agree with that definition with the, you know, looking at how truly passionate are you about certain things, or are you just saying that you are because that’s convenient for you to say that? Right? Yeah. And even

24:55

then you just admitted that it’s not as much of a passion as those other things. You said? I’m saying like You said like I could just like, you know, there are plenty of things I could do. You know, even like, I’m passionate about personal development, I’m passionate about personal growth. I blogged about personal development and personal growth for years. That’s what led to me teaching this stuff now. But I decided that, like, people kept coming to me, you could go back what we said, right? What did I struggle with? I struggle with monetizing early on, right? Why did people come to me and ask me for help, but they came to me and said, Matt, you know, I wasn’t making millions of dollars a year, but I was making hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year from my paycheck. How’d you do it? Well, I’ll share my how I did it. You know, what did I used to struggle with that? Exactly? What did people say was interesting to me? Wow, it’s interesting that you kind of figured out this affiliate marketing thing, and you figured out how to make money, promoting other people’s products, and really not even having products of your own. All three criteria were met, and I went, well, do you know, why I am talking about this other thing, which I’m passionate about. But nobody was coming to me asking me for help with personal growth, nobody was going, it’s really interesting that you know, a lot of stuff about personal growth. And I never really struggled with personal growth, like, I mean, I guess I did when I was like a teenager, you know, but like, I didn’t overcome some intense battle, like my story was, I’ve always been a personal growth junkie. And actually, I’ve always had a pretty good mindset and been pretty good at this stuff. What that’s a stupid story. Nobody likes that story. That’s like the guy who says, you know, I’m going to teach you how to be fit. Come to think of it, I’ve been fit my whole life. I was always fit. I was a high school athlete, I was a college athlete, after high school, I ran my first marathon at the age of 17, I don’t want to learn from that person, I want to learn from a guy who went when I was 32, I was 360 pounds. And now I’m 180. And here’s how I did it. That’s where we want to learn from. So even in that passion, like I’m passionate about my own personal growth. So I thought that meant I had to go teach that stuff. But, but all these things led to me realizing ah, it’s actually this other side, you know, helping new entrepreneurs again, to make their first dollar online. Because I know, if you can make your first dollar, you make your first 10,000, you make your first 100,000. And I’m gonna tell you right now, like the, the distance between zero to one is infinitely greater than the distance from one to a million, it’s so much easier to go from making something to a million, that from zero to one, if you can fit, if I can teach you to do that’s why our mission is to help 100,000 People do that, if I can teach you to do that, you can figure out the rest of yourself.

27:24

That’s so true. Yeah, that’s so true, the amount of time it took me to make my first dollar was actually a shorter period of time, compared to making my next 100,000. And between the first 100,000 to the first million, as well, you can see it, you know, accelerating them from the first million to the second million, etc. It keeps accelerating. So that’s actually really true.

27:47

It took me three years to make $1, it was actually $588. In the very first affiliate commission, I got the first dime I made for my platform. So to me almost three years, to get to 100,000. I got 200,000 by the end of that year, so that was from March to end of that year, so nine months to get probably a little bit less, but it was called nine months to get from 100,000 to a million is actually about two to two years. But still, I mean, think to go from, you know, to go from one to a million was only about three years, it’s the same amount of time it took me to go from zero to one. I mean, that’s

28:27

kind of like, it’s kind of like a spaceship, right? All that power required to just push it off the ground and get to atmosphere, but then you can almost push it with a finger and it’s going to change trajectory.

28:40

It’s so such a great example.

28:42

Now speaking of your first in your book, you have a whole chapter devoted to your first 100 subscribers. Now, this is a list building podcast after all, so we can just not talking about building a list. So tell us about your first 100 subscribers.

29:01

Yeah, I mean, it’s the most important one, you know, the most important subscribers you can get. Because, again, like we talked about with, you know, the financial side, most people want to know, well, how do I build a list of 100,000 people 100 people at a time? You know, it really is. And what we found is again, we have we have a program called list launch challenge. And we actually break like, we break it down in the book, step by step a lot of what we do, and one of the things that we noticed when we did our list launch challenge, the very first time we did it, Igor, we didn’t have a, like, here’s the number of subscribers you should get. We just kind of threw it together, we threw together actually as a bonus for another course. And there was no promise like you’re gonna get 100 You’re gonna get 500 You’re gonna get 10 There was nothing. And what we found, though, with the end of it, so we had we had this one, this Facebook group, and we went through and analyze it, there was like 180 I think it was 187 people if I remember correctly in there and 60, some odd of them got to 100 subscribers, another 30 or so. So that got to 250 plus, so about half of them got to 250, about 60 or so we’re at 100. The rest were below 100. When we went back and looked a year later at where they were almost every single one of the people who was below 100. At the end of this, this was a, this was a five day challenge, or seven day challenge. Sorry, this no, the first year was five, we expanded to seven. So at the end of five days, if they got to 57 subscribers, which is actually a lot for a beginner to get in five days. Almost every single one of those people under 100 was still under 100. Every single one of them was under 500. There was not a single one of them. That was over 500 subscribers over a year later. So when we did the next one is about 14 months later, and we did this whole study, every single one of the people under 100 was under 500. Almost all of them were still under 100 of the people who got to just 100. So this was the cool thing. It didn’t matter if they were 100 or they got to 250 or they James Khalida was one of the people we did a profile of him James clean, it got to over 1000. Fast forward a year later, almost it was the complete opposite. I think it was like 75% of those 100 were over 500. Almost half of them were over 2000. And only like, it was like maybe five 10% were under 200. So what does that say? Says just get to 100 really, really fast. Then here’s what it does. Now you can send an email to that 100 and you can make you could do something promote an affiliate offer and make 200 bucks. Are you getting? Let’s be honest with 100 subscribers, are you going to make $5,000? Probably not. I have seen it happen one time. I always say her name Rachel Luna, when she first started, she had a list of I think it was about 125 people. And she promoted a really high ticket item and sold like three of them and made $5,000 Okay, just to be clear, it can’t happen. It’s probably not it’s probably not going to happen to anybody listening to this right now. I don’t want to set unrealistic expectations. But could you make $200? Yeah, could you make even maybe 500? Sure. It doesn’t matter. If you make 200. And you if you’re married, and you go to your spouse, and you go, Oh my gosh, with a $200 this week, changes the dynamics of your business. When you’re making real money. In your what?

32:47

And your relationship.

32:50

That’s dinner out. I mean, we went to Ruth’s Chris Ruth’s Chris is the single most expensive restaurant in Fort Wayne. Its $224

32:56

favorite Steakhouse? Yes. And that’s my

32:59

point, like you can take your spouse out to the most expensive place for what you made off that little affiliate promotion with that little list and you go, Okay, it’s one meal, Matt? Yeah, well, you know, if you go to Taco Bell, its 24 meals. But, you know, my point is, it changes the dynamics, because you no longer have an expensive hobby, you have an actual business. And then if you can get 100, you can get 200. And if all you did, in theory was just grow by 50% a month, in terms of your subscribers for the first year, I mean, it’s astronomical, you know, you want to do the math. But if you continue to apply the principles, you starts to take on, like I’ve known, we’ve all noticed this, where now they start referring people to us, if you get that 100, and they tell 20, then that means you work your butt off, not gonna lie, the first 100 is hard, you have to work your butt off for him. This is not like go do one article, and you get 1000 subscribers know, you work your butt off, it’s hand to hand combat. One of the things that we teach you the first one here, and again, this is about how to get 100 People in five days, not how to get 100 people, you know, long term, this is 100 People in five days to build that see list, you pull out what I call the magic rectangle, I’m showing it to you on video eager, because you and I are in video, it’s also called a smartphone. I call it the magic rectangle, you open up the messaging app, you know, it’s a little mine, I don’t know what iMessage is, you type in the letter A and you pick the stuff that falls down and you send them you know, a particular message that we have in the book and all that and you start building that list of interested people, right? But I’ve seen it happen time and time again. I got we had a message. This is no joke. I’ll never forget it. We send all of our new students this certificate. And it says my first dollar online because if you ever go into a business ever go into a locally owned business. We were up in Ann Arbor, Michigan the other day and there was a sub shop that was owned by I found out they were two Armenian. They were Armenian refugees. They moved here from Armenia like, you know, 40 years ago, and these were their sons they were running this sub shop, it’s just this little hole in the wall sub shop. I don’t remember the name of it, I wish I did, because oh my gosh, they were so good. And so we’re there and they had up on the wall $1 bill, it was $1 bill that someone had given them for the very first sub they ever sold. The problem with the online world is we don’t have that you get it via PayPal, you get it via stripe, you know, to credit card transaction, you don’t have that dollar bill. So we send them $1 Bill, they get $1 bill in the mail, and this certificate, I told you don’t glue this to that certificate, and put it up on your wall until you make that dollar. So we have pictures of hundreds, probably 1000s of people now that have that, you know, that certificate is the coolest thing. And this guy said, I don’t feel like I can put it on there yet. But I made my first affiliate commission. And it was for a $4.99 cent product. And he got a 20% commission. And you can do the math on that. He made it was it? No, it was actually it was a four it was a $4.97 cent sorry. So he got 99 cent commission. And but he was like, but it changed everything. It changed everything for him because he saw Okay, he had a list of like 102 people promoted this one thing sold one of them for 497. And he said it changed everything for him. And you know that this was only a few months ago. So he’s not like he’s not a million dollar success story yet or anything. But mentally he’s all in it changes that dynamic. So if you can get that 100 subscribers, fast, this is all about speed. This is like I know people, there’s a guy who went through our list on challenge. His name’s Eric. And I won’t say his last name, because you know, I’m kind of making fun of him here. And I made fun of them to him. I was like, Dude, stop doing this. He was like, yep, banana for four years, my list is up to 82 people. And I’m like, no, just like you can have 182 by the end of tomorrow, if you actually put in the work. And sure enough, he did. And so my point is like, don’t be one of those people who grow slow, grow fast, especially to start with so you can just begin to get some momentum.

36:59

Yeah. Look, you’re talking to a guy who’s in business of teaching people how to build a list. You’re, your observations are spot on. I actually never measured it like that. I had no idea that if you don’t get to your first 100 really, really fast. You don’t get anywhere. Because we I didn’t either. Yeah, it’s fascinating to me to discover that.

37:23

Yeah, I didn’t either. We just, I actually went back in. So I, to be honest, we weren’t trying to do some sort of a study. We were trying to get testimonials. And we did, we got some great testimonials. I went back to them just to get testimonials. Because when we ran it the second time, so when we did the listening challenge, the first time we didn’t have any testimonials. You know, we’ve never done it before. So we had nobody going oh my gosh, Matt’s amazing. He helped me, you know, grow my list. Like, we had nothing. We just ran this, it was basically like, hey, come give us I think we charge like 10 bucks for it, you know, come give me 10 bucks, I promise it might work. You know, but the second time we had, you know, 75 testimonials. But we went back and looked and it was like if you compare side by side, the people in the Facebook group, who said at the end, even the people who were like, I’ve got 63 subscribers, when they were like 63 They still had like 150 At the end of the year, you know, but the person who was like, Man, I only got 122 I’m kind of disappointed. You fast forward two years later, they have 3000, you know, 800 subscribers or whatever. I mean, James Kalita I remember that one. I mean, he I guess he got like 1000 really, really fast. And I interviewed him. I interviewed him for that second round. And he’s, you know, it was like 90 days later, he had 3800 subscribers. And we found most niches, you know, like faith based niches tend to be lower. But on average, you’re looking at 50 cents to $4 per subscriber per month. That’s a pretty good range, again, is every niche at $4? Clearly not is every niche as low as 50 cents? Clearly not most we find are the buck 25, Buck 50, you know, my niches, you know, we’re in a buck 75 You know, per subscriber. But if you think about that, 3800 subscribers and $1.50 per niche, that’s, you know, $5,700 a month. That’s the average full time wage in the United States. Now, you may make more you Oh, I got $125,000 a year job cool. I’m not saying you should go full time. I’m just saying you can go full time with about 3800 subscribers in most, you know, most niches he got there in 90 days. You know, but it was you know, pure acceleration, you know, and so if he had to hit 100, he had 100 plus in five days, you know, it can take almost 1005 days. If he hadn’t have done that. I guarantee he’d still be sitting there right now with 82 subscribers, you know, and 14 podcast listeners. And pedaling along winter one can only succeed at this, you know, he, he made that aggressive move very early on. And I remember he did an affiliate promotion. So you got it really, really fast early with us did an affiliate promotion. It only made like three 400 bucks. It wasn’t a ton. You know, the verifier he was like, I screwed up everything. You know, he’s like, I sent some stupid emails. Just didn’t wasn’t aggressive enough. Didn’t know that, you know, you should send multiple emails in the last day and just, you know, he’s like, he’s like, I looked at this one email. The subject line was so dumb. I got like a 14%. Open Rate. He’s like, Oh, my gosh, what a coolest mistake I made. They still made like 400 bucks. You screw everything up and make $400 that’s a game changer for most people.

40:45

Emails very forgiving in that way. Yeah. I’ve made a few mistakes myself over the last 15 years or so. All right. Well, your book, turn your passions into profits. When is it going on sale? Where can we get it? And yeah, who should get it? Really? You know,

41:06

there’s something in there for everyone. And that’s not a like, wow, everybody should go buy the book.

41:14

If you are literate, you should buy the book.

41:18

You’re gonna literate you should buy the book. Actually, there’s going to be an audiobook version. It’s been recorded right now. So even if you if you if you’re not literate, go get the audiobook version. You know, anybody who needs help knowing like, Okay, what niche should I be in? Already got my niche, Matt, you need help? Well, we talked about earlier like committing to leading that’s, you know, step two, you’re trying to capture people’s attention, convert them into subscribers, create a community, you want to be a leader for their cause you want to create raving fans. These are the types of people if you haven’t, if you’re struggling, monetizing. Like, if you’re really, if you’re like, man, I’ve got all this down, I just don’t know how to monetize, like, I’ve got raving fans, they love me, I’m their leader, you skipped a step eight, you can come back and read the other ones, because I think it’ll help you. But like, again, if your problems monetize you skip to step eight. You know, if you’re struggling with creating content, skip to step 10. You know, depending upon where you’re at, like, it could be for everyone. But if you know, everybody knows somebody who’s like that you got a friend who’s like, man, they, they know, they want to start a blog or start some sort of a, you know, a podcast, they just don’t know what they should be doing. Well, they need to start a step one, you know, and go through the whole book. So it’s for, you know, it’s, it really is for almost anybody who has or wants to start an online business and grow their audience, be a leader, you know, be a champion for their cause. That’s, that’s step six, you know, be a champion for their cause is probably one of the coolest, probably the nerdiest chapter that I wrote, because I actually talked about like, historical leaders, I got to kind of be like, I’m a history nerd, you know, I got to like, here’s how Gandhi did it. And, you know, and here’s how Jesus did it. Here’s how Martin Luther King jr. did it and Steve Jobs did it and like, kind of compare the you know, how they did it was really, really a fun chapter to write. And, yeah, to answer your question, it’s so it’ll release, you can preorder it now. It’ll release on January 10, of 2023. But if you pre order now, now through January tennis, like just do it now. It’ll be there. Like, trust me, it’s going to come in the mail. I, I just got a book yesterday that I pre order on Amazon back in June or July, you know, and but I’m glad I did, because I got like tons of amazing preorder bonuses, just like you know, we’re doing so if you go to passions, into profit, passions into profits, book.com little bit of a wordy URL I get it, probably need to get a better one. But if you go to passions into profits, book.com and I know Igor you’ll put that in your show notes and stuff, make it easy for people. It’ll walk it’ll show you like all the amazing preorder bonuses, I mean, there’s over like $750 worth of of awesome, you know, preorder bonuses, because I just I believe in the book, and I was super excited because, you know, I had a dream for years. I mean, literally, I had a dream that I was working. My publisher and my distributor. You know, my publisher has been Bella and if you look at my bookshelf like all the entrepreneurial books I have like Gino Wickman and David Feinstein like all these guys that I’ve looked up to for, you know, 10 years. We run our business on Geno’s EOS system, right? Ben Bella’s you know, his publisher, like they published some of the best entrepreneurial books in the world. And I had this dream that my book was being distributed by random or Penguin Random House, you know, who’s the number one publisher and distributor in the world? And I remember when I saw this, I know it sounds crazy. Like this is not like I’m not one of those people. I don’t actually believe in the secret, you know, and like the whole, like, if you see it, it’ll definitely happen. Like, I can see myself playing in the NBA and it ain’t gonna happen. You know? I am too short and too white for that. But, you know, like, it’s just not going to happen. But I by dreamt it, I literally I woke up going, that’s never gonna happen. You know, like, no, I’ll write a book and it’ll maybe it’ll get published. And it’ll be like on Amazon, right? Maybe I can even be like an Amazon Best Seller. And then, you know, sure enough Penguin Random House is distributing the book. And it’s in Target, Walmart, and, you know, Barnes and Noble. So, yeah, it’s kind of cool. But check that out. Yeah, www.passionsintoprofitsbook.com. Go ahead and preorder, you’ll get tons of bonuses, you’ll get immediate access to, you know, to some of the stuff in there, some of the stuff won’t be delivered till after the book, because it’ll make more sense than we don’t want you to get too far ahead of yourself. But check it out, place your order and love to serve you through the book.

45:46

Alright, so passions into profits goes on sale in January 2023. You can pre order it now by going to www.passionsintoprofitsbook.com to get the book and tons of really cool bonuses. Yeah, which is exactly what I’m going to do once we’re done recording this session. So, Matt, thank you so much for spending this time with me. I’ve enjoyed this. And I’m really looking forward to, to having our listeners dig into your book because, you know, reading it, you can tell I mean, we spoke about this on the show passion, right? You can tell you live this stuff. Like, you know, you I mean, I can imagine you waking up in the middle of the night, you know, saying something like, you know, put on your message, you know, or the first 100 subscribers? Yeah, I can see that happening. Right?

46:45

I gotta tell you, I’ll tell you this real quickly that so that thing that I shared about the 100 subscribers, that is actually dead? True. So we did the Can we didn’t do it as a study, we did it to collect testimonials. And I don’t know how this is kind of weird. I’m just gonna get like super personal. I don’t know how else to say this. So I’m just gonna say it like this. Most mornings three, four, and five, I wake up and I have to pee. And I have, I guess, yeah, well, I have a little notebook that I keep on the sink, because there’s something about it. Like I’m lucid enough, because I’ve been asleep for you know, five hours, five and a half hours. So I’m not like exhausted. But I’m also not, you know, like super lucid, right. But I’m just lucid enough. I have some of the coolest ideas. Wake up the moment. And sometimes it’s hard. I used to get in this, I gotta be thinking and I’m like, oh, crap, I’m going to forget about that. That’s a really good business idea. And that’s a really good, you know, whatever. Sometimes I’m like thinking of like better ways to coach my kids at soccer. You know, it’s like, wherever my brain goes, right? And I had this thing, and I was like, Holy crap. Wait a minute. All the people that were, oh, we should go back and compare that I think this might be true. And I wasn’t sure. But I was like, I think this might be true. Because I remembered some of the names some of these people became some of these people join our mastermind, some of these people became like people that I actually interact with outside of just like, match the leader of the company. And this is a guy who bought some stuff from us, like, these are people that I’ve become friends with, right? And these are people that I’ve hung out with at events and actually gotten to know them personally. And we’re going, Oh, my gosh, all the ones that. I wonder if that’s true. And I wrote down a note, when they’re in the bathroom the next morning, tore that out, took a picture of it, sent it to my sister and said, Can we actually analyze this data and see if this is true? And that’s how we came up with those numbers that said, like, Yeah, you get 100. Yeah, so you’re totally right. Like, this is the stuff that I think about in the middle of the night, and it’s totally crazy. There is a tip though, if you’re like me, and you wake up in the night and have like thoughts, put a little note book or a little yellow pad or a journal or something where you can write your ideas down and then go back to sleep peacefully. If you get nothing else out of this podcast today that was worth the listening. They’re

49:03

totally worth it. It reminds her that Seinfeld episode, remember when Jerry wakes up in the middle of the night and he’s like, came up with a great joke. And he kind of jots down a few words on the pad that he keeps next to his bed and then he can’t read it the rest of the episode. No, that wasn’t a good one. There you go. Go ahead and visit www.passionsintoprofitsbook.com preorder the book. By doing so I’m pretty sure you’re going to be helping it become a best seller before it even publishes, which would be really cool. And definitely get those bonuses and actually read the book. I know that you know, myself included by the way in this statement, but we love buying books but it’s not like we read all of them. You know I have a full stack of books that I bought on because someone said I showed her because they just the titled got you know was catchy and they’re just still sitting there. In a deep, dark, dusty corner of my basement, but yeah, read this one this is the passion jumps at you through the pages and it’s inspiring on many different levels. Not to mention that I felt that this book had more like constructive instructive, do this do that kind of information rather than just talking concepts. Because sometimes I would pick up a book and, you know, you read a few pages, you’re like, I get what this book is about. I’m done, right? It’s kind of like, you know, my mentor used to tell me you make the book your bitch, right? So you open the book, you read it, quickly grasp the concept, close the book, move on to the next thing. This one, you can do it like that. This one you actually have to read, because each chapter actually gives you stuff to chew on. And I really appreciated about like, I can tell you put a lot of work into it. So again, go to www.passionsintoprofitsbook.com, get the copy that’s in presale mode. If you’re listening to this for any reason, you’re late to the party, and it’s already January 2023. Then just get the book. I mean, simple as that. So, Matt, thank you so much again for spending this time with me. I really appreciate it. And until next time we chat. Have a good one. Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, get access to the previous episodes transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my bestselling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list building starting from scratch. Plus, I’ll give you $3,000 worth of free bonuses, including my best landing page templates, email, swipe files, and traffic blueprints. Go to www.igorsbook.com. Now to claim your free package