The Pitfalls of Rapid Growth Spikes

Well, well, well, if it isn’t our favorite friend Igor Kheifets inviting me back to introduce another stellar episode of the list building lifestyle show George Carlin here again, stepping away from my class. That’s to drop another intro on your laps. Now, let me tell ya life’s a journey, right? Not a race. And in this crazy game of business, we’re always chasing the fast buck, the quick success, the next big hit. One day you’re sitting there and the next your papers are going Ding, ding, ding, like some during a slot machine that’s lost its mind feels good, doesn’t it? Just like a fresh chocolate chip cookie straight out of the oven. But then Whoop, there it goes. Your accounts froze faster than a polar bear’s back sank in January. And you’re left scratching your head thinking what the heck just happened? Well, folks, that’s what today’s episode is all about the slow steady climb up the mountain rather than taking the rocket ship and then crash landing on the other side. So, stick around because if you think business is all about making a quick buck, well, we got some reality to splash on your face. We’re gonna go from PayPal locks to email spam, talking about slow and steady and why it always wins the race. That’s right, we’ll talk about how to build your list without stepping on the landmines along the way. Now grab a cup of something strong and get set for an enlightening ride to the list building lifestyle show let’s jump in.

01:20

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.

02:05

Several years ago, I had this happen with PayPal where I actually launched a new offer. And I think I made like 10k in like three days. Now it feels amazing. Just so you know, having like PayPal notifications on my phone go Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, that was freaking. I still reminisce about that moment like one of the first instances where I had nonstop every minute of the day payments come in for days. Right? That was amazing. And so, what that created though, is it created a spike in income spike in my PayPal account, guess what happened on day four. my PayPal account got frozen. PayPal, inquired into my business and started asking me questions about where my sales came from. What exactly am I saying, selling and whatnot. And eventually, they ended up deciding to put a 10% reserve hold for six months on anything I was earning. So, for every dollar I was bringing in, 10 cents of that dollar would be staying with PayPal for six months, and I had no access to it. Because they were afraid that if I keep spiking, they’re going to basically end up with some kind of fraud. And I’ll just disappear and they’ll be left with, you know, holding the bag. Now this approach is actually extremely, extremely popular with almost any form of merchant processing. If you stripe a brand-new Stripe account, what you will find is they don’t like volume spikes, either. They inquire right away. So last year, we had a spike in revenue. And they inquired, they actually made me send them some screenshots or my bank balance showing that if there’s anything that goes wrong, I can actually sustain myself, they actually want you to show several months of revenue in the bank. They want to see proof that you have a solid refund policy that you’ve got support. So, all of a sudden, they’re inquiring and why is that? Well, because if a business goes from making $1 a day, to making $100 a day, that’s a spike 100x. And a lot of things can go wrong, because you know, we’ve all heard the stories of businesses skyrocketing success, and then all of a sudden, you know, they go bankrupt for some reason. Like Dennis I was talking to him the other day, he was just telling me a story about a guy who started the cannabis business here in Toronto. It was producing, I think 20 mil a year or something like that, if I remember correctly, I might be getting the actual number wrong, but it was at a point where it was turning lots and lots of revenue. Then one sudden day, you know, the business went bankrupt. Why? Well, it turns out they were having lots of revenue, but very little profits, and a couple of mistakes led to bankruptcy. Now imagine what happens if the business went bankrupt and All of a sudden, the bank starts getting inquiries and chargebacks and refund requests for like 20% of that revenue, the bank will have to pay that out of their own pocket. And the bank doesn’t like that the bank doesn’t like taking risks. So, any form of merchant processing will usually want to see gradual increase in volume in order to feel okay. And apparently, the email gods, they want to see the same, they don’t want you to skyrocket from zero to 10,000 subscribers in a day, they want you to go for like the first you know, 10 to 20 subscribers per day, then kind of increase that and kind of increase that some more. So, it’s a gradual process, and therefore, you’re not required to go and spend 1000s upon 1000s upon 1000s of dollars, right away on traffic generation. There’s really, there’s no point in doing that, right. So that’s a good school of thought, I think to subscribe to, given if you’ve got a limited budget, which is like 99.99%, of all people, including myself starting out, you kind of just want to take it easy, take it slow, and most importantly, take it gradually. Right, so what you’re looking for is starting at a low point, but then gradually continuing, not stopping, continuing and slowly increasing the volume of incoming leads you’re getting now with my own, I tried to keep my mailing volume very consistent. So, you’ll see me mailing all the time. And one of the reasons now is not only to stay top of mind with my list, but to also maintain high sender volume. Because the more I maintain my volume at a certain level and continue to increase it, the better my email reputation overall. And the more I’m protected against anyone potentially hitting the spam button, because that does happen. And you know, when you’re just getting going and starting on your list building journey, that one or two spam complaints can actually be detrimental. You know, I’ve seen it happen before where, you know, in our done for you service, where we have clients, so all of a sudden, they get one spam complaint, but because their list size isn’t big, yet, all of a sudden, that’s a big ratio compared to their total list size. So, we actually have to go and start rebuilding, kind of working with them on restarting, getting them a new domain. So, I mean, things can go wrong. And that’s why we’re there constantly watching things, constantly monitoring things. But you know, you have to be mindful of the bully. But this is basically to say that you don’t need to spend all the money right away, create a plan to gradually spend your money on traffic. So, you get a small amount of leads and then gradually increase over time on a weekly or bi weekly basis. Okay, you don’t feel the need to start generating a million subscribers a day. There’s really, it’s really not about that, it’s more about a gradual, consistent thing, rather than a sprint.

07:47

Thank you for listening to the list building lifestyle, get access to the previous episode’s transcript of today’s show, as well as other exclusive content at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to clean 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. Go to www.igorsbook.com now to claim your free package