The Myth of the Tech-Savvy Entrepreneur

Technology promises leverage speed and freedom, CRMs, pixels and AI automations, but for many entrepreneurs, these tools become the perfect excuse to avoid real work. In this episode, I unpack how the obsession with tech tricks you into feeling productive while silently keeping your business stuck.

[0:28]
I’m Igor Kheifets, and this is The ListBuilding Lifestyle. The podcast is 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 best selling 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.

[01:14]
I know so many sharp entrepreneurs who simply fail to see through the veil of technology. They look at online marketing, and they’re so fascinated by all the different software, platforms and automation tools and AI tools that they end up spending hours upon hours, every single day, playing with these tools.

And they become masters of these tools, by the way. Somebody invests like 50 hours into mastering segmentation in their CRM, they can push the lead through to the form, they can push the lead back from a form and into another form, and they can pass a parameter from here to there, and they can validate it and unvalidated. And they can run it through a system to check their social security number.

I was chatting with the company today, they pixel you, and then they run you through a soft credit check, and they know if you qualify for credit or not. And then, by the time a salesperson talks to the rep, and, the salesperson, or he knows what the rep.

Lots of great technology out there! It’s a whole universe. And there’s new technology, exciting technology, coming every single day. But it’s so easy to get lost in it, like you can literally lose dozens upon dozens, if not hundreds of hours of your time playing with these tools.

[02:42]
Now, as somebody who’s, I grew up playing video games, so, I was familiar with computers, I was never IT level, but I knew how computers work, okay? I couldn’t really put them apart, but I knew enough about them, on how to use them.

And, when I got into this industry, I fell into the exact same trap of spending way too much time on the technical mumbo jumbo gizmo schism stuff. I spent a long time learning WordPress and trying to understand how WordPress works and how to install websites on WordPress, and how to do plugins and how to do themes and how to do widgets and this and that.

I spent a long time learning HTML, working with HTML templates, playing with code, modifying, etc. I spent a long time, a long time! Learning how to do video editing. I would film videos, edit videos, add music, add captions at lower thirds, upper thirds.

Look, email sending tools and autoresponders, I spent a long time playing with all the different features, tracking software, parameters, UTM this, pixel that, okay? But none of that stuff made me any money!

You know what did? It’s putting offers in an attractive fashion, in front of a market, AKA a group of people with a common interest and the problem they’re willing to pay money to solve. And basically learning how to communicate through emails with those people, and how to make offers.

So, learning influence, learning copy, learning how to position an offer, how to make an offer, why one should use scarcity or not use scarcity, and a bunch of other stuff about persuasion, that’s what resulted in actual dollar bills hitting my bank account! It wasn’t technology!

[05:09]
In fact, what I came to realize, later on, was that technology or technology knowledge was kind of irrelevant, because you could find somebody for $5, $7, $10 an hour, who knows all that technology way better than you, works with it way better than you, and can do things way more exciting than anything you can do with that technology, but they will continue to be $10 an hour, kind of person.

While you have the ability to break the link between your time and your income, if you learn things such as persuasion, such as systems building, such as offer selection, such as picking markets or studying markets that are rabid and irrational when it comes to spending money. That’s what you need to learn! And that stuff has nothing to do with technology.

[06:06]

Technology can change and will change. The way we engage technology today is different from the way we did it 10 years ago, different from the way we’ve done it 20 years ago, and that’s different from the way it was done 30 years ago and so on.

There’s things such as the fax machine that we aren’t even using anymore. There’s now things like email and AI, there’s all kinds of stuff! And things will continue to evolve. And I’m pretty certain email ain’t going anywhere, email will continue to be a really good communication channel.

But, lots of technological components will become interchangeable, and what will really matter is persuasion, is the authority building, is the relationship building, is the communication skill sets that we use to communicate to our lists, that’s what’s going to matter, that’s what’s going to make a difference.

[07:06]
So, technology today is really distracting, and people end up wasting so much time playing with the technology because it’s fun to play with, because of all the exciting possibilities. But they never actually have these possibilities come to fruition. Because they’re stuck playing with the software. They don’t realize that the software is like a tool in the toolbox.

If you’re a handyman or if you’re a plumber, what makes you that? Is it because you have a wrench in your backpack? Is it because you have a hammer or something like that? No, it’s not the tool that makes you, it’s your knowledge of what to do with the tools, right? It’s your education, it’s your experience, right?

[08:04]
So, when it comes to building an online business, I think people spend way too much time with technology, way too much time, unwarranted, unjustified, just because they love playing with technology, and because playing with technology is actually a safe thing that keeps them busy and offers them an excuse, a really good excuse, not to put themselves out there, not to make offers to other people, not to build a list, not to drive traffic, not to take any risks, essentially.

You can say that you’re an internet marketer, if you’re playing with an email autoresponder for the last two weeks, because it’s part of the game, right? But it’s not the part that is going to make money on its own.

So, I look at technology as a tool, as a crutch, as a helpful device that can help me make more money or work less or both. But in itself, it has no value, unless it is applied in an environment where it can offer those things, where it can offer value. So, technology, be careful, don’t get carried away!

[09:30]
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 www.listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also remember to claim your free copy of my best selling book at www.igorsbook.com. It explains how I made millions with list buildings 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!