The Principles That Actually Build a Million-Dollar Email List

Chasing new tactics, tools and techniques often keeps people stuck. The real breakthroughs come from mastering principles, saying no more often and doubling down on what already works.

[0:15]
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.

[1:03]
Intuitively at one point, I shifted from being somebody who just tried to learn new things all the time, pretty much any free moment I had, I was trying to learn something new.

That meant I was either watching a webinar or going through a course or reading about something or grabbing a book. I basically got to a point where I felt guilty not learning. I felt guilty not consuming your information.

But then, at some point, a few years into my journey, I realized that I only move ahead when I’m creating something, not when I’m consuming.

And I’ve also noticed that I’m not learning anything new per se, it’s just I’m relearning the same things with a different wrapper or from a different angle. So, it led me to conclude that maybe I’ve learned most of it.

[2:03]
And then, in addition to that, I’ve learned just through experience that not every new tactic, technique or method is actually a good thing.

And so, all of a sudden I’m learning to say no, I’m learning to say no more often. I’m learning to say no to new techniques, new methods. I used to chase methods, “Oh, is this going to give me a conversion bump of three percent? I’m in”.

I realize it’s just a lot of the stuff that I was trying to do all the new stuff, it didn’t necessarily translate into big results for me.

And the more I’ve been in the game, and the older I’ve gotten, the more allergic I started to become to more for the sake of more, and getting more for more.

Because, at some point, I realized there are only so many hours in the week that I’m willing to work, and there’s only so much I’m willing to do, and there’s only so much money I really need, ok? So, it made no sense to go kill myself and keep learning new things and trying new things just because they’re new.

[3:11]
And so, I started by toning it down, I started saying “no more” often. At one point, I went for a good year without reading any new books.

So on a typical year, I would try to read 50 books or so, on a good year, it’s going to be closer to 60, on a bad year, it’s going to be close to 35.

But like I’m trying to average out around 50, but there was a point in time, a few years back, when I just didn’t read anything for the whole year.

And I just figured I’m just going to do stuff, I’m going ensure that whatever is working, I’m going to double down on that, I’m going to try doing more rather than reading more. And it was a nice detox for a little while.

[3:56]
And so, after I came back from the detox, I started instead of learning new things, I started relearning things that worked.

So, for example, instead of chasing new books to read, which is -don’t get me wrong- you should read new stuff, but we often try to plow through so much new stuff that we don’t really truly learn the lessons.

For example, many marketing lessons that I learned from books and mentors only really clicked after my 50th marketing campaign, after my 15th product launch, and even then I kept making mistakes.

So I figured, you know what, maybe I need to relearn things as well, maybe I need to repeat some stuff, maybe I need to double down on what’s working.

And so, I started doing more of that and I started limiting -maybe unconsciously, I don’t know- but started limiting the amount of new information.

And what’s funny is that, even though I wasn’t seeking novelty, it would find me still, either by landing in my inbox or on social media in some way, or a friend would be telling, or a business partner would tell me things like, “oh, we got to try this, we got to try that”.

And I would fight them, every step of the way, “No, we don’t need to try that, the system is not broken, we don’t need to fix it”.

And so, I became quite biased against new things, because the more you do, the more you’re in business, the more you study different industries, the more you connect with people and masterminds in other businesses, you realize that there are very few truly new things, for the most part, it’s all the same principles that work.

[5:36]
And so, this whole idea of principles versus tactics is a very powerful idea. I don’t know if I ever talked about it.

Because the vast majority of people chase tactics, but in their chase for tactics, they ignore principles. But it’s the principles that make the tactics work.

I’ll give you a great example. So, the principles to persuasion are still exactly the same as they were 50 years ago, even 100 years ago. But the tactic, in other words, a media, for example, or a channel, a marketing channel is being used, that stuff’s changing.

So, 100 years ago, you used to get a printed piece in the mail, or you had someone knock on your door, then they developed radio, all of a sudden, you put ads on the radio, then TV, all of a sudden ads on TV, then direct mail, right? You get packages in the mail, envelopes in the mail.

Then, some time passes, emails created, all of a sudden email is the marketing channel, then social media shows up, then now, we’re marketing social media.

Now, the principles to the marketing part of it didn’t change, because human nature doesn’t change. But the tool that we use to deliver those messages changed.

So, as long as I know and master the principles of persuasion and the principles of marketing, I don’t need to worry about the techniques, because the techniques will sort themselves out.

So, with that philosophy, principles over tactics, all of a sudden, you shift your focus from trying to learn the next big piece of software, or the next great AI tool, to the principles that govern your thinking and govern your actions, where the tool is just a tool, okay?

[7:33]
Now, every now and again, of course, groundbreaking tools, groundbreaking techniques do show up. For example, with the invention of AI, a tool like Manus, if you’ve been on the masterclass with Harlan Kilstein, last week, you’ve probably seen it, it’s quite amazing.

Basically, in just an hour, he built an entirely new affiliate business, from scratch, with that tool, right? He started with zero and ended up with a website, all the images, all the ads, an affiliate program, everything.

I mean, that’s groundbreaking stuff, yes? Yes. But, he still had to know the principles of what makes an affiliate business. He still had to understand, like Harlan, right? He still had to understand that he needed an offer, how to research the market, as well. He had to understand the big picture.

So, the principles guided every command that he was giving to Manus to build out everything technically.

I just lean towards principles as much as I can. If some things work, I do double down on it and try to go deeper into it as well.

So, in other words, if I know that list segmentation works, and there’s a layer of segmenting buyers versus non-buyers, then I’ll explore in what way could I further segment my list, so I can go deeper into that.

If I know that webinars work, then I’ll explore how I can further go deeper into the webinar campaign and develop it further: what can I add? What can I remove? How can I time it better? Etc, etc, etc.

[9:31]
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 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!