Growing Your Best Marketing Channel

How We're Growing This Newsletter On AutoPilot

The easiest way to grow a newsletter and how todo it.

A newsletter is still our (business operator's) most effective marketing tool.

We use them here (Hakune - 800 readers) at World Fitness (1,500 readers), K&J Growth (7,000 readers) and Rugby Bricks (30,000 readers) to educate, entertain and inform. Which drives immeasurable value for each of these ventures.

Even today, with our flooded inboxes, across our businesses, 30%+ of our readers open these every week, month, and year.

Obviously, the more readers you have, the more eyeballs you can bring to the outcomes you want to achieve.

So we've decided to test an email referral program here, and if it's successful, we will roll it out across the rest of our group.

To do this, we'll incentivise you, our reader, to tell more people about us with a newsletter referral program called SparkLoop.

Sparkloop automatically tracks how many people you have referred to our newsletter and rewards you each time you hit a milestone.

Tier 1 - Refer 2 People: A free 72-page digital e-book on how to

Build your business on LinkedIn. ($Unknown)

Tier 2 - Refer 10 People: A free hardcover copy of 'The obstacle is the way' or 'The 4 hour work week' ($35)

Tier 3 - Refer 20 People: A free website & copy audit from K&J Growth ($500)

Tier 4 - Refer 40 People: A 45 minute one on one with Rhys or me on how to scale your company ($1,000)

The trick here is to ensure the cost of your rewards doesn't outweigh the benefit of growing your readership base.

We haven't and don't intend to monetise this newsletter, so it's impossible to know what your readership is 'worth'. But taking industry-standard guidelines of ~ $3 per reader - we shouldn't 'spend' more than $3 per referral.

At Rugby Bricks, our readers are worth closer to $10 per year, so we can spend up to $10 per referral. At K&J, a single email can be worth $100,000.

Currently, this newsletter is getting 60 new readers a month, and we expect this referral program to increase our growth rate by another ~30%.

Notes: Referral programs only need to be built once. You can then leave them on autopilot - build once, compound forever.

Reinvest, Reinvest, Reinvest

How entrepreneurs make extraordinary sums of money by exercising self-control.

I expect the value of my stake in World Fitness to crack ~$1,000,000 by the end of 2024 - a 33.3x ROI on an initial $30,000 investment in 7 years.

How? A big part of it has been maximising my reinvestment into the business.

I didn't take a cent out of the gym for my first three years. And even now, my annual drawings won't exceed $40,000 until the end of next year.

Many owners mistakenly take money out of their business to buy shiny things like cars that continuously devalue. Even though there are opportunities to re-invest money into their businesses at 50 - 500%+ returns.

Who do you think is going to be better off long-term?

The guy that draws $10,000 to buy a car worth $5,700 after three years or the guy that re-invests $10,000, which turns into $33,750 (at 50% ROI) after three years.

We brought a vending machine for our gym at the start of this year. It cost us ~$9,000 to purchase, ship and set up. Nine months later, we're doing ~$500 in weekly sales at a ~50% profit margin. That's a $13,000 - 144% year-on-year return.

In three years, the machine will still be worth about $7,000 and will have produced $40,000 in profits.

The less you draw, the more you can re-invest, and the faster your business will grow (if done with a mild level of intelligence - buy vending machines).

Notes: Business growth and, by proxy, the compounding returns of your equity are highly correlated with your drawings.

INSIGHTS FROM OPERATORS

- Charlie Munger

The Enemy Of Our Fragile Little Minds

A look at our most excessive and expensive behaviour.

Without a doubt, we say dumb and do dumb stuff because of our self-perception, our egos.

Look around you, watch what people are doing and saying and take a moment to ponder why.

In any environment where there is an opportunity for humans to impress(sion) our idea of self on others, or worse, for that fragile idea of self to be tested by others - our behaviour tilts.

And not for the better.

Our focus on protecting that projection can make us blind to everything and everyone around us.

Presented facts become attacks.

Shared opinions become truths.

Our friends, at times, become enemies.

It's incredibly easy to see this in others if you take a moment to look, and paradoxically equally as challenging to see it in ourselves - at least without proper reflection.

When we act for our egos, without consideration of others nor the outcomes we're trying to achieve - we will do dumb stuff, period.

I've seen prosperous relationships sour over misspelt names in an email.

I've seen agreements fall apart because the other person would get more.

I've seen thousands wasted on lawyers - for the sake of winning.

Our egos make us greedy, selfish and arrogant. And without our concerted effort to notice, reflect on and adjust this behaviour, we will continue to piss good opportunities down the drain.

Notes: before you wreck yourself... Ice Cube