[64] Giving Customers What They (Really) Want w/ Robert Williams of Workshop
This is Bootstrap Web episode 64. This is the podcast for you, the founder, who learns by doing as you bootstrap your business online. And today, we've got Robert Williams on the show with us. Robert runs let'sworkshop.com and emails that win dot com, So we'll get into those and whatever else the conversation brings our way. Robert, thanks very much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Hey. Thanks. Thank you guys for having me on.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Robert, you know, great to have you here. I've been following your stuff for a while. And, actually, a couple weeks ago, you and I, joined another, mastermind group together. So, so that's been awesome to kinda, you know, hear what you've been up to in the last few weeks.
Brian Casel:And I've always just been really impressed with what you did with with the Let's Workshop. I think it's a a brilliant concept. It's so simple, and it provides so much value. So we're gonna kinda get the story behind that. And then just recently, a couple weeks ago, you launched a, a new book, Emails That Win.
Brian Casel:So we'll, we'll definitely hear all all about that as well. But, know, like, why don't we start off, you know, talking about about Let's Workshop? What what is that for those who aren't familiar with it?
Speaker 2:So real quick, it's basically a service where I send out the top, eight or nine leads every day, for freelance web designers and web developers. So when I say leads, mean like, basically people online looking for freelancers, whether it's a job board like Authentic Jobs or, you know, any of the other job boards or Hacker News or wherever they seem to be. I send out basically a link to that. So
Brian Casel:you're not just going to the job boards, you're actually going to places like Hacker News and like other other sources of of leads too?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like Twitter and, you know, Reddit, stuff like that where, anywhere I can kinda find people looking for a problem they need solved and looking to hire a freelancer. And I Yeah. And I try to include like email and a, you know, Twitter address, something where, freelancers who get the leads can kind of do a little bit of background like recon on on who they're emailing.
Brian Casel:That's cool. I actually didn't know that about the service. I thought it was kind of just straight job board listings, but it's actually a whole bunch of stuff which makes it even more valuable. I I can I can see that now? Very cool.
Brian Casel:So how did, or actually when did you actually launch Let's Workshop?
Speaker 2:It's It was November 2013, and I actually launched On launch day, I had one person sign up. So I sent them a list of leads just for them. It was actually Kurt Elster.
Jordan Gal:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Brian Casel:I know Kurt. Very cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And he he wrote me back like, holy shit. This is freaking awesome.
Jordan Gal:That's great.
Speaker 2:And it better be I just spent five hours writing email free.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And and before like getting into, you know, questions about the details or or these like, how you find them, just generally speaking, I just love how absolutely dead on the the supply demand you are. Like, this is exactly what people want above all other things. Proposal software, project management application, like all these things, the the thing that people want most and need most are just leads and a way to find them consistently. Because anyone can go on Reddit and spend a few hours in on Hacker News and find a few of these and email and be and and think feel good about themselves and say, okay.
Jordan Gal:I, you know, I did that, but they're not gonna do that every day. It's it's nearly impossible to keep that up. So I just love how perfectly this service nails exactly what people are looking for. How how did you how did you identify that as, you know, a really a burning need?
Speaker 2:Sure. So thanks. I appreciate that. I I think you're right on with what with what you're saying is like people don't they don't really they want proposal software or they want even lead generation, but it's not because they want the leads or or the proposals. They want to land the client, which is the result of the of the service.
Speaker 2:And when it comes to, like, how I came up with it, what I basically did was research in places like Hacker News and and Reddit and Twitter and stuff like that, where people were kind of complaining about different, different problems when like finding clients and running out of work and, dry spells. That's that's like a very common theme amongst freelancers. And then I combined that with, personal experience, which was, I saw I saw hacker, on hacker news and and and developers would constantly kind of throw around the same advice, which is like, oh, work can only come in through referrals and it can only feast or famine is just part of of freelancing. And I've personally knew that wasn't the case because I started a a consultancy from scratch just using, like, the leads I found online and I and emailing them. So what I basic and I also took a course, a product building course called 30 by 500, with Amy Hoyt that basically taught me how to turn those two things, the people the research of what people were saying and my personal experience and turn that into something I could sell.
Speaker 2:And it's funny you mentioned, like, like, job boards and and proposal software. That stuff to me felt like it was trying to get me to use the software, and it was trying to get me to use the job board. It was trying to get me to log in and stuff, as opposed to trying to get me to find a client or to find work. And so I I tried to zero in on that aspect of it as opposed to, you know, trying to get people to check use my awesome app that, you know, has these cool features or whatever.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So like really focusing on the end result and and the core challenge, pain point, but also the core like goal or destination that the person really
Speaker 2:Totally. And even, like, not getting in between the the client and the freelancer in any way, so I send instead of sending they kinda shaped my solution in a way, because instead of sending them to my job board or taking a percentage of whatever the project is, I just give the emails out and it's it's on the freelancer then to kind of contact them and and, you know, land the client.
Brian Casel:Yeah. You know, so I'm I'm kinda wondering, an outsider looking in, looking at this business or looking at your site, it's so simple and the concept is so straightforward, And it seems like it's the kind of idea that just just like that overnight just kind of comes to you. But I I'm I mean, I'm sure we all know that it was not like that at all. There were probably many iterations that I know, you know, there there's a heavy, like, research, process, you know, coming from, like, the 35 by 30 by 500, process and all that. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Brian Casel:Like, what did what did the research process look like? But really, as you got closer to the idea of what became Let's Workshop, like, what did the different, like, iterations kind of look like, and how did you go through that process?
Speaker 2:Okay. Like, iterations as far as, like, the actual service? Like, what came out of it? Or
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean or, like, how what was the idea for for Let's Workshop pretty apparent from you early on? Or did it take you different a lot of effort to, like, get to that point?
Speaker 2:So it it came from me wanting that, and so, like, me I I when I was freelancing, I knew that if I emailed clients, potential clients, would make more money than if I didn't. And so then, at a certain point, it just became a daily hassle to have to find the list of clients that I needed to email. And I tried like hiring a VA. I tried getting my girlfriend to do it. I tried like, you know, I tried outsourcing it a bit, but at the end of the day, I wanted basically to like clone myself to to focus just on this one task that I
Jordan Gal:had to do.
Speaker 2:Because as a freelancer, as a web designer, I knew what the great clients looked like better than anybody else, especially for me.
Jordan Gal:So you
Brian Casel:you can look at the the hundreds of potential freelance gigs that are out there on job boards and on Twitter and whatnot, And you just knew based based on the things that they're saying and and how they present themselves, right, these few are the good ones and the rest will throw out.
Speaker 2:Totally. And and the other thing too is when you talk about, like, the research, people weren't asking for, a newsletter like this or like a a my service. They were asking for other things. Like, I had to kinda read between the lines. Like, they would say, what's the best job board out there?
Speaker 2:Or like, you know, what's the best app for finding work? Or, you know, whatever. They they phrased it in ways where I had to kind of extract what they meant what they meant and what they actually needed as opposed to what they said they were wanting.
Jordan Gal:That can be tricky.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so, like, for me, the like, the answer to, like, what's the best job board? The answer to that, it it there is no answer. The the best job board is every job board, you know? Like, the the opportunities are gonna be spread out everywhere, so I think not falling into like the holes that they that you get try to get kind of placed into, even with people who are asking and like have these pains.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And it's not even the customer's fault really for not being able to articulate it. Right? Mean, from from an objective point of view, the the business proposition here is I would like to just pay for leads. I don't wanna do work for leads.
Jordan Gal:I just wanna pay for them. I will give you money if you give me leads, and then it'll be my problem to turn that into, you know, a lot more money than what I paid you for them. And if I can do that every day, then you have solved my lead generation problem. And if you could just put money toward it and get out a return, then that that works. That's a business.
Jordan Gal:Totally.
Brian Casel:And it sounds like you kinda solve the other half of that equation as well with with the new book, emails that I went. We'll get to that in a minute, but Right. That's which kinda I I guess the goal there is to help them be more successful when they are emailing those leads and and and just be more successful overall.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Totally. The like, the thing is I'm not, like, the first lead gen service or, like, I'm not gonna be the last. So making it not about so much about the leads that I send as opposed to making it more about the freelancers winning work and being better at winning work, is more important. Just making because then they're more likely to succeed with my my thing as opposed to any other lead gen service.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So, you know, it it also sounds like you really made the conscious decision to to build this product for people like yourself. I mean, you you were a a web designer. I mean, you are a web designer, but, how did you come to that decision to, like, kinda serve your your people rather than, I don't know, other other types of clients?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Jordan Gal:Was it like a solve your own itch thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, what we talked about a little bit was I had that that pain. I knew it very well. I felt like I could solve it better than, somebody else just because I had been freelancing for two or three years, and I was, tired of finding clients by myself. I wish I could outsource it.
Speaker 2:So, yeah. I mean I guess there was a there
Brian Casel:was like a problem and a customer base that's just so close to to you is like the first kind of the most logical next step is to look to your own people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and I had been, you know, as a as a web designer, as a freelancer, we do a lot of like content marketing, newsletters, you know, writing emails and stuff like that. And so I had Just by talking about design and about development, I had a list of like 200, 300 people who, I wrote to, which also kind of inspired me to make something for that group. Mhmm. So, yeah.
Speaker 2:Cool. It did it did come from with from within, like, my pains and stuff, but I definitely If I didn't have 300 people listening to me or who were freelance web designers and developers, I don't know if I would have been able to get it started. So I think having that probably helped also.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Very cool. And, you know, the other thing that that really pops out about this whole product is that it's it's really like a productized service. It it sounds like, at least for a while, you were the one, like, manually, you know, handpicking these leads and setting up the the newsletter every day. And, I mean, beyond that, it's not all that complex.
Brian Casel:Right? You're just using, like are you what are you using, like, Mailchimp or something for
Speaker 2:Yeah. Campaign Monitor.
Brian Casel:Campaign Monitor. So, I mean, just this whole concept of a productized service, were you, were you looking for that type of solution, or were you ever hesitant to build this? Like, think knowing that how how heavily it relies on, like, manual work? Did that ever kind of
Speaker 2:Well, so to be honest, I was like, I I wanted to buy this thing for like a day, and then I was like, I'm gonna make it. And then I thought, okay, and if if I'm gonna be able to do this, I need to make I think it was like 3,000 in the next thirty days or something with with Just with with Workshop, just with the service I'm creating. So I launched it like, I think on a Thursday, and I got a paying client the first a paying customer the first day. A few few days later, I had a few more, and then it kinda built up to where slowly on the on the thirtieth day, I had, $3,000 in recurring revenue. So so yeah, I mean, it definitely was a was a product where I I I saw I needed it.
Speaker 2:I kind of went really quickly in terms of like just getting something out there. The first version was It was a really crappy landing page, and and it didn't explain anything about what I was doing or anything, but I just had And I knew I could iterate on that stuff later. Getting people to sign up and pay for it was kind of my my first step, and and I think it it helped me in terms of knowing that there are people out there that are gonna be able to pay for it and wanna pay for it before I started worrying too much about the exact solution or how to sell it or anything like that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So, like, the so, like, the delivering of the service, sourcing the leads, making sure the email gets sent out every day, that's just a process that you are willing to just take on day in, day out in the beginning knowing that, like, if if this thing reaches, you know, 3,000 in revenue, then that's that's kind of a good problem to have, and then we can figure out how to streamline it later.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly.
Jordan Gal:Robert, can I ask you how long you've been in the entrepreneurial game and, you know, and not to couch that, without, like, giving context to it? Like, what I'm writing down from what we're talking about is is like a case study in doing things the right way. Right? And I usually, that doesn't happen from someone doing something like this for the first time.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? The so here's here's what I have. So domain expertise. Right? So you're scratching your own itch.
Jordan Gal:So you're you're reading between the lines to identify the actual end result instead of the in between, selling to an existing audience so that you have built in feedback and customers, starting manually and not worrying about automation, you're adding value on top of existing software so you don't have to build anything, the time to paying customers is minimal. Right? Like, all these things are, like, the way you should do this. And is the Is this your first, kind of thing entirely on your own or you've been doing this for
Speaker 2:for a while? This is this is my first like product type services. I did have I mean, I freelanced for a couple years before that. Freelance web design. But yeah, this is this is my first kind of service where it's kind of been productized.
Speaker 2:But it wasn't it wasn't like I think that stuff that you're mentioning I don't know if I if it was so deliberate as it it might seem. It was just kinda starting from starting from, like, the the core part of of, like, the first one you mentioned, which was, like, doing something for myself where I wanted to buy it, kinda led me to the rest of those steps.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I just think it's great for people to to kinda to hear about and and see. People get distracted by these other things and what they have to build and what they have to prepare before they launch and all these things they think they need to line up ahead of time before they can actually talk to real customers. And, this is just a great example of, you know, a lot a lot of those things being, you know, bad assumptions and hurdles that people put in their in their way when they they really shouldn't be.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And and I think what another thing people kinda run into is like, they they might do research or they might do customer research and but it's feedback that's coming in in a kind of controlled environment. So like, you you might ask them, hey, would you pay for for this? Or hey, what's your biggest whatever problem with, you know, whatever pain?
Speaker 2:And I think doing research like that is always gonna be it's it might hurt you more than it helps because as opposed to looking at somebody who doesn't know what what you're, doesn't know what you're looking for or whatever, they're more likely to give you honest feedback and and be, you know, honest because they they don't know that you're there kind of lurking, which is what I did like with like in hacker news and on forums, doing the research that way. It You're not kind of imposing onto them whatever your solution or your idea is, and asking for feedback that way.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, that's what I really like about from what I understand about the, you know, like, the 30 by 500 sales safari approach, right, is to kind of watch, watch your your audience or your customer base talk about the problem amongst themselves, like, in their own habitat or whatever rather than doing the the I guess, rather than relying on customer interviews and and I I too have never really put a lot of stock in in that whole question of, here's here's an idea. Would you pay for this?
Speaker 2:And Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like, when people ask that to me or even when I've tried to ask that of of potential customers for various products, I I always felt like no matter what they tell me to that question, I I can't really believe it even if it's yes or no. It it's just hard it it's it doesn't really mean a lot a lot. But I guess, the thing about customer interviews that I do like is not necessarily to to validate it completely, but to just really understand how is this thing going to fit into your daily workflow.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Totally.
Brian Casel:And, like, your and your big goals. Like and because there are probably a lot of nuances in there that I don't know about. I mean, like, for example, I was listening to an interview with, with Patrick McKenzie this week, where he was talking about appointment reminder. And when he originally launched that, he he launched it to, I think, like, hair salons and and customers like that. But then he he later learned that the cost of of hair salons missing an appointment and he did he did interview them about, like, would you buy this?
Brian Casel:And they said, yes. The cost of them missing an appointment was not very high. Like, they they're like, we don't care if people don't show up. But crafts tradesmen, you know, carpenters and electricians and whatnot, if their if their clients don't show up, they they lose a couple of hours of day, and and that's that cost them real money. And and he didn't really learn that until, I think, couple months or a year or two into the business, where he kind of learns those nuances of what how this thing actually fits into the to the larger picture.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And if if you like, you end up asking somebody, will you pay for this thing? And they say yes, like, the real question is, okay, then pay pay me for it. Like Right.
Speaker 2:Like, if they back out at that point, then you kinda know, hey, maybe maybe they won't pay for it since they're not paying me for it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And even that's like a little bit awkward. Right? Like, give me your money right now.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I don't know. The the more you get awkward, the the the more success you have when it comes to asking for money and asking for
Speaker 2:That's stuff
Brian Casel:I I Out of that comfort zone.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I was telling Brian today that we're we're in the process of thinking about changing our pricing for Cardhook. It looks like we're gonna do it. And today, I had the first conversation with someone to jump on board according to the new pricing. And I felt like I was back at the very beginning.
Jordan Gal:You know, I wasn't exactly sure to have position, and then it came out so awkward. And he he wasn't even sure if I was asking him for feedback on our pricing or if I was asking him to join for that amount. He it was it was very strange, but you you have to do it and and and get better at it.
Brian Casel:But Yep.
Jordan Gal:It's the only only way you get money. Gotta ask.
Brian Casel:So so, Robert, you you launched, Let's Workshop about, a year and a half ago. What what has happened since? Like, how how has the service evolved? How did you grow it? And what what does it kind of look like today, a year and a half later?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Pretend we're Andrew Warner on Mixergy and tell us the exact revenue figures per per minute. No. No. Obviously, just share share whatever you want.
Jordan Gal:But, yeah, how how's it going?
Speaker 2:The like yearly or the monthly revenues are in in 5 figures? That's Is that like over 10,000?
Dan Norris:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So so so it's I I've I've been like extremely happy and and even surprised at how quickly it's been able to grow. But I am so in in the year and a half since I started, there's been kind of two groups emerge as far as like my customer base. One of them has landed client after client and has provided me testimonials and made, you know, six figures from the leads I've sent out in in under a year or or, you know, whatever whatever time they've been subscribed. And that's that's great and everything, but there's also a group who hasn't landed a single client. They don't hear back from any of the emails they send out.
Speaker 2:And they've just like really struggled with finding, work through the service. And so what I ended up doing was I was basically like wondering why that was, and I and I emailed the people who were struggling and I told them, hey, you know, you're not hearing back from emails. Why don't you be like b c c me on the emails you're sending out to to the to the clients, and I can kinda give you feedback on on what you might be doing wrong. I remember when you were
Brian Casel:doing that. I think that's just such a brilliant idea to to like BCC you and have like someone kind of like looking over your shoulder. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:It's awesome. Yeah. Totally. And so what I noticed was just like the the amounts of crappy emails and and poor poorly written emails that were getting sent sent out was just like overwhelming. And and I ended up repeating myself like nonstop on on the feedback I gave them.
Speaker 2:It was just like the same core four or five issues that everybody was was kinda struggling with, which was like sending extremely long or extremely short emails, not offering anything compelling in the email, making the email all about themselves as opposed to the the person they're emailing. And so I basically ended up extracting like, you know, my the emails I was sending them with with advice and feedback on the emails they were sending, and and kinda compiling all that stuff into one kind of manual or whatever for writing the for writing an email from scratch.
Jordan Gal:That must be
Brian Casel:how how the book, Emails Out Win, you know, kind of evolved, right, or or the the beginning of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Toll totally.
Brian Casel:When
Speaker 2:And and it it I I didn't extract it until after I started seeing that that that there was results coming in. Like, once they changed their emails to be closer to what I was suggesting they do, they started hearing back like more often than not. And and one one Like, one case in particular, I had a had a girl in workshop named Stephanie. She was She she would send out like 50 or 60 emails a month and just not hear back constantly. And we worked together, and then she ended up sending an email out in like, in comparison to the email she was sending before working with me.
Speaker 2:She would send stuff like, hi, I'm I'm Stephanie. I'm a I'm a logo designer. I do branding. Let me know if there's a fit here. And what she ended up doing after we worked together was there was a client who came in who, I guess, had written a book, and she ended up buying the book, reading the book, and sending an email saying, hey, I I read your book.
Speaker 2:I really love this part in your book. And she quoted it, and then, you know, talked about why, how her work was gonna relate to to that part of the book and help him with whatever logo he was making or whatever, and she heard back like thirty minutes later. And so, was it was kind of like a bunch of little events like this that kind of I I started saying, you know, instead of me having to repeat this stuff all the time, I should just put it all in one, like, condensed manual that people can just read at their leisure, you know.
Brian Casel:I think that's awesome. I mean, I'm curious. So in that process, when you first started reaching out to customers of Workshop to say, hey. You know? Well, first of all, my my first question there is, like, how did you know who's being successful and who's not?
Brian Casel:Like, was it people kind of requesting a cancellation? Or, because you're not really tracking, like, what they do with the leads after you send them. So how how did you distinguish those two groups?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was people who were asking for cancellations, and then the other group was people who were email emailing me and was like, oh my god, never stop sending me leads. This is awesome. I just landed another client for $6,000 in a week or whatever. And then from 60,000.
Brian Casel:From there, were you look basically just looking to like reduce churn and just improve the service itself, and that was the reason for kinda starting this this this project?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was the churn. And the other thing too is, I don't think it's it's like, it's like people don't automatically know how to write emails. I don't think it's like something we're taught very much in school. It's not and and and yet, it's also it's like such a big part of our lives now, and such a big, like, determinant of how well we do in business.
Speaker 2:And it kinda goes like behind the scenes. It all kinda happens. We think it's like nobody sees our email, they don't matter as much as maybe our website copy or whatever. When it I think a lot of times, especially for freelancers, they it matters more because
Brian Casel:It's so true.
Speaker 2:You're Yeah. You're emailing clients and you're telling them to go to your website, but if the email isn't isn't good, they're they're not gonna ever see your website, so
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And the relationship is more important than than the website anyway. Yeah. You if you trust someone and you get along with them and you you hit it off and you see eye to eye, like, the the person could never look at your website and and sign up as a client. It's just it's not nearly as important as the actual connection in that email. It's the first the first touch point.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And it it truly is amazing how many freelancers and these are web workers, people who work on the web who just write these emails that are just, like, mind boggling when you read them. I mean, we you know, we've all received, like, the cold email from the SEO, you know, agency who can increase your rankings by tomorrow. But even, you know, the really, really solid and and even, reputable freelancers, designers, developers are still sending emails that are, like you said, just either, like, six paragraphs long or, you know, just, like, incoherent, poor grammar, and and all this stuff.
Speaker 2:It's it's kinda crazy. They just list, like, a 20 Yeah. Bullet paragraph of like p I do PHP, I do Joomla, I do Right. Rails.
Brian Casel:And here It's just Here here are my most recent WordPress sites and there's like 25 links,
Speaker 2:you know. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's it's tough. It's one of these curse of knowledge things where, you know, I recently hired a a sales guy and when I when I first hired him, I told him about about Cardhook, about the product, about what it does and all that. And at some point, he was like, I don't wanna know anymore. And I didn't understand. Was like, don't you need to know everything?
Jordan Gal:And he said, actually, it's easier to sell when you don't know everything because you just focus on the big stuff and the benefits, and the other stuff creates that you don't know creates questions, and that starts the sales process. So when you have a freelancer trying to convey what what they have in their mind internally, it's like it's very hard to limit that to just a few senses that relate to what the client is looking for in their situation instead of just, but I wanna tell them about all this other stuff that I do and have done and, yeah. You can you can forgive them. It's just that once you know, then it's no longer forgivable.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. So I mean, Robert, like what are the, what are some of like the like the best tips or best practices or the most common mistakes that you're seeing with, with emails?
Speaker 2:I think the biggest thing is so it kinda ties back to what Jordan just said. Everybody when you're writing an email to a client, it's like a blank slate. Right? And you're kind of, it's intimidating us, like even if you're writing any anything, just seeing a blank screen is gonna like, intimidate you into kinda creating like a a big brain dump of of everything you're thinking, and there's no real strategy behind that. Instead, I think you should throw out most of what you think you need to write just out the window completely.
Speaker 2:Like, people think they have to exhibit expertise or they have to make a connection or they have to, show all their skills, you know, past work, all this stuff they think that is gonna help them. At the end of the day, those are not gonna help you get a reply. What's gonna help you get a reply is making the the email easy to reply to. And starting from from that perspective where your goal is, okay, I need to write this email to get a reply as opposed to, okay, I have to write this email to exhibit my expertise and tell them everything about myself. It's probably the the quickest thing you can do to just change, the response rates you're getting.
Speaker 2:And and yeah. Were were you gonna say something?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, it's like you said, it's the end goal is just to, a, get them to open the email, and b, get them to reply. And it's and if you go into it knowing that, rather than having the end goal be, I wanna land this contract today after this email is done, that's just not gonna happen. They in order to get that contract, you have to get on into a conversation first. And the way to get there is to get them to reply to your email.
Brian Casel:So optimize everything about your email just to get the reply.
Jordan Gal:Totally. Right. It's very much a sales funnel. And if you if it's a relatively complex sale, it's not a $5 item at a at a at a deli. If it's gonna take multiple steps, then the goal is just the next step.
Jordan Gal:And if you focus on that and look at it that way, it's just it's a lot easier anyway. It's really hard to get hired off of one email. It's not that hard to get a a response or to get onto the phone or just to get to that next step in your process.
Brian Casel:Are there any kind of How how do you recommend like that that very first line? That the intro to an email. Like how do you just Like what's the best practice there? That seems like a very important first first impression kind of thing.
Speaker 2:The the thing I I like to to Like, the
Jordan Gal:the
Speaker 2:mindset I like to go into it with is like, when you're checking your email, you The first thing you think is like, is this spam? And, you know, can I delete this? Can I get this out of my life immediately? And so, that's the first thing I think anybody should who's writing an email should mention is like, something personal, something that could not be sent to anybody else except for me. So like I mentioned earlier with Stephanie, she wrote a quote from a book that the person had written.
Speaker 2:But other ways to do that is like, just even if it's like something specific to like, you don't have to say, I I I just saw your job post here and blah blah blah. You Instead, you can say something like, hey, I noticed you're looking for this. The benefit of that is, you know, whatever, and this is why you should you should do that. Right? And and and always leading with, you know, dear Robert or hello Robert or or, you know, the actual first name as opposed to sir slash madam or whatever
Dan Norris:it is.
Brian Casel:Dear hiring manager.
Speaker 2:Yes. And that that goes the same for like subject lines too. If you can make it clear that it's not spam because it's just so tuned in to like me and what I'm care about, then you're gonna get you the email's at least gonna get opened and it's probably gonna get replied to. Like, if somebody emailed me today and was like, hey, Robert. I heard you need help with finding leads.
Speaker 2:You know, that's gonna be 10 times more likely for me to open a reply than somebody who says, I'm a freelancer in their subject, you know.
Brian Casel:Right.
Jordan Gal:I like flattery. That's that's my first line. If I were emailing you, I'd say, hey, Robert. Heard you on Bootstrap Web and loved your interview. Now I'm gonna ask you for what I want.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I do the same thing. I love what you've done with xyz.com. I was wondering what you do for abandoned carts. You know, anything to stroke the ego and to show that you did a little bit of research on, hey.
Jordan Gal:Congrats on that, you know, community award for your x firm, and then to get into it. I I that's what I like. It's the first line.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I guess the other thing to keep in mind is that when you're previewing in Gmail, I think the same is true on on, like, iPhone and most email clients. You're you're gonna see the subject plus a few words from the message. Right. Right.
Brian Casel:Right. You know, in that, like, lighter gray text or whatever. And and that that should also be, like that should help to increase the open rate. It's something relevant there. You know?
Speaker 2:Right. Because I think we're all pretty good nowadays at at knowing that there's that there's spam there, you know, that, you can you can sniff out like a an email that's been, written for thousands of people pretty easily.
Brian Casel:Yep. Cool. So, so, I mean, tell us about the book, like the launch of the book and how that went. Sure. It's been just a couple weeks now, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's been a week and a half. I think I launched I think I I I shared this with the mastermind, like, thousand was my launch window or whatever. What's I gonna say? Oh, the Yeah.
Speaker 2:I I don't know. I I forgot what was gonna say about the earlier thing, but the book has been going good. I'm I'm still working on a few other things that that like in the packages that's gonna be released out soon to everybody else. There's a a freelance, like, strategy sessions I'm putting together, which is I've done like four or five no, actually, it's like eight or nine interviews with like Nick DiZobato, Kurt Alster, like these people who are kind of building their consultancy in in really cool ways. And what I ended up doing was, I took all these interviews and instead of grouping them by by the person, like Nick Nick all of Nick Disabato's in one file, I extracted the the topics.
Speaker 2:So like, if Kurt talks about productized consulting, and then and then Nick talked about productized consulting also, I grouped that stuff all together. So, like, it's gonna be an add on to the to the to the book where you can kind of go go through it and listen to whatever you're specifically struggling with from all these top consultants.
Brian Casel:That's really cool.
Speaker 2:And that that'll be coming out later this month.
Brian Casel:So those are like prepackaged audio interviews, but they're grouped to get like, are you editing them together? It's like one Yeah. Like one string of of like Kurt talking about this and then Nick Desibato on that same topic.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Totally like Basically like a round table discussion.
Brian Casel:Nice.
Speaker 2:And then the other thing too is is there's a package that you can get workshop A workshop subscription at at kind of a reduced rate if you buy the if you buy the book. And that's, I think, pretty cool because once you learn how to write the emails because the book is basically it you know, it's chronologically ordered, so it's like how to start writing an email is at the beginning and how to close your emails at the end. Once you have that kind of in place and you read the book and you and you know how to send the emails, then it's just a matter of like a numbers game of like contacting people. So if you've if you've gotten that that package, you can kind of then just basically turn on a stream of, you know, constant revenue that's coming in as a as a as a freelancer.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. They they feed into each other very nicely. If if you start the workshop and then wanna get better at emails, there's the book. And if you start off with the book and say, now I'm ready for more volume, it can it can go the other way.
Speaker 2:It's Totally. And if if you're building like a another business like a productized business or something else where you're where, you know, you need kind of a buffer of like time and but you still need that that revenue to support you like from freelancing or consulting. This is like, it's a way to cut down dramatically the amount of time it takes to not only find clients, but also to write them emails and to get them your foot in the door with a bunch of different people.
Brian Casel:Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I I think it's fantastic the way that the two products work together, that that they're solving two very related problems. You know? I I think it's just awesome.
Brian Casel:So what what's what's up what's up next for for you, Robert? Like, how do you see this kind of progressing over the next year or two, and and what are gonna be working on? Just kinda growing these things or other kind of big ideas to add into the mix here or what?
Speaker 2:I definitely wanna make make the leads that are coming in, you know, higher quality and and keep building that up so that if you join workshop, you know you're gonna start landing work. I definitely need to improve because the leads I'm finding right now are from all over the place, Authentic Job, like I mentioned earlier. And what I wanna do is I wanna invest in in getting better leads coming in solely through workshop, finding out about workshop and coming in directly to the people on the list. I'm actually interested in in in in productized consulting a lot, so I'm looking at your course and stuff about how, you know, how can can Workshop help freelancers get started with productized consulting and offer packages that maybe deliver productized clients to them like like I'm doing with the leads currently, but maybe in a little bit more structured way or with with some more scope scoping and pricing added to the mix, so it's a little easier to get the conversation going about pricing and stuff.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:But that's kind of stuff that's in the works. I've been talking about it with current members and stuff like that.
Brian Casel:Nice. Cool. Well, I think that's, about all we had here on on the doc. But, Robert, this this has been awesome. You know, I mean, I I'm sure the, the audience is getting a lot from this.
Brian Casel:I know I know I learned a lot here for sure. So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I I think it's awesome what you've done so far, and I I think there's there's a lot a lot of different places you can go with it and grow it and add value and and raise prices based on how much value you're giving. Yeah. I think there's opportunity, you know, for a course type thing that helps people hold their hand even more. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:I just think if you have if you're nailing the demand properly, if you're giving people what's really, really important to them makes a big impact on their business, you you just have you have a lot of options. You can Totally. Yeah. You can expand. You can raise prices.
Jordan Gal:You can work with different people. You can move over to productized. Yeah. And just I I have to mention, I can't help but notice the copywriting on let'sworkshop.com. Is that is that following a particular structure, something that you can, like, guide, listeners toward?
Jordan Gal:Because I I see it feels familiar in some ways, and it's also I mean, it's it's real copywriting. Like, I just read all the headlines, and I got all the gist by just reading the headlines. So clearly, you put work into the page. Can can you talk to the the copywriting in general on on that page?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So as a web designer, I pretty early got into copywriting and and I got into a lot of the basics and like, I don't know if you've heard of like David Ogilvy, some of the older like advertising people. The and the reason was, I saw that, like, most of my time was spent working on copy and designing copy. And at the end of the day, I was I was seeing that the most important part of my design was what it actually said, not how it looked, not anything like that. And so one big I took I took a couple courses.
Speaker 2:I took the 30 by 500 course that we talked about, which gives you kind of like the outline for how to write, where to start, where to what what's in the middle, which is is called a PDF format. So it's pain, dream, fix.
Dan Norris:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So if you look at my sales pages, you'll see that I start off with a pain, then I go into a dream, the dream world. Mhmm. And then my fix eventually, whatever my product is. And then the other thing I I did early on also was I took a a course by Joanne Wiebe from co Joanna Wiebe from Copy Hackers. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:She has a copywriting course that I took also. And I think those those two things really really helped me. It just gave me the structure for writing copies. And they At the end of the day, they both kinda talked about the same ideas, was researching people, using their words instead of trying to come up with your brilliant copy, and just kind of reflecting their words back to them. Because at the end of the day, that you know, something I said myself is gonna help is gonna convince me more than something you think I want.
Speaker 2:So so yeah, something I said I want is is is more powerful to me. And and that's basically the psychology behind it.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I thought it was I thought it was worth mentioning.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Very cool.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. You see it lacking on a lot of sites. And at let'sworkshop.com, I think it's done really well. I think it's worth people taking a look at.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, I've seen that in in your work here. It's it's it's really focused on on the text. And there is a lot of text, but it doesn't feel overwhelming. And it does kind of, like, pull you in with with the headlines and and just really compelling, you know, overall.
Brian Casel:So, yeah, really, really nice work there. And
Speaker 2:Shoot that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So, yeah. So I guess we should kinda wrap it up here.
Jordan Gal:Excellent. Thanks for coming on, Robert. It's really, interesting kinda case study look at. I wish you luck with it and, you know, just keep keep growing and I'd love to keep updated on on how things go.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Definitely. I'll I'll I'll definitely be, listening to more podcasts and and bootstrapped web and everything, keeping up with what you guys are are working on. And and Brian, the mastermind and everything.
Brian Casel:Yep. Of course.
Speaker 2:Talk to you on Wednesday.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yep. And so, you know, folks can check out let'sworkshop.com, emails@win.com. Where can people kinda reach out to you and and connect with you?
Speaker 2:If they have any questions, you can just email me, robert, @let'sworkshop.com. And then on Twitter, I'm at let's workshop.
Brian Casel:Easy enough. Alright, Robert. Well, yeah. I'll talk to you soon. Alright.
Brian Casel:Take care. Alright. Take care, guys.
Jordan Gal:Cheers, gents.
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