← Growth In Reverse: Newsletter & Email Growth
Growth In Reverse: Newsletter & Email Growth
How He Turned a Free Google Doc into $1.2M + 18,000 Newsletter Subscribers
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- [00:00]
Ali Richards
People with big successful businesses in the creative economy, they don't tell you how their business works. I was desperate to see people with other businesses like mine and to understand how exactly they worked on the inside, but no one would ever talk about it. Whoever has the audience can do whatever they want. The real cheat code for us as business owners is brand. The world doesn't need another online business guru.
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Host
It's a beast of a Google Doc.
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Ali Richards
But the Google Doc itself did a very important thing, which was.
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Host
Today on the show, we have Oli Richard. Now, Ali started off as a broke jazz musician until the age of about 28. He then got a real job, but realized quickly this wasn't for him either. So he started teaching people how to essentially learn a new language through his blog as a side hustle. That eventually turned into a very successful blog and business called StoryLearning, which has done over $10 million in sales. And now he's pivoted into a personal brand of sorts, which is kind of where we want to take most of this discussion. But, Ali, welcome to the show. We're excited to have you here and talk through all.
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Ali Richards
It's, it's, it's always, always fun to chat. So I can't wait.
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Host
Amazing, Amazing. So we actually covered your Google Doc a few times in the Growth in Reverse newsletter. This was something that kind of went viral in the creator space. And I don't know, do you want to give a background of, like, how that started for you, like, where that idea came from?
- [01:24]
Ali Richards
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, as you said, I started storylearning over 12 years ago now, and when I was 10 years in. So about two years ago, two and a half years ago from when we're recording this, I just kind of started to feel it's time, that it's time for the next chapter. And I wanted to do something a bit different. And when I asked myself, you know, what, where is my career capital, as Cal Newport would call it, you know, where do I have real value in what I. Who I am and what I've done? And more and more, it was just becoming apparent to me that it was my experience with business, with online business that really valuable to people because I just kept getting first friends and then other random people just coming and asking for, for advice on things. So I thought, well, okay, I'm going to move into this space and, you know, the world doesn't need another online business guru, so what am I going to do differently? How do I avoid becoming like literally everyone else? And I Thought to myself, well what have I actually done? What have I got? What's, what do I got that other people don't? And it's the answer was the business. It was storyline. I have this multimillion dollar business that I only work a few days a month in and that is for most people, like a really good thing to aim for. Most people will be quite, quite happy to have that as a goal, as an aim. So I thought well, why don't I just go full disclosure and just write about how the whole business works? Because I remember when I was just getting started, I was desperate to see other people, people with other businesses like mine and to understand how exactly they worked on the inside. But no one would ever talk about it. You know, you always had the gurus who were, you know, teaching various launch formulas and things. But I wanted to see how other people's businesses work. So you know, I just, I just went kind of full on into full on sharing mode and just wrote 118 pages on exactly how my business works. And I think it was, it was that kind of, that, that, that depth and scale and kind of openness which people seem to really, really appreciate. And that's what kind of contributed to it getting shared around in lots of different places.
- [03:19]
Host
Yeah, it's a, it's a beast of a Google Doc, let me tell you. This thing is like full on do. So when we first covered it, this was back In September of 2024, it had gotten you about 12 and a half thousand subscribers, made around 175k at that point. And then more recently with this 30 days of growth challenge, we re kind of shared that. And now you said you made 1.2 million from this Google Doc and about 18,000 subscribers. Can you break down like how that works on the back end? How do you go from free 150 or so page Google Doc to $1.2 million?
- [03:56]
Ali Richards
I mean the Google Doc itself is just marketing, right? So the reason it's a Google Doc rather than a PDF or a webinar is simply because the kind of people that I'm aiming at, which are established business owners, they've seen it all before. They know when they're being marketed to. They just want the information. They don't want the glass and the packaging. So I thought well let's just write it in a, in a Google, in a plain Google Doc. Words on the page, you live or die based on, on the words on the page essentially. So that was just my particular angle. But you know, it could Have. I could have done it equally with a YouTube channel or a blog or a podcast or handing out flyers door to door. You know, there's many different ways to grow an audience. And I got the traffic. I mean, I wrote the Google Doc and a lot of my list growth came from the virality of the doc. That's true, but it was fueled by buying ads. So I bought, I bought ads in lots of other people's newsletters. I ran some Facebook ads, I started the YouTube channel. So the traffic came from lots of different places. But the Google Doc itself did a very important thing, which was establish me as, you know, someone who knows what they're talking about. And that was the goal of the, of the Google Doc. And then, so I, quite quickly after I published it, got people reaching out to me, asking for. And I think the reason that this happened so organically was because I didn't advertise this at all. It was just people emailing me. And I think the reason it happened was because it's very difficult to find people in this particular space. I don't really, I don't consider myself a creator. I'm not a creator. But the creator economy is a kind of useful. It's a useful example, I think, which is that, you know, people with big successful businesses in the creative economy, they don't tell you how their business works. Like, they might tell you about one product they've got, but they don't show you actually, how does the email marketing work? How does the product ecosystem work? They don't go into that level of detail, typically because their audience is not business people. And so their audience doesn't want them to start talking about business. So I think because I got my positioning on point and I managed to attract the right audience, people naturally started reaching out to me for, for, for coaching. And at first I didn't even want to do it because I'd never really done it before. But. But more and more, I kind of got to the point where there were so many people that wanted help. And, and I was, I was writing my newsletter, after all, to help people. So it seemed like a logical step. So I started off by taking a few people as mentees. I mean, I call it what I do. I call it more mentorship than coaching because, you know, coaching is typically. You don't have to be the master to be the coach. You know, like whoever coaches. Serena Williams wouldn't beat her at a tennis match. Right, but they're a good coach, whereas a mentor is someone who has actually done it before been down that path and can actually say to you directly look, here's what I think you should do. If I were you, I would do ABC very, very directly based on experience. The first kind of 100k or so came from people just reaching out and me eventually saying yes. Once that became established I started to raise my prices on that a little bit. I made it clear in my emails and on my website that I offered that mentorship. And so I started to get more people applying and, and you know, over the course of the last two years there have been people of ranging from relatively, you know, modest sized businesses through to, you know, some of the biggest creators out there who, who I've worked with in various different ways. So the, the largest revenue stream has come from that mentorship. But then I also started to introduce more leverage things. So I, I wanted, I wanted ways that people who couldn't afford the mentorship could work with me. So I opened a, I ran a Mastermind event in a castle in the UK which was super fun. We had cocktails by the fire and it was a legitimate castle surrounded by golf by golf course. It was quite interesting. That was a one off event. So then I thought well I want to do more of this because this is fun. So then I started an annual Mastermind which is just eight people, it's quite small but you sign up for the year. It was a bit more expensive. So that added a new, a new revenue stream as well. And then I started, I started making some, some, some digital workshops and courses to kind of standardize the, the various different ways I was helping people and that provided the revenue source as well. So I'd say overall it's probably about, you know, 60% mentorship, 20% things and another 20% digital products.
- [07:43]
Host
That's interesting. So you, you kind of hinted at, you didn't, you didn't want to start with coaching or do coaching when you wrote this Google Doc. I'm curious, like what, what did you envision it looking like?
- [07:53]
Ali Richards
Yeah, I mean so to be clear, I did eventually want to take the business into that area and to work as to help entrepreneurs in some way. I just didn't expect it to happen so quickly. Got it. So you know, when I grew storylearning it was, it took us until we were at the seven figure mark. It was like, you know, good five, six years. I really like building audience slowly and building audience. Well, good things take time and I wasn't in a rush because I have my other businesses so I didn't need a new revenue stream. I kind of went into it with the attitude of, well, I'll just, I'll build the audience. Because my strongest belief in the Internet world is that audience is supreme in terms of value. Whoever has the audience can do whatever they want. So an investment of money and time in building that audience. I knew without a doubt that if I did, if I did nothing with it for three to five years, I'd have a seven figure business sort of ready and waiting the time that I chose to monetize it. And so that for me was a great investment. It just, it just happened a lot quicker than I thought. So when people first started asking to work with me, I, I think there was a bit of imposter syndrome as well, to be honest, because I was like, okay, well I haven't done this before. You know, I haven't charged people for help before. Feels a bit weird. I'm not sure, maybe it's just easier to wait. So there's a bit of that as well. But yeah, I just didn't expect it to happen so quickly.
- [09:05]
Host
That makes sense.
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Co-Host
As, as it is now, the Google Doc is still kind of doing its thing. It's on your landing page for your, your olliewrichards Co website, but you're also writing a newsletter that, that kind of leads into. So can you talk to us a little bit about. Because our audience is primarily people who write and operate newsletters. Just talk to us about maybe your philosophy or just how you've come up with the newsletter, the content. This is kind of a loaded question, but I guess your general, the way you operate your newsletter and what you mean to get, or your main goal out of writing it and maybe just like how frequently you send it some of that information so we can kind of get a feel on your newsletter philosophy.
- [09:41]
Ali Richards
It's very interesting. Actually. I had a conversation about this, about exactly this earlier on today with a friend who is starting a new business and writes a kind of editorial newsletter. You know, it's kind of a bunch of links, his latest podcast, you know, quote that, that, that kind of thing that you see a lot of newsletters doing, that kind of thing. And, and that can be fantastic. When we were talking about, you know, his positioning and what he was trying to achieve, you know, he, he said very clearly, like, I want to be the rebel in my space. I want to be the person who's like tearing up the rule book, positioning myself against all the big players with, you know, a real, with a hot take on everything and a unique point of view. And so I asked him, like the person who wants to be seen like that, do they write out, do they, do they send an editorial newsletter with links and, and quotes and, and their latest podcast episode? Is that what they send? Does that person send that? And he said, no, that put that person, that person sends like just stream of consciousness, whatever's on my mind. I'm going to write a quick email and fire it off because that's what I've been thinking about today. And I just, I want you guys to know this and it might be incoherent, but this is just coming from my desk and this is me. And I agree with him completely and said, yeah, I think that's exactly what you should do because that is in alignment with your positioning and the Persona that you are. Well, the Persona that you genuinely are, but also the Persona you want to get across online. And I very much take that approach with my newsletter. So I see it as email. Much like audience is king in terms of the value of the business. Email is king in terms of communication. I mean there's nothing like it's. And I've always taken the approach of trying to be that trusted friend in the inbox. And what does your friend do? They don't, they don't, they don't send an email saying, hey, I hope you're doing well today. Here are three things I wanted to say. No, they just, there's like a one liner or something. That's what a friend would, would write. And, and I want people to. The relationship I want to have. I'm trying to create a two way relationship with, with my audience whereby they feel that I'm responding to them and if they email me back, like that has some kind of influence. There's a conversation that they're getting raw thoughts from me that are not wrapped in marketing speak or pimped up for consumption. I try to really adopt that. And you know, I can, I can send, I can send short emails with like two sentences in or like massive long essays. It really is just kind of whatever I see, whatever comes out of my, whatever trends I see, whatever I feel like talking about. But I try to keep it very, very casual, very, very raw.
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Co-Host
And you're sending it this raw casual email as a friend. Are you sending that weekly? Are you on a set cadence daily? How often are you publishing?
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Ali Richards
I mean, I aim for three to five a week. I would send daily if I, if I, I mean, ideally I'd be sending daily at least Monday to Friday. And I do from time to time. If I'm, if I'm. You know, I wrote a series recently called How a Seven Figure Business Dies. And it was like a six or seven part. It's actually a lot more interesting than it sound. It sounds really depressing, but it was actually quite interesting.
- [12:35]
Host
No, it's, it's definitely interesting.
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Ali Richards
Um, but I send that every day because it's like it ends on a cliffhanger, right? And I'm trying to get. I'm trying to want people to come back. Like a, Like a Netflix show. You know, people binge three Netflix shows a day, every day now. Why wouldn't they read an email? As long as it's interesting? But I, yeah, I go for like three to five a week.
- [12:52]
Host
That's super interesting. So are you. Have you always done three to five a week with this personal brand list email list?
- [12:57]
Ali Richards
No, actually, not. So for the first, the first six to 12 months, actually maybe even 12 months, I actually sent one a week. And I took the approach of having one really long, like, essay almost on one particular topic, and it could be like 2,3000 words, and I would write it and I would spend hours and hours editing and I wanted to be perfect. I think that was mostly. I think I was almost a bit overly impacted by the gravity of my case study, actually. It was such a big document. I thought, well, I want everything to. My. Everything I send to be equally, you know, impressive and grand. And. But I, I had a sort of. I had to sort of check myself after. After six, 12 months or so. And, and I just reminded myself that the, the. There is a strong undeniable correlation in any online business between the number of emails you send and the amount of money you make. That is across the board. And, you know, for so many businesses who have an email list and have something to sell, if the only thing you do is send more emails, I guarantee you 100% you'll make more money immediately. And, and I just kind of had a reality check with that. What am I doing? I'm spending like 5, 10 hours writing these massive essays. But actually what matters with email and with relation with online relationships is frequency and consistency. So I think I'm going to be much better off just. Just going completely the other way, making it very casual, very stream of consciousness, very very raw, but sending more of it. And yeah, it was, I mean, you know, almost immediately since I started doing that, I started to get a lot more applications to work with me, a lot more product sales. So, yeah, I had a big shift.
- [14:31]
Host
About A year in without potentially going way too deep into this. I'm curious how you think about those 3-3-ish emails a week because I see you're doing some cross promotions. You have some callbacks to blog posts from the past or case studies. I'm curious how you think about the cadence and the variety of the emails you're sending.
- [14:52]
Ali Richards
Yeah, absolutely. So most. So there are some things which are kind of fixed. So for example, I do like list swaps with, with people. And there are times when you want to promote other people's stuff. Let's say for example, when I, when I was in your 30 days of growth special newsletter or like a pop up newsletter. Pop up newsletter, that's it. Yeah, when I, when I was in that, you know, because you were kind enough to feature me, dedicated one email to sending people to that and, and some. And so that's like a swap, I guess. And so I often do like a swap maybe once a month with people who have, who have similar lists. And that just a great way to grow your list in general. So there's, so there's that if I put out a YouTube video, I might send an email out to let people know about that. If I'm, if I'm doing a webinar, obviously I'll send emails out about that. So there are certain emails that support events that are happening in the business. But other than that, generally what I'm doing is I, so I use, I have a Kanban board of topics and I. So in the first. So a Kanban board for anyone who doesn't know is like Trello. So you know, you have, you have different, different columns and then you have cards and you move them from one card from one column to the next when they're at different stage. So I have, my first column is like 250 ideas for emails. And I have an app on my watch which I love, called Epiphany that my friend Troy made and basically touch it, speak the idea into the watch and that sends it automatically through to my Trello board. And so I just had like this ballooning board of ideas. And then in the morning I have writing time every morning. So I get up at 6, I walk downstairs, make a strong coffee, sit down, and then I have a writing process like 30 to 60 minutes or so in the morning. And what I do there is I spend about seven minutes, seven to 10 minutes splurging. I pick an idea that I want to write about and I write really quickly for about seven to 10 minutes. Just to get it out on paper. Then I'll move that across to the next column and I'll do the same thing for the next idea. So I might get like 3, 4, 5 emails out in really rough draft format. And this is based on the principle that, that the quantity is the quality. So you, when great artists make studio albums, they don't just set out to write eight amazing songs, they write 20 songs, 30 songs and then they pick their favorite eight and that's what ends up in the final album. Similarly, I might Write drafts of 10, 20 emails and 4 or 5 will actually make it through to a later stage where I think, yes, there's something here. This is quality. I think this is interesting. Let's actually flesh this out into a proper email. And I do it in these in like 7 minute rounds and I optimize for kind of coming back, coming back to the email multiple times. That's always better than trying to sit down and write one email head to toe in one sitting because you just, you just, you're just better when you're fresh. I kind of just work through ideas that way and, and build, you know, get ideas out and, and then the good ones make it, make it out and. But they're always just, you know, they come from my head, things that I'm interested in. If I'm running a mastermind event, for example, and a certain topic comes up, an event. The other day, for example, most common theme was entrepreneurs who were sort of stuck in the operations of their business. Even though if they had a team of like five or six people, they couldn't get themselves out enough to be able to get some space and work on strategy and work on the business. So that's going to become a series of emails at some point because I've noticed it's an issue and I want to write about it. So yeah, that was a very in depth.
- [18:07]
Host
No, I like it, I like it. I've never heard someone explain their process like that. That's interesting and I feel like there's something to the series of emails that you're kind of alluding to. You talked about the how does a seven figure business die? And then this potentially operations one. I think that's, that's interesting and it gives yourself enough space to like think about one topic in that series and then move on to the next the next day. Like you don't have to fully flesh out this huge piece. You can just kind of piecemeal it together, if you will.
- [18:37]
Ali Richards
Yeah. Although I actually find that these are Best written in advance because. So I, I learned email. I learned email from the great Andre Chaperone. And he teaches a kind of similar approach whereby you have a series of emails. So it could be like 5, 10 emails in a series. And they all work to one purpose, which would be to align your frame of mind with a certain product or a certain outcome of some kind. And you serialize these emails and you have cliffhangers, and it would lead from one to the next. Anyway, he's a huge advocate. What he taught me was he was a huge advocate for writing all of these emails out and actually having all the emails on screen, like in long, thin columns. If you imagine kind of tiling emails across your. Across your screen horizontally and so you can see them side by side because, you know, the great writing happens in the editing, as Stephen King says. So if you, you can write a fantastic email, number one. But what happens if you tell too much of the story and then you, by the time you get to email two or three, like, oh, that said, too much. But I can't go back and edit it now because I've already sent the damn thing. So it's much better to kind of write the whole and then edit it. And that gets a far better result in my experience.
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Co-Host
And so when you're, when you're planning those, those emails with that frame of mind that you'd mentioned that kind of Andre had taught you, is that how you kind of weave in offers and services or. I'm just curious how your newsletter and how you kind of intertwined your stories and your personal anecdotes and things you want to get off your chest with, like, oh, by the way, I can help you build your business or your. To coach you on your online business.
- [20:07]
Ali Richards
Yeah, no, I don't, I don't. I keep that all separate. I mean, almost all of my email is just content. And then I'll have, I'll have, you know, links in the footer, you know, so apply to work with me or like, check out my YouTube channel or whatever. I do very little direct pitching of. Well, I don't pitch my mentorship stuff at all. I do. If I'm releasing a digital product or a workshop, I will write a promotional sequence for that. Yeah, just like any product launch, you know, my general approach to that is always, step number one, write a really good, interesting email that's useful. Step number two, add a link at the end of it. But like, I very rarely send an email that's just like, hey, I've got this thing to sell. Here's how it works. Go, go and buy it. I'm always sending value based stuff but part. But then at storyline and we do things very differently. Right. Because that's a B2C brand. You know, for B2C stuff typically you need to sell more and explain to people why things are why their thing is right for you, so why your thing is right for them. But again, just to go back to what I was saying earlier about positioning and the need to maintain that positioning very carefully in my business brand. Like if I just, if I sell too much, it's just. That's not the role I want to have in, in the consciousness of my audience. I want to be seen as the authority, as the person who's giving and who's helping and so I'm quite protective of that.
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Co-Host
So what would you say you're. The job of your newsletter is the.
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Ali Richards
Number one job to build relationships and to position myself as the authority. And you know, to the point where I mean so many. So a lot of, for example, I've had quite a lot of people who have applied to work with me or joined my mastermind who have said look, I've already made so much money from just implementing an idea from your case study. Now I just, it's almost like a given that I, that I want to do the next step, take the next step in this particular space with this particular thing that I'm trying to do. I find it's best to position yourself in that authoritative way and just let everything else happen naturally downstream of that. This is not necessarily a good strategy for other businesses. Be clear. But, but the, the, the kind of guru space is so swamped with that it's super important to be, to be different, to be totally different to everyone else.
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Co-Host
I think there's a lot of value in that. Standing out.
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Ali Richards
Yeah. This is something that you know, Ben Settle, I always remember this from, from his, from his teaching, which is that the easiest way to get noticed, provide value is to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Because the, the, the, you know, the online world is so copycat ish that you know, you get on some. On, on someone's newsletter, it's the same as everyone else's. You get on Instagram, someone's Instagram, it's the same as every other Instagram. Everyone's just models everyone else. Even the big youtubers like you just if you line up their thumbnails, they've all got identical videos, identical thumbnails. They're all just modeling Each other. It's so depressing. And it's all just done in servitude to the algorithm. Again, like my, my thinking on that is how do we exit the equation all together and do something completely different? It's. As long as you've got the fundamentals there in terms of the quality of what you write about, it's hard to go wrong.
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Host
Yeah, I think there's a tough balance between creating the content you want to create and creating what's going to potentially go viral or whatnot. If you're playing the YouTube or LinkedIn game, it's, it's a struggle like to find that balance. So, yeah, I mean, you could even look at any of the courses that YouTubers all teach you. It's like, use these tools to see what's actually working and model that and do that thing. And it's like, oh, it's so frustrating. It's like, how do we get out of this?
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Ali Richards
Yeah, well, I mean the easiest way to get out of that is to know your numbers. So if you're a YouTuber, for example, bet my house on the fact that your videos with the most views are not the videos that get you the most leads and are certainly not the videos that get you the most customers. Because the videos that go viral are very, very top of funnel broad appeal. And they'll get millions, hundreds of thousands, millions of views. But no one will opt into your lead magnet and no one will buy from you because you're, you're getting in lots of, lots of, lots of random people, but people don't know their numbers. And so they see those, these, these, these big metrics that the social media companies want to get you hooked on so that you keep coming back and creating more and making them more money. People get hooked on these bit on the, on these kind of headline numbers. But if you learn to track properly, then you can track exactly how many email leads you get from which specific videos and which of those lead to sales. And the higher ticket you go with your, with your offerings, the more important that is. And it's often the case that the videos with the lowest views actually make you like 10 times the most money. Because, because chances are on those videos with low views, you actually went in depth on something and you did something that you care about a little bit more. So you attracted the right people, even though there weren't so many.
- [24:34]
Host
Totally. I've been seeing Ed Lawrence is a guy on YouTube. He's been making some videos about. He used to run film booth and then he left that to do something different. And his, his channel, like his videos get less views now, but he's like, I'm making six times so much money.
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Ali Richards
Exactly. Yeah.
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Co-Host
It's a paradox.
- [24:52]
Host
I mean, all the beginners just see the huge numbers and they're like, I follow that guy because that's what I want. And they don't think about the back end. So I love that you're taking a different approach.
- [25:01]
Ali Richards
Yeah, it's that same thing of like, you know, you don't see what goes on behind other people's businesses. Right. That's kind of why the case study that I wrote was why I took that, the approach I did, because if we could all see inside each other's businesses, we do things very, very differently.
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Host
So you wrote, you wrote that long Google Doc, and then you also put out a workshop essentially called the seven figure Marketing Stack, which details like how all of these pieces work together and you're essentially building like a flywheel of sorts. And you were kind enough to give that to growth Reverse Pro members. So I really appreciate it. I was, I was laughing because you called it a workshop, but it was like 13 hours of content. I was like, this is a course, Ali.
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Ali Richards
Yeah, Yeah, I probably should have called it a course. Yeah.
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Host
But it was, it was fascinating just to watch through you talk about so many different things and like meta content versus versus teaching content. And just like I thought that was a fascinating concept. Kind of takes us away from what I was just mentioning. But if you want to explain that, go for it.
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Ali Richards
Oh, the meta versus teaching thing.
- [26:01]
Host
Yeah.
- [26:02]
Ali Richards
Yeah. So I actually just put out a YouTube video on exactly this. So. So if we wind the clock back 12 years or so, I, I just started my language blog and I released my first product, 2014, something like that, and it was called so. So my business was all about teaching people la. And I released this product that was called Language Learning Foundations, how I learn languages. So here's what I do every day. So here's how I choose textbooks, here's how I set up my flashcards, here's how I memorize words, you know, find people to practice speaking with. It's all the meta stuff. What it wasn't was like a Spanish textbook. You know, if you walk into, into Barnes and Noble, go to the Spanish section, you'll find Spanish in 90 days. And it's got all the words and all the grammar. There was none of this in my course. It was just how to. And a friend of mine pointed out, you know, sometime later, you know, the problem is that people like you and me, we are systems thinkers, which means we. We actually look beneath the surface and we ask, how are things done? How do you build a business? Like, what's the. What's the theory? Well, how does it actually work? We think in terms of systems. Most people, though, are not systems thinkers. It's maybe like maximum 10, 20% of the population are systems thinkers. Most people, hey, just. Can you just teach me the thing? And so I started to think, actually, yeah. So I'm there building my business around this course on, like, how to learn a language. But what I really. What people really want, if I'm being honest about what the wider market really wants, what they're thinking is the conversation. The great Joe Sugarman angle. You know, what's the conversation that's going on in their mind? The conversation that's going on in their mind is, I think I want to learn Spanish. Who's got a Spanish course for me? So what I needed to do was to give them the Spanish course. Like, really simple, like, Spanish, day one. Do this. Learn this word, you know, you know, listen to this thing step by step. And so from that point on, I built out all of the how to courses. And so in each language now we have, like, between four to six levels that progress from beginner to advanced. And it's, It's. It's that. So what I used to teach was the meta stuff. What I now teach is the instructional stuff. A lot of teachers make this mistake. A lot of educators make this mistake, because as an educator, you're typically, you know, your topic inside out, and you know that it's not enough to just pick up a how to, you know, coding for dummies or whatever in, in the, In. In the bookstore. But no, you need to understand a lot more than that. You need to really study your field if you want to learn this well, you. All these concepts, you've got to know, like, it's not enough just to paint by numbers. And so we, us, as educators, we fall into this trap of teaching all of these nuances and theories, because we know that this is the real key if you want to become great at it. In reality, all that most people want is teach me step by step what to do. Just tell me what to do. And so one of the biggest kind of unlocks for a lot of people is, you know, if you're. If you're listening to this and you know that you teach this meta stuff, the systems thinking stuff, then it could be a huge unlock for your business to ask, you know, what would it look like if I actually taught the thing and that that can completely transform your business. If you are not a natural teacher, maybe you're not a trained expert and you have a bit of imposter syndrome over doing it yourself. Go and partner with someone, find an expert and offer to, to pay them to create the product. Lots of people do it, do it in that way. But you will find that you unlock like 80% more market for the thing that you're selling because you're actually giving people what they want.
- [29:25]
Host
That's so interesting. There's a lot to that. I'm curious, are you thinking about these things and like teaching and even just content in your newsletter differently with AI? Like I know it's, it's definitely going to change certain things and sure we've had a bunch of courses before and now we can just go to ChatGPT and ask it a question and probably get 90% of the answer. So I'm curious how, how you think about that.
- [29:47]
Ali Richards
I mean, I think it's, I think anyone who tells you that they know for sure is, you know, I'm very skeptical of people who have supreme confidence around AI and where it's going and how to use it because it's just, it's just changing every day. So I think, I don't know, I'm thinking of it in a case by case basis mostly. And it does change from, from vertical to vertical. So in the language learning space, for example, it's been turned on its head because whereas previously if you wanted to practice French, you had to go and pay someone on a, on a tutor marketplace to speak with you in French for an hour. It cost you like $30 or something. Now you can fire up a AI language app and practice speaking French to very, very high quality for free. $30 a month or something like that. So it's completely changed and is in the process of completely transforming the industry. But for the most part, and especially in anything that's not going to text based process, anything that's text based processing is, has been or is getting upended. But for the most part, you know, all that I can really do is just speed things up and make things more efficient. But you still need that quality control at either end. And you know, when I have one of my most popular courses is an AI writing course which is like how to, I mean everyone's selling these things now, but released this some time ago after banging my head against a brick wall for 12 months with Claude to try and get it to write like me. I cracked it in the end and. But one of the princip that I, that I realized was really important for most AI stuff is 1080, 10 principle that I borrowed from Dan Martell's time management book. It's the idea that the first 10% is input that you have to give. You have to engineer the prompt, you have to provide the material, you have to give it direction. 80% of the task is then done by the AI. But then you still need to come back for that final 10%, add the nuance to make it your own, to check for errors, to do all of these things. So you know, for. What I'm seeing is that for the most part, especially in online business, it's that, that thing that everyone's been saying for years now, like you're not going to lose your job to AI, you're going to lose your job to a smart person with AI. That's, that's pretty much what I see. What do you guys think? Have you seen anything different?
- [31:41]
Host
I, I agree with you. I think if anything it's just gonna change how courses are delivered. Maybe not completely get rid of them. I think, I still think there's importance of learning how a specific person does something and how they think about it. Like I don't know, just two different people will have two completely different teaching styles and ways of going about things. So I think AI can't just like generically give you an answer on that. I just think it's going to enhance learning and make it more like back and forth if you will. Like almost more like a conversation than a static course, but it gives a.
- [32:15]
Ali Richards
Lot more optionality for sure. You know, the ability to actually, if you have an, if you've been asked to come up with an answer to something, well, you don't just have to guess if it's right or not. You can interrogate the topic with, with AI, go back and forth on ask questions. But yeah, I mean specifically for the course thing, I do think that what that means for us as business owners like to kind of state the obvious. You've got to evolve. You have to learn how to, how to implement AI in what you do for sure, both in the, in your products but also in marketing. But I think the real, the real, the real cheat code for us as, as business owners is brand. Because you know, in a world where the value of information has gone to zero, you can find information on French verbs from a friend in Paris from ChatGPT or from your, your textbook Textbook on your shelf. Like, information is openly available to everybody in that world. Who do you go to when you want to learn something? And the answer is the person that you know like and trust. And so that's where brand comes in. And it's partly why I decided to, from storylearning to this personal brand, because I felt that whatever's going on, the personal brand is always going to be because, because people will follow you for, for being you.
- [33:25]
Host
So I guess going back to your personal brand, how are you? I mean, initially you had paid ads running, you were doing sponsorships and other newsletters. Are those things still all happening or have you changed your growth or even. Are you even focusing on it?
- [33:37]
Ali Richards
Yeah, absolutely. So, so I still run a lot of ads, spend tens of thousands a year on, on, on, on ads. I've done a lot of newsletter advertising. I'm just actually this week launching a book funnel. So I'm taking my case study and turning it into a free plus shipping book funnel. We're launching in the UK to begin with, but then it will probably come across the pond at some point. So, you know, because since the case study was so popular, I thought, well, that makes sense to lead with as a marketing campaign. So we've turned it into a paperback book and it's, that's, that's going to go out, you know, through regular Facebook advertising. Yeah, but I mean, the stuff I've been doing on the paid side has been working really well. So I've been, I've been mostly recently behind the scenes focused on product. You know, I've built an audience of about 20,000 people. I just don't have much to sell. That's the problem. So, you know, a lot of this happens a lot with creative type businesses actually, where people can build massive audiences through their newsletter or through, you know, YouTube or whatever, but they just don't have enough of a product ecosystem to actually fully monetize that. So I'm in that kind of, in that phase now. I've got, I've got, I've managed to build a fairly good audience. The challenge for me is kind of how to, how do I want to turn this into a business? I do, I want to, there's a lot to be done. A lot of people who I think I can help. So I'm kind of, that's the opportunity for me right now is how do I do this in a, in the best way?
- [34:54]
Host
I'm with you. Yeah. Audience. Audience came fairly quickly.
- [34:59]
Ali Richards
So you've done an amazing job with audience. I mean the, the reach of your newsletter is incredible.
- [35:04]
Host
Thank you. Yeah, so I'm just trying to figure that out, like have the, the community now and then trying to figure out what the other ecosystem looks like. So I'm excited to continue going through your, your course.
- [35:16]
Co-Host
But yeah, I have a quick question, something that you mentioned that I haven't forgotten since you spoke to us in, in the pro community. And that was about what you called I think a self liquidating flywheel with your seven figure marketing stack.
- [35:29]
Ali Richards
Yes.
- [35:29]
Co-Host
Yeah, so I think that that kind of, it was like this light bulb that was always probably there. I just realized it wasn't, it was, it was on the whole time but I just finally looked at it. Could you, it just like kind of blew my mind a little bit. So could you maybe talk about a little bit how you're funding. I think you're using kind of the, I won't give it all away, but you're using some of this, the funds from this, the seven figure marketing stack to help fund your paid growth.
- [35:52]
Ali Richards
Yeah, so, so, so this, that particular marketing course, that was the first course I made. I've got over, over 10 now. I got 10 or 12 workshops and courses on different things from like you know, financial mindset, business models, online business models through to all kinds of different things. So this is, this is a fairly standard model in the coaching industry. And the way it works is you go out and you buy ads and you mostly run lead gen ads. You could have a cheap product but lead gen ads are fairly common. Now obviously you've then paid for those leads, right? You might be paying 2, 5, $10. So the question, well, how do I add cost? I can't just don't just lose that money, make that money back so I can go and then buy more ads and increase my audience even more. So the kind of, the really simple model to say well okay, I'm going to get, I'm getting these, I'm going out and I'm advertising, I'm offering a lead magnet. I'm getting leads to come in and then I could just sell coaching and that way I'll make the money back. And if you're selling high ticket stuff that's super easy to do with paid ads. You might, you might spend $5 on a lead, $250 on a customer, but then you make 5,000 back on the back end, for example, just plucking numbers out of thin air. But the problem with that is that you are now to continue to spend on advertising. Your, your Personal time is now being used, right? So you can you pay to get leads in your coaching, you're sending coaching to those leads. So the growth of the business is dependent on your time. So you could 10x your ad spend. Even if you're really profitable, you could 10x your ad spend, get 10x more leads in. But can you 10x the time that you're available for coaching? Probably not. And so the approach instead is to say, well, let's use digital products to recoup that ad spend. So you go and you spend $5 on a lead. That lead comes in, you then offer a $50 workshop or $100 workshop. And what you're aiming for is to get to a point where the digital products that you sell cover all of your ad costs. So now you're able to pay for all of your ads. You're at break even or even making a bit of a profit. The advantage of that is now you've got a lot more leads coming in. You can raise the prices of your coaching because you have more demand. And everything that you do in your coaching is now profit. And you don't have to spend any of that to cover the ad. And so that's the model that I use in my business brand, which is I use digital products to cover all of the ad spend. So all of the, you know, 20,000 odd leads I've got in have been paid for through digital products and workshops and things like that. Which means that the, you know, the million odd that I made through the mentorship and the masterminds and all that, I just get to keep it.
- [38:20]
Host
That is cool.
- [38:23]
Ali Richards
But it's a big deal, you know, because you see a lot of, a lot of, you see a lot of online business models where, you know, people are running 20, 30% net margins. And I think that's a big problem for an online business because us as entrepreneurs, we tend to be quite undisciplined with spend. And you hire new people and you spend money on this fancy software and before you know it, you know, you make the number of people I know who make a million top line, but only keep, you know, 300,000 of that. And then after they've paid a salary, after they pay their mortgage and salaries for themselves and their partner, they've maybe got like 50 grand left at the end of the year. Like, that's not a lot to show for a million in revenue. So. But it's all the fault of the business model because if you design your business model properly, then, you know, you should be able to keep large amounts of what you make. And you know, for me personally, an online business should be an online education business. Like the kind of thing that we do really should be work. Should be aiming to make 40 to 50% margins at the least. 30, 30% margins are fine if you're kind of really reinvesting heavily in growth because that will pay off later further down the line. But you know, the natural sort of resting place for, for margins for online businesses really should be 40, 50%.
- [39:30]
Host
So. Interesting. I'm curious, so you're spending a lot on paid ads. How, how are you thinking about like cleaning the list? Like are most of those people sticking around a while? Are you often cleaning your list from those or some.
- [39:41]
Ali Richards
I don't actually clean my list at all. I, I think the whole list cleaning thing is a bit overblown because I think what you got to remember is. So it is definitely the case that if nobody opens your emails and nobody clicks your emails, then you'll get, your domain reputation is going to go down. But you've got to remember that in the wider industry, you're up against like the kind of Hilton Honors or like Southwest Water or whatever are sort of sending you emails about, you know, just updates on our, on our GDPR policy. And you know, you know, those emails that you get from these big, you know, travel companies and you just, you don't even, you get just straight in the bin. Right?
- [40:17]
Host
Yeah.
- [40:17]
Ali Richards
And these guys are sending millions of emails a month and they're all completely useless. So those guys need to clean their list. But people, people like us who have audiences who are really engaged, you know, if you're getting 40, 50 open rates, which is kind of a fuzzy metric, but it's a good indicator. I'll tell you something for sure. The Hilton Honors are not getting 50 open rates on their, on their GDP 50 rates, you know.
- [40:40]
Host
Yeah.
- [40:40]
Ali Richards
And the kind of the big Internet marketers who are, you know, I remember Russell Brunson telling me they have a 5% open rate on their email. He just spent millions on ads, blasts the hell out of them with email, which is, it's a strategy. It's completely valid. It works well for this is 5% open rates on his email. People like that need to clean their, need to clean their list. But people doing what we do, it's not an issue as long as, as long as, you know, if you ever want to check how, how, how, how healthy your email list is, go and open a blank Gmail account with a, with a brand New address, add yourself to your autoresponder or to your email software, that new email address and then send yourself an email, see what folder it lands in. If it lands in spam or promotions or social, something needs fixing. But if it lands in primary, you're good. You don't need to worry about gaining your list. People will naturally unsubscribe and you know, you'd be amazed how often you send out a promotion and you know, someone who hasn't opened an email for two years will see that's that cool subject line you wrote, open and buy. It happens all the time. So that's how I think about it.
- [41:39]
Host
So interesting. Yeah, I guess, I guess from my perspective, like I have a bunch of people coming from recommendations and that kind of thing. So I clean those pretty heavily. But I think other than that it's just like every once in a while. So I guess it also depends on where they come from.
- [41:55]
Ali Richards
I think that, I think, yeah, because in my case there is a, there's a high barrier to opting into the list. Right. They have to see an ad, they have to click on the ad, they have to enter their email and so they have to take a lot of proactive steps. The issue with CO registration, so like, you know, the ConvertKit, Network, Spark Loop, things like that is just like, it's just people are signing up to your list, they don't even know who you are, they don't even want to. They just click the button on a whim. And it's quite dangerous actually because you can end up with a lot of people on your list. Again, we talked about headline numbers earlier. We can fall in love with the list growth and all of that. But if you look at the stats that I've seen, and it does vary from space to space for sure, but stats that I've seen suggest that the value of a, of an email subscriber from co registration can be up to 20 times less that of a, an organic subscriber in terms of, in terms of actually how much money they spend.
- [42:46]
Host
Yeah.
- [42:46]
Ali Richards
So if an average, if an average, if an average buyer who finds you organically spends a hundred dollars, someone from co reg will spend 5. So I think there, there's a much better argument for scrubbing those people from your list.
- [42:58]
Host
When you said you don't clean your list, I was like, but now that makes sense. Yeah, if someone's using like recommendations and that kind of thing, I highly recommend cleaning at least that segment of your list.
- [43:09]
Ali Richards
Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, but again it's all context specific. Right. So I mean, my whole model is low volume, very, very high touch, high intent. Yeah, that's what you have to be with a high ticket. With a high ticket model. At StoryLearning, we do clean our list a couple of times a year because we have a lot more people.
- [43:22]
Host
Yeah.
- [43:23]
Co-Host
For your Ollie Richards personal brand, what does your team look like for that? Is it just you?
- [43:27]
Ali Richards
I have a. I have a. I have an EA and you know, and I make use of service providers. So I have a guy who's doing my social media at the moment, just managing the scheduling and posting. It's a freelancer and I'm using an agency to help me build my book funnel. But yeah, it's just me, so I.
- [43:41]
Host
Know we're coming up on time. I'm curious, I have one kind of larger question. So do you have anything that you see a lot of creators doing or online course creators, that kind of thing? See what you see them doing that you think is a mistake or something that they could turn into a bigger opportunity?
- [43:59]
Ali Richards
Oh, a lot of things. A lot of. A lot of things, to be honest with you.
- [44:03]
Co-Host
That's a loaded question.
- [44:05]
Ali Richards
How should I answer this? There's so many different ways to answer this. Think that there's been a real decline, basic knowledge of like Internet marketing, best practice. So a lot of people that I see figure out a way to make money somehow. You know, for example, growing an Instagram account and then selling cohorts to teach something specific. But they don't use email. They've never taken a copywriting course in their life. The landing pages are atrocious. They only send emails when they want to promote a course and even then it's like one email and that's it. There's no testing of landing pages there. There are no, there are no email automations. They have like one and then someone buys that product. There's nothing else for the customers to go on to next. And all of these things kind of fall under the umbrella of like just basic direct response Internet marketing. And you know, back in the day when I first got started, you had to know this stuff because. Because you couldn't. Like the traffic wasn't being like freely dished out on YouTube and Instagram like it is today. Right. So you had to go pay for your leads, you had to hustle to get them. And so you wanted to make sure that when you got an email, when you got someone on your landing page, you wanted to make sure they're opting in at 50% or 60%. And if they were opting at 30%, that's a problem. Let's, let's test the headline. Let's see if we can get that rate up. And then, you know, let, let's, you know, we want to, we want to create recurring revenue. So let's make sure that we have strong email funnels which are, which are well written at that, that sell to new leads on, on autopilot. We know through as, as direct response people that however much money you make on the front end with what you offer, there's as much to be made on the back end. If you have customers, try to get more customers. What you should do instead is figure out what the next thing is for your existing customers to go and do, because then you can just sell to them and you don't even have to get any more customers because they're already there, that can double your business overnight. And so, you know, I, I, it's really hard to pick one thing because I just, like in general, I just come across this real lack of understanding of kind of basic, just business theory. And, and in a way it makes sense because, you know, the creator economy is sprung up as something for everybody that everyone can do. And that's what's great about it. We've kind of democratized reach and we reward creativity. It means, it's a wonderful thing, but it does just, just does mean that we have this entire generation of people working online who don't, don't know the fundamentals. So, you know, I would say in a general sense, like, go and study copywriting, take copywriting courses, go and learn digital marketing, do these things and what you will. I mean, for me, copywriting is like the mother skill to be a copywriter, to be a good copywriter means understanding all elements of the business. You have to understand the customer journey, you have to understand the avatar, you have to understand pricing and offer. You have to understand, you know, front end, back end. You have to understand average order value upsells. All of these things gone completely around the houses. I'm going to answer your question by saying learn copywriting.
- [46:57]
Host
I love that answer. It's such a good one. And I, I see this because when I started in the online space in like 2013, 2014, like there were so many webinars happening and all this stuff, and people in the creator space don't even do that for the most part there. It's like very, it's a lost skill. Even just in the sense of like webinars. And like promoting your stuff in that, that, in that way.
- [47:16]
Ali Richards
So, you know, about a year ago I saw a very well known Internet personality shut down his business and he was very, he was very vocal about this on Twitter. So it's hardly a, there's no need to mention who it is, but what he said was something along the lines of, you know, we've been running our kind of cohort based business now for three or four years. It was super successful, but we just can't make it work anymore. And so we're shutting it. I've taken the decision to shut it down. I'm not happy, I'm not enjoying it. I don't know if he did actually walk away, but he said, he said, he said he was going to. And I took one look at that and I thought, look, the reality of this is you were in the right place, right time during COVID when your social media following exploded overnight and you were able to launch a cohort and monetize that and make a bunch of money. Good on you. Like if you can do that, fantastic. But that's just the house of cards with no foundation whatsoever. This person spent too much money to build their to. They spent so much money on hiring, they built their team way too fast, way beyond what the business itself could actually, could actually afford. And so what happened to so many people in the aftermath was that they realized that they were just burdened with this huge wage, this huge salary cost, all this software tools, they're spending a bunch of money on lifestyle or whatever. And as soon as the kind of COVID Covid bubble dipped and people stopped spending so much time and money on online courses, they suddenly realized that they were, you know, they were making 2 million in a year and spending 2 million and they were desperately trying to get back to where they were, but they, they couldn't because they didn't have any of the fundamentals in place. It didn't know how to find customers, they didn't know how to spend money on paid advertising, didn't have a funnel that works to cold traffic. You know, all of these things. And so this was a business that kind of was, was like died for no reason other than it wasn't run by people who understood online business and how to do these things properly. It is a big deal. And, and you know, now as AI is just pulling the rug out of, you know, from, from underneath the feet of so many online course businesses in particular like those, those businesses that have the fundamentals are going to be able to adapt because they understand what's going on to want people who don't know their numbers, don't understand how their businesses are working from a, from a structural perspective, are going to. Going to struggle to adapt because accurately diagnose what's going on.
- [49:23]
Host
So good. Mic drop. It's so true, though. This is great. This has been amazing. Definitely went in ways I was not expecting and I'm grateful for that.
- [49:36]
Ali Richards
So that's why I tried to do with my newsletter as well.
- [49:38]
Co-Host
Yeah, exactly.
- [49:39]
Ali Richards
Exactly.
- [49:40]
Host
So, yeah, I mean, thank you for coming on the podcast and if somebody wants to join your newsletter or follow you or do anything else like that, where should they head to?
- [49:49]
Ali Richards
Sure. Well, thanks for the invitation. It's been super fun. Yeah. You can go to ollyriches co not.com co and everything's there. My case study is there. It's all free. You can also find me on. On YouTube, but you'll have to find my business channel because whenever you search my name, that's what you'll find. But the business channel is there. And yeah, Oliverichards.co is where you can find all this stuff anyway.
- [50:10]
Host
Amazing. And we'll have all of that linked below as well, so you can go find it there. But thank you so much for coming on the show, Ali. This was great.
- [50:18]
Ali Richards
Anytime.
- [50:18]
Host
Thank you.
- [50:21]
Ali Richards
It.