Newsletters Part 2: How to Start a Newsletter Without Losing Your Mind with Paul Gowder

Back on episode 972, we were talking about using newsletters to grow your audience. And I got so much response. I'm like, oh, that needs a part two. And the beautiful thing is, you'll hear about this.

I knew a friend who knew a guy who knew a guy, that whole nine kind of thing. And Paul Gowder is on the show. And the beautiful thing about Paul is, yeah, we're going to talk about newsletters.

We're going to get deeper into tools and, and strategies. But Paul is also a guy that knows a lot about building communities.

And you are not going to believe what happened to his community that I still listen to it. Just wait. What? What happened? Are you kidding me? So today we're following up with, hey, what should I use for my newsletter?

What should I put in my newsletter? And hey, what if I really don't want to do the newsletter thing? Yeah, we've got resources for that as well. Hit it, ladies.

The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson. Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning in.

If you are new to the show, this is where I help you plan, launch and grow your podcast. If you want to monetize, we can do that too. Just remember, you don't monetize a podcast. You monetize an audience.

My website is schoolofpodcasting.com you can use the coupon code listnr when you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription. And if you're a little worried about that, that's fine. I give you a not a 7, not a 14, not a 21. That's right. 30 days to try. The school of Podcasting.

Not happy. I will refund your money. And you know what's kind of cool?

Look, there are times when you work so hard on an episode and you put it out and you just get crickets. And there are other times when you, you hit the button and you go, I don't know if this is going to work or not. And you get tons of fanfare.

Well, back on schoolofpodcasting.com 972 and here's the thing for everybody that's like, you need to put episode titles or episode numbers in your titles. Here's a novel idea. The Link to episode 972 is in the show notes. Yeah, and you can just go to school with podcasting.com 972.

I'm very anti episode number in your title. That is beachfront property. But Speaking of, that title was called Want More Downloads Ditch Social Media for Podcast Newsletters.

Now you don't need to listen to that one, but I would. It just explains how I just had multiple people. To get back to my point. Sometimes you put out an episode.

Nothing.

Sometimes you put out an episode, you're like, I'm not sure. And it goes great. This is one that I worked on. And I was like, I really think you're gonna like it.

And to quote the immortal Sally Fields, you liked it. You really, really liked it, right? I was like, holy cow. Had people saying I almost had to pull off the road to take notes.

And it was about how great email is. I know. Email. What, like the thing with the, you know. Yeah, going back to aol.

Yeah, you know, so consequently I was like, I gotta do a part two, because there were things that I just. It's not that they didn't fit. I just don't. Didn't want to make this five hour long episode. And so I just so happened.

As I was doing research, I found my buddy, Jeff C. Jeff C. Is a guy I watch a lot while eating my lunch in the living room.

Even though he's got a podcast he's on, he's on YouTube because, you know, you should be everywhere. And he does a show called Social Media News Live. And there was this guy named Paul Gowder.

Now, I met Paul briefly at Podfest, and Jeff, as he introduced Paul on his show, basically said, the guy's a big shot smarty pants. Now he here's the thing. And honest, we'll get to Paul in a second. But I just want to show you how podcasting works. Jeff C. Is a nice guy.

I've met him over the years. He's the beard guy. You know him, you're like, oh, that guy. Yeah.

And I got to hang out with him because he said, you should go to eCamm's Creator Camp. And I was like, well, if Jeff says I should go, I'm going, because I never been to creator camp. And I went and it was an amazing event.

And I was like, hey, that, that Jeff C. Seems to know what he's talking about. And so when Jeff C.

Said, hey, Paul Gouder is like a really good guy, and if you want to know email, this is the guy. Heard him right there on his show, and I was like, huh.

So I went over to Paul's site, saw that he had some things on email, and I was like, hey, I just got done talking about this, signed up for his stuff because I'm not going to bring on somebody that even though Jeff said he was cool, like, I want to. I want to smell it and taste it, too. And I'm like, no, no, this guy knows what he's talking about.

Especially when I looked in the background and the guy had a YouTube play button. Now, that means you have 100,000 followers. Think about that. Let's just hold. Let's hold on. Before we move forward, let's think about that number.

100,000 followers on YouTube. So this is a guy that knows content creation. Wait till you hear. Because he's a twofer.

You get email and community with Paul, and wait till you hear what Facebook did to his one community. You will not. I just went, what? Like, you will gasp. It's amazing. And so I say this because the power of podcasting here. Jeff Z.

Said something was cool. I went to it. It was cool. Jeff said, this guy is cool. I went over, check him out. Turns out Paul's really cool.

And so when you give people content that's good and true, they tend to believe you. This is how you build your relationship. And this is one of the things we're talking about today, is you can extend that relationship.

You can extend that loyalty. You can fan the flames of. You got to go listen to this person. She's amazing. He's great through newsletters.

And that's why I brought on Paul Gowder from PaulGouder.com to talk more about newsletters. Paul Gowder, thanks for coming on the show.

Oh, thank you. I'm looking forward to it and. And honored to be here. Your show. I've been listening to you for so long.

It's great to be here on here, so appreciate it.

Well, let's just jump into email because there are people that say, oh, another thing to do. How much time does it take to write an email newsletter?

And I realize, because it's a podcast, we know the first part of this answer is going to be, it depends. But what do you see people doing.

For anybody, whether you're a podcast or whatever? My first advice to anybody who's starting a show, starting a YouTube channel, or starting a blog, if you don't, you have to do email first.

I think email is more important than social media and all these other things because it's the one thing you own. You know, Lou Mongello talks about it a lot. You can own your podcast feed, right? You control that. Same thing with email. You control your email.

You know, for me, I write most of the stuff I do in email is email sequences. So I spend a lot of time building those email sequences. So it takes me a little time, but then it's passive. Right.

Then you can sit back and just let those run. My weekly newsletters, honestly, I have a VA that does my weekly newsletters for me and.

And then I'll go in and put my personalization, my, you know, talk to the community in my, you know, I put the introduction in. Right. But all the stuff about, here's what's new on the site, here's the upcoming events. All that's just done by VA.

You know, I spend, you know, 10 bucks a month, a week for him to do that. It. So, you know, you can put a lot more time into it, really, once you get these kind of processes going, it's not a huge time commitment.

Yeah. I think a lot of people think you have to write War and Peace.

And I don't know about you, but I have probably one or two people that write really long emails. And the last one, I cheated.

I copied the email, threw it into 11 labs, downloaded some generic voice reading it, and threw it into my phone to listen to. I'm more of a listening guy. We like what we like the way we like it. And some people do like to read. That's the other thing.

I guess the next thing would be they don't know what to write about. Yes. And that's where I know you have templates, and that's actually a service you offer.

But what are some of the things if they're like, I have no idea. Like, what are some things like? Well, here's some easy things you can do.

Yeah. I think you should start with what I just said, creating some kind of email sequence. Right. Stop worrying about what you're gonna send out every week.

Let's create a three or five automated email that's, you know, a series of emails, and it's take your elevator pitch. We should all have that down. Right. Especially for podcasters. We, you know, what. What's the introduction to your show? What's.

What is your business about?

Take that, divide it into three emails, maybe five if you're, you know, have a little bit more going on, and write a quick, you know, the first email is like, hey, I am. Let's pick on Jeff C. Hey, I talk about AI, and I can help you automate your business, create this kind of content, repurpose your content.

That's your first email. Your second one is like, hey, here's my experience. I created mainly Pinterest tips. I worked at Social Media examiner, blah, blah, blah. Right.

And then the third email maybe is your pitch. Like, here's the service I offer, here's the course I offer. There you go, that you're done, there's your welcome sequence.

And then when you get people on your list, you're not so worried about what you're sending them every week you already have something, that's where I think you should start.

So it's just a way for them to get to know more about you. And, and it sounds like on that one, you don't really even think about pitching till the third email or third or fourth.

I mean, for me, that first email is. Shouldn't even be an introduction to who you are. It should be an introduction to, here's how I. Here's how I help you. Right?

First thing you have to do is deliver the value, like one of my welcome sequences on my main site, powwows.com I have one that's what to expect at your first powwow.

And in that first email it, I deliver a lot of value about, you know, we're going to tell you what a powwow is, how to find them, the do's and don'ts. And, you know, I don't even get into like who I am, what the website is until several emails later.

So these email sequences, don't worry so much about those kind, you know, all that other stuff, tell them what you can do for them. Maybe the second or third email you can introduce yourself, give your experience, maybe show a little social proof and then make your pitch.

Yeah. And then would you recommend like maybe at the end of that first email, kind of throwing a question back at them like, hey, dad, how did you find me?

Or anything like, because to me, that's the thing I love about email is unlike a review on Apple Podcasts where I see that JimMom37 liked the show and I appreciate Jim Mom37, but I have no idea who that is. Can't reply to it, Can't.

But if you send me an email or if you sign up for a newsletter now I've got a direct connection and I can say, hey, how'd you find the show? I should do more of that because I want more people like you kind of thing. And now you've got a conversation going.

I love putting conversation starters in emails that what to expect is your first powwow.

The very last thing I say is, look, I know you're excited, I know you really want to get to one of these, but what are you looking forward to the most? The singing, the dancing, the, the crafts or the food.

And every day I get up in the morning and you know, I've got a few of these emails that people have replied and I'm able to have those one on one conversation. That, that is my favorite part about email is people don't think it's a community tool. Right. They. Because it's a one to many conversation.

Right.

But once you get them to respond, now you're having one on one conversations. That is community building. Right. That's the, that's the whole ticket, right? If we can have true one on one conversations, you've won, right.

You've got somebody there that's interested, you can deliver value to them and they'll be around for a while.

And I know you do consulting with people. Is there kind of a top mistake that you see over and over where somebody's like well here's my first email that I'm going to send out.

And you're like whoa, whoa, hold the, hold the phone there just a second. Is there a common mistake that you see?

Yeah, I mean one of the most common mistakes I see is even more basic than that is people just don't ask for emails. I see so many people.

Like I've done audits of people's websites and how much time do people spend making their front page so gorgeous, the perfect colors, the branding and then maybe in the footer they'll have sign up for my newsletter and with a box I think you need to create some kind of, not necessarily a lead magnet. A. I think those are a little overdone. But what is it that you can offer in email? So like a, you know, if you're school of podcasting, right.

Could you offer an email or an offer that says hey look, sign up here, I will give you all the basic information. I'm going to break down the equipment, the software, what to say, all of that stuff in email. I'll deliver it to you weekly. That's an offer.

That's an you've got to ask for it. And once you do that and you create kind of, you know, a landing page or something like I keep going back to.

I always tell people the what to expect at your first powwow because I you. I love that when it works so well for me.

Yeah.

The address is powell.com Paolo101. I can mention that here on this show and people will remember that. I can say it in a live video. I can post it on social media.

You know, once you come up with a couple of these offers, then you can start rotating them on your website elsewhere, and they'll really build that. But that's the first mistake is people, whether on their podcast or on their website, they just don't ask for emails. It's not their call to action.

Podcasters are so bad at having a long call to action of, you know, like. And subscribe. Go to Spotify and rate us. Make sure you subscribe and click the bell over on YouTube, you know, like, right.

It's 10 minutes of all this stuff. Forget all that, right? Just ask them to subscribe to the newsletter. The rest of it will come naturally.

I mean, anybody who listens to a podcast, once or twice, we learn that, oh, yeah, maybe I should go and click subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, Whatever, right? That comes natural. Get them on your list. You can do the rest later.

Yeah, because once you get them on their list now, whatever actions you want. And that would not be a first email where it's like, hey, do all this stuff for me.

But you can ask for the follow, you can ask for the rating, you can ask for the I don't know, here, buy my book. Exactly. Later. And you know that. Yeah, I agree with you 100% on that.

One of the things I did, I was really surprised is this was without having a lead magnet.

I said on the show, I'm like, hey, if you're on a treadmill or if you're in the car and you're always thinking, I need to go back and look at the show notes, did you know you could have the show notes automatically delivered to you?

Just go to whatever the website was school, you know, And I was amazed at how many people signed up because there must be people on a treadmill that are going, that's me. And I gave him an easy remember newsletter. And so it wasn't a lead magnet, but it was something of value.

Exactly.

That actually worked. I was really surprised. I was like, wow, you just throw it out there. And you're like, hey, look at that.

That's a great call to action. I'm writing that one down. I had not thought about. For podcasters, that's show notes as the. I mean, even if you're in the car driving.

I was actually on the treadmill this morning, and I was watching a YouTube video, and they. And they started mentioning all these URLs. I'm like, oh, my God, now I got to pause my treadm, pull out my phone, and write all this down.

But if they'd given me an easy email or something to go to later. That would have been perfect.

Yeah. Now we mentioned lead magnets. Is there any magic to a lead magnet? I always kind of say it should probably solve a problem.

Yeah, of course you offer some kind of value. My. On pows.com, the. The one what to expect is really popular, but the other one is people want to find pow wows in their state and near them.

So that's my number one thing is, hey, look, I'll send you a list of powwows broken down by state or Canadian province. I'll get you one that's near you. So I'm offering value. You can deliver that in an ebook.

And I know a lot of people like to do ebooks for their lead magnet. For me, I would rather take the content in that PDF or ebook and put it into emails.

One of the things I did recently, actually I did this last summer, is I took my what to expect. I kind of did it in reverse.

I took my what to expect at your first powwow email sequence and turn that into an ebook and offer it as a purchase at the end of the sequence. So if you have an ebook, maybe you take that, break it up and make it into emails and then offer it as a download at the end.

I think that just for me, I never open an ebook once I buy it, but if you deliver that same content over the course of three or four days or three or four weeks, I'll read those.

Yeah, that's a good point. I laugh because I have. I think it's called marketing crap. I have a thing in my, in my note, Joy, that I'm like, oh, cool, here's the ebook.

I'll put it over here and I will read it later. And that has now been renamed marketing crap. And I'm sure maybe someday I'll download them all and run them through Google LM and.

Right, right.

Let it make a podcast out of it and then listen to it or something like that. But excellent. Any favorite tools? Because there are 8 million email list.

It's, you know, it's like every day you wake up and you're like, look, somebody started an email list company and.

It'S like, you know, right now I see a lot of people trying different things. Flow Desk, Mailerlite. I have been on convertkit or now Kit for several years. I moved from mailchimp to convertkit.

To me, convertkit flows and it works for me.

It may not work for you, but it really is built for Creators kind of takes away some of the complications that mailchimp or some of these others have. For me, it's really simple to use. It's a nice, clean interface. The people at Kit are great to work with.

They are creators and they, you know, it's mostly bloggers and vloggers and podcasters there. So that's. That's my preferred tool. And, you know, now they have, I think a thousand subscribers, is free. So you can get into Kit pretty cheap now.

So I love it.

Yeah. And they have. I know a lot of people love Substack because you can sell, you can make, like, premium things. You can do that on Kit.

And then also Substack has this, like, you'll sign up for somebody's newsletter. Like, hey, if you like Dave's email, you should check out Paul and Jeff's. And so this referral engine, Convertkit, has something similar. Correct.

Kit now has a recommendation engine, so you can recommend each other and you can actually, there are paid recommendations, so you can start a. You know, they're like morning Brew, and some of those others will start paying.

And so if you refer them, you can, you know, make a dollar or two per subscriber. Substack is growing, and I see a lot of people using that. I was. Again, I would just caution, if you're going to go substack, please also build.

Build it somewhere else in case Substack blows up or whatever else. Make sure you own your data. So build it over on someplace where you can export all that information out.

Yeah, that's the. The one thing that I'm starting to see on Substack that I'm like, oh, here we go. Is they were an email tool and then they added podcasting.

Right.

And now they've added video, and somebody said, you can now live stream on that. And they're kind of like, look, we do it all.

But usually, like, for me, I get that there are places that, you know, we do podcasting, too, and I don't want somebody who does podcasting too. I want somebody who just does podcasting.

And I kind of like my newsletter people to just be the master of newsletters, because deliverability is a pain in the butt. That's one of the things I understand is they're always fighting to make sure that, you know, your message gets to somebody's inbox.

Yeah. And deliverability is huge issue. And, you know, I talk about you own the audience, you own the thing, but that.

That is the one variable you don't want to end up in the Promotions tab or the spam folder.

So going back to what you said, asking a question, that's a great way because if people start replying, it is going to tell Gmail and others that you need to be delivered more.

The other thing I've started doing the last few months is at the very end of my email, I'll put a trivia question and if they reply and get it right, then I randomly select one person to, to win a. You know, just made up stickers. We just got our play button, so I made up stickers of our play button.

So I'm sending those out if you get the trivia question right. So that, that's kind of fun, you know.

And again, that helps that deliverability because you making sure you're getting that reply and that engagement. Yeah, that works really well.

And for anyone who doesn't understand what a play button is, I mean, that's pretty cool that you got a play.

Thank you. Yeah, appreciate it.

What is the play?

The hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube. I got the silver award. Took us a long time. We were counting down for forever. But yeah, we finally got our 100,000 on YouTube.

Funny story about the, about getting it the next day, the very next day I got it. I had to go and speak at a career fair at a middle school. And the teacher that invited me, he's like, dude, you have to bring it.

And so, you know, I'm like, these kids aren't going to know what this is. But sure enough, I opened it up and pulled it out the box and they're all like, you know, because they follow Mr.

Beast and dude, perfect, instant credibility, right? And they're like, okay, this, okay, we're going to listen now. It's kind of fun.

Yeah. And so when we talk about pow wows here, this is not some cool jargon thing for a mastermind of, you know, nerds or something like that.

Tell me, what is a powwow?

Yeah, powwows are a Native American way of celebrating. It's a Native American festival.

Down here in the south, we have a festival for everything where, where there's the chitlin struck, the Irish festival, whatever. Native American tribes and families, they do the same thing when they put on a, a celebration. You know, it's, it's a festival.

It's singing, dancing, it's crafts, there's food. It, it is. And it's open to the public.

So these are things you, you can go really experience native culture firsthand and you'll go and you get to eat some really Cool food, Buy some crafts. It's a complete immersion into native culture.

Interesting. I must check that out. I forget what percentage I am. I know I'm part Cherokee and part Creek, which is how you ended up.

When I was younger, I had jet black hair, and yet my grandfather on my mom's side is Irish, so I had jet black hair and freckles. So it's kind of this weird combo of that. So I will definitely have to check that out. But obviously that's a community.

And speaking of communities, wait till you hear what happened on Facebook with Paul and a community. It is. Truly. It's kind of unbelievable and kind of not, but it's going to blow your mind right after this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So when it comes to building a community, any tips on that? Because everybody knows it's one of those things like saying we should have ice cream.

I don't know that anybody's gonna argue against that unless you're a diabetic maybe. But it's like, everybody's like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea.

But when it comes to building a community, you know, do you have any pros and cons? Because nobody's like, well, we'll just start a Facebook group. And I'm. I've been kicked out of my own Facebook group.

So that's not my favorite answer. What are your tips on building a community?

Yeah, we had an 85,000 person Facebook group in November that Facebook deleted with no appeal. So.

Wow. Wait, hold on. Before we move on. So 85,000 people. You wake up, poof, gone.

And you go to them and you're like, hey, can't help but notice you deleted 85,000 people, and there's no appeal. There's nothing.

Just like, I went through all the channels, you know, met a verified service, have Facebook ads. I'm in a meta leaders Facebook community. And all of them looked into it and they're like, nope, you're done. So.

And did they say what you did?

Yes, they did.

Yeah.

We. It was a buy, sell trade group for Native American goods. And Facebook does not allow the selling of animal parts, whether they're legal or not.

So you cannot sell leather. You cannot sell, like, chicken feathers even if they're legal. That is not allowed.

Now, part of my trying to appeal is like, you know, you do let people sell, like, leather tennis shoes and leather belts and.

And jackets in leather jackets.

I mean, where do you draw the line? But they. There was no answer to that. It was just, no, your group is deleted.

Just got to say this, because we hear numbers. I want you to stop and think about 85,000 people and how much effort it took to build that. One click of a button and it was gone.

Yeah.

Wow.

So, going back to your other question, community is any place where you can engage people and make them feel like they are part of something. Facebook group is one way to build community. It is not community. So that's what I tell people.

You just have to have that mindset of everything you do is community first. Whether that's writing an email and talking to people like you're sitting with them and not just, like, shouting at them like you're a big brand.

You know, if you read an Amazon newsletter, they are not trying to build community. They're trying to convert you and make a sale. So you have to be different.

You have to talk to them directly, whether it's podcasting, email, whatever. You know, always be community first. That's the first thing I tell people. Pals.com is was built on community.

When I started it in 96, I didn't build it to build a business. I just built it because I was playing with the web. Tech, right? I was just having fun playing with web pages.

But it was people coming to me and asking, you know, they were asking questions. They were wanting to engage more. And so I threw up a forum. You know, way back then, it was like V Bullet. It was even before V Bulletin.

But V Bulletin is where we kind of landed. Lou Marella and I like to reminisce about the old days of V Bulletin and wish we could go back there sometimes, but that. That's where we got started.

And that's kind of where we. We built the following and really had the engagement. It was letting people engage with each other.

Sometimes it's just about building the right tools, building the right environment, showing the right content, and then getting out of the way. Sometimes it is that you have to get in there and kind of see things and start discussions.

So you kind of have to, you know, have a lot of hats here to build community. But I go back to, you have to actually have that community feeling. This is an example I like to share with people.

In the beginning on V Bulletin, my username was Webmaster. Again, I came. You know, I was a tech guy. I played with technology.

And somewhere along the line, one of the moderators, she's like, paul, you know, everybody on here thinks you're like some kind of automated thing. They don't even think you're real. They just think, you know, and I was like, you know, you're right.

So I changed my name to Paul Gave and I started participating and talking with people and engaging. And so when I wrote messages, it wasn't like I'm making an announcement as the administrator.

It was like, hey, by the way guys, we're going to do this this week. You know, those kind of things.

That was, you know, back in 98, 2000, somewhere in there I still have people that come up to me at powwows and still address me as Paul G. Because they, that's how they got to know me on the forums.

That alone just changing the attitude of being webmaster or being myself made all the difference in the world.

That's amazing. That's a cool story. The other thing that people, I think stops them from doing it is especially right now, social media is just a mess.

I will stop from what I want to say. It is a show, let's go that route.

So that might stop people from creating a community, but in a way, on one hand you're getting kind of like minded people or at least similar people. So you're probably not going to have that. Are there any things people should be doing to get the community off in the right direction?

Yes. I think you need to know what you want your community to be. Who are you trying to attract? Like who are your people?

And once you decide that you start publishing the content, you start engaging in that way. Don't try to be too broad and attract everybody because they're not your people. Don't worry about things like unfollows and slow growth.

It's, it's about keeping with that, with that same content, content, keeping with that same plan. And, and your people will find you. It may take a while. I mean it took us 15 years to hit a hundred thousand on YouTube. Right? They will come.

You just keep to your principles, keep to the contents that you want to put out and your, your people will find you.

Yeah. And then I know some people will say things like, you know, no politics, no religion.

Right.

And no, and no spam. You know where somebody comes in second post is like, buy my book, whatever. Just no, no value, just hey, hey.

Thought I'd introduce myself to the group. I'm, you know, the best thing since sliced bread. And here are 15 things of mine that you should buy.

Do you have kind of a one strike, you're out rule or how do you usually handle communities when people want to color outside the lines?

Yeah. So our main Facebook page for powells.com or our main group that's just the general everybody that wants to come in.

We have about 130,000 people in there right now.

Wow.

I am a strong. And we did this on V Bulletin as well. I am a strong believer in heavy moderation.

Nobody can post in that group a new message, a new thread without approval. So it doesn't matter who you are. Everything goes through us, and we read it before it gets posted.

So if there is somebody posting problematic things, then the first time we see it, we'll delete it. If we see it multiple times, we will send them a warning. Facebook, you know, that is a cool thing about Facebook groups.

You can, you know, send them a warning and show them what rule they broke. We don't hesitate to delete, ban, throw people out. Yeah, we. We have a very low threshold of. Of that, and you're gone. Especially if it.

If it is political harassing. I don't allow personal attacks. You know, we don't play those kind of games. Any of that is instant ban. Same thing on our Facebook page.

You know, if we see that kind of stuff come in on the comments, you're gone. I think you have to do that even from the beginning.

I know a lot of people are hesitant to throw people out of their Facebook group because they want to grow. But again, you have to stick with what you want to build and don't worry about the numbers.

Worry about the people that are there and how you engage with them.

We all want to be liked by everybody, but we want to be liked by the right people, and those people are not the right people. Any favorite tool?

My favorite tool right now for Facebook groups is there's a couple of them. I use one called Group Leads.

And what it lets you do is if you ask those questions when somebody joins, if you make one of them an email, ask people for the email. Group Leads is a browser plugin, and it will scrape those email addresses when you approve them and put them right into kit. So that's a cool tool.

And with 130,000 person group, I have been able. I think we've been able to get about 25,000 subscribers just from using Group Leads. It's a pretty cool tool.

Nice. But, I mean, I know some people use Circle. I'm a big fan of Heartbeat. So there's ton, you know, mighty networks. There's.

It's kind of like email lists. Like, there's. Every time you turn around, there's another one.

There's a lot of those. For me, I consider the heart of Powell.com is our email.

And so we're actually now, I mean, even creating new segments and new kind of lists on the smaller kind of niche topics on powell.com and email. And then there's Facebook groups associated with each of those. For us, our audience is, is email first and Facebook second.

We, we have a big following on Facebook. So I find it hard to try to. It's a big lift to get people off of Facebook somewhere else. And we, we have so much engagement on Facebook.

I'm just not going to take that audience anywhere else.

Yeah. Now with the 85,000 that went poof because you had their email address, did you just go, hey, we're over here now?

So actually, yes, we did. And instead of rebuilding the buy sell trade group on Facebook, we actually built it in WordPress and we're doing it over there a little slower.

But then we can let people post anything. We're not going to worry about Facebook getting mad about it because if we rebuild it, at some point they're going to delete it again. So.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Excellent. The other one thing I want to ask you about when it comes to email is I realize that some people are like, I. Okay, I have an idea.

I know I can give them, I don't know, behind the scenes stuff and maybe topics that I didn't talk about on the podcast because it's not long enough or whatever, but they're, they're still kind of stuck on what I should talk about. I know you have a lot of products on your website, but one of them is you have templates for email. So tell us a little bit about those.

Yeah, So I started a service, Community Spark Powers or PaulCoutter.com Community Spark will get you there. And yeah, what I want to do is help people find ways to engage because I know people will sit down at their screen and struggle with what to.

What to even post on Facebook. Right.

So in this newsletter, we're giving people an email template every week and then a few things that you could post on email or on Facebook and social media to get them working. It is a struggle even I struggle with what to send each week. Our weekly newsletter.

Like I said before, I have a VA that writes the, you know, here's the new article. Here are the powwows that are coming up this week. But I write the top, you know, I write the introduction, and I struggle to do that each week.

Jeff C. You know, Jeff does a. I encourage everybody to go subscribe to his newsletter.

He does a great job each week of writing a really Engaging personal email. And that's what you just have to find is what is your unique take, what is your voice. It doesn't have to be long, right? It can be.

Some of the best emails out there that I've written are short, you know, 50 word emails. But you're, you're asking something or saying something that's meaningful.

But yeah, the Community Spark service will help you kind of get started and give you some prompts for that. But go look at conversation starters, Google that and use some of those to get some things going in your email.

I think that's the best place to start.

Got it.

And I know also@paul gowder.com podcast yes you've got kind of some info there for people that this exact topic of like if you're struggling with what to do with a newsletter for your podcast, that's there. And then Paul gowder.com email tools. What are we going to find there?

That, that is a video where I go through my favorite tools on growing email. There's some things I've done that are really kind of, you know, traditional tools like ConvertKit, Convert Box, some, you know, lead generation.

But then I also do some really fun things with giveaways and I talk about that in the podcast thing too is I think giveaways are a great way to engage people, whether it's on live video, on podcast, whatever to get them off of that video and back to your website. We do a giveaway every month on, on powells.com and that's, I use it all the time. Powell.com win will get you in this week's or this month's contest.

Right? It's easy. And then we also like we, we use bonus codes.

So if you listen to a podcast episode, I can give out a bonus code that only people listening to that podcast get and that gets you extra entries into our giveaway.

So it's a really cool way to get to engage with people whether they're already in your community and you're kind of rewarding them or if they're new again, you're getting that person on the treadmill to, to stop and take a little action. So I, I love giveaways for that. And then the other thing I talk about in, in the email tools and the podcasting is building landing pages.

I think that's something you have to do is create these email forms that there's nothing else on the page other than an email form. It's a, that's how you can really drive some email signups I posted one on Facebook the other day. I just recorded my podcast about that.

I posted the landing page on Facebook and I hit the algorithm just right. Facebook liked it. We got 700 new subscribers in. In 24 hours. So yeah, keep posting that kind of stuff, that content even on.

On social media, driving people to landing pages really works to grow your email list.

Yeah, I see. When you go to Paul gowder.com email tools, what's cool about that one is there's a video you can watch.

Yes.

But it's after you give them. I got to give you my email. That's kind of a cool little trick.

Again, just offer value. Right. It doesn't have to be an ebook. It doesn't have to be something complicated.

Record a two minute video and answer a question and put that behind an opt in form. And people are going to want to do that.

Absolutely. Well, Paul, buddy, I thank you so much for your time and I'll have links to everything we talked about out in the show notes.

But I'm glad you know, again, by the way, we keep saying Jeff C just to make sure C is S I E H. And I'll put a link to him because we've mentioned him five times now at least. So I'm sure we'll. I'll just send you a invoice for that, Jeff.

He's texting me right now, so. See, we mentioned his name too many times.

That's it. He's like Beetlejuice.

Yes.

Excellent. All right, well, dude, I appreciate your time and I will see you at cex.

Yeah, thanks so much.

All right, man, have a good one. All right.

And everything we talked about you can find@schoolofpodcasting.com 974 and again, one of the things I love about this is when somebody signs up for your newsletter. It's kind of like a friendship ring. I'm going through the motion.

I give thee my email in a action that shows trust that you're not just going to spam me and give me a bunch of nonsense. Right. And that opens the door to one on one communication between people.

And I love the fact that Paul was like, he'll put trivia questions or he'll put just any kind of question at the end of the email to spark that one on one communication. That's a great strategy in terms of lead magnets. He said just whatever the pain points are of your audience. Right. Solve a problem, deliver value.

And if you're like, I have no idea what the pain points are of My audience, then maybe do a survey and find out. Because if you can help them not be in pain, they're going to like you for that. I also mentioned I threw in there something about Note Joy.

And if you're like, what is a Note Joy? That is my alternative to Evernote. It's what I use to put notes in.

So when, you know, you get out of the shower and you're hit with a lightning bolt of brilliance and you're like, I need to write this down. I use a tool called Note Joy. It works on everything.

My biggest reason why I like it is I can email stuff to a email on notejoy and it puts in my account. So there are times when I'll see something, I'm like, oh, I gotta remember this, and I'll do that.

In terms of favorite tools, Paul likes kit, previously ConvertKit, I want to give you just a couple. I too am moving to ConvertKit. I have used the following. I've used Substack. Right now my newsletter is on Substack and it's working well.

But there's a part of me and I don't know, it's weird. We're going to talk about this in the next couple weeks when we talk about running your podcast as a business.

And there's a part of me that wants to move to ConvertKit because that's where all the cool kids are. And that's not really a good reason to spend money. But I have run into some situations that, you know, maybe this isn't the right tool.

But Substack is free, so if you're looking for free, yes, do that. And Paul mentioned about, hey, you know, build your newsletter outside. They do have a way to export your emails.

And I do that about once a month or worst case scenario, once a quarter because you work hard for those email addresses. The last thing you want to do is, you know, have Facebook delete 85,000 people. You know, you'd hate to have like, hey, guess what?

Substack went out of business. Sorry. Oops. Right. Don't want to do that. And so there's Substack. Then if you go up one notch, there is Sendfox. Sendfox is $49 for a lifetime deal.

It's an app sumo thing. And that works. I have a lot of things on Sendfox because I spent 50 bucks years ago.

And so when you sign up for my daily podcast tips right now, you will get emails that are sent through sendfox.

And so that's a fine tool that the one later, if you want a team, you have to use something like 1Password because it's not made for teams, but it's fine. And you can do lead magnets and all sorts of stuff like that.

So if you're like, don't want to put out a lot of money, you can use sendfox now in full transparency. Well, number one, I have an affiliate for, for that. I have pretty much a link for all of these.

But that's because that's almost like a given in all email tools.

But sendfox, when you sign up, they kind of have a thing where it's like, hey, if you want your email delivered faster, you can give them $10 a month. So it's kind of like, yeah, it's a lifetime deal, unless if you want this thing.

So I don't mind sendfox and I don't mind nothing I'm sending out needs to get like right now. So there is that. Then there's Mailer Light. That's another one that Paul had mentioned, that you can get a thousand people for free on ConvertKit.

You can do that on Mailerlite as well. I've used Mailerlite. It's always kind of confusing because there's Mailerlite like Junior or something.

It's like their first version that they never killed. And then they have, you know, the super jumbo deluxe version of Mailerlite.

They're both the same price and they're a little more affordable than ConvertKit.

I just found their interface just like it was good and I could figure out what was going on, but it always seemed just, you know, and that's really so subjective. You might go, what are you talking about? I love it. So that's an opportunity. That's a. Not an opportunity, but that's another option.

But the one that I like is Kit, previously known as ConvertKit. And does anybody know how long we have to say that? Previously known as ConvertKit. I don't know. But I probably like Twitter.

I will call them convertkit until I die. And I like that. Like Paul said, I like their interface. They do a lot of stuff and it's hard to have powerful tools and yet keep it user friendly.

And so they do have a lot of knowledge based articles and things like that. So I am moving things to ConvertKit just because they have tools and such to really help me identify who the heck I am talking to.

And so I can say, oh, these people like gear, these people like growth, these people want, you know, storytelling, whatever. And I can set up things for people to click on that, let me know that. And so I kind of like that.

And that's just something that they say you can do in Sandfox, but not really. So the good news is almost all these have some sort of free trial. And I'll have links to all of these again out@schoolofpodcasting.com 974.

And if you're like, but what about mailchimp and octopus and moose? And there's 8 million. Look, if you see one and you think you like it, use it.

The other thing I thought that when he's talked about a community is someplace where you can feel safe and you don't feel like an outsider.

So one of the things I love about going to events, whether it's, you know, pod festival or podcast movement coming up here, you know, you're in a group of people and when you say, yeah, I'm a podcaster, they don't go, what? It's nice to not have to deal with that. So those are some things that I love.

And it's just something, like I said, the thing that started this is when I started taking my newsletter a little more seriously and delivering it. And look, you've already done the hard work. You, you created content. Just take it and put it out.

The one thing I would never do is say, hey, AI, write a newsletter about, blah, blah, blah, copy and paste. Never. My preferred method using AI is to write the newsletter. Right now I'm using Claude started using that instead of ChatGPT.

And I'm liking the way Claude writes more than ChatGPT. And I know there's, you know, somebody's, oh, just fix your profile and whatever, but use whatever you want.

But I like to give it something I wrote and say, hey, can you kind of make this better? In some cases, that is my prompt, make this better.

And it almost always does without losing my voice because I don't want it to wipe out my personal stories and things like that. So it's in terms of you're still like, I still don't know what to talk about. Well, I got you covered. Think of it this way.

If you've ever watched a DVD, remember those. Watch DVDs and there'd be a director's cut and you could hear the director talking about it or deleted scenes previously not in the theaters.

So these are things that they cut for time or whatever. So if you ever have content and you're like, oh, yeah, I was going to talk about it in the episode, but it was already Too long or whatever.

This could be that director's cut stuff or the behind the scenes of the, you know, the episode. I know there are musicians that have very popular videos where they talk about how they made the song.

And sometimes the story of the song is more popular than the song. But the cool thing is, is when somebody reads the story of behind the song, they almost always then go listen to the song.

So if you're new in your newsletter, you're like, hey, I'm working on this story, blah, blah, blah. When it finally comes out, they're going to want to see what the finished product was. So there's that kind of director's cut.

It could be a personal story that's going on that if you can somehow tie that into your topic, then that will, you know, it's again, it's information that the people that said, I want more information from you are going to care about a personal story. Right now, as I put this together, there's something going on with my pinky finger on my right hand that is just not working.

Like I can move it and all this other stuff. But I'm going to the doctor this week to go, hey, I'm a guitar player, I need all 10 of those things. And it's a little wacky.

But on the other hand, when we don't have our way with what we want to do, if you're like, yeah, I'd love to do that, but I've only got two microphones, I need three. Well, sometimes you make do with what you got. And so maybe I'm going to end up getting creative typing with nine fingers.

Who knows what's going on there? But it's enough to where I'm like, yeah, I don't want to sit on this one. I like my fingers. So keep that in mind.

Sometimes you can work in a personal story. There's news in your industry. There's so many things to talk about.

And that again, doesn't mean, keep this in mind, that you have to talk about everything. Every week I do a newsletter for PodPage. That's a website tool. You throw in your RSS feed. We print out a pretty looking. Pretty. Pretty.

Yeah, we spit out a pretty looking website that you don't need to know any coding. And we actually made a really easy page out of the box. You can go to your website.com newsletter.

So if you go to, I don't know, podcastconsultant.com newsletter that's on PodPage. And so in the PodPage newsletter we just have Here's a website tip, here's a podcast tip.

Here's a common question that we're getting in our, you know, support desk. And that's pretty much it. That's really. It doesn't have to be War and Peace. Just start collecting emails.

The number one mistake that Paul said is you're not even asking for emails. And if you go, I don't have a lead magnet. Explain to them that they can get the show notes automatically delivered to their inbox.

And you can set up almost all those tools I mentioned. I don't think Substack does this, but you can set it up.

You put in your RSS feed, it reads the episode when you publish it and turns it into an email. So those are just some things when it comes to using newsletters to grow your audience.

And again, I'll have links to the original, the part one of this, which was called Want More Downloads? Ditch Social media for Podcast newsletters. That was 972, and this is 974. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The school of podcasting.

One last thing about newsletters. If you're like, Dave, I get it. It's easy. I should have one. Not gonna do it. All right, I get it.

But there are still ways you can use the power of newsletters. And I'll have links to this again out in the show notes@schoolofpodcasting.com 974.

And I'll have links, obviously, to Paul Gowder.com but there's also things like Tink Media has a database of newsletters that you might be able to find someone who's doing a newsletter about your topic, and then you could advertise in that newsletter.

Now, that may not be as good as advertising on another show that's like yours, because when you advertise on a podcast, you know, those people listen to podcasts when you advertise in a newsletter. Maybe, maybe not. But if you've ever thought about it, there's a database of newsletters there.

And then I wanted to point out to another person I met thanks to Jeff C. And that's my buddy, Liz Wilcox. And I believe somewhere in the next year she's going to come on the show. She's another person that. And it's.

It's kind of beautiful. She does email. That's it. Liz loves email, is all about email. Like, just. That's. That's her jam.

And she loves the fact of you get that one on one connection. She also has templates. And so between Paul And Liz, if you are hurting for content, they got you covered.

I think the best is your content that you make. But I wanted to make sure that there are other ways of using newsletters besides making one of your own. In fact, you might want to do both.

You might want to make your own newsletter and then advertise your podcast in another newsletter. It's something to think about.

And as I look at the clock that's going to do it for this episode, if you need help making content, you're like, dave, I don't even have a podcast yet, so.

Well, number one, here's again, as you're building it, once you have the name and you have a domain name, you can point that domain at your newsletter and say, sign up here to be notified when it goes live. And then you can use those people to help shape your content again. If you need help with this schoolofpodcasting.com, use the coupon code listener.

That's L I S T E N E R. When you sign up and somebody asked me this and I'm like, I guess I've never explained that that coupon's for life. What do you mean, Dave?

Meaning it's not like, oh, you get X amount of percentage off the first month. It's like, no, no, if you sign up, you get X amount of percentage off every month, off every year.

I don't kid around when I make coupons and that's probably why I don't do Black Friday deals, because I'm already giving you a good deal. It's my way of saying thank you for being a listener. Hence the coupon code is listener. And again, that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.

Go to schoolofpodcasting.com and sign up today. Until we meet again. Take care, God bless, and class is dismissed.

If you like watching what you hear, if you like what you hear.

It'S called podcasting gone wrong. The ultimate. Oh, that's that. Pet peeves. I don't want you to listen to that one. Oh, hold on. We got to redo this now.

Cuz it wasn't last week, it was two weeks ago. Don't. Podcasting since 2005. Welcome aboard. I am lost. I threw in a welcome aboard and it totally threw off my rhythm. What am I? I'm. Wow. Wow.

I don't know who I am. Award winning hall of fame podcast. Wow. One word. Welcome aboard. Just. And I'm totally like. It's like pull my string and if I change one word, I'm.

I'M out of it.