with Noah Kagan from Sumo Group
Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 8 Episode 20. This is a recap of my interview with Noah Kagan about how businesses like yours should be utilising email.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
02:20 About Noah Kagan
03:00 About Sendfox
06:40 Little tips from Noah to make things quicker
13:40 Free things where you can put your attention to
16:20 Podcast advice to hospitality owners
23:00 Success stories from Noah
26:30 Quickfire questions
Whilst you’re here
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
Noah's life and career has been about evangelizing and marketing. He followed his interests to join different companies like working at Facebook. He explored a lot of curiosity around what products does he like, what products are coming up and he built a company with a lot of great people called appsumo.com, which is the number one site for software deals. So if anyone's looking to start a business online or already running an online business, go sign up for their free newsletter and a few times a week they send out the latest and greatest products plus it's only $50 for life for most the tools they promote.
A lot of where Noah spent his personal time is, you know, sharing how to do marketing experimented with a lot of marketing. do his best, have fun with it.
About Sendfox
If you have an Airbnb and you've had guests over a period of time email marketing is a great way in general to either get them back or potentially sell them other things so for right now if you're on Airbnb and you don't have it, wouldn't it be nice if you could communicate directly with your past customers say hey, do you want to pre buy for the future? Or maybe you can actually offer them something else? Is there a physical product? Is there a food is there another service that you can recommend?
Noah has been doing internet business world for 20 years, and he found out that this is the only place and only way that you can communicate at scale with your audience. And so they've built with appsumo, and an eight figure business just off email. Noah was on MailChimp just like you, and he's paying 400-500 bucks a month. And it took him like an hour to create every email. He thinks the best way to run a business, the best way to run an Airbnb is just make the Airbnb the way you'd want to go to. He got tired of using MailChimp. And so he said, well, what if we could just build it ourselves. And that's what's become Semd Fox.
Noah doesn't want it to be very expensive. So right now, it's free to start or one-time payment of 50 bucks forever. What Noah is really trying to focus on is just encouraging people to communicate with their audience weekly. So how do we make a tool that makes it very easy for you to create content or material so that you're communicating with your customers or potential customers regularly? That's a huge mistake that a lot of people miss out on if you have an Airbnb, maybe they're not visiting you weekly. So maybe monthly makes more sense.
Attention is worth more than money. Attention is worth more than money and if you're not at the top of The attention or somewhere on the attention of your customer, they will stay somewhere else, they will buy something else. So they will use something else or they will learn from someone else. And so it's critical to stay top of mind and Noah thinks email is a great way to do that.
Little tips from Noah to make things quicker
Ever since Noah was a little kid, he has been really into efficiency. He was fascinated with how to get to school the fastest way, and it's something he has reflected on in his life.
It doesn't mean just because you're efficient, doesn't mean you're effective, which is a very important thing in business efficiency and effectiveness. It's like, are you going very fast. It's not great to be going very fast on a canoe up the wrong stream. So you don't want to be going fast off the wrong stream.
But for Noah, it's been very important to be going fast and trying to be effective. If you kind of start looking at what, where am I spending the majority of my time and how do I optimize that? That trickles down so that it's a huge multiplier effect?
One of the number one thing for Noah is learning how to type faster so most people if they're not typing Probably around 100 words a minute then you're going to be as less efficient on everything else you're going to be do subsequently.
Two ways to improve: one is called keybr.com and the second one is ratatype.com. Those are the two places totally free, that Noah recommends people going and learning how to get to at least if you're not an 80, you should be focused on getting to 80 and get out don't do that chicken typing.
Number two is your trackpad. If you're using a Mac you go to System Preferences click on trackpad and then the point and click section make your tracking speed the fastest.
Number three is a stupid one because people may not realize this stuff but your computer and your phone or it's not about necessarily bad but wherever you're spending The majority of your time, if you're on an old phone, if you're on an old iPad if you're on an old tablet, and it takes a long time for it to load times how long it takes to load times every day times the whole year.
What Noah is really trying to people to think about is think about where you spend the most of your day, if most of your day is on a computer, get a faster one, if most your day is using some certain software, learn the key.
So another example of that is go to Gmail, go into your settings, the little gear thing in the top right click on settings, and then turn on your keyboard shortcut. And then all you do is in Gmail, you're going to hit Shift question mark. And so in shift question mark is going to show you all the keyboard shortcuts and I've studied almost every single one of them. And that basically just shows you I'm a big loser. But the second thing that it shows you is that if you can save time by not having to move your mouse from the like the email to the next thing, you're gonna save tons of time because most people spend about an hour and if you're using Outlook, it's the same thing. There's a bunch of keyboard shortcuts, but if you're not using the majority of keyboard shortcuts in Gmail or outlook, you're probably wasting 15 to 30 minutes every single day times 300 plus days a year that you're checking your email.
You're in Gmail hit backslash. It's the same one as the question mark. It might be different for Euro but the question mark, it automatically goes to the search section. But that one is like a simple one just hit the backslash, you go to the search area. Other ones that I really like that maybe aren't as common is that if you're if you if you do J and K from the inbox, it goes up and down, which is pretty known. I think people know that but do J and K go up and down. Then when you the two things that are cool, I'll give you some things that I really like you hit X and it chooses the email then this is the one I actually really like for the you can hit L which labels it so you just hit l or you hit M and that moves it so I don't have to actually do anything.
The key thing is that look at where you spend the majority of time. It's an email, it's on your phone, it's on your laptop, so maximize that stuff because that's the biggest wins.
The last one that Noah thinks most people don't optimize their bedroom, try a nice bed. Noah tried different mattresses, they also have a mattress cover. They've basically bought a bunch of different comforters, a bunch of different covers. They also have a weighted blanket, a bed cooler, like a bed air conditioner. They have different pillows. Noah also also wears the aura ring to figure out what time is the best time to go to sleep and when to wake up and all this stuff.
Think about what and where the majority of your time is and if you can sleep great then the rest of the day you're gonna have that energy so it's kind of the same concept.
Free things where you can put your attention to
If people aren't sending emails to their audience, once a week That's the number one thing just get going right because Facebook, Instagram, YouTube all these places they control the audience they control your customer.
Number one thing is get an email, sendfox.com it's free and start communicating with them. How do I find new audiences? And then how do I nurture my existing audience.
One of the things that Noah has been experimenting with is Facebook groups. So the people who already know about Noah Kagan it's not necessarily expanding the pie. It's more of like a way that Noah can connect them people with other people and become a hub which is always very powerful and it's a chance for them to help each other which is also very powerful and it's fun.
In Noah's Facebook group, every week we help a different person in it. If you're running any business, there's a pie of marketing, which is your ads. It's your press. It's your affiliate, it's your partnerships. It's your content with email marketing, you know, a good email, most people get 30% open rates, that means 70% of people didn't see it or deleted it. And so that is where social can be helpful. So groups, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn.
Try something out on one place, and then promote in other places, but see where you're getting the response.
Podcast advice to hospitality owners
If you're a bed and breakfast owner, don't start a podcast. A podcast is for your most loyal fans. The opportunity right now is not about a podcast, it's more How do I diversify my revenue within this sector? So if this happens again, I don't really care, right? And you're like, well, what can I do is a bed and breakfast. Noah doesn't think it's hosting a podcast yourself. But could you potentially host people who want to do podcasts in your area at your bed and breakfast, so maybe you don't do a podcast. But if you have anyone in your area, if you're in London, if you're in Houston, if you have extra space in your Airbnb or in your hotel, maybe you can use that space more creatively so that if no guests are coming, you can still have people that maybe are using it, maybe you can have it as a YouTube recording studio. That's a way of actually building exposure.
If you're an Airbnb owner out there, there's two main options one What can you do with the property? Secondly, how can you get creative in generating a second income stream or a side hustle that can compensate for it? So if one thing is down, you've hedged it with another thing up.
Everyone should build a newsletter. Everyone should be communicating with whatever small audience you have.
Success stories from Noah
Noah shares some sites that he thinks you can go teach other people to start building your business.
One of Noah's new favourite business pivots happened yesterday. It's by this company that makes his cell phone case. These guys make ultra-thin cases. That's their whole shtick. So you can see it's called buypeel.com and what these guys did a key holder, they've used their design skills and their packaging and their skills around that to launch something new. The other thing that they did that's really critical is they thought about I already have a customer base of people how could I potentially sell this customer base that I already have access to something else that's relevant.
Noah thinks they're gonna survive for many years because look, in business most stuff won't work but at least they're trying something and they're doing something about it versus you know, sitting and hoping someone comes and saves them.
Quickfire questions
If you could be isolated on lockdown with one celebrity who would it be celebrity?
Tupac. Gordon Ramsay.
What series or movie has been on your watch list for ages but would like to watch now?
Gringo. John McaFee. Dark Waters. The Gatekeepers.
What is the one thing that you've missed being able to do since being on lockdown?
Going to the sauna.
What is the best purchase that you have made under $100 in the past six months to a year?
Oculus Quest.
One bit of advice that you would give to hospitality owners to help them boost their direct booking?
Contact all of your previous guests and ask for a referral.
Know more about Noah on his YouTube channel.
Before you leave
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