Build Your Copywriting Muscle with Kate Doster

Why aren’t you emailing your list? Are you worried about coming across as desperate and salesy or is your email list too small to try?

It all boils down to confidence. The good news is the more you flex your confidence muscle, the better you get. After all, being on your email list is a privilege.

On today’s episode, Kate and I chat about email best practices, how to create an email sequence that sells, why client avatars aren’t all they’re cracked up to be (you know I love that topic!) and so much more.

Listen in!

Mentioned in This Episode

About Kate Doster

Kate Doster is the host of the Inbox Besties Podcast, creator of the Love Your List 2.0 email marketing mega course and is dangerously obsessed with helping ethical entrepreneurs carve out their slice of the interwebs. She helps her students woo open the hearts (and wallets) of their small but mighty audiences thanks to fun email marketing and easy yes mini-offers.

If you want to jolt subscribers into taking action, gobbling up your paid offers like candy… or kale is that’s their thing, follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter or visit her website.

Transcription

Abby Herman
Hey there and welcome to Episode 112 of the Content Experiment Podcast, a podcast that supports the idea that content and marketing are ever moving targets in any business. And it’s okay if you don’t feel like you’re doing at all right all of the time, you have permission to experiment with little tweaks and changes in your content, to find what works for you, what increases value for your audience, and what grows your business, and most importantly, what feels good for you. I’m Abby Herman, content strategist and coach for online business owners who are ready to make a bigger impact online. I firmly believe that success isn’t about what big marketing brands and so called gurus think is the right thing. It’s about you and your business, your lifestyle, and, frankly, your values and belief systems. You get to do business in a way that works for you. If you’re new to the podcast, thanks for stopping by. I’m really happy to have you. And I think you’ll find this podcast to be full of no nonsense support, to help inspire you to get your message out there and give you the actionable steps you need to make it happen. If you like what you hear, hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss another episode. And what about those of you who have been listening for a while thank you for sticking around. I’m guessing if you are a repeat listener, you’re liking what you’re hearing. So I want to tell you something. I love doing this podcast. I love the interviews and the solo episodes and getting this information into your earbuds. But it takes a lot of time and financial resources to get it done. So I would really appreciate it if you would pay it forward.

Would you take five minutes, maybe less and go to your podcast app right now to leave this podcast a five star rating and review, you can probably get it done while you’re listening to this intro ratings and reviews are what help tell Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, and all the other platforms and me know that you like what you’re hearing. And it helps to get the podcast in more earbuds so others can benefit from the information I’m throwing down on a regular basis. Today’s episode is brought to you by content mastery lab, a membership community that supports business owners by helping you through identifying the right content to create for your audience. From market research to ideation to creation, iteration and publication, floss shuns. It offers support feedback, community accountability, and so much more. Because you can’t to just sit down and decide that you’re going to create content for your business, you need a plan, and you need space to tweak and adjust that plan when needed. Sometimes it takes some time to get there, you have to try out a few things, experiment with different types of video in different places. You need to share different content in different places, maybe try out a new type of pillar content or two. And maybe you try these things out and discover that that’s not really what your audience wants at all. And so you shift gears and try something different. But luckily, you were experimenting rather than doing an entire overhaul of your content strategy, right.

That’s what we do inside Content Mastery Lab, the membership community, stop floundering with trying to figure it all out yourself and start creating content with the confidence that you’re on the right path. And give yourself permission to make little tweaks and changes along the way. Join us monthly or quarterly or commit to a whole year for extra one to one time with me. And quarterly planning parties where we work through your content together in a more intimate group, head to the content experiment.com slash lab for more information and to sign up and use the coupon code podcast to try out your first month for just $1. I hope to see you there. Now today we are revisiting one of my favorite topics email marketing, because honestly, it is one of the easiest and one of the most effective marketing tools you can use to grow your business. Today’s guest Kate doster is going to break it down and make it really easy for you. We talk about best email practices, how to create an email sequence that sells why client avatars aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. You know, I love that topic and so much more. But before we get into the interview, let me tell you a little bit about Kate doster Kate is the host of the inbox besties podcast, a great podcast By the way, I think you should have her head over there after this episode and listen. She’s also creator of the love your list. 2.0 email marketing mega cores and is dangerously obsessed with helping ethical entrepreneurs carve out their slice of the interwebs. She helps students will open the hearts and wallets of their small but mighty audiences thanks to the fun email marketing and easy Yes, mini offers. She believes you don’t need to believe the alphabet or be a dirty rotten spam phase her words to write emails that jolt subscribers into action gobbling up your paid offers like candy or kale if that’s their thing. And now here’s our conversation.

Welcome, Kate. I am so excited to chat with you today all about email marketing, and manifesting those big launches list size and all of the things.

Kate Dostler
Yeah, I am super excited. I love talking about all of those things.

Abby Herman
I know. And before we get started, I already introduced you but I would love to have you introduce yourself in your own words and let listeners know what you do and who you do it for. Sure.

Kate Dostler
So I’m Kate Dostler of KateDostler.com and I have a podcast called the Inbox Besties Podcast. And it is my sole mission in life to put money in the hands of good people so they can do good with it. And the thing about good people when they identify is that there’s two things that they tend to really really hate sales and then ironically writing. So I really love to help people with their copywriting email in particular. So it’s copywriting with a W, meaning writing words that actually get people to hit buttons. So I have just always been so enthralled with humans in general. And I always said if I had found behavioral economics before like copywriting and psychology, I definitely would have gone into that, because I just find people so fascinating. And I just I just love everything about it. So that’s me in a nutshell.

Abby Herman
Do you follow Melina Palmer and I the brain is at the Brainy Biz Podcast? Do you follow her?

Kate Dostler
I don’t actually I’m a Freakonomics girl. So anything by that team I am all about.

Yeah you would like Molina to I think, yeah, highly recommended. She’s got a great podcast all about human behavior, and how you make decisions on buying things and and things like that.

I’ll definitely check her I’m all about that stuff. Like grocery store psychology, your girl knows all of it is just so fascinating to me how brains work?

Abby Herman
Yes. So before we got started, I was showing off a product that I bought from you, maybe like a year ago, and it’s been a while. And so I know, part of how you work with clients. Can you tell everyone how you how you work with clients, and then how does the way you work with clients help you to live the lifestyle that you want?

Kate Dostler
Sure. So the product that we are referring to is the email marketing fairy. So that is a series of email templates that we have got a funnel in there, we’ve got a welcome series, there’s the 30, because we just added new ones newsletters that are in there. There’s a whole series on if you haven’t emailed your list in forever, on exactly how to re enter people’s inboxes. And I’m going to tell you right now, like, Oh, I’m so sorry, I’ll do better next time.

Nobody cares. That’s very selfish, very self serving, they’re just going to hate it. So we tell you the right way to reenter people’s inboxes in there, I have my signature course love your list, which I absolutely love that we have our list to you. So there’s a Facebook group, you get access to that for about six months. And I do take the occasional one on one client and usually it is action takers that seek me out. And so I was just like, Oh, can I just give you like money I’m like, okay, so much of my philosophy when it comes to those things Am I also have some other sort of non email related stuff like Trello magic and all that. So I love digital products. I love courses, I love teaching. But I also love the ability where even though I’m kind of an extrovert, I’m really truly an introvert. So I’m like one of those on the spectrum. Sometimes I just don’t want to talk to people for a couple of days, or in that home, good people to do good money with their things. Scenario a lot of the time we take on the burden of like other people’s results. So when it’s something like a small digital product like the email marketing fairy that has nothing to do with anything for me at all because it’s like it’s a $36 price point like you need to go do your thing but when it was you know bigger things like love your list or like one on one coaching that’s why don’t take on too many people at a time. Sometimes I have a poor boundary of like, Oh no, like all that stuff. So that’s something that I’m working on. I know that you have other great episodes, you know about mindset that are coming up and all of that so I love digital course product businesses because I don’t wanna say it set it and forget it. You do have to answer those hi forgot my login or you know the inverted a letter and their email address and they didn’t get it but I just love it because then I can do things like we’re in the process of selling our old house so I can take off like two weeks to like renovate and My executive assistant, she’ll handle the unboxing we’re good to go. So, yay, digital products?

Abby Herman
Yes, yes. I love that. So tell me about why email marketing. Why? How did you fall into the email marketing space? Where did that niche come from? And and, you know, I love email marketing, I love talking about it. I love what you said about, like, Don’t apologize for not showing up in other people’s inboxes for a while, and there’s a there’s a finesse a way to, you know, get back into their inboxes and get back into their line of sight, I guess. So I love talking about this. But I’m curious, where did that come from?

Kate Dostler
Sure. So again, loving people so much like most people, when you start your online business, you start your blogs about different things, you know, you get into the content creation. And so at the time, this was like 2016 2017 ish, I’d already had a background in communications and psychology, that’s one of my many degrees, because I cannot pick a major to save my life. And so I was in a lot of Facebook groups, because they were really in their heyday. And people were just posting like landing pages, and they’re just awful. And it was just like, things like that. And so I would go in and I was just being like, really helpful. I’m like, This isn’t like interesting at all, like, say, like this to like that. And then I got hooked up with a copywriter, because I didn’t even know this was a thing. Like, I didn’t even watch Mad Men I didn’t know. And she was like, I really think that you would be good at this. So I studied under an amazing copywriter. And when you’re a copywriter with a W, you write everything from home pages about pages, sales pages, but what I loved writing with emails, because it was so personal, I got to ask my client, a bunch of their stories, I got to ask their clients stories to be able to get them in there. And I really got to think of people’s I call them muses, because avatar sounds gross. I got to think about people’s music, like almost as little Actor in a Play. And it’s like, oh, what are the Yeah, butts that they have, like, what are they like struggling with? Like, you know, how can I find a fun story and, you know, emails can be as long as you want them to be, they can be super short, they can be a little bit longer. And so I just fell in love with emails, launch emails, sales emails. And so I did that for quite a while. And then I was like, again, because I did not want to have any other bosses. I was like, I want to do digital products. So that’s just how I switched over, it was just one of those things. And for anyone who’s sort of struggling with their niche, like just just keep on going on. I never at the beginning claimed to be like anything that I wasn’t like I always told people like, you’re like broke every rule I could grow. The first couple of clients, you know, here are the industries that I’ve worked in here are a couple friends that I like helped redo their thing. And here’s the results they got. And it just snowballed from there. Because it was everything that I love doing just writing to friends. I’m like, I can do that.

Abby Herman
Yeah, I love that. And yeah, I’m so I’m a huge rule follower, but only if the rules make sense. If they don’t make sense to me, if I can’t like justify why there’s a rule, I’m totally going to break it. So I do like to break the rules. Because most of the time in email marketing and marketing in general the rules, quote unquote, air quote, rules don’t make any sense. And you should just do what works for you and what feels good to you. Because it’s your business, right? Exactly as you want to do.

Kate Dostler
Exactly. And being that like the enneagram to which everyone thinks is odd. I’m a two, three and not the other way around. Because I love being an entrepreneur is like I saw what people were struggling with. And it was email and I’m like, Well, I can go in and fix that. And so that was like the holy mama bird, Sam, everybody thing. I then like I just I fell in love with like all of it. landing pages offers just like, yep, I can write launch sequences all day.

Abby Herman
all day long. Awesome. So let’s talk about the the landing pages and all of that. So talk to me about because I know a lot of people think, well, email isn’t going to work for me, because I don’t have that big list. Can you share a little bit about that list? size, what the? What value list size has, if any, and then what we can do to potentially grow our lists?

Kate Dostler
Sure. So I love this question. Here is the thing. So one of my core philosophies, is to treat people like people. So you got to know this. And people do not know if they are one of 10 if they’re one of 1001 of 10,000 they have no friggin clue. Because it’s not like you’re on Instagram where people can see the amount of followers that you have, right? Or you know, potentially like your hashtags are real to see like what your reaches, no buddy knows. So use that to your advantage. Again, you’re not bragging about things that you haven’t done, but you are treating it like it is a privilege to be on your list because it is so those 10 people want to leave because you want to talk about something else like that’s fine. Go find another 10 people go find another 100 people that you would love to talk to, and then you’ll be fine. So I don’t think that your list size has to directly correlate with how much money you make. Now, keep in mind, if you’re like becae, I want to make $10,000 a month, and you’re only selling a $7 ebook, and you only have 100 subscribers. And you’re not doing like, say any direct sales page ads? Well, no math is going to come and get you at that particular point. But if you’re like, I want to make $10,000 a month, and I want to sell two coaching spots for $5,000 a piece, you could if you have the right 100 people on there, and you get them and you know what they struggle with. And you can really call out the things that are going on wrong in their daily life not just being like, Oh, are you not getting your work done that sort of thing, then you could very easily make that $10,000 a month. So you do need math at some point. But your list doesn’t need to be large. People do not need to know how many people are in there. I know that there’s this stat that goes around something like you know, for every subscriber you have that’s like how much $1 a month or something you should make, like a oh god now 100% I’m like, Oh, that’s what we call like a normal and logical but like we don’t do logical and like you guys listening to show like I officially have dubbed you in like a logical group. So like we teach our students and love your list how to write thank you page offers people call them tripwires. I think that’s gross, I’m gonna do that. And industry average is like one to 2% Meanwhile, I have listings, they’re like, how can I get more sales and they have anywhere between a five to 10% conversion rate.

It’s like, well, you just need more people, you just have a people problem. So the way to fix your people problem you really have I would say in this day and age, honestly two ways that you can do it, it is either going to be through some type of collaboration where you’re bothering other people’s audiences, or it’s going to be some type of pay promotion where go figure you’re borrowing somebody else’s audience, whether it is Facebook’s, whether it is YouTube, whether it is Pinterest does not matter. Again, wherever your people are hanging out where it makes sense, you can test out some ads there for collaboration, it makes no sense for you to sit out and plan your whole entire Instagram grid. And all these hashtags. And like 30 days worth, when it doesn’t work. First of all reels might help you a little bit at the time of this recording, because they’ll push it out to new people. But like it’s not gonna work. I would much rather you spend that afternoon pitching for people to be on their podcast, pitching for people to do a guest blog post. Even better, you can pitch them to do something like a freebie swap that we talked about a lot. We can talk about that if you want to know about that. You could do something big like I have the back to business bundle giveaway, I would much rather see you actively try to borrow somebody else’s audience and make a connection every single day than post on an Instagram or Facebook account with like 50 people. It’s a waste of your time. So either pay to borrow someone’s audience or give value and collaborate with somebody.

Abby Herman
So talk to I love that. Yes. 100% collaboration relationships are relationships with other people who share the similar audience with you. Talk to me about the paid promotion a little bit though, are you specifically talking about ads there?

Kate Dostler
Yeah. forbade permission is any any type of ads, because you’re essentially either borrowing Facebook’s eyeballs, Pinterest, eyeballs, YouTube’s eyeballs, whatever, um, I don’t know, Google, some people like to use the google adsense ads at the top of Google search results, you know, nothing wrong things like, you know, SEO or organic reach. So that’s when it’s free. Like, maybe you will have a pin on Pinterest that takes off, but maybe you won’t, because it’s fickle. Same thing with a post on Google, like it might rank but it could take three or four months and you don’t have time for that while you can still do those things in the background. The 80% of your time needs to be focused on really doing those collaborations, or like I said, some type of paid advertisement,

Abby Herman
would you say being a guest on a podcast as a collaboration?

Kate Dostler
I do. I think that’s a great way to borrow other people’s audiences. And with podcasts, people can they can hear your enthusiasm. And I think that that’s why you know students do so well, is because I really try to work on that confidence muscle, because like, I can tell you till I’m blue in the face, send this sentence, but I can’t get you to actually hit the send button with your finger. And the only thing standing between that is you and your feelings like that. I’ve only done half of my job. So yeah, be on the podcast, do collaborations on YouTube channels get into the interview circuit like this is where you need to be.

Abby Herman
Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about the freebie swap that you mentioned. What How do you put your like that together? Do you? Do you recommend someone actually being the organizer of that or finding reaching out and finding other people who are already doing that? And kind of piggybacking on that, my guess.

Kate Dostler
So a freebie swap is super simple. So say for example, you can reach out to me again, you want to do something that has a similar audience but teaches them in a different way. So if I am focused, like if I’m a health coach, and I focus on nutrition, and then I reach out to somebody who focuses a lot on like physical fitness, or a lot on cycling, or, um, you know, on different aspects, I don’t want to go to somebody else who focuses on the exact same thing that I do. Sometimes you can, but you want to do somebody that’s adjacent to somebody that’s close. And you’ll be something like, I’m just gonna say podcasting, for example. So say Abby helps people with their podcast. That’s who she targets, right? I heard you. I’m like, hey, ami, so I know that you love helping podcasters. And honestly, I’ve got a lot of them in my audience, but it’s just not something I would cover. So I’m wondering, if you since you don’t talk about email marketing, would love to share my two years worth of email ideas with your list, just on the landing page, I can give you a copy of the PDF to look out beforehand. And I’ll go ahead and send a solo email on how great your podcast is for freebie hosts.

And then that’s it. So most people, they’ll probably say yes, because again, you’re coming in with the fact like, Hey, I know that you help X, Y and Z. I don’t do that. And I share your stuff, will you share my stuff. And you don’t have them share like the actual file, you just have them share the landing page. So if you spend even an hour a week, just trying to, and you might be like, cool, if I’m just doing all these collaborations and like, when am I going to send my email is my stuff just have something called freebie Friday, and then it’s like every Friday at some new free thing that you found. They don’t necessarily need to know that, hey, Abby is also sending this on, you know about this, like, just go ahead and do it. And it’s a really easy ask. I think that people get very, nervous when it comes because nobody wants rejection, right. But again, you’re going to get a lot more subscribers. I literally had a student do this right for Black Friday. And within one day, she had 400 new email subscribers, it was completely for free. It was just one person. That was her friend, again, start the easiest work up your muscles. And she was like, Hey, would you share this my landing page or their lesson? I’ll do the same for you. And they loved it loved it.

Abby Herman
Totally stealing that. Thank you.

Kate Dostler
Honestly, that’s something like even myself. You know, we’re working on ourselves as well. It’s like, we could definitely do a couple a month or at least once a month, you know?

Abby Herman
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so you get these new subscribers on your list. You need to nurture them versus trying to sell them something right. Talk to us about nurturing I know you. And I know, in theory, yes, we do want to sell I saw you pause. Yes, you want to sell to them. But we also need to nurture them, right? What does that look like?

Kate Dostler
Well, you need to sell the fact that you get them the fact that you understand them. And the fact that you know what it’s like to be them the fact that you know, you’re struggling with the fact that you deserve to be in their inbox. So you’re always selling, it’s a matter of if you were asking for money. So if you are so jaded and thinking Oh, value, value, value versus sell, no, every l mail, every single email is a sales email, because you’re always selling the fact that you get them, you understand them, and you’re going to help them conquer whatever demons it is, whether it is just that fight on Friday nights, about what’s for dinner, right? Like, you’re going to come and help them. So that’s the first thing. So for most people, again, and this would depend on sort of your product suite and where you’re at in your business, if you sort of have lower priced ticket things, then you can always have what’s called a welcome series. So somebody will go to a landing page, which is where people put in their email address because they realize we didn’t define the term to get your free gifts, usually called a freebie, lead magnet, something of that nature. So if you have some lower priced products, or you don’t have anything for sale, yet, a welcome series is really just sort of rolling out the red carpet. So it is making sure that the people actually look at your freebie is sort of drawing a line in the sand. So maybe in your industry, everyone’s like you need eight glasses of water a day. But like you think that that’s complete bowl, right, you’re going to call that out and like your 30 ML, because you only want people on your list that you can help. And if one of your core philosophy is our core beliefs is that people should be fasting, then you want all those non fasters to get off now because you don’t want to waste their time. You don’t want to waste your time, right being on your list is a privilege, treat it like one, then you can go and maybe you know if you did a guest blog post somewhere, or maybe one of your most popular pieces of content, that sort of thing.

Maybe you have an affiliate offer, or maybe you do have something small for sale or a discovery call, then sure shove that on there as well. Now, if you have a product, like a course, a coaching, in that case, in several welcome series, you’re going to do a funnel. So for a funnel a little bit different. The funnel is very like laser focus, whereas you know, welcome series just like oh, you know, here’s the bathroom. Here are some chips here at the party. This is like no, you want somebody on the dance floor. You’re not going to show them anything else. You need them on the dance floor. So you need to think to yourself, why wouldn’t this person want to get on the dance floor? Maybe it’s because the rest of us is bad maybe because they don’t want to embarrass themselves. Maybe it’s because they don’t know the right moves. So your goal in this funnel is to think of all of those things that could possibly be standing in their way of seeing success with the topic of your offer things that are holding them back physically, mentally, sometimes even spiritually, depending on your offer, and breaking those down in your emails, and then showing them how there’s a better way. And look, your product is gonna help at the end. So rather than showing them all these different pieces here and there, it’s like, Okay, I’m gonna create this freebie that has to do with my paid product. More points, as you say, this is strict for my paid offer, because then they’ve heard the name of your products before. And that’s like, Okay, so how can I take them to point a to point C, a lot of people tend to do that with webinars, you can do that with challenges, you can do that with one page PDFs if you want to. It’s just those emails into the middle. It’s like, that’s where the real buyer psychology comes in. So you know, on the last day that have the car open, nine times out of 10, it’s not somebody’s second guessing door stuff. If they’re still opening the email, they’re second guessing themselves, will they be able to actually get the results. So that’s gonna be very different than the message you sent at the very beginning, where you’re just trying to prove to them that blogging is a useful way to spend our time rather than you can get results from blogging.

Abby Herman
Yeah. Okay. So what about the people who don’t buy at the end of that funnel? Or at the end of that welcome sequence? What do you do? What do you do with them?

Kate Dostler
Well, most of you in the welcome series, the goal isn’t necessarily to buy it might be some small offers, and maybe some affiliate stuff. So right before you’re done with that, I was like to send an email that just kind of tells people like, Atlanta is like, hey, like you’ve been through our special you can call the red carpet serious if you want to. So we’re gonna be putting them into our weekly newsletters, where we talk about a variety of things like ABC and D, because I mean, you don’t know they might have signed up for your list to say, learn about emails, but then I’m doing a promotion for somebody whose money mindset course so they could get one of those. We’re trying to make it less jarring for people, again, treat people like people for a funnel, especially either whether it’s an auto webinar, even with someone that’s not fancy, and you’re just you know, okay, they didn’t buy their product. And now what, if it is an automation that you have set up, then I put in what I call a bridge sequence, which is okay, so I know that we’ve been talking a lot about, you know how to do this one thing, so you know how to drink a lot more water. But I actually do talk about a lot of other things like Susie is a nutrition, so you kind of give them a little bit of a mini welcome series, just kind of tell them the other things you talk about, and shove them into your newsletter. Same thing with if you actually do a live launch, and people don’t buy, I would like to send one afterwards. If you’re brave enough, you can either ask people why they didn’t buy, if you want to give them something free that you can, if not, then just put them back on your normal newsletter list.

Abby Herman
Like that. Okay. Now, you had a big complicated, no, it doesn’t have to be complicated. You had a big launch recently, where you had a small list small, I mean, small is relative relative, right? Yeah, yeah. So you had a list that wasn’t gigantic wasn’t a 10,000 person list? yet? You had a six figure launch? When you talk to me a little bit about that? And how that happened? How did you nurture them? How do you How did you sell to them? And like, how did you? How did you start and plan it out?

Kate Dostler
Sure. So I really started planning out stuff because my VA we actually brought on as like a real team member, and she likes to you know, make sure that things are planned out. So the only thing that I knew about when we did this last live launch of my signature course love your list is I knew it was gonna be $100,000 launch, like I just knew, and every core of my being like, this was a it was happening. It was last October. So in 2020, just over No. So it wasn’t like it was a pandemic, but it was just like, yeah, it’s happening.

Abby Herman
So can I ask you what your what the launch size was the previous time you launched it the previous time? How much it was?

Kate Dostler
Yeah, it was 45. And it was right in the middle of pandemic like it was right when everything shut down.

Abby Herman
So you more than doubled.

Kate Dostler
I also think not having a giant pandemic probably could have helped people. Yeah, I was in October. So yeah, more than doubled. We had a launch list of it was just about 2000 people a little bit under. So and this is something that might differentiate me from others, some people do it as well. I do not launch to my whole entire list. So if you haven’t either signed up for the auto webinar before, signed up for what I call a launch trigger. So meaning like a brand new live webinar or a challenge. I’m not gonna send you my whole sales email, you’re literally going to get the invite to whatever the launch trigger is. And then you’ll get an email that’s like, Hey, you didn’t sign up for a, b and c, but you signed up to my list because you wanted to learn how to talk to your people how to not feel gross and slimy. When you do want to let you know love or less is open is the only email you’re gonna get. So if you want to come with us and like I’ll show my testimonial, we’d love to have you but that’s it. So, the list of 2000 people we did a webinar is a brand new one, it was called a cookie method, which I absolutely love. I love webinars because I love teaching. And again, remember that introvert thing if I had a show of a live every day for five days, I don’t know if I could do it. But I’m like, I can do 60 minutes, I can do 90 minutes. So we did the same webinar. We did it Monday, I think it was in the afternoon, and then Tuesday at night, because I want to be cognizant of time zones. So I made a couple of switches in between, it was mainly like, you know, you always work on the pitch parts, or if you stumble over a couple of words. And so we did that. I want to say the whole sequence was not including, like reminder emails about the webinar, it might have been eight max emails that we sent. And yeah, it was $100,000 launch.

Abby Herman
Wow.

Kate Dostler
Yeah, we just decided and we, you know, when somebody joined, I’d go, you know, on Instagram and welcome them. We did a couple of reels. I had tried doing ads for the first time, but because they don’t normally do Facebook ads, they like never show ads. They’re like you can’t spend this much money in this period of time. So it was like, I think maybe it was like $200 by the time the ad said, but it was just like, so I don’t really think that that honestly helped at all, I couldn’t track that it helped at all. I think it was just the fact that I show up. I know my people, I know what they are struggling with. Yes, at this point, I do have students that have results. But if you don’t have students that have results yet, if you can really get very specific about what their situations are, we call them moments you’re going to be able to sell regardless, just regardless, because there’s a big difference and build a business of your dreams. Because people hear that all the time. Versus make sales before your coffee gets cold. There’s a big difference between get healthy or never have to ask the attendant for a bigger size pair of pants again, it’s when you get really specific about what is going on those moments in time. That sales are just gonna come so easy, because she gets me Of course, I got Cheryl. I made it my job to get me I legitly care about you. And I don’t have any desperation for scarcity and urgency. I mean, we had one expiring bonus, but I never make it about those things. It’s like oh, yeah, and if you do this by tonight, you’ll get this to which is going to help with a BNC. I don’t use urgency as a crutch. And I was like, oh, there’s five minutes left everyone, like, Come and join now You idiot like no, it’s like, I know you’re struggling. I know what it’s like to be looking at a sales page button and not taking it because you’re nervous about yourself. But like, this is all the stuff that I put in this program to make sure you succeed. If you take the leap, I’ll be there to catch you. There it is. As opposed to like warmed bought you moron. Like it’s so different. And I think that’s why people love it so much.

Abby Herman
And you just decided that it was gonna

Kate Dostler
Yeah, I just decided.

Abby Herman
So tell me about that. Because you and I talked before we hit record, let’s talk about like manifestation manifesting this these these sales. So and I told you make me a believer because this is not something that I do or think about much so I’m really curious from your perspective what that looks like what you do, and because as we’re recording this I’m in the middle of a launch. I’m launching, I have a summit coming up and so that will be over by the time this goes live. But talk to me about that manifestation. Let’s make it happen for Abby.

Kate Dostler
Right? Okay, so here’s the here’s the thing with manifestation one you have to find the teacher that speaks to you. So I really especially when you’re okay like I’m the most like laid back person ever. I really wanted to like Denise Duffield Thomas I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with her. She’s someone that has like lucky being all that I don’t swear students but explicit. It just didn’t work for me like there was something and it’s not about her Same thing with like your hopefully I can say ask you’re a badass to spending money. I think that’s the gently it didn’t work. Amanda Francis of all people which is like the polar opposite of cave, like valley girl Chanel bag like we should never mesh it just some reason when she opened her mouth. It just worked. So that’s number one is that if you’ve been trying mindset stuff and manifestation stuff, and it’s not working, it could be the source that you’re going out just doesn’t click with you. Amanda just did because Amanda has a very strong work ethic. And that’s what I always really liked about her even like if you go past all of the Chanel and like all of that sort of stuff, like the girl loves to work and she loves her people but she’s not like chained to her desk about it. And so I love when she was talking about doing everything and like the logical and doing everything and like the manifesting world. So for myself, and for the launch. The biggest thing that drags most people down is that like you shape in the middle of the launch, or the middle of the summit, the first day that you send out that email, you’re gonna get all these registrations, day two, you’ll still get a lot, but T three, it’s low. And that’s where most people give up. And they’re just like, Oh, well, it’s never going to happen. And it’s not going to work. Well, just like Henry Ford said, If you think you can’t, or you can’t, you’re right. So if now you’re going in there, and you’re like, desperately sending those emails, or you’re just like, Oh, well, this summit was such a waste of my time, I can’t believe it. When I’m making the money. Of course, you’re not, of course, you’re not you’re right, you’re not. But if you can go over this, and you’re just like, but they’re coming, I know, they’re coming, of course, they’re coming, just like when I dropped this pen, it’s gonna fall to the ground, of course, 100 people are gonna register, of course, we’re gonna make these ticket sales, you know, we’re gonna probably make more than enough ticket sales.

So for some people, it’s talking out loud to themselves. For some people, it’s writing them down. And if you’re really like, really, truly in the weeds about things, then what this was kind of monumental, what bad thing do you think could happen if you’re successful, which sounds so odd. And then the other thing is that you need to forgive yourself for any of like, the past assumptions that you had about yourself, because a lot of people judge like, Oh, you know, if I had just done this, like, you know, I forgive myself for judging myself for thinking that I could only get 100 people in this summit, I forgive myself for judging myself for letting my energy get low for those two days in the middle, like, you know what, it’s day four, it’s a brand new day, I’m gonna bring it. So again, what bad things could happen, because as women, and I really paint off, the label us out, a lot of us can’t suffer from that sort of tall poppy syndrome, where it’s like, oh, if you’re doing so well, then other people are going to feel bad because they’re not doing well. So that’s sort of one of those things that I see me nodding, that it’s like, oh, if I have this six figure launch, then like Sally’s gonna feel bad, because she only had a $25,000 launch or, you know, Sue over, there’s only making five bucks and like this, who am i is type of a thing. Or for a lot of people, what ends up happening is they think, okay, like, I’ll have this launch, and I’ll make all this money, but then I’ll lose it somehow. And so you are stopping yourself short of actually getting this stuff, because of all that mindset junk that you’ve got, or it’s just like, No, just like, your real goal is just believing that it can happen. And then I know this is gonna sound so odd. But the more you flex your muscle at this, the better.

When you get like a download or like a knowledge or however you want to term it, you do it. So like, in the middle of that launch, I got this just like added nowhere, that was just like, share with them the best lesson. So I shared with them the best lesson. So I got a version of the sales page, I put in the lesson we have about moments that we talked about here, sent it. I know people bought from that particular page, I did have some affiliate. So I told some affiliates, hey, I’m giving away the moments less than they’ve got till Friday to watch it, like send us your people, if you want to, they don’t have to register, they can just watch worked. And then even when it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen, still believing it. So we already have $100,000 launch, but there was a number of particular students that I wanted to have. And we were like, one short, and I’m like, well, it’s not gonna be a problem, because by Tuesday, we’re gonna have three more and then by Tuesday, we had three more, because it’s just like one of the things like believing that it is still going to happen even after it doesn’t happen. So say Abby was like, I really thought that we were gonna get, you know, 100 sales of our all access pass, but it didn’t work. It still can happen, it’s still gonna happen, it will still happen. Whether it is it’s going to happen, because someone’s going to email you and be like, Oh, I missed it, can I still have it, or the next one that you do, but like keeping that thought process up, while again, still showing up, still sending those emails, still sending them with a great energy.

I mean, we all know, like, we can feel and smell desperation in an email. We know when it’s the end of the month, or it’s tax time. And you can just tell someone’s just going for money grab, you don’t know why, again, treat people like people, but you know that you can. But when you’re like, you know what this summit, I truly believe in my heart of hearts, that it is going to help somebody do A, B and C so that d is no longer an issue for them. And you go in and you send that email and you write that email with that mindset, it is gonna work, it’s gonna work, and you’re just gonna be like, this is bonkers. And you just have to let it happen. I think a lot of people either they get scared, or they’re like, but I did all this and it didn’t work. Let’s do it again. And don’t judge yourself for not working last time. There was a Tuesday when you didn’t have a business. And then by the next Tuesday, you did. So the past is the worst indicator of the future.

Abby Herman
The worst? That is so true. I’ve got so many thoughts about all of that. So yeah, I totally agree. I even posted in my membership community, somebody was trying to register today. And they were getting an error because the website has been like spent all morning being down that I had issues with the website. Today is day two of the lunch. So no new registrants for like the first you know, 12 hours of the day because it was down. And I even said in my office It was Friday said it’s working now, this is why I hate launches. Because this stuff can you know, all the things can go wrong. So it is difficult for sure. My thing that I tell myself, the negative thought that I always have is the I guess it’s the price of responsibilities. So if I had this really successful, if I’m successful in business, if I do all the things right, then I become this responsible adult, and oh my god, what do I do with that?

Kate Dostler
Branson seemed like a responsible adult show.

Abby Herman
I mean, no offense.

Kate Dostler
Like, so they’re in right there. I just logic against you. So you find cases and everything? Where’s it? Oh, no, but like, they are having fun. People are writing and they’re simple. It’s like, I don’t have to be an adult. One of the biggest things that was stopping me because I didn’t even believing pandemic was stopping me. But one of the biggest things stopping me as I thought that having big launches, big numbers, big community would make me unrelatable. Because that is one of my core values. And it was no, because I’m still gonna be me, I’m still gonna use words like buttface, and talk about the cervix law principle, and just be like, corny, because that’s who I am. But it’s going to show people that they can be just as corny, just as weird, just as odd ball and be a success. So I’m like, I’m actually doing them a larger disservice by not, and then it just it opened the floodgates, because now I wasn’t worried anymore. Yeah. All that mine stopped. Okay. Like, I’m so glad it happened on day two. So now that it’s over, if I need to keep registration open, we will now we’ll send that email. You know what I mean? Like, it’s just like, it proves that people actually wanted to come to your stuff. Yes,

Abby Herman
Yeah, totally, totally. Well, so tell me, before we close out, I want to go back to something you said at the very beginning, which was treat people like people and let your personality shine through. You have it on your website, you’ve mentioned it here. Tell me what you mean by that.

Kate Dostler
People are not logical. So you cannot treat them like logical people. Meaning like, a lot of like my students, we’ve emailed about them once, but then the advisor must not want it. If people were logical, then everyone would have slept six hours today, I mean, eight hours, they would have had all of their water, they would have exercised, they would have journaled they would have done there stop. Smoking wouldn’t be a thing. Alcohol wouldn’t be a thing, drugs and be a thing. Because we know inherently those are bad for us. Right? So it is a logical that somebody would knowingly start smoking, because it’s only going to be bad, but they do it anyways. People make no sense. So you got to realize that going into it, okay. The other thing is treat people like people and that other flip side of the coin is, again, how would you want to get an email from someone that hasn’t been in your inbox, you know, for a fact and you haven’t been stalking them for the last four months, you forgot who they weren’t. So if I come with, Oh, I’m so sorry that you don’t care, because people don’t care about other ones. But if you’re coming in with like, oh, here are three resources that are going to help. Oh, and by the way, in case if you’re like, again, this is tricky with like people, in case you’re thinking, how did this person get my email address? Because that’s what people are thinking, here’s how you got it. Oh, okay. Treat people, like people, they’re logical, in happens, be honest with people always remember that everyone’s always thinking about themselves first. And you second because they will like your personality, they will be looking for a name at some point. But they’re only going to do that, when you address their suspicions. When you give them some results, when you confirm things for them. That’s what it is. And when you treat, like really letting your personality shine through. And really just saying to yourself over and over again, being on your list is the privilege. All of a sudden, that scarcity mindset of what if I send an email in 10 people unsubscribe goes away, because like, Oh, well, 10 people are gonna leave, but like, I’m gonna get 100 people more. So it’s just like, they’re lucky, they get something out of me. They’re lucky they get to be in my energy, they’re lucky. And because of that, you will also on the flip side of that coin, have a plan for them. You will have a plan of what you’re going to send for them every week, you’ll have the welcome series that you’re going to set up for them, you will go and collaborate your buns off. So that way you can go and find those people that you know you are called to serve.

Abby Herman
Yes. And they are going to be able to unsubscribe, you don’t need them on your list anyway because

Kate Dostler
your people, again, cheap people like people have Marie Kondo in our inbox, myself included. Sometimes you just get to the spot. Another thing treat people like people, people love novelty, right? This is why most people will fall off a diet in two weeks, like week three is usually the worst for everybody. Because most people give up to people like people, which means somebody could have been like, Oh, I am going to run a summit and they might sign up for every summit coordinators freebie, right? But two weeks later when it actually comes to like, you know, brass tacks are just over it. So they’re unsubscribing it’s not because you stink. It’s because they gave up on themselves. So it’s okay. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. Just let them go. There’s more people who are into, and you’ll help them.

Abby Herman
That is so good. They’re unsubscribing because they’ve given up on themselves. So good. Oh, fine. You have a freebie about teaching us how but what we should be sending to our audience? Can you tell us a little bit about that? And where people can find you online if they want more of Kate?

Kate Dostler
Sure. So inbox besties is the podcast. So inbox besties. I’m sure there’ll be a link below or if you’re listening to this, you’ll be able to find it. And because, again, treat people like people I hear like, but yeah, but look, what do I actually send in those weekly newsletters or like I can never think of what to send for my list. So I have a two years worth of email ideas that are nice and strategically planned out. So that way, it’ll literally tell you like, okay, it’s January, I give you four topics. You can either send them an order, you can mix up their order. And guess what if you’re like, Well, I mean, it says for two years, and I’m listening to this, and it’s like August now, you can start in August, and then just keep going and recycle until you get to that next January. Like it when things are date specific. It’s like, Oh, it’s national toothbrush day. So I’ll have a little mark that says something’s time Pacific, I have some students that literally they’ll just look month by month, I don’t care what month it is. And they just want that sentence starter of Oh, sensory mistakes, oh, send a YouTube video oh two, or this or that email. Because, again, treat people like people, when you have this vast amount of stuff that you can send your paralyzed bone. It’s like, oh, how can I relate national toothbrush day to teaching about summit’s, then it’s like oh, and then you start getting your creative juices going. And then you’re like excited to write your email and you send that. So we’ll go ahead and we’ll have a link for that down below as well. Or you know, is head on over to Kate doster comm forward slash two years, but you can click the link in the show notes to get you there too.

Abby Herman
Awesome. And then where else can people find you? Where do you like to hang out?

Kate Dostler
I have been starting to hang out on Instagram. So I like to hang out in people’s inboxes. So I’ll be honest with you. I spend a lot of my time doing collaborations and not a lot of times during my social media, but you can hang out me over on Instagram. I’m getting a lot better over there, everybody. So it is @Kate_Dostler. And that’s where you can find me.

Abby Herman
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much. I have a whole page worth of notes. So hopefully everyone listening does as well. I’m totally stealing the collaboration idea. So thank you so much for being here.

Kate Dostler
I am so glad and just email your list guys. email your list, email them three things, three apps that you love right now that can help them with whatever you teach them with. Just email them today. That’s it, rip off the band aid, email them today.

Abby Herman
Yes, love it. Thank you. So as Kate said, the more you flex your muscle, the better you get at it. And I know that Kate didn’t actually coined that term, but I wanted to repeat it here. How often do you send emails to your list? Now I’m not suggesting that you flex that email, muscle and send emails all the time, but it is important to start nurturing your list so they’re ready to buy when you’re ready to sell. If you are ready to start experimenting with content and marketing in your own business without having to do all the guesswork yourself. Remember that you can join us inside content mastery lab at the content experiment comm slash lab and use the coupon code podcast to get your first month for $1 Pricing starts at just $97 A month after that and we’re also quarterly and yearly options. If you found value in what you learned here today, be sure to share it on social media. Take a screenshot of the episode on your phone and share it over on Instagram stories. tag me at the content experiment and tag Kate at Kate underscore doster it’s spelled d o s t r. The more you share the more we can get the podcast into the hands of more business owners just like you who need to hear the message that they are not alone. Until next time, take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai