Cold Emailing vs. Warm Emailing: Which Works Better? | Jonathan Brambles

Never Been Promoted Podcast with Thomas Helfrich

Jonathan Brambles, a seasoned email marketing specialist, dives deep into the nuances of email marketing and ethical business practices. As an entrepreneur who has navigated through various industries, from construction to high-tech startups, Jonathan brings a wealth of knowledge on building authentic customer relationships and leveraging email as a powerful, ethical marketing tool. His journey is marked by a transition from mechanical engineering to becoming a marketing expert, emphasizing the importance of adaptability and ethical engagement in business.

About Jonathan Brambles:

Jonathan stands at the forefront of email marketing with over 17 years of experience in the field. He is known for his unique approach to marketing which combines his engineering background with his deep understanding of digital communication strategies. Jonathan is committed to transforming email marketing into a more authentic and less intrusive tool for businesses, promoting ethical practices that respect both client needs and industry standards.


In this episode, Thomas and Jonathan discuss:

• Effective Email Marketing: Jonathan shares his insights on how to use email marketing effectively without spamming customers, focusing on personalized and ethical communication strategies.
• Career Adaptability: From his early days in mechanical engineering to his unexpected shift into email marketing, Jonathan discusses the importance of adaptability in navigating one's career path and finding success in unexpected fields.
• Ethics in Marketing: Explore how Jonathan’s commitment to ethical practices has shaped his approach to business and marketing, making him a trusted advisor in the email marketing community.

Key Takeaways:

• Authenticity in Communications

Strategies for maintaining authenticity in email marketing and building genuine relationships with clients.

• Ethics Over Exploitation

The importance of ethical marketing practices in building long-term business success.

• Adaptability in Career

How flexibility and openness to change can lead to unforeseen opportunities and professional growth.

"Embracing ethical practices in email marketing isn't just about avoiding spam; it's about building trust that lasts." — Jonathan Brambles


CONNECT WITH JONATHAN BRAMBLES:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanbrambles/
Website: https://theemailguy.org/

CONNECT WITH THOMAS:

X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/thelfrich | https://twitter.com/nevbeenpromoted Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hovienko | https://www.facebook.com/neverbeenpromoted
Website: https://www.neverbeenpromoted.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neverbeenpromoted/
YouTube:

Transcript

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Welcome to the Never Been Promoted podcast YouTube channel. Hi. I'm Thomas Helfrich, your host. Our mission is simple. Let's help a 1000000 entrepreneurs get better at entrepreneurship by cutting the tide, all the crap that holds them back, all the excuses they make, anything in their way. We want you to get out there, unleash your entrepreneur. And the point of the podcast is to help you do this through some micro mentoring, by learning from other entrepreneurs on their journey, where they failed, where they succeeded, where they're in the thick of it, and how they're thinking. So if you can get one thing out of today's show, maybe 2, you've done one thing better to become a better entrepreneur. If this is your first time here, thanks for for coming by, and I hope it's the first time you'll, or first of many you'll be back. And if you've been here before, I am cheesy. I always give away dad points. You can do what you want with them. Can't spend them anymore. And if you're not a dad or you don't get it, just ignore that part. Today, though, we are joined by mister Jonathan Brambles. That is basically a BRM ram it's like it's like saying rambling after you had, like, too many drinks and you ordered that last one you shouldn't have ordered. I'm John Ramble. He's the email guy. So, Jonathan, nice to meet you. I don't see it. I know you already. It's good. Good to talk. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me on, man. I listen. The Email Guy, I I, I have so many questions. We've we've done and so, Jonathan, I've we've worked it a little bit, but I don't do a whole lot of email at this point here in, you know, April 2024 because I just don't understand it, and I find it spammy at times. And so what I love about his style you're gonna learn today is it's not. There's ways to do it better and to be more effective and efficient, and it's it's a good marketing tool that, honestly, I underutilize. Lots of people misuse, and so we're gonna get into that. But first, a icebreaker question. I may have 2 for you. We'll start off with the first one that came to mind as we were talking off air, which is what is your favorite store?
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Oh, my favorite store. Funny enough, I never expect this to ever be the case. I have a long back history of my, friends, family, all being in law enforcement, and like, oh, pot's the devil's weed. But there's a store over here in Orange County that's basically a pot dispensary that feels like the Apple Store. You go in, everything is wonderfully adorned. Everything has very kind of, like, high end, like, wall features. There's a couple sconces. You walk up, you give them your card, and basically, they say go to the tablet. And they have these big ass tablets that are about 3 feet tall, and you just basically say, I want this, this, and this, and this, and it feels like you're going to the genius bar, and at the end of the day, you're happy for it. My answer is I love dicks. Richard, I tell you.
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It's a great store. Oh. It's such a big store. I know. That's what I hear. Such a big entry to get in there too because it's so wide to get some of the products out, and they're heavy. Lush even.
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Yes. Yes.
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Michael Scott over there. No. Dicks did not sponsor this. There are no dicks in this podcast today. I'm so sorry. Okay. Here's my other icebreaker. What is your most useless talent?
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Oh, I'm gonna say the faces that I make. Because usually, above and beyond, they I'm in a meeting and somebody says something, I'll go, I didn't mean to do that. It just you you pulled this out of me. It's a face that I make. I can't help it. It's that theater nerd in me. I like it. Acting. Remember that Jon Lovitz scene from Saturday Night Live? Right? Acting. That's why I can't go to Vegas and do all the craps. I can't do poker. Like, they they have me. They know what's up. I'm like, oh, can't do it. No. Can't do it. Alright. Hey. Why don't you drop a little backstory in kind of what you're working on today, mister email guy? Yeah. So, high level view from 30,000 feet. Interesting story is that I never intended to do email marketing my entire life. Who does that? Nobody actually goes to school, wakes up, and, like, yeah, I'm doing email. That's not a thing anybody does. Long ago, I I was actually, building houses, and I was in this one, hardware store. My friend basically said, hey. You know what? You're you're already doing your mech engineering degree. Why don't you actually come over here and do some marketing? I was like, oh, I don't know about that. And it was just a snowball. I I started to learn how to do podcasts for a second or 2, and then they showed me how to do other blogs. And then I was doing code, and all of a sudden, like, hey. We need a email developer. And I was like, I develop I can develop email. And then it just kinda, like, it ebbed and flowed from there. Funny enough, unfortunately for me, living it not as fun coming to the very end of this, it is a lot of fun. But I was unfortunate enough to hitch my wagon to all of the start up companies at the very beginning of 2007, 8, 9 market crash. How lucky was I? Being in Silicon Valley, basically, you're like, oh, it's a startup. And at one point in time, I was actually, poached by the, was it, the Zynga Group. So the guys that made FarmVille back in the day for Facebook. And, again, like, these are old names, so anybody that's young, I apologize. I'm sorry. But they said, hey, we're gonna sell you the the sun, moon, and stars if you come and join us. I joined, they crashed. I'm like, yay. And that kind of was one of the beginning stories that I ever really took to heart of, hey. This is the actual corporate world, especially in the startup world, because I told everybody, like, hey. Can you believe it? They pulled me aside for 1 week of work, and then the entire company went under, and everybody that's already been in the business, like, yeah. That's normal. It's like, oh, good. Got it. So I moved on through life, and I was like, maybe I should start focusing on larger corporations. And ever throughout the years, I kind of made my, databases that I worked on larger and larger. And everything in this world is kind of based upon volume. Right? Every single start up, every single social media is based upon volume. So all the companies I work with, I started working with databases that were maybe 30,000 large, like, yay. At the time, it sounded big, but it really wasn't. Back in the day, I went all the way up to about 2012. I'm not allowed to talk about, because of an NDA, which social media company it was. But, at one point in time, they had me sending 50,000,000 emails per day over 91 sets of IP servers. Back in the day, that was like the wild, wild west. I'm like, why not? Well, let me tell you why, and this gets us to here and now. One of the more interesting things is that they always tell you, like, oh, yeah. You gotta listen to the c step. They know what's up. So the CTO, CFO, CEO, yes. They do usually in general. But you gotta remember the time and space with which we live, which means greed abounds. And so they say, hey. We got all these emails. We should just start sending. Because the more you send, it's like Vegas. You know? It's a game of numbers. Basically, you just play the numbers. And I said, well, that's probably not the case. Long story short, and I'm gonna bookmark this for later, they ended up getting dragged in front of the FCC. And then at a later point in time, the SEC decided to give them a little knock on their door. I was like, yeah. This is why we don't do spam. But that brings us to now, and I am here to talk about everything and anything under the sun.
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Well, we're gonna keep it focused on email because I think being an effective email marketer, is it's hard. And and I try to explain to people, like, you know, if you focus on LinkedIn for your outreach, that's basically like a business unit approach to sales. It's like, you know, if you go into email, it's it's a whole you you need someone kind of fully committed to it. And I know you can automate lots of things, but you need a brain behind it. And even if you outsource it, you still need someone on your team to help you with your Nuance. So before we get into that, though, I I I wanna because I wanna dive into that, but I wanna tease that for later. Because you're trying to learn about email marketing, you're gonna learn a bit today. And I'm gonna challenge him on a couple of things that we're gonna he doesn't know about this yet, so don't tell him. Alright. So, like, how the inner the inner thoughts come out for everyone to hear. That's what happens with the Friday. I've had 75 drinks already, but it's just been water. That's it. So it's 75 drinks regardless. Alright. Tell me something. In your own perspective, just so we kinda get into your mind a little bit, what is, like, does an entrepreneurship really mean to you, like, really personally? Like, what what does it do for you? How do you how do you, you know, interpret it or identify that? Yeah. It's kind of interesting.
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You know, when when I first dove into the concept of, like, hey, maybe I should start doing this on my own and launch my own company. It it was really incumbent upon me, like, how am I gonna actually be different from everybody else? Honestly, it's a flooded market. Right? And so everybody out there, like, it's just a ton of noise all the time. So the question is, how do you become the signal amongst the noise? And so just kinda thinking about it, I always kinda look at the market in terms of trends of 3. So it it's really weird, but that trifecta really does come into play in a number of parts of life. And so I wanna make sure that as an entrepreneur, I actually follow that same path as well. So I looked out across the the bow, and I was like, well, the the markets are strong, but they're top security at the same time. Depending on which outlet you listen to, it's the end of days or it's the beginning. So I didn't really know exactly what to take from that except for, hey. There's definitely a few companies out there trying to figure out where to put their dollars that are most effective. They can't afford a full team. I get that. But they know that they have enough set up. They have a tranche of money to basically invest wherever strategically needed. I'm like, great. Next part. What's the number one thing that a lot of clients are requiring after you get somebody in the door? So if somebody sells somebody to somebody, they're in the door, they're a paid client. What do we do with that person? Well, it's a sunk cost, and how do you get them to repurchase? That's where I come in. Above and beyond email, the entire point here is basically offering different clients, customers, and anybody up that they might, you know, approach me. How do we increase the lifetime value through any kind of holistic means? And that's email, SMS, app notification marketing. All of that is a full automation. And so I thought about this in terms of being an entrepreneur. I'm like, hey. I've always told that you have to be part of this kind of corporation. You gotta work your way up through the ranks. You gotta get promoted. You gotta put in 10 plus years. Heck, my my mom worked at the Van Nuys courthouse. And 35 years in, she's like, see, that's what you should be looking for. 35 years at this one place where I was like, you know how many union protests she had to go to to maybe get, like, 1, 2% raise? I'm like, that's not entrepreneurialism. What you can do, however, is get messy with it. And so through my journey here, last year, I was able to work with one of my best friends in the world. He's actually somebody that I met through BNI network. But, basically, he kinda helped re encapsulate what an entrepreneur means, and he's like, man, just get messy with it. You already have the bumper guards of what you want and who you are, and that's basically there's morals, there's ethics, there's good business practice. Not screwing people over, actually delivering on what you say you're gonna do. Shocking, I know. And so I took all that, and I was like, entrepreneurialism 101, getting messy with it, making sure that you have true bumper guards that are gonna prevent you from doing things you should not do, like getting hauled in front of the FCC or the SEC. And then from there, just have fun. I accidentally found my calling because I was introvert. Shocking, I know. But because of that, I was forced to learn new skill sets, like, put yourself out there, talk to people. And more than anything else, I found that I got attraction and I got, kind of into the flow, so to speak, with other corporations and other partners and other agencies when I just became myself. I wasn't selling them anything. I was just talking about life just like we are right now. But I was honest about it. I was authentic about it, and I wanted to do good business with them.
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Well, and and in your journey, right, like, what's been your maybe your top
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skill that you think you've absolutely had, and and how did how does your mindset align behind it? Yes. So just like you were saying earlier, and this kinda queues me up for one of my slogans that I hate saying, but I'll pull it out just for this one. Email's easy to do. It's hard to do it right. I've actually been part of 2 different corporations where we were on the verge of actually blacklist listing their entire domain. So imagine just for instance, a place like Facebook out of nowhere, you try to log in. It's like, sorry. We're offline. That actually was on the, like, the precipice for a couple different companies. And so when I think about it, I'm just like, you know what? How about we just focus on doing this right?
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So your your skill there would be
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Basically, it's the morality of it all.
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The So it's doing it ethically correct. Yes. And the mindset being that you're trying to do the best interest of your customer Yeah. Because, you you know, in my because it sounds like that's a rub. Right? If you do things unethically, you're effectively doing them incorrectly. Yeah. So,
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you know, to be to be, like, myopic about it, one of the things that I've really helped, you know, guide my principles is both left brain, right brain. Going into engineering, you know, that's very different skill set versus being creative. And it's the whole concept of getting messy with it and bringing it all together. There's a lot of different corporations back in the the late 2000 that were trying to figure out different ways of just elevating their own business. And so you gotta leverage all the technologies, but you gotta wrap it with something pretty. And so when I was always thinking about everybody was trying to always do shortcuts. So there's always a concept of MVP, MVP. Hell, I gotta say it. Cybertruck, that's an MVP. They just kick that out the door. Look at all the astronomical problems they're having right now. Hell, you gotta sign a waiver, and you gotta put in a special mode if you're gonna get that car washed. Like, okay. And when you're pushing that out as a product, what's the morality behind that? You're just here to make money. I am not. What guides me and what's helped me get through to this point in time in that value add is like, hey. I wanna use my creativity to build out these infrastructure pieces, but I'm not just gonna kick it out the door because it's good enough for government work. What if, shocking, what if we actually put something out there that was done right? If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. And that's kind of been my guiding principle, and that's actually elevated me to that point right now where a lot of my clients are taking a look, and they go, actually, he's honest about this. That's shocking. I know once more. And so that's really elevated me to this point in time.
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You, how do you balance between getting it right and, you know, chasing perfect? What you call the Schwartz Yeah. The Schwartzchild ratio. Right? It's the it's the math that defines the event horizon of a black hole, and the closer you get to that, it's perfect. You know? Oh, I'm gonna do it. But once you enter perfect,
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you can never get out. No one can save you, and it's forever. You're gone. Yeah. You're you're just you're out there, man. You get stretched into oblivion through that black hole. It's done. It's never ending. I'm a perfectionist living in imperfect world. I've made that peace. However, you can do things well. They don't have to be perfect. They can be 99%. And I'm talking about whenever I do, a lot of the the asset work for my clients, when I do deliverables that have great designs throughout them, If you're the guy that can actually see that one pixel of a difference in over 4,000 pixels on a single screen, that's how you know, like, okay. I'm a perfectionist. I'm gonna let that go. But the rest of that 99% is amazing.
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My my next question, I'm I'm afraid to ask it. This might be a long answer. Nope. I'll keep you posted. Because, guys, perfection here. I'm gonna give you my I like to find reflective moments, and this is a bit comedic. So, if you're a perfectionist, the question I'm about to ask him is unanswerable, so I'm gonna hopefully he can just get one out of them. But if you are a perfectionist, quit. Just stop. Just just do get some training. Go see a therapist. Get mindful I don't know what it is because it it is a it's a it's a great thing and a limiting thing unless you're a brain surgeon, then keep keep on keeping on. However, here's my question. What keeps you up at night?
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The emails he email industry, man, it it's it's wild. So I'm only gonna I mean, there's multiple things that keep me up at night.
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And you and listen. This answer is not always tied to business. I mean, sometimes the right answer is I don't get enough time with my kids. Like, I wish I had more time to go golf on Fridays. And that's a great answer, but if you wanna keep it the email world, I'm totally fine with that. It's it's it is not a, you an entrepreneurial podcast, but part of our life is our families we ignore. So let let's pull this to a macro level. One of the more important things that I found across our landscape as it stands right now is people have the inability or people don't have the ability to
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understand the source of something. So let's just say some news outlet does x y z. Some people just take it for granted. Other people know how to actually get to the source of the truth of how that was and the actual facts behind it. The weirdest thing that I found, throughout the last 20 years is that we have an illiteracy in the United States on how to identify fact versus fiction. People just don't know how to use Google. Funny enough, like, you can learn your entire degree. You can learn how to do, real estate. You can learn how to do investing. I Google Google how to do said thing because you're gonna get to the source ultimately. But there's a complete lack of understanding how to find that. And it's almost like we should be forcing people how to do journalism 101. At the very end of the day, it's not necessarily that it's left leaning, right leaning. It's literally how to find the truth of a matcher. Like, a facts are just the facts. So whenever I approach these different scenarios, they keep me up at night, I'm like, just the facts, sir. That's how we'll get to the very end of this. We'll identify the problem. We'll figure out a solution. We'll get to the other side on the same ship together. Complete lack of literacy, especially in the digital environment, which is escalating exponentially faster with AI. If you take a look at the ramp rate of intelligence across the the land for the last, like, several 100 years, it's just such a gradual grade. And then you get to the forties and goes up, and then the eighties, and then right now, this is the ramp rate. It's literally almost, like, 100% straight up in terms of staying up to speed with all the functions, the technologies, and the services that are available to us in this world. And how do people get to that point? They gotta actually have some kind of literacy on the Internet. They don't.
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Yeah. It's the I I'll tell you, I'll sleep right through that. That would not keep me up at night. Because I just fall back to the foot people know is just go interact with somebody and and get to know them a little bit, and typically, you can solve a problem. But listen, in your own journey, right, you and you got a cool story, and I know we don't have enough time to get a lot of it because, like, you know, you've touched on parts, but maybe as it relates to building your own business. Yep. What's been like like a defining entrepreneurial moment as a success story? And then conversely, what's a challenge you just you faced in either a really hard one that you ever, you know, that you overcame or just became a life lesson of something you wouldn't do again? Yeah, man. We can Quentin Tarantino this one.
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So, back in 20 it was 2016, 15, I was with a startup up in the Bay Area, and, we made the world's smallest rechargeable hearing aids. And, again, just like being an email guy, I'm like, I never thought I'd be an email guy, here I am. And then hearing aids, sure. Why not? But the caveat was is that it was actually a technology company and our service was hearing aids. So great. Okay. So I came in right around their series b of funding, and we were getting ready to hit our series c. And right at that time, we were gonna actually open up our services to sell over in Florida and then basically the Panhandle. So, everywhere in Houston, Texas, Louisiana, and so basically, like I said, the entire Panhandle. Well, literally about a week before we were allowed to launch because of federal regulations. The entire area just got hit with a hurricane. Everything was just decimated. I'm like, great. Everything that our investors were expecting to see was that we're gonna blow it out of the water with this upcoming campaign promotion, blah blah blah, to unlock a round c of funding. And it just it it scared the crap out of, the powers that be that were working with us. And so we're like, hey, how do we overcome this? And again, this is where I told you before. What really gets me in entrepreneurialism is you don't have to be a shark. You don't have to have a zero sum game. What if, shockingly, again, what if we were here to help people? So we took that mindset. Like, okay. Well, you know, let's think about friends, family. Like, how are we gonna help people that are devastated at the moment in that Panhandle area the best that we can and figure out how to save our campaign here. You know, because this is a business at the end of the day, it truly was all about, like, how do we unlock that round c? It's through funding. It's through money. It's through selling stuff. So at the end of the day, I hate to say it's a business, but what we are able to do was we're able to articulate in a number of, email campaigns. We did a Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then we did the week after, and then we did a follow-up the next week. So it's basically a a 3 week stint that we're starting to email very specific groups of people, but we all did it from the heart. Said, we all see you over there. Our our hearts go out to you. We wanna make sure that you're taking care of the best that we can help you get taken care of through this company. And by doing so, maybe you'll get to the other side a little bit better as a family. So we offered a couple different promotions, and it sounds gimmicky, but it was truly thought out the way that we verbalized it, the way that we worded it, and the people we reached out to. It wasn't like we're just hitting the head over and over again with promotions. But, basically, we got them to that point where a lot of our emails going out were very family based. They're very, authentic, and it was very, like, hey. Come in here for a second. Let's just have a quick talk. How can we actually help you? And so we went about our our path. At the end of 3 weeks, not only did we hit that product point that we needed to hit, the price point that needed to get unlocked, we had the strongest month ever in that company's history up into that point in time in terms of sales just because, shocking again, we were humanistic about it. Tada. And that's honestly what I think a lot of, businesses are lacking these days. Corporates are gonna be corporates are gonna be corporates. There's no such thing as culture in corporate life. But what you can do as an entrepreneur is bring that mindset to everything that you do. So that was the back half. Now the front half. It's kinda 1 and the same. Corporations really don't care about you. They'll try. They will pretend, but they don't really care. If at any given point in time that I was defined as replaceable, just like that. There are a couple times when I was actually, what one point in time, I had a point of pride. I was walked out the door of this one company only because the person that got my promotion was threatened by my knowledge base that I just knew how to do the business better. And they were just fish out of water, and I was fired, but not fired. So they're like, oh, you we're we're having you resign. Here's the door. I actually got, like, walked out. I was like, I didn't do a single thing wrong. All my numbers were there. I didn't piss anybody off. I was just a threat to this one guy that took my job. So that was the moment. That carrot in the stick that everybody's like, okay. This year, we gotta make sure that you hit all of your goals. We gotta make sure that you get, at least a 3 star out of 5 on your review. And that's why I said, you know what? This is kinda crazy. In order for me to get that promotion of maybe 4 to 5% increase of salary, which again, if you think about inflation on a year to year annualized basis, states is way over 4%. So at best, they're willing to give me a 4% raise if I got 5 stars, but this is the catch 22 they would do. And this is kind of what the straw that broke the camel's back did it for me. I had a 4 star review across the board and as a 360. So that's the even hardest part. Like, so the people above me had a grade me, people below, everybody side to side, they graded me. I averaged, like, a 4.1 out of 5, which was phenomenal at the time. And my manager says, well, you know, this is the thing. I need to move you down to a 3 because I I I think that, honestly, if you're at a 4, you don't have anywhere to grow. I'm like, I could go to a 5. And they're like, no. I mean, that's that's unrealistic because that means that you you're delivering the sun, the moon, and the stars, and, you know, nobody's really doing that. Right, Jonathan? And so I was like, okay. So for for me to get my 4% raise, I have to be a solid 4 stars out of 5. But you're saying at 4, I don't have a lot of room for gross. You're gonna move me down to 3, which if it's a 3, then I no longer qualify for that promotion. And I was like, okay. Here's your your your line in the sand, Jonathan. I realized that carrot in the stick, that's just a way to keep you just moving along, moving along, moving along. You're not gonna go vertically. You're just gonna keep doing lateral moves, and that's where they want you to be. And that's just the corporate world in a nutshell. Just to cap this off in 10 seconds or less, basically, my last main job, I was the director of automations for a Fintech company that was publicly traded, the global director of automation. So it it has its bonuses, its perks, and whatnot. Had a very steady income, and it was decent enough. The moment that I left that, within 2 months of starting my own company, not only did I, like, do well, I was already doing recurring monthly revenue at that same pace. 2 months out, within 6 months, I was knocking on a little over 220% of my monthly recurring from that job. As it stands right now, coming up on my 1st year, I'm looking to do 3 x monthly recurring. I was like, that was the moment. I'm like, you guys are just dragging along with that carrot in the stick. What if?
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What if? And and that's a great challenge to overcome. But but and you're you're describing, I love that story because it's so representative of so many entrepreneurs of, you know and I'm you know I'm in this I was the same boat and you know I was making north of a half 1000000 a year as an innovation officer of a company and all of a sudden, you know, make quarterly bonuses every quarter. And, you know, 2 weeks after the last one, they're like, we don't see the value here anymore. You're gone. You're like, what? Now I will say my take home for my own adventures, don't don't hit that yet 3 years later. But but but the thing is I'm 10x happier. I I you know, it's, it's a lot of work, and I don't make new as much as I used to. I have, because we also invest a lot back in the company because I'm not trying to just cash plow. I'm trying to actually grow and build the brand. And what you you described is such a thing. If if you see entrepreneurs, if you're listening, you hate your job, or you just man, I hate your job. That might be extreme. You just like, I'm tired of, like, what I gotta do this and do this and ask for my 2 weeks to go do that. You if you have any idea of what you do in your value and it's something you think you could do on your own, you can get to probably what you're making way faster than you think. And and and and the big thing is once you're walked out and there's no safety net, that's when you're gonna get there. Side hustle, it's a lot harder. You gotta be, like, you know, almost, like, diabolically, like, focused to get that done. Because until you have no safety net, you're you're not even gonna be there until you you require that income for survival. You just won't have the drivers, honestly, to get to where you can go. Absolutely. And and so Yeah. Yeah. So please take that to next to next place.
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Yeah. So, you know, funny enough, as a child, like, your parents tell you certain things. And one of them that always kinda stuck out to me from my mom, and I, like, I was always kinda, like, rolling my eyes. I'm like, yeah. Yeah. I get it. Whatever. But she's like, you gotta be the change that you wanna see. And I was like, I thought about that. And it was always framed within a religious context initially. And I was like, honestly, more or less, honestly, I just get to that point these days when I'm older and older. I'm like, if if something doesn't agree with me and I have the ability to change in that moment, do it. Be the change that you wanna see. And every time that I'm like, well, I I did have that side hustle for a while. And I was like, I think it's making money. I think I could do this. But the moment that I literally burned the boats, there's no turning back, I became the change I had to see. And it just it you get foisted into the flow to a point that you're like, there there's no turning back. It's all or nothing. Let's just keep on footing the gas. And until I see that checkered flag, I'm not letting up. And then all of a sudden, it just became one of those things. Like, things just started clicking in. Like, I got 3 partnerships within the 1st month. Then another agency reached out to me because they needed email help. And then another and then and it just started to cascade, and it was all because I put myself out there in this honest way. There was no turning back, and I became the change that I wanted to see. And once you become those things, everything else starts to become a little bit of a a fun game, honestly. Like, my my coach told me, he's like, get messy with it, man. And it's not that you're gonna be, like, scatterbrained and shuffling all over the place, but now you can be creative. Oh my god. Instead, it used to be basically, like, you're at this corporation. Here are the 3 SaaS systems that you're working with. I get rid of that. I shuffle the board, and I say, hey. I can literally pick and choose from everybody in this industry, whatever I want, however I want, the way that I want. And I was like, oh my god. It's one of those mind blowing moments that you realize, yeah, now is your time to shine. Here's your moment.
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Yeah. I love that. And, you know, you you can react to this kind of statement, but I'll say this. When you get an entrepreneurship, you're gonna start somewhere, usually around something you know or love to do that I will tell you have a bigger sense of purpose and it could be it could just be like, you know, something more, you know, mindfulness, grace, maybe it's faith based, whatever it is, but have a bigger purpose because whatever you get into initially is going to evolve, and you're gonna have to grow otherwise you're gonna kind of feel stuck and and don't get so married to what you do but more of the bigger purpose of what you're serving so if you like to help companies grow do it and and do it from bigger purpose because you might go from email to, like, oh, I'm kinda moving into SMS now or I might and the point is that you're still help you're you're tied to a bigger purpose and allows you the mind space and headspace to evolve. And so I I mean, it sounds like you're doing that to some degree in your career, but do you have a do you have a thought on that one?
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Yeah. So, again, theater nerd on this one. Honestly, for the longest time, and most people live their lives like this, where they say, okay. I came to the fork in the road. I could do this or I could do this. That that's where they stop. They deadpan stop. They go, okay. I gotta go left or I gotta go right. What if this is an and scenario that brings Yes. And. Yes. And. We're gonna do some we're gonna do some, improv. Yes. And you have a chicken in your hand now. Exactly. Right out the gate. And so with that chicken, what I said is go fly. And it didn't fly, but it gave me some eggs. And so I made an omelette and what that almost looks like, it's above and beyond the Denver. It's more than any kind of, like, I guess, a a Tex Mex omelet. It is something that is zesty, that's healthy, and it has room for growth, hence the protein side of this. But, basically, when I started to do my business, like, that's great. I'm doing business, and there's a concept of here's what you're offering people, and here's what they're actually getting. And the distinction here is the value versus the the widgets. You're doing this and this and that. Yeah. That's great. The true value honestly gave me the opportunity to start to reach out to a bunch of different companies. And not just to say, hey. Let's do business. But what if, again, this is an amazing thing you can't do when you're at a corporation. What if you can do good in this world through your business? Again, wow. Shocking. Most people don't talk about this. So what I'm actively doing right now is I'm reaching out to a bunch of philanthropic places that I can help out. One particular place that always kinda spoke to me, I don't have any kids yet, but I do have that instinct where I have so much love to give and to help people and to do right in this world that I reached out to this one place. It's called the painted turtle. Love it to death. You know, they have the Ronald McDonald Foundation for kids with cancer, and that's fine. They do that great. Continue doing that. There's this other place called the Painted Turtle that was actually created by the Paul Newman Foundation, and it was built with the Imagineers from Disney so that kids with terminal illnesses, kids with issues that, you know, they have to be on dialysis machines, breathing machines every day, they can come here a couple times a year for free. They come here. And when you first check-in, they're a little, like, the the office nurse to check them in to make sure they're good and they get all the stats of what they need to to live to be taken care of. They go into a room, one of them that I absolutely loved. Looks like you were under the sea. So you're in a submarine, and there's there's people above you dangling their fishing rods and there's portholes in the wall and everything. At the end of the day, when I first volunteered my time there long ago, I was going through a rough place in my life. And I realized, oh my god. These kids have found genuine happiness knowing that, hey, at least I can be a kid in this moment in time, in this location with my friends. And it was so utterly pure joy that I realized in my life, what do I have to complain about? I'm healthy. I'm still making money. Yeah. It's it's going through a little bit of a rush patch. It's hell right now, but these kids enlighten me. I was like, what if we take our businesses not just through pure profit, but we incentivize people to do good for others. There's a couple people out there on the the stage doing their rounds in this world, talking and doing a bunch of, you know, group corporate chat type of things, but one of them really did stick out to me. One of the things that that the ultimate humanitarian thing to do is to take care of others that take care of others. So in that moment in time with the painted turtle, I was helping out the entire staff. Every time I donate my time, every time I go to visit and I help clean up for either a weekend or stay for a week or whatever, I'm helping the staff take care of these kids. And so I am taking care of the ones that are taking care of the others. And that's kinda like the most altruistic way that I could look about this entrepreneurial business. Hey. We will be doing good. In the words of Michael Scott, it's a win win win. And in a win win win, we all win.
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Well, you know what? You you've, is I'm preparing for, you know, the book's coming out. I'm trying I'm trying to get this book out. Hopefully, one day it does. But and I was thinking that and I have a coach right now for sticky stories and trying to get the right TEDx talk. I think you just gave me the thing I thought was missing. So I talk a lot about altruism in our in our in my marketing company that, like, like, hey, serve others. And you see that it's one of the reasons why we work together with that. I didn't realize that about you when you said that, but that's really how I think. But I think about this idea that I really want to help entrepreneurs help each other, and I think that's how you'll grow. And having the right mindset and the right skills lined up to allow yourself to help others and not expect anything will actually open the door for others to wanna go help you. And and do it in a way that you didn't expect, do it in a way when you really need help they are. But but that altruistic approach, I think, is gonna be the core of where I go develop that story. So thank you for that. I've stolen that. I have you've you've helped my afternoon out in in thinking Right? Run to the end zone, my man. Right. Done. Give me the 60 seconds of what your main differentiator is for your company. And and it's for email marketing. It it's for businesses. But tell tell me what the differentiator is.
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Beautiful thing. I am the anti agency. What the hell does that mean? Let me tell you. So, long story short, I've been part of several agencies, and I've also hired multiple agencies from my corporate perch. One of the things that's always the case with large and in charge agencies is that they are a hype machine. Hype machines basically say, hey. Look. We could take care of this, this, and this, and anything you want. We got this covered. Don't worry. And, basically, they'll get a client to the closing table, and they'll have somebody like myself come in. And, you know, for a while, I I've been running the director of email CRM marketing positions, blah blah blah. I have me come in. I will close the deal. Great. Sign the pen. And then the those new clients kinda get pushed to the side and say, okay. Here. You're gonna work with our interns now. You're gonna work with our people that are straight out of college that don't actually know the industry, but we're teaching them so they're good enough. And so it's like they pay for government work. As the anti agency, one of the cool things is that I'm really focused on, you know, quality, honestly. And it kinda goes in lockstep with my honesty and, you know, morals and all that jazz. But, basically, I'm trying to make sure that I partner and actually have clients that are a legit fit. And when I can do that, it means that I actually have much larger clients, much larger billables, but then these clients are actually taken care of in a much more holistic way for life. And so maybe they can't afford a version of me to hire on full time, but they have me as an adjunct just plug in marketing person. And so when people work with me, they actually work with somebody that's had over 17 years in the email industry with hands on experience at every single level. I am the coder. I am the designer. I am strategy. I do data. I do automations. I bring this all together. Lo and behold, I am the ringleader of that circus, and that's something you can't get at an agency. So as the anti agency, basically, when you work with me, you actually work with me. Again, shocking, I know. And so there's a level of quality above and beyond that most place you're gonna be like, oh, sorry. Our intern forgot this. They didn't QA that. They accidentally sent this out. And, again, with our new day and age, one of the biggest things that keep me up at night is, we have new rules and regulations from Google and Yahoo and a lot of the other places like Apple that basically state, you know, if you have a spam rate of 0.3%, not 3%, not 5%, 0.3% or more, We're gonna start sending you straight to the spam box and good luck ever getting out. And so these are basically clients, corporations that are like, I could do email, and they have their interns doing it or an agency intern doing it. And all of a sudden, wait a second. How come we're sending a 1000000 addresses out and maybe 5,000 people are clicking on it? Anti agency means that you're working with me, the whole shebang. We do QA, QS. Everything that's done and pushed out the door goes through rigorous checks and balances.
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So it's just quality at the end of the day. Yeah. It is. And and and one of the approaches, and I think maybe the top tip, and you I'd like to expand on this. If you don't agree with it, then nuke it into your own here. But I think one of the top tips for email is, you know, if you're doing cold in particular, we we do things like try to warm up that list. So they've seen my face. They've seen my company through some interactions on their post interactions. And you could build a lead list, take a lot of tech to scrub the email from it, you know, from LinkedIn or wherever else. Do another one to say, hey. Validate it. Do another one to validate it again. Get it down from, like, the 500 to 250 to 208, whatever it is. Right? And then when you do your first email out, hey. This is Thomas from LinkedIn. And they might be like, well, they're gonna hug in my email, but they may not care. And I do and they typically won't mark it as spam. They'll mark it maybe as unsubscribe or or just don't contact me. And first of all, I I that's my approach to it. Now we have to be fair and transparent. We haven't enacted that, but we've all the lead list built up. What's your top tip if you're doing that for somebody? Like, what would you what is the, like, you know, the the down and dirty, like, just here's my top tip for email?
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Hire mister t right here, buddy. You did it right. Everything that you said leading up to that question for myself is what you should be doing. It it all boils down to, at the end of the day, do people or people receiving your email actually recognize you, know you, and are you irritating to them? There's 2 options. You can either hit unsubscribe or spam. Spam becomes punitive against the sender, the client, the company. So, honestly, as long as you get enough, airtime, you get in front of these people, your face is over here, they've seen you on LinkedIn, Basically, all the pruning that you're doing and making sure that people are generally familiar with you actually takes a lot of the guesswork and all the punitive damage out of doing cold outbound email.
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So my my approach is meet Thomas from LinkedIn. What is maybe the best intro given that scenario that you think? Oh. If I I'm going with that. I made that one up. I'm not sure it's the best. So I'm here to steal information for sure. Yeah. No. No.
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Humanize yourself. Shocking again. Everybody and their mother, everybody listening to this right now, I know you guys have gotten spam after spam, especially when you get to a certain level in your career. People look at you as, hey. That's the decision maker. Let's reach out to them. But time and again, it's just it's a canned, hi. I saw this on LinkedIn. I wanna be part of your network. Simple stuff like that is like, yeah, you're failing email 101. So if you humanize it, you go, hey. I'm sorry. I know you're busy. And you just make that very first sentence super just very humble, very relaxed. I'm talking from person to person. We're not a bot. This isn't a camera spam reply. That's how you're gonna hit it out of the park in that very first cold outbound email. Yep.
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Alright. 15 seconds on this one. Ready? Hit it. Next year, what did you accomplish? What's the main goal you got done?
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Oh, I will have grown my company year over year by 5 x, and I would have hired 4 different people, and we will have been on track to actually sell out in 4 years or less. Sell sell the business. Sell the business. And it's not just selling the business. It's actually selling the business to then turn it into not just a not for profit, not just a nonprofit, but one of those corporations that can then become nothing but just philanthropic. All I'm here to do is make enough money so that I don't have to focus on all corporate life. I could focus on how do we sell the business to create another then solely and only do philanthropic work from this point forward. Yeah. I love that.
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So your last question I'm gonna ask you is just how to get ahold of you, but the one before it is, what's the question that I should've asked you that I didn't? Has everybody out there, if you're sending email,
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demarked their email?
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Absolutely. I have no idea what you're talking about. On your email. Got it. Alright. We got we got 2 minutes. What does that mean?
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DMARC, so anytime that you send email marketing, you're pretend you're gonna send from an IP. You're sending it from, you know, wherever place. So Klaviyo, Salesforce, wherever you are. There's the holy trinity. So you always have to have a DKIM, an SPF, and preferably a a DMARC configuration. All these basically say is that you're a legitimate sender. Long story short, DMARC used to be a nice to have. Gmail always wanted it. If you had it set up, it was, like, p equals none, p equals maybe just quarantine help. Reject is the best. If you had that, like, wow. These guys are our best in class. Let's kind of move them to the inbox. Well, it used to be nice to have, now it's required. As of, I think it was either February or March this year, Gmail and Yahoo made Demark a mandatory requirement. So you can't just turn and burn with a bunch of dirty IPs like they used to do back in the day. And I actually knew people that had server stacks, and they would burn through an IP. They sent a 1,000,000 out, and they burn it. Go to the next, and the next. DMARC ties your sending platform to your domain. So you need to actually have a decent domain, a decent website. Everybody's like, hey. Maybe I spin off another domain. I was like, that's cute, but they also take a look at your record as a sustainable domain. Have you been around the block for a while? Yeah. So it's spinning that stuff up. It doesn't work. Demark it. If you haven't done it, you're not getting to the inbox.
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Does that mean if your main is a dotcom and you're sending stuff from dot edot dot.net.io, it doesn't work anymore?
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No. No. Not the case. I mean, hell, even for me myself. So my business is the email guy dot org. That's where you can find me. Hi. But it's a dot org, not a dot com. But I basically put DMARC in all the proper configurations so it has the proper sending ability. It doesn't matter if it's dot whatever extension it is, that's fine. Yeah. It's just when you try to game the system, that's where they're like, yeah. We see what you're doing. It's not gonna work. That's,
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you know,
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you know, who should get ahold of you? And if you don't know what the hell we were just talking about and you're sending emails, you should be panicking right now. So that's the one person definitely wants to get ahold of them. But, how should people get ahold of you, and what should they do with you? There's 2 different ways. Number 1, honestly, just go to my LinkedIn profile. Find me, Jonathan Brambles, the email guy. Send me a DM. I'd love to hear you from there. Alternatively, you can take a look at my website, but my website's kind of a hook and bait and switch on purpose, and I'll tell you why, baby bird. Basically, what happened was is that a lot of people always take a look at your website and say, hey. For SEO purposes, I bet you need to do this, or it's not optimized to do this. I did that on purpose. I'm catching some flies with Honey over here, and people are just coming out to me saying, hey. I can help you out. Like, oh, contour. I think I could help you with email. So, go to my LinkedIn. Don't judge me per se on the structure of my website. I did that on purpose. Jonathan Brambles on LinkedIn.
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And if you try to exit this site, you do that little annoying pop up just so you know, but it is very effective for getting emails. Yes. Indeed. Someone talk them into it. John, thank thank you so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate it. I love talking with you, and there's so much more we could have, but I've gotta keep it reasonably length. Otherwise, I will have to go to the bathroom and leave in the middle of the show. That's it. I'm over for I know. The those 72 cups of water or whatever. Gallon a day. It's hard. Thank you, by the way. It's a pleasure, Thomas. Thank you so much. And if this is your first time here today, thank you for making it to this point in the the podcast. If you've been here before, thanks again for for coming back. If you like listen. Get out there. Go unleash your entrepreneur. If you're doing well, and you have some skills, go help somebody. And and, you know, just get out there and help another entrepreneur really unleash theirs as well. It it's it's so important to take ownership of your own journey, your own path, recognize when others are struggling or you you see something you think you can help them. Just just help because that is really how you unleash. That's how you'll bring in good, energy back into you to kind of be, you know, a a better entrepreneur yourself, and it will pay forward, for you. Until we meet again, thanks for listening to the Never Been Promotive podcast. Have a great day. Get out there. Go unleash that entrepreneur.