Living The Red Life - Email Mastery: Dr. Michelle's $8 Million Strategy

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

In this insightful episode of "Living the Red Life," Rudy Mawer sits down with Dr. Michelle Sands to explore the lucrative world of affiliate marketing and email monetization. Dr. Michelle, the force behind Glow Natural Wellness, shares her strategies on building a massive email list and turning it into a multimillion-dollar revenue stream.---Key Topics Covered:Introduction to Dr. Michelle and Glow Natural Wellness: Dr. Michelle discusses her brand, which focuses on natural women's wellness, and her journey in the industry.Building a Massive Email List: Insights into how Dr. Michelle grew her email list to 400,000 subscribers and her approach to engaging this audience effectively.Monetizing Email Marketing: Strategies and tactics used by Dr. Michelle to generate approximately $8 million a year through email marketing.Overcoming Limiting Beliefs: Dr. Michelle talks about reaching out to influential figures and overcoming fears and self-doubt in the early stages of her career.The Power of Starting: Emphasizing the importance of taking the first step, despite initial fears, and how it has led to her current success.Evolution of Interview Skills: Reflecting on the growth and improvement in her interviewing skills over time, contributing to her brand’s growth.Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs: Dr. Michelle shares tips for entrepreneurs looking to start and grow their own email lists and engage in effective affiliate marketing.---Key Takeaways:Leveraging Email Marketing: Understanding the potential of email marketing as a significant revenue source.Importance of Audience Building: Strategies for building and nurturing a large and engaged email list.Growth Mindset: The journey from initial nervousness to becoming proficient in conducting interviews and business communications.Starting Despite Fear: The value of starting and learning from early experiences, no matter how daunting it seems initially.---Join Rudy Mawer and Dr. Michelle Sands in this episode of "Living the Red Life" for an enlightening discussion on mastering email marketing and turning it into a successful business model.---Subscribe for more episodes and share your thoughts on Dr. Michelle’s email marketing strategies in the comments below!#LivingTheRedLife #EmailMarketing #RudyMawerPodcast #AffiliateMarketing #Entrepreneurship #DigitalMarketingStrategies---Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

I think the first, like the most important thing is provide value. You know, they're not on your list to be sold to. They're on your list because they like you in some way. They like what you have to say. A lot of times they want to know more about what you're doing in your personal life. They want to know what you're doing. They're following you. And so they want your perspective on things.

And so I think like the worst thing you do is just sell on every email. And also if you just write very like boring, generic emails, people aren't going to keep opening them. My name is Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast. And I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Guys, welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. I have Dr. Michelle here with me today, and we are gonna dive in

to the world of affiliate marketing, growing email lists, and actually making money from email. A lot of people have emails, and they have email lists, and what they don't do is one important thing is send their emails out. You do the opposite.

You send a lot of emails. You have a big email list, and you make about $8 million a year from sending emails, correct? Absolutely. Cool. Well, let's dive in. Tell me and tell the audience a little about you and your brand and what you guys do. Yeah. So my brand is Glow Natural Wellness. We are a women's wellness brand. We work on women's hormones, healing from nature. So all natural methods of healing from within. And our target demographic is women over 35 years old. Great. And firstly, how the heck did you get 400,000 emails? And how are you sending so many

emails to them to make $8 million? Yeah, well, it's been a while. I've been in business for about eight years. And I started because I got my degree as a doctor when I had my son. So I wasn't supposed to have my son. I was told I was infertile, went to Mexico, thought I got sick from the water, but it turned out I was pregnant. So here I am about a month with my medical degree, have a new baby. And the last thing I wanted to do is send him to daycare while I was at work. So I started trying to figure out how can I use my degree and my desire to help women but not have to go into a traditional office.

So I found a coach online that was teaching people how to build their email list. And I watched a lot of different coaches and they're like, your email list is your ATM. And so I'm like, okay, I have to build an email list, but how? Because I was totally new, never did anything online before. And so what I learned how to do is actually create interview series. So my very first interview series,

I interviewed some of the top leaders in our industry just by reaching out to them and saying, hey, can I interview you? It's going to be a 20-minute interview on Zoom. And they emailed their list to say they were going to be on this event. So I ended up getting those emails. And I got to position myself with those experts in the industry. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, yeah. And I put the summit on for free.

I gave it out to the audience for free. And so now I was giving to the email list that I was acquiring. And the very first kind of notion they had of you was someone who was a giver. And then they wanted to return that to me. So when I made an offer, they were super happy to. That's crazy, yeah. So let's unpack that because one thing,

this weekend you're here, we're talking about celebrity marketing influencers. I think the first thing is people have limiting beliefs that they can reach out to big famous people, right? And you obviously started and did that pretty quickly. I didn't know that I should be nervous. Okay, well, that's sometimes a good thing, right? But the reach out wasn't as scary, but then it was scary when I actually had to do the interview.

I had my son and a car seat under my desk for most of the interviews. And I was scared. I was nervous. They were not the best interviews. I look back now, and I'm like, oh, my God. most of the interviews. I was scared. I was nervous. They were not the best interviews. I look back now and I'm like, oh, my God. Yeah, of course. Those are terrible. But they built the email list.

They got the start. And now I do interviews. I'm pretty decent at interviewing people because I've done thousands of interviews by now. But the getting started, if I would have been scared to get started, I wouldn't be where I am today. But I love that, that you just went all in on it, right? You didn't overthink it. You got it done. And I want that to be the first lesson today to everyone,

that it so doesn't have to be complicated. And you don't have to be like my level where you can start getting other experts, right? There's a lot of times, as long as you position it well and you reach out, and I'm sure some of them didn't reply to you. I got a lot of no's. I got a lot of ghosting. But I only needed 20 to say yes. So probably reached out to 400 okay great at least 400 and I got a lot of no's but I got some people said yes I couldn't believe they said yes like

oh my god yeah Dr. Tom O'Brien, Dr. Mark Sisson like these are guys I've been following but you know the first the first summit I did I didn't make that many it wasn't that many emails it was only like 3,000 emails which was big for me at the time. But as I got better at understanding how to position, like, hey, I'm going to want you to email. Because I didn't say that. I told them after the fact that I wanted them to email. So that was not a setup from the get-go. So once I got better at hosting the summits and telling them ahead of time how to having a contract and making it agreeable to both

and creating content for them to share with their audience so it became a win-win for both people and how many so talk about the best summit how many people how many experts revenue so a couple years ago i did the perimenopause summit and we had 30,000 um 30,000 people up no i'm sorry we have 30,000 people by the summit wow for 99 but we had um 74,000 people that's crazy often so 74,000 people opt in. No, I'm sorry. We had 30,000 people buy the summit for $99, but we had 74,000 people opt in. So 74,000 emails for about three months worth of work. Crazy. And revenue? Oh, revenue from that. Well, I still count the revenue I make today from that because I still have those women who found me from that event are my customers now in my continued yes yeah so yeah

it's crazy what that one ripple effect can make right but yeah i mean look that's more emails than half the businesses will get in 10 years yeah it's amazing and it's it didn't cost me anything but my own time and elbow grease and work and just for someone listening that's like this all sounds great but i'm lost the the summit thing can you summarize in 30 seconds basically just the online interview series so you think about like what we're doing right here as a podcast is piecing together maybe 15 20 25 similar influencers on a similar topic yeah and then you could even have your own like theme through i i when i got better at doing the summits, I started having myself positioned as an expert and somebody else interview me.

I didn't think about that to begin with. But it's really a no-trust factor because people saw me, one, with someone very influential like yourself. And then two, they saw, I wasn't selling them anything every day. I was just trying to give them information. You were a facilitator.

I was, yes. I was just the facilitator, but people somehow did put me up with those people well eventually you do right and Les Brown speaks a lot about the association game right and that's the power of association and something I've learned even as I've moved into the celebrity world right that association is so strong and I the funny thing with summits is I've never hosted my own. We've always talked about doing it, but I've been on many as a guest. And I posted actually an image of a summit I found on my phone from five years ago before this event. And the main two headliners was Kevin Harrington and Les Brown. No way. Well, that's another thing that's pretty interesting,

the relationships formed with the speakers as a result. Some of the people I would have never gotten to talk to, but we're hosting an interview and we got to know each other and we've done other affiliate deals on the side or just help each other in other ways. Yeah, it's crazy who you can meet. And that's come full circle because if you're listening on this podcast, those two individuals were the two keynotes for the two days of my event here in Tampa.

And I'm business partners with both of them. And I didn't, you know, I knew of them and obviously followed them five years ago, but I wasn't friendly with them. And then another summit I did with Pete Vargas was the keynote was Floyd Mayweather, who I'm also a partner with now. That's wild, really. You should never underestimate how, you know, life can come full circle. And I bet you've had that, right? A couple of people you've done summits with.

It's like you've either overtaken them now and they look up to you. That's the funny part, Rudy. Actually, the people I used to be like, oh my God, they're the real deal. They're such a big deal. I didn't even know if I could reach out to them. Now, I'm actually doing better than some of them.

Yeah, and they ask you or their friends. Yeah. But yeah, it's a while that at least you're on the same level. And it's really kind of interesting. But yeah, I mean, I think that one of the fun things I did with the summit was we actually made the proceeds go to charity. I love that. So that actually was felt me feel good. But also it helps some of the speakers come on. It brings the guard down of the big speakers. And I mean, it also, like you said, builds such goodwill out the gate too with the audience, right? Exactly, exactly. So let's move on to the second half, email, right? So that's how, like I think already people have learned about Summits.

And I think people are starting to see, hey, how could I get creative networking with some great people and building email is fast but let's talk about what to do when you've got the email so you now have 400,000 emails and I'm sure you have many more you've cleaned off the list too every every 90 days so you probably got to a million or something close yeah okay so how does someone build a good email strategy? Let's talk about that. I think the first, like the most important thing is provide value. They're not on your list to be sold to. They're on your list because they like you in some way.

They like what you have to say. A lot of times they want to know more about what you're doing in your personal life. They want to know what you're doing. They're following you. And so they want your perspective on things. And so I think, like, the worst thing you do is just sell on every email. And also if you just write very, like, boring, generic emails, people aren't going to keep opening them. So, yeah, I write – I send five emails a week to my list.

I didn't always do that. When I first started, I was sending, like, two emails a week. And one email was always just a straight give. And the second email was a give and education, but always tying back to something that we did or sold or a free call or a free download PDF that had a call to action in that. And I think that's good because we used to send less, and I feel everyone's general frequency of sends

has gone up too now as an industry. Like, you know, I was speaking with Grant Cardone about this a year ago and he sends like three, four times a day. Oh, he does. See, I haven't gotten to that comfort level. He said something interesting because he talked about his chance. So he has 33% unsubscribe a year, but he, but he goes, he grows it faster than the unsubs, and he doesn't care. And here's where it really hit home with me, so maybe it will with you too and everyone listening. Grant told me that he goes, you know, what's interesting,

he goes, they did an analysis one time for his 10X GrowthCon events of the people in the VIP spots, which were 20K tickets to the event, and most of them had unsubscribed from his list, but they were still his 20K VIP buyers. So just because someone unsubscribes doesn't mean they don't know about your brand, follow you on other socials, and it doesn't necessarily mean they don't like you

because these people paid 20 grand. I used to, in my early days of business, I used to actually get emotional about the unsubscribes. I let it actually predict like dictate what I was mailing for a short time and that was not good because I'd mail less or I'd say oh that email wasn't good. Sometimes it was a controversial email that actually got people to love me on one side but then hate me on the other. Quality over quantity right? So my advice would be don't look at the unsubscribes. Have someone on your team take care of that.

And so now I don't even look at them anymore. Well, and I think it's also if you've got a good lead gen strategy to grow it, like Grant does and we do, you don't have to worry about it as much. But if you don't have a good strategy, it's like making money, obviously. Like I don't worry too much about expenses. I on making money yes yes if you don't know how to make money then you have to pinch the right because your list keeps shrinking and that becomes stressful so yes you have to have more coming in to make up for yeah okay and let's talk more about email strategy so you talked about general amounts of send and stuff one way i teach it kind of simply

to people is i see it kind of like social media, right? Like I don't sell every day on social media, but when there's big things, I promote it and sell and makes a big deal about it. And I want to create interesting, engaging, controversial topics. I want to get people excited and obviously give people a reason to engage or open their email. So do you have any kind of general strategies or structure you work with your team on for your emails? Well, I still write all my emails myself. I know you're probably going to teach me otherwise, but I mean, look, like I teach is know your superpower. Yeah. So you make eight million dollars from email. You write five a week. How long does

that take you? I now use some tools to help me, but it takes me, I do like maybe an hour a day. Okay. So you spend five hours a week, 20 hours a month, and you make on average about what? 700k a month from that 20 hours a week. So then if you do the maths at that, that's what? $35,000 an hour. That's not too bad. I can allow that. It's a good use of your time. Yeah, I always incorporate like a personal story, something that happened in the day. Sometimes I'll include a family photo. My audience, because they're women and they're in my demographic, I'm about their age, they kind of want to know what I'm doing and how I feel about things and my opinion. Or if there's news that comes out, I'll comment on a new study that came out

or something is happening in the world of women's health or celebrity i'll comment on that and people write back to me like it's like it's on their pen pal yeah yeah yeah that's great that's when you know you've got good emails right and that's why people open because it's like you're emailing them as a friend or texting them as a friend versus like just a blast right with a corporate head a new product yeah mine are always super informal yeah it's exactly like i talked um they're not perfect there's mistakes and i still actually get your emails yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so no i think they're great they're

engaging um so so what about let's talk we've talked about email a little right and i'm sure obviously we could do a whole hour on that um and some hits too I'm sure but lastly I just want to touch on for a few minutes and maybe we'll have to do another episode fully on this but affiliates right that's another thing you've done really a good job of and become very successful so can you talk a little about affiliate what what is affiliate marketing how do you actually do it properly and make a lot of money from it yeah so with affiliate affiliates are actually one of the largest sources of new emails coming in for me right now. So that's the replenishment that we were talking about earlier. And so affiliates are simply just another influencer or business owner that has a like-minded audience,

not the same product that you have, but some audiences that use the same services. And they will either send an email or do a social post talking about your product or offer your free gift your webinar and I just created a few relationships over the years going to events like your events and I'm just getting networking with some of the people from the summits even, and just talking to them and seeing like, hey, your audience can benefit from what I do. And I pay my affiliates really well.

So I found that I could pay affiliates, a strategic affiliate, I can pay them about the same price I would pay for a Facebook ad, but they're going to convert stronger for me because it's a warm connection. They're saying, my friend, Dr. Michelle Sands, has this amazing webinar. And they're a buyer, right? connection. They're saying, my friend, Dr. Michelle Sands, has this amazing webinar. And they're a buyer, right?

Yeah. They're not always buyers. Sometimes they want more education, but I can convert them through my emails on the back end. So, yeah, I think that affiliates are, it's gold. But you can't just treat them like salespeople. They don't work for you. So you have to nurture you can't just treat them like salespeople. They don't work for you. So you have to like nurture them like a personal relationship. And a lot of times affiliates will want a reset.

That became a little sticky for me because we're so brand oriented. And so when I first started working with affiliates, I felt obligated to send for them. And I did it like two or three times. And then my email list would actually write in and say, I think Dr. Michelle got hacked. We've had the same. Yeah, I've had the same a few times. Because she never sends for other people's products. I think her email list got hacked.

But we made a lot of money from those few emails. So I see, it depends on your brand. So if your brand is not like super brand focused, then you can actually make a lot of money. I know a lot of people that email for us. We have a lot of friends. They make more money on affiliate deals than they do their own products. They're behind the scenes. They like, you know, a lot of these people, if you listen.

Supplement companies, maybe. Yeah, or they're like just that they're not faces of the brand. They're probably not going to exit their company ever. They're just like, you know, they sit at home and there's only two, you know, they have two contractors. And don't get me wrong, they make a million dollars doing it. It's an avenue. It's just different.

Yeah, it's different than what we do, but there's people out there that might be interested. Yeah, and we've had this too. We've never really done affiliates. And a couple of times we've tried or done it as favors. And it's literally, has your thing been hacked? Or when now I have a big marketing list, it's like, Rudy, we're not interested in your affiliate friends. But the one thing I do do affiliate-wise is if there's a product that I actually like and I actually use, then I will talk about that. I'll show it in my YouTube videos.

And it's authentic. Yeah, that's the good part. It's like everything I do is authentic, even my emails. So I think that my audience can see that. So last question then for everyone that's thinking about affiliates. Break it down. If they have no clue, where do they find them? How do they start? How do they structure a deal? Like give us the really 30,000 foot view. Yeah. So you have to make it attractive for the affiliate to want to email for you. And so usually how the math that I do is they have to make, um, a thousand dollars per 10,000 to. That's kind of how we work it out.

And for our webinar, we pay per lead so that they don't have to worry if I sell it on the back end. It makes it more attractive to them. So we pay them $5 per lead to our webinar, $2 to our lead magnet. And so basically you have to set up a win-win situation. You're not going to get someone to email for you if they're not going to make any money because they're only going to email for you once, and then you're going to kind of ruin that relationship with them. So you have to set them up to succeed.

And I wouldn't reach out to affiliates to mail for something until you've tested it yourself with your own audience. You always want to set them up for success. You don't want to make them mail to something that is a funnel that doesn't convert. But once you have a funnel that does convert, and if it converts unpaid, it's going to definitely yeah so if you're running facebook ads then you find a few like-minded influencers that have if like for me um my affiliates are people that do like docu-series on health or they do yoga brands like things that my audience uses but they're not women's health and hormone experts because then

we'd be conflicting audiences. So reaching out to them, just saying, hey, you know, your audience seems to enjoy the things that I do, and I've been following you for a while, and I have this offer. I don't know if you email your list or not, but if you'd be interested, and, you know, just reach out. But I'm in a couple networks. Right after this, I'm going to Affiliate Summit West in Vegas. So I just meet people and people refer.

And so that's basically how I do it. Yeah, and I think that's important to understand when you really want to go all in on the affiliate game. Like I've been a keynote at ClickBank Platinum for a few times and all those people in the room are all the big affiliates, right? And at the affiliate summit so you do have to go you know like you can get kind of started by just reaching out to people and stuff but when you want to play it at a high level it's all about the relationships

and almost like building a mini brand for yourself in that little group right exactly and even before i started doing affiliate marketing it i was building relationships just to build the relationships. Well, in some ways, the summit is still an affiliate, right? Because you're kind of bringing people on. Exactly, and they do make money when they sell. Everything sells on the back end. So that was my first affiliate, and some of those people are my affiliates now that I interviewed.

The one thing with a ClickBank type thing, a lot of those affiliates are, it's more for like a more aggressive offer. Yeah. Like lose weight in two minutes. Well, they're the guys that are sat Sunday and crazy. Because my offers don't do good on those because mine's more of a soft offer.

So it depends on what kind of business you have, but you're finding affiliates that sell similar things and similar genres. Yeah, and you've moved, I mean, a lot of the ClickBank friends of mine, they're the more super heavy direct response marketers. And, you know, that works and that's where I started. And eventually if you want to build a $100 million brand,

you kind of move out into the branding side too, right? Exactly. So last question, I always love to ask our members this because they get to see an alternative side to what I just teach. Obviously, we've known each other for a long time. We've worked together over the years. What's something you've learned or a big thing you've learned from me that you've been able

to implement with success? So the one thing that I'm learning from you now is about like positioning and branding. And I've been trying to grow my brand. The one reason I came and started following you is like you just metamorphosize into like this like larger than life character and so I want more of that I want to know about like how to do that and how to incorporate that for myself but your authenticity okay you've always been super authentic all the way across the board and you could have fell down many rabbit holes along the way right because like you're you're very um ambitious yeah and sometimes with ambition you you look for that money but

you've never just taken the money you've always gone through like the authenticity so i think like that's what good has my heart i appreciate that and and i mean just to touch on the branding positioning side like i talk about this a lot now because the world is moving more into that than ever like how do you stand out how do you position yourself people want to align themselves with brands or personal brands too and there's so much noise so much advertising and I teach you know teaches at all my events if you can't stand out other people will right it's not like I think five years ago if you just had a great product or you had, and you had great copy and ads, you could get a long way. But now it's like,

you just got to go up to a whole new level. You've got to have all of that. And you've got to be able to stand out, grab attention and promote yourself. So I'm glad you're, you're looking all best. Yeah, you see that you're implementing it. So, and you have all the basics, you have the foundations, the amazing brand products and community. So where do people you know, if they're listening, and they want to see how you're putting all this together, see the brand, or maybe they're your ideal avatar, where do they find you? Yeah, so you can go to glow natural wellness.com or fix hormones.com to make it easier. Great. All right, guys, well, there you have it. I think this was a bit of a mini mastermind itself on, you know, affiliate marketing, emails, building that brand, guys. Well, there you have it. I think this was a bit of a mini mastermind itself on, you know, affiliate marketing,

emails, building that brand, right? And then, of course, the summit side that we started on. So thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. And until next time, as you can see, if you're watching this on video, keep living the red life. Take care, guys. you