The first business I sold was a strange one.
In fact, most people wouldn’t even consider it a "real" business. I know my parents didn’t at the time. And, the guy that bought the business was forced to close down the main product being sold just a couple months after he bought it from me.
You’d think he’d have been mad but he wasn’t phased at all. He was completely happy with the deal, and at the time, I didn’t fully understand why.
I didn’t understand the full value of an owning an email list.
Here’s a bit more of the story:
One of the first "real" businesses I owned was a tiny internet publishing company.
I was a solopreneur before that word existed. We (aka me) had 1 product. It was an ebook that showed hard-core James Bond fans clever real-life ways to live like their fictional hero, 007.
It was strange, yes.
Do my close friends from back home still make fun of me for having that business? Yes.
When I sold the first pre-sale copy of the ebook even I was surprised. When I started selling a bunch of them I was kinda mad that it was working! "I have to create this now!?"
One thing I did right with that business from the very beginning was to build a prospect’s email list and a customer’s email list.
Again, I had no real idea at the time what I was doing.
I was traveling around the world trying to pay all my bills which were minuscule in South East Asia and in Mexico.
The ebook kept selling pretty well and I kept accumulating names on my email list.
Without really realizing it I was building an asset. Email lists are assets.
When you have a list, you have a business.
And I’ve talked about this a lot before but you really only need about 500 people on a list in order to have a successful business that covers your bills.
Anyway, eventually I caught on that there were other ways to monetize this email list that I had.
So I started doing affiliate marketing and that worked too.
Even then I didn’t grasp what I had on my hands.
I thought I was selling ebooks. I was actually running the world’s simplest business… I was managing an email list.
So when I was presented with an opportunity to work with a friend on a larger startup publishing company, I jumped ship.
I decided to sell the business.
I listed it and was immediately flooded with offers.
"Woah, what’s going on here?" is what I should have said to myself.
Instead I sold it to a Dutch guy who was a big James Bond fan.
Well… you can probably guess what happened next.
The owners of the 007 and James Bond copyrights eventually came knocking… mere months after I sold.
I’d been careful to try not to use trademarks or copyrights. I always felt that the ebook was more like an article I’d seen from Tim Ferriss on how to become a modern day Jason Bourne. I wasn’t taking from the brand, but pumping it up with a unique work of art.
Plus, I had a few different competitors selling similar books.
But I think the new owner put in some pictures from the movies and that made it seem like the materials were licensed.
So a cease and desist letter was issued and the buyer decided to shut it down.
I was worried he’d be mad at me but he didn’t care one bit.
By that point he had a valuable asset: a customer email list of proven buyers. Many of them older and with disposable income (James Bond was just a hobby interest for most of those guys).
The buyer shut down the ebook but continued to promote other products to the list.
In retrospect, I regret selling the business for so cheap!
It’s something people just starting out don’t realize…
The money is in the email list.
When you have an email list, you have the simplest business known to man.
So with that said, this week I’m going to share a series of emails I’m calling the “Beginner’s Guide to Growing An Email List”.
I’ll walk you through how to start and grow an email list from scratch.
- If you’ve been wanting to get started building your own online business as a solopreneur, but haven’t been quite sure exactly what your first steps should be – an email list is the best option and you won’t want to miss this.
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If you’ve already started building an email list – you’ll learn how to scale up and grow more quickly.
This should be a lot of fun so stay tuned for an email from me tomorrow!
– Derek
P.S. All this week I’m going to do my absolute best to give away as much free advice on growing email lists as possible. However if you do want to go deeper, I’ll be promoting a list building system and course that I believe is the best available.