IN THIS ISSUE
- The secret ingredient to a 2,100% annualized return
- The digital house that you can own free-and-clear and rent for profit
- Discover the assets you need for an invisible selling machine
- What specific knowledge you need to build your selling machine assets.
Naval Ravikant, the co-founder of AngelList and Epinions, had this tweetstorm about how to get rich and there were many quotes, but here’s one to start us off:
Learn to sell. Learn to build. If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.
He also talks about gaining specific knowledge and creating the kind of leverage that works for you while you sleep.
So I’d like to talk about building an invisible selling machine—one kind of realization of Naval’s writings that I think can be created by any of us.
But fair warning, like everything that I’ve written about previously, it takes effort and consistency which keeps people from doing it.
Turn Advertising into Profit
I was reading an old Frank Kern document recently and he wrote this:
The most predictable and efficient way to generate wealth is to turn advertising into profit.
He went on to show a case study where he put $28,000 in and got $77,000 back for a net of $49,000.
That’s 175%.
In 30 days!
If he could repeat that across all 12 months in a year, that would be $588,000 (12 x $49,000) for a 2,100% return.
Now realize, it’s pretty dicey for the average person to make the average stock market return of 10% these days.
What is 10% in this case?
$2,800 (invest $28,000 and get back $30,800). And remember, that’s over an entire year.
Yawn.
And yet most people are ecstatic with a 10% return!
Heck, what if you just sucked and only made a 20% return—over 30 days—that’s $5,600, but over a year that’s a 240% return for $67,200.
Most people I know would take that all day long.
Now If I told you the skill of advertising was part of the secret to getting these returns, would you want to learn more?
Each Week I Share The Latest Digital Builder Tips, Techniques, and Stories:
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Digital Houses for Rent
Suppose there was a digital house that you could buy for $4.00 and then rent out for $11.00 that next month.
After that first month, your profits have paid off that house and you’ve also enjoyed a $7.00 profit.
If you can rent it out ever again, even for $1, it’s pure profit.
Most people would buy as many of these little digital houses as they could stand.
By the way, as one who has dabbled in real estate, I can tell you there are no tenants and toilets which makes this an even better investment!
Now, say I told you that $28,000 was used to buy 7,000 of these little houses which produced those aggregated rents of $49,000.
Here’s what that digital house looks like: bill@billeisenhauer.com.
That’s an email address!
Also known as an opt-in.
In many cases, and in the example I’m writing about, someone has used advertising to compel you to visit a website and trade your email address for something of value (also known as a lead magnet) or collect your email address as part of a purchase.
The metaphorical rent comes from the present or future sale of some product or service to the email owner.
It’s not altogether different from the dollar bill as an employee example I wrote about in the Create Your Own Economy newsletter.
The Machine
Conceptually, this should all be making sense, but you need to have a machine that converts your advertising investments into profits.
This is where you start to get into Naval’s specific knowledge; you need an offer, the ability to sell and fulfill it, and the ability to advertise and market for it.
The offer is more often a problem you can solve that has reasonable demand. Ideally, as you read this, you have some specific knowledge that could be used to solve a problem. You just haven’t thought about packaging it up.
Once you have a product, you need the marketing system which is the ads, the emails, and the automated system that converts the opt-ins into profit.
The product and the marketing system enable you to create an email list.
The email list enables you to continue to deliver value to your prospects and buyers and potentially create additional revenue through more product sales.
This is your invisible selling machine. The set of assets that work together to earn while you sleep; just as Naval tweeted:
Getting Specific Knowledge
While this all sounds good, in your mind you’re thinking you’re so far away from pulling any of this off yourself.
Every one of my newsletters presents an optimistic possibility, but in the end, you have to create the mindset that will make it possible for you to create vs. want and to stop stopping. To get this mindset, I recommend reading Straight-Line Leadership as many times as required.
Because you need to embrace that you are creating a company of one through a series of iterative learning, I recommend you also read The Lean Startup. But if you are already down with testing and adapting, maybe skip this one.
Since I’m essentially talking about email marketing and sales funnels, you could start with Russell Brunson’s Dot Com Secrets or the older inspiration for this newsletter title, Invisible Selling Machine. There are tons to choose from.
And finally for advertising or writing copy, anything from David Ogilvy, Claude Hopkins, or Gary Halbert. The seminal work on advertising is, of course, Breakthrough Advertising, but it’s a pretty expensive book.
This is the seminal book on copywriting and has only recently been made available on Amazon. Who knows for how long? Buy this is you are serious or if you want fascinating insight into what compels us to buy what we buy.
That’s a lot of reading, but my suggestion is to get started as fast as you can.
Get on that bike and crash your way into success.
Start building your invisible selling machine.
You’ll be unstoppable.
— Bill
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When you are ready, here are some next steps…
- Pick any of my recommended courses to continue investing in yourself
- Build your digital assets using the tools I recommend in my toolbox.