Jay Papasan:
This week, our guest is Sam VanderWielen. I met Sam at a conference I attended last month, and it was the first time I’d ever heard her speak, the first time I’d heard about her business or her book, and she absolutely blew me away. She comes from a very real place, she’s super authentic, and you can just tell, like, “Man, this person really knows what she’s talking about.”
Sam was an attorney who hated her career, thought that’s where she wanted to go. She dealt with multiple challenges while pivoting from being an attorney to starting her own online business selling legal templates. But in eight short years, despite the fact she lost both of her parents, had to take care of her father in his dying years, also had brain surgery herself, all of these challenges, in eight short years, she built an eight-figure business. And we get a chance to learn from her today.
We only have a 30 or so minutes so we are focused on some of the things that I love about what she’s done. She did over 1,200 interviews to figure out exactly what it was customers needed so that she could deliver the right product. Those were also sales calls by the way. She didn’t take that long to figure it out but she made a real commitment to understand what is it that she could uniquely do, that they uniquely needed, and through curiosity, delivered an eight-figure product. She’s a great business person, lots of tactical tips, and I also think she’s just pretty darn funny. I hope you’ll enjoy this episode with Sam Vander Wielen.
I’m Jay Papasan, and this is The ONE Thing, your weekly guide to the simple steps that lead to extraordinary results.
Okay, Sam, I’m so happy to have you here. Welcome to the show.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Hey, Jay, thanks for having me.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. So, a lot of our longtime listeners, they know how much we preach models and like models before creativity, models before creativity. And that’s because we see so many entrepreneurs go straight into the creativity part of things and they dismiss the fundamentals. I love, in your book, how you’re kind of also telling people, don’t just copy everybody, go ahead and be unique too. So, I know that you’re not telling people to skip the basics. Walk me through what you’re seeing and why you’re leaning into that be unique advice.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah. I think, I mean, models are important because models show us that there is demand for something. It’s a great place to start in seeing that there’s proof of concept, something’s working. But I think that when you’re entering into a space where there’s also supply, we need to approach it by saying, “Okay. Well, what else? What else is missing? What’s something that someone’s not doing that I think needs to be done or that could offer a really unique spin on this?”
And when people, nowadays, get so concerned over starting a business or starting some sort of online presence, the first thing that they’ll say to me is,” I’m so concerned, there’s no space for me. There’s already so much. I see so many people doing what I want to do.” And I always say, “There are a lot of people doing what you want to do the way that you see it. Why don’t we instead go and start something that you don’t see being done? And that’s how you will actually stand out amongst a very crowded sea.”
Jay Papasan:
How do you get people to trust that there is an actual audience for them doing it their way? Because I mean, like you might be coaching me here right on the spot. You look up and you’re like, “Well…” Like, a lot of our… I think I told you about a third of our listeners are probably in the real estate field. And like, it’s a joke in some states. Like, you know, if you get pulled over and you don’t have your driver’s license, “Well, here’s my real estate license.” Like, there’s a lot of competition. So, how do I trust that my way is like an actual value proposition?
Sam Vander Wielen:
I think that the only way is to try, I think. But I also think that this speaks to a lot of, what are your values? If it’s very important to you to feel yourself, to be yourself, to feel like you’re going to be able to show up and be the best version of yourself if you’re actually acting like yourself, then you have to show pieces of that in your content or in little sprinkles throughout your business, like maybe your branding, for example, or your social media presence. And so, I think that it’s important to tap into what’s going to make you be able to show up fully.
And that’s what other people are going to be attracted to too. Like you said, anyone, you can pick a real estate agent, throw a dart somewhere and probably find a real estate agent but I’m sure that people want to work with people who they trust, who they connect with, but you have to actually give them a little something to connect with.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. Well, the saying in our industry, people want to work with people they know, like, and trust. And so, the trust is where you’re giving them information that’s reliable. But knowing and liking you, we were chatting, I got to see you for the first time at a conference on a stage, but what screamed out from, like, you’re in front of all these people, like, I didn’t know it then, but it was one of your first big speeches like that, but you were just so authentic. You were just being you, and it felt clearly that you were being you, and that was actually what attracted me to it. Because I think some people, I think they can sense when we’re trying to be something we’re not authentically, we aren’t authentically are. Let me say that three times fast. So, again, like, we just need to go out and try it. How do we know if it’s working or not?
Sam Vander Wielen:
I think you know when you’re getting a response from people, like, let’s use my talk at a conference we were at as an example. So, after I gave this talk, and I was very vulnerable and sharing about my life, so many people came up to me and said, “Oh, when you shared about X, Y, or Z, that was exactly me and I related to that because…” and then they would tell me their story. And I know I already told you this, but when they would say that, I would think, “That’s not at all what I was talking about,” or “That’s not what I said even, what they heard.” But it was interesting to know that meant it worked in the sense that it connected with them, it landed with them. People saw themselves in it.
So, I think that you see that it’s working when you get responses from people. I mean, in my industry, this is typically like I get email responses from people saying, “Are you in my head?” or “Can you hear what I’m thinking?” or “You always know the right thing to say.” So, in your industry, you kind of have to translate whatever that would mean to you, whether that’s you’re getting a lot of inquiries or people are just saying, “I don’t know what it is about you. It’s just like, I want to work with you.” And I think that’s when you can kind of tell that you’re building more of a community, an audience, not just making a sale here or there.”
Jay Papasan:
Right. Like, audience over engagements. I can’t remember the language you used. You distinguish between two things. So, when you are sending an email or making a social post, what is the feedback, then, that you count as that worked?
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, I would consider… I mean, especially when I write my emails, for example, like I have a weekly newsletter called Sam Sidebar, and I get a lot of replies.
Jay Papasan:
Plug for you, I’m a subscriber. Sam Sidebar, we will put it in the podcast notes. Y’all should definitely sign up.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Thank you. Yeah, it’s my favorite thing to do in my business, which I think then reflects itself in what I’m about to say, but I always considered it to be engagement but this is also my style. So, this is an example, like, I’m from Philadelphia and I’m pretty forward. And so, in my emails themselves, I will say to people, “By the way, this is a two-way street. Hit reply and let me know your answer to this because this is not just me yapping at you. This is you getting involved. And if you’re gonna sit here and be passive, this is not the place for you.”
And then I will have a lot of responses, usually, on those weeks when I say things like that. So, for me, I’ve decided that that’s a good metric of like, am I actually getting people to respond to me in some way? I think, nowadays, whatever platform you’re talking about, whether it’s a podcast, an email, a YouTube video, getting people to actually take some action from it is very difficult. There are so many passive watchers and listeners and readers. So that’s what I consider to be a win.
Jay Papasan:
So you love the email best. I mean, you were an attorney for… was it 12 years? Or is it 12 years?
Sam Vander Wielen:
I’ve now been 12 years now, yeah.
Jay Papasan:
How long were you an attorney before you made the switch?
Sam Vander Wielen:
I’ve made it to five years.
Jay Papasan:
Okay. That is long as the average marriage.
Sam Vander Wielen:
No, I couldn’t make it any longer.
Jay Papasan:
When I think a bout how people authentically respond, I go back to you’re from Philly, you’re direct, you were in a career path that you hated and made you miserable. You had a really tough childhood, right? And I think there’s multiple levels where you’ve chosen a lot of people, they get like, is this oversharing? Like that line is so unclear. And they also are just scared to be authentically them in front of everybody else because the worst thing in the world is to have people see you for who you are and still reject you, right? So, when people get to be seen and accepted, it’s huge. But you’re doing it on at least three levels on a regular basis, and you’re also strategically saying, “Let me know how you think of that.”
Sam Vander Wielen:
I mean, but the way that I talk about and share things pisses some people off. It really triggers some people.
Jay Papasan:
Really?
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yes, I get really mean emails or comments about things that you can tell it’s really bothered someone to talk so openly about mental health or when I was caring for my dad when he had cancer and it would really upset some people. But that’s where, no matter what it is that you’re doing in your business, you have to… it’s very hard, so I’m not saying that this is an easy thing, but you have to constantly be coming back to what, like… this is the way I am, first of all.
So, if you ask me how I’m doing, I’m pretty much going to tell you, unless you’re like the Starbucks barista who doesn’t wanna hear it. But if you’re someone that I know and you ask me, so this is the way that I know personally how to show up. And I came to this decision point, and I talked about this in my keynote at KITT. But I came to this fork in the road where it was like, I don’t know how to move forward without talking about this, because it felt like this giant thing that I had hanging over me.
Jay Papasan:
You were in a hospital room caring for your dad and trying to do your job.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yes.
Jay Papasan:
Like, how can I hide that this is my life right now?
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah. And I also thought that that meant that there had to be other people. You know what gets me through at the end of the day, even though I’ll get a comment here or there or something like that, my inbox is full of people saying, “I have the same exact thing going on right now.” I just got an email from a woman the other day who said, “My dad has Parkinson’s, I’m caring for him. I am in the exact position that you were in. I have been binging all of your episodes listening to this stuff.” And so, you’d be surprised. And you don’t have to have this big, heavy trauma thing going on in your life, but you’d be surprised by sharing different pieces of yourself in your life, how many other people would relate to that.
Jay Papasan:
We can be authentically who we are. There’s probably limits, right? You don’t wanna just be the person who complains all the time. People have enough of that, but we can be real and also add value. And so, one of the things that you talk about a lot, and I know it’s probably from your attorney training, is scope of practice. And you see this a lot online, and I’m not sure this applies to everyone, but I like the bigger problem. You’re watching people online do things that they’re not licensed to do, it’s actually kind of illegal, out of fear of not offering enough services.
Your process that you describe in this book for how you figure out who your audience is, what product they need, was really thorough and impressive. I would love to take a few minutes, we’ll have to have a break in the middle of it for everybody, and just kind of walk through that process of how did you figure out, like your million dollar product. Like you had the product that became the product. How did you get there? How did you… like, what’s the process for doing that?
Sam Vander Wielen:
So, I think the first thing was that I wasn’t thinking of it this way at the time, but that I was very open to learning and to creating something new that didn’t exist to the kind of model part of our conversation earlier, that I had this inkling that there might be something that didn’t… it actually hadn’t been created yet. But the only reason I was even able to think of that is because I had an open mind. But I also had over 1200 sales calls with people who were my ideal client, who were contacting me online saying, “I need some kind of legal template,” or “I want to start an online business, I want to learn how.” And so they were contacting me. So, I knew a little bit that they kind of fit, you know, the mold.
Jay Papasan:
Pause.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
You did 1200 of these calls?
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yes.
Jay Papasan:
They were sales calls. So, they weren’t just like customer discovery calls.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Right. I got better and better at them over time in that I started marketing them more as sales calls than in the first, I was so desperate to get people and I thought, “No one would want to talk to me. So, if I could just get someone on the phone, that would be helpful,” to the point that, then, there were so many people that I started saying, “Hey, by the way, this call is not to give you free advice. It’s actually only to talk about whatever you’re struggling with, and then whether I’m the right fit for you or my product is the right fit for you. And I am not giving you any free information,” to the point that I actually created an email sequence that’s really good. And I, now, give to my customers, that prime signal, before they get on the call to make sure that they understood what the boundaries were of this call.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah. I’m not giving you, like, legal advice “
Sam Vander Wielen:
No. And so, I would just ask them a lot of questions. But what I noticed-
Jay Papasan:
Give us some examples of that though, because I think that’s helpful. Like, what does that look like?
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, So, I was asking them, like, “Tell me a little bit about what kind of business you’re trying to start,” and they would tell me about that. And I would ask what they would really want out of that, kind of open up this possibility of like, “Well, what would that bring you? What would that bring you? What would that mean for you if you’re able to do that?” really painting that picture. And then, I would ask them, “Well, what’s getting in the way?” So finding out the problem. And this is kind of the basics of our marketing and understanding what’s holding you up? Where are you stumbling?
And that’s when these consistent questions started coming out of, like, you know, in my industry, it was typically, like, “I don’t understand whether I need to register my business now,” “I don’t know what kind of contract I need.” And so, from that, I understood, like, “Okay, I can easily create a product, right? I can create a contract, a template,” which I did. “But what about everything else? Like, what about all these questions that everybody keeps asking me?”
And I noticed, and I write about this in the book, I joked with my husband that I could have just recorded myself, played it out loud, and walked around the house because I was just saying the same thing. And I was really frustrated about that until that open mindset clicked and was like, “Wait a minute, that’s a product.” That means that that’s a course. Courses were relatively newish at the time, online courses. And I put it into a course. And then, that’s how you’d start building your email list, which is how you’ll then start creating this community. So, like, everything can build. I would just follow the curiosity, always follow the curiosity.
Jay Papasan:
So, let’s keep everybody curious. We’ll take a quick break. And then, on the other side, we’re going to revisit right where we are, come back to this curiosity and pick up this thread.
All right, so welcome back, everybody. So, we’re doing these sales/discovery calls where you identify, here’s this universal need. Do you also ask people, like, in addition to what’s not working for them and what is working for them, what they’ve already tried up to this point?
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yes. And also, a follow-up question from there. So, I would always ask, like, “What have you tried? And then how did that go?” And then really, I didn’t at first, but over time I started categorizing it. Like time, for example, would be the problem, or confusion, overwhelm would be the problem, money would be the problem. So, I started kind of putting them into buckets. And I really paid attention to the language.
So, when someone would talk about the confusion and the overwhelm, what would they say? Because what was the problem? Like in my industry, just them being confused and overwhelmed, like, “Okay, but then what happened?” And they would say, well, “I never followed through with purchasing that product or that service because then I was afraid that there was all this other stuff I didn’t know, and I never knew what I didn’t know.” And so, I honed in on this language and started using it.
So, if you go to my website or my sales pages now, you will see, “I don’t know what I don’t know, I don’t know what I don’t know,” over and over again, because it’s very consistent language that my ideal customer uses.
Jay Papasan:
This is why, by the way, people are replying back to you, “Are you reading my mind?”
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, I listen to what they say.
Jay Papasan:
Well, because you know. I’ve actually been listening to people just like you for years and paying attention and taking notes. And I do think there are people who naturally see patterns, and then there’s probably someone out there listening to this going, but I don’t know that I would ever notice the pattern. So like, I just want to call attention, like the minute you see a pattern, like you just created buckets. Like did this person talk about this? Like it could be a simple checklist. I think it’s these four problems. Let me see when I get on this call if they check. I can ask about each of them and see if they line up or not.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yes. You know, I’m realizing as we’re talking about this, too, that so much of what we’re talking about would be solved if more people would approach their businesses, always thinking from the customer’s perspective. Because if you’re thinking about, I see this so often in my industry, people want to be the expert and present themselves as the expert because they’re so, you know, I understand, but like desperate to be taken seriously and respected and liked and followed and all of these things that they start talking in a language that’s literally a different language than their customers listening to. I mean, even a realtor, right, could talk in realtor speak and could talk about certain things that the average home buyer-
Jay Papasan:
Would you like a CMA on your home?
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yes, exactly.
Jay Papasan:
No, but I’d like to know what my home was worth. Same thing. Like you can use jargon to make yourself sound smart or you can use human language and be understood.
Sam Vander Wielen:
When I see other people’s businesses that aren’t quite taking off, I often see this common mistake. Like you are speaking in a language, you’re using jargon and lingo, and they do not know what you’re talking about, and you’re not speaking to the emotional experience. That’s really behind a lot of what I’m saying, is like, me telling maybe difficult stories or anything like this, it’s not about the exact circumstances that I’m talking about. I’m hitting on the emotion.
And even when I’m talking about grieving the loss of both my parents as I run my business, this speaks to someone who maybe even just had a child. Like, because it’s this emotional pull of like, “I can’t be everything all at once,” or “I have other priorities now that are not my business. And I feel a lot of mixed feelings about that.” So, it’s just speaking to the emotion that your customer is experiencing.
Jay Papasan:
And I see a lot of people like you, like they’re designing the product for… sometimes it works to design the product for their own problem, but you gotta position it for what your customers think they need. How do we decide who our customer is? Because I think the other thing is, the reason they maybe stretch the boundaries of their license or they’re copying people they shouldn’t, because they wanna serve everybody. Like, how do we identify who’s your customer and just talk to them?
Sam Vander Wielen:
Well, it helps if you have a customer already who you know is like… you’re like, “Oh, if I could just have 1000 Jays in my Rolodex, then I would be really happy.” I think that’s one way to go about it. And then I like to kind of reverse engineer and think, “Well, what is it about Jay? Well, he’s a self-starter and he’s smart and he has lots of questions,” and like you think about…
Jay Papasan:
Oh, we barely know each other and you’re just nailing it.
Sam Vander Wielen:
And so, if you have customers, then that’s a great way to go about it. It’s something I think about a lot, like the people I enjoy. I also do that in the reverse. I think about some people who cause us issues as customers in the business and I think, “What is it about my marketing that attracted them?” or “How can my marketing actually repel those people in the future?” So, I like to think of it that way.
But I think if you’re just starting out, whether you’re going to create a new business or a product, I mean, I always start kind of more on the demand side, and then think about, “Well, who needs us? What is the kind of person?” and really stepping into their day. I have this little thing I like to do where it sounds kind of creepy on paper, but I like to think about if there was a camera following this person around in their home or wherever, your business would, your product would live, what are like four or five little snapshots of their day that you would see where they would actually be bumping up against this problem and thinking really like getting into their head. Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
That’s the question to me. I hardly say like, what does that look like? Like, how do we get… there’s the intellectual idea of how people use it, and then there’s the reality of how they use it. And I think that… is that kind of what you’re going for?
Sam Vander Wielen:
I just think there’s no way around this other than old school talking to people. I mean, you can’t… people will preach like going on in Facebook groups and listening to their chatter and like looking on Reddit. And you can do that too, I do that as well, but I just think that nothing substitutes actually speaking to people. But again, it’s that mindset, it’s that attitude that when you are speaking to people, you are collecting data, you are taking this in, and you are processing it with an open mind, not with an agenda, but really listening to them. And if you are open to it, and you do start to see patterns, even being curious about that pattern, like, “Huh, I wonder why everyone keeps saying they can’t find X. Where are they looking? Or why isn’t this thing working? Or what don’t they like about the thing that’s being offered already?”
Jay Papasan:
It also lines up with something that you’re able to deliver, right? This is something that you do and hopefully something you enjoy doing.
Sam Vander Wielen:
I think that’s… I mean, hopefully these two things would intersect in the sense that you know a lot about this. So, like, when people were talking to me about business and the legal problems that they were running into, I mean, I just so happened to know how easy the solution was. So, that’s what was so interesting to me, being just curious about it, being like, “Huh, it’s actually really easy to do what they’re saying is the problem. So, I’m just curious about why it’s so difficult for them and why they think it’s so difficult.” And then, how can I just create something that’s super simple that cuts out all these objections that they have.
So, they have an objection that legal stuff is expensive, I can handle that. If they have an objection that it’s overwhelming, I can make it simple and make my marketing. They had an objection that lawyers were scary, so I made all of my branding colors very calming. I used blues and greens.
Jay Papasan:
And you’re funny.
Sam Vander Wielen:
I try to be funny, and I tried to be myself. And I also tried to talk about things. I very intentionally wore normal clothes in my website. Like, this is all… every single thing I do is very intentional. But it all was answering these objections. So, you know, if you know this topic area really well, you can also overcome it easily with, I think, a little branding help.
Jay Papasan:
The implication from your book is the vast majority of your business came from this Ultimate Bundle. All these interviews, the 1200 conversations led you. People don’t want to buy these a la carte. What they want is to kind of have maybe an abundance, stuff they don’t need but they just pay one price and get it all.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yes.
Jay Papasan:
How much does that cost out of curiosity?
Sam Vander Wielen:
It’s a little over $2,000. And my favorite part of this story is that this is actually not the product that I thought they needed. So, I learned my greatest lesson in, then, ultimately, creating my best-selling product probably that I’ll ever create. And so…
Jay Papasan:
Well don’t say that. Yet, that you’ve created yet.
Sam Vander Wielen:
I know. But it feels a little like I got struck by lightning. But I know I actually thought that it should have a different… like I was going to deliver in a different way. So, I sold 15 of them to some beta customers to test it out, which I also recommend to anyone if they’re going to create a product, especially a digital or a service of some sort. So, I sold it to these 15, and part of the deal was that they had to have an interview with me afterwards, and I got on with them and they all said, like, “Thanks so much, this was great but like, I just want this.” And I was like, “No, no, no. You need these other two things.” And they were like, “That’s great, but I don’t.”
So, what I did was, I kept it the way that I wanted, so it includes videos and includes templates, but I just marketed it the way that they said that they wanted it. And then, it’s more like a delight on the back end of like, “Oh, by the way, there are also a bunch of trainings in there that you’re gonna need later on, but you can thank me later.” Yeah, yeah.
Jay Papasan:
So, you have to deliver it as what they think they want. Teaching people that they need something is a whole other journey.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah. This is another thing that I feel like I have come to learn and really appreciate when I look at other people’s businesses that are not functioning very well. It’s typically because you’re offering something the way you want it and the way that you think other people should have it. And really, I think what’s key to marketing is just, again, speaking their language and I know that this is what you want. I know you think this is the solution. It doesn’t matter if you as the experts know that it’s a completely different solution. You market it that way.
And so, we call this the broccoli and mac and cheese effect in my business where I say that you have to like… nobody wants the broccoli except for probably me. I actually do love broccoli.
Jay Papasan:
I was going to say, I know where you’re going, but that actually… except for the flossing afterwards, I like it.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, yeah. So, for the most parts, other than us, we’re the outliers. Most people just want mac and cheese, right? And so, really, like putting the pride aside, which I honestly think is the biggest part because people will say, “No, they need the broccoli as fiber and all of these vitamins.” And you’re like, “I know, just market the mac and cheese. And then, like slip the broccoli in there. Like, let it in.”
Jay Papasan:
Treat them like little kids.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, it’s really what you need to do. Honestly, I get so many emails from people telling me that once they shifted this, it’s just a shift in your messaging, that this is what unlocked a lot of outreach for them.
Jay Papasan:
What I love about that is that you’re selling them what they want, but you’re actually delivering what they need, which is ethics also.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yes. I mean, at the end of the day, all of marketing comes back to feeling less pain and more pleasure. And so, people just come to you wanting one or both of those, some mixture of those two things.
Jay Papasan:
Which do you lead to? If you had to choose between removing pain or adding to pleasure.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Well, my ideal client wants less pain.
Jay Papasan:
Yeah, me too.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah. And so, it’s just like, that’s how I think of it. I mean, in the real estate example, I can think of both pretty much. I mean, a house, a living situation could resolve pain. It could also provide a lot of pleasure, and you could really paint that picture.
Jay Papasan:
I’ll change the language. There was a guy who was one of the top listing agents in the country, maybe a decade or so ago, and his whole thing was the no hassle home sale. That’s it. Like all he marketed was like, no hassle. Like it feels hard, it feels complicated. We removed the hassle. He made that one pain point be the focus of. And does he deliver other things? Of course. But like you bait your hook with that core thing, and then you can serve a wider audience.
And that’s another thing, like people want to serve everyone so they have this diluted message versus focusing on this one thing that they do really well and are passionate about doing, and then realizing that attracts people that they get to serve in all kinds of ways.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, I talk about this in the book. I think it’s a brilliant marketing strategy to actually overcome the objections to your industry in your marketing. So like me being a lawyer, I know what people think about lawyers. I’ve heard people talking.
Jay Papasan:
“I dress and talk like a normal person.”
Sam Vander Wielen:
So, I talk like a normal person. I appear normal. I try and I do this kind of stuff. But I tell people this all the time, here in the financial industry, everyone thinks you’re going to yell at them and tell them to stop buying their lattes or whatever. So, there’s things you can do even in your marketing, I think, that help people to be like, “Oh.” I call it the like, you’re-not-one-of-those effect. So, like, “Oh, you’re not that kind of real estate agent,” “You’re not that kind of lawyer.” I think that when you can create that effect that that allows people to relax some of those objections.
Jay Papasan:
I think in professional services, especially where there are stereotypes, that allows you to play that game. So, to kind of bring us to the end, I’m going to go back to close to the beginning. You and I both, like, we met at an email conference. And I preach this all the time. I do think that we say your database is your business. And what is your database? It’s a collection of contact information. And the most important and valuable to me is their email address. And our crowded inboxes that’s full of spam, if someone invites you in, what a gesture. I want you in my inbox.
So, you play a sophisticated game there, a long game. How are you doing some of the things we’ve talked about, building engagement with your clients, kind of nurturing them over time? Can you give us kind of a thumbnail strategy for how you’re using email to kind of play the long game with all of these customers?
Sam Vander Wielen:
I take an attitude that we internally call “All roads lead to the email list.” And so, I literally think of every single thing that I do is to like, how could this support my email list? If you go give a talk at a conference, what is the call to action at the end that is getting people on?
Jay Papasan:
Are you subscribed to Sam’s Sidebar?
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, I slip it into every conversation. You know, I think about how to bring things back there because I’ve decided that’s the best conversion tool for me. I do think it’s very difficult to stand out on a lot of other platforms. And I’ve always taken this attitude that I want to build a house on land I own and not what I rent.
Jay Papasan:
Thank you.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah.
Jay Papasan:
And that metaphor, for people to understand it, if you’re building your business on Facebook or Instagram or any other platform, that is, at best, rented territory. Someone else can plow down your house by changing the algorithm, shadowbanning you. You see it all the time. People lose huge chunks of their business because the foundation of their business is on someone else’s property.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah. I mean, you literally… I think we have over 50 something thousand followers on Instagram and some insanely demoralizing percentage of those people actually get delivered my content. It’s like, what other industry do you know where people have elected to hear from you? And then, they’re like-
Jay Papasan:
It’s broddled.
Sam Vander Wielen:
… we’ll send it to a hundred people. You know, like, that’s crazy. So, I can’t control, necessarily, who… although I think I write pretty good subject lines, I can’t control who necessarily opens my email, but I at least can sleep at night knowing all… like however many actually receive it, right? So, that’s as well as I can do. And so, that’s where my energy is going to go.
And so, I think with that mindset that, okay, all roads lead to the email list, this is gonna be my place, I also position it in my business. Like if you want the best information from me, then you better get my weekly newsletter. But it’s also where I nurture people because I have from day one, even when I was making no money in my business, taken this attitude that someone doesn’t have to buy from me today, they don’t have to buy three, six months from now, maybe they’ll never purchase from me. This is not a popular sentiment in our business, but I don’t care. I show up the same way regardless and I’m okay. I’m confident or comfortable enough that if they purchase from me six months from now, great. I’ve had people email me and say, “I’ve been on your list for five years.” It doesn’t bother me.
Jay Papasan:
That’s great.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, it doesn’t bother me.
Jay Papasan:
That’s a sale that just took a little longer to happen, but you do soft selling in there. I don’t know how to call it, but like you’ll mention, this is something I teach in this, or this is something I do there, but you’re giving it away in the email but you’re also referencing that it’s connected to a larger ecosystem that they could choose to opt into.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah. This is just what I call like a lot of top of mind marketing, just keeping… I think it’s helpful when you consistently talk about what you do without actually directly pitching it, so that when you directly pitch it, people are already warm. Like, I’m not having to explain to them, “Oh, by the way, I’m Sam, I’m a real estate agent, and I only focus on selling these kinds of homes.” They already know that. So they’re already thinking, when that opportunity comes up, like they’re ready to buy their first beach house, they’re already thinking of me as the girl who sells beach houses, you know? You know, so that’s what I’m constantly just trying to be like, remember that little nagging voice in the back of their head.
Jay Papasan:
You’re mentioning your services in context. It almost acts like you’re giving your own testimonial about your services.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yes. It’s a great way to integrate storytelling. I’m here in Austin giving a talk at a conference for travel professionals, very high end travel pros. And one of the things I’m going to teach them tomorrow is to integrate. They don’t need to send out sample itineraries to their email list to be valuable. I’m going to encourage them tomorrow to tell great stories. Tell stories about horror shows that happened on these trips and how you got them out of it. Tell stories about these incredible trips that Jay had with his wife Wendy and it changed their life. Tell the story. People want to connect with other people. It goes back to a lot of what we’ve talked about.
Jay Papasan:
So, I have one objection, I know everybody tells me I should be building this email list, but like, I’m not a natural writer. What would you tell that person?
Sam Vander Wielen:
You can build an email list that’s structured like a newsletter where there’s not a lot of long form writing. Like my emails are more story-driven, they’re long-form writing, but people have great newsletters that are… I don’t know, little amalgamations of different sections and highlights of different things.
Jay Papasan:
James Clear’s 321.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Right. You can keep it simple.
Jay Papasan:
Super formulaic, super short.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, some people choose to build their email list by referring to other people, like outbound links, right? So, you see like a great article in the New York Times that you know would be so helpful to your audience, right? And you include that.
Jay Papasan:
So, you’re curating. You don’t have to create it. You can just curate.
Sam Vander Wielen:
You can, yeah. I mean, I would encourage you to flex it a little, like as we go, but I do think you can do that. It can also then be additional streams of revenue for you because you could have different sections of a newsletter that list your favorite products or places or something like this or sponsorships.
Jay Papasan:
I think with AI and voice transcription, there’s a lot of paths. It’s not as hard as it used to be for a lot of people to start that journey.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, for sure. Also, if you use a little simple formula, like even starting out with something as simple as PAS, you can start off with a problem, agitate that problem, and then offer them the solution. And so, if you are paying attention to your customer’s language and you kind of know what’s going on, or use an example, an email question that you’ve gotten that week, or a DM you’ve received, and start off with describing the problem, twist the knife a little bit by saying what else could go wrong with it, and then be in the expert seat and provide the solution.
Jay Papasan:
That’s great advice. I think someone gave me that advice around a little consultancy we were playing with. It’s like, you’ve been answering these questions forever, just go through your sent emails. All of the conversations are there already, and you’ve actually had to write them down for people.
Sam Vander Wielen:
I really recommend that, maybe this can be our challenge, that you…
Jay Papasan:
Oh, yeah, let’s go right there. Based on this conversation, what’s one challenge we can give our listeners between now and next week?
Sam Vander Wielen:
I want you to start a document, wherever you’d like. You can start a note on your phone, or if you use Asana or Google Docs, wherever. Start a document. I used to call it a sizzle file. I don’t think I have a name for it anymore, but I would literally just start collecting every single… your friend knows you’re a great real estate agent, so they text you a question about real estate, put it in the sizzle file, or someone sends you an email, you put it in there. And just indiscriminately include everything right now. That’s how you start to see patterns.
So, this is what I did in the beginning, every single question I got, you don’t have to put their names or anything like this, just dump the text in there. That’s when you started picking up on… and I would start control F-ing and seeing, “Oh, they’re using the same phrase,” or “Everybody’s always asking me about this one thing,” and you start picking up patterns, but I would actually use those questions verbatim as fodder for an email or social.
Jay Papasan:
Did you just drop them all into like a Google Doc or something?
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jay Papasan:
That’s super easy because it’s available on your phone. Wherever you are-
Sam Vander Wielen:
You can access it.
Jay Papasan:
…you can copy paste into it.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yes. And I would write down ideas in there as well. If you were out and about and you saw, you know, somebody doing something funny that you were thinking, “Oh, that’s bad. I can teach a lesson out of that. That’s something I can turn into a lesson,” you write that down in the thing and write down details, like as many sensory details as you can.
And I think, you know, you said earlier about how, what if someone’s thinking, “I don’t want to write an email because I’m not a good writer,” I think great writers are born from writing. Writers write, as I’ve been saying to myself lately, and I think you just have to start trying and you have to start, I don’t know, just practicing putting the stories out there.
Jay Papasan:
I love that. So, the challenge this week is just to open up a file somewhere, we’ll call it the sizzle file, but it’s really your research. You’re collecting the feedback you’re already getting on your business and what you’re doing, so you can start looking for patterns.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Yeah, I’d say part two to that challenge is if you have the time to go back, let’s say for the last week, look at your texts, look at your email, look at your DMs, think about conversations you’ve had in person with people where they’ve asked you a question, just write it down. Don’t think about it, don’t overthink about it, don’t do anything, just write it down.
Jay Papasan:
Okay. Well, Sam, thank you for joining us and sharing so much.
Sam Vander Wielen:
Thanks for having me.
Jay Papasan:
Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I love chatting to Sam. I definitely wanted to have more of her. And if you heard, we’re also gonna have her at our year-end event, The ONE Thing Summit. So if you want to, you can definitely check her out there.
Next week, we’re doing a solo episode. I’m gonna talk about the six ways that people self-sabotage. At a recent group coaching program, we asked everyone there, what’s the number one way that you get in your own way? And we took all of those answers from over a hundred attendees and dropped them into buckets. So, we’ll go through the six ways that we tend to get in our own way, the ways we self-sabotage and offer solutions for each. Make sure you tune in next week for our solo episode, The Six Ways People Self-Sabotage.
Disclaimer:
This podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views, thoughts, and opinions of the guests represent opinions of the guest and not ProduKtive or Keller Williams Realty LLC and their affiliates and should not be construed as financial, economic, legal, tax, or other advice. This podcast is provided without any warranty or guarantee of its accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or results from using the information.
