Founder of Rebel Email Marketing | King of DTC Steak Twitter | Email + lifecycle for 7-9 fig ecom brands
Joined July 2011
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I bet 99% of the "I work 14-16 hours per day" guys on here have never heard of Parkinson's Law
if this is you, look it up
anyways, here's what I'm doing OUTSIDE of the agency...
a new reading project
3x books per civilization, focused on a "10,000 ft. view" kind of angle, then planning to dive deeper into any specifics that catch my eye (people, places, events, etc.)
each book will have a specific chat dialogue in claude I built under this project so I can discuss what to focus on in every chapter + my thoughts at the end so I'm not just mindlessly reading
here's the current lineup, in order + view from my reading chair :-)
let me know if any experts here have any recs/swaps:
Rome
1. Rubicon, Tom Holland: the Republic’s collapse, reads like a thriller
2. SPQR, Mary Beard: the whole arc, told sharply
3. The Fate of Rome, Kyle Harper: how climate and plague broke the empire
Greece
1. Introducing the Ancient Greeks, Edith Hall: what made them tick
2. Persian Fire, Tom Holland: the Persian Wars from both sides
Egypt
1. The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt, Toby Wilkinson
2. Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs, Barbara Mertz: older, warm, and fun
Mesopotamia and the Bronze Age
1. Between the Rivers, Moudhy Al-Rashid
2. 1177 B.C., Eric Cline: a whole interconnected world collapses at once
Byzantium
1. Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire, Judith Herrin
2. The New Roman Empire, Anthony Kaldellis: bigger, for when you’re hooked
The Islamic world
1. Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary: world history from the other side
2. The Great Arab Conquests, Hugh Kennedy
Vikings
1. Children of Ash and Elm, Neil Price
Mongols
1. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford
China
1. The Story of China, Michael Wood
2. The Open Empire, Valerie Hansen
The Americas
1. 1491, Charles Mann
2. When Montezuma Met Cortés, Matthew Restall
The connective tissue
1. The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan: reread it whenever you want to see how all of these fit together
my garage gym has to be a top 5 investment I've ever made
and it's not even what I would consider "good"
this is my entire setup:
1. DBs up to 100 lbs
2. Squat rack
3. Bumper plates
4. Safety squat bar + olympic bar
5. Adjustable bench
6. Chin up attachment on rack
7. Accessories: Bands, dip belt, straps, etc.
would love to have more leg equipment like GHR, reverse hyper, ext/curl machine... but other than that, love the convenience + my daughter hangs out with me every workout
absolutely incredible
meats roasting on an open fire while the rest of my meats are aging
what more would I possibly need?
klaviyo's new composer being giga rammed down everyone's throat
"the leading AI marketer"
uhhh... really?
"trained on hundreds of thousands of brands"
that's... scary
9/10 klaviyo accounts I've reviewed are NOT doing what I would consider "good", let alone "great"
so... why would you want to put 20-50% of your brand's revenue in the hands of this "leading marketer"?
looking forward to the upcoming weeks when we all 10x our sending, everything will be JUST FINE TRUST ME ITS GONNA BE OK NOBODY FREAK OUT SURELY THEY WILL FIGURE THIS OUT AND WE WONT GO DOWN DURING BFCM WEEK
here's a little secret tip...
stop listening to everyone else
they don't know shit about you and never will
they don't know what you're capable of
and they don't have as much figured out as you think they do
I've asked a handful of people I look up to about their lifestyle design/vision/plans
most of them didn't have a good answer for me
do I still respect the hell out of them and admire them?
absolutely
but it made me realize I shouldn't beat myself up over not having a "perfect" plan most days
you got this 👊
Recent wins at my agency:
- 4 week old slept 5 straight hours
- 3 year old approved the ribeye
- zero clients sent a "are you free for a quick call" before 8 AM this week (it's only Tuesday though)
xitter.cf/thePhilRivers/status/2…
Recent wins at our agency
- client 1: closed a $160k 12-month deal
- client 2: unlocked $76k from 2 abandoned cart tests
- client 3: doubled opt-in rate from 4.3% to 7.8%
- added 3 more team members for Q4
- 9.7x average ROI on Email CRO
- fired 1 account lead because he didn't have that dogg in him
- all clients' BFCM campaigns approved and in development as of last week
- crazy advancements with agents and human in the loop processes
- on page to almost 3x YoY
Switching agencies 3 weeks before Black Friday is a wild move
the new team spends BFCM figuring out where your logins are, tracking down asset folders, etc.
youre much better riding it out + letting the same team get you through this critical period
xitter.cf/podriscoll_ecom/status…
I've got agents doing real work inside my agency every day
and I still wouldn't tell a brand to fire their team for one
the bots are fast. somebody still has to know what your brand needs in week 3 of BFCM
xitter.cf/JoshuaChronos/status/2…
Every week I hear about a DTC brand trying to replace their agency with AI.
Wishing them the best. Here’s the backlog of things they'll have to figure out:
> how email and SMS play out for every segment of the audience you serve
> a segmentation strategy that crosses into your email and SMS strategy
> design, split up into a million and one things
> copy, another bunch of things
> tried and tested playbooks, so you don't go through the pain of trial and error to learn what doesn't work anymore
> knowing which steps to skip, which is hard
> knowing what not to do as much as what to do
> email deliverability, which is insane to manage on its own
> deliverability technicians with a crazy amount of experience
> email, SMS, and WhatsApp
> the relationship you have to build with Meta for WhatsApp
> an analytics product
> your email infrastructure
> compliance laws across every state and jurisdiction you operate from
> costs you have to manage and project out to keep track of everything
Most welcome series follow this pattern:
Email 1: Thanks for subscribing
Email 2: Here's our story
Email 3: Meet the founder
Email 4: Now here's 10% off
By email 4, half your list is gone.
Put that offer FRONT AND CENTER. Let it ripppp.
This is what we do
I am constantly amazed at these little nuggets of info I read about newborns, mothers, etc.
Truly mind blowing
I'm doing free lifecycle/retention audits for $1M+ brands. I'll go through your email and SMS and tell you what I'd fix first. Book here: calendly.com/nickyates1/star…
I’m gonna be grokkin even harder once I get wired in to the matrix
