From RV Living Blogger to Email Strategist, Chat With Liz Wilcox

Yasi: Welcome to the Fast Track podcast, Liz.

Liz Wilcox: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited.

Yasi: And me too. Because in my intro, I said you have a study of a blog, and you sold the blog, and now you have another business. So, I would like to know more, a little bit about your background, like where you started your blog in the past, what is it about, and why did you want to start a blog?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, so I feel like a lot of people out there start blogs because it’s a topic that they’re passionate about. Right. You know, maybe you start a food blog because you just love food, and maybe you travel around, and now, you’re starting to do recipes, and all your friends tell you to start a blog.

Well, that is not why I started my blog. So, it was 2016, and I had just moved into an RV, which is like a caravan, depending on where you live in the world, but basically a house on wheels. And I was married at the time, and my ex-husband was in the military, and he was going to get out of the military and about, I think it was a two-year timeline, and I really wanted to travel in this RV we had bought. We had bought it to save money, right? It’s very inexpensive here in America to live in an RV. We were also living in Alabama, which is a very inexpensive state. And so, we were saving a boatload of cash. And so, you know, I started Googling how to live in an RV, how to travel, you know, how to travel plan for our big adventure when he got out of the military.

And I started seeing all these kinds of entrepreneurs, and I saw these bloggers, then, of course, I got into all the webinars of how to make a million dollars in three years, or, you know, how to make a hundred thousand dollars in your first 12 months of blogging. And I was like a hundred thousand dollars USD; this is crazy. You know, I need to start a blog too. And then I also saw, you know, people traveling in their RV full time and living in it and, you know, it wasn’t just a trip. This was their lifestyle. And I went to my husband, I said, oh my gosh, you know, did you know people move these things, we should do this too.

And he said, yeah, but you know, we’re only going to go on a trip; I’m not getting out of the military for a couple of years, you know, how would we fund that adventure? Because my husband was an air traffic controller. You can’t really move around when you have to be at the airport every morning.

And I said you know what? I keep seeing these bloggers out there. I think I’m going to start a blog. And so, I started my blog as a business. I wanted it to be the full-time income that my family needed for us to travel around the country, travel around North America, and truly like to see everything. We also had a toddler at the time.

We still have her; she’s seven now. Anyway, I started the blog, and I knew I wanted it to be a business. I had no idea what I was doing. I was not an entrepreneur. Looking back, I had done a lot with the gig economy, and this was before Uber and Instacart and all that. But I did a lot; I found jobs on Craigslist and things like that.

So, I just took kind of that Stick to it-ness and applied it to my blog. I said, okay, I’m going to figure this out. And after six months, you know, I had learned that email marketing was the number one strategy, all these, you know, quote-unquote gurus were saying, oh, I wish I would have taken my email list more seriously, I wish I would’ve built my list quicker, et cetera. And I said, well, mama didn’t raise any fool. That’s what I’m going to do. And so, right from the get-go, I started building my email list, and then about six months into it, I said, okay, I need to create a product, but I was still kind of all over the place.

You know, when you start a business, you know, you don’t know who you’re talking to. You’re not exactly sure what you want to do, especially with the blog. You kind of have a free ring, which, you know, can be good or bad. And so, I asked my people, my email list, Hey, I got all over the place, I have no idea what I’m doing, I’m not even traveling yet, why do you follow me? Why do you follow Liz Wilcox? They said, well, you’re pretty funny, and you can tell a good story. So, my very first product was a collection of funny stories. And I want to say whatever your idea is, whether you want to create a blog, your e-commerce, wherever it is, my first product was a book about poop. So, the funny stories were like poop jokes, or, you know, it was called Tales from the black tank, and the black tank is where your sewage goes in your RV. You know, it’s sold $7,000 in like the first 90 days, it got picked up by an international sponsor, and it really sorts of, I’ll say, a slow skyrocket into making a name for myself in this RV blogging niche.

And so, if I can do that with poop, like whatever your idea is, it’s way better, you’re going to be successful. You just have to believe in yourself.

Yasi: I love this story. And your blog is about RV living or traveling? What is it about?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, exactly. At that time, it wasn’t really about anything; it was about my journey into living in the RV, into traveling, into trying to make it work.

But we were stationary. We weren’t moving. So, I did a lot of stationary living blog posts at the time, you know, five ways on how to not kill your spouse when you haven’t lived in six months, you know, and you’re living in 400 square feet. Our first RV was 400 square feet, our second RV was 200, but basically, I was just building the email list, and I was building this, I guess you can say fan base.

I hate that word, but this community is the word that I’m looking for. I was building this community of other people that wanted to RV or were RVing and just found what I was doing inspirational. You know, I was emailing them once a week saying, hey, this week we’re getting ready to, you know, we’re planning this, and I would just share that.

And so, the blog eventually moved into just RV living, and how to live in your RV, how I was living in my RV, I had a lot of stationary posts, you know, for people that weren’t traveling or were traveling very slowly. I had some family posts, people who are RVing with kids. But mainly it was very funny stories.

I shared a lot of really funny RV stories, and people really liked that.

Yasi: And how long have you had this blog, and when did you sell it?

Liz Wilcox: Sure. So, I started the blog in October 2016, and as I said, I started it as a business. And so, I built up kind of a suite of products, I built a course, and I ended up selling it in March of 2020.

So about three and a half years I had the blog.

Yasi: Why did you decide to sell it?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, so I started it as a business. And like, I just made the joke about skyrocketing myself to RV fame with poop jokes. I realized that you know, I’m a lot smarter than that. And I was actually starting to get recognized at campgrounds at a lot of; they have things like RV rallies, which are just big events with a bunch of RVers. And people always knew me as the RV poop lady, and I have a master’s degree in education and leadership. And I was like, you know what? I really pigeonhole myself into this, like funny but kind of silly woman role, and there’s nothing wrong with being funny and silly.

And I definitely am, you know, the poop jokes were just too much on it. I mean, honestly, that’s pretty much why I sold it. I knew I didn’t want to talk about RVing forever, and I definitely didn’t want to be the RV poop lady forever. But it made it a very interesting and super fun journey into entrepreneurship.

Also, I realized. In 2019, I went to a conference, and I had sold my course, and I had 141 people on my waitlist. And at the end of the cart closed, I had 141 sales. And so, a few months later, I went to a conference full of copywriters and marketers and things like that. I was telling the story about my hundred percent conversion rate.

And everyone was like, what? That’s crazy. You need to teach that; you need to teach that. And that really gave me the confidence to say, okay, yes, I am going to sell my blog. That is the direction I need to go. I need to teach people how to do email marketing. Cause that’s where I saw success, where other people didn’t. The one thing you have to know about the RV niche is a lot of those people don’t pay for electricity. They don’t pay for water. They’re very frugal. And they actually, it’s kind of a game for a lot of RVers to see just how cheap they can be, to see just how low their living expenses can be. And somehow, I was selling them books about poop and online courses when they’ve never taken an online course in their life.

And so, I realized, okay, I’ve really got something to share here for all the other bloggers and people that aren’t the typical business to the business course creator. I found that if I could do it, I wanted to share that with other people.

Yasi: I love this idea that you have already built your business and use what you learned from building your business and then venture out into something else which you can monetize from. Then what do you think for bloggers or online business owners when they use email, this marketing tool to reach out to the communities. What do you think are the typical mistakes people make?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. Well, number one, they are trying to tell too many stories. I know a lot of email marketers out there. I started my email marketing business after I’d already built a blog after I had been using email marketing for myself.

I think a lot of other email marketers start off as like copywriters, and, you know, they’re writing stories for other people, other B2Bs, but I was very B2C. Remember, like these people don’t want to pay for water or electricity, right? Like how do you convince them to buy an online course? And so, I found, I had that unique perspective, and the one thing that I’ve learned is that telling stories, sure, I had just told my story. It took 10 minutes, right? Stories do connect. I’m not saying not, but when you’re writing a newsletter, especially when you’re just a blogger or, you know, even a maker, if you’re on Etsy or, you know, e-commerce site, people don’t care that much about your story.

They don’t care what you ate for dinner last night and how that segue into you buying their jewelry or them buying your jewelry. What you can do instead is write a personal update; you know, you want to make that personal connection. And so, this is just two to three sentences in your email before you get into the content, your blog posts or your sale, or whatever it is you want to showcase that week or that month; it’s just a personal update.

Two to three sentences. Like if you’re on the phone, you know, you call your mom, and she asks how you’re doing, you say, yeah, you know, I just had a podcast interview, and I’m just taking a break before I get a shower. That’s the personal update, right? You’re just sharing a little bit of your life; hey, you did a podcast interview, you know, that tells people something without having to try to write some story. Most copywriters, including myself, get paid a lot of money to tell stories. The chances are that’s not your thing. You sell something else. You don’t sell writing stories, so don’t try to. Also, just being inconsistent, you know, let’s say you decide, yes, I’m going to commit to emailing my list, you know, every Wednesday.

Suddenly it’s Thursday, and you forgot to email your list. A big mistake I see is, oh, well, I’ll just wait until next Wednesday. No, just write, you know, be consistent, stay top of mind. Those are really helpful. And just do it when you can, you know, it doesn’t have to be this big, oh my gosh, Tuesdays at 4:00 PM, I’ve got to get it out. You know, if you forget, you know, just keep going. It’s totally fine.

Yasi: And do you think people that, you know, they don’t have copywriting skills, they don’t have marketing skills, and then they start a blog or business, do you think it’s necessary to build the main list for every single online business?

Liz Wilcox: To have an email list?

Yasi: Yeah.

Liz Wilcox: Necessary, no. I mean, I would like for you to have a list, but you know, I do see lots of people that just run Facebook ads and, you know, that’s their bread and butter, and that’s fine. But I will say, you know, especially the time of this recording, it’s August 2021; I know all summer long that you know, Apple came out with a new update.

It was really messing with Facebook ads, Instagram, etc. And so I don’t think it’s very smart to put your entire business into, you know, the Facebook ads or the ads bucket. You should, but it’s not necessary. You can make money without an email list. I’ve seen people do it; I’ve done it. But I think the strongest and most secure way to make money is through an email list because all in those emails, people have opted in and said, you know, yes, give me more information, or yes, I, you know, I want to buy this, or I’m interested in buying this. And so that’s a very safe way. And then, if you’re into all the privacy updates and you believe in that sort of thing, I love having an email list because they can always opt-out.

When you’re scrolling on Facebook, you know, Facebook makes it very hard not to see those types of ads. If you’re like, oh, I’m tired of seeing X ad, it makes it difficult to stop seeing that. Right. But with the email list, you can just put that unsubscribe at the bottom; they can opt-out. It’s very two-sided, which I really, really like.

Also, with an email list, for every dollar you’re putting in, when you do it right, you can expect 40 — $42 in return. There’s really nothing like that. I know I was just at a friend’s house, and she, her whole business, has the email list, but she gets a lot of from Facebook. And she says, well, I put in $1, I get a dollar 50 back.

You know you put a dollar into email marketing, you get $42 back. So, is it necessary? No, but it would be smart to have an email list, no matter what your business is. Even I know people with plumbing companies that have email lists, and they email their people once a month with tips, depending on the season, right.

Email marketing really can be for just about any business.

Yasi: And can you elaborate a little bit more on the fact that where you spent $1 email marketing, then you get $40 plus return? How does it work?

Liz Wilcox: Sure. So, number one, you actually have to sell to your people. You know, we all hear that buzzword funnels, right.

But basically, you can just have simple email sequences. When someone opts into your list, you can take them through a sales sequence. And because it’s email, people act differently. So, let’s say you go to your actual mailbox, right? You go out to your mailbox; you get a few pieces of mail, and you’re looking for something that you actually want to open.

Right? Like if I got something from Yasi, I would be like, oh my gosh, actual mail, like, let me open that one first. And so, if you can create an email, if you can create this persona in the inbox, you know, that acts like that. Like, oh my gosh, Liz Wilcox, she’s in my inbox, and I’ll be open that. And then you build that trust, and you sell them something that is relevant.

The conversion rate is going to be much higher. So, I use ConvertKit. It’s an email service provider I pay. Before, I paid $30 a month, but for it, you know, it’s $30 a month. So, you think you know, by the end of the year, I should be making six figures for my email list.

And I was pretty darn close with that last year. So basically, you just want to be selling to them. Not every single email, you don’t have to sell every single email. Depending on what your business is, but you always want to be putting offers out there. As I said, at the very beginning of this podcast, I asked my people, why do you follow me?

And they said funny stories. So, I created a book on funny stories. You can go to your email list and say, hey, I’m thinking of creating X, would you buy it? And if they click, yes, then send, you know, send them a link to buy it. And so that’s how selling an email marketing works, and it works so well because it’s that.

It is one to many, but it feels like that one to one. And if you do it right, you can really channel that one-to-one. You can, you know, ask people, hey, what do you think about this? When I sold my course, 141 people were interested, 141 sales. That was because I had built up this sort of community, this sort of friendship with them.

And they knew, oh, Liz Wilcox is really, really paying attention to what I need. And by the time I had sold, you know, had created the product, created the course, I had already answered all their objections about it. You know, I told them the price. I shared what was in it. I did, you know, XYZ all the little pieces of it.

I had told them so they knew whether or not they were going to buy by the time that I opened the cart. And you can do that with email marketing. You know, it’s not like every time you send out an email, you’re going to get $42 per customer or whatever, but if you do it right, and you build out those sales sequences, and you keep putting different offers in front of them, you know, people are going to buy.

And like I said, maybe about five minutes ago, if they don’t want to buy it, they’re going to opt-out, which is good. And it’s good. And you pay for your email list. You know, no matter what provider you use, if you get enough subscribers, you’re going to pay for it. So, you want the people that aren’t going to buy it, the people that say, no, I don’t really like Liz, you know, she’s not the one for me. I want those people off my list because I pay for it, and I want that stat to be true, right. And then personally for me, probably I send once a week emails, and I usually put some sort of offer, whether it’s a reminder of a product I already have or it’s, hey, I’m going to do a paid live training next week, or it’s, you know, someone else’s product.

I usually try to put at least a PS, so they always know, like, Hey, I’m a business.

Yasi: Does that

Liz Wilcox: make sense?

Yasi: Yes. Correct. And on behalf of all the people who are, for example, building an online business, or just starting out when you talk about, you know, ConvertKit is $30 per year, and then they need to create something to sell, to build this relationship.

What if they have no experience with writing emails? Can you give like a simple, is there like a formula how they should follow or what should they do to?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah, I love this question. So, I actually have a formula, it’s called the 20-minute newsletter. If you’re taking more than 20 minutes to write your newsletter, you’re doing it wrong.

I know that sounds harsh, but I’m going to tell you how to do it right. And normally this is a product I sell, but it’s just something that. I want everyone to know. And it’s so simple, especially for those online businesses. And if you have no freaking clue where to start. So, number one, as I said, starts with personal updates.

So just a greeting, you know, Hey Liz, and then the personal update. So, it personal update might be, you know, I took my kids for a walk today, it was a disaster, I don’t want to talk about it anymore, moving on, you know, or something like that. Or, you know, I made dinner last night, that’s not my normal routine, you know, but everybody ate it.

You know, just one little tidbit of your life. It doesn’t go into detail, it’s very simple. Like I said, just like, you’re on the phone with somebody, and it’s like, Hey, what’s up? And you just spit out that two to three-sentence thing. That gives that personal connection. It gives insight into your life like, oh, everybody ate it, that must mean she doesn’t live alone, without saying I’m live with X, Y, and Z, you know? And then you can just segue into the main content. And this is where people can get really frustrated and like, well, how do I segue from talking about dinner to my blog posts? Here’s how you do it: ANYWAYS… What I really want to talk about is my new blog posts, my new podcast, you know, my new YouTube video, or this thing I saw on Instagram, whatever it is you’re going to actually bring up. It can be that simple. I know when most of us sit down to write, we think about our school English teacher or whatever language you speak and how they told you how to write.

And you have to have this beginning, middle, end, and there has to be a climax and an antagonist and all this stuff. No, it doesn’t have to be like that. You’re writing a newsletter, not a novel. It can be simple. So that personal update, segue, right, which is just ANYWAY, what I wanted to talk about is blah, blah, blah.

And then whatever the blah blah is, you can go into your podcast. Hey, I interviewed Liz, we talked about email marketing, oh my gosh, you have to listen to the part about her first product. Spoiler alert: it’s about food or something like that, right. Or, you know, your blog post. I wrote this blog post I kept writing, or I decided to write this blog post because I get a lot of questions about X, you know, something like that.

And then you can say just something like hope you click over to read, to listen, to watch, and then you just, you know, sign up, and that’s pretty much it. Just remember that personal update and that segue can be so simple. Remember, if you’re taking more than 20 minutes like you’re really overthinking it.

Yasi: Okay. Tomorrow I’m going to send out a newsletter. I will see how long it takes me to write it.

Liz Wilcox: But here’s the asterisk, like sometimes the first couple of times, especially if you don’t write a lot in your business, it could take 30 minutes, but keep following that formula, and you’ll get quicker and quicker, you’ll be able to come up with that personal update and be like, oh yeah, you know, today I went for a run before X or, you know, whatever.

And this also helps you out because we opt into businesspeople like Amy Porterfield and the like, and they have these beautiful newsletters and these awesome stories. And then they somehow segue, and you’re buying a $2,000 program, and you’re like, how do they do that? I’ll tell you how they did that.

They hired someone like me to do that. They do not write those newsletters. Those are expensive newsletters, I’m sure. Don’t try to keep up with that. And also, if you’re not a B2B, like if you’re like I was where, you know, your people aren’t used to buying online or, you know, there is not as easy as that of a sell. If you don’t have time to write the newsletter, chances are your person doesn’t have time to read it. And so just giving that personal update and just getting into the mean of things, remember they gave you permission to email them, but only about this or that. So just give the personal update, and that helps make that human connection and then get into the content.

And that helps you keep the promise of, you know, I’m going to email you about emails, or whatever. Does that make sense?

Yasi: Makes sense. Totally. Thank you so much for the tips. And lastly, for the audience who are either building an online business or think about building a business and then want to create an email list, and they probably want to learn more from you and where they can find out about you or your services?

Liz Wilcox: Okay. Yeah. Thanks so much. So, I’d love for you to join my email list, obviously. If you want more examples, newsletters, when you opt-in to my email list, I gladly give you permission to steal all emails that I write and use them for your own. Take out whatever the heck my personal update is. Put yours in, take out what I’m selling, put yours in.

Use them as templates, as frameworks, and you can go to Lizwilcox.com. You can opt-in in the top right-hand corner. There’s a hot pink button. It says free emails. Swipes are kind of like templates, but they’re fully written out examples, and I have a swipe file for an entire welcome sequence. So, when you get that first person, and I’m going to show you exactly how to build the foundation so that you can start selling right away.

And I’m also going to give you three newsletter examples and then 52 subject lines. All these subject lines have given me a 40% or more open rate. And, you know, you can also use them as prompts for your newsletter.

Yasi: Amazing. Thank you so much. And I’ll make sure to leave all the links in the show notes.

And thank you so much for being here today, Liz.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. Thank you. And I’m so excited to see what everyone does with their email marketing.