259. How Building an Email List Helped Increase my Revenue 10X With Sena Wheeler
Being a CEO is no joke. If you are running a business, you are a CEO. You may not think of yourself that way, but when you're a CEO, you must learn specific skills to make the business grow and remain healthy and strong. Today’s guest Sena Wheeler has the best story about the one skill she doubled down on to increase her revenue to keep her family's business afloat. And it's something she still uses every single day. Her family's mission is to make sure that we get really healthy, pristine, beautiful food, specifically fish on our plates. It was on an eight-hour drive to Thanksgiving dinner, where she was talking to her husband and suggested how to market his fishing business, and he reeled her in. It was a good fit; Sena had studied onboard handling techniques that correlated to flavor and quality attributes. She knew how to market the Copper River salmon he was catching. “I took [Marie Forleo and Laura Belgray’s] B-School and just set up the business while we had the site going, and we were selling fish by the time he left for Alaska. … So it was actually like a pretty, pretty fast,” says Sena. “And if it hadn't gone fast, I think I probably would have overthought it.” Sena says that first summer was a lot of trial and error. There were weeks where Sena was tempted to quit, but she says her husband telling her, “You’re the CEO” helped change her mindset. She would ask herself, “what would a CEO do?” when she felt like she wanted to quit. “It forced me to be like, have we exhausted every avenue? Is there something else to try? Let's try this.” She started writing emails for her small but growing list every other week. “I would get like $500 of sales on an email,” says Sena. “Very early on, I could see that that was the needle that's making the business move, you know, when not many other things are.” She leaned into writing and did The Copy Cure. It took a bit of time. Sena says when you’re writing to a list there are levers, how good the email is and how many people are on the list. “My best emails, I sit down to write one thing, and I write something else, and something else just comes out and, and it just starts going in a new direction,” says Sena, who finds consistency in imperfection. Getting a first draft done, even a terrible one, is better than not writing at all. Now she’s sending emails every Monday and started a Fish Friday email, which is a recipe and link to the featured fish. “I'm going to say like 30% of the time, I'm like, ‘oops, well, this is the email that came out. So this is what we're doing.’ ” Sena says she sets a challenge for herself to see what she can tie back to her business when she writes. Writing helped open the door for people to understand where their food is coming from and that connection provides value. “When we have kids over, I'm going to feed them fish, right? … I will talk about Rich and how he caught it. And maybe my kid’s right there. They were out on the boat, too,” says Sena. “Just bringing that connection immediately changes how they how they perceive the food.” Connect with Sena Wheeler and download free cookbook: https://www.senasea.com The Copy Cure: https://www.marieforleo.com/the-copy-cure Other GoG episodes you might want to check out: How to Write Sales Copy That Sells https://sarahwalton.com/how-to-write-sales-copy/ How to Use ChatGPT Without Losing Your Personality https://sarahwalton.com/how-to-use-chat-gpt/ Does Your Story Matter? (More Than You Know) https://sarahwalton.com/your-story-matters/ You can check out our podcast interviews on YouTube, too! http://bit.ly/YouTubeSWalton Thank you so much for listening. I'm so honored that you're here and would be so grateful if you could leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts by clicking here, scrolling to the bottom, and clicking "Write a review." Then, we'll get to inspire even more people! (Watch this quick tutorial if you need help leaving a review.) #EmailMarketing #HowToBuildEmailList #EmailListBuilding #BusinessOwner #SmallBusinessTips #EmailList #AskExpert #WomenInBusiness