[SwB] How I found Bill.

Hey, Ninjas (and maybe some not-yet-Ninjas) —

I wanted to chat you up a bit in the leadup to Storytelling with Bill Mueller and give you some context around why I'm so excited to have him talk to you guys.

Because, believe me, I know that we don't seem like a perfect fit on the surface! Bill's older (but not by much), fitter, and considerably more blokeish (😂) than I am.

And, despite doing very similar jobs, we don't travel in the same circles at all.

We're both big fish in smallish ponds — and I guess maybe that's one thing we have in common other than our love of email. I'd much rather be a big fish in a small pond than the other way around, and while I've never had occasion to ask him directly, I get a feeling Bill would enthusiastically agree.

But as to how I found Bill, that's the most mundane thing you could image: During the fall of 2021, I was spelunking out there in the swampy old caves of internet marketing, trying to figure out how to actually make a go of Newsletter Ninja instead of freaking out at the end of every month about the next month's rent. (Good times.)

And one day, Facebook served me one of Bill's a ds, one that he runs for a mini-course he sells for $37 (of course).

But this a d had a lot of comments — like, tons of social proof. People saying this stuff was absolute gold, etc etc.

I was intrigued, but not convinced. I clicked through and the page was very blue (MANLY), looked very Clickfunnel-y (eeek, Russell Brunson), and just generally didn't "vibe" with me.

"Bro marketer," I thought. "Too bad, because it looks like a lot of good content, but ... meh."

But because I had clicked through, Facebook kept serving me the a d — and I noticed something interesting. Bill was a frequent presence in the comments, answering questions and thanking folks who said positive things about the product. And if someone expressed any doubts about the quality, he would offer them a free sample.

(The first one's free, kid. Now go tell all your friends!)

Eventually —

and I'm talking weeks, because I am a waffler, and the sales page was VERY MANLY (lol, listen, this stuff matters, so think about that when you're designing your own landing pages)

— I gave in and asked for the samples.

They were good, but I was already pretty good at this, so they weren't as earth-shattering to me as they were to some of the folks in that comment section.

But now, of course, I was on Bill's list. And after a few onboarding emails that talked up the paid product I still hadn't pressed Go on, he dropped me into his regular campaigns.

In early November of 2021, he sent an email with a very click-baity title that made me roll my eyes a little.

And then the email itself absolutely blew my mind.

It was loooong. I mean LONG. A long, extremely detailed story that I won't spoil for you, because I'm gonna give you a link in a minute.

But the point is, I kept reading and kept reading ... not even realizing how LONG it was (that email is over 1700 words) ... waiting for the segue that would say "now buy my stuff" .... and that moment never came.

It was a long-ass, engrossing story, it had a little lesson at the end, and then ... after being told for months by every marketer out there in the swamp that it couldn't be done, I could not believe it when Bill just ... didn't segue into a sale.

🤯

Those of you who have taken courses with me will know that sometimes when a student is struggling with something in a workshop, I'll stop and say, "Do you just need permission to [X]?"

"X" could be anything — send more often, send less often, send more dog pics, start including cat pics, share personal stories, keep the most personal stuff private, move to a new email marketing service, throw out the whole list and start over, shorten a welcome sequence, don't do a winback campaign before list hygiene, write a new reader magnet, put an old reader magnet up for sale, etc, etc, etc, etc — but sometimes people are so in their own head that they just need me to say "Yes, it's okay to do the thing you wanted to do anyway."

That was this for me.

Even if you've been on this list since the early days, you might not have noticed, but that was when my relationship with my list changed. I needed someone to tell me that it was okay to just talk about the stuff I wanted to talk about. To put in dumb animated GIFs (Bill is a master at this). To share my own embarrassing moments. To make a lesson out of things both profound and mundane.

I needed to know that it was okay to share a super long-ass story, as long as I had a reason — and I needed to know that sometimes "I thought you'd like it" is all the reason you need.

Those of you who have been around a while will say that I was always doing that, and I was trying. It was what I wanted to do. But I'd realize an email was too long and try to edit it down (always taking out some of the best stuff 😭), and then I'd realize I hadn't made a sales pitch, so I'd edit out something else to make room for that, and so on and so on. I very much needed to read a really good story-based email that didn't care how long it was and didn't try to shoehorn in a sales pitch, so I knew it could be done.

And you can bet I started paying very close attention to what Bill was doing after that.

So will you, once you meet him!

XO Tammi 🥷🏼

PS: Here's the link to that email: newsletterninja.net/downloads/SwB1.pdf If it doesn't blow your mind like it did mine, that's okay. That means the lesson that specific email had to teach might not be for you.

But I'm going to send you two more emails, and they're each different from this email and from each other. Bill's very good, and he's never good the same way twice in a row. One of those might be the one that changes your outlook.

PPS: In the interest of radical transparency and authenticity, I have to tell you that Bill did have a sales link for something in the PS of that email — I didn't even see it until I reread the email the next day. 😂 And honestly, I wasn't even mad. Sticking it in the PS was the right call, because it made it the afterthought it needed to be.

I would have picked it up too, except that I was too busy going through the course I'd just bought — because that was the day I picked up the product I'd been hemming and hawing about for two months.

You can bet your butt I picked the other one up later, though. And whole lot else besides. 😂