You’re brilliant. You’ve spent years mastering your craft. You’ve taken the courses, built the website, posted on social media, and even started your own podcast.

You know you can change lives, so why are your bank statements still screaming struggle?

The truth is brutal: most experts stay poor. Not because they’re not smart. Not because they don’t care. Not because they aren’t amazing at what they do. They stay poor because they’re stuck, trapped in the middle of two totally different kinds of business models. And until you choose one, you’ll keep spinning your wheels.

This episode is your wake-up call. It’s the line in the sand. You’re going to find out exactly why your growth has stalled and the one simple decision that will make everything click into place. 

Useful Episode Resources

FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketing

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Join The Email Hero Blueprint

Want more? Let's say you're a course creator, membership site owner, coach, author, or expert and want to learn about the ethical psychology-based email marketing that turns 60-80% more of your newsletter subscribers into customers (within 60 days). If that's you, then The Email Hero Blueprint is for you.

This is hands down the most predictable, plug-and-play way to double your earnings per email subscriber. It allows you to generate a consistent sales flow without launching another product, service, or offer. Best news yet? You won't have to rely on copywriting, slimy persuasion, NLP, or ‘better' subject lines.

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Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. 

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00:00.99

Kennedy Kennedy

Most experts stay broke, not because they're bad, not because they're not passionate or good at what they do, but because they're stuck, slap down in the middle of two completely different businesses and they don't even know it.

00:43.50

Kennedy Kennedy

Welcome back. Hello. Thanks for being in here. If you haven't already, make sure you hit subscribe and and get the notifications for when a new episode is released. Lovely to be here with you. So here's the thing.

00:55.05

Kennedy Kennedy

Most people who are experts I'm speaking to are like, why is it not working? I'm trying all these things, and'm trying all these things. And it came to me that this is the reason.

01:05.71

Kennedy Kennedy

And it's kind of frustratingly simple. And it's it's simply simply this. gonna show you how to actually do this in a second. This sounds overly simple. But basically, if you don't choose between having a marketing-led business or a sales-led business, then you are going to stay stuck, you are going to stay poor, and it's literally that simple. It really, really is.

01:32.67

Kennedy Kennedy

Now, before we get into how to see the difference between those two things, when to pick the difference, and figure out which one you should be, um I'd love to give you my framework that I've used now to generate more than 8,000 paying clients for our business and multiple millions of dollars in the process of doing that.

01:53.22

Kennedy Kennedy

And you can just copy and use it too. It's the same email framework I've used for my business, multiple businesses my own, and for more than 8,000 clients now. And I call it the Fast and Forever email framework.

02:04.18

Kennedy Kennedy

It allows you a simple methodology to continue sending emails like get people engaged now and make sales now and continue making sales in the future.

02:14.45

Kennedy Kennedy

You can download it along with a little free training if you go to emailmarketingheroes.com slash fast. So into this stuff now, as I said, there's two different types of businesses. There's marketing led businesses and there are sales led businesses.

02:29.42

Kennedy Kennedy

The first person I ever heard talk about this was I was, it sounds like a really strange thing, but I was in this mastermind, which was held in a mansion. And it was, it was run by a guy called Todd Brown. He was like, if you don't know Todd Brown, he's like the OG goat of direct response. He's the the marketing director behind lots of the top email um and top of the top marketing campaigns in the world.

02:53.25

Kennedy Kennedy

And It was very early in the morning. was staying in this mastermind and Todd and I were literally standing in this ridiculously huge um mansion kitchen, right?

03:05.27

Kennedy Kennedy

and And there's just the two of us. So my both side kind of like, oh, this is crazy. um And we're literally, he's having a a coffee and I'm having a cup of tea. And because British American, right?

03:17.23

Kennedy Kennedy

And he said, you know, i think it's interesting that looking at our businesses, we have to pick whether we have a marketing led business or a sales led business. And he was the first person I ever heard say that in his deep, gravelly, excited voice and passionate voice.

03:32.50

Kennedy Kennedy

So what does that really mean? It's one of those things that I've always really taken to heart, but... Like everything in life, I've also strayed from the path. And I found myself also in that tug of war wondering what's going on? Why am I like not progressing? Why are things like ah much more difficult than they used to be?

03:51.80

Kennedy Kennedy

And what happens is... If you are a marketing led business, which is what I've always been, and you end up hanging around with a lot of people who are in sales led businesses, you start adapting and ah and adopting a lot of what the people around you are doing. So I start to do some sales led business activity.

04:11.77

Kennedy Kennedy

And i was like, why is this not really working very well? It's because, well, my entire rest of my business, the foundation my business, my knowledge, my experience, my confidence are all from a marketing-led business. And these things were counter to each other.

04:24.44

Kennedy Kennedy

So that's kind of where this all came from. So what do I mean by these two things? Marketing-led businesses are the kind of businesses that rely on content. They rely on attraction, bringing people in, on your brand, warming people up, that kind of stuff.

04:41.00

Kennedy Kennedy

And generally, they've got a slower ramp up. Not always. like There are things you can do to to make some sales very initially, you know, like initial offers and stuff like that. But they really rely on long-term trust. And generally, you are going to go for a very long-term relationship with these people who you're bringing in and get a really high lifetime customer value.

05:02.92

Kennedy Kennedy

Okay? LTV, a lifetime value. So people you might have heard of who are doing this very successfully are Pat Flynn, Ali Abdal, who I spoke on stage with a few years ago, but about a year ago now, actually.

05:16.61

Kennedy Kennedy

um Marie Forleo, my friend Natalie um Ellis, who runs Boss Babe. ah Me, we've all built these... very much marketing-led businesses. okay And if you're going to go into marketing-led business, you're going to be doing things like podcasting, YouTube videos, ah SEO, newsletters, videos, um SEO, blogs, running ads to lead magnets, that kind of thing.

05:44.44

Kennedy Kennedy

So that's what a marketing led business kind of looks like. now I'll give you some more details on on how you go and implement that and what that would look like in practical sense of what you need to be doing and what you need to be aware of before you say, that's what I'm going to be. what to do. Because at the end of this video, I'm going to ask you and make a decision and which one you are going to be. Because to unlock so much freedom.

06:03.22

Kennedy Kennedy

Seriously. So on the flip side, sales led businesses. These the kind of businesses that rely on outreach, that rely on direct offers. So you you'll have people running ads straight to like book a call, that kind of thing, book an appointment, that kind of thing.

06:19.66

Kennedy Kennedy

Lots of follow up, lots of DMs, that kind of stuff. The great thing about those businesses is they are fast cash. They usually hire ticket as well. OK.

06:30.36

Kennedy Kennedy

And the negative side of that is it's lots of manual effort. That's a lot of time involved. especially compared to a marketing-led business, but I'll get into that in a second. The kind of people you'll be familiar with that kind of world are, if you've seen the way that Alex Homosey, Jeremy Miner, Cole Gordon, John Penbethy, Rudy Moore, those kinds of people...

06:53.69

Kennedy Kennedy

um those kind of people are doing a, are more sales led type businesses, cold DMS, high ticket sales calls, um, that kind of stuff. You need a volume of calls for doing that sort of stuff.

07:06.80

Kennedy Kennedy

Okay. So you've just got to clear that's okay you're got to now a clear picture of of those people. So what do you actually have to do if you're choosing one of those things? Well, if you're going to get into a marketing-led business, you're going to be thinking, okay, your activity needs to be something like one to two long-form pieces of content per week.

07:28.28

Kennedy Kennedy

And long-form doesn't mean like an hour or two. It just means time. Not short reels and stuff like that. Again, that tends to be more for your sales-led business. But one or two long-form pieces of content per week. So that might be a podcast like this one, which is usually five minutes or longer. We go for anywhere between, i think our shortest video so far is about seven minutes up to about 35 to 40 minutes on some of the episodes.

07:52.23

Kennedy Kennedy

that's That's a long form piece of content. okay So that's going to be on on a YouTube video, on an audio podcast. It could be a written post either on one any of your own platforms or on a third party platform, something long form like that.

08:05.99

Kennedy Kennedy

what going to do is you're build your email list. So if you're a marketing led business, you are going to be building your email list. You're going to be sending regular emails. You're going be building that email list with things like free lead magnets or low ticket offers.

08:19.87

Kennedy Kennedy

So like a small paid lead magnet. And the whole point of that kind of business, of this kind of business, is to optimize all of your socials for reach and audience building.

08:32.36

Kennedy Kennedy

That's what you need to be doing. So that's why for more than nearly almost 300 episodes now, we've done this free weekly podcast audio and then recently also flipped to doing it on YouTube as well because it's all about building audience and also having a lot of time that people can spend with you.

08:51.98

Kennedy Kennedy

So one of the best things you can do is have people spend more time with you. And my favorite thing ah about marketing-led businesses is that you can create automations. email automations, they could be ah DM automations, those kind of things that sell in a way that is passive to you, that you don't have to be there and be on the phone or be in a call with somebody or be manually in DMs with people one-to-one.

09:18.77

Kennedy Kennedy

It's very not one-to-one. It's very sort of scaled. OK, so right now, as I'm talking to you, there are emails going out to people as they're joining my email list. As you're registering for that fast and forever framework that i mentioned earlier.

09:33.50

Kennedy Kennedy

you could immediately get an email from me and the automations will talk you through what our different offers are that we could help you out with to in terms of making more sales from email marketing. That's very much a marketing led business.

09:45.35

Kennedy Kennedy

You're not gonna get a personal DM from me offering to get on a call with you or whatever to start to sell you a high ticket offer because we're a marketing led business. We don't do that. We give you more information. We'll allow you to sort of take a little bit slower.

09:59.07

Kennedy Kennedy

We obviously want to still include urgency elements, like we'll sometimes run a flash sale or we'll give you a reason to act now. That's all still marketing. I'm not saying marketing-led business are super slow. No.

10:09.40

Kennedy Kennedy

Hey, some people, when you join their email list, they're marketing-led business. As soon as you their email list, they'll run a quick flash sale and say, hey, you as as a brand-new subscriber, you've got a special offer, but only for the next 48 hours.

10:21.42

Kennedy Kennedy

Still a marketing-led business, okay? On the flip side, sales-led businesses. And again, although I don't have a sales-led business, I'm heavily involved in a bunch of sales-led businesses with my clients. And also, I'm in masterminds with lots of people who are mostly sales-led businesses, like my friend John Penberthy, um Adam Stott. a whole a bunch of these folks who are very much sales-led businesses.

10:45.14

Kennedy Kennedy

And then those businesses, if that's your kind of bag, are going to be the the ones where it's all about asking for the sale. And you're going to doing things like sending, you should be like, set if you're in sales-led business, you should be sending out like 20 cold outreach message outreach messages a day.

11:00.35

Kennedy Kennedy

That could be emails, it could be LinkedIn DMs, it could be ah DMs on Facebook or Instagram. That's the kind of thing you'd see. You'll see that in the kind of things like Takimu is great at this. You join a ah Facebook community of Takis, he's brilliant at having the team get in touch and be like, hey, how can we help you?

11:17.82

Kennedy Kennedy

My friend Molly Mahoney is exactly the same. Again, so it's very much a sales-led business. um You're going to be looking at booking sales calls usually. So again, you'll be wanting to book in 10 to 15 sales calls every single week from those outreach messages.

11:34.10

Kennedy Kennedy

And that's when you get on the call Zoom, whatever, you know, on a phone call, whatever you fancy, and actually have that direct... It's a sales opportunity. It's literally you showing up and making the sales pitch.

11:45.06

Kennedy Kennedy

um And again, this is the kind of business where you're going to see these, where you run ads straight to the the sales video, straight to a VSL, which tells you all about the thing, or to a call booking page. Hey, book a strategy call with us. Book a discovery call.

11:59.51

Kennedy Kennedy

And then the whole aim of that game is to have really good closing... really good ability to close sales in that sort of live real-time environment, whether it's in DMs or it's on a call, and then get as many clues as you can then, and then do not miss out on the opportunity for the long-term follow-up, follow-up of those people.

12:21.72

Kennedy Kennedy

But this is the reason I personally chose for my personality type, the way that I've always liked to do things and what's comfortable for my lifestyle that I want to lead. The reason I've chosen marketing led business is is one, I really like marketing.

12:36.63

Kennedy Kennedy

I'm not a huge fan of sales and selling, right? Also, in sal if you've got salespeople, to begin with, a sales led business is going to be you. you Every single person who shows you how to build a sales-led business will tell you, everyone who's done ah done it successfully will tell you, the first salesperson in that business has to be you.

12:58.69

Kennedy Kennedy

You have to get really good at selling your thing before you pass it on. And then you have to do that. And it's literally a game of reps and tweaking and refining and reps and reps and reps.

13:09.51

Kennedy Kennedy

And then you have to pass it on to a salesperson. And what you have to be really aware of, and this is totally fine. I know people who doing this extremely successfully. They're just happy that this is one of the factors is,

13:21.10

Kennedy Kennedy

There is ah burnout to salespeople. Most salespeople, most, there are definitely outliers who do this for years, but most salespeople will last between six and 18 months and then they move on because it is about really treading that over and over again on that hamster wheel.

13:41.27

Kennedy Kennedy

So how do you actually pick which one you want to do? I'm definitely not here to say, hey, the the marketing way is the way, right? That's what this is about. This is about when you are picking your conversion mechanism, the thing that you're going to, the way you take cash off people is all going to change. Your emails are all going to change. Every single thing in your business will change to align to the type of business.

14:05.93

Kennedy Kennedy

The only thing I want you to do today is not pick marketing led, is not pick ah sales led, What I want you to do is pick.

14:16.91

Kennedy Kennedy

I don't mind which one. People are having incredible success with both models. So how do you pick? Because at the end of this, I literally just want you to pick. Well, the first thing i want you to do is think about the lifestyle that you want to have.

14:31.79

Kennedy Kennedy

What do you want to your average week to kind of look like? Do you want it to be one where you've got um you've got a sales team, you've maybe got one or two or three or maybe more salespeople who are doing these calls for you and you're able to be anywhere you want as long as you can get to a laptop and manage those people and you can look at simple spreadsheets and be able to see how they're doing and how things are converting?

14:57.16

Kennedy Kennedy

That's one thing. Secondly, what kind of business do you want? Do you want a business that is all about getting quick sales, getting clients in, serving those clients, moving on to the next client? Is that kind of how you want it to be?

15:08.98

Kennedy Kennedy

Or do you want it to be not that? Or the other way of looking at this is what kind of offers do you want? Right. What we have to do is you have to reverse engineer all of this from the lifestyle, the business and the type of offer that you want and what you want to get better at.

15:25.61

Kennedy Kennedy

I'm not a fan of finding something you're not very good at and going, right, I'm going to get good at that thing in general in business. If you've got any kind of experience, if you've been doing this for 18 months or more, I would say you probably found something that is already showing promise, showing the beginnings of something that's working.

15:42.82

Kennedy Kennedy

I want you to take the thing that's already starting to work, that seedling. And it might so might not just be a seedling. It might be bigger than a seedling. And I want you to make it grow. I don't want you to start digging dirt again, over and over again.

15:54.01

Kennedy Kennedy

Most people fail in their business because they keep digging dirt over and over again. What I want you to do is I want you to find that seedling or find that thing that's already starting to blossom.

16:05.28

Kennedy Kennedy

And I want to make it grow. I want you to do more of what is working. rather than starting over and over again. Because every time you start over, you're starting from scratch putting yourself back to that disadvantage. The clock starts all over again. And if it takes two years to really get a business going, every time you restart, you're restarting the clock of two years, which sucks, right?

16:23.95

Kennedy Kennedy

So how do you do it? Okay, well... If you want to choose a marketing brand, um i' ah sorry, a marketing business, it's going to start with brand, right? It's going to start with brand. You need to have a brand.

16:35.53

Kennedy Kennedy

So we've got email marketing heroes, but i've also got my personal brand of Kennedy, the guy who talks pretty quickly, has this crazy hairstyle, who talks very, very no bullshit, very directly and passionately about this stuff.

16:48.85

Kennedy Kennedy

Tends to be a little bit funny, although i don't know. I think I do that much funny on that on the YouTube, but I kind of, I am kind of known for being pretty funny. Hard to believe, I know. um Okay. um And some people think of it slow to start.

17:00.87

Kennedy Kennedy

It is slow to start in terms of getting big numbers. Like if you compared to a a sales led business, where if you had a 20 grand offer, you could like BDM and people this week, probably make a sale this week.

17:13.27

Kennedy Kennedy

You could probably do that. You are not going to make a 20 grand sale this week if you are just starting with a marketing brand. You're just not going to do it. But if you don't like the idea of getting on calls for people and DMing people and being very direct, then a marketing business is for you.

17:29.11

Kennedy Kennedy

Right? The other thing that marketing businesses do is they they focus on longevity. They focus on, I've got this offer and I'm going to stick with it. It's all about building trust and building more and more trust.

17:40.08

Kennedy Kennedy

So that also means because it's a marketing-led business where I'm not willing to get on a phone call with somebody for most of our offers, it's very occasionally I will, because usually when I'm researching a new offer or something, it's actually serving the marketing purpose as market research.

17:55.13

Kennedy Kennedy

But generally, we're not going to have a super high ticket offer. cause I'm not willing to get on a call for that level. So basically, if you want to sell without a sales call, you probably need to be looking at a marketing-led business.

18:09.05

Kennedy Kennedy

And what your job becomes in this kind of business is maximizing the profitability of those subscribers, of the leads, of the contacts that you bring in. What's really nice about a marketing-led business is it is scalable without people.

18:26.03

Kennedy Kennedy

So if you've got a sales led business and you want to and you've got one salesperson right now and you're doing 100,000 a year, if you want to double that, well, truthfully, you probably need to know how and looking at other people's businesses, you're doing this. You need to probably have three salespeople in order to double the business is generally kind of the the rule of thumb from everything I'm seeing and worked on with clients.

18:48.24

Kennedy Kennedy

So if you are comfortable with that, then great. But I don't want that. I like the fact that it doesn't matter how many people are on my email list. I still can send emails and they all get it and they all can go to a sales page with all the information on maybe a little video, maybe some written information.

19:05.21

Kennedy Kennedy

whatever, um and it doesn't matter how many people are on my email list, I can grow the business. The only way to grow it is to have more leads, more people coming in, right? Which means the business relies on email marketing. It relies on videos. It relies on content channels.

19:21.21

Kennedy Kennedy

It relies on payment pages. That is it. Whereas the flip side is a sales led business. want to make sure you have a completely informed decision here is fast cash, but is time heavy.

19:33.70

Kennedy Kennedy

So if I want to make my 20 DMs today, my 20 outreach messages today by email, DMs, whatever, then that's great because I know by the end of this week, I could be making fast cash.

19:47.28

Kennedy Kennedy

but it is a game of churning of leads. Like you were gonna get lots of no's, get lots of that kind of thing. and And that's just the kind of business that it is. If you are good at selling, if you are just naturally really charismatic and you're very good at selling and you perhaps wanna build a team of other people who sell, then use that skill.

20:09.38

Kennedy Kennedy

Use that skill and have a sales business. If you have high ticket offers like products and services, again, you're probably going to need a sales led business. And when I say high ticket, the highest I've seen regularly in most niches, and there's always exceptions, that people will buy products on a hands-off without a consultation call is $2,000. That's the highest amount I've ever seen.

20:35.10

Kennedy Kennedy

If you've got an offer that's honestly anything above $1,500, I think you probably need to have some kind of sales mechanism. So that's just another thing to think about.

20:46.95

Kennedy Kennedy

One of the things you do need to think about is that a sales that business is a people business. And if you're all about people and building teams and building businesses, go do that. I'm not.

20:57.92

Kennedy Kennedy

I'm your stereotypical entrepreneur. I'm the person doesn't want to build a business. I want to have a lifestyle. So I'm happy to not have a sales team because I want to be able to send emails from literally anywhere in the world while I'm waiting for my niece's school play to start or whether I'm sitting on the balcony of my holiday or I'm just sitting here at home in in my home office.

21:20.84

Kennedy Kennedy

I can send an email from literally anywhere and and make sales. Whereas a a sales led business, it requires a different type of energy for for building building it up as as a sales led business because of the people element. Right.

21:36.55

Kennedy Kennedy

Now, what I'm not saying is if you have a marketing led business, can you never and should you not have any high ticket items at all, which require some kind of one to one selling?

21:48.05

Kennedy Kennedy

I'm not saying that. Great example of this is I've always had a marketing led business, but we used to sell and we may again open up um a program called our accelerator program, which was a much higher ticket item, much more intensive, much more proximity and handholding by me personally for those small number of clients.

22:09.95

Kennedy Kennedy

But what how did I sell them? Well, First of all, it was only ever offered to people who were already customers of our membership and other lower ticket offers who'd come in through the marketing. They'd spent time with me over a great deal of time, six to 12 months already.

22:26.40

Kennedy Kennedy

So they had trust. They could see what it was. And it was a case of some simple DMs. It was a case of putting up a post and saying, hey, I've got this thing. It's much more high touch. If it solves the problem that you've got, drop me a DM.

22:40.00

Kennedy Kennedy

We have a conversation back and forth in DMs. I actually sent them a little Google Doc with the outline of the program. They'd say, yes, I know, and I'd send them the bank details. So again, it was a one-to-one selling, but it wasn't like a pressure thing.

22:52.26

Kennedy Kennedy

It was all based in marketing. But that selling high ticket through marketing takes a lot longer and they have to spend a lot more time with you. So what I want you to do today is I want you to pick your lane because as soon as you do, i promise you everything. everything becomes simpler.

23:11.79

Kennedy Kennedy

If you're going to be a marketing led business, you start putting together offers, products and services, and price points, and conversion mechanisms, and emails, all of which serve the marketing but marketing business type model.

23:27.32

Kennedy Kennedy

If you are going to be a sales led business, you are not going to do any of those things. You're going to put offers, products and services and conversion mechanisms together, which serve a sales led business.

23:37.59

Kennedy Kennedy

So what I want you to do is wherever you are right now, just write a little note in your phone or wherever on what kind of business you are going to be. Are you committing, drawing the line in the sand to being a marketing-led business or a sales-led business?

23:54.48

Kennedy Kennedy

Make that decision. Write it down. And if you want to see exactly why most people give up on their marketing,

24:05.79

Kennedy Kennedy

whether you're marketing-led business or a sales-led business, in that follow-up before, if you most people give up on their follow-up, their follow-up emails, before people are ready to buy, before the majority of people are ready to buy. The reason that is, is due to four psychological things in our own brains. I made a whole video about it, which is just here.

24:22.38

Kennedy Kennedy

I definitely recommend whether you are marketing-led or sales-led, you go watch that because you'll make way more money from the subscribers that you're already bringing in. That's it for this video. I'll see you next week, next email marketing Wednesday.