Ken Okazaki talking with Jason Capital on the Content Capitalists Podcast:
Jason:
So, Ken, this is one of my greatest mistakes in my life that I’ve ever made.
We brought in, in that 18-month period, over a million leads on Instagram. And we didn’t start collecting their emails until the very end.
And so, that was the conversation I had with Kevin Hutto. And he was like — basically, he was like, ‘I’m not gonna be your friend unless you start collecting your emails. Like, what are you doing?’
My whole thought, I was like, well I don’t want to interrupt the flow — like, the sales flow. Like, it’s working. I don’t want to ask for the email. What if they don’t —
And he was like, ‘Trust me, it won’t matter.’ And it didn’t matter, at all.
That was painful. And I won’t make that mistake again.
Ken:
You know, there’s somebody else in the fitness space who I’m about to interview — he’s on my schedule, actually — and I know part of his story is similar to you.
He grew tons of people on his account, on Instagram, and then he got permanently shut down, overnight.
He lost like, everything. It’s gone. Right? And with email, nowadays if you have email, it’s the only thing you actually own is peoples’ email addresses.
You can:
- download it
- you can put it on a spreadsheet
- you can print it out
- you can tattoo it on your arm.
You own it.
Followers on somebody else’s platform, like:
- YouTube
…you absolutely do not own it. And that’s something a lot of marketers just need to understand.
And I only recently started collecting emails, too, because — yeah, so, super-recently. So I’ve got a little tiny baby list growing right now.
And if you’re listening, guys, this — I think Jason — you’re like, the fourth person that’s told me, so far: Get into emails. Don’t let shiny objects —
I know they’re fun, but all these social media platforms — like, all the new trends — they’re fun, but emails are OG, and they always will be.
Ken and Jason* are marketers, not YouTubers in the purest sense, but the warning applies to every income-earning creator on social:
- If you lost your channel tomorrow morning, how soon would your income go to zero?
What percentage of your audience would you be cut off from?
As a creator already positioned as a platform owner, you’d be fine. Might not even feel it, lifestyle-wise.
*(To be clear, the ‘lost everything’ guy was neither Jason, nor Ken — be sure and listen to the clip!)
— Tang
