Even Writers Need a Long-Term Strategy with Liz Wilcox

Liz Wilcox, an email strategist and creator of the Email Marketing Membership, helps small businesses, including authors, build online relationships and effective emails. With her own successful business ventures, Liz aims to write a screenplay and have the freedom to write what she wants. She takes a step-by-step approach, focusing on one thing at a time, and believes in building a long-term strategy as an author. Liz’s Email Marketing Membership offers weekly newsletter templates and guidance for authors to improve their email marketing, priced at $9 per month. Her ultimate goal is to help 10,000 people achieve their goals through her expertise.

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Links:

Liz Wilcox email marketing membership

wmdeal.com/liz

wmdeal.com/lizannual

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EPISODE 100 TRANSCRIPTION:

[00:00:00] Christopher Maselli: Hey, hey! Welcome to Writing Momentum. I'm Christopher Maselli. I'm here with my wife, Gena. How are you doing today, Gena? 

[00:00:05] Gena Maselli: I'm doing really well. I'm so glad that we have our guest on here today. It's just been a lot of fun. We've been talking to her a little bit and we're going to talk to her a little bit more and I love our topic. So let's go. 

[00:00:17] Christopher Maselli: All right. Hey, Liz Wilcox is back. She's the fresh princess of email marketing and an email strategist. She shows small businesses, including authors like us, how to build online relationships, package up their magic, and turn it into emails that people want to read and purchase from. So she had in the span of five years, she grew and sold a successful blog. She was bought out of her second company and she built a third into a multiple six figure business. Many people know her because she has over 4, 000 users in her email marketing membership. Which you're gonna hear a little bit about today at the end of the podcast. And as we've said before, multiple times now, I think, she is our best kept secret because she helps us out every week with our author [[00:01:00] newsletter.

[[00:01:00] Christopher Maselli: Liz, how are you doing today? 

[00:01:04] Liz Wilcox: Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to be back on the show. Thank you for having me. What an honor. I'm doing great. 

[00:01:10] Christopher Maselli: Awesome. Awesome. Hey, we've talked about your email marketing membership before, and you've got over 4, 000 members in that now, which is just amazing.

[00:01:19] Christopher Maselli: And so we thought, hey, we want to have you just come back and talk about how you've achieved this goal, and it seems like you must have achieved all your goals in life then, because that is just so amazing. What left do you possibly have to do? 

[00:01:33] Liz Wilcox: Yeah, so hopefully by the time we air this, and you're watching it out there on the interwebs, I'll have 10, 000 members.

[00:01:43] Liz Wilcox: But right now we've got about 4, 000. And, yeah, I just, I... I've said this in our previous episode, I consider myself a writer first, and this allows me to write and be creative while also, putting money in the bank, [[00:02:00] feeding my kid, paying my bills so it really, I really am living the dream.

[[00:02:04] Liz Wilcox: Thanks for pointing it out, Chris. 

[00:02:07] Christopher Maselli: Of course. But now, so what then is your ultimate goal? Is it, is that the 10, 000 members? Is that your ultimate goal? Is that why you're, You've created this membership. 

[00:02:19] Liz Wilcox: Okay. So I feel like you writers will understand. This is something that's super close to my chest and I don't like to tell a lot of people, but I love, I just love Chris and Gina and I love what they're doing for writers.

[00:02:32] Liz Wilcox: And so I'm going to do the brave thing and I'm going to sweat through this. My, I don't think I've ever said this to anyone, but Chris and Gena and my sister ever in my whole life. So one day I really want to write a screenplay. I think I'm pretty darn hilarious and I'm constantly like having little pieces of inspiration.

[00:02:56] Liz Wilcox: This morning, I was walking into the 7 Eleven to get my [00:03:00] Mountain Dew because I'm an addict and I saw two men eating their lunch on the hood of the car and I thought wouldn't this be a great opening scene to a movie where someone walks out of the gas station and says hey get off my car and then they just pick up their stuff and leave, right?

[00:03:18] Liz Wilcox: And so that's my ultimate goal is I want to write a screenplay, I want to have the freedom to just sit and write a screenplay without worrying about selling it or is it good enough? I just want to write what I want to write. I feel like a lot of writers will probably identify with that.

[00:03:36] Liz Wilcox: So while right now, of course I am writing for my email marketing membership. I love it. I'm writing for my audience. One day I really do just want to get into comedy writing. 

[00:03:46] Christopher Maselli: I love that. I think that's awesome. And I think that's, you're right. I think that's something a lot of us identify with because, Gena and I do a lot of ghost writing. We do a lot of letter writing. We [00:04:00] do just things all across the board. We've been doing this for a long time. , but most of those things aren't the things that, that when we go to sleep at night, we think that's what I want to be known for.

[00:04:10] Christopher Maselli: That's what, that's my ultimate goal in life like, like we also. I've got a lot of children's books here behind me. I love writing children's books. That's the thing I love to do the most. But, unless you have a huge bestseller, writing children's books will often not be the thing that can make you enough money to support your family, support your whole life, all that sort of thing.

[00:04:32] Christopher Maselli: So we found that there's other things that we have to do to supplement that and that's where we get into the ghost writing and the marketing writing. All those sort of things. And it's and I think it's okay to realize that as an author that doing other kinds of writing can help support and build toward that thing that you really want to do.

[00:04:54] Liz Wilcox: Yeah, can I just say, and one of the reasons why I'm not writing [00:05:00] what I want to write right now and hopefully you identify as I'm scared. I'm terrified of failing I much prefer to succeed and so I have you know unashamedly written things for other people or you know for this or that you like Chris said, you know I've sold two other businesses before that was because I was following the cash flow and I am NOT scared of that.

[[00:05:28] Liz Wilcox: I am NOT ashamed of that because I think I mentioned this in our last episode a few months ago like I have a mouth, I have a stomach, I have a kid. I have bills to pay and so if you are like, this is not going to be an episode about follow your dreams and just write whatever the heck you want. This is called building a long term strategy as an author, right?

[00:05:51] Liz Wilcox: And so if you are in that ghostwriting stage and you have this guilt of, oh, I want to be writing my book right now. Yeah, of course, [00:06:00] give yourself time to write that, but I say stand strong and firm in that you're doing what you have to do to live in a modern era, and I commend that.

[00:06:09] Liz Wilcox: I think it's amazing. It's something that I'm doing. Of course, I've found something, finally, that I love to write about and makes me money. I've finally figured that out. But I do have a much bigger plan. I'm still not doing the, I haven't reached the top of the mountain quite yet. If that makes sense.

[00:06:27] Liz Wilcox: I'm at a nice plateau right now. So to speak. 

[00:06:30] Gena Maselli: And I think when you're talking about this, we're talking about really a long term strategy, right? We're talking about, we're doing, this is one of the phases as we get towards those passion projects. This is the phase that we're in. And I agree.

[00:06:44] Gena Maselli: I've had to really let go of some of that guilt like you're talking about, because I have passion projects. I have books that are sitting right now that are nearly done that I haven't finished because I'm, I am doing some of this. [00:07:00] But as we're talking about this these long term projects, I think they do often feed into that ultimate project that we're working on, and that we often tell writers you're more than just that one book.

[00:07:14] Gena Maselli: You're more than that. It's not just oh, I'm going to write this book and release it to the world and then I can kick back and not do anything else. 

[[00:07:23] Christopher Maselli: That would be nice though. 

[00:07:25] Gena Maselli: That would be so nice. One and done. Yeah, that's not reality. Building these long term plans and understanding that you are more than your book.

[00:07:35] Gena Maselli: That one book. That's just an important part of, as we walk toward that goal. 

[[00:07:41] Christopher Maselli: I totally think so too. 

[[00:07:42] Gena Maselli: So definitely. 

[00:07:42] Christopher Maselli: Okay. So let's talk nitty gritty then. So you've said that you're about 4, 000 members as we're recording this. You want to have 10, 000 by the end of the year.

[00:07:50] Christopher Maselli: You want to be able to sit on the beach and write your screenplay eventually. So are you setting short term goals? Like how do you do it? Do you write down your goals? Do you [00:08:00] create a vision board? What's your, what's the Liz way to creating a longterm strategy? 

[00:08:05] Liz Wilcox: Yeah, so I'm very, I don't know, I'm a very tactical person.

[00:08:11] Liz Wilcox: And so I just do, step by step. Of course, I start with the end in mind. Toes in the sand notebook in hand or, whatever. And I just look backwards to, okay, but where are you at right now, Liz? When I started, I was in an RV park with a toddler. It was like, okay, that's a very far away place.

[00:08:34] Liz Wilcox: What can you do right now to just get going to start writing and, maybe make a little cash and that was for me to start a blog, to start an email list and to sell a little, I had a little mini book, y'all. I didn't even write it in like Google Docs or Word. I wrote it in Canva because I wanted there to be images and I was so ignorant.

[00:08:59] Liz Wilcox: I didn't even [00:09:00] know how to add images to Google Docs or whatever. So I was like I guess I'll just write the whole thing in Canva. 10 out of 10 would not recommend. But really just having that big picture in mind and I think being humble enough to say, Okay, but that's probably really far away.

[00:09:17] Liz Wilcox: Don't set that dream down. But also what can you do right now? To get going, to get in the practice of writing, because Gena was saying there's no shame, let go of that guilt. Also writing for other people, or starting off with a small blog, or even a small book, if you are a children's author, and you just start off with, one of the. What are the, what are those golden spine books?

[00:09:43] Liz Wilcox: Those little golden books that maybe you start off with a story like that. Yeah. But you eventually want to write something like Harry Potter, right? There's no shame in, wherever you get started. So for me, it was, I know I want to be a comedy writer one day and so I started very niche like they [00:10:00] tell you I was like, okay I'm gonna make fun of RV travel because this stuff actually sucks I was sold into a dream that kind of sucks.

[00:10:08] Liz Wilcox: So I'm gonna be sarcastic. I'm gonna practice out loud on my blog I'm gonna write a book And I'm going to sell it to this email list and now I have this membership. I knew eventually I wanted it to make five figures a month. That's what everybody's talking about, right? Oh, if you could just make 10, 000 a month, you'd be set.

[00:10:29] Liz Wilcox: So I said, okay, I'm going to start with my first hundred. Okay, how can I get my first thousand? Oh, wow, we're at 3, 000. How could I get to 10, 000? And that's what I'm working on right now. And I know once I hit the 10, 000, I'll have cash flow to build out a team, to make the membership, more practical for authors, another section more practical for e commerce etc.

[00:10:53] Liz Wilcox: So I'm just going, step by step, and just always keeping that, screenplay, [[00:11:00] like the carrot dangling in front of you as you step forward. 

[00:11:04] Christopher Maselli: It does seem like you're taking everything one step at a time, but you're staying on the same set of stairs, right? You're not looking at the next shiny object, you're saying, Okay, this is where I'm heading, and I just gotta make the next step up. To make a natural progression forward. 

[00:11:20] Liz Wilcox: Yeah, you guys, like actually a lot of people have shared with me or asked me, Liz, it seems like, you jump all over the place. You had this blog, you sold that business. Now you're doing email. I actually, I bought an e commerce shop about a year ago that I own now and I'm learning about, but it's all, it really is all what Chris said.

[00:11:41] Liz Wilcox: I'm still building the same wall. I'm still climbing the same staircase. But these are all things that I need. In order to one day reach that place, I need to know about e commerce and how to write emails for e commerce because that's going to help me build out my email marketing membership better.

[00:11:58] Liz Wilcox: And also it's going to help [00:12:00] me understand how to sell physical products like books, right? It's going to help me understand a different market. Which, I can't retire myself if Liz Wilcox. com isn't doing really well and I always have that exit strategy. I want to share one story that I probably should have started with as far as goal setting and a long term strategy goes.

[00:12:24] Liz Wilcox: I'm sure that Chris and Gena have heard me tell this story. Y'all, I'm a huge 90s pop culture... If you're just listening to this, you can't see me, but I'm pointing on my mug. I have the Fresh Prince, Will Smith on my mug. And Will Smith is the perfect example of a long term strategy as someone who considers himself an artist, right?

[00:12:45] Liz Wilcox: He tells this story about, when he asked, how did you become the biggest movie star there ever was? And he said I didn't set out, to be a big movie star. Of course, that's the ultimate goal. But I always am [00:13:00] reminded of what my father told me. You don't build a wall. You just lay one brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid every single day.

[00:13:08] Liz Wilcox: And one day you'll have the wall. So as far as long term strategy, like yeah, I want to build this wall. And sitting at the top is my screenplay, right? But every day I just get up and I'm like, Okay, I'm not at that point yet. So what do I have to do today? Okay. I've got this podcast interview with the Maselli's Writing Momentum.

[00:13:29] Liz Wilcox: How can I make sure I do the best job I can today? That's the brick I need to lay today. It might seem completely unrelated. But because I have that longterm goal in mind, because I work backwards from there, it is totally related. And hopefully I'm doing a good job laying that brick today.

[00:13:49] Christopher Maselli: Does that help keep from getting overwhelmed too because you're just focusing on that one brick at a time as opposed to everything that you could possibly do out there?

[00:13:57] Liz Wilcox: Yeah, it helps me stay incredibly [00:14:00] focused. I never would have gotten to the 4, 000 members. I wouldn't be able to say, yeah, I'm actively working on 10, 000 members if I was also trying to build a podcast and focus on Instagram and write the screenplay right now, Liz, because people say you should pursue your dreams and why wait?

[00:14:18] Liz Wilcox: You're funny now right? You're smart enough. You can figure it out. But for me, it's because I just wake up every day. I focus on the one thing I have to do today and I spend time, every quarter, every year thinking, okay what is the thing I really want to focus on this year? I only have that one thing per year.

[00:14:39] Liz Wilcox: Okay. And then I can compound it. So a couple of years ago, my one thing was just getting on podcasts and I hired people to help me get on podcasts. I hired a speaking coach, so I didn't sound like an idiot. I really practiced that. But now, it just comes naturally. People ask me to be on their podcasts.

[00:14:57] Liz Wilcox: I took a nap right before [00:15:00] Chris, Gena, and I hit record, and hopefully I might sound like an idiot to some people, but I tend to think I sound much better than I did two years ago. It's that compound interest. But this year, I was focusing on scaling. I haven't added anything to my plate.

[00:15:16] Liz Wilcox: Chris asked me earlier, do you want to start a podcast? I said, yes, in 2024. Because this year was scaling. I hired people to help me create basically a company manual. And I was able to take the entire summer off because I have, mostly successfully scaled the business. So now all I'm doing is marketing instead of, working on the behind the scenes stuff.

[00:15:40] Liz Wilcox: But that was an intentional brick that I had to lay. And I've woke up every morning. How are we working on that brick? How are we laying that today?

[00:15:47] Gena Maselli: It's so good.

[[00:15:48] Christopher Maselli: That is so good. 

[00:15:49] Gena Maselli: Now you've talked and we touched on it at the beginning and then you mentioned it again, your email marketing membership.

[[00:15:55] Gena Maselli: Tell us about that. Cause well, tell our listeners about it. Cause Chris and I [[00:16:00] are already part of it and we love it. 

[00:16:03] Christopher Maselli: We're very enthusiastic about it. It's the killer offer. And it is not only the killer offer, but it is so helpful to us as authors in making sure that we get our newsletter out every single week that we get people interested in what we're talking about that we just do it right and so yeah, tell our listeners about it. I'm sure some are gonna want to jump in with this too. 

[00:16:25] Liz Wilcox: Yeah, so practically speaking, email marketing membership is just that. It's a membership where I do your email marketing for you. I send out every Monday morning, 5 a. m. Eastern on the dot, a newsletter template, think Mad Libs style with a video walkthrough and an outline so you can get your newsletter out the door in 20 minutes or less.

[00:16:46] Liz Wilcox: It's nine bucks a month but if we're in terms of this long term strategy as an author, y'all, when I figured out that I was doing email in a way that worked and other people couldn't [00:17:00] understand or weren't doing it the same way. I sold those other businesses. I was like, this is the thing I need to do.

[00:17:06] Liz Wilcox: This is the thing I need to teach. Because it's not just about my screenplay. It's not just about me retiring and being able to write whatever the heck I want. I want the exact same thing for you. I really mean it when I say I want us all in on this. When I figured out I could make money online. I was like, move over Jeff Bezos.

[00:17:29] Liz Wilcox: These rich people have been lying. This is open for everybody! We should all be doing this together. With the long term strategy of it is, I just want, it's not about oh, I want 10, 000 members so I can retire. That's not, I'm not going to retire with 10, 000 members. It's about finding 10, 000 people.

[00:17:48] Liz Wilcox: Because I know they're out there and I know that I can help them. It's the same way when you're writing your book, whether it's a memoir, a children's book, you just have a special [00:18:00] message and it's nonfiction, something like that. It's not that you want to sell your book to make a ton of money and disappear into the woods.

[00:18:09] Liz Wilcox: It's you have this message that you quite literally can't keep inside and you want the right people to read it, right? We don't want everyone to read our books. We want those kids, with that issue to read this book, we want our memoir to help other women leave their relationships from financial abuse.

[00:18:33] Liz Wilcox: We want, whatever your message is, you want those exact people to read your book, and that's why you have to get it out. And that's why I had to create email marketing membership. Seriously, I wrote a newsletter and created it like 10 minutes later. I was like, I'm so tired of only people who can spend thousands of dollars a month to work with me.

[00:18:57] Liz Wilcox: I want to help, the author who [00:19:00] published their book but can't seem to, learn how to sell it. Or, the blogger who wants to be a writer one day but is making, pennies on the dollar from advertising on their blog. I wanted to help those people figure out email. So that they can go with, whatever their long term goal is in life, whatever their next level vision is.

[00:19:22] Liz Wilcox: That's why I created email marketing membership. That's why I'm talking to Chris and Gena and you today because I want to find those 10, 000 people. I'm dying. I'm dying to meet you. I'm dying to meet the other 9, 999 because I know I have a message. I know I have a way to help you. Sell more books build your platform and just be able to write, just be able to move towards that longterm strategy.

[00:19:51] Liz Wilcox: And I know email can help you and so can I. That's my soapbox. 

[00:19:56] Christopher Maselli: And so what it is it's a membership where every single week. [00:20:00] Liz will send you, essentially a template. It's kinda like a fill in the blank template except for you can put it in your own voice and really make it your own.

[00:20:07] Christopher Maselli: But it's like you're, it's like you're hiring, you are, you're hiring an email strategist that is gonna just help you know what to start with every week. It just gives you a kickstart. And I don't think you mentioned the price yet. Did you have, you mentioned the price. 

[00:20:20] Liz Wilcox: I Think I did, but I'll say it again because I'm shameless about it.

[00:20:23] Liz Wilcox: Just like you should be shameless about, finding the right readers for your book. It's $9 a month. Again, I kept it $9 because I want it to be accessible. I want to actually help you. This is, I don't take client work. I don't write books for other people. The only writing I do is for email marketing membership.

[00:20:43] Liz Wilcox: And for $9 a month, I'd love for you to get in and give it a try. 

[00:20:47] Christopher Maselli: Yeah, so if you want to check that out, we have a special link for you. It's WMDeal. com slash Liz and that's where you can find out how you can sign up for just $9 a month. It's the best investment [[00:21:00] I think that Gena and I have probably made in our business is what we feel like.

[00:21:03] Christopher Maselli: And then she also has another version of it called it's an annual membership. It's basically the same thing. But you can prepay for the entire year at once, and when you do, Liz also throws in all the trainings, like all of them, that she does during the year. So you get not only the weekly template with the trainings in it, but also all the trainings throughout the year, and you can find that at wmdeal. com slash lizannual, and we will put both of those links in the show notes. Man, that's just, I just, I love it. Every time I talk about your deal, Liz, I get excited. 

[00:21:37] Liz Wilcox: Thank you. I love email marketing membership. It is, of course, part of this long term strategy for me, but I can't see myself not doing it, not trying to find more people to help with email because email really changed my life. It changed the game for me. It saw that, or it helped me see that selling my book was possible and so much more. 

[00:21:59] Christopher Maselli: [00:22:00] Yes. Yes. Thank you so much for joining us again today. It's always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Just really enjoyable. Do you want to close this out, Gena? 

[00:22:08] Gena Maselli: Yes! If you enjoyed this episode of Writing Momentum with Liz, we're so thankful that she was here, please rate, review, subscribe, and share it.

[00:22:19] Gena Maselli: Share it with that person who's... Maybe beating themselves up because they've put off their long term goal for just getting the work done and making, putting food on the table. We've all been there. But hopefully it's something that will encourage them to just keep reaching towards that long term goal and setting those smaller goals that will lead them to it.

[[00:22:39] Gena Maselli: But we do this because Chris and I truly do believe that as writers we are better in community with one another and that together. 

[[00:22:49] Christopher Maselli: We have writing momentum. 

[[00:22:50] Gena Maselli: We have it. 

[[00:22:51] Christopher Maselli: Bye.