Two days ago I was told that The Austrian Oak, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has started sending out daily emails.
I was curious so I signed up for his list. A fun thank-you page popped up:
“Come with me if you want to subscribe! Check your email! DO IT NOW!”
Good job, big guy. But I wondered about the actual content — will Arnie write it? He’s already had an A-list career as a competitive athlete, a business man, a movie star, and a top-level politician. So why not an email copywriter?
But no. It turns out Arnold employs two editors-in-chief who write the actual emails. Inspiration + diet + health advice. The content feels correct but a bit bland, a bit too earnest, a bit too how-to.
I skimmed the first day’s email. I skipped the second day’s. I’m not looking forward to the third day’s.
The point is unavoidable:
Arnold Schwarzenegger has figured out the importance of daily email, even at this stage of his enormously successful career. Some kinds of influence you just can’t shortcut or replace.
Unfortunately, he’s delegating the writing of the emails to these two editors-in-chief. That’s already a huge minus, because what his audience really wants is something that feels like real, one-on-one contact with Arnie.
To top it off, the content is lacking spice.
For all these reasons, and as a way of saying thanks to the entertainment that Arnold Schwarzenegger provided early on in my life, I’ve decided to take the following dramatic and unprecedented step.
I offer coaching on writing daily emails. My goal is to get business owners writing daily emails effectively and efficiently. That means:
1. People should enjoy reading your emails.
2. People should do what you tell them to do as a result of your daily emails (Arnold is promoting his Pump Club and preselling his new book, set to be published in October).
3. Writing these daily emails should be manageable, so it fits it into your otherwise busy schedule — in between shooting your new Netflix action show, pumping iron, and trying to mediate the war in Ukraine, for example.
I don’t often advertise this coaching program. I don’t often take on new students. I also don’t accept most people who express interest in this coaching.
But since Arnold has shown so much promise in so many other fields, I’ve decided to accept him into my email coaching program, without the usual screening call I make everyone else go through.
I’m just waiting for word of this uniquely good news to reach him. Once this happens, I will probably get an email from Arnold, and we will coordinate our busy schedules and find a regular time to talk that works for both of us.
I have little doubt that his daily emails will improve dramatically very soon after, and we will make that October book launch a huge success.
And while Arnie and I work to get our schedules synced, I might take on another coaching student.
In case you are interested, reply to this email. Tell me a bit about yourself — who you are, what you do, who you do it for.
I’ll tell you if I think you’re in a place to benefit from the coaching. And if I think you are, we will get on a call to see if it really is a fit. Except Arnold, nobody gets to skip this step.
If it is a fit, then we can start working together towards the goal. As someone asked Arnold once, “What is best in life?”
I don’t have his exact quote in front of me. But he responded with something like:
“Crush your readers’ indifference… see money driven to your bank account… and hear the lamentation of your competitors.” With daily emails, of course.