One of my stupid mistakes in college-

I handed her a rose.

She smiled.

I smiled back.

Oh hey, Greg here.

I dated this girl in college who just loved getting flowers.

But once I made a stupid mistake…

I figured that if one rose made her happy, that TWO DOZEN roses would make her even happier.

(That wasn’t the mistake.)

I went to the flower shop.

Holy cow, bundles of roses were expensive.

I noticed some other large, nice looking bouquets of flowers in the next display.

Wow, this one was twice as big, but cost less than half of the rose bouquets.

I bought the gigantic, non-rose bouquet.

(That was the stupid mistake. But keep reading, I’ll tell you why.)

Later that evening, I handed the bouquet to my girlfriend.

“Oh, wow!”

She looked surprised and pleased, but her smile quickly turned into a scowl.

“This has a bunch of daisies in it. I’m allergic to daisies.”

She handed the flowers back to me with a disappointed frown.

“I can’t keep them, they’ll make my eyes water and make me sneeze.”

Right then, she sneezed.

You see, I made a classic blunder that doesn’t just apply to flowers.

I assumed that the quantity of flowers was more important than the type of flower.

I couldn’t help but think of this story while reading through some of my recent onboarding survey responses.

More than 50% of new subscribers want one thing:

“I want to grow my email list.”

And on the surface, it makes sense.

Ask anyone who’s made some sales through email, and this is their #1 goal.

The dream of clicking send and having lots of money magically appear…

They start doing the math.

Linear math.

“I am making 10k per month with 5,000 subscribers, so I could make $20k per month with 10,000 subscribers!”

They start counting the future money.

The simple goal is to add 5,000 more subscribers to the list…fast.

The run a giveaway.

They promote a free lead magnet.

They run some Facebook lead ads.

5,000 new subscribers later, they hit “send” on a new sales campaign.

Crickets.

They resend to the (significant) unopens.

A wave of unsubscribes and a handful of spam complaints.

You see, you just added a bunch of daisies (or maybe dandelions) to your list.

But the ones that make you money are roses.

People’s next question is, “well then, how do I add more roses to my list?”

Simple answer?

You can either pick them or buy them.

Picking them is not very fast.

(Because of the thorns.)

And buying them is more expensive than buying daisies (or dandelions).

But if you want roses, these are your options.

I could share a little more about this, if you’re into it…

P.S. Even if you’re holding a bouquet of daisies and sneezing your head off, there’s still hope. I ended up convincing that girl to marry me.