| Hey, Craig here. 2020 has been a wakeup call for a lot of entrepreneurs. Myself included. And for me, a big part of the “waking up” process has been making decisions based on data and objective facts. Not just gut reactions and what “feels” right. And with that, I’m making some big changes to my business behind the scenes that I want to share with all of you. Partially so that you know what to expect in the coming weeks and months. Partially so that you can learn from some of the challenges my team and I are facing and how we’re responding to them. Anyway, here are the three big changes my team and I are making to the business and a few lessons you can learn from them… 1. The death of Early to Rise and the rebirth of Craig Ballantyne I bought Early to Rise from my mentor Mark Ford back in 2011 for … a LOT of money. What’s interesting is that exactly 5 years, 3 months, and 17 days earlier... I had set a 5-year goal with my first coach, Tom Venuto, that I wanted to “Own a company like Early to Rise.” I didn’t expect that almost five years to the day, I’d have the chance to buy the EXACT business of my dreams. But it happened (and I explain more in my first book, The Perfect Day Formula). For the past decade, it’s been an honor to take over the ETR brand and rebuild it. However, as time passed and the landscape of digital marketing changed. I encountered some unexpected challenges. As Google and other search engines have updated their algorithms… The same factors that made Early to Rise such a valuable asset in the past--the 10,000+ pages of content, wide breadth of topics and authors, etc--turned it into a technical nightmare. Our traffic has been steadily declining for years. Ugh, I’m embarrassed to admit that… but it’s true. And the organic traffic that we did get to the site came from my outdated fitness posts... Or investing content Mark wrote almost ten years ago (Which is great content, but it doesn’t help us sell my new coaching, Instagram training, or Morning Routine courses). But the final nail in the coffin came about three weeks ago when Google rolled out their latest update. Which I heard one SEO expert refer to as, “The single most devastating update I’ve seen in 15 years”... Overnight, our traffic dropped by almost 70% 
And it became clear that Early to Rise, as a website destination, was dead. But… We didn’t panic. In fact, Austin Gillis, our resident content wizard for ETR had been anticipating something like this for about 6 months. And we’d already begun the process of rebranding the business under my personal brand and shifting our assets away from ETR and toward CraigBallantyne.com. Google’s update just accelerated our timeline. Much like COVID-19 accelerated the digital transition for many companies... ...And your online spending habits. So what does this mean for you--the reader? Honestly, not much. We’ll still be creating amazing content for you, just the same as ever. The only difference is that now… that content will be housed on CraigBallantyne.com, not ETR. And--to stay in line with the current SEO best-practices--we’ll be creating fewer articles... But those articles will be longer, more valuable MEGA-Guides, and better looking (I can’t wait to show you the “8-bit Craig” web design we’re creating to add some extra pizazz to our guides). Moving forward, you can expect 1-2 truly EPIC mega guides and long-form posts from CraigBallantyne.com each month. That said, you can still expect to get a ton of amazing content from me and the team each week because of big change #2… 2. The daily email strategy No matter what you’ve heard, email is not dead. It’s just changed. And one of the biggest ways that it’s changed is that the entrepreneurs who really kill it with email… All focus on building relationships with their emails. Gurus like Justin Goff, Ben Settle, and Stefan Georgi who send daily emails that resonate with their readers and tell a story. And recently, I’ve realized that this is something we’ve been missing out on in a big way. Don’t get me wrong, our “newsletter” style emails were great. And I’d get replies from readers each day telling me how much you loved the wrap ups and Good News Monday messages. But moving forward, I’ll be sending emails that are a lot more personal (like this one). I’ll be taking you behind the scenes in my life and business... Sharing stories and lessons... And (of course) telling you about all of the life-changing products and programs I have to offer. For now, you can expect an email like this about three times a week. If all goes well, I’ll move to a daily email cadence after that. My goal is to provide more value to you and make this email list 100X more valuable than any blog post or podcast you could listen to. And a more personal daily email seems like the best way to do it. 3. Getting clear on the WHO The third and final big change we’re making to the biz is shifting everything we’re doing from a marketing and content creation standpoint to speak to our ideal customer. Thing is… No matter how good you are at what you do or how many people need what you have to offer. You can’t be everything to everyone. But you must be everything to someone. In the past, I’ve been guilty of being too “generic” with my messaging and trying to reach too broad of an audience. But after sitting down and actually looking at the numbers… seeing exactly who my best clients are and why they decided to work with me… I realized that the clients I’m able to serve the best are typically family men in their mid-30s... Who own an already successful business that they want to take to the next level. And moving forward, that’s who I’ll be targeting with my sales copy, Instagram content, and emails. Does this mean that you can’t be a part of this list or one of my clients if you’re a 40-year old #ladyboss? Or that my content doesn't apply to you if you're a single 20-something working as a freelancer? Of course not! It just means that I’ve identified the niche I’m able to serve the best. And everything I do moving forward is going to be focused on speaking to and attracting members of that niche into my world. Anyway… That’s what’s going on in our business and we just had to share. Thank you for being a part of the journey so far and I can’t wait to continue serving you and providing even more value to you moving forward. Big things are coming and I couldn’t be more excited. To Your Continued Success,
Craig | 
