Getting Chewed Out on my Birthday...

In partnership with

The smarter way for DTC brands to drive repeat revenue

What if you could drive 20% more repeat purchases, without the headache of building customized flows?

Black Crow integrates with your existing email & SMS tool, identifies customers that need a nudge to repurchase and determines the precise timing to trigger a pre-built flow.

With personalized cross-sell recommendations and customized storefronts, you can also increase second order AOV by 10%.

Black Crow is so confident you’ll get results that they’re offering a $100 gift card to Shopify brands with $2M+ in GMV to get a demo.

Book a demo

Welcome back!

It’s great to have you for this Tuesday's edition of the newsletter.

Writing my emails to you all has become one of my favorite things to do throughout the week.

And for today… I’m going to share the story of how I wound up in the “newsletter” niche and what led me to start the agency known today as Summit Group.

Let’s dive in:

It all started when I quit my 9-5 job 9 months ago in November of 2023.

But to take you back to the beginning of my online entrepreneurship journey… I started writing online in January of 2023.

My goal since then: Make enough money to be able to quit my job and go full-time with being an entrepreneur.

Fast forward from January to September 19th (also my birthday), I’m having dinner with my girlfriend — now fiancee — to celebrate my birthday at a local restaurant around 4pm.

We’re sitting there in a booth next to the bar having a glass of wine and waiting for our food when I get a phone call.

It’s my supervisor (not exactly my boss or supervisor, but an authority figure in our company, and also a family friend).

I pick up and in fewer words, he tells me:

• You’re not hitting your numbers

• You’re not working hard enough

• You’re not spending enough time in the office

• You’re spending too much time with your girlfriend

• You need to turn things around or they’re going to look at replacing you

BTW — I don’t think he knew it was my birthday. But to call me and chew me out on my birthday? I certainly wasn’t expecting it…

I wasn’t mad or upset though. He was right, I wasn’t spending as much time as I could have grinding away.

But it was the extra push I needed to say to myself, “Okay, it’s time to go all in on online entrepreneurship.”

I was ready… and that was the first time in a while I felt a sense of peace come over me… because I had made the decision.

Before then, I was wavering on whether or not to stay at my safe and secure 9-5, or go down the journey of the complete unknown and with complete uncertainty.

I mean… just a month before then they paid for us to go to Italy for a week.

I was making decent money, and it satisfied my family and the people around me to have a safe and secure job… but I was dying inside and needed to chase my dreams of becoming an entrepreneur.

And that dinner around 4pm on my birthday 2023 was where the switch flipped in me to do what I’m doing today.

For the rest of that dinner, we celebrated the excitement of this new journey we were about to embark on.

Stay tuned for my newsletter this Friday… where I’ll share what happened after… and how I started my agency.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great weekend,
Eric

Eric Higgs
Founder of Summit Group | Newsletter & Email Marketing Agency

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here’s how I can help:

• If you’re reading this online, join over 3,000+ subscribers receiving regular emails helping them build, automate, and grow their business with email.

• If you’re struggling to grow your newsletter, click HERE to learn more about Summit Group, our full-service newsletter agency.