A field guide
Almost every business spends its money looking for strangers, and almost none of them work the list of people who have already handed over money and found out what happens next. This is a field guide to that one lever, written for owners who have customers and no system for staying in touch with them.
There is a companion workbook at revenueexplosion.com about diagnosing which of four levers is holding a business back. This is not that book, and you do not need it to use this one.
This one assumes you already know the answer, because for most businesses that have been running a while it is the same answer: there is a group of people who have bought from you, nobody has written them down properly, and nobody has thought carefully about what they would actually want to hear from you next. That is a specific job, it is mostly unglamorous record-keeping and plain writing, and it has its own book because it deserves more than the chapter it usually gets.
What this is not is a promise of revenue. It makes none, anywhere. There are no figures in this book — no amounts, no percentages, no rates — and no screenshots of anybody's accounts. Whether contacting past customers produces anything depends on your business, your market and what you actually sold them, and none of that is ours to promise.
Plus twelve printable worksheets, a glossary, and a section on the specific situation where you do the work properly and nobody replies at all.
Most people who buy a guide read it and build nothing. That is the normal outcome, and a page pretending otherwise would be lying to you before you had even paid.
Of the people who do act, the usual failure is not bad writing. It is starting with a message rather than with a record — sending something to whoever happens to be reachable, finding it produces nothing, and concluding the whole idea does not work. It was the list that was not there, not the idea. Chapters 1 and 2 are the dull ones for exactly this reason, and they are the ones that decide whether the rest is worth doing.
This takes time before it returns anything, and it may return nothing. Attention from past customers is finite, and a list can be permanently spoiled by contact that has nothing in it. That risk is real and it is the reason this book spends as long on restraint as on writing.
There are no reviews on this page — not invented ones. Real ones go up as they come in.
Do I need the .com workbook as well?
No. They are separate books and either stands alone. The workbook diagnoses which lever is holding a business back; this one assumes it is this lever and does the work. If you already know your constraint is somewhere else, start there instead.
Does this tell me what the law allows?
No, and be careful of anything that claims to. Rules on contacting customers differ by country and by whether a message is marketing or service. The book covers the principles that hold everywhere — record consent, make leaving easy, honour it immediately — and tells you plainly to check your own jurisdiction before you send.
Do I need software?
No. Nothing in the book requires a subscription and nothing in it is an affiliate link to a tool. A list that lives in a spreadsheet you actually maintain beats a system you stopped updating.
How big does my list need to be?
There is no number in this book, including this one. A small list of people who genuinely bought something and remember doing it is a different object from a large list of people who once left an email address, and the book is about the first kind.
Is this financial or legal advice?
No. Nothing here is financial, investment, tax or legal advice. For advice about your own circumstances, speak to a qualified, regulated professional.
Eight chapters plus twelve printable worksheets, a glossary and a troubleshooting section, as a PDF you read on anything and print the sheets from.
Revenue Explosion sells an educational field guide about working with customers a business already has. It recommends no investments, names no returns, and promises no amount of money to anyone. The work involves real costs — time, and sometimes money — payable whether or not revenue moves. Nothing here is financial, investment, tax or legal advice, and nothing here tells you what the law requires where you live. For advice about your own circumstances, speak to a qualified, regulated professional.
No revenue, growth or outcome of any kind is promised or implied. What anyone gets from material like this depends on their own business, their market and their effort, and no two are alike.