THE core concept

DEFCOR: A Newsletter Business Built On A Movement

Here's a strategy for a newsletter business that:

Takes zero effort from you
Makes you millions now promoting products
Makes you millions later as a sellable business asset
Helps the troopers & charities along the way
Is ready for you to tweak & go live

Bottom line up front

Jocko,

Tell Momma Lee to save the date for you on 03 June 2021.

That's when you'll hand her one of those gigantic Publisher's Clearing House type checks for $2.4m.

Think of all the Random Acts Of Kindness that could create! Seems like something Marc could be down with.

I'll explain how below.
If you see anything worth exploring, get in touch.

I can't thank you enough for helping me transform my life & I'd love to give back and help the troopers.

- Daniel Bennett

Founder, Legend Media

What it is

Give the troopers what they're asking for - a DEFCOR community - in a way that takes zero time and energy from you and makes you impact & money now and later (a lot more).

It's ready to tweak and roll out at defcorhq.com (I assume you own defcor.com so we can use that instead).

Daily newsletter + community + more

If you want to see how an influencer with a fraction of your following is making millions with his daily newsletter https://pomp.substack.com/ check out Pomp, James Altucher, Agora Financial, many more.

Promote existing & new products

Each email will promote 3 related products in a non-spammy way. Example: at the bottom of a workout email is a one sentence promos for Jocko Go, The Burden & a cool dry T-shirt and a DEFCOR promo code for a discount/bonus. You can see an example at the bottom of this email .

The Cadre - peak performance training from influencer instructors

Increase your audience with regularly scheduled cross promotion collabs with other influencers . Example: feature a "Psy Ops" training series from Jordan Peterson. Basic training is free, advanced training is behind a paywall (courses/membership). You both promote to each of your audiences.

Why a daily email, why now?

Giving away outrageous value for free builds a massive audience with virtually unlimited ways to monetize on the back end of the business.

Check out huckberry.com for one example of a hugely successful and profitable D2C ecom business built behind email - get to their shop here.

Own & grow your audience

Email gives you direct access to your audience without relying on social platforms
It's a vital contingency plan in case social accounts get shut down
Giving free value in exchange for an email address then offering paid products on the back end is a hugely profitable model that works (Agora Financial, AXIOS , more)
Regular collabs with other popular influencers adds value to both audiences & increases brand awareness in a simple, scalable way
The Cadre is your own "Avengers of influencers" who promote DEFCOR because they benefit (they get the emails of subscribers who use their link, they get a % of joint venture products, etc.)

Make more money now

Make more $ from social ads forever. How? Troopers will be curious and check out the DEFCOR website. Just doing that means you can easily show them ads on FB/IG (called Facebook pixel - ask Pete about it).
Promote existing & new products in every day's email, not just once a week at the end of each podcast (that some heathens may skip).
Easy to buy with one click from an email (can't do that on a podcast, hard on Instagram/YouTube)
Promote affiliate products - example: promoting Jordan Peterson's selfauthoring.com info product
Non-spammy ads - ad supported daily news email Morning Brew does $20m in revenue
Create new products including info products, paid trainings, paid communities, virtual events, limited edition merch drops, startup incubator for veterans, more

Make more money later

Create a sellable business asset with an exit strategy
thehustle.co is a daily newsletter business with over 1 million readers that sold last month for $27 million to Hubspot. Article here . Read thehustle.co emails here
Daily news email Morning Brew sold Oct 2020 to Business Insider - profitable with $20m annual revenue and 2m readers. More info here

Benefit troopers, charities & causes

Troopers need to TAKE ACTION. Social media can be a distraction so email them at 4:33am every day with one thought and one action to win the day and accomplish their goals.
Spotlighting causes that matter is a win win win for you, them and the troopers
Giving some of the new profits to great charities fires everyone up & spreads the message

How it could work

Here's my ideas on how this could work. I'm interested in hearing yours.

explore my legend vault

Tasks

You get final approval and control over everything
You promote it, I'll handle everything else
All I need is one point of contact from your marketing team to coordinate details with
I ghost write the content in your voice. You helped me transform my life over the last 2 years - I've researched hundreds of legendary lessons from you in my Legend Vault I'm ready to share with the troopers. Read some starter posts here. I'll adjust the writing voice to whatever you want.
I manage the community
I manage your promotional product offers
I manage referral and affiliate partners (I'm calling them The Cadre) for cross promotion with similar audiences (Jordan Peterson, BRCC, Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss just to name a few)

Financial

I take a reasonable % of existing product affiliate sales (tracked with promo code DEFCOR or affiliate links). Origin Maine already runs a "brand ambassador" affiliate program with up to 10% payout so we can just start there.
I take a larger % of new revenue streams that I create, execute and manage (you have total approval).
I'd LOVE if your charity of choice gets the biggest % of new revenue stream profits.

read the story

Creative content

The daily schedule I outlined on the home page is just one idea of many.
Judging by YouTube views and comments, troopers want more epic hero stories (and hilarious deleted scenes clips!).
SOG Chronicles special series collab with JSM! Every day could be a story excerpt from John Stryker Meyer and I would love it. Here's one with The Frenchman. Judging by the comments he is voted the 3rd member of the podcast!
"Daily Hero" - short story excerpts from books/podcasts, Medal of Honor citations, etc.
Accept graphic design submissions from the visual artists in your audience. They work their handle into the artwork and get a shoutout in exchange for you owning their design. These designs can be used for exclusive merch & more at a variety of sites like threadless.com that sell/print/ship.
A "design of the week" concept makes people pay attention and read every email, which helps everything - email deliverability, sales, etc.

New revenue streams

Here's one example troopers are asking for: the Eminently Qualified Parent online training course.

Ultra high margins and a natural upsell from your 5 kids books. I can create and launch it within 90 days.

Eminently Qualified Parent course = $6m est. revenue within 90 days

1.8m subs on IG, 1m subs on YT = 1.5m unique subs (estimated, not even counting podcast subs)
If 60% are parents = 900k subs
If only 10% (conservative) buy an online training course for $67 (conservative) = $6m and it's all profit
Let's assume a rev split of 40% charity/30% Jocko/30% me, that means you're handing Momma Lee a check for $2.4m 90 days from today. Even a fraction of that gets me fired up to make it happen.

New paid info product every 90 days

But what if you could hand out huge charity checks every 90 days?

It's totally doable to put out a new paid info product every quarter targeting your 2 audiences - consumer (low price) and business (high price) like:

Online courses
Exclusive paid membership
Guest instructor courses (preparedness, emergency medical, tactics, leadership for ____ industry, etc.
High ticket business mastermind membership
Startup incubator for veteran entrepreneurs (you promote the best and get a % of every sale)
There's endless possibilities that are all on-brand

Risks

Expect the best, plan for the worst.

Reputation

This can't tarnish your reputation. I'll create content in advance, you'll approve or request changes & it will be scheduled to be published.

Negative effects on your other businesses

I can't see anything but benefits, actually.
DEFCOR appeals to both your business and consumer audiences so it's a way to stay in touch at scale.
Stay on the radar of prospects for all your businesses until they are ready to buy. They're seeing your name every day!

We don't know what we don't know

True. But we've both been in that position before and succeeded.
I've got connections who have done this before at various levels that I already consult with.
With your name recognition, I could get meetings with the biggest experts. One specific one is my "newsletter biz hero" Sam Parr who just sold thehustle.co for $27m last month. Another I've studied extensively is James Altucher. My newsletter business model research is here .

Thoughts? Advice?

Respond back if you see anything worth exploring and we'll go from there.

I'm creating this because I personally want the daily discipline hitter but if it doesn't make sense for you right now, I totally understand.

Another option is for you to be involved silently - meaning it's not officially related to any Jocko brand. I'd change the branding to The Cadre, remove any affiliation with you/DEFCOR & write it in my own voice. It could include your EF crew, podcast guests, charities, etc. It would still promote your products (among others) & you'd make a revenue split on any joint venture new revenue streams we collab on. Any promotion is appreciated but not expected (like young Aidan and his warrior soap keeping those troopers CLEAN!).

Let me know. I'll be monitoring the net.

KEEP GOING

- Daniel Bennett