Paul’s Money-Getting Tip: Small Events with Big People#

Alright, I’m going first because you guys always steal the good ones! I want to get credit for the one I know everyone’s going to have.

My top money-getting tip is: Have small events with big people.

Now, I don’t mean tall people! (Though they could be, gotta be over 6’3”, right?) I mean having small events with people who are doing things, who are moving the market, who are bringing in revenue, who are in motion.

Why small events?

• Think about running a large event with 300 or 500 people, even at $1,000 a head. It sounds amazing, right? But you’ll likely “die a miserable death” just trying to get it together and organized.
• You’ll get endless questions and complaints (“There’s no vanilla cream!” “You didn’t give us pens!” “Where are the notebooks?”).
• It’s incredibly complex.

Why big (influential) people?

• If you put 10 high-level people in a room, you need almost nothing.
• They’re self-starters, sustainable. They’ll get their own coffee.
• You only need simple things like a card table and folding chairs.
• You will have the best event ever.
• These people don’t need strict schedules or agendas. They just need to know they’ll be in a room with like-minded people.

Pricing for these events:

• What you can charge for this is significant.
• You’ve likely seen prices like I have. Some groups are well over $100,000.
• Routinely, you see small group events like this priced at $10,000 plus.

This strategy could also apply to masterminds that meet several times a year.

So, that’s my number one tip!

Brian’s Money-Getting Tip: Raise Your Prices#

Okay, similar to Paul’s point about charging more, my tip is: If you want to make more money, raise your damn prices.

This was something Scott and I were always scared to do when we started.

• Our first business selling baseball courses started with a $27 ebook. Charging $27 for a digital product felt terrifying.
• We had a $100 upsell. I don’t think we ever sold anything for more than $100 back then. This is probably why that business “didn’t go anywhere” (meaning it only made a couple grand a month).

Then we started 10,000 Fans, teaching entrepreneurs Facebook.

• Our front-end product was $47.
• We had upsells that were like $100 or $200.
• It took us four years to get the guts to sell a product for $1,000.
• We created a “Mega course” about building funnels using Facebook ads. It was a $1,000 product. This was terrifying to launch.

The Results of Raising Prices:

• That $1,000 product launch was our biggest launch by a factor of five.
• Our normal launches back then were around $100,000.
• That launch did like $600,000 or $700,000.
• Even then, in that market, most big courses were $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, or $5,000.

We got to about $2 to 2.5 million a year mainly selling that kind of “low ticket” stuff.

Then I joined a mastermind around 2013 or 2014.

• Everybody in that mastermind had masterminds of their own that were $20,000 or $30,000.
• They did live events that were $5,000 or $10,000.

Taking Action (Finally):

• We one, had never had the guts to do it, and two, I didn’t really want to do events (I liked staying behind the scenes).
• But we finally got around to doing a few bootcamps in Baltimore.
• It was like two or three different bootcamps, two-day events.
• We announced it with just one email to our customer list: “Hey, we’re going to be in person for 2 days. We got 20 spots. We’re just going to be in front of a whiteboard talking about our business and strategies.”
• The price was $5,000 a pop.
• All three of them sold out in like four hours.

The Key Takeaway:

You don’t have to raise all your prices. Having a cheap front-end product is fine. But you NEED to do whatever it takes to have a product on the back end of your business, sold mainly to your customers, that is at a price point you are uncomfortable with.

You just have to do it. There is no way you will make less money by doing this.

Scott’s Commentary & Tip: Focus on Repeat Customers#

That’s great! I’ll dovetail into that point about targeting your best customers.

We have a stat from the SamCart database that’s really important (I think we mentioned this in a previous Blackbook call).

• 12% of your customers will become repeat customers. So, about one out of eight customers buys something again.
• But that 12% on average accounts for 46% of total revenue.

So, to Brian’s point, if you are not giving your best customers a chance to go and spend something “outrageous,” you are literally chopping your business in half. Your business could be twice as big if all you did was just focus on helping your customers spend more.

I love that! That’s great.

Scott’s Tip (Continued): Using Order Bumps for Strategy Sessions#

I’ve got one that’s sort of related to that idea of helping customers spend more, particularly your best ones.

We talk a lot about order bumps. An order bump is when someone is buying something from you, and you offer recommended products they can add to their cart, like on Amazon.

The first person we ever saw use this specific strategy was Nick Wyly. He’s a great dude, a writer, and he has an agency service that writes for you and helps you get published in big magazines.

Nick’s approach was interesting because he didn’t want to sell digital products traditionally. He was selling like an ebook or a digital product – something sort of cheap – on the front end.

Nick Wyly’s Strategy:

• He used his order bump for a strategy session.
• The bump was: “Come talk with me for 30 minutes, and let’s do a strategy session. We’ll strategize about your writing, what you’re doing,” etc.

Benefits of this Strategy:

1. Getting paid for calls: He was getting paid to show up for calls he was probably doing anyway.
2. Getting closer to customers: He got a chance to talk to his customer, learn their language, and speak to them better. He said this was “crazy valuable” to him.
3. Booking backend services: He was booking what he really wanted to do – his services. He was booking $5,000 a month writing services. And he was getting paid to find these clients!

So, by having an order bump that let customers add a strategy call, he found his hyper prospects for what he really wanted to sell. The majority of his business was this big backend service that was super expensive.

Having an order bump for a strategy session can help you identify who your best customers are and go sell them more stuff. Awesome!

Commentary & Additional Point#

Speaker (likely Paul or Brian): Yeah, I mean, I got one that kind of ties into that.

This point is about making sure to ask early and often for your biggest offer.

A lot of times people think the front-end product has to be $7, the order bump has to be $10, the upsell has to be $100, and they have to ascend gradually.

But you should look at it from the standpoint that the customer is in pain, and they might just want to take it all away right now.

So, having a path, like Scott said, where they can get on a call maybe, or find out about your full product offering right upfront, is important instead of thinking they have to wait and go through a long, slow ascent. Awesome, I love that!

Rock’s Money-Getting Tip: The Long Form Opt-In on the Front End#

Alright Rock, go ahead.

Okay, so my first one is something I do on the front end. I’ve talked with Scott about this before.

It’s like a long form opt-in. This is kind of different from what most people do. Most people either use a short squeeze page opt-in or just collect the sale upfront.

This strategy is a blend between the two.

• You have a regular long form sales letter.
• It has to be written in a specific way, really focused on building the relationship with the prospect.
• There is still a pitch at the end.
• But rather than clicking “add to cart” and going straight to the order form, you make them opt in to get to the order form.

This is a complete mind shift from normal. They aren’t opting in for something free; they’re opting in because they want to buy something.

Why this works:

• I think long form copy works because, like in the book Influence by Robert Cialdini (I mentioned this book before, I think Paul’s keeping a list!), he talks about the six weapons of influence.
• Mostly everybody focuses on the “sexy” ones like scarcity and authority.
• But the ones that often get lost are commitment and consistency.

If somebody is reading a long form sales letter, they are very invested. They’ve already committed a lot of time and energy just to get to the opt-in. Then, I make them make another commitment, which is giving me their email, just to even have the chance to buy this.

Benefits of this Strategy:

• They enter their email and go directly to the checkout page as if they had just clicked “add to cart.”
• The difference is, I now have that email address.
• This is better than a cart abandon, where you only get their email if they started filling out the checkout page.
• This works really well for retargeting because you can customize your follow-up sequence for people you know have read your whole sales letter and are on your email list.
• These are very high quality prospects, even if they don’t buy right away. You’re getting someone who is likely to engage with your stuff.

I would only do this on the front end, meaning the first chance someone has to buy something from you. It’s kind of overkill on the back end. But when you’re building that first relationship and first experience with your customer, I feel like this is a good way to build a high quality email list and get a lot of good customers.

Discussion on Rock’s Tip#

Scott: Rock, on that first sales page, do you put the price on there, or do you keep the price for after they opt in?

Rock: No, I keep the price. So, the way I do it is like a traditional sales page. The only difference is I give a little more content.

The way I first viewed it was like a YouTube video structure, since I’ve always done content on YouTube.

• You have your intro.
• You have your pieces of advice (content).
• Then you have a call to action.

I kind of made a hybrid of that with a typical sales page.

• You have your intro (introduce yourself, give credibility or “cloud”).
• Rather than just making a hard sales argument, you weave the ideas into content, as if it’s a YouTube video.
• When you get to the offer/call to action section, it’s basically a typical offer: bonuses, guarantee, everything else looks the same.
• It’s just when you click the “add to cart” button, it says, “Enter your email to secure your spot.”
• They enter their email, nothing else happens, they just go directly to the checkout page.

Scott: I love it!

Brian: Rock, would you say you’re sacrificing like more leads for higher quality leads? Obviously, people who grab the email first before showing content might get more leads, but you’re looking for quality?

Rock: Yeah, and that’s a good question. I just had a call with a new Facebook ad rep (they rotate every six months). He was looking at my funnel and said, “Your sales page is very long. Don’t you think it’s better to shorten it because you’re missing a lot of people?”

I try to tell them that’s the point! I only want a certain person.

The people who go through this system… I have people in my membership or “member circle” who stay engaged for years. They buy everything every time I come out with a new product.

I think a lot of it has to do with this first relationship I built with them and making sure they were a good, high-qualified prospect. My audience also plays a part; people learning Spanish tend to be older and want to learn for years.

Paul’s Money-Getting Tip (Continued): Create an Optimal Selling Environment#

Here’s the one I would add to this: Create an optimal selling environment where people can make a quick decision.

One way we did that was through Zoom calls. Every Thursday at 11 am, I had a Zoom call. Sometimes that was to create products (we’d invite our top level customers).

The key is that when people are actively consuming your content, having a good experience, and seeing that you can help them, you should give them that next step right then.

Example Experiment:

We ran a little experiment during one of our workshops. I kind of interrupted randomly and said, “Oh my gosh, I completely forgot about this!”

I told the group something like, “Brian and I found this while digging through Dropbox. I guess we did this right before the pandemic, and the whole world blew up, and we forgot about it.”

I said, “Look, Brian and I were at ‘concert pitch’ during this workshop. I forgot about it. I sent it over to the CreatorU team, and I’m sure they’re going to put it out there, and it’ll be pretty expensive. But today, if you guys want to grab this…”

We said, “We’ll just put a link out. Just put your email address in the comment box, and we’ll send you a link to get it for, let’s just say, $49.” We implied it would probably be 10 or 20 times that later, but for today, just $49.

The Results:

From that experiment, we have now sold over $9,000 worth of this offer.

We weren’t talking to 500 people.

• We did it on a Course Creation Challenge with around 100 people.
• We did it on something else with around 70 people.
• A grand total of less than 300 people.

Key Points of the Experiment:

• We didn’t say how long it was.
• We didn’t say if it was audio or video.
• We didn’t say if it was 5 days or 2 hours. We didn’t say anything!

(By the way, that was an empty Dropbox folder. There was nothing in there. It was just a test.)

But what we saw was: “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” People were given their email addresses because they were in an optimal selling environment.

Creating Optimal Selling Environments#

So, we were running this course creation challenge, right? It was maybe day two or three. Folks were getting to know Brian and our system, and they were really liking it. In that moment, they thought, “Okay, this is great! Yeah, if I can…”

That’s a super easy way to sell. There was no sales page, no nothing. We even filled a mastermind meeting just from an announcement on a group call that had less than 60 people on it!

When you put people in that kind of environment… like a live event can be like that, but you can replicate a lot of that feeling on Zoom. We see it happen constantly in our other businesses. We just say, “Hey, we’ve got this. If you guys want it, just put your email address, and we’ll send you the link.”

In that moment, they’re really buying the relationship. It’s like going home with a concert T-shirt or some kind of souvenir you really want.

Think about the best selling environments in the world. The top two are Las Vegas and Disney World. By the way, Disney World just eclipsed Las Vegas in money extracted per head. Think about the difference in what they offer there!

So, my main point is: Put them in an optimal selling environment and then make them an offer. It’s the simplest thing in the world.

Brian, you’re up! Beat that! Go ahead, beat that!

Who Should You Never Listen To About Your Marketing#

That point about selling environments actually reminds me of something Rock mentioned about getting a call from his Facebook ad rep who was questioning his landing page, saying it was “too long.”

So, Rule Number One is: Don’t ever listen to people who have never made their own money.

If someone on your team, or a Facebook rep, or someone like… we get this on SamCart all the time with our engineers. Look, I love our engineers; they’re why SamCart is what it is. But I don’t get into their business, and I ask them not to get into mine.

Everyone has an opinion on stuff they don’t know anything about. If someone has an opinion on your marketing or sales or whatever, and they’ve never made their own money, ever, tell them to shut the hell up.

They don’t get a vote. They don’t get to speak. They don’t get anything. And it’s not just because they’re unqualified (though it is because they’re unqualified). It’s that the stuff we do every day – selling stuff – it goes against everything everyone was taught in school!

• “That’s too many words.”
• “No one’s going to read it.”
• “That sales pitch is too long.”

The average person… and me and Scott were there too, which is why it took me 18 months or more to make my first sale, because I didn’t know! And I even went to school for marketing! It’s the biggest waste of money ever. (Honestly, all college was good for was playing baseball, and that was it).

Yeah, Facebook reps are idiots when it comes to the strategic stuff. Most reps at every company are idiots in that way. They might tell you where a button is, but do not let them tell you:

• What your ad should say.
• What your landing page should be.
• Who you should target.
• None of that stuff.

Don’t listen to anyone except someone who has:

• Made a ton of money with their own money.
• Put their own ass on the line.
• Ran their own campaign.
• Was put in a spot where their back was against the wall and had to make money up here, out of nowhere.

Those are the only people you should ever listen to.

(That’s going right into Brian quotes!)

Yeah, so… by the way, welcome to all the Facebook ad reps who are watching this. Yeah, thanks for watching guys! Thanks for coming out! If they need any advice, they should ask us. They should pay us to show them how this stuff works.

The Accelerator Test: Is Feedback Useful?#

So, here’s the test we’ve come up with in our Accelerator program.

I always say, look, I love Chris with all my heart. Just crazy about her, same as the day we met her. But I would never ask her opinion on my products or my ads.

The test is this: When people come back and say, “You know, I showed it to my wife or my husband…” I stop them.

And I guess: “Let me guess… They talked about:

• The color.
• The copy was too long.
• They didn’t like the logo.”

Why? Because they’re looking at all the things that someone who the product is not for would look at.

But someone who the product is for? Those things disappear. That product page disappears into the experience. They don’t even know what the logo was or the color was!

The best products, the best ads, the best funnels, the best everything should disappear.

• The best movies don’t feel like movies.
• The best restaurants don’t feel like businesses.
• The best books kind of sweep us away.

If somebody goes, “Oh, that book is really long,” they’re probably right… it’s probably not for them.

So, that’s the test. We don’t even listen to that feedback anymore. “Oh, they talked about the colors on the page. They wanted to change the colors.” Yeah.

(Paul’s a big Rainforest Cafe guy! He loves Rainforest Cafe. You just disappear into the experience, you know what I mean? Yeah, love it, love it. Come on! You get the elephant section, that’s… few things better when you’re eating, you’re having that volcano salad, right next to you!)

Paul, you always use that analogy: Don’t listen to people who aren’t on the field. I love that too. It’s true. If you’re not… it all looks easy from the bench. All looks easy from the bench!

Sales Strategies: Bonus Loops and Tangible Value#

Alright, I got one. This is one of my favorite ones. It’s called the Bonus Loop Campaign.

It’s basically a cart abandonment strategy, right? Like Rock was talking about before, how to get more people who are warm leads. If you’re not already talking to people who start buying but don’t buy, step one would be to start! Send some emails – great, all good.

This is a specific strategy we really love using in those emails. So, someone starts to buy and they don’t finish… Start sending an extra something. Incentivize them a little bit more. It’s not just, “Hey, come back.”

Think about what every website on the planet does to you. You go to buy a shirt at Lululemon or wherever, and what’s in your inbox like 10 seconds later? A 20% off coupon, right? They’re giving you a little extra something to come back and buy again.

• Give them a coupon. You can even automatically apply it for them (we talked about how to do that in SamCart).
• You can toss in another bonus. Give them something else. “If you buy now, I’ll give you, I don’t know, some 30-minute session with me,” or “I’m going to give you some extra checklist,” or whatever. Something like that.

Give people some sort of bonus. When you’re incentivizing those people, all they need is that one extra little push. They’re so close to buying. That one extra little push is going to start closing more of those people than you ever imagined.

You might make a really, really, really significant difference. You could double the amount of people that are buying an offer by putting in a Bonus Loop to people who get really close but don’t actually go buy.

The Bonus Loop – send it out! That’s awesome.

Nate, I have one very similar, so I’m going to use it. It’s called the Bonus Loop Two!

No, it’s more of an application of what Scott’s talking about. We recently did this for a cart abandon email, and we were able to 4X the results.

Here’s kind of what we did: Knowing that the product’s main objection was just not using the product, I wrote an email that just said, “Hey, we’re taking these 72 templates. We pre-made them. I just loaded them into the account. Here’s the link to go sign up.”

And we’ve saved just hundreds and hundreds of sales by just making it feel tangible, like it’s right there, it’s waiting. “I understand, I’m with you. Go sign up now.”

Yeah, that’s like the TypeSet landing page thing again.

Case Study: The TypeSet Demo Landing Page#

The original funnels for that business were set up by people who never had to make it rain before. Like, they didn’t have to eat. These are full-time employees who don’t have as much at stake. Almost everybody on this call, probably all of us, have been in a spot where, like, we’re making something where if this stuff doesn’t work, we don’t make money. So, it has to work.

So, we… you know, we had a normal software landing page for TypeSet. If you don’t know what TypeSet is, you can just go to typeset.com and look. It’s just a piece of software that designs ebooks, ads, webinars, and stuff.

We made a new landing page that basically showed how it worked. It’s like a mini hybrid 5-minute long demo video. It’s kind of a pitch in disguise, but it’s more demo than it is pitch.

But as I’m going through using TypeSet… for me to show the full power of that tool, I need to have some content ready to paste inside of it to turn into an ebook or a webinar or whatever. So, we have a bunch of GPT prompts (or I have a bunch that I’ve made) that help me make those things.

So, I just demoed it. It’s me sharing my screen saying, “Hey, watch me design this ebook in 30 seconds.” Then I say, “Okay, let me go over to ChatGPT. Write a quick ebook with this prompt,” and I paste it in. Then, “Watch TypeSet do its magic.”

But I planted a seed on this GPT prompt. As I’m recording this sales video or this demo, I’m thinking, you know what? Everyone’s probably going to want this prompt that I just showed them. Like, they’re going to want TypeSet, but they’re really going to want the prompt.

So, not only is that a great bonus I could throw in (because I don’t charge, I don’t sell this thing, I might as well just give it to them), but it does the same thing Nate’s bonus did. The prompt, if I offer it to them for free as a bonus, not only makes them want TypeSet even more (I’m going to close more people), but it’s going to help them use it. They can use the prompt to write their own stuff to paste into TypeSet and get value from it.

That one page… like, we cannot beat that landing page. It just demolished the previous one. I think it was literally like a 3 or 4X conversion rate over their regular website that just sells like everybody else: the normal branding, the normal page, the normal “pretty” site.

And it might look a lot better than mine, but you know what? Mine pays the bills, and yours doesn’t.

So again, yeah, all this wrapped back up in it. That gets added to the quotes! Yeah, going right to Brian quotes!

How to Create a High-Converting Demo Video (Copying Wisely)#

Brian, you should talk about one of your tips on how you even put together that demo. It seemed like once you actually added that video on that sales page for that funnel, we were able to scale ads to like 10K a day overnight.

Yeah, I got the script… and I mean, I shouldn’t even admit this, but I take my own advice. The only people I ever copy or steal from are people that I know are killing it, period. Like, I don’t go look at anyone or take what they’re doing and model it unless I see them putting paid ads out of using cash out of their own pocket to promote something.

And I forget who this guy was, I found some guy on Twitter who had some… he was talking about some sales tool that he had, was a piece of software. And he was promoting the hell out of it. And I went and checked out his site, and he had a little short video sales letter, like it was three or four minutes long, but it was demoing a piece of software, which is what I was trying to sell (TypeSet). I was trying to figure out a better way to sell that thing.

And it was your traditional kind of like VSL script, but he had a couple of really key points that he made along the way. And his hook was “Watch me do this thing in 90 seconds.”

And I was like, “That’s perfect for TypeSet!” Because the whole point of TypeSet is to design stuff that normally takes two hours in Canva or two weeks with a designer and do it in two minutes.

So, that was my hook: “Watch me do this thing in 30 seconds.”

And then he just goes through real quick and actually does that thing and shows how easy it is. Everything else is kind of standard sales pitch stuff: overcome objections.

So for TypeSet, I know the objections are like:

• Does it work with this?
• Can you export to PowerPoint?
• Can you do this?

So, I just hit each one of those over and over. And then, “Hey, who does this work for?” So, part of the script there is, “Look, if you’re a real estate agent designing a flyer, if you’re an ebook author creating content, if you’re an influencer creating social posts…” and you just hit that.

Like, it’s all the objections: “Is this for me?”, “Does it work with this?”, “Can it do that?”

And that’s it. But the core of the 5-minute video… like, four of the five minutes was just, “Watch me do this cool thing in 90 seconds.”

Which hits that mental trigger of like, “This must be new!” Like, no, I’ve never seen anybody else design an ebook in 30 seconds. So, this sounds cool and new. And it also sounds like this guy I never met on this video is going to prove this claim right in front of my eyes.

Most of us… Rock, I forget where I heard this… I mean, I’ve heard it a thousand times, but somebody said it a week ago, it just reminded me when you’re talking about ad copy. That proof over promises is the way to go.

And so many people, especially in our world of how to grow a business, how to scale a business… everyone just makes freaking promises left and right. Nobody proves anything. Most likely because their products suck and they don’t actually work, so you can’t prove it. Or you’re lazy, you don’t do the hard work, the really hard work, of finding someone you actually helped and documenting it.

But that TypeSet video is kind of like the perfect storm of literally proving it to you live on camera. And I think that’s why it works. Love that!

Finding Out Your Audience’s Objections#

Sorry, go ahead Nate. As a follow-up, what are some of your… if somebody’s watching this, they’re thinking, “How do I find out what objections are?” Like, “Okay, we’re saying use bonuses, use whatever, use content to fight objections and in that way get more people to buy.” What’s your favorite way to go find objections? Someone’s saying, “Oh, cool, what now? What does my audience want?”

Yeah, I mean, any way that you can actually get it from their mouths, right?

• You can do live chat on the sales page. That’s an easy one, especially if you don’t have a lot of customers.
• This particular one (Nate’s example) was from just from churned clients who are exiting. “What was the biggest reason that, you know, you left?” “Well, I didn’t use the tool. I didn’t use the tools, didn’t have time, too confusing.” So, it’s like, “Well, let’s do a lot of the work for you” and stick it in there.
• Surveys.

Love it. Yeah, just live chat, looking at people who canceled, surveys, anything.

I mean, ideally, if you’re… you should ideally be selling to a market that you truly understand because you’re part of that market.

Okay, let’s break down these ideas into a clearer picture, like drawing a map for a traveler.

Understanding Your Market & Handling Objections#

Think about it like this: If you’re trying to sell advice on how to hit a baseball better, but you’ve never actually played baseball yourself, you should probably just pack up and go home.

When you’re in a market, you need to ask yourself: What kind of pushback or doubts would someone have? These doubts usually fall into three main areas:

1. Objections about Themselves: Does the person doubt their own ability to succeed?
   • Example: Selling a 90-day weight loss boot camp that promises kicking butt and losing 30 lbs. The target audience is likely out of shape, so they’ll doubt themselves.
   • Possible self-doubts: “What if I don’t have the time?”, “What if I look like an idiot?”, “What if I don’t have the equipment?”, “What if I’m not strong enough?”
2. Objections about Other People or External Factors: Are there outside influences that might stop them?
   • Example (cont.): Doubts about things outside their control.
   • Possible external doubts: “What if my job doesn’t let me take off time?”, “What if my wife doesn’t support me?”, “What if some other thing keeps me from doing this?”
3. Objections about the Product Itself: Do they doubt if your offer is real or works?
   • Example (cont.): Doubts about your boot camp.
   • Possible product doubts: “Is this real?”, “Is it legit?”, “Does it actually work?”, “It’s too expensive.”

Tip: Make a list of these objections. Honestly, the fastest way might be to just go ask ChatGPT to list them out for your specific market.

Another angle on handling objections upfront:

Remember how Dean talked about Jennifer Leathers, the furniture store? Instead of salespeople asking the generic “Can I help you?”, which usually gets a “No, I’m just looking,” they ask, “What’d you come in here looking for today?” This gets people talking.

But the key part is how they end the initial chat. They’ll volunteer common information people always ask about, like:

• “Just so you know, these come in nine colors. All nine colors are right here.”
• “They come in four different fabrics. The four fabrics are…” (maybe hand swatches or show them).
• “Everything is ready to ship within 24 hours.”

These were the three big things people always wanted to know, so they just stated them upfront to deal with those potential questions/objections right away. Yeah, love it.

Proving Your Product Works#

This piggybacks off something Brian mentioned about proof.

• Getting Started: If you’re new and just getting started, you often can’t start with customer testimonials. You have to find unique ways to prove your product works. Usually, this means proving it by showing that it works for you first.
• Once You Have Testimonials: When you have a sales letter or any sales message, you usually start with a big promise or a big claim. The first reaction in the prospect’s mind is often, “This is [__].”
• Countering Doubt Early: You need to immediately follow up by acknowledging that doubt. Say something like, “Now I know you probably think, ‘Oh, I’ve heard this before…’.” But then you transition: “…but this really works. Take a look at what some people…”
• Tease Testimonials: Tease or show a few testimonials early on in any sales script (VSL, sales letter, etc.). This can really help improve your conversion rate.

Always Be Studying Others#

Here’s a major tip: Just like Brian looked at someone doing something and copied it, you should be constantly studying people and companies that are better than you in your market. This is how marketers improve.

• Daily Study: Every day, read long sales letters. There are companies making billions of dollars whose sales materials you can learn from.
  • Examples given: Oxford Club, Agora Financial.
• What to Study: Pay attention to:
  • How they talk and structure arguments.
  • The specific phrases they use.
  • How they transition from one point to the next.
• Find Templates: You’ll start noticing that successful sales letters often follow similar templates.
• Using Ad Libraries: Check platforms like the Facebook Ads Library or YouTube ad tools.
  • Tools mentioned for YouTube: Vidt, VidTao.
  • These tools can sometimes show you how much money has been spent on an ad over the last 30 days, or the number of views.
• Identify What Works: Look at ads that have spent the most money or have the most views.
  • Example: Seeing Shopify ads with millions of views versus others with only thousands. The money went to the ones that worked best. You can often save and study the best-performing ads.
• The “Running Ads” Test: If a company is running a lot of ads, especially if they’re a top player on a platform like Sam Cart (someone mentioned having a thousand Facebook ads running), they have to be making money back. Nobody can afford that kind of ad spend otherwise. If they’re running that many ads, “they’re making it rain.”
• Model the Right People: Study the people you know are “killing it” and making significantly more money. Figure out how you can take what they’re doing and adapt it for your own business.

Talk to One Person#

Another crucial lesson: Make sure your messaging, whether it’s content, a sales letter, or anything else, talks to one person.

• Focus Your Message: Even if your product or service is for a wide audience, when you craft your message, write it as if you are speaking directly to a single individual.
• The “You/Your” Test: The best sales letters talk directly to the reader. You can literally hit Ctrl+F on a successful sales letter and search for the word “you” or “your”.
  • Examples given: One sales letter had “you” or “your” 200 times. Another had it 185 times.
• Improve Your Script: If you check your own sales letter, YouTube script, or other message and the word “you” or “your” hardly appears, you should definitely revise it. Find ways to include “you” or “your” and replace some instances of “I” or “me”.

Warning: Don’t Model the Wrong People#

This is almost the opposite of studying successful marketers, but just as important.

• The “I Saw” Danger: As someone in our Mastermind group put it, the two most dangerous words for a marketer are “I saw.” Why? Because you usually only see the surface level. You don’t see everything happening behind the scenes (like Brian mentioned).
• Checking Ad Activity (or lack thereof): If you look up a big player in your space on Facebook Ads Library or YouTube ad tools and find they aren’t running any ads, it’s a major red flag.
• Lack of Ads = Not Making Money? If they aren’t running ads, they might “suck” at the core business of making money, even if they seem impressive on the surface.
• The Typeset Example: Our company, Typeset, competes with companies like Gamma and other AI document designers. These competitors are often very good at:
  • Raising a lot of money from investors.
  • Getting good PR (like being on the cover of Forbes).
  • Looking legitimate and well-promoted.
• But Are They Making Money? How do we know they aren’t good at actually making money?
  • You can do some digging and find their revenue is low.
  • They aren’t running ads.
• Why Aren’t They Running Ads? Because they can’t make an ad pay for itself (i.e., the ad costs more than the revenue it generates).
• The Modeling Mistake: Our team sometimes wants to copy these companies – mimic their pricing, their website pages. But that’s modeling a company that is likely “going to be broke in 12 months.” You can see it in their marketing efforts (or lack thereof).
• The Right Action: Do NOT model them. In fact, consider doing the opposite of whatever they’re doing regarding pricing, promotion, etc.
• Surface vs. Substance: Just because a company is on the cover of a magazine doesn’t mean they’re profitable. You can be great at PR and fundraising and look successful without being legitimately successful at making money. Dude, it costs a lot to look this [unsuccessful]! It costs a lot to look this shitty.

Competitive Ruthlessness (Paul’s Story)#

Okay, switching gears a bit, let me tell you about some… early tactics.

• Early Approach: Early on, I (Paul) might have been called “ruthless” by some, though maybe they just had a low tolerance for pain.
• Targeting the Chief Competitor: Daily, I had a separate email address that started by sending emails only to my chief competitor at the time, a guy named Dick Mills (he’s dead now).
• Misleading Emails: I would literally write emails specifically designed for him to read, intended to throw him off the trail of what I was actually doing.
• Adding More Competitors: Back then, you’d get notifications for everything, like when someone opted into your list. I had these notifications go to one email. Whenever I saw a competitor, I’d add them to that special email list that received my competitor-focused emails.
• Shadow Launches: I even created specific web pages and ran “shadow launches” – launching products or tests that only my competitors would see, designed purely to mislead them.
• Motivation: This might sound intense, but for like eight years, I woke up every day just wanting to “destroy Dick Mills.” That kind of enemy can be good; it gives you something to fight against.
• Competitor’s Mistake: We talked about this on another call. The worst thing Dick Mills did was acknowledge my existence publicly. I never mentioned him by name (always “a colleague” or similar), but he wrote a whole long piece about me one time. My response? Copy-paste his text into my next email the next day and go through it line by line. (Again, without saying his name).

Understanding Audience Psychology: Men vs. Women#

Here’s a tip I learned in a really unexpected way, from a pastor talking about men’s versus women’s groups.

• Men’s Groups:

  • Want action, status, exclusion.
  • Want to be seen as better than others (better shape, car, money, marriage, etc.).
  • While they gather, the underlying drive is often individual improvement and status within the group or compared to others.
  • You can call them to action more easily.
  • Meetings can be shorter.

• Women’s Groups:

  • Want reassurance, security.
  • Need more space and time to process and talk.
  • Meetings often go on longer (“till curfew”).

• Applying This to Marketing:

  • Since we were often selling to dads (mostly men), we started using shorter, punchier offers.
  • We’d use language like, “Hey look, if you want your kid to do this, and you’re his dad, and you’re in charge, then you need to get this for him.”
  • Using Status/Exclusion: One great line we used in our guarantee played on the idea of status among other dads. We’d phrase it a few ways, like, “Don’t be surprised if another dad takes notice.” Maybe they’d ask, “What are you feeding that kid?” or joke, “Is he taking steroids now?” because of the results.
  • Creating Intrigue: Then we’d add, “They’re gonna start poking around on what you did. Share it with them or not, keep it for yourself, that’s fine.” Adding the option to keep it secret reinforces the idea of having an exclusive edge. (Though we’d say it’s great if you do share with close friends/family).
  • Using Guilt/Responsibility: We’d structure pages to be short and direct, almost saying, “Do this because if you don’t… you don’t care about your kid. You don’t care about your family. Your kid will fail, and a father’s job is being responsible for the failure.” This is pushing hard on their emotional buttons.

• Important Caveat: If you’re going to push these kinds of buttons and “poke on every live wire,” you must have a good product and deliver on your promise. The product itself is the “easy part”; delivering results is the hard part. You’re waking up intense feelings, so you better follow through.

• More on Women’s Needs: The need for more time and space for women is also reflected in sales material format. I once heard Alan Salonic talk about how even the space in video sales letters (VSLs) or sales letters needed more time when targeting women for them to absorb the information.

(Here comes the funny interjection) I just saw all four of you think of a terrible sexist joke based on that last part! I didn’t think of it, but I saw it on your faces! I saw exactly what you were going to say. That’s terrible, and I want all the women listening to know it was those four who thought of it, not me. I’m the guy who was screwing with competitors, not the guy making jokes about women!

Website Simplification: Focus Your “Front Door”#

Let me tell you something based on doing six or seven one-on-one calls with businesses, mostly those making six or seven figures a year. It’s amazing how many of them, almost all of them, have websites that are a train wreck.

• The Problem: Their homepages are chaotic.
  • A million buttons everywhere.
  • A million different front-end funnels.
  • Four different things you can opt-in for individually.
  • Six or seven different products you can buy.
• How They Survive: They are making their money purely on sheer talent. It’s like that kid who never had to study for a test until they got to college.
• The Core Issue: They make most of their money from just one product, or maybe two.
• The Advice: The main advice for almost all of them was: SIMPLIFY.
• Identify Your Core: Ask yourself these questions:
  • Where do most of your leads come from? (Usually one of many lead magnets).
  • Which of your many products brings in most of your new customers? (Usually one product).
  • Where does most of your back-end revenue/profit come from? (Often the same product, or maybe a membership, coaching program, or subscription).
• The Solution: Delete everything else. Well, you don’t have to permanently delete it, but get the hell off your main website/homepage.
• Create One Front Door: You should have just one main path or “front door” that you want everyone visiting your website to go through.
• The Coaching Example: There was a woman, I forget her name Paul, who was doing multiple six figures a year. Her business model was simple: Get attention online (ads, content, social media), get everyone on the phone, close them into her coaching program.
  • Her business is simple: Get everyone on the phone.
  • Therefore, her website should have nothing that is a clickable button unless that button links directly to them booking a call with her. Period.
• The Opt-in Mistake: People forget how much complexity they add. Just adding one opt-in option is often enough for a single page or main path. Don’t clutter your main entry point with multiple choices.

Alright, let’s break down that text and put it into an easy-to-follow format. Think of this like getting directions from someone who knows the area really well – clear, direct, and keeps you on the right path.

Keeping Things Simple: Why More Isn’t Always Better#

Adding new things to your business, like a new PDF lead magnet for your website, can actually make things way more complicated. Why? Because each new thing needs its own systems – like setting up flows in ConvertKit, HubSpot, or your CRM. You have to dial them in and keep an eye on them. That’s just more stuff to track!

When you start getting leads from multiple places, you end up wondering where your best leads are actually coming from. If something is working well, the smart move is to simplify. Have that one thing that works, and just drive everyone to that one thing. That’s it.

The “Government Regulation” Test: What Matters Most?#

Here’s a great question to think about: Imagine some government regulation came in and took everything away from you. But, you were allowed to get just two things back. Which two things would you choose to get back that would make up the biggest chunk of your income?

For example, you’d probably take your list back. And maybe you’d take your product over your sales letter, because it’s usually easier to recreate the sales letter than to go through all the work of building the product again. But really, if you could only get one thing back? Most people would just take the list.

Thinking about this question helps you figure out where your money really comes from.

Why Marketers Overcomplicate (and Why You Don’t Have To)#

As marketers, it’s easy to fall into a trap – we’ve all done it a million times. You spend maybe two years getting everyone to book a call, or download your first lead magnet, or buy your first introductory product – whatever your one thing is. Then, you start thinking the market is “over it,” or that it’s going to slowly stop working.

But guess what? It’s usually not true! Unless you’re in the tiniest market in the world, you absolutely do not have everyone on your list yet. There’s still a huge number of people who haven’t seen your main offer.

If that one front door – your main offer or lead magnet – is the most profitable path for you, keep driving people through it. Even people who came through that front door before and didn’t buy your backend or your main offer might go back through the same front door again in six months when they’re finally ready. Then, they’ll buy your main product.

The Problem with Too Many Offers#

When you end up with things like:

• 10 different lead magnets
• 5 different front-end offers
• 3 different backend offers

…you, as the business owner, start to look distracted. It looks like you don’t truly stand for anything specific. It looks like you’re not incredibly proud of just one thing because you have so much other stuff going on.

Consider someone who makes all their money from one specific product, even though they might have 10 different ones. For their branding and public image, they could basically pretend the other products don’t exist publicly. They could sell those other products via email to customers after they’ve already bought the main thing (this is selling on the backend).

Learning from the Best: The Jeff Walker Example#

This is exactly what Jeff Walker did. To the outside world, Jeff Walker has one main product: Product Launch Formula. This is why he is known everywhere as the launch guy.

Now, I can guarantee you – and I know this for a fact because I was in his Mastermind group – he has other things. He has a coaching program, other books, other courses. But he doesn’t talk about all that other stuff publicly.

He leads with a clear identity: If you want to interact with him, Jeff Walker, he’s the launch guy. So, you can opt-in to his launch process, maybe get some free information, and then he’s going to sell you the one course he believes in so much that it’s the only thing he visibly sells to the world. That’s a powerful way to build a clear brand.

Market Size: More Room Than You Think#

Here’s another way to look at it, using a past example:

• For about 15 years, our online business was the biggest in the baseball niche.
• We had around 70,000 customers per year.
• But, there are about 6 million people playing amateur baseball.

If you compare those numbers, 70,000 customers out of 6 million potential players? We weren’t even close to reaching everyone. We weren’t even scratching the surface! There was multiple, multiple, multiple times more room to get new people into our audience.

The Power of Being “The Guy” (or “The Gal”)#

Paul, I know you guys had a bunch of baseball products too, but wasn’t your main one the Everybody M Club? Yeah.

Think about it this way: If I hear about you and I start liking your stuff, and I’m at my son’s Little League game trying to recommend you to someone, it’s harder if you’re just “the pitching and hitting and fielding and base running and coaching guy.” That’s a mouthful, right?

A full-throated, easy endorsement is much better:

• Harder to recommend: “Hey, you should go to Paul. Your son’s struggling with fielding? He’s got a really good Fielding course.”
• Easier, better recommendation: “Hey, your son isn’t throwing hard? You should go to Paul. He is the pitching guy. If you want to throw hard, he’s the guy.”

It’s much easier to say, “Your son has a spaghetti noodle for an arm? Go see the pitching guy!” (Yeah, we used to make those jokes. Paul always accused us of saying, “Is that your kid out there? Geez… woof.”)

Understanding Your Market: River, Not a Lake#

One more thing to think about is the size of your niche or market. A lot of people think of it like a lake – a set number of people, and that’s all there is.

But, it’s better to think of it like a river. There are always people leaving it (maybe they solved their problem, or moved on), but there are also always new people coming in. The market is constantly being replenished.

So, while you might get tired of your main offer or your front-end lead magnet, remember that it’s completely new to all the fresh people flowing into your market.

Alright, looks like we all have to wrap up by 12:00 sharp. So, we’ll end right there on that bit of wisdom about the market being a river.