The Michelangelo Of Offer Creation: Adil Amarsi

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap them in bacon for business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business, pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week, our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo. All right, welcome back to the show. This is Brad Costanzo, and today we're going to talk about something that every single one of you out there either has or should have, and that's called an offer. And an offer is different than the product you sell, and it's different than the service you provide. And we're going to go into exactly how and why I say that. And I've brought on as a guest today, guy who's known as the Michelangelo of offer creation, Adela Marcy. Now, Adel is a friend of mine. I was recently on his podcast. And the one thing that I have to warn you is that we may talk a lot about offer and copy and creating very compelling offers, but we might not. We might talk about a whole bunch of stuff because the last conversation we had was so interesting, talking about various aspects of the mindset of an entrepreneur and some of the issues we see today and some of the issues that we both face. It was a lot of fun. We may stroll into that topic again, but we're definitely going to talk about some ways that you can really understand the power of an offer, but also the perils of getting it wrong. Adol, welcome to bacon wrap business, dude.

Brad, thanks so much for having me on the show, man. I appreciate it, and I'm glad that we actually, I got to interview you first. Just simply to set the bar for ourselves and our conversations.

Exactly, exactly. It was fun, dude. I had a lot of. I had a really good time, and we forgot that we were recording. We just kind of went off on a tangent, and I'm looking forward to listening to it again. But so let's jump into something meaty for these folks here. Now, first of all, you're over in London, right?

Yep.

Correct time is it there right now?

It is 10:55 in the evening, which is. I'm staying up late today. I'm batting the midnight oil. But what's really funny about it is we've been trying to get this show ready for the last 25 minutes, and technical issues be damned, we're eating into.

Your sleep time, though, your beauty sleep.

So.

And you're about to Take a week off. Right. A little sabbatical. And this was something we talked about on our episode is the necessity of taking a sabbatical sometimes and just letting yourself decompress and shake off some of the mental cobwebs.

Oh, definitely. I mean, all my clients that now have your email address, FYI. So any messages they get back from me going, email Brad Costanza. I'm taking a week off. So they'll just like coming at you now.

I'm just gonna start charging them. I'm gonna get that monies.

It works for me. That's how you sort it out.

Exactly. So let's talk about, let's talk about offers, man. What the Michelangelo of offer creation. First of all, you, your primary business model is. Explain that to me because there's copywriters out there and I know you do a lot of work writing copy, but, you know, I guess let's preface it with this. I just told everybody you're cool. Let's back that up. Talk about some of the people you've worked with and some of the offers you've worked on and some of the big stuff to where we can get people to go like, oh, damn, Brad's not blowing smoke.

Okay, cool. So I'll give you guys a very quick 2 minute intro to who I am, so you kind of know where I'm coming from with this. So I've been writing direct response since I was 12. I've been doing it professionally since I was 18. As of the time of recording this, we're heading into my 17th year. As a direct response copyright that gets paid for. My 11th year as a pro did over $400 million by the time of the show. Some of my clients have included in the past, Jason Hornung, Jay Abraham, Shane Hunter, Carissa Hill. That's my cat in the background. He's not one of my clients, I promise. He's not a child. We also like. My list of people I've worked with is so lengthy that I can tell you right now that I've even written for, like, indirectly for Tony Robbins. I've written for Tony Robbins as kid Merrick Glazer and, you know, Erica Martin. Those guys like clients of mine as well. And essentially, if I really showed you the full body of my work, there's about 250 markets I've WR for, from everything from selling vacuums over direct mail to $15,000 retail. Was it real estate programs to like every Internet marketing, dating, self development program under the sun? I've somehow had a hand in Crafting those.

Have you got a favorite offer that you've worked on? O it's hard but I mean a lot of us have been like man, this one just either did either one that because of you, it did so well or maybe your favorite for another reason completely.

Okay, I'll give you two. There's one that was this three actually there's one of my favorites that actually bombed, like genuinely bombed. It was a terrible idea. But the reason it was my favorite was because it actually proved a point I was trying to make to my client. So that was lovely. My second favorite author that actually we're not getting into that one because it's a bit of a weird one. My favorite author ever was probably a God, this is gonna be a hard one. It's probably going to be writing for a continuity product. A friend of mine whose name I can't really say, unfortunately he had a software business online and you might know him, but at the time he was selling a very high end WordPress theme as his main business and he had a ton of little miniature plugins around it as well. And essentially what happened was when he hired me, the reason it's my favorite was because he hired me at the time, I think I was 21 years old, hired me and told me that he needed it done in like a week. He paid me, I think he sent me the money o' clock at night on a Tuesday, by 5am, six hours late on the Wednesday he received a need, received an email from me, had all the emails, the sales letter, the upsell copy and I think the downsell copy as well. For it was a continuity program he made. Instead of like waiting until the Friday to mail it, he like knocked out the sales page, got up and ready and you know, sent it out and he sent back the screenshot testimonial on the Friday. It was $25,000 a month created just from three emails I written for him. So it was like. And the thing is, I followed up with him a year later from the initial $25,000 generated in that three day period. His continuity rate, as in like usually you have a 30% drop off every three months, so you need to replenish his was only 10%. He lost only 10% of his monthly eyes down to this one simple thing because we built it into the email sales hook and the sales letter to actually keep them on board. One of my favorites that actually I'd actually say is well, this is in the self development market. And the reason it's my favorite was because the impact it had, it was for a suicide prevention offer. It was basically helping men express their emotions. Yeah. Specifically those men that are actually right on the edge between I'm gonna kill myself and I have. That's the last resort. Like, it's either this or I die. So it's like, it's. It's game time. It's not the. It's at the end game. I wrote that ad in six weeks. Obviously, me having been through something very, very similar in my life, it was quite simple for me to actually relate to them in that sense. And around it.

You've been suicidal before?

I've tried to kill myself seven times before I. Whoa. Before I turned 18. So.

Guys, guys, I told you, you don't know where these. This show is gonna go today.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's one of the craziest things. Like, I'll get on that in just a second. But, like, the suicide prevention thing for the software market was the most impactful because when I wrote it, I actually used my story. The story I might tell you guys right now. When I was 16, I think the only reason I say I think it's because my brain is still hazy due to this event. Um, I'm diagnosed bipolar, by the way. I'm also dyslexic and I have add, which is hilarious that I'm a writer, by the way, that I write for a living and I'm dyslexic. So I want you. Like, you have a pen next to you, right, Brad?

I do.

Right. Okay. So you know where the nib is?

The nib?

Like where the pointy thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, the nib. What I want you to do is I want you to hold the pen in front of you, and where the nib is is where my head would be. And I jumped straight as a pen would off a seven story car park headfirst into concrete. I should have crushed the top of my skull and died or at least snapped my neck.

Did you land on your head?

Yeah, I landed straight on top of my head. Seven stories. Didn't die. Did not die. I literally blacked out a second or two before I made impacts. I didn't feel anything. So I'm not really sure if I landed on top of my skull or if, like, by some weird accident I popped my head forward. All I know is when I woke up, I could taste cement. And I was on the side of my. The left hand side of my face is in the ground. And I got up with two bruised ribs and some Internal bleeding. That's all. I walked away with no broken bones.

How is that possible?

No clue. My exact words are miracle, one time only. Deal. Granted, I tried to kill myself like two or three more times thereafter.

Obviously, two or three more miracles because you're still here.

Yeah, but nothing to that extreme. I think I just got a little bit like, I was like, damn, I'm never doing that one again because I'm scared of heights. So I thought, conquer two fears at once, right, dude?

But I really didn't know it was gonna go this way. But it's, it's interesting because I have been just. In the past couple months, I have been much more deeply involved in working with bipolar mental health issues. So I've got a client through, you know, through my other partner, client, Frank Shamrock, I've got a new client named Mauro Ranallo. I don't know if you know who Mauro is. He's actually, I think he's over in.

I know. Wait, Ronaldo? As in he did the whole podcast with Baz Rutten.

Yes.

Yeah.

One of the top combat sports announcers in the world. He called the Mayweather Pacquiao Mayweather McGregor fight. He's on, you know, WWE's NXT, Showtime Sports. And now, have you seen the. Did you know that just this past month over on Showtime Network, there's a brand new documentary, and I can send it to you, called Bipolar Rock and Roller. All about his life and, and how not only his struggle with bipolar, but how he's at the top of his industry despite, or sometimes maybe even because of his bipolar disorder. And, but it's debilitating. It's absolutely debilitating for him. And yet he's still at the absolute top of his game. And he risked everything to tell his story and to come out and help to end the stigma. He's, he's got. His new nickname is Stigma Smasher. Because his whole thing is how to, how to like, really bringing awareness to this and helping people overcome the stigma of saying, listen, I'm fucked up. Like, I've got issues, I've got bipolar. I'm, you know, whatever. I need help. And it's okay to reach out and say you need help as opposed to just holding onto it and thinking that you're broken. Because, as, you know, like, mental health is still like that one thing where it's, you know, it's, it's okay to say, hey, I'm an alcoholic. I'm this, that or the other. But if you say, look, I'm mentally ill, There's a stigma surrounding it. So I've been working as his brand manager and helping him to get more exposure to his message and create more social activist role for him. And in doing so, I got to go to New York City for the premiere on Showtime of Bipolar Rock and Roller and work a lot and kind of like hear his stories. So it's been really eye opening because, I mean, I'm add as a mofo, but I'm proud to say that like, I think that's my only real, I guess, issue that I know of. So. And mental illness has never been a part of my family or my friends that I've known. So this is kind of new to me. But it's really eye opening when I start to meet people and talk to people who've had those issues and my heart goes out because it's like I can't even imagine. Except a couple of times when I was doing some research and I got on the Reddit. Yeah, like Reddit subreddit for depression and oh my God, if you ever want to like really understand, like, I mean, people are bearing their souls there and it's just, I mean, I was in tears reading some of these things. But not to go up on that diatribe, but you probably didn't know that I was working on this stuff in this mental health stuff. So guys, I told you, offer creation. That's one thing. Adel and I get on the phone, who knows what rabbit trails we're going to take.

Oh, dude, it's one of those things. Well, I will say this much if you're still listening to this and I owe you that you continue to continue listening anytime that like Brad and I get on the phone. And it's not just on this call. We've had calls outside of being on each other's show. We will go down rabbit rabbit trails like crazy and rabbit holes that you wouldn't believe, but somehow they would make so much sense that what we were talking about previously, bring it completely life.

We're going to tie it all back together.

Yeah. It's the thing that you do. You just create like a bunch of little rabbit holes and then bam. It just has like one big destination.

Wonderland. Exactly.

Pretty much.

So. So and was it really just like the depths of depression and bipolar and chemical things that you don't understand? Were there other stuff or was it just triggers?

There were triggers. Like I, the. I don't really talk about my childhood all that much, but it wasn't the greatest fun in the world. And I basically had to force myself to grow up very. Because of the situation at home. And you know, I was actually having this conversation with a friend of mine this morning how I. How the brain changes due to trauma.

Yeah.

And I've had three or had nine, if we're counting the seven. But I count as one big event. If we look at it, there are three big traumas in my life that shaped who I was. The first one was when I was 3 years old and I cracked my head open because prior to that I was the little bully, shithead kid that no one wants to be around. Sorry. I swear a lot from time to time.

So quite all right.

Yeah, that was one. And that changed me from being the tough kid to being the sensitive kid that would cry all the time. The second one, when I was 11 and I'd started, I think it's. Would that be middle school for you guys? So I don't know. Is that middle school? Yeah. So I was 11 years old, I had a 16 year old kid punch me in the face. And then I tripped up on some stones playing soccer. I suck at playing soccer, by the by. Basketball is definitely more my sport, as is martial arts. But I was playing soccer to fit in with the other kids and I hurt myself. And I remember having this conversation in my head that was like, you're in, you're in middle school now. You can't cry. Because I used to be the crying kid and I was like, gotta toughen up. So that was the second thing. I toughened up real quickly. I stopped crying until I was like 23. And the third big one, realistically, was when I was 18 after my last suicide attempt. And that was emotionally triggered because a girl, like the first girl I'd ever fallen in love with, that accepted me for who I was and all my faults, all my chips on my shoulder, the whole lot. She accepted me for who I was. And because that I just fell in love with her. And after we broke up, because we broke up in a pretty, pretty harsh way, I kind of like turned to business and just threw myself right into what I was doing at the time, which was starting a network marketing company. And I just threw myself into it. And through self development, I started to see the light on the other side.

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah, so that's, that's essentially how I, I turn that ship around. But to say I don't sometimes get those feelings is a lie. I mean, the reason I'm taking the sabbatical is because for the last three weeks Straight. I've written. I'm writing for like six separate clients right now and helping them create their offers. Oh, man, that gets draining really quickly.

Draining it. Writing for one is hard.

Yeah. Like, especially when you've got like so many on, on like the run pile as well. You're like, I gotta do all this. And on top of that, I'm preparing for Jiu Jitsu competition as well. I'm like, damn brains everywhere. But there is a system to this.

Well, so now do you still, like, I mean, do you. Do you have to actively manage, like, do you go through bipolar issues still or have you got it a little bit more evened out through self care?

I actually do go through it, but there is a system I've put in place for it and if you don't mind, I can share what it is. Because people.

I'm sure there's other people out there.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, if you go through any of these symptoms, I mean, by all means, sort this out. I'm not a doctor, so we'll preface that. I'm just some guy that likes experimenting on himself a lot and figuring shit out. So the first thing I do is I have a constant supply of 5 HTP in my house. That's a thing. It's a medicine. It's a supplement that boosts serotonin in the body. So anytime I can usually feel like I'm going to be having a bipolar situation where I'm going to feel sad or whatever it is, and, you know, transformation work I did 90 days ago helped me really understand this. But when I was going through the depths of it, I feel really sad and depressed. And I wouldn't get suicidal because I wouldn't allow myself to get that low, but I feel like I don't want to do anything on certain days. Yeah, the thing is, when you hit that point, the last thing you want to do is beat yourself up for not doing work. So what you really need to do more than anything is understand that, yeah, your client might be pissed off at you, your friends might be mad at you, your boss might not like who you are. Inform them what's going on. That's the first thing. Let them know. It's like, guys, I'm going through a bit of a situation. I just need a rest day to relax. And if they don't understand, fuck them. They're gonna go away anyway. It doesn't really matter. But if they respect you, who you are, and they know what you can do, what you're capable of doing, they'll be like, okay, yeah, cool. Take a day off. Relax, enjoy yourself. And on that day, all I want you to do is find three or maybe five activities that you genuinely love doing. Like, for me, it's. I'm an extrovert, so I love being around people. But when I get like that, I don't believe I'm worthy of being around people. So what I do is I call two of my best friends and I say, let's go to the movies. Because it means I'm around people. But I'm in a silent room, so I can feel isolated, but physically, I'm surrounded by people. So I go to the movies. Afterwards, I feel a bit better. My friends and I had this little discussion about what we loved, what we didn't like about movies, all this, that the other. I come home, we either get dinner or I make dinner. Because cooking is a great way for me to actually feel expressive and, you know, get it all in my own head. I play with my cats because animals are amazing. If I had a dog. If I could have a dog, I'd have a dog as well. But I can't for my apartment, so I only got cats. And then the last thing I really do is the evening of. I make a list of things I want to do the next day. These are the tasks I want to complete the next day. And I sign off by just saying to myself, I commit that tomorrow these things shall be done, and I will be kind to myself every single moment, every single time, every single hour. And then I'll just signature and date it underneath it. And finally, before I go to bed, because it's kind of a big thing. So that's the side. Right before bed, I'll take out my journal and I'll write five things I love about myself. And it'll just be something. It could be one of those moments where you don't feel like writing about yourself. Because I do have that from time to time. I pick really random things. Like, I love the way my eyes look. I love the fact my hair is growing. I love the fact that I'm, you know, I'm six foot tall. I like the fact that, you know, I love the fact that I can train, that I live in London, that people. I have friends like Brad Costanza, who's an amazing catalyst, just shit like that. So I just look at it and kind of go. I make a note of all these things, and then I just smile, say my thanks to it, and go to sleep. And if you have one of those overactive brains where you can't really go to sleep. One of the things I found that really helps me is there's an app on, I think Android as well as the iPhone, but I have it on the iPhone and it's called Relax M or Relax Melodies.

Nice.

I just put that on, put it on a low level so it's not loud enough for me to hear, but it's not quiet enough for me to just like not listen to. So it's like a good little pitch. I just leave that on the side, play it and go to sleep and I sleep for however long I need to. I don't wake up to an alarm. I get up the next day, I stretch out and I just basically, you know, I spend the first hour of that morning doing a self love routine. It could be eating breakfast, it could be playing with my cats, could be going for a walk or going to the gym for me come back and that's when I start my day. I'm like, I've got a commitment list, I need to get it done. We're done. So that's pretty much how I deal with it. Yeah, that's how I deal with it.

Well, yeah, as a, as somebody who's, you know, new to this, this world and the more and more people that I talk to about it, the more I realize that, you know, you uncover this fact that a lot of, you know, and mental health especially, I mean it's a huge spectrum. I mean there's every. Everybody struggles. Like nobody is 100% perfectly mentally healthy. We've all got issues, we're all dealing with some shit. And sometimes it's just a bad day, sometimes we get moody and other times it's the other extremes. And I think that having those systems of self care is so important to kind of recenter you and ground you so that you don't hit the ground again and jump off a building.

Oh yeah, seven floors. Yeah, I'm still alive. That's the crazy thing. It's like I've got no wounds on my body. I've not got like a cracked skull or anything. It's like the most insane thing ever. I was actually going to jump on and just say this one thing though. If you're like me and you have a really hard time expressing when you need help, which I do actually have a very hard time doing. What I found that really helps is I created a code word for my friends. So if I text them this code word they just know, right, I gotta drop this stuff, I gotta call him. I've gotta make sure he's okay. My code word is joker's wild.

Yeah.

Because fun fact that very few people know about me, and I think Brad definitely knows about. I think, you know, this about me is I did voice acting for a really long time, and I basically mastered Heath Ledger's voice for the Joker.

I actually didn't know that.

Oh, seriously? No, I can do that for you after the show and stuff, or during. Whichever one. But it's after.

We got to keep, at the end of the show, keep all these mo fos listening.

Oh, yeah, no, you guys are in for a treat because I'm actually going to do something for Brad in that voice. But what it is, is, like, that alone, because I identify with the joke so much in, like, so many different ways, with the hystericalness and whatever it is, because he's a crazy genius that had one bad day. And it's just a constant reminder for me that, like, hey, one bad day could either end it all or save someone else's life. So, you know, you got to go out then have an impact on people. So I guess that that answers the question of why. That was one of my favorite pieces I've ever worked on.

That's fantastic. That's a nice way to kind of bring it back around. So. So let's get back into business as far as offer creation. So define for the audience what is an offer and what is it not.

Okay, So I want to quickly just acknowledge Brad for this one. He's the one that kind of dug me the Michelangelo offer creation. Just simply after, like, we had a conversation, he saw what I did and was like, that's what you do. And I was like, I'm totally taking that. But what I was going to say very quickly, so what is a offer and what it is not? So let's start with what it's not. An offer is not. It's not writing copy. Okay. It's not something that you have to strenuously wonder whether or not you want to give to people and have people come on board. And it's not a cash grab. So once you have those three notions out where something like doing. Because I have to, I'm not comfortable offering. It's not. It's essentially just as long as it's not a cash grab. That's all it is. Okay? That's. Set that aside. What is not, what is enough is quite simply this. It is something that you're completely aligned to that. If I asked you at 3 o' clock in the morning, while you were in a high drunken stupor and said, all right, tell me what it is that you do for people that you can just go, hey man, this is what I do. This is how I get it done. That is essentially building around your offer and who you are. The actual idea of creating said offer is how do you package what is your vision into a way that people can actually buy either as a service or a product. So the best image I can give you for this is imagine there is an orb like the sun is right there. Like that's the sun and that is your core message. Who you are, what you do, who you serve. All the fun avatar creation stuff right now, the solar system around it, each section out is a different offer based on what it is and how close someone can be to you. So bear with me one second because my solar system and knowledge is a little bit out of date here. What's the. It's Jupiter. This closest to the. To the sun, right?

Yeah, Jupiter and then Saturn.

Okay, so you have Jupiter. That is kind of like your one on one office. Like you can work with me one on one.

When you say the clo, like the closest planet to the sun. Yeah, no, that's Mercury.

Okay, so I might pull up, I'm actually going to pull up a solar system. So yeah, not Dola, but solar system. So Mercury is basically the hottest alpha that you have. Okay, so that is the one that people come to you for the one on one work. That is the best way for people to hire you to work with you. That's offer one offer and that's your high, high ticket product, offer two, which would be your Venus, that's your secondary level product where it's kind of like a done with you system. So if you would say for instance it was copy that you were creating or it was offering social media consulting, you'd have social media consulting as your Mercury offer. People would work with you, they pay you a lot of money to work with you and you help them out. You're quite involved. Your Venus offer would be something like here's a six week intensive that I work with you. It's anywhere between three and a half thousand to $10,000 for these six weeks. And what we do is we sit down and I show you how to build out your own profiles and do it yourself. Your Earth offer, that is basically someone can buy and do in their own pace and time and it keeps going out until you've got like, you know, your freebies and giveaways, they're on the outside of your solar system. So as they get close to you, they get warmer and they get more nurtured and so on and so forth. That's what, that's one way of looking at it. The other thing, what an offer is, it's not just writing the copy, it's not just the product, it's not just the services, combination of all of those things. Because an offer is essentially the difference between how do I put this? Buy this right now, and here are all the reasons why.

Right. So when it comes to creating the offer, sculpting it, working with whether it's your own or somebody else, where do you have a process by which you start to get to the core elements of the offer?

Yes. Oh God, yes. I'm so glad that you asked this. Okay, so I have. There are three things I go through and they're all different checklists and systems. So I'll give them all to you very quickly right now. So the first thing I look at is the service. And the first thing I do with a critique of any client that comes to me to work with me is I critique their service. What are you offering, how long is it, for what price point you're going with and why? Right. And I do the same for the product. I look at. What are your products, what's your product, what's it like, what are you doing, what are you covering, what's the end result, how will they feel? What, what's the story behind this? Because the service is easy to get to. I did this because I'm good at it. Offering a product, you got to have a story to why it's created and how you got to this conclusion. So that's number one and two, that's like research that's researching that stuff down. Because once you have those, it moves you to the third checklist, which is my 15 point checklist of understanding how to write. Said often. So to backtrack for a second when you're going through service based offers, I'm looking essentially for is it the right fit? Are they charging the right amount for the audience they're speaking to? Who is their best person they've worked with in the past? Can I interview them? If I can get these four things down, then I actually understand their service better than they do and why someone bought what's going on. So I understand the angles and ideas of the offer that could be given to the right person. Because you know, you can make an offer for 200 bucks for something, but in reality it's like a $10,000 offer, just a person doesn't understand the value and unfortunately neither does the marketplace. So they get gypped and they struggle for clients and they just keep driving their prices down low because they're thinking that's the price is too high, when in reality the price is too low. They need to raise the prices. It's a whole different conversation to have. The second with the product is very similar. I need to know the story of how someone arrived at this product creation stage, as in what the end results are, why they would go to where they're going to and what they're looking to achieve, including their story, their best testimonials and case studies and how I could speak to them and incorporate that. Because again, very similar to step one. If I can understand why someone bought what they're looking for and how they're doing it, it's great. Whereas same time, I'm sure you've seen this yourself, Brad, is when someone buys an info product, sometimes they get fire hosed with content and information that can be streamlined into a couple of hours rather than a couple of days. Like I'm sure you watched an hour long video where you're like, I got everything I needed from this 20 minutes ago. Yes. And you're like, why did you keep talking for the last 14 minutes? Shut up and just give me the thing I wanted. So I look at it that way and go, if that product is waffling on, if it's talking too long, if it's going on random tangents for too long, how can we downsize that? How can we bring that back to what it is? And once we've got that down, great, now we have the next steps on which are the checklist writing ads, namely how to sell you down thing. Now when I have, you have to have the first two things done because that is your research and you got to sharpen that axe. You've got to understand why the audience is there, what they're feeling, how they're going through that again. We'll get to that in a minute. When I'm writing the offer, it follows these 15 steps. So the first thing I look at is a beneficial headline. Can I write a beneficial headline? I look for this is where it is, where it's product service. I look for the most beneficial thing that my client can offer or I can offer and put that into a headline. This curiosity driven approach promises something that's beneficial. The second is the sub headline. And this is to continue on the conversation they're having. So if the headline was something like, if I asked them a question, I know it's a yes. Like, are you getting the most from your social media? Sorry, are you getting the most from your social media pre headline? Your headline would be discover how you can increase your organic reach while lowering your advertising costs and be seen as an influence in your marketplace. Then you know, then read every word below. And the sub headline to that would be. Well, if that's. To discover the sub headline will be if you are a coach, consultant, business owner, speaker, whoever it is that you're targeting, or even a health professional, whatever it is that is feeling any is feeling like, is feeling like they're stuck in the shadows, that they're not being paid what they're worth and feeling and driving down your prices just to fit in. Stop that behavior starting now. Here's why. And that's your pre headline headline sub headline mixture right there. So that's first two steps really, because pre headline is not always used, but in this case it was. Then you have, then you have your opening paragraph where people mess up on your owning paragraph needs to continue the story. And this is what I mean. A lot of people go from that sub headline directly to the dear friend or let me introduce myself phase. You've seen that, I'm sure. Right? Right. So if you have that interstitial where it's kind of. Because it's almost as if you're talking. Okay, if you're out on a date and you spoke to a person and you promised them just to talk about something and the first thing you did was to pattern interrupt of a hi, my name is Adol. Their mind's not going to be like, I don't, I don't want to know who you are right now. I want to know what you were saying. Keep going back to the promise because I want you to expand that promise. And that's what you do. You go back to it in the opening paragraph and just say something along the lines of, before social media became a big thing, people were using traditional media and PR in order to become influencer celebrities. It was much harder back in those days. Today, with the advent of social media channels like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, you can quickly become a celebrity in your market place, garner the influence that you need to allow you to have the lifestyle that you want. But there are certain rules, there are certain etiquettes, and there are certain parameters that you need to be aware of in order to achieve this. And I'm going to be sharing, I'm Going to be sharing those with you in this letter. But before we get into that, let me introduce myself. Do you see how you build up even more of an interest to read the rest of the letter?

Exactly.

Then you do the introduction to who you are. You know, hey, my name is Brad. This is who I am. I'm known as the catalyst. This is all the stuff I've done, yada, yada yada. And then you kind of go into the story of how you got to the service or products that you're offering. So if you're a service based person, like for me it's writing ads. So the way I got to where I am would be When I turned 18, I decided to join network marketing company. I grew very quickly, but me and my upline had a falling out. Long story short, I essentially had to find a way to fend for myself. So I decided to create a blog on blogspot.com so it was like some URL.blogspot.com I wrote an article on there about how to join my network marketing company and why that was the right thing to do. And I put out on Facebook, I just sent it to 10 people on Facebook. From those 10 people to 10, seven of them decided to join my network marketing company that day. So 70% conversion, that's how I got to where I am. So I can talk about how that is one story to get to how I got into understanding how to write advertising, the copy and the rest of my story from there on in and build that out with you. If you're offering what you do as a product, what you essentially do is just tell them the story was like, I don't know, say it wasn't you, but it was someone else that you collaborated with or it was you and you didn't actually go do this. You could just say health, for instance, is. I was training one of my clients, James, let's call him James, training with my client James and I realized that after a while he couldn't get any more gains and we didn't know why. It wasn't until I sat down with him and started really looking at his diet, his lifestyle and what he was doing that we truly understood that the outside aesthetics of his healthy body was just killing, carrying a disease ridden internal parasite that wouldn't allow him to get to the maximum potential he was, he was able to achieve. And, and then you go into the whole story of how you came into the discovery of this product and how you created it. You created this offer essentially from the sheer idea of helping another human being. So you've established your beneficial headline, your sub headline, your opening paragraph, your introduction to who you are, the story of how you got to where you are right now. By the way, a quick way of doing this is go mark down your greatest defeat and then mark down your greatest victory and line out how you got from your greatest defeat to your greatest victory and put that into a narrative in your sales letter. The next step is quite simple. It's introduce what? Your introduce your product. Step after that is talk about your product in a huge detail. A lot of people leave this step out or they tell you what it is. And blind copy doesn't work, people. It works for a short time, but gets you on the radar of the FTC and other governing bodies around the world. That will get you shut down. So if you tell people what you're giving them, what you're selling them, it's a much more honest way of doing it. Your conversions go way up and your refund rates go way down. Really good business practice. Absolutely. Then come the testimonials. And the reason you put your testimonials here, not your bonuses. We'll cover that in a moment. Your testimonials are there. Then you have the price reveal. You tell them the price and you tell them why. The price. The justification followed by the justification, you tell them how to order. One of the key things I always tell people here is remove as much fear in the buying process as possible. If you tell people what's going to happen, they're okay with it. If you let people guess and wonder, they'll freak out and pump the brakes.

Yeah, People want to know exactly. What can I expect?

Exactly. Once you've done that, you will naturally start getting people to trust. Trust you and buy from you at a much greater rate. Right. So then what you do.

Go ahead.

No, I was just gonna say so very quickly. Just last couple of points here is once you've actually, you know, done your whole justification, remove the fear, you have the guarantee, which is further fear. Remove removal. Then you have your bonuses in the section. Then you have a reclose where you tell them if they're getting and how to order. Then finally you sign off. So those are the last three steps. But, Brad, you're gonna say something. I apologize.

Yeah, so one of the things I was gonna say, and I got this from Perry Belcher, which I loved, and it was one of the big things that I keep. I always remember in going back through my copy, like reviewing the copy that I write or the copy that client has written, which is looking for the points of where I'm asking somebody to believe something. So, like, how many belief points? Because in essence, what is a belief is something that I'm asking you to accept as true without proof. Right. That's a belief. Because if you have a fact, then you don't need belief. Right. So. And like, like Perry Belcher, who's one of the partners of Digital Marketer. If anybody doesn't know, he's like, I try to get to the point where I'm not. I'm not asking people to believe any more than one thing that isn't substantiated with facts, because the more you're asking them to just take your word for it, the worse off your offer is going to be. So it's a really good way to go back and say anytime you're making any sort of claim or anything whatsoever, it's like, can you substantiate that and can you prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. And it's been a really cool filter for me when I'm working with offers to go, nope, there's too many belief points in here. How can I remove those and back them up with proof?

Yeah, that's always the big thing. And that's the reason why when I say testimonials, you want to make sure the testimonials are 100% legit, because they need to be. Otherwise you're asking for trouble. But you're completely right. You have to be able to, like, actually back up the belief points there. So you actually stop them from having to suspend a disbelief for too long.

Exactly. No, I love it. And it's a. You know, there's a. There's a whole. There's a science to this, but there's an art to it as well. And I know the thing that I like doing is coming up with a big idea. The. The hook, actually. Have you ever read the book Great Leads?

Yeah. Michael Masterson, great book.

Love that book. I love that book. I gotta go back and reread it. But coming up with those hooks and angles to get people to really consume what you're doing is super important. And I know you talk a lot about story selling and using stories, which is some of my favorite marketing as well. And I think it's only getting more important as attention gets harder to get. Because the one thing that we know as a human species that gets our attention is a story. And it doesn't only get our attention, it stays with us long after we're gone or long after the interaction. And if you can get somebody to remember that story, to be able to repeat that story, it just makes the entire offer work so much better. So you use a lot of story selling, don't you?

Yeah, I mean, it's. It's something I see is the future of what is traditional copywriting right now.

Yeah.

Because if we look at what's happening, I think something. You guys an idea on this. And it's kind of one of the things that Brad and I did discuss very briefly. And it's this tendency that you kind of. Once you've been in the industry for a long time and seen different things, you almost become the quiet trendsetter. So you start shifting everything towards one way. Then you start seeing everyone else come with you. Right. Brad and I had the same idea with podcasting, you know, in different places at the time. But the podcasts were pretty much to bring people joy, but also give them an idea of the person we were interviewing in a manner that they were relaxed. It was the authenticated version of them, not this side of them that's like, hi, I'm Guru X, Y, Y and Z. It's kind of like, no, hi, my main names, you know, Adel or Brad or whoever. And what we do is this thing. Yeah, it's super cool, but this is all the other cool shit about us and how we get to the ideas that we create, what we do. So you kind of see it. It destroy, it destroys. Almost. Not destroys, but dispels that mystique that there is, that they're different from you, you know, that you're different from the people that you're hearing on this podcast. We're all the same, really. Like, some of you guys are amazing at who you are and what you do. And I've got things that I'm amazing at the different. So what I'm getting at is that's a trend setting section initially, the authentication and being the authentic influencer. That was a trend that, you know, way back when. Now it's becoming popular. The next iteration, I'm going to say live, as an exclusive on your show, Brad, that anyone can listen. Years to come, 2018, I said it here. It's essentially everyone is moving towards this idea of storytelling. And they happen for the last three years, two or three years, but no one is doing it. Practically no one is doing it in their copy. And here's what I mean. People you need to be able to marry. Direct response principles, meaning shit that works. From Gary Halbert, from Eugene Schwartz, from all these people, and combine it with a good enough spot story from your client's true, authentic past in a way to create influence that is unmatched and unrivaled. And the way that you do this, that outline I gave you, go back and listen to that. Because when you hit all those points and marry a story through that, like, run your narrative through it and keep the direct response principles, you will see a much higher conversion than anything else you've ever produced, just simply because it's authentic. But you're hitting every psychological trigger point at the right time. Yep.

And, you know, it's funny about stories. I was in a. This was. This was super cool. For those of you who've read the book Influence or pre suasion, Dr. Robert Cialdini, who is, you know, super famous, and I know you know who he is, and I got to sit in a small room, was about five of us with him, and he was talking about. He was talking about these, you know, stories, but he was. And those belief points that I mentioned. And he said, as a species, there are, you know, we're always looking, you know, our brain always looks for things to kind of call bullshit on and to not believe or, like, especially in a sales environment where we are subconsciously filtering out and waiting for the gotchas. Like, I don't believe you, right? So he goes, there's only a few things. There's like three or four things. I've got these written down somewhere, but off the top of my head that it bypasses that automatic filter. And he goes, one of them is images. Like, if you show me a picture, like, I can see it. Seeing is believing, right? So, okay, boom. Music, which in this case, like, I don't really know how it's applicable, but maybe it's like, if there's a sad song and you're trying to make me sad, it's like, okay, I just accept it. But the other one was stories. And that's the most important part of this entire conversation here, which is he said, if you tell me this product is. This product will help you lose weight. That's one thing. If you tell me that. Listen, I was this. I went through this, and you tell me your story. I mean, exceptions aside, I'm going to believe your story, or you tell me your story about how and why you got into something. It totally shuts off my filter, my bullshit filter. So it's a way through story. People who accept it as a fact versus a claim that you're just simply Making. I thought that was really interesting. I think I've got the recording of him talking somewhere from my iPhone about this. I gotta see if I can find it. If I can, I'll post it. But I love that because it's, it's not only because it's more effective at selling, but one of the reasons is, is that, yeah, it bypasses the bullshit filter. Unless it's a completely bullshit story.

Yeah, you gotta make it believable and real. And the way that you get around that is by digging through your greatest defeat and how you got to your greatest victory.

Yep.

I mean, I'll give you an example. Like there are some stories that are so fucking unbelievable that people don't believe you. And that's the reason when I did the suicide, you know, prevention off, like.

Jumping off a seven foot thing under your head.

I don't believe you. That was, that was the story that we ran with. And the way that I actually backed that up was I actually had the X rays from the doctor that day. I asked my doctor to send me the X rays and I basically posted a photo of them. And this is my ribs. Like I had two, two, what was it? I had two bruised ribs and a ton of excessive internal bleeding. The weird part of that story is I didn't actually go to the hospital until six hours after the incident because I went, I went home. And the reason it was believable that I was bleeding and, you know, had scuff marks all over my face was I was doing Thai boxing at the time. So I just lied to my parents that I'd just gone, like, had a really good round of Thai boxing. So it used to be coming home with bumps and bruises. So I was like, all right, I'm gonna go have a bath. I was like, my ribs really hurt. So I'm gonna go into my bed, I'm gonna go to sleep. And you know, midnight, just slightly over midnight, I get up, incredible pain. I feel like I'm about to throw up. I run to the bathroom and I start throwing up blood and that. My mom is like, what's wrong with you? I was like, I think I got damaged during Thai boxing. I was like keeping up the light the entire time because I didn't want my parents to freak out. So, you know, my mum took me to the hospital and they were like, yeah, you've got some internal bleeding and you know, you got bruised ribs and blah, blah, blah. And afterwards I spoke to my doctor, like in private. I told him what happened and he was like, okay, make sure you don't do that again. And I asked him not to tell my parents, which he thankfully did. But when I was writing the story for this, the belief points were. That was the only belief point there was. I jumped off a building and I survived. Now, everything else that came up to that were all points like, I repressed my emotions, I couldn't talk about it. I had these several issues that went around. And everything I said, the person on the other side, I can imagine them nodding their head and going, yeah, I can totally relate to some of this. I have felt this way. And that's what it is. When you use a story or an image, you can do it that way. If you're using a video sales letter, by the way, and I will give one touch on this because you mentioned it. Study musical notes in the sense of where you can cut off. So each musical note. So each bar runs on a bar of four almost always. And if you have like an inspirational piece and you miss out the fourth bar and keep repeating the first three, the brain is trying to wait for that fourth bar to kick in so it'll keep your viewers staying for a lot longer. That's a little sneaky tactic that you can use. The other is if you want someone to feel sad, downshift the tone to a lower, deeper bass or slow the music right down so it could be like a happy song. You slow that music right down, it takes on a whole different tone. And you want to have that in your videos to actually change the sound.

So do you. On a lot of the offers that you work on these days, are you doing more work with video sales letters and webinars versus traditional sales letters?

I work on all of them.

Are you seeing, you know, videos personally, converting a lot better?

Not really, no.

That's great.

Yeah. Give me one moment. Hold on a second. I've got like a friend of mine trying to call me like twice. I'm like, damn it. Sorry about that, guys. All good. All right, cool. So real quickly, what I was going to say was like, I see videos do convert quite well. But the thing is, it's the type of video, if you're going old school direct response video, you're a good story based sales letter without convert it. Webinars are the same thing.

Yeah.

If, if, if you run it like the thing with webinars and videos or any funnel type thing, establish a running narrative before you actually start creating anything. Because if you have a running narrative of emotions that you want someone to feel before, during, and after they watch the video and get to it, you will have a high conversion rate. Same with your sales letters. But I actually find a story selling based video sales letter out converts a story selling based sales letter. So vsl, that's story based is will out convert just a written letter but big but here they have to have the principles of initiating and ingratiating a story to it.

Right. And you know one of the things there because you know there's a lot of people just say, you know, videos always convert better than sales letters. Well, not always true. Especially because with a video it is much more important and because you're doing it in a linear fashion. And I can't just scan down to the end of the page to see what you're offering. Like with the sales page I can go, alright, I kind of like your headline. This might be something I want. Everybody scrolls down see what the bottom line offer is. And if it's like how to do X and X is something I want to do, I might be much more willing to give you the time of day because I can kind of see the page. I like. I personally hate video sales letters now because I just get me to the damn point. Although I know that a lot of times it can burn better. But you better have a damn good, you better be damn good on video and be able to create that narrative that people are going to pay attention. Especially in a times, you know, time starved economy where people are just like get to the point already. So it really kind of depends, right?

I'd actually take it further. It's kind of like people are into that but if you're authentic and give them a true story that they can watch all the way through, that's the key.

That's what I'm saying is like the, like that the story will hook them in and keep them to watch your video versus if you're just sitting there making claims like hey, watch this video and I'm going to show you how you can do X, Y and Z and it's going to be super duper cool. It's like get to the point dude, like you haven't engaged me. But if you start with a something, a story, it's like okay, well you got my attention.

See there is something that works that is I'm gonna make a prediction on this. It's gonna keep working, but it needs to change, otherwise it's gonna die. And that is the whole. Our friend John Benson does this where he kind of says this is like the doubt. Badass is one of the best ones I've ever seen him do, and it sticks my memory for years, is like, this is a goldfish in the moon. And I'll tell you why. This goldfish is responsible for how many times you get laid. Or something like that. That's a great pattern interrupt. But if you watch the rest of that video, it's a really good story based around an offer, that's fine. But to change that and make it even better today in your industry, rather than going, this is a golf ball in a moment, let me show you how this golf ball helps you with your health and training. Instead of shifting, instead of going that route, you can actually just really start off with it depends what tempo you want to set. So I'll give you an example with something I'm writing right now for myself, and that is I'm actually opening in myself in the self development market under a pen name, which you'll see soon enough. It essentially the opening words on that video, it's just a blacked out video that has a flash of light and then goes back to dark. And all it says is, and I thought I was in heaven.

Huh?

That is the opening of words that and I thought I was in heaven. And then it just opens up with the beeping sound from like a heart monitor and just goes into, when I opened my eyes, this is what I felt. And then it just goes. It just goes into the whole idea of, you know, I've taken you from a point of, oh, yeah, you know, I'm just gonna watch this video to you're right there engaged into a gripping battle of drama with me. And then all of a sudden you're like, I'll take you through the journey of how I overcame the drama and how you can actually do the same thing and how we can actually work together.

That's great.

Yeah. By the way, if you guys want to really understand how to say, study stuff like this, watch movies like Tarantino is a master of creating dialogue.

Oh, yeah.

Just watch YouTube videos breaking down Tarantino's dialogues, and I guarantee you you'll understand how to script really good copy. If you combine the story aspects with direct response response aspects, you'll create perfect offers every single time. And one of the things I will say that if you really want to understand what to offer if you're lost, survey your marketplace. Actually spend a couple of bucks to survey them. Find out what they want, find out not just what their pain points are, but what their pleasure points are, as in what they're seeking. Reverse engineer that and send it to them.

Yeah, the surveys and actually asking. It's amazing what you get out of that. You know, one of the things that I've done a little hack for copy intelligence on clients sites. I've done this on some of mine as well. Which is, which is immediately after they buy something online and before you give them the access, like the username, password, if it's a login or whatever, it just says thank you, please, you know, please complete these two questions in order to proceed. And it's. And it's mandatory. They have to do it, which is step one, Basically, where did you find us? And this is a softening question. I could care less. I can usually tell by my Google Analytics or whatever, but I do want them to know like, hey, so and so minded me or I found it on Facebook ad or whatever. And it's like people are like, oh, cool. And then number two is what made you decide to make this investment today? Or why did you decide to invest in this system today? And it's like one little long. And what's so cool about that is you've got them at that peak moment where they're still got the endorphin rushes and they'll tell you. And in the language that they use when they did that, you'll often get some really good copy elements. I used to be working with a real estate investor named Kent Clothier who sells a software about how to find motivated sellers and whatnot online. One of the pieces we got, which is one of the lines, I'll just never forget it because it murdered it when we started to use it in our sales copy, which was I'm tired of killing myself trying to find motivated sellers. I was like, wow, that's good language, right? Like you get it. So immediately that became the subject of the next email that went out. Tired of killing yourself trying to find motivated sellers. Crushed it. Started using that everywhere. And you know, there's other things that, that we use as well, but it's super cool because you just go through there and you might not use any of them, but every once in a while you're going to get somebody who in their own natural language is going to give you the best copywriting line.

You could ever use and for the marketplace as well. And just as a quick tip real quickly as well, if you want to get really good at understanding what your audience is thinking. So like, first of all, understand your demographic of who you buy, following Brad's example right there, then actually go hang out with them like not the, with the person that filled out. And you can do by all means, but find that demographics. It's like if it's 25 to 35, hang out with a 30 year old that is into similar interests or in a similar marketplace and you'll find out exactly what the language is.

Yep.

What they respond to. And then reverse engineer that pop culture into your emails.

Bingo. Bingo. I love it. Well man, this brings us to the actual end of the show, but I want to not only thank you for being a guest, if people want more information, whether it's on your show or to potentially work with you. I mean like, are you like you currently do work with clients right now, is that correct?

I do. I'm really selective. Like my dance card for the time being is kind of full. So the best thing for you guys to do, there's two ways of working with me and getting in touch with me. Number one, I'll give you guys three links. Okay. So it's that easy. So to work with me, find out more about me, check out the show and so on and so forth. It's just adelamarcy.com go there, check out the podcast. Brad show will be up as well. So you guys can check that out when it comes out. And also if you hit the consulting tab, you'll see how we can get on the phone for 15 minutes and how I can solve your business problem because I've discover crazy little idea of how I can verbalize copy out of my ass. As you guys would have actually noticed on the show, pulling copy out for the fun of it. So that's links by the way, if.

You bitches had a podcast, you could get them on the phone for an hour. What?

Yeah, exactly. What? There we go. Yeah, just get me on like that's another way hit me up on my site. If you do want me on your show, check out my podcast adelmarcy unplugged. So alanmarcy.com podcast or just Adam Marciom itunes. And finally this is a treat for you Brad, for your guys because I put your face up there nice and lovely as well. If you guys go to story selling emails.com I've done a 15 minute free video. There's literally nothing to sell on that. It's just a free video. I want you to go through on how to structure your email sequences and how to structure your welcoming email. So your welcoming email example, exactly what points you need to hit in order to get someone to actually be completely engaged with you. And then the outline of how you can actually write sales emails and just influence emails over the time period that you have someone on your mailing list.

I'm pretty sure I see it.

How's. Yeah, see, told you I got you up there. So story selling emails, once you enter your name and email address on that page, you don't have to reload or anything. It'll just unlock the content. You can watch the video at your own pace. I think there's a PDF download as well on this. You guys can go through the PDF when and if you want to. But yeah, dude, that's how people can get in touch with me, get to know me, get me on this show and hire me if I'm available.

I love it. Well, guys, I hope you have enjoyed the topics we've covered today with me and Adol and hope you've learned a lot. I mean, this is one you may want to go back through and take some notes on if you didn't write down all those formulas and points. You know, offer creation and copywriting is a, is an art and a science and it's a very rare skill. I'm proud to say that I'm, I feel I'm pretty good at it. Adoles. One of the best in the world. So hopefully between the two of us, you guys have gotten a lot of value from this. And Adol, thank you so much for being a guest on the show today and for all of my listeners. Subscribe if you haven't yet and send me an email if you have any questions or would like to offer any insights yourself or would you just like a second opinion on your offer and you know, maybe you're stuck and you looking for new ways to grow. I'm happy to see if there's an opportunity to add value. My email is askbradakenratbusiness.com and ADOL. Thanks again, brother.

Oh man, thank you so much for having me.

Talk to you soon. See you on the next episode.