Sean Vosler - How To Sell Through The Power of Storytelling

I love story. Like, I think it's one of the most interesting sides of persuasion. And that's really what story is all about. People may not realize that, but story is a tool that's been around for millennia in society to, to convince people of things. You know, maybe back in the day, it was the story of when I ran into a lion and I was able to get away from it by, you know, using a pointy stick or whatever.

Right.

But it's. It's a persuasion technique to help those around.

Things.

This is an intro. Intro, intro, intro.

Hustle and Float Shark with your boy, my boy, Matt Wolf. Joe.

Hey.

Welcome back to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. My name is Matt Wolfe and along with my co host, welcome back to the show. Today's episode is one that was kind of a long time coming. And he's one of my longest friends. No, that doesn't make sense. One of my oldest friends in the digital marketing space. Him and I were both teaching and doing WordPress stuff together, oh, about a decade ago. So we go back quite a bit. We've been pretty good friends. We live in the same town. We've hung out quite a bit, bounced ideas off each other, been in masterminds together, things like that. Just love the guy. And we've been talking about getting on the podcast for quite a while and scheduling conflicts and other things have popped up that, that have kept us from making it happen. But we finally did it and it's a really amazing episode. You're really gonna enjoy this discussion. It is with Sean Vossler. And Sean is just a king of social media. He's all over Clubhouse. He's on Facebook, he's, you know, if you follow him, you probably hear from him a lot. And he's got a book called Seven Figure Marketing Copy. And it is just this beautiful book on copywriting philosophy and strategies. And it's, you know, he goes in depth with the graphic design on it to just make the book look like a beautiful coffee table book. And it's just, I can't wait to get my hands on a physical copy of it really soon. And he's going to talk about all of that on the show. We cover a lot of ground on this one, actually. We talk about his book, we talk about copywriting strategies, we talk about how he sold 25,000 copies of this copywriting book. We talk a little bit about Clubhouse, we talk about what went into the design of this book, this coffee table book, we talk about our philosophies on knowledge management. And reading books. And if you ever listen to, like, Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose's random show, this is kind of like our version of the random show. We kind of go in a lot of different directions. The core focus is on copywriting. We're gonna learn a lot about copywriting and a lot about storytelling, but we do kind of dip our toes into a wide range of topics. So if you're into really nerdy digital marketing, Internet marketing, knowledge management type topics like I am, you're gonna nerd out over this episode like I did. So again, we cover a lot of ground. So grab the notes, go to flowchartgroup.com and you can get the notes that we took on this episode. If you do it within two weeks. So you go to flowchartgroup.com, you'll be able to join our Facebook group there. And while joining the Facebook group, you'll have the opportunity to give us your email address so we can send you these notes. So go to flowchartgroup.com, join the group. If you do it within two weeks, we're gonna hook you up with the notes to this episode. And also, as a last quick thing, go check out Sean copy. That's S E A N copy. That's where you can get your own copy of the seven figure marketing copy book that Sean put out. All right, enough of my rambling. Let's go jump in with Mr. Sean Vossler.

We have hit record, Matt. Cool. Is the red light on? Okay.

Yes.

Vossler, you good? Got your red light on.

One, two, three. Tacticals. Yeah, we're good. Yeah, we're good.

Okay. Whenever we start recording a podcast, Joe always likes to act like he's never done it before, and he wants to know if we're doing it right.

It's a new setup, my friend. Jesus. I mean, look at Vossel over here.

What does this red light mean?

Is this.

What is this?

Just making sure we're all confirmed here. Oh, man, it's great to have you on the show. We've only talked about it for a while, but I think it's all for good because you're doing some crazy things now and some new things coming up here with your book, which I know we'll be talking a lot about.

No, it's. It's Joe. It's good to be here. I'm a big fan of what you guys been doing and kind of watch it since its infancy and starting to blow up now, and I'm just like, I'm impressed. You guys just been really consistent, bringing awesome content to people. So any way I can contribute? I'm just happy to be here, guys.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. This episode's been sort of a long time coming. I think you were just saying before we hit record, you and I have known each other for roughly 9ish years, maybe. I actually don't even remember how we got introduced. I think it was. I had the WordPress classroom at the time, and you were Sean, the WordPress Guy Vossler at the time. And somebody was like, hey, you're a WordPress guy. You're a WordPress guy. You should know each other. And we're like, okay, let's know each other. And we.

Right. I think that's how we got connected. I think even before. I think even before that, it was just like Facebook, like, you came up or I saw, you know, something about WordPress, because at the time I was. Yeah. Trying to gear that up and. And, you know, so, you know, we've. We've. We've both grown quite a bit since then, but it's cool that we're. We're still, like, in the same neighborhood too, you know, like down here in La Jolla, so. For sure, yeah.

Although I haven't really seen any good people.

Still could be connected.

I haven't seen anybody but my family and Joe for like a year now.

But in our bubble, anybody at all.

You haven't left your office.

Why would you. It's a good time to be Ms. Tooth, to be honest, if you're going to be missing a tooth.

Well, are we starting it on that front vessel?

We could. I just want to get it out of the. Out of the air, you know, and. And we could do a formal introduction on. On some of the awesomeness. We'll be talking about copywriting, marketing course, making a lot of sales, stuff like that. But I did not get in a bar fight. I did not. I was trying to think of, like, good stories that that could have been, but really what happened is I just. I needed to get it removed. And this was in like, the end of February, like last year, so right before COVID hit. And so I got it removed, and then the dentist shut down for three months, and then they shut down for, like, they said it was cosmetic, you know, And I'm like, might be cosmetic to you, but yeah. So I'm finally getting it back in like a month. So, you know, till then I look, you know, like, I'm from Ohio, which I am from.

You are from Ohio, and you haven't.

Just Gotten and bought a pack of Chiclets and jammed one in there.

Dude, I thought about it. That's a good idea, actually. I like where your head is, Matt.

And for everyone who's just on audio only, you have no clue what we're talking about, but, yeah, go check it out. Yeah, I think we'll make this the featured image of the podcast. So it's nice and I'm just kidding. All right, moving on. Let's talk about. I'm kind of curious, like, from WordPress days when you guys first met, how did that transition from that world go to copy affiliate marketing, doing equity deals, working with people like Tai Lopez and just like, Specker. Yeah. I mean, you have a crazy network, man. So kind of take us back a little bit. It's been a while, too.

Yeah. So it's. It's interesting that. Yeah, I was actually talking about this the other day, trying to think of, like, where. Where did all the. The cards fall to build this, you know, house or whatever. And from those days, like, I got my start really in web development. Like, I went to school, I, like, wanted to build Internet stuff, you know, and this was, Gosh, I don't know. Oh, 660-708-09. Something like that. Can't remember. And came across this little platform called WordPress. Now it's like, everybody obviously knows about it. And I started building sites for people, you know, and it kind of. Kind of seemed natural at the time. Build a brand around it. Kind of like, I didn't really know what I was doing at the time, but came up with the little, you know, Sean WordPress guy, Vossler. And what was interesting about that, as an entrepreneur is, like, it opened a lot of doors for people. I generally now don't recommend. Like, sell yourself as a tactical person. Like, I want to be the WordPress guy now. Like, you don't want to just build WordPress stuff. Right? But the doors that open as far as people, like, I need a WordPress guy, like, that's. I got connected with a lot of the people in the Internet marketing world, if you want to call it that, kind of at the start, you know, folks, like, my actual first person I really worked close with on the, like, online mart in the online marketing space was Lewis Howes and just connected over the old Facebook and about probably around the same time I met you, Matt, and kind of snowballed with that. Like, I had the technical aspect of it, and a lot of people need that stuff. So I was really kind of. I was happy to be Running my own agency at the time, but.

I had done the old entrepreneur trade, the 9 to 5 for the 5 to 9. So I was working like 80 hours a week, it seemed like at the time. But yeah, that transitioned into really.

Just.

The casual introduction to what is known as copywriting and the value of it over the years of working with folks like Frank and Lewis Howes and like that, that's where the real value was in the pieces I was building. It wasn't the pages, it wasn't the design as much, it was the words on the page that made the difference. Right. So that was kind of the transition. You know, there's a lot more twists and turns, but like understanding and experiencing that it wasn't the vessel I was making that was valuable, but the stuff that was inside the vessel, that was what really drove me to where I am now.

Yeah. So I apologize in advance because I'm going to name drop on your behalf, but I'm just kind of curious, how did that lead to the connections to guys like Tai Lopez and Sam Ovens and Alex Becker?

When you said Frank, I'm assuming you meant Frank Kern, because that's like the Frank that everybody talks about in our industry.

How did those connections end up happening? Were you just, you built a website for Louis and Lewis told his friends this is who to go to?

Yeah, no, it was part of the branding thing on Facebook. So I would actively search out people I thought were interesting. I'm a big fan of finding people like you guys who are doing really cool stuff and just studying it, even if I don't particularly understand it, just try to deduce what they're doing. That's how I got involved with Lewis actually is I didn't even really know what Internet marketing or affiliate marketing or any of this stuff was, but I saw this.

Good looking dude or whatever, like sitting on an infinity pool in New Zealand and I was like, whatever that dude's doing, I want to learn that. Right. So I virtually stalked him and studied his stuff and figured out who he was connected to. And it sounds a little creepy in hindsight.

But a big part of what they did was launch information products. Right. And at the time I got connected, I kept reaching out and you know, I'll never forget really what caused that connection to really happen was I, they, they had become aware of myself because I had, I'd reached out and given them, you know, some, some advice on WordPress here and there and fixed a few things. And then one night they were doing a big launch with A fellow named James Wedmore. And he. Just in the middle of the launch, everything just crashed. Like server. I can't really remember what it was, but they hit me up like two in the morning because no one else was around, and I was able to help them. Right. I got in. It's just something probably simple at the time.

And that made a good impression. Eventually I started working for them full time. And the networking side was really just that kept finding people who were interesting and exciting to study and getting to know them and reach out and get on their radar.

You've always made yourself available. Yeah. I feel like you always put yourself out there where a lot of folks will be a little bit more. I mean, I feel like you are. You hold close to your cocoon or bubble, you know, like you're cockpit in the office that you're in. But at the same time, you're always out there helping and giving advice or lending a hand whenever you can. And it seems like that's because that's what I've always known about you is like, oh, there's Vossler again. He's on Facebook or Clubhouse now. You know, you're there just giving value, making connections, just offering to be there for someone. And I feel like, I don't know, it sounds like that's like the big key that really got you in with, you know, with the folks that you've. That kind of made you grow now, you know, to where you're at.

Sure. And, you know, it's. And maybe there's a formula to it. I couldn't really say. But it's. It's. If you have value to give as an entrepreneur or like, in your world, the thing you can do that no one else does quite as well in your circle. Right. How do you get people to know about that, and how do you get them to like you? And how do you get them to trust you? Right. The old. No, like, trust factor. Right. Getting them to know you is just a matter of getting in front of them in certain ways. And I found that the best way to do that is to give them value advance. Right. So I got involved actually with Tai Lopez.

I'd casually reached out at a certain point because he was doing some interesting stuff on YouTube. And at the time, I'd been a little more advanced in my career, so it was easier to just reach out to folks like that. But what I wanted to actually work with him. It's not like I just rang him up and was like, hey, we should do something together. Right. I went and studied what he was doing in his business. And I created a mind map of ways he was losing a lot of money. Right? And it was pretty freaking detailed. It took me quite a while, but I sent it to him. I said, hey, listen, I do this stuff, but truth is, I know you have a team. I'm fascinated with what you're doing. I couldn't help myself but study and take a look at under the Hood. From everything I could see. And I noticed this, this, and this. And here's what I would do to fix it. And we actually didn't end up doing that plan. He thanked me. He was like, this is awesome. But it opened the door to the conversation later when he's like, I need to start doing affiliate marketing. Which is part of what was in that mind map anyways. So anyways, the value you can bring as an entrepreneur in advance, it pays dividends. You're making an investment in that networking part.

Yeah, for sure. And you're just giving them optics or a new perspective on something they might be too close on, close to. And then here you are with a detailed plan, boom, dropped in their lap. I mean, even if it wasn't as detailed, you thought through something that they might not have. And anyone can swipe that up.

It may not be. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, Joe. But it's funny, like, it may not be the most efficient way to make sales, you know, like as far as, you know, having a sales team, people call in and closing $2,000 deals, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you're doing really high end services, it pays to work with people. You for sure know that you can help. Right? And that's really been the difference. On my agency side, I'm only really looking to add one or two clients a year at that. And especially now with the way the books going and stuff, I've actually been curtailing that down. But.

I'm looking for at least 100k a year per customer. So to get those kind of deals, it's a lot of nurturing and, and building out that relationship in advance. So that. Because you're asking for quite a bit of guacamole at that phase, San Diego guys.

Yes. Well, I know that you've done some deals where you've struck up equity deals because you've actually got a training course that I think I won access to. I think you did some sort of contest on Facebook. And I won the contest and got access to your equity consulting.

It was rigged.

It was rigged.

Yeah, yeah. No it's so, you know, it's one of those like kind of the natural progression. Of course, once you've done something successfully, you know, you keep doing it, but if you want to supplement a bit of that, you know, and oftentimes it will replace the income of that. So I created a course about how to do it. Right. But the essence of it really is like, I used to sell websites, right? And if you go and you go on fiverr.com you can get a website set up, WordPress installed, theme installed for like 50 bucks. That's. That's selling a website.

That's probably high Fiverr too.

Yeah, right. That's the 10x version of the $5 deal. So, you know, the. The natural evolution of understanding where your value is. It kind of hit me that what I'm selling at the end of the day is growth, whatever, you know, for me it's. It's marketing, so it's sales and leads, right. And that's what I'm selling. So that's what I need to be pitching. The technology doesn't matter.

The strategy does to an extent. But that's not really even the first real conversation you're going to have on the sales side. The first conversation you're going to have is like, what is this going to do for you? I think I quoted to Ty at the time about 10 million a year he was missing out on by not patching these things in his business. So I try to bring.

To the conversation the perspective of an investor, but really what I'm doing oftentimes now it's more like click funnels and other tools like that than WordPress. But I'm still building stuff, still at the end of the day delivering.

A thing to them. Right. Website, messaging, all that. But I'm not pitching that. And that's a big. For anyone listening, that's in the service world looking up a level of not like whatever it is you're selling, try to think of the outcome of that and focus on selling that as opposed to the thing you've been selling. And you can increase your rates quite a bit. And that's profit share is something that changed my business drastically, even though it is a bit more of a complex move.

This is cool. Yeah. Because I love the fact that you told Ty, hey, you're missing out on 10 million on stuff you're already doing. So a. Already. I know. And I'm sure in his mind he was like, okay, oh crap, holy shit, this guy's seeing stuff that I don't see. And I could probably just make some minor adjustments here, or maybe not so minor. But I'm kind of curious. What are some deal structures? You don't have to be specific on people or clients, but throw out a couple ones that you kind of default to. Or an agency, or even maybe it's not an agency. You can kind of swipe this.

Yeah, no. Well.

Again, it's about framing it. Right? Right. Like, you don't want to frame it as you're pitching them something. Really, it's more pitch. Like, here's an experiment. Let's try this. If it works, you know, I'll take a small percentage of the sales. If it doesn't, you're not out anything. So I do pure commission structure. Like, and I'll generally do. Depending on this, you know, the. What I think the outcome will be. I'm okay with, like, 10% or less. Oftentimes, it may sound kind of crazy for folks who are like, wow, shouldn't you do 50 50, or something like that? But the folks I'm pers. Suing, the customers I really want to work with, they already generally have a lot of their ducks in order, so I don't have to do as much of the legwork on things. And then there's really just the two types of clients that I go after. There's distribution clients like Tai Lopez's and Alex Becker's, and then there's the product and people who have really good products. So, like, I, early on in this process, got involved with a fellow named Sam Ovens, who's. He's blown up considerably now, obviously consulting dot com. But I got involved with him because I saw his product, and I was like, dude, this is so freaking good. And I was, like, kind of mad because I wanted to make a similar product, right?

But instead of doing that, I actually pursued him as, like, he'd never done affiliate deals. He'd never really done webinars before this. And I basically said to him, listen, I love your product. I think I could find people to promote it. So really, you have those two columns of clients, the distribution and the product. And then what I would actually do is obviously connect them, but then I would use my craft of marketing and funnel building and copywriting to actually build out the promotion. And that was another big risk removal for them because, A, I had the experience in it, and B, they didn't have to take away, you know, their team to build out this stuff. I knew that it'd be better if they had someone focused fully on making the promotion awesome. And writing this all very specifically for them. And that formula has worked really well for me. Right. Like actually taking the time to not just connect people, but build the bridge as well between them.

Yeah. You have a mechanism that they might have, but they're not going to tie their resources up because here you are presenting them with a plan, something they probably haven't seen. You're like, yo, I can just take care of it. Everyone wants done for you anyway, and you're giving them a really sweet offer or, you know, a way to collaborate together. And they're not out anything. They're just. They just have upside.

Right, Exactly. And honestly, you know, I'll. I'll just, you know, I'll admit for a minute, like, I mostly came to that model out of. I don't like to sell. I don't like to pitch. I don't like to, like, hard sell or close people. I like to make it a, you know, such a big win, win, win that it's really hard. Like, they'll start pitching me on it. And it's more of a collaborative experience. Right. And to be honest, most. I don't. I can't remember the last deal that has come to me directly. Like someone reaching out and say, hey, we should do this thing. I do remember last one. It didn't go so well. But I haven't done one of those in a very long time because I want to be the one to formulate and bring it to them. Because if they already know all the nuts and bol, they actually. I mean, I could make a case for them to need me, but it's a much more uphill battle and a lot more work I found, and a lot less profitable around because I'm. I have a little less flexibility to actually build out the thing I want to build for them.

You're literally sparking curiosity on their side, you know, and then you have the magic codes and this, you know, whatever thing over here. There's like.

Like, Vossler has the key.

I need him.

I generally give it to him, by the way. I hand them the mind map, and they're like, I don't want to do this. You do it. That too.

I like that approach.

They don't know how to use the key.

I feel it's similar to sort of the approach we've always taken, too. We've always kind of resisted doing the whole hard selling, and here's what the cost is going to be. So we've always kind of approached it in a similar way of, like, how do we find a win win deal. So if they don't want to work with me, they almost feel dumb for not doing it because it's such a win win to do it right. I love that approach.

That's great.

Thanks, man.

Well, it kind of reminds me of. Well, it is. It's persuasion copywriting. I mean, it's like exactly what you preach. And you were saying right before I hit this big red button that I don't know what it did. I think it records stuff. But you were saying how every entrepreneur should have some freaking copywriting skills. And even if you're not the best, and maybe you still hire a copywriter like we did just recently, at least we know how to present it, how to find the right person to really up things for us. Speaking of your thoughts on why people should really study copy, and then we.

Can kind of dig into that. Yeah, and of course it's going to sound. I'm going to sound pretty biased on this because I have a book on copywriting, but literally the book was born out of that kind of realization. And for myself, it was very clear that in my experience, copywriting made all the difference in the value I was able to bring to clients and also just like launching my own products and things like that. So, you know, as entrepreneurs, we often get really excited about.

Things like the product development side and.

Like the nuts and bolts of the tactical things that make our business work, where a lot of times we just assume when people see it, they're going to get it and want to buy the thing. Right? And then.

The early, the new entrepreneurs, they put their widget or their product or whatever out in the world and they're like, why aren't people buying this? Right. It's clear to me, it's so clear to them how awesome their thing is. And then they're just confused. And oftentimes, I mean, I've been there, I've launched things that fell flat. I couldn't figure out why, because I put my heart and soul into them. And the realization that you can't assume people are going to be persuaded to buy your thing just because you think it's great. You need to learn at least the fundamentals. And the more you learn it, the better you'll actually get at the other things that surround it, like actually.

Building better products as well, because you'll, you'll be able to dig into the, the fundamentals of, of what people actually want and desire, and you can build that into the product itself. So it's not just a way to persuade people to buy, but it's also a tool you can use to. To help you refine your product and. And make it even better. So there's. There's lots of good reasons, but those are really the two key ones I found. And. And if you can be persuasive and actively convince people to take action, which is what you're doing when you're trying to sell something.

You really are. It's really a superpower that you can apply to just about any area in business as you move forward in your entrepreneur journey.

Yeah, I would say even more than just business, like, anywhere in life, because you're trying to persuade people in business and out. So I would say it's just a good life skill in general to be able to persuade. And another big piece of copywriting, which you and I have had some discussions around lately, is the storytelling element of copywriting. How much does storytelling fit into the frameworks that you use inside of your copy?

Yeah. Yeah. So I actually have a couple chapters in the book on storytelling, one really specifically on the hero's journey, which we don't have to dive into all that detail. But I love story. Like, I think it's one of the most interesting sides of persuasion, and that's really what story is all about. People may not realize that, but story is a tool that's been around for millennia in society to convince people of things. You know, maybe back in the day, it was the story of when I ran into a lion, and I was able to get away from it by, you know, using a pointy stick or whatever. Right. But it's. It's a persuasion technique to help those around you experience things. So I actually, I started digging into this study of story and marketing, how it all intertwines, because, as you know, there's tons and tons of books about storytelling and marketing. And honestly, I just didn't connect a lot with them. Like, I didn't really. I didn't get it just yet. And then I was reading a book on writing fiction, and the gal who wrote it, the name is escaping me, but she explained story as.

Giving an experience to someone and giving experience to someone. So you're giving an experience by, like, walking them through. They're getting the emotional, they're getting the fear of the line or whatever, or, you know, the time you. You drank too much and. And you walked out into the bar and whatever the story may be, right, or how you lost your tooth.

But you're also. So that's giving them an experience, but you're giving them experience as well. You're actually putting into their mind experience so they don't have to go do that thing to get the experience. They don't have to go kill the lion, they don't have to go get in the bar fight. They can learn a lesson from you. Right? So in marketing, the best way to use story is to wrap the lesson of our offer our product or service, whatever we're selling in that story so that we can give them a lesson and experience that resonates and teaches them and gives them that like aha moment so they don't have to go through the headache we went through. So like with you guys, I know you mentioned. I don't. I hope it's not too much of a spoiler like mentioned. You're looking to put together a podcast product, a story that you can tell about that is a time that you were incredibly frustrated or had major hangups or really down on your luck or really upset. Like the hero's journey. Right. The all is lost moment in the story and what you did to overcome it. Right. That's like the three act structure, right? Well, that's two out of three. But that, that gives the end reader, the person who's engaged in the story, that gives them all kinds of useful information. It gives them the authority aspect, which is huge in copy and persuasion. If you tell a story like here's how I succeeded, just by succeeding, you have built authority for yourself. If you failed and then succeeded, it makes you more of a human factor. Right. There's all these different elements, but in a nutshell, story, it's an underestimated, underutilized tool in the marketing world for what it's really meant to be, which is a way for us to deliver an experience to people.

And it really seems like that's where empathy comes from. You can empathize with the reader, viewer, whoever. And it almost like to your point about creating a better product, it allows you to create a better product and probably smash some of these objections or create a product that can allow people to. You're building a bridge for them. So yeah. How does that relate to the benefits? Writing benefits or thinking of the objections, some things that might stop someone from buying.

Yeah, empathy is a great word, Joe.

I actually, I keep referencing the book, but I have a chapter on empathy. You're a good study, Joe. I try, but it's funny because it is an emotional experience. Empathy, it's understanding someone's emotion without being them, stepping into their shoes. Right. So as copywriters like as the profession of marketers and copywriters. Like what you're trying to do early on in the phase, let's say I'm writing a piece of copy for a bottle of water.

One of the first steps is to get to understand the people I'm trying to market it to and the benefit that it brings to them. And the way to do that is empathize with the problems that your product is solving. There's a lot of different ways to do that. Interviews, reading things about the individuals, their testimonials. One way, a simple tip, tactical thing people can do that I like to do is go on Amazon and look at the book reviews in the niche that you're in or even products that you're in would work too. But let's say you're writing a piece of copy or a message or a story or whatever in the self development world, right? Like improving yourself. If you go to one of the classics like how to Win Friends and Influence People on Amazon and you start digging into the reviews, you're going to find a lot of language that you can empathize with. You're going to find a lot of. I was down on my luck and then I read this certain thing and I started to realize that it wasn't about, you know, getting, wasn't all about having him being a positive person. A lot of it was just accepting the negativity, whatever the insight is, right. You're then able to empathize with that statement if you've experienced it or just you can feel it in what they're sharing. And.

The benefit of that is you're able to write much more effective connective copy with people because you did take the time to understand their pain, where they're coming from.

Yeah, the whole Amazon review strategy, I guess it's one. I was even just looking at some random products the other night because we were looking at helping my father in law with something. But I was just like, man, reading reviews are really cool because they're little mini stories and you get a window into someone's experience in their lives that you would never know otherwise. And really what other platform at a wide scale can you do that for? Literally any product, product or book possible than Amazon.

Are there any? And it's beautiful because you know their buyers like they left a review because they bought. And you'll like you said Joe, it's funny, the top you can sort by most like reviews, they're almost always stories. Like if there's like a thousand reviews, the number One is if it. It's almost, like, inevitable that it's a story of, like, you know, my. My son was always late for, you know, soccer, and it really puts stress on her family. But then I got this alarm clock. You know, it's like, okay.

But people get it right going back to that story point. They can empathize with that. And it's like, a lot of people don't realize in marketing, copy sales, what you're really. A lot of times you're trying to do is just get them. A lot of times they've made up the decision to buy, and what you're trying to do is just reinforce that decision and give them a reason to buy. Like, or they're looking for a reason not to buy, and you want to give them a reason to buy. And story is just a crazy, effective way to do that. Yeah.

Now, is there, like, a specific flow to a story that you like to tell? Actually, you know what? Let me ask you this question instead. When it comes to stories, where should somebody start to kind of hone that skill? Because that's something that, for me, is something I want to get better at. Not just for business. I just want to be a better storyteller in general. For the sake of this podcast, for the sake of hanging out with friends and being more interesting, you know, just in general, I want to learn to be a better storyteller. Where's a good place to start?

Yeah, that's a good question, because I'm right with you, Matt.

I got the old chronic adhd, so I bounce around a lot in stories, and as you might be able to tell on the podcast here. So it is something, I think we all naturally are decent at telling stories like, it's a very human experience, especially if it's like, you were. It was really emotional, and you got very, like, one end or the other end of the spectrum, super in love, super mad, whatever it is. Those. Those will come a lot more naturally. But in general, you know. You know, when you hear a good storyteller like Tai Lopez, like, great storyteller, it's kind of off the wall sometimes and all over the place. But. But he just. He's good at winding things into his story. But I think people underestimate the value of practicing stories.

And actually taking the time to formulate them. Like, if it's something you care about, think about the stories you'd want to share in social situations and actually take the time to. You don't have to write them in detail, but bullet point them out. And what are the things, the key points you want to hit another just kind of cool thing you can do at the very basic level. Because story as natural as it comes, it is complex, the frameworks for them to tell a really good one. As anyone who watches a really good movie, they'll say, that was a good movie. Can't tell you why, but it's really good. Good story, right?

I like to look at very simple stories and try and extrapolate them. Like. Like, how did they get this story into like four or five lines? So Aesop's. I can't say that. With the missing two Aesop's Fables.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

Like.

They'Re all online, they're all free. It's a really cool way to go and look at very, very short stories. They're usually less than two paragraphs and they almost always have an interpretation too, like, what is the moral lesson? Right. So starting by studying some of those simple stories I think is very helpful because it gives you a lot more.

Appreciation for the very fundamental particles that make a story work. And I think we could all agree at the heart of every good story is a moral or a lesson or the takeaway, right? The thing, the overcoming evil, whatever it is, like, what are the themes.

In them that we can take away? So a lot of times what we are trying to do when we're telling a story in real life is we're trying to remember that lesson a lot of times as we tell the story. So if you can start by identifying some of those stories.

And identifying those lessons, it's a lot easier than later to communicate them. But I think too, just time and experience is always going to help as well. If you don't tell a lot of stories, then you're going to have a hard time with it. Right?

Well, I like that reference to the fables because you said a couple paragraphs. So it's short, it's punchy, but it's impactful. It's like, if you can nail that, I feel like that's probably what the best move. And then you can extract on that if it's necessary. I mean, have you found, like our shorter stories better than longer, drawn out for specific reason? Like, do you have some kind of, I don't know, like, go to Framework for that as well? I'm sure you do.

Yeah, you know, of course.

Show the book, man.

Show the book.

I know you're looking at it.

I won't get there just yet. No, you know, as you guys know, like, it doesn't matter the length of the thing, as long as it's engaging and interesting and has those elements. And same with marketing. Like my sales page for the book, Sean copy.

It's 2,500 words. Like, it's a pretty long sales page for a book. But I'm telling a story about the entrepreneur who didn't understand why the heck their stuff wasn't selling. Right? And I'm building that connection and I'm. I'm teaching them the mistakes that people often make. Like, I'm going through the lessons, right? So the length doesn't matter. Some of the podcasts I listen to are four to five hours long each. Like, I'm really big fan of hardcore history, right? Like, love that one. And there's another one about history. It's escaping me. But these are four and five hours. But they're not just four and five hours of rambling. They're very structured. And if you examine them, there are story arcs after story arcs, character building, all the elements, you know. And I know we're kind of shifting into the world of storytelling more than copywriting, but I firmly do believe those are married. Like, it's very close, and it should be, because Good Copy does the exact same thing. There's several different flavors of copy. Direct marketing, branding, content marketing. But at the end of the day, you're trying to do the same thing that a story is trying to do. You're trying to keep them engaged, keep them reading, keep them enthralled and trying to figure out what's next and then bringing the lesson home to them so that they can get the lesson. TED Talks are another really good example. They're about 18 minutes. Well, they're specifically 18 minutes on purpose. And so they're more short form. But there's a really good book called Talk Like TED where the guy studied TED Talks. And I think it's something. I think it was 68%, if I'm remembering that. Right. The average ted talk is 68% story. Wow. So it's just natural for us to do. And it's the things that makes them so engaging. And guess what? The people who do these TED talks, they practice for over and over and over again. They get it very concise, they get it very.

Focused, as opposed to what I tend to do, which is ramble. This is why you write points altogether.

No, you're great.

Yeah. It's a powerful tool for sure.

Why? I'm actually curious because I have not read that book. Why 18 minutes? Do you know why Ted does that? If it's not relevant here, then I.

Can'T really remember the specifics. But I think it's along the lines of that is the optimal attention span to get a fairly complex piece of information across.

Okay, got it.

Anything over that and you start to lose focus. Anything less than that, you're not giving enough detail. I think that's the argument they made for it.

Yeah, makes sense.

So I'm going to ask. This is going to be a broad question, but I'm not quite sure a better question to start with when it comes to copywriting. So let's step away from specifically storytelling and more of the broad topic of copywriting. What are some of the principles that people should start with when it comes to studying copywriting? And I know there's so many possible paths we can take this down, but I just want to hear like from your perspective, your opinion, like, where's the best place to start?

Sure. Good question. Because a lot of the. Actually most of the books on these shelves are not about copywriting. I find it hard to find books that I enjoy on copywriting because generally they're just like surface level. Like.

They don't really dive into the why of the information. So, you know, something I can recommend people start doing, and this is where I really got my start, is analyzing copy that's worked on you. Right. Like if you bought something, go back and try to deconstruct what it is. The thought process you had that persuaded you. You know, this happens to me all the time. Like I'll be on Amazon, like wanting to buy something. And then I'll generally, if I do buy it, I'll generally have this self.

Inner thought of like, yeah, and you know, I should buy this because of. That's a good point. I should buy this because of that. Because I'm looking for a reason to buy it. Right. So if you can go back and analyze those things, that's a really good place to start and break down, like the language they used. Especially if you bought from a random ad on like a display ad, that's the most difficult type of traffic to convert with the colder traffic. Because on Amazon, obviously if you're like searching for a coffee maker, they're already interested in buying. So the messaging is a little bit different than a banner that you might randomly see for a coffee maker that you already have a coffee maker. So the banner needs to. Or the Facebook ad, it needs to convince you that you need this one instead. Right. So changing behavior. So cataloging those things, I generally will transcribe like webinars, if I found them very persuasive and I'll highlight them and try to deduce what I thought was persuasive about it in my own language. Now, as you go down the rabbit hole, you'll start finding the different frameworks out there. You'll start learning about Aida, which has been around 100 and whatever years. Attention, interest, desire, action, like these frameworks that are out there. But if you start there oftentimes without actually doing some of the deduction, which is the act of coming to your own conclusion about the information, then you just have head knowledge and you don't have that street knowledge of you know what this feels. Right, I'm going to write it this way. And the way you get that is through that act of deduction of your own opinion and then vetting it out. Right. Like I think this worked because of this. I'm going to research that now and find the, perhaps the scientific reason it worked. But yeah, those are a few things you can do to even if you're just getting started, it's a brilliant way to get there a lot quicker.

Yeah, I like that a lot. I remember in the past there used to be this common advice that was going around and it might still be the common advice I don't run in a lot of copywriter circles is to go and find sales pages that you like and then literally rewrite them by hand yourself so that you get your brain into the mode of writing what those people wrote. And I was never able to do that. I didn't have the attention span to do that. But I'm curious, is that something that you recommend people do?

Well?

So everybody learns differently, right? And honestly, most of the books on my shelf are about how to teach and how to learn because it's to me the fundamentals tool of persuasion is about teaching somebody why you're right.

So you know any of the tactics you do, they may work, they may not, but you're taking action and telling your brain this is important to me. Right. And I think the cause and effect might be off of to why they they recommend do that. But I'm a firm believer in that kinetic action of handwriting. Something that's on your brain like this is important to me. I'm going to focus on this and it's more of a meta.

Influence then. I don't think you get better by just doing that, but I think you get more proactive by trying things regardless of whether they inherently work or not. But I've never done it either. I've studied a lot of them, and I'm a big fan of finding lines I really like and then I'll write them out. But, yeah, I think that's more of a. The cause and effect are a little off there, but who knows?

I like the idea, though. It probably does sink in. I was just thinking, with all the books that you have, because I've been looking at your bookshelf and I know you just distill so much information, and you mentioned Amazon reviews. Do you ever have questions or do you have a handful of questions or things that you have in mind when you go into a new resource or when you're seeking something for an answer? Do you have a set of questions that you have in mind before you jump in?

Yeah, I wish, because I'm transitioning into a new approach to research. Because like you said, it's like you kind of come at a topic like you don't know what you don't know, right? So you dive in and you're like, I'm searching for something, and I'm not even sure really what it is. I'm going to just grasp at straws until things start to make sense. So storytelling, for example, I didn't get it. I didn't really. Fundamentally, it didn't make sense to me. So I bought a bunch of books on it with the intent of seeing what other people's philosophies on it are, right? So I looked at fiction, nonfiction, writing, thesis papers like, where does story fit in all these pieces? And I didn't really have. My question really was like, fundamentally, what makes sense? What gets me excited about story that I can't really articulate right now. That, of course, is a super abstract question. It's kind of like walking into a dark room and hoping you can find a light switch. But it does work in the sense that.

You'Re doing a survey of what's out there in the world on the topic so that you can make a more informed questions. Now, my questions around story are like, what are the optimal way to introduce a new character so that they connect.

Either on one end of the spectrum or the other on the emotional spectrum of, like, we love this person or we hate them. Like, what's the best way to do that? Right? You know, so like, a book by Stephen King on story might be better for that, right? So to answer your question, no, I don't generally have a lot of specific questions, but kind of like it's, you know, putting a cow out to pasture to do Some free range and, you know, getting a bunch of accessible material. You know, libraries are not as available now with COVID and stuff. Hopefully they'll be. But I used to go to the one here, San Diego, one of the biggest libraries in the United States, and I just grab a stack of books. I'm not gonna sit there and read every. I'm looking mostly at the table of contents. You can do this on Amazon too, right? And Kindle Unlimited is huge if you're on a budget. Like, you can get. You can get a survey of 10 books, look through them, find the pieces that, like, you find interesting, study those, return it, get another one. But yeah, that's generally the direction I'll go for Anybody really into the research stuff. There's a book called Smart Notes, one of the most boring titles in the world. But it teaches a very cool way of doing research like that and cataloging it. Because I know a lot of people just sit, read and take notes, but they never look at them again, Right? So that book is designed to help you overcome that.

But that's Zettelkaskin.

Kasten.

Zettelkasten. That's it.

I have a. I have a I nerd out about knowledge management stuff. And I actually went down the knowledge management rabbit hole because I think on.

Instagram, it's amazing, right?

Well, no, I think on Instagram you actually shared that you were reading the how to Take Smart Notes by Sankey Aherns. I think that's how his name's pronounced. You mentioned that you were reading that book. I'm like, that looks interesting. And so I went and picked up that book, read it, and that led me down this whole rabbit hole. I found what's the guy, Tiago Forte stuff. I started studying everything he's put out. And then Andre Chaperone's really into it.

It was Rich Sheffrin, too. He was kind of insane about.

Rich was really into all the knowledge management stuff. So he was sharing articles with me. And now it's like one of my favorite topics. But that's a nerd out for a different day.

It's another podcast.

But fundamentally, though, a lot of what marketing is is bringing insights to people that didn't have it. They didn't know the thing that you're bringing to them. The best copy is the stuff that does that. Right? Gives them insights. So how do you find insights which an insight is like it's lifting up the veil of.

A solution to a problem. And to do that, it is very important to understand you might not call IT knowledge management, but research and searching for information. And if you don't like to do research, you can reframe it. I'm just a very curious person. I don't like to do research, but I do like to explore information and try to learn stuff. But at the end of the day, like getting that as a habit, I kind of ebb and flow with it. I would love to be the kind of person that sits and just reads four hours a day or whatever. I tend to fall in and out of the habit, unfortunately. But when I'm in motion, especially when I'm writing copy.

I am looking and looking. And it's an emotionally painful thing to find that insight a lot of times because it is kind of like walking in that dark room and finding that light, trying to find that light switch. There are ways to. There are approaches to help you with that. A real small tactical thing I would recommend people do is take. I think it was Confucius that said this. We're name dropping, you know, 4,000 year old Confucius said, but you know, he said all knowledge and wisdom. Paraphrasing of course starts with a definition of terms. And a lot of times if I don't know a subject, I will just literally try to build a glossary. I'll start on Wikipedia. Knowledge. Knowledge or what you call it.

Knowledge management.

Knowledge management. There's a whole article on Wikipedia because I dived into it and there's all these different theories and stuff and I just did a survey via Wikipedia on like the fundamentals of it. So that as I explore what works for me or you know, let's say I was selling a program on knowledge management.

I would want to find the basic fundamental terms before I even started trying to find insights and things like that. Make sure my foundational set of information is solid.

Yeah, I like that a lot. What do you use for your Zettelkasten? Are you using cards or do you have a software app that you use?

Right now I'm using Workflowy. Workflowy, which we think we've talked about before, but there's a bunch of them and that's another rabbit hole. But I managed to find.

You don't have to go down.

It's. But the whole idea really is you take notes and then you translate those notes into your own thoughts, complete thoughts, and give them sources. And there's tools to help you do that. It actually helps to start with paper because I couldn't understand it. It was like hurting my head like this system. So I actually did it as the book recommends on paper so that I could just get it. And then now I'm taking it digital.

But yeah, like when I was putting together my book, the process of writing it is now getting much more simpler by exploring a lot of these techniques of knowledge management and ways to digest information quicker. Which at the heart of being an entrepreneur.

That'S what you're doing nine times out of 10 is identifying.

Opportunities in the marketplace that people, other people don't see. Right. So how are you going to do that? You got to take in information, you got to digest it, you got to look at for the holes, the pieces, the connections. So it's another just universally good skill to get decent at.

Yeah, I love that. I find that some of my biggest insights around our business came from books that I read that had literally nothing to do with business. Joe and I were sitting out in my backyard a couple months ago and I was telling him about this book that I was reading all about sort of like the history of humans. It wasn't sapiens, but it's like a sapiens kind of book. Right. And while I was reading this book, I had this insight around Rockefeller and Henry Ford and they were kind of mentioning the prosperity and wealth that some of these early pioneers created. And I got some massive insights around our business from this book about the history of the human mind, basically. And it had nothing to do with business when I was reading about it, but it gave me this aha. And I pitched it to Joe and Joe's like, yeah, that's a great philosophy to look at our business. And it was the rational optimist.

Right, Rational optimist.

That's a really, really good book. But yeah, so I had all sorts of insights. And the book is not about business, it's not written by a business leader. It doesn't really talk about business much. It mentions some of the robber barons of 100 years ago or so, but other than that, it's not a business book. And just using this sort of Zettelkasten system of taking some aha's and notes out of that and then also having some of these notes that did come from business books. And I'm sort of cross linking them with tags and then you end up with these pages where books are cross linked. And now all of a sudden you're seeing like, all right, here's 15 different books that all reference this same idea. They just approach it in different ways. And now you have this bigger picture of the concept. And I feel like I'm rambling And that doesn't make sense. I know you know what you're talking about.

You're onto something very, very powerful. And fundamental to persuasion and marketing in general is by the way, what they call that, if you want the key phrase is domain knowledge, right. And there's actually this, there's studies, I think it's called heuristics. I'm not an expert in that stuff, but.

A lot of innovations come and I wish I knew some good examples of off the top of my head, but they come from people who have cross discipline experience or are able to see how things connect from different avenues and different business models and different areas. So a lot of what I read is like not about copywriting, it's about persuasion, it's about influence, it's about psychology, it's about literary analysis, rhetoric. And what that does, what exploring those topics does, is it helps me create those insights. And that's really what I'm striving for in my book. You know, you, you brought up a while a little bit ago about.

The idea of. I forget what it was. But needless to say that most of the. Oh yeah, like how do you come up with. Or you ask certain questions when you start doing research. Joe is asking. A lot of what I'm doing is I'm again back to that point. I'm searching for that eureka moment. I'll give you a good example. So I recently wrote recently, recently Blame it on the Tooth, a sales page. Yeah, there we go. About information products or like a course on how to build information products like everybody else in the world.

But as I was writing this page, like I was teaching about the value of it, the importance, the opportunity. And like I was really struggling to like find a insight that might connect with people. So.

I actually was procrastinating, which sometimes is an okay thing to do when you're not sure what to do. And I was reading, I think I was actually watching like a David Attenborough like nature documentary and brought up this really cool bug, the dung beetle, right. And he was sharing in the documentary about how there's, there's two different variants of the male species in this dung beetle family. And what's the end goal of all males species is to reproduce, right? But one the, the horned version of this dung beetle. I wish I could do a good David Attenborough.

We'll try that later. He's actually by weight, the strongest creature on the planet. Super strong, like pincer force is insane. Strongest animal on planet by weight can lift like, you know, eight us lifting whatever, 16 buses, whatever it is. And it spends most of its time like it digs out tunnels and the females are in this thing's tunnel and it protects the tunnel and brings crap back to the nest. Right. Literally. Well, yeah, literally. And, and it does okay. Like it, you know, obviously reproduces. Does okay. But there's another variant of the male that doesn't have the strength. It actually doesn't have the horn. But what it does have is giant testicles.

Interesting.

I'll come back to that in a minute. That's an open hook and kind of weird. But follow me with this one.

Sure.

We'll remember it. Yeah, yeah. You can't forget testicles. So this other beetle, what it does, it doesn't try to. It doesn't try to beat the. Go head on with the, you know, the horned beetle, the chad.

And what it does is it actually it burrows underneath behind into the big fancy chad, you know, fighter beetle. It burrows into their nest and mates with its females passing on its line, eats a little bit of food and leaves. Right. And like you were saying kind of you were reading a book about, you know, human development. It brought you a business insight. Well, it got me thinking about for this sales page what I'm trying to talk about here about information products. The big challenge people have is that they might feel like they're not that big, smart, crazy strong beetle out there that can defend and blah, blah. They may feel like they're at a super big disadvantage. So the insight I got from all this was that.

Strategy, the right strategy can beat the biggest advantage. And that insight came out of a beetle documentary. So I went and studied a bit more and I actually half the sales page. The headline for the sales page is attention grabber. It's what entrepreneurs can learn about building a $20,000 a month information business from dunk beetle's testicles. It's going to get your attention. So I tell that story on the page and the insight came from procrastinating, from not being really happy about the copy is putting together. Long story short, you can go out to other. Like you were saying, Matt, go go out to other fields and explore. You know, become the adventurer of information and you'll be able to bring that back. A lot of times, a lot of times you don't find anything. A lot of times you'll read a. I tend to catalog it away and try to, you know, maybe it'll come back later. But for the most part that's where my biggest and best ideas come from. Are These weird out there situations that I can tie into a lesson like we were talking about that I want to share and make it interesting to read. So people read my gosh darn sales copy.

Right.

Because that's what I want them to do. So yeah, that's how you answer a question in 5,000 words.

Well, cool. So we're actually hitting the hour mark right now. Are you still good on time? Because I do have like another rabbit hole or two. I'd love to go down with you.

Sure, let's do it.

Are you good on time?

I'm loving this.

Yes, I am good on time. But I do have a question on the research phase. Okay.

Before we just wanted to make sure you're filling in.

Since we're hitting the mark. I didn't want you to. I gotta go to dinner or something. Okay.

No, I appreciate it.

It's only three o'. Clock.

Three o' clock in the afternoon. We're good.

This is, and I don't want this to become a Clubhouse thing, but how do you use, or are you using Clubhouse as a research tool? Because I see it as a frickin amazing tool to even just throw on some headphones and just take notes, kind of digest. And you can go to any category like that you can think of. They have rooms for them.

So yeah.

What are you doing there?

It's just like going and doing the empathy research through the Amazon listings or you know, what a lot of people used to do and probably still works just fine is go to forums. But Clubhouse is just an audio version of that. And a lot of times you'll get very unique perspectives from your audience. You know, this is a great place to do some customer research because you're hearing in real time their frustrations that they're communicating. And what's nice about it is it's very informal. So they might in real time be coming up with great marketing copy that you can tap into or insights. And they may share like a problem that you didn't anticipate was a big problem in that niche or that world or your product. They may share a story that resonates and you might say, oh, I want to reach out to that person, capture that story. They may bring a resource to your mind that you know. So it's, it is like you say, a great place, a very unique place for that because of the format of it. For those who don't know about it, it's basically like a, you're going to an event and there's a stage, people on stage, Are talking. People come up, ask questions, and have a roundtable discussion. But it's on all kinds of topics all over the place. We, of course, been on more of the entrepreneur side of things, but every single topic you could think about, it's disgusting.

It's just the fact that, yeah, it's like, not recorded. You have people that are being super vulnerable and you're like, wow, okay, that triggered my thought immediately. I was like, these are all the concerns, objections, all these questions that in these panel rooms, they're literally throwing out the objections and all the questions that you can consider in writing copy. So it's. Yeah, if you're on Clubhouse.

Yeah. And fundamentally, just to put an endnote on that, that's a lot of times where the process starts. In writing great copy or writing great anything is identifying the hurdles that people need to overcome to get the thing they want. And what is the thing they want isn't always. It's not your product. Your product is the thing that helps them get what they want. So identifying very clearly what they want, the problems, you know, that are going to hold them back from getting there. And then your job is to paint the picture as to why your product helps them overcome those things and get the thing they want. That's the hero's journey in a nutshell, right? You're selling a sword to slay a dragon, the dragon may be tooth decay, and you're selling Colgate. You know, but. But fundamentally, you know, you can't write any of that unless you have some fundamental understanding of your audience, their concerns, their headaches, and what keeps them up at night.

Well, staying on the topic of Clubhouse for just a second, how have you used it outside of the research and just kind of hearing the words that other people are using that are potentially in your market. How are you using Clubhouse right now to drive more business? Or are you even focused on driving business off of Clubhouse?

Yeah, well, I mean, it never hurts to. I sell quite a few books through there in the profiles and stuff, you know, so it never hurts to go in and talk about the thing you're passionate about. So I go in to rooms about entrepreneurship, talk about marketing and how to do it better, and then people buy my book. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't even pitch it. They just click on the whatever. So that's one powerful way. But I've also lately, what I've been excited about Clubhouse for as a tool to help me improve is viewing it almost like a Toastmasters. And you know, Matt, how we Were talking earlier, like, how do you get better at doing stories or telling stories? I mean, practice makes perfect, but it's a good, it's a good.

Venue to experience the emotions that come with public speaking without all the risk. You can just pretend like you're, you know, you cut out if you like lose your thought or something. Right. It's not like you're on stage and you freeze. So you get a little bit of practice to tell stories. And I haven't done this yet, but to the discussion we were having, I think it would be very advantageous to outline a few critical 90 second stories that I could tell very succinctly. I get a really good point across this, by the way, is what I've noticed. A lot of the best speakers on Clubhouse, do they have their like canned responses that they give? Right. You've heard them kind of over and over again. Oh, yeah.

I have two or three, like go tos that I give when I'm in Clubhouse rooms.

Yeah, they're like, what do you think about this stuff? And I'm like, well, you know, that reminds me of a thing that I really want to talk about, you know? No, but it's, it's. And there's. I don't know, the book. I can't remember. This is the problem with using your memory to remember things. Some of the advice that.

This person gave in a book that I read was to have your mini talks. Like, if you want to be a brand and you want to grow your brand, you need your TED talks. They don't need to be as advanced as TED talks, but they need to deliver value in a way and deliver a lesson and tell a story and do a lot of the things that we're trying to do in copywriting and persuasion. So if you can get a collection of those, maybe even on index cards.

Then you're gonna be well on your way to using Clubhouse as a venue. I know a lot of people right now that are making a lot of sales because they're building that connection with people on there. It's nuts. I'm not particularly curious as to selling a bunch of stuff on there just yet, but I am excited about the form itself.

Yeah, yeah, no, we've been pretty excited. I think we were really hot on it for a couple weeks and now the shiny's worn off a little bit and now we're kind of popping in a couple times a week. But it was like, for the first few days I was like, I had one earphone in all day long sitting In a room while I was trying to do the rest of my work.

That's dangerous. Yeah, we were all there, though.

I'm still there sometimes. But, you know, it can. If you use it the right way, it can be super valuable. Like, for you guys in podcasting in particular, getting in front of very influential people, and then you give really great value and build a connection. They say, hey, Matt, that was really cool. Like, that's. Honestly, don't take this the wrong way, but we've been kind of going back and forth about doing this podcast, and it wasn't really until we reconnected again in Clubhouse, in a room that I was like, oh, man, I forgot how freaking cool these guys were. No offense. I just.

That's all good, man.

All over the place. But. But it's. It's a great tool for that. Like, I've been able to connect with some really cool people just through that avenue of reaching back out to them via dm. I've talked to some crazy people in there, too.

But, yeah, that's another. If you sell a service or you have a podcast, try to think strategically how you can use tools like this to grow what you're doing and don't just burn time on there. Right. That can be a risk.

Well, the room that you were in with us, where you pulled. I pulled Tyrese up onto the stage. Tyrese Gibson. And then you started asking him questions.

Sean's like, who's that?

And he didn't know who Tyrese was, which was probably a benefit because there's no. Sort of, like, he's on a pedestal to me now. But that was literally our first time going live on Clubhouse.

Yeah. Just a random celebrity that's done 9 billion in box office, you know, jumping in your room, right.

All about how to connect with influential people. Right. Like, it was just connecting with. And, yeah, we brought him on stage and then UMC'd the bad boy.

What did he do, though, right? He. He told stories. That's it. He didn't really, like, share and too much, like, quote unquote, like, factual information, like, here's how I was successful. It was just like story after story after story. And I think people that naturally do that are great marketers, whether they believe, you know, understand why or not. And personally, it's a skill I definitely want to improve. Just like you were saying, it's like, how can I build messaging that connects on that fundamental level? It's not easy, but it's powerful.

So I've got one last topic I want to Touch on. And I was talking to you offline before we hit record around the interview that you just did with Chandler Bolt. So on that interview, I think you said you'd sold 20,000 books of a $37. 20,000 copies of a $37 book without using Amazon. And I think before we started talking, now you said it's closer to 25,000. Now I want to talk about that. Maybe can you give us a quick overview of what that sort of selling system looks like?

Yeah, sure. And of course, soft pitch the book. 7 figure marketing copy, Google it, something like that.

We'll hard pitch it at the beginning of this episode and we get at the end, so don't worry.

There you go. Whatever. But it's funny because the book actually was born out of the stuff we've been talking about today. In my agency side of things, I was doing a lot of cataloging knowledge collection without really knowing what the term was, of marketing that worked well and marketing that didn't. And I would actively try to diagnose where mine worked and where it didn't and that I built these standard operating procedures, SOPs in my business. So at a certain point, and I'll just be 100% honest, one day I was sitting around like kind of like angrily stewing over the fact that I've been making folks all this money. I broke about 100 million in revenue for clients at profit margins that are almost 100% right. Like very little overhead. So.

Very good money for these folks. And I honestly, I was kind of pissed off and I was like, as we often do as service providers, like, I just want to do this for myself, you know.

So I got to thinking like a book is a kind of low hanging fruit that I could start with because I've launched plenty of stuff myself and done, okay, I've launched a lot of WordPress plugins way back in the day and some other products. But this is the first one that I really dove in to be my centerpiece. Right? This is the center of my world and everything can build out from it. But I started it.

With the. That kind of like I was kind of pissed off and maybe not the most, you know, heroic of motives, but it got me going. And then it's because it was born out of hard earned experience. The content, at least at the beginning, I think it was a lot easier for me to be confident about selling it. A lot of times as, you know, as an entrepreneur.

It'S so much easier for me to write copy for other people. It's A lot less painful, but when your ego's involved and that's half the pain. And now I have a healthy respect for folks like Sam and Ty, who the big challenge they have is getting out of their own way.

So, long story short, I put this book together and I sold it in kind of a unique way. I sold it as what I called a live book, just really is unfinished. And I wanted to sell it so that I could get paid to keep writing, which I love that angle.

It's freaking brilliant because I think we bought it. Yeah, it's been two years ago now.

It's all good. No, I think it's amazing. Forcing my. Now I'm like putting a, you know, whatever. I'm putting my foot down. Like I'm going to actually finish this thing because I want to sell the physical copy. But it. That actual strategy was born out of. It wasn't like a super strategic, like, smart, like it turned out to be great, Joe, but it was actually born out of.

My fear and propensity to be a perfectionist. And it's a lot of why I failed in the past because I've tried to put a product together and got burnt out, like, you know, trying to build this thing to be perfect before I got it live. So the way I solved that was like I just told people on the sales page, this is not complete. What you're getting is awesome. And I believe that. And I still believe it. It's a lot better now. It's up to like 400 pages. When I launched it, it was like 60.

But.

The necessity, or the at least saving this necessity to give myself that social pressure to get it done by selling it in advance was very useful tool. And that bore the strategy of launching a unfinished book in a digital format that actually is really a course. You know, if you want to break it down, get it as a PDF and a mini course and stuff. But a lot easier to sell a book. That's a whole different discussion. But that's where it started, you know, that. That necessity of myself kind of forcing myself, building. There's, you know, to give you another rabbit hole. Matt, you can write this one down. There's something called the theory of constraints, and it's all about how to be do things creatively and unique approaches to innovation by giving yourself constraints. My constraint is that.

I'm going to launch this book unfinished and I have to keep delivering value or I'm going to piss people off. That's a unique constraint instead of the constraint of I need to finish Thing and it be perfect works maybe if you're getting a million dollar advance or whatever, but. Wasn't my cup of tea, but then, yeah, I just, you know, I didn't launch on Amazon for that reason. You can't really sell an unfinished book on Amazon, right? Not very well, anyways. And that was another constraint. So I sold it through Facebook ads. And for what it's worth, the sales page is killer. It converts it like 9%. Wow. And I don't market it to copywriters, even though it's a book about copywriting. I market it to entrepreneurs and I tell the story of the why they're not doing so well. And the hero in that story is them. And the tool they need to slay the dragon of not selling the stuff they want to sell is copywriting. Guess what? I got a book on copywriting you should check out. Right? So that's that.

Strategy of selling up a level. I could make a sales page for copywriters. Not that many copywriters out there. There's 500,000 new businesses started in the United States every single month. Probably more now after the pandemic. I want to target that. I want to go broader. But to do that, I need to compel them. I need to persuade them. I need to teach them why copywriting is so freaking important. That's why that sales page is 2,500 pages, and it's why it works with Facebook ads with audience sizes in the 20 million person. Wow. So for you guys, you know, talking meta for a minute when you launch your podcast program, great. Make it everything awesome about how to grow an awesome podcast, how to get guests. But that's the tactical right? Don't make that the sales page. Make the sales page the underlooked way to.

You have to come up to something to target a broader audience that gives them an insight. And the answer is podcasting. Right? Like, how do you build traffic? Right? How do you get free traffic? It's so freaking hard. Oh, I know it is, because I faced that challenge for a very long time. But guess what? Then this beautiful thing called podcasting came into my world. Now I have more traffic than I know what to do with. And now I've monetized it awesomely with affiliate offers. Right? So anyways, that's a long, long ramble for you. But the campaign behind it, people really need to think about that at a higher level.

Do you have any sort of like, funnel behind it or upsells or anything like that? Or is it just $37 here's? The book?

Yeah. No, I have an upsell that teaches equity consulting because, again, I know it, so I teach it and I do it. So I keep improving it, and I'm comfortable with selling it. Right. And I don't like the idea of upselling from a copywriting book into another copywriting thing, even though I know it would do much better. I don't upsell into that because I want the book to be everything they need to get the promise that I made on the sales page. If they have to buy something else and upgrade or something, I kind of.

I don't know.

I never feel good about having to, like, you know, okay, final upgrade to get the full thing. I feel kind of whatever, but I didn't do that. I made an agency program, even though it converts decent, but it's not. Generally, the target audience is more broad than just agencies. So.

Yeah, I like that.

All right, tell us about the book really fast. Just how people can get their hands on the bad boy. And I want that. Here, show that thing.

I want to ask one question. I want to ask one question. You can be showing the book while I ask this question because it's relevant. I'm curious.

I'll model it.

There you go.

The book itself is just visually beautiful. Like, if you were to open it up to, like, any page, it's probably, like, the most beautiful page of a book we've ever seen.

Definitely. Look at that.

The old flip through.

There you go.

Look at that.

Pretty, pretty book.

I know people listening on audio can't see it, but go to YouTube, we'll have a video.

It's worth it.

Yeah, like that right there.

Yeah. So I can't even see what's on the. There we go.

It looks amazing. So I'm curious, like, the design behind it, the graphics behind it. Like, how are you coming up with the ideas? And where are these graphics coming from? Are you an artist yourself? Are you hiring people to draw all these graphics? It's just a random curiosity question.

Yeah, absolutely. It's actually relevant to the discussion here because it's one of those things that was born out of one reason, and now I'm justifying it with a very practical reason, actually. I went to school for design, and I really love graphic design. I don't get to do it enough because it's very much a commodity skill. Like, I can get somebody to do graphics for, like, 10 bucks an hour, but I really actually very much enjoy doing it, practically speaking. It might not be the best use of my time, but I Find that it is a cathartic experience. Like, I actually, I enjoy it, so I'm going to do it. Not the most logical approach always to success in business, but to answer your question specifically, I license most of the imagery through stock sites. And a lot of my. Not so much anymore because it's extremely time consuming to do to write this way. But being a very visual person, a lot of times I would just browse imagery as a part of research to try to get ideas. And a lot of times I'd find an image that just gave me an idea for a metaphor, and that metaphor became a story, and that story had a lesson. And that lesson is the thing I taught in the chapter of the book.

So the imagery worked very much as a mental tool for me early on. Now I try to not do that as much because it can take literal days to find the right imagery.

So now I generally will find the image to match the words instead of the other way around. But on a practical standpoint, the ad that does extremely well with it, the billboard on Facebook, is me flipping through the book. And what do you got to do on the first step of the ring in this whole marketing thing is get people's attention. And they see those pretty pages and we are human, we like pretty things. So they see that and it gets their attention. Then I have to build their interest by making the case for entrepreneurship, being.

Our copywriting, being very important to entrepreneurship, AI and the D. Right. Build their desire for the outcome. If you want to make more sales, learn copywriting. And then the call to action. I wrote a book on it. Bio.

Get it? Yeah.

For lack of a better way. But yeah, it's a fun. You know, I wouldn't recommend it for most people. Go hire somebody to do it because it's about four hours a page on average when it comes to research, writing, design, I need to get that down to a lot less.

I think it's a killer resource. I mean, you even told us you're like, for the pod hacker stuff. For us, you know, we don't need to hire a copywriter, which is totally true for us, it was more of a time thing, you know, but.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I. If I could hire a good copywriter, I would. I seriously. Recently I've been practicing this. I've been practicing what I preach, which is once you get decent at copy, that's when you should hire a copywriter. You guys are marketers. Like, you know, if you had to and you were, you know, had zero dollars in the bank and you had to build, you know, rags. The richest story you could write a sales page, right? Oh, yeah, you had a gun to your head you could do.

Is time consuming and painful. And.

Especially when you're getting started, that's not a good sales pitch for it. My book makes it less painful.

But reality is, like, if you can't talk the talk, if your business, especially if it's on the less than $20 million scale, you're gonna have to wear a lot of different hats. Like I said, the reason to wear the copywriting hat is, is it doesn't just help you create great messaging. It helps you create better and more innovative products as well.

Yeah, well, in our business, I feel like I like to have what I call enough to be dangerous knowledge of pretty much everything that happens in the business. I want to know enough about Facebook ads, enough about Google Ads, enough about copywriting, enough about email marketing. Even though I don't do any of that stuff in our business anymore, I want to get in there from time to time and know enough about it so I can have intelligent conversations with the people who are doing it for me. And so the copywriting in our business. Up until now, Joe and I have written all of our sales pages for pretty much every offer we've ever put out. And we've been doing this since 2007. So we've done a lot of copywriting, and it's only now where we're finally comfortable going, okay, we could spend large sums of money to let other people do it for us because we'll be able to tell if it's good copy or not.

Okay, I have a challenge for you then, because this is actually something that's been happening fairly regularly on the testimonial side. So I'll hook you up with a book. I want you to give it to your copywriter and say, just tell them, listen, go through. You don't have to go through all of it if there's some of the basics in there, but go through it. And what I've been finding, Actually, a lot of the testimonials I'm getting for the book are from business owners who got the guide because they're curious about it and then gave it to their marketers, copywriters. And now they buy it for every single marketer they bring into their business, and they're seeing massive improvements on that side of things. So I'll give you guys that little challenge because it really is a tool, especially if you're into messaging and marketing and find it fascinating that you'll benefit from. But I think like you said, it's a good skill to get familiarized with because you never know what cross domain knowledge is going to come in to make awesome stuff in your business.

Absolutely.

Now, did you say the URL where they can go grab it? I think you might have earlier, but you want to.

Google it.

Probably good on a podcast. Google it. Yeah, Google it. So either Sean Copy, that's a short link, Sean, as in S E a n copy, or just7figuremarketingcopy.com.

But yeah, it's been a. It's been a real like adventure, man, putting this guy together. It's kind of, I'm sure it's kind of a similar creative endeavor like the podcast world. It's just, it evolves. Yeah, yeah. You get to make a thing, you know, I highly recommend it to anybody out there, if you are human, to start creating more stuff. Very exciting.

I want to see this on TikTok pretty soon, Sean, Just flipping through the pages, maybe, you know, little stories to entrepreneurs and TikTok, maybe just a little.

It's on my list.

I'm just thinking of visuals.

I'm like, yeah, podcast has been on my list for the last 18 years.

You've got to do them all. Every. Every new idea you hear, you have to do them all.

That's the kids are saying lesson to end with right there, man.

Do them all. Do everything.

Everything you hear, do it.

Just chop off the last minute here.

Yeah, no, we're not going to chop everybody. Go to Sean copy or 7Figuremarketingcopy.com if you feel like typing a little more and that'll hook you up with the book. Anywhere else you want people to go to after listening to this. Any other resources we should send people to?

I want to make sure for the 30 to 40% who are listening to this who haven't subscribed to the podcast yet to make sure that you hit that little subscribe button. Because Matt and Joe, they often don't get a chance to talk about themselves often enough. But from all I've seen over the years, and you're two of the guys that I've kept in touch with in this space probably longer than most, especially Matt. Like it's been close to a decade now and you're doing something very unique with this podcast and the way that you guys run your business in that you're bringing great people to the discussion, but you're pulling out gyms for individuals in your world that you know you can help and that's a beautiful thing. And I think everybody can learn a lot from what you guys are doing, but also just metaphorically, like, how you're doing it. So I. I highly recommend folks get subscribed on the YouTube too, right? Like, share something. Oh, yeah, yeah.

We're everywhere.

That's it.

Wherever you're listening to this right now.

See this thing live, guys.

Thank you, brother. That means a lot, man. I can't wait to share this. And thanks so much. I mean, we did it. That's why I was going to. We made it happen podcast man, so.

Oh, we forgot to hit record.

Oh, crap. I didn't hit the red button. All right, let's do it again.

Let's do it again. All right, Sean. Appreciate you, brother.

All right, man.

Thank you.

Boom, boom, we're back. And Vossler was on the show.

Well, the people listening, we never went anywhere.

Yeah, we didn't go anywhere. Well, we are back. We hit the record button again. Yeah.

We got rid of Sean ordeal.

Yeah.

Kicked him out of the room. Like, you've been here too long. Just kidding. That's always a fun time chat with him, man.

Yeah. And it truly was like. So I interviewed him for Authority Insider, which was Hustle and Flowchart before Hustle came into the mix.

True.

And last time I interviewed him, I think our interview went for about two and a half hours, and I actually broke it up into two episodes. And for a minute there, I thought this might be the same thing, but I think we were a little bit better about being concise and to the point.

Got more stuff to do these days. Responsibilities and. No, no, probably not.

Actually.

We were just like, let's just give the listeners a break.

And I'm doing my best to back and shed responsibilities day by day.

That's true. Working on it, my man. Working on it. But yeah, I mean, we. As we were just saying, we'll probably keep this little outro to a minimum because we covered a lot.

Yeah.

But let's. Let's start off by saying get the action guides to this episode, because there are going to be many a nuggets, and they'll be formulated in a way that actually is maybe a little bit more linear than the conversation. So get them@flowchartgroup.com within two weeks of this episode going live. They're totally free. After that, they're not totally free, but they're still accessible. But go to flowchart group.com. it's going to be our Facebook community. But really plug your email address in the little form that pops up and you'll get both community and the notes and you won't want to miss them. And also get Vossler's book. Do you have the URL?

Yeah, there's two URLs. 7Figuremarketingcopy.com or Sean copy. Sean Copy is the shorter, probably quicker option to get there.

Sean Copy. Copy, copy. I don't think Sean would approve of two call to actions. But if it's for his product, I'm sure he would.

That's a very good point.

Alrighty. Well, yeah, get the book. And this thing is. I mean, yeah, I think we did get in when it was like 60 pages or something.

Yeah. And it was in. I don't know how it's presented now, but it was in teachable. And like, you couldn't. You can go through each of the chapters on teachable and it was definitely a different model.

I think he had some videos and stuff in there as well, but I could be lying on that. That could have been like the upsell back in the day. I don't know. It's been years.

But it's.

I just love the fact that I think we're.

We're showing our cards that we actually haven't looked at Sean's product in a little while.

Well, I mean, that has been a couple years ago. The book, though. I mean, that one, it's.

I can't wait to get the physical.

Copy and the additional 400 pages that he's. Whatever.

You know, 340 people listening to the audio. Well, everybody's listening to the audio if you're listening to this part. Because this isn't in the YouTube videos, but like in the video, when he held up the book, it was like a big old fatty book. Like, that thing looks like it weighs.

Like 10 pounds to Timmy Farris style book right there.

But bigger. It was like even bigger dimensions, though.

Well, you gotta. You have all that beautiful artwork.

Yeah, it's. That's a.

That's one of those table. Table coffee. Coffee table book, for sure. Yeah. Gets everyone interested in persuasion and copywriting. So totes go get it. And Sean is just. He's just such an awesome guy. I just like the way he thinks, you know, he's different and just kind of connecting the dots, building bridges between people. And I just like the fact that he goes after people with a solution that he has that he knows they need or probably would likely want. That is Tai Lopez getting a big mind map from Vossler that says, hey, you're missing out on 10 mil with what you're currently doing, I think that would catch the attention of most people.

Yeah.

Well, it sort of reminds me, like, there was an email that I forwarded to you recently from. From Andre Chaperone. Right. And.

They were trying to figure out what their next launch was gonna be. And he told a story in the email and I don't remember all the details of it, but they were putting out a big launch, they were putting out a product, and they were trying to figure out what they wanted to put out next. And everybody was giving this advice to go model. Yeah, model, like go sell high ticket. Just get on the phone. There's people on your list who would easily pay you $25,000. Right. And we've gotten a lot of that advice as well. But something just didn't totally feel right to them about that model. They don't really like doing the phone sales. They don't really like the whole super high ticket offering kind of thing. And it just didn't feel right. And then they kind of redirected and went down a different path with their business.

When Sean was talking, it was very reminiscent to me of that email that Andre sent where he was saying, like, I just don't really like doing the sales. I don't like being that closer. I don't like being the one that like tries to push them into buying this thing.

A lot like us.

And that's how we are too. Like, we don't really enjoy the phone sales. We don't really enjoy pushing the high ticket products. It's not really our realm of comfort or even like, I don't know, it just doesn't feel like us, really. And the. What Sean was saying was perfect. Like, go and bring them a result, show them what you can do, and have it almost be their idea to bring you on board.

Yeah, buddy. Yeah. And yeah. And then the deal structure side of it is also equally as brilliant. You know, getting, getting equity or rev share, whatever that looks like, you know, using that model. But he's going after folks. He's doing the quote unquote, the hunting. Well, you know, he's not. He's not really. It's not the inbound thing. And he said he actually pushes those away, which I'm like, wow, that's crazy. But I love it.

Well, and I will just say, like anecdotally to the companies that we do have some sort of like rev share or equity deal in. That is literally how they all went down.

Yeah.

Like, we were either introduced to them or we got on a call with them for other reasons. And they sort of asked us to get involved. Like, it's almost always. Maybe we incepted it a little bit. I don't know. But probably in pretty much every case I can think of, it was almost them saying, I want to figure out how I can work with you guys somehow 100%.

I like that. You know, you almost. You're positioned as the prize at that. That sense too. And, you know, the roadmap, and they're capable of achieving it. So it's like you've done all the. That's your avatar, you know, that you've like. I mean, it's the perfect match. Yeah, go for it.

And then the other. The other, like, really standout moment. We don't have to do a whole recap of this episode here or anything, but the other, like, standout moment for me was when he. He couldn't remember what book it came from.

From.

But he was talking about storytelling. And the whole goal of a story is to basically implant an experience in somebody's mind. So imagine like, an experience, and you telling the story is essentially you transferring that experience to somebody else. And I think that's a really good sort of angle at looking at storytelling. I just really like that perspective on it.

Yeah, it's like, take the experience and implant it. Yeah, just take it out of your mind somehow. But in a nice story arc in a way that's consistent, concise enough to keep attention and yeah.

Story.

There's a lot of good resources in this one. I want the notes already. Sue, hurry up. Get the notes done. All right. Get them@flowchartgroup.com. get your email in there. Be quick and hustle. Jesus. Not hustle. Flowchart. Easywebinar.com.com hustle.

I thought you were easy webinar. And I was going to go dot com and you were going to go slash and I was going to go hustle.

You had a whole thing in your head that we did not plan out, my friend. I know. How about we talk about what the heck easy webinar is first before we tell them.

Go to this place that you don't.

Probably heard about it before, though. Yeah, Hustle.

And geez, why do I keep saying it's easywebinar.com hustle.

That's it. But the thing I'm trying to say here is easy webinar is the actual tool. So everything webinar and the. They have it under their roof of their online roof of.

Get me.

Get you? Yeah.

Joe's Brain's given up. He's. He's throwing his hands up in the air going, I'm done for the day.

No.

Yeah. The brain has just jumped out of my head and it's crawling down. It's like, take me home and give me a nap. Just like what Sean said. Oh, he said it off air. He's like, I don't get any sleep anymore. Having a kid. Yeah.

Yeah. So Easy Webinar is a webinar platform. It does odd automated webinars, hybrid webinars, live webinars. We have our upcoming Pod Hacker course. Actually, by the time this comes out, Pod Hacker should be open. So, you know, we're planning on doing some webinars around Pod Hacker. We're going to be using Easy Webinar. That's our platform of choice. And Casey and the team over there are hooking you up with a discount for being a Hustle and Flowchart listener. So go to EasyWebinar.com hustle.

You sound well rested, my friend.

I am. And, well, modafadil, too.

Oh, wow.

I don't have that in me today. Maybe that was the. Dang it.

Yeah.

So get Easy Webinar. They are badasses. We love them. And they're hooking you up on a fat discount over there.

Yeah.

And speaking of Pod hacker, go to podhacker.com. i believe it should be live as of this recording, and all the details about what it is, is there, but I'm gonna leave it a mystery at the moment. So go there to find out more.

Sean gave you some hints, so.

Yeah, there was hints in the episode.

There you go. There you go. So listen to Sean. Go check out podhacker.com as well.

And.

And that other thing he said, you know, go, go subscribe on whatever platform you're hanging out on right now. We'll tie a little. Little loop like that little bow around this episode with that. So.

Sounds good.

Thank you all.

Thanks, everybody, for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a. A Cliff's Notes version of every episode where you can go and find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out, all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice, simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com, find this episode that you just listened to and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

Go get it.

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