How to Create Compelling Copy that Sells with Joe Polish, Dean Jackson, and Jennifer Hudye - I Love Marketing Episode #294

I'm dean jackson, he's joe polish and this is the I love marketing podcast. In this episode, you'll learn how to create compelling copy, use words to influence, craft messages that attract your ideal clients, and more. With Joe Polish, Dean Jackson and guest Jennifer Houde. Jennifer has worked with some of the top experts in the world. She is the founder of Conscious Copy and Conscious Hustler. She helps experts, coaches and leaders develop attention and trust with their email list. As a result, they become the influencer in their space, build a loyal tribe and and make a bigger impact. If you would like access to the full interview, the show notes and the special resources for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 294 that's ilovemarketing.com 294.

Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and Joe Polish. And we have a special guest who's sitting here with us at my Scottsdale, New Scottsdale headquarters.

Wow.

Who. Who are you?

I am Jennifer Rachel Hoodie.

Jennifer Rachel Hooty. Wow. Wow. So. And other than just currently 24 year old. When I say currently because there's someone quit making noise here, don't worry about it. We're literally trying to pay no attention.

To the man behind the curtain. Gosh.

So by the way, just, I want to warn everyone right now, see, we are here in person together at the studio and Dean is if there's any background noise, snorting or dropping shit, it's going to be Dean currently doing that.

That's a good chance.

Yeah.

So Jennifer, who's currently 24 years old, copywriter. And I say that currently because 10 years from now, if someone listens to this, she won't be 24 anymore.

I'll be 34.

Correct.

That's quick math. Yeah, yeah.

So the reason I decided to invite Jennifer into the loop here is because, you know, any success that she's had, which has been pretty tremendous in the last year, I mean, you're starting to build a great reputation for yourself as a online copywriter and working with some big. Mainly because I introduced you to all these people.

It's true. I can't even deny that.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. We can even make jokes here. But here's what we're going to talk about on this episode.

Tell me.

We're going to talk about copy, the power of sales copy. Because that's what all of us have really relied on to build and grow our own businesses. That's what Jennifer's entire business is around with people that hire her to do that. And we're going to do a rehash refresher of something we've talked about in previous episodes, which is the eight profit activators. So one of Dean's favorite things.

My favorite.

So what I'd like to first start off with is let's establish what copy is and what that actually means. And Dean, of course, is unshrinkwrapping something here. These eight little profit activators.

That's a great little tarot card.

Just try to keep anything away from you that makes noise. Yeah, so these are like tarot cards. So we've got these eight profit activators that we've used in some of our workshops. At least I do.

And meetup groups.

Yeah, yeah. Because when I do workshops, I try to have things look nice and I think you just kind of show up with like cold cut sandwiches and like notepads and stuff and pens that don't even work.

That's right.

Yeah.

So.

So you go first, Dean. Talk about what is copy? Why is it so important?

You know, I just saw a documentary that was called Everything is Copy, which is great. Which I think is really true.

I've not heard of this. What's it about?

Nora Ephron. And it's really that everything is copy. I think that's absolutely true. I'm not like I really could care less how you define something like copy.

No, but I say define it because I want to do it for people listening.

And I think people. Yeah, I say that only because it's all copy. It all matters. Right. Everything is design, everything is copy, Everything is branding. It's all cumulative. Right. It all works out. So I think a more like practical way to describe what somebody might be really asking, if they're asking what is copy? Is the words that you say that point somebody in a direction to take some next action. I think the words that you use to influence people when you say copy, copy is everything.

The way that you say, I think copy is everything. Are you talking about what we're saying right now?

Yeah, of course.

It's all video.

When you look at it, that if we. And this is really good because we've never done this. We've never had a conversation about copy in the context of the eight profit activators. And copy is going to mean different things in each of the eight profit activators. Right. It's going to mean something different in your before unit, it's going to do something different in your during unit, and it's going to do something different in your after unit. So I think that it's really about the choosing of careful words that are going to get a result. And that result could be that somebody is going to be exposed to a new thought that they think a new thought, that that thought leads to prepared mind to hear the next thought that you're going to present to them. And so I think that often you.

See how his copy was a little weird because what he said, he said the choosing careful words versus carefully choosing words.

No, I think it is completely different meanings. Yeah, see, but you see, that's a careful word.

Do we want careful words? Do we want to carefully choose words?

I think there's the thing right like that when I say careful and I mean you look at those things that you're taking an interest in each of the words that you're using. And I would say to people, you know, it takes, there's a lot of time. If anything, what I'm probably most known for is more conversational short copy that just gets a result. When I really look at this, it's about getting the best words that are going to get and accomplish the goal that you're trying to accomplish in that communication. And so I look at it that now, conversation is always great when you think about that, because anytime you're having words, the whole point of it is to really engage in a dialogue with someone. I think Robert Collier always said, join the conversation that's going on in somebody's head. And I always used to think back, enter the conversation that's already going on.

I'm trying to edit his comment as he says this, get the quotes right.

Yeah, yeah, careful. The whole thing. I used to think and read those things when Claude Hopkins and Robert Collier and all these guys were sending out letters for a penny. And I would always think, because when we started studying direct Response in the 90s, there was no Internet. There was the only direct mail and print. And it was much more expensive than a penny to send a let. They always look at those guys and think, oh man, they had it so made being able to send. If I could send letters for a penny, I'd be rich. Think of that now, fast forward 25 years since we really started studying direct response and we've got not only the opportunity to enter the conversation in somebody's head, but to actually have the conversation with somebody through email. You know, Robert Collier, you think about that. They had to pack everything in to one letter. They had to say the most, the things that are going to resonate the most, that are going to get the Whole message into that one package. And what we have the opportunity to do is to skillfully choose your own adventure. You can have it start out with multiple things to put somebody in, in any direction that we want. That's where copy's really changed. This modern world is so completely different. We can jump mediums, we can send a postcard to somebody that gets them to go to a website where they leave their name and email address and then we enter into an actual conversation with them. That's something that we can do with. With copy, you don't have to get the whole message. And that's one of the big mistakes that I see people make a lot is trying to do too much at once, one step at a time. We've really never been in a better time to do that.

Well, you know the thing with copy, like when I first read Gary Halbert say that you got a canon clone yourself, what that meant to me and what Gary meant by it, because I actually ended up becoming good friends with Gary over the years before he passed away. He would basically say that you can be the best salesperson in the world, but you're limited by the clock. But with the right sales letter, you can talk to 10 people, 100, 1,000, 10,000, a million people. And you do that through sales copy. You do that through words. So I looked at copy as a way to, to replicate myself. And he called it can and clone yourself. How do you put yourself in a can and clone it? Back in the days when I first learned this, I was a Deborah carpet cleaner living off credit cards and I needed to survive. I've told that story a million times. And it was through the first sales letter that I created, which we've done entire episodes on. And if people have not heard the beginning episodes of I Love Marketing, I will tell you most of what we have recorded in terms of episodes, especially the ones that are me and you together talking about marketing. Although in I Love Marketing, we introduce people to a variety of different subjects that we think are going to make them better entrepreneurs and better humans. The stuff that me and you talk about related to how we built and grew our businesses is very principle based. I mean, it's going to, I think, be relevant 50 years from now. And you're talking about Robert Collier and Claude Hopkins. And for people that aren't familiar, these are, you know, some of the original people in advertising and direct marketing.

Oh, geez.

Say that again.

The OGs. The old gangsters. The old gangsters. Original gangsters, yeah.

See by the way, if I'm not familiar with something. Jennifer, just say Joe, let me kind of fill you on. You're a moron. Here, let me, let me, you know, get you up to speed. So the thing with all these old school direct marketers. Old school, right. And so they had to rely on words. I mean, they didn't have all of the technology, they didn't have videos, they couldn't do Facebook live, they couldn't do any. I mean, none of this stuff even existed. Right. But what did exist is the psychology of how to persuade and how to take that understanding of selling effectively one on one and using words to replicate it. Because you can have a one on one conversation with somebody and try to help them solve a problem, or you can sit down and write a book about it. And if that problem is universal.

And by the way, a book is copy. I mean, when you look at it, if you look at this whole process here, there's so many things that fit into this. Now I look at copy as the entirety of all of the options and communications that you have with somebody, you know, all of it.

So there's sales copy, which is what you do, Jennifer, which is designed to sell. So let's hear something from you. So you've heard Dean kind of talk a little bit about this. What's your. I mean, when did you first stumble upon this thing called marketing and advertising and then actually turn it into a business?

So I actually had my own online fitness coaching business that I had started and really learned just like fumbling through it. And I had no idea. This sounds super ignorant, but it's the truth. I had no idea, like the term copy. And then people were like, your copy is really good. And I had no idea. And so in my fitness coaching business, I was selling online fitness programs to women. I heard on the importance of email marketing. And so I literally started off with a list of like eight people and one of them was myself for like three months. And then I just grew it organically because I would meet people or they would come to my group fitness classes and then I would get them to sign up for my emails. And I started asking the women in my fitness classes, like, what is it that you're struggling with that you want help with? And like, what is it that you have the most trouble with when it comes to fitness? And I would take that question and then I would just simply write a post about it or an email about it and I would send it consistently until I had this online program. And I actually used. I know Frank Kern's in the other room here. I used his for four day cash machine email structure.

We have Frank Kern tied up in the other room. That's what she meant by that. No, he really is. He's there in the office right now.

But we're.

It's okay. No, I'm not top secret.

It's top secret.

We're going to Facebook Live him in a little bit.

But I used his four day cash machine email structure to sell my first product and it sold out in 48 hours through my email list. And then it wasn't until I had people starting to reach out to me that were also in my space that said, your copy is so good and the way that you're setting up your emails. Could you be on my podcast and share with me, like our group of people how to do this? And then I was on a webinar just sharing what I had done for my own business, when at the end of the webinar, the person who, who was the host was like, why don't you make an offer and just help a couple people build out their email funnels and write all their copy with them to get clear of it? And that is when I was like, oh, wow, people actually like, this is a thing. This is something that people don't have a lot of maybe like knowledge in or they don't really know much about it. And then from there, when I made that commitment to, like, I really, I've only scratched the surface. I started looking into other people who are doing that now, like John Benson and both of you guys. I started studying your stuff. And then when I really made the commitment to go and look at all the OGs, so like Claude Hopkins and Gary Halbert and Dan Kennedy, I would put in that group and like Robert Colley here and really started studying it, I was like, that's when there was a huge shift for me of my coffee getting that much better and really understanding what I was doing that I didn't even realize with my old business, I didn't even realize that I was essentially asking people, what are your objections of not doing something? And then I was just answering them. But once I started to have a framework for it, I could be that much more intentional about it.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. It's interesting to see how people come to this because there's not like a college course on how to write sales copy. You know, they don't teach any of this.

Well, there is, but it sucks.

Well, yeah, but yeah, I mean, it Mostly probably sounds. I know there's a ton of great courses. No, there's a lot of great courses.

If they did teach it in college, you think that the professor would like, then just go make money off of it if they were so good at it. Right, right.

Yeah, exactly. So the thing for me, like, when I first wrote A Consumer's Guide to Carpet Cleaning, I hired a copywriter who actually wrote my first version of it. And it was something I've told the story about how I paid $1,800 with money.

I didn't have a crap.

But I had this concept, this idea, because I had learned it from reading Gary Halbert, that you want to do lead generation and you want to. To get people to show up in advance and using hooks where you can get them to raise their hand and then you can send them something. And the thing that you send them, which would be the sales letter, the copy, when they would read it, then that would literally make them want to do business with you without having to do cold calls, without having to start from scratch. It was this way to get people to give you permission to sell them. And they would want to be because they asked for it. And it was really funny because then several years later, Seth Godin wrote a book called Permission Marketing. And people that had never been exposed to this marketing that had been around for years, that's what the old advertising guys did, is all this position. This stuff had been around for centuries. I mean, God knows, if we went back a thousand years, how would they do in copyright? But the thing is, everyone thought, oh, my God, this was like this new invention. It's like, shit, I've been doing this for karmic leaders to get people to raise their hand and say, I want a Consumer's Guide to Carpet Cleaning. I would send them this sales letter, which was the consumer guide. But it wasn't like a hardcore offer you must buy right now. It was simply just education Profit activator three, Right. Which, you know, in a minute, I want us to go through this because it'll layer a whole nother depth to what we're talking about here. But that discovery change my life, where you could take words and you could put it in print, and you could not only persuade people that you have never had a conversation with, that you have never spoken with, you've never met, but you would save all of this time. And so, you know, I interviewed my buddy Harvey McKay and Dean Graziosi in a car, you know, two days ago, on our way to. To a basketball game and, you know, a basketball game. The NCAA championship games.

A basketball game. We were just on our way to a basketball game.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're on our way to the basketball game. Yeah.

I don't really care about.

He doesn't care. It's so funny.

I've been given Super Bowls. I give them away. I give them away to people that actually really like. I used to follow the Suns when I have my carpet cleaning business because there are a couple of the Suns players. I used to clean their carpets. We had as clients. So there was a period of my life where I did follow sports for just kind of a short period, but I really don't. And that's because I had a sadistic baseball coach that sort of ruined my liking for sports. So that's nothing against sports fans.

And be good.

Yeah. So that's. See what copy can do to you. See what copy can do to you in all levels. So Harvey said, you know, one of the most important four letter words is H, I, R, E, you know, hire. Well, for advertising, one of the most important four letter words is C, O, P, Y. And getting your copyright. Because if you get your copyright, you can use that copy to hire and position the right sort of person. And when you get the copyright, you have just hired a salesperson that you don't have to pay other than putting it together. Meaning, like what copy did for me was it replaced me having to have face to face salespeople and pay them commissions. Because the best salespeople that I ever had in the starting on my business, I would put them in an envelope, I would put a stamp and I would mail it. And that salesperson, that robotic elf, easy, lucrative and fun, which is what ELF marketing is all about, was that. And what allowed it was the copy. And then the copy sent to the right list. Because it's a twofold thing. It's the bait on the hook and it's where you're fishing. So the copy and the list. So yeah, I mean, the thing that I want people to do from this episode is to start looking at everything that you are communicating on your websites, on your social media, on any sort of print. You have business cards, brochures, the side of a van, storefronts. A lot of people now, most of their communications, communications live in the electronic world. However, seeing what happens in the physical world will make everything in the electronic world better. And you said these guys were paying a penny to send it out. And if we could only send that for a penny, but you can actually do it for less because now it's free. But here's the challenge with that. It's like, because people can send it out for nothing, they don't put a lot of thought into it because they think, well, what's it going to matter? And I will tell you, I have made mistakes by letting other people in my company and I still do because now I've got so many things going on, I can't possibly touch every communication that goes out.

I think people get to the point where they confuse copy. They make it this thing that we're speaking to a bunch of people. And when Jennifer said she had eight people on her email and she was just writing to them, that I think is a bigger thing because you could actually picture who they were. And she's writing to eight people. You hear that, you see stories of that all the time. Right? Tucker Max was just on James Altucher's podcast and talking about when he was writing I hope they serve beer in hell. What became that? That he was. There were nine guys that he was writing emails to. That's what he was doing. Right. It's not. I think there's something to that. When you personalize it. The more that you can write as if you're talking to as close as you can to one person, that that's really what it is. Everything about the way that I approach email copy especially is when I really realized that people read their email alone. And I think that's. I don't want to let that sink in for a second. Right. You've said that about mail and everything, but especially their people read their email alone. So the more that you can make an email sound and feel like it's only for them, that's really the highest things. That's where the nine word email came from. Right. That whole. The reason that it works is because it feels exactly like you would say to one person and they don't have any idea that there's thousands of people that are getting that same email. I think that that kind of approach and really using the eight profit activators as overlay, as a structure, as the architecture for how you're crafting your copy at each level to understand what's the job of work of the copy at each of the eight profit activators. Right. Like when you look at, you know, profit activator 1 being about narrow your focus and picking a single target market, that's really going to help you make more specific copy. It's going to help you choose careful words that are going to be Specifically appealing to that individual, to that person, rather than trying to make generic words to make it easier for you to talk to a group of people. I mean, in the Breakthrough DNA book, the thing that we talk about is the commercial photographer. We shoot bottles dot com. And that compared to a commercial photographer who is trying to appeal to everybody. And that term commercial photography, that's a blanket term that's made up that makes it easy for him to lump everybody in. The only person generalizing and categorizing and stuff like that is convenient for is you. It's not furthering anything. It's not making it be more appealing. So when you look@the weshootbottles.com as a photographer that when you go there only shoots bottles and everything, there is these beautiful, great looking bottles. If you have a product that's packaged in a bottle, you want to go to the guy that that's the specialist for it, you know, but people think, I don't want to limit myself in that way. But there's nothing stopping them. And they have. We shoot cans.com, which is exactly the same thing except oriented to cans. And so that's where picking that target audience makes it easy for you to know what are the words that are going to be most appealing to them. And knowing where specificity really helps, you know, not about trying to just be a commercial photographer that does. We shoot boxes and cans and bottles and catalogs and this laundry list of all the different things that somebody could hire a commercial photographer for, hoping that somebody's gonna look at that list and say, oh, that's me, and find it, you know, but you see it in evidence everywhere. Like, I just posted up a picture. If you do an Amazon search right now on Excedrin Extra Strength and Excedrin migraine, there's a 50% or more premium on Excedrin Migraine. Even though it's exactly the same pill. Exactly. Not a single different milligram of difference in the medication. It's part caffeine, part acetaminophen or whatever it is, and that's it. And it's identical. And because they put it in a package called Excedrin Migraine, people will pay 50% more for that.

And there's a perfect example with that where immediately in the copy it's saying migraine. And so that's going to attract. In the person who says I have a migraine, they know I have a problem. That must be the solution compared to just extra strength, right?

Yeah.

Interesting.

And that's the whole. Let me Even have a picture of it. I was just looking to see, but.

I thought he was checking his text messages.

No, no.

See, when Dean's not talking, he'll just start. Sometimes, like, you just don't even care about what he's talking about.

But that whole thing, that's where. This is why the lynch pin of the profit activators is selecting that target market.

Well, let's do this. Let's go through the profit activators and speak to it in terms of the copy. And what's also funny, Jennifer, is that I first got introduced to copy when I was 24 years old. So the fact that you have a head start like this, if you don't far surpass whatever sort of minuscule success I've had in my life, by the time you're 30, you're a loser. And I just want to let you know that right now, you're on notice. The clock's good kindness.

Can I use that? So can we, like, get that transcribed? And then can I put that quote specifically on my website?

You should. You should put it on your vision. You should put on your vision board.

Successful by the time you're 30, you're a loser.

Not anyone you in particular, because there's a lot of people that they're like, hell, I've had people that have got introduced to sales copy that are in their 70s that became clients of mine that in a couple years they just transformed their business. There's no telling what you can do with this newfound knowledge once you apply it. Look, this knowledge has been around forever. It's just people that seek it out are willing to do it. And hearing about it is one thing. Sitting down and actually writing it is another. As we know, most people that read books and listen to podcasts and go to seminars and watch videos, they are observers. One of my reasons about sports, I was with Dean Graziosi and my friend Anessa and Harvey McKay. And I've always found the food selections at ball games just fascinating to me. Like, why doesn't someone just put healthy food and just charge five times? What the hell? Everything else, you would still have a segment that would want to eat well. And so we're sitting there, like, me and Dean were walking around this whole place, and we found a place that sold organic salads. And we literally went and got. It was like, really good food. And. But it was like just this little corner thing. We couldn't find anything else. And there were 77,000 people at this thing. And my whole thing is, most people Observe others unique abilities. Like when you look at sports players, I did a whole episode with Dan Sullivan where years ago, one of my very first interviews with Dan. I shouldn't even say episode. It was part of my tape of the month club back then. This is in God, like the late 90s or something. And it was my first interview with Dan, which we put on a cassette tape. And it was a whole episode about how Michael Jordan at the time is the underpaid professional athlete in the world relative to how much money his existence created for the economy. All of the shoes that were sold to Nike, all of the endorsement relationships, ticket sales, food sales, T shirts, you know, television, like, like all of these things related to how much money he himself was responsible for in the economy and how much he actually got paid. Although he got paid more than any other basketball player at the time, he was actually the most underpaid relative to his production.

I saw that same thing about Tiger Woods.

Yeah, yeah. And so the thing that was interesting is we did this episode and he was this episode, damn it. I'm so used to podcast interview this interview. And he. One of the things is people will pay to observe others unique abilities because for every person that's in the game, how many people are paying to watch it? The concert, the person singing, who's the audience? If you get skilled at something, people will pay you for unique ability. Whatever your business is, that is what you get paid for. I never knew how to get paid because I didn't know how to convey value. Copy was actually in the application of. It was the thing that got me to be skilled enough to direct people towards something that I had that was valuable to them. But I didn't know how to convey it. And once I did that and now, you know, there's a big part of what I do, I get paid for being me, right? But what is me me is like a copulation of insanity and capabilities, skills and you know, whatever. But the thing is, it all starts with develop. I admire people that are on the field more than the ones that are observing it. And that's not to take anything away because I go to movies, I go to comedy shows, I go to concerts, I go to games. Once in a blue moon, I pay to see other people's unique ability all day long because we love that. The thing is, when we're talking about this as the application. Play with my pen, Jennifer. The application of marketing here, I'll be redundant with this. When you hear something like this, an episode like this, sit down and look at anything, your website, any communication and look at the copy. What are you saying? What is the outcome that you want? And frickin write someone a letter, write someone a card. Do it immediately. Don't just like, okay, yeah, the copy's important. Let me have my marketing department listen to this audio and then let me go around. And then you're trying to shoehorn in a sale. That's what Gary Halbert would always. Some companies, you walk in there and it's like trying to shoehorn in, in a sale because they're focused on everything other than how to sell shit. And you always go back to the Peter Drucker quote. The primary purpose of business is to create and keep customers. Marketing and innovation produce results. All other business functions are cost. And he also had another quote which I've been, that's been on my mind lately and I've said it to a lot of people, which is you never get wealthy by solving problems. You get wealthy by exploiting opportunities. And the way that you exploit opportunities is you exploit the hell out of your marketing. You really leverage it. So you have this whole process, Dean, that you first came up with called the eight profit activators. And so what I'm going to do is I want to read them. So the first one is narrow your focus and select one target market at a time. And by the way, these things that I'm reading, anyone can go to ilovemarketing.com Download Breakthrough DNA Report that we have and you can read this for free. And you don't even have to buy anything. So this comes free of charge for just being lucky, just being lucky that you stumbled across this. Number two, use direct response offers to compel prospects to call you. We're going to come back to this, but I'm going to go through them. Three, patiently and systematically educate and motivate prospects to meet you when they're ready. Four, present your unique service offer in a way that makes it easy to get shared.

Let's stop right there. That's the before unit. Yep, that's the before unit of a business. Right.

So what do you mean by before? Let's define this for. I mean this is for people that have been listening to every episode of I Love Marketing. They know this inside out. But this is be a good refresher for new people. Go ahead. So what's the before unit?

The before unit of your business? The best way to think about it is that you know we're going to divide your business into three units. The before unit's about Finding people who want to do whatever it is that your business does. The during unit is about delivering the result and doing the actual work of what your business is. And the after unit is all about nurturing lifetime relationships and orchestrating referrals. So each one of these is its own independent unit of your business. And when you look at it like that, what we're really focused on, the best way to think about your before unit is as a supplier to your during unit, that you've got a supplier of new clients to your during unit.

I love that.

When you think about it like that, I often use, like, a vending machine analogy.

Right.

If you could pick and describe exactly what you want. I mean, a vending machine completely fits with this. Right. Like, if we look at it that on the COVID of the vending machine, you've got pictures of the products. You see whatever it is that they have, and you go up to the vending machine and you look and you see, oh, that's what I want. And you see that's D4. And then you go and you see what the price is for D4 is $1.50. And you put in your money and you push D4, and that's what you get. And it's so predictable. Right. You know exactly what's going to happen.

You know, it's been so long since I've used a vending machine for anything that it's, you know, it's kind of bringing back memories.

They don't put spinach in vending machines.

I know. Yeah. I try not to eat anything that has, like, a nutrition label on it, because if you have to describe it, it's not really food. It's like some process.

That's funny.

Yeah.

So what we're looking for for your before unit is to set up the vending machine for your Turing unit. So you could see, this is what I want, and this is what I'm cheerfully willing to pay for it and put in the money, and out they come in whatever volume or number that you want. So if you're a real estate agent and you're looking for people who want to buy lakefront homes as your target audience that you see lakefront homes there, and you're willing to pay $1,000 for somebody who's gonna buy a lakefront home, that's what we're really looking for, is that you push, put in the thousand dollars, and out comes the person that's going to do it. Now, when you look at it, most people aren't accustomed to thinking through how do I do the accounting for this? How do I determine how much I'm willing to pay? And if you do, if you have an info product or you have something that is like if you have an affiliate program or you have something like that, you've already established what that is like. Realtors have a whole industry wide referral protocol that most of the time they'll pay a 25 or 30% referral to another Realtor to refer them business if somebody's coming from out of town or whatever. So they would happily and cheerfully pay that 25% referral. So I have people establish that as their budget for this. The reason that people are willing to pay that amount of money and you think about people who have affiliate programs where they'll pay 50 or 60% of the the sale price. That's often the most expensive sale that you can get. But it's good to have a benchmark to establish that benchmark. You think about people often and we never participate in just blanket affiliate programs because we get pitched all the time for me and you and I for, I love marketing for this audience. They want for us to pitch their stuff and they'll pay us 50 or 60% or whatever of the sales that come from it.

And we've never done that during this entire time, although we could have made a fortune doing it. We just have never done that. We've promoted people's books. We obviously let guests all the time share what is. But we don't.

So people think that that's a good idea in their mind, right? They would think that. What they would think I would have it made if Joe and Dean would just promote my product. That would be super because I'd get this windfall of all these new customers. I get all that exposure and I would happily pay them 50% of all the money that comes in. And that what people are not willing to do or don't have the confidence to do is to think and set up a system that allows them to pay that money to marketing to do that same thing. They don't have the confidence they'll gladly pay. After the money is already generated, you get a big check and we'll write you a small check. Happily do that. But very few people are interested or skillful enough to write the small check to get the big check. Nobody wants to write it in advance. Everybody's very cautious with that kind of money. But everybody's so super optimistic and generous with future money, money that they're going to bring in. So when you look at it. This whole idea of setting up this vending machine, what would have to happen, that's how a vending machine works on the surface. You got the box, you've got the target audience, you've got the price, you push the button and out it comes. That's what we ultimately want to create for your Azure beforehand. That's the way we want to think about it. But in order to make that happen now, we have to open up the machine and see what these for profit activators are that make that work. How are we going to set up the wiring here to find those people and to make them come out the other end to make it appear like that vending machine? Selecting that target audience really gets you narrowed in on your focus. Now, each of these next three profit activators all have very different jobs and we're going to approach them very differently copy wise.

Right?

Profit activator 2 is just about getting people to raise their hand. It's about turning invisible prospects into visible prospects. Somebody who's interested in what it is that we're talking about. So the key word for profit activator 2 is compel. And the key word for profit activator 3 is convince. And so a lot of times the big mistake that I see is people are trying to do too much in the ad. They're trying to convince people in one ad, one postcard, one letter, one email to take this big leap. They're trying to make the entire sale in one thing. And so taking this approach of the vending machine is if you narrow your focus and you know that you've got this finite group of people who could potentially be your audience. And some of them, there's a difference when you understand it, between visible prospects and invisible prospects. Like if you look at it on a real estate side, somebody who owns a lakefront home is a visible prospect because you can get a list of them. Chiropractors are a visible prospect. Dentists are a visible pro. Anybody that you can get a list of, those are visible. But what you can't get a list of is a buyer who's thinking about buying a lakefront home, or somebody who's got a sore back or somebody who just got a toothache, you can't. Those are invisible prospects. So you have to attract those people, right? You have to get them to raise their hand first. And that's where something that we talk about compelling is that often when people make the first step into something, when they enter the vortex of ultimately being a prospect for you, that they have a need that your during unit is going to be able to solve for them. If they have a toothache, for instance, that now all of a sudden they are ready to hear about a dentist. They weren't interested in the dentist. When they don't have the toothache, they have compelling reason to do it. Somebody who's thinking about selling their house has now got a reason. They've made this trigger that I'm going to be selling my house. So rather than try and convince people to do the major action, which would be to list with me and let me sell your house, it's focusing on just getting those people to raise their hand. Getting the people who could be prospects for your business to raise their hand. And there's nothing as powerful as a book in situations like that to just get somebody to raise their hand. And we talk about the. Because people enter the information gathering stage of something right when they're kind of getting their thoughts together. If they're thinking about getting cosmetic dentistry or they're thinking about selling their house or they're thinking about buying a car or anything, the first thing they start doing is getting their bearings. That's information. They want to set out the corners of it to see what it's all about rather than making a specific decision. But everybody's speaking to people, trying to convince them to do what it is that you do. When. If you on the front end can just focus on getting those people to take the very first step and think like a chess master, thinking two or three moves ahead. Where I know that if I can get somebody to download a guide to Winter Haven lakefront house prices, or I can get somebody to download any kind of book on information about whatever it is that they're looking to do. I know now that that is now a visible prospect. I've turned an invisible prospect into somebody that now they've triggered this dialogue, right? So that's. And once somebody raises their hand, Profit Activator 2 has done its job and they now are in profit activator 3 where now we're going to convince, we're going to educate and motivate people. And I think that people put too much, too much emphasis on really thinking that they have to be salesy and try and fast talk and convince as if it's them doing something that's going to convince somebody to do something. People convince themselves of things and it's just presenting them, thinking like a lawyer really and, and presenting them with the case, the facts to come to their own conclusion. So that when we ask them to render their verdict that they're convinced enough, beyond a shadow of a doubt or with a preponderance of evidence that this is going to be something that I can take a chance on. It's just you're moving down that path one step at a time.

I like it. Do you have anything to say to this? Jennifer, how's all this land for you? This is the first time you've kind of sat through with us.

This is super good, Just because I think it's entertaining and funny. Can you give this in a dating reference?

In a dating reference? Yeah, you know. Well, it's really interesting. So that whole thing you look at, we talk about Gary Halbert and one of the greatest things that Gary Halbert did was write that full page ad about the successful, creative, generous businessman or whatever, creative, generous businessman looking for hot sexy woman for fun and romance. It was really this whole thing of really kind of selecting who he's looking for and getting people to raise their hand. I mean, I remember when Eben, we were joking about that. But Eben would create this whole. We created a system when he was living in La Jolla for running little classified ads or running an ad in the LA Reader or San Diego Reader, which was essentially that same thing, but would send people to a recorded message where they would listen and then they would leave their information and he would set up tea dates with them where they would come and have tea and he would just line them up like that, which is the profit activator 3. And then if there was a connection, he'd make an offer in profit activator 4 to go on a date or to hang out or to do whatever. And that whole thing is using kind of the profit activators for dating. That's exactly what happened.

Well, I want to say a couple things too, based on the positioning of all of this and how you do it. For instance, when it comes to selling Genius Network, I like selling things to people that want it, not people that need it. And that's why I think we're very nonchalant about how we go about our own stuff. We're like, look, people are into this, they're into this. If they're not into this, they're not into this. However, when it comes to making money and stuff, some things are bought, other things need to be sold. The thing with selling is like seduction. I mean, it's all the foreplay that you do until you pop the big question. I'll leave it up to the listener to determine what the big question is that could be, would you like to go on a date or would you like to marry me or would you like to do whatever? But the thing is, it's.

Want to play Twister? Yeah, exactly.

And the, you know, I made the analogy about sports earlier, and one of the things that I was always tell my carpet cleaners is like, if you have to figure out how to successfully sell something nobody wants to buy, it forces you to learn a lot about how to be persuasive.

Right?

Because nobody wants to hire a carpet cleaner. I mean, no one says, hey, man, I can't wait till the cat pisses in the corner again. Or I can't wait. I can't wait, you know, till the boss is gonna come over and we have to, you know, look good or, you know, Thanksgiving dinners and the family's gonna be here, you know, I mean, so there's usually an event that, that is in place in order to. And now a smart carpet cleaner would be mailing a monthly client newsletter, and they would be having people, you know, sign up on their social media. They would be getting reviews. I mean, there's all. There's all these things that they would do. But most people, they want heat, but they don't put in logs in order to. And then they're like, oh, my God. And so people usually respond and do marketing when they have to shoehorn in a sale, when it's like life or death if we don't. So most of the time, the big guns are called in, in crisis mode, not in. Let's set the stage. And so the beauty of the profit activators here in the model of before, during and after is it gives you a framework to actually think about your business. So, for instance, one of the things I would explain all the time with sporting events is that if you're a healthy eater and you're going to go to a ball game and you show up and you're not hungry because maybe you ate something, but then an hour goes by and you're getting kind of hungry, and then maybe an hour and a half goes by and you're at the point where you're starving. Or worse, you showed up at the game, you didn't have enough time to eat anything beforehand, and you kind of showed up hungry. Yeah, well, they know that. I mean, they know that sugar, fat, popcorn, sodas, this stuff costs nothing in healthy food. The margins aren't going to be as great, right? So they're going to sell booze, they're going to sell sugar and that's what.

It'S really there for, is to sell more beer.

Here's what's funny about the game we were just at. They didn't have alcohol. They actually made a judgment call that they went out. And I was like, and me and Dean Graziosi, because we look at all of the financials with all this, and we're thinking 77,000 people. And let's just say that, you know, 20% of people there spent 10 bucks, you know, on. I mean, we're talking. They probably, you know, I mean, then how many of those people do. So we factor. They are losing probably at least half a million dollars, minimum. I mean, if not a million dollars, right. Because of that. But there's ramifications of it. Because of it. So they obviously, they made a judgment call from that standpoint. But if someone's going down the aisle with sodas and cotton candy and popcorn, you eventually. Or hot dogs, what I would say is, if you've got supply and demand on your side, you don't need to be a great marketer. You don't need to have great copy. And I would always say, if the world supply of toilet paper ran out tomorrow, and you live in a city where people need toilet paper, which is like, pretty much, you know, everywhere in America, and you had a garage full of toilet paper, you could put a cardboard sign that says toilet paper, $50 a roll, and you would probably sell out.

Right?

Because people couldn't get toilet paper anywhere. They would do it. But most people don't live in that world. They have competitors. They have different options that people can go to. So that's where sophistication, that's where understanding this stuff. Because, look, trust me, I wish we didn't have to. To do all of this marketing stuff. I really wish I have great stuff, and it would really help people. And I could sell it to them, and they would just show up and they would buy it and everyone would be happy. But that's not the way the world works. So these sort of things are the recipes in order to get what it is you want if you have people that have your money. Like, I used to drive down nice neighborhoods when I was a Deadbrook carpet cleaner and saying, every one of these homes has carpet in it. They have my money. If I can just go in and provide a service for them, how do I write a withdrawal slip and get them to deposit money into my bank account? Right? And so, because back then, there wasn't square. There wasn't, you know, like, people Wrote checks, you know, and getting a merchant account back then was a giant fade to the ass, right? To even be the. So I'd be like, okay, how, how do I get someone to give me money? And so what you're saying is, without getting all sales hypey and profit activator number three, if people are, they just need to know, like, and trust you. And if you can do that and accomplish that with your copy, that's the deal. And so once you have established a level of trust or a level of rapport and they look at you as a trusted servant, as someone that's there to help them, then you don't have to be like this preconceived notion of what someone thinks a salesperson is. I mean, it's not like people love to be sold. They hate to be pressured. And if you don't use this sort of stuff and you wait till you try to do without it, guess what it is? It's pressure. It's desperation. It's like, you must buy this ship.

Well, that's the thing. That's exactly what happens. And that's the, you know, the Internet marketing world especially is built around that, trying to get people to buy right now. And that was. So I spoke at Dan Kennedy's super conference and I put up a slide about the gauntlet series because that's such a language. You think about the words that we use to describe these things, like gauntlet series of messages, which are like the first 10 days that you're hammering somebody to buy your tripwire offer. And it's all so assaultive on people. It's really what it is. And so the whole thing, when I was looking it up, I found that gauntlet is a military punishment where a man would run through a line of other men beating them with a stick. That's what a gauntlet. Running the gauntlet is punishment. And that's the way that it feels for people when they opt in for something that now they're getting this gauntlet getting beaten. You know, buy now, today only, this offer is going to disappear. You could buy it now or you can pay later and then they don't buy it. Okay, well, you twisted my arm. What about this? How about if you break it up into payments and if you do this, I'll give you this bonus. Well, what about this? And frankly, I'm puzzled why you haven't bought this far and all that. 10 days. And if they don't buy, they then relegate them to the affiliate offer list and call them Bad leads. Those leads are no good. When you look at the reality of it that I look at the long term value and I've recently come to the. Because I'm always looking at metrics. How can you account for something? How can we make something work it? And I think that Profit Activator 3 is an asset. The list of people when you, you know, Profit Activator two is just a gateway into profit Activator three where once you've. Somebody's raised their hand, they've given you permission, like Seth would say that you've now got this pool people, this audience of people who are interested in what you've been offering. So somebody downloads a guide to Winter Haven lakefront house prices. You've got a list of people who are looking for lakefront homes or if they're. If you send postcards to the homeowners, you've got a pool of people who, you know, own lakefront homes and they may be thinking about selling at some point. So you look at the long term value of it and we've had other podcasts where we've broken down the break. The fact that just over half of the people that inquire about something will buy what it is they've inquired about over the next 18 months. But only 15% of them will do it in the first 90 days. And so most people are really kind of focused on the next nine days. Not even 90. 90 days is their long term follow up program. Right. Like those leads are really. I've already. They would consider it a failure because most of the time they're looking to run the ad today and then get them to buy right away so they can pay the credit card bill for the Facebook ads before it's due.

So this says patiently and systematically educate and motivate prospects to meet you when they're ready. When they're ready.

So this is where the term patience.

Is a virtue actually comes into play.

It really does.

Remember that little meme, I can't hurry the fuck up. Let's do this. Because of timing purposes and because here's what I'd like to do. This will cause everyone to have a really good reason to listen to the next episode that me and you do together. So here's what I wanted to do. So we covered, we talked about copy, we talked about the before unit of the eight profit activators. I'm going to read the remaining ones, but we're not going to go into discussion on them. What I'm going to encourage people to do is if you have not read recently or read at all the Breakthrough DNA report and book, go to ilovemarketing.com, opt in, literally have it sent to you and read it and study it and be prepared.

So be prepared to go through our Gauntlet series.

Exactly. Which we don't have. Yeah, we don't like.

Here's our Gauntlet series. It's 300 episodes long.

It is free. You don't have to buy anything from us unless you want to like, you know, come to one of our events or something and we, you know, anyway, so I'm going to read those and then any I'll get famous last words from you guys and then we'll encourage everyone to just, we'll do another episode and in between there may be different topics. So but the next time that me and you like literally sit down and go through this, I want to do the second part. I want to do the during and the after. So number five is the eight profit activators. Number five is deliver a dream come true experience designed from your client's perspective. Number six. Six, provide after sales service even after you've already been paid. Seven, nurture lifetime relationships and focus on lifetime value. And eight, orchestrate referrals by giving your clients the opportunity to feel great. Now if you follow these and you use the right copy along the way, there's also this other thing called delivery. If you deliver what it is you promise then people will continue to do business with you. And frankly, this is the way to do ethical marketing. People look at marketing as like oh, someone struck. Like this is if you literally take someone through the before, during and after unit and the last one being orchestrate referrals by giving your clients the opportunity to feel great. Now if you deliver a world class experience for your clients and you also don't hide the fact that you would like them to tell other people. Right. Then you actually have bonded with people. And bonding is a bond is another four letter word that is critical that needs to happen. So great marketing without following up with what your great marketing is offering and promising is stupid and it's not how you build and grow a business. And if you want word of mouth marketing, you want to give people something worth talking about, you got to be.

Able to get the result. Yeah.

So the thing is that's the focus. So anything else that you would like to see, say Dean or Jennifer to this and then we will let everyone go and read Breakthrough DNA that hasn't and make it a great day as Joel. Make it a great Day, as Joel Weldon would say.

Yeah, exactly.

I would share a couple more things on my end. When it comes to copy, is a lot of people listening probably feel this sense of, like, frustration where you're like, people need what I have, and I know that I can give them a person the result. And from a copywriter's perspective, what I would love to share with you is people will buy what they want, not what they need. And make sure to communicate that whatever it is that you have, share with them through your copy that you understand what they want and that you can get them there before trying to tell them what they need. Because I know Joe's shared it a lot. Where people know that they need to exercise and eat healthy and there's millions of books on it. But enter the conversation. Back to what Dean said of enter the conversation that's going on in their mind and start to show them that you know what they want and then speak to that.

Love it. Awesome.

And Jennifer, for people that want to follow you, you have a podcast, you take on some clients. Not a lot because we're kind of keeping you busy. But if people want to track you down, give out your conscious copy or whatever you want.

Yeah, so it's conscious copy. And yeah, check me out there if you want to learn more about email copy.

She's actually quite funny, too. I think one of the reasons we hang out is she reminds me of a female version of me when I was 24, when I was young people.

When people introduce me, or especially the people at Joe's office, they're like, jen's a younger version of Joe.

She's very witty, she's very funny, she's very charming. You know, all those qualities.

Very good looking. Oh, yeah. All of that especially. We just put a wig on you and I see it right now.

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

I just need to grow a mustache.

Yes.

So go ahead, Dean.

That's funny. Well, I think, you know, this is the thing. If somebody can fall in love with the idea that copy is just communicating, really figuring out when they have a track to run on, when you know what your objective is, it's really about engineering the right words that are going to help steer people towards that next step. That's really what it is.

Love it. Love it. All right, everyone. Well, it was great to do this episode for you and to help you have more knowledge and strategies and frameworks to build and grow your enterprise and your ambitions, whatever they may be. So we will talk to you next time on a future episode of I love marketing, so make it a great day.

Thanks for listening to this episode of I Love Marketing. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network Annual event, go to geniusnetworkevents.com that's geniusnetworkevents dot com if you would like access to the full interview, the show notes, and the special resources for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 294 that's ilovemarketing.com 294.