You're Not Boring: How to Sell More with Stories

This book is amazing. I went to Sweden recently and had, you know, 2 weeks where I was just chilling, hanging out with family and friends and stuff, and I only wanted to bring a book, so I brought this book with me. I recommend this book to people all the time, and a lot of them don't even read it, which is a shame because it's such a powerful book. And the fact that it's free is kind of mind-boggling. The reason I'm sharing it with you today is because I want you to see the real value that is inside of Russell Brunson's book. I have no affiliation with Russell Brunson, by the way. I'm literally just making this because I feel like it'll help you because it's helped me. And what I want to share with you today is The Power of Storytelling in Your Business. This book really opened my eyes to storytelling and how stories hold people back and how stories can transform your life. It can transform your clients' lives, your students', and make a really big impact. But everything is a story. So that's what we're gonna dive into today. Hey friend, I'm James Allen, founder of Profit Your Knowledge, where we help people take the knowledge that's inside of their head and turn it into digital products, membership sites, coaching programs, and a real legitimate income. So you can teach the things that you know, that you're experienced at, skillful at, and turn that into a lucrative online business. It is an amazing time to build an online business around what's inside your head. And it may seem ordinary to you, but that's extraordinary to a lot of other people. So you just have to get out there. And to help you get there faster, I created a passive income masterclass that shows you how to turn your knowledge into $2,000 per month of passive income in 5 hours a week without complicated tech. I'll put a link down in the description for you to check that out. I'm gonna show you how to create digital products that people actually wanna buy before you build them, how to create a simple non-techie system that can sell that product for you on autopilot, and then how to drive endless amounts of traffic to that system so you can start making sales. Breaks it all down really simple. It's filled with tools, templates, and examples to help you get your business up and running as soon as possible. Obviously you can watch my free content, but if you want the most streamlined approach, I'd recommend checking out that masterclass. Again, there's a link in the description, or you can always go to profityourknowledge.com/masterclass. But let's dive into Russell Brunson's book Expert Secrets. This is page 191. I'm going to link in the description the website, it's expertsecrets.com. But you can just click on that and opt in and you can get the book basically free. I mean, you have to pay for shipping and handling and all that, and then you go through some upsells and, you know, options like that to work with Russell more if you want to, but that's where I'd recommend to get the book. You get a hardcover and it's like the most up-to-date edition when you go through expertsecrets.com. Again, zero affiliation with Russell Brunson, it's just a great book. And I wanna show you the real power that this book has right now. So secret number 10, he goes over the 4 core stories. There's a lot of stuff that leads up to this too, but this is just the main idea with telling great stories. And when you think about stories, everything is a story. Our entire lives are stories. The beliefs that you have, the way that you act, it's all built off of a story that comes from an experience that you had in your life, whether that's to serve you or not. As he shares in the book, we have an experience of some kind, we create a story based on that experience, and then that forms a belief, which is what we live our lives by. So how does that help you make money? No matter what you're selling or you're teaching people on the internet, people have experienced really good things in that area and they've experienced really bad things. So if you're trying to sell a solution to someone, chances are they've tried a lot of different things. And when you present your solution, in my case for example, I'll help you take your knowledge and ideas and turn it into a digital product like an online course that you can sell passively and create real legitimate passive income doing that. If I tell you that, you're gonna start to think a lot of different things like, well, I don't even know what my idea would be. Like, who would pay money for what I have inside my mind, for my experience? You know, I haven't really done anything truly worthwhile, which isn't true by the way. And that's just one idea around you packaging your knowledge into something valuable. The other thing is about online courses. Things I hear from people are like, are online courses even valuable? Don't they take forever to make? Also, how do I know which online course to actually build? I have hundreds of ideas, but I have no idea which one is really worth pursuing. Those are real challenges that people have, and maybe because they have tried to build online courses or digital products and were just overwhelmed by the entire process of it, guessing if what they're doing is actually working. Or maybe they just know somebody who tried to build an online course and spent all this time and then didn't make any sales. So it's our job to rewrite the story inside of this person's mind by telling them a new, more empowering story that creates the number one thing that leads to sales, which is belief, belief that it has worked for you, worked for other people, and I really believe that it can work for me. When someone's able to check off each one of those boxes, then they are more open to investing in your program, coaching product, whatever it is. So inside the book, Russell shares that there are 3 types of stories related to any product or service that causes people friction. It causes them to step back and really think about this and their experience. And the first one is their vehicle story, then the internal belief story, and then the external belief story. So the vehicle story is whatever vehicle you're presenting to them. In this example that I'm sharing, creating online courses or digital products, that's the vehicle. Because what you really want is passive income, because you want more freedom in your life, autonomy. You don't want to be glued to a phone all the time. Like, this is real stuff that I hear from people all the time. But then again, with that vehicle of creating online courses, digital products, there's a those different false beliefs that pop up inside of people's minds about like, will they take forever to make? Are they really valuable? Uh, it— you have to have a huge audience in order to sell any. And while that stuff can be true, and it is common that people have that experience, it's not the foundational truth. So because I've experienced things that aren't true for that story, I can share my story and my experience and how it's worked for me, my clients, and other people so that they can believe that it can work for them. For example, I was making thousands of dollars from my YouTube channel when I had 200 subscribers, and I've been able to keep that going throughout my YouTube journey before— way before I was even monetized. So I can share that story with people, and then they start to see hope for themselves and think, oh wow, I can see how that would work for me too. Now they're starting to believe in my vehicle. Even if you can get someone to believe in your approach or your vehicle that's gonna help them get from point A to point B, there's still another concern, and that's, okay, I see that it is possible, but can I actually execute on that? So if I can get someone to believe that online courses and digital products are a great way to create passive income in your life, they say, that's awesome, but I suck at tech. I'm a dinosaur when it comes to tech. So that is an example of this internal belief that this person, even if they believe that it is possible. They don't know if they can make the tech work in their favor so they can make it— this whole process work for themselves. Does that make sense? So this is where I'll share a story and solution about how I tried all these different tools and none of them were working. And then I found one tool that really worked for me, and that was called Kajabi. And you know, if you were teaching something similar but you found it through Russell's company ClickFunnels and that worked for you, you can share your experience about ClickFunnels. But even when you get people to believe that the vehicle is going to work and that they have the ability to execute on that, there's still another barrier, and that is the external belief. So the external belief isn't something that's really in their control. It's really other people— how to get other people to buy into this thing too. When you get people to buy into your vehicle, get them to believe that it can work for them, and that they can make this work despite external circumstances, that's when you get buy-in and belief. Now you know what types of stories to tell. How do you actually tell those stories? Russell breaks it down in depth about storytelling inside of this book, and then at the end, after going through all of it, he does a more revised version, kind of a condensed version of how to tell a great story. So here is the 5-part framework that Russell uses to tell captivating, transformational stories. First, we have the backstory, then the journey, the new opportunity, the framework that you learned or earned to achieve that result, and then the achievement. What's the actual achievement for yourself and for other people? So using myself as an example, my backstory: I was in construction work making about 6 figures per year, and then I finally left to start my coaching business. The journey: I was going to networking events, speaking on stages, and doing a lot of manual marketing and wasn't getting the results that I wanted. I wanted freedom and autonomy in my life. And then of course COVID hit and I was forced to move my business online. The new opportunity, I found some great mentors, Graham Cochran and Ramit Sethi, and they taught me how online business worked. And I realized I was making things way more complicated than I needed to. The framework was that I built 6 different digital products that didn't make me a penny until I finally learned about customer research and really getting into the mind of your customer. And that's where I started making sales and realizing that this was really possible for me. Then as for the achievement, I started making legitimate money, started paying for my rent on autopilot, and then it continued to grow. And then I started helping other people achieve that result as well. I hope you can see how simple this is. What matters more is that you're getting out there and you're sharing these stories and really talking to your audience and understanding where they're at. What are the stories that they're telling themselves that are holding them back? And when you hear these related to whatever it is that you teach people, You're gonna think, that's bogus, what are you talking about? And then you can share your story. It's gonna give them the belief they need to keep taking action and build the thing that they want. Anyways, this book is amazing, and I recommend anyone who wants to turn their knowledge into a lucrative online income that you read it. And again, if you do want to shortcut the process and see what I'm talking about in action as well, you can always check out my free passive income masterclass. I'm gonna give you in-depth stories of the examples I shared with you in this lesson. That way you can really see what I'm talking about. To get the masterclass, once again, link in the description, or you can always go to profityourknowledge.com/masterclass. Take what you learned here, get out there, make something happen more importantly, and I will see you in the next one.