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Let me preface this by reminding you that the greatest selling tool in all the world isn’t the internet, or sales letters or sales videos or even word of mouth. It’s stories.

Stories sell like nothing else because we are hard wired to listen to and love stories. It’s in our genes. There was a time when storytelling could literally save our lives. Think of a primitive man coming back from a hunt and telling everyone in camp the story of how ‘Bob’ was killed by a saber tooth tiger in the sixth valley to the south.

Do you think anyone would venture into the sixth valley to the south after that? No way, because they knew the story of how Bob got killed by the tiger who lives there.

Now then, here’s how to get experts to practically write your blog posts for you AND get them to do it in story form:

Ask them a question that invites a personal story.

For example, your blog is about investing in commodities. This week you want a blog post on pork futures (I’m making this stuff up right now) so you send out an email to every commodities expert you know of, asking them about their most memorable pork futures story. It doesn’t matter if they made or lost money, you just want to hear their story. A dozen of them write back and you put those stories together into a post.

You’re doing a few things here:

First, you’re getting experts to weigh in on an interesting question, which means you get to ‘borrow’ on their credibility, making you look good to your readers and customers.

Second, you’re doing this in story form, and since people love stories, they are coming back to your blog every week for more of these stories.

Third, you’re building a relationship with these experts. Sure, some of them won’t respond to you, but others will be eager to share their stories. And down the road, who knows what might happen. They could end up promoting your product to their lists, or asking you to do a JV, or even becoming good friends with you.

Fourth, blog posts like these tend to get shared on social media which brings in more traffic.

Fifth, your experts might also share your posts with their followers. “Hey, my hog futures story is featured in this post, check it out.”

The trick here is to phrase your questions in such a way that it invites personal stories.

And don’t forget to ask your readers the same questions. Sometimes it’s the everyday guy or gal you don’t know who has the best story – the one that makes your article go viral or even get referenced on other major sites.

One little notebook could be worth a million dollars to you. Or more. Here’s how…

Keep track of everything you do and especially all of your ideas. When you start something new, keep a running record of what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

Two things will happen:

First, you’ll have more and more ideas, and better ideas, too. The simple act of writing ideas down drives your subconscious to create more ideas. Review your ideas weekly and find the gems. Test out the best ones, choose one and run with it. It could be a million-dollar business.

Second, teach others how to do that business. If you find an awesome new way to build an email list, build your own lists and then teach others to do the same. If you discover how to launch a product from start to finish in 3 days, teach others to do the same.

Keep your notebook with you at all times. Write in it when the mood strikes, and even when it doesn’t. Resort to an online journal only when necessary. There’s something about the brain and handwriting connection that inspires more creative thinking than simply tapping keys.

So, do you have your million dollar journal yet?

If not, get one and get started. Here’s one I found on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Ideas-Journal-Millionaire/dp/1080419748/

Your future self with thank you for it!

We talk a lot about storytelling in marketing, but what’s the meaning of it all? With one simple story – the right story – you can turn an unsuccessful business into a success, and a successful business into a behemoth of customers and sales.

Stories are 22 times more memorable than fact and figures alone. And our neural activity increases five times when listening to a story. Storytelling lights up the sensory cortex in the brain, allowing the listener to feel, hear, taste and even smell the story.

And because consumer attention is the ultimate commodity, it’s more important than ever to tell the right story.

Since the best stories are often not your own, Land Rover tells their customers’ stories. They find people who depend upon the Land Rover vehicle – such as a team of local transport drivers in the Himalayas – and share their remarkable stories.

IKEA uses puns and humor while sharing stories of how their products improve the private lives of their customers. They shared funny stories of how their products are used in the bedrooms and bathrooms of customers with tremendous success.

Sanlam Bank educated South Africans on the importance of saving money by filming the trials and tribulations of a young professional who got paid only in rand coins. These coins were worth about 7 cents in US dollars or .34 pounds sterling. Combining the story telling with valuable personal finance advice earned the video series 900,000 South African views on YouTube and generated 74 million media impressions.

Here’s how to get into the right mindset to uncover your own story. And guess what? It’s in the form of a story…

This guy is walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can’t get out. A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, “Hey you, can you help me out?” The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on.

A priest comes along, and the guy shouts up, “Father, I’m down in this hole, can you help me out?” The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on.

Then a friend walks by. “Hey Joe, it’s me, can you help me out?” And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, “Are you crazy? Now we’re both down here!” The friend says, “Yeah, but I’ve been down here before, and I know the way out.”

Be the friend to your customers. Jump in the hole with them. Let them know that you’ve been in that hole before, but you know the way out. Tell them your story, show them how it parallels their own story, and then show them the solution.

The U.S. elections are over now, but the impact they had on many people still resonates strongly. Thinking I might like to revisit a U.S. show about the White House called ‘The West Wing’, I found it on Netflix and started binging.

The West Wing was a serial political drama series that ran from 1999 to 2006 and it enjoyed a large, enthusiastic audience.

The funny thing is, the #2 actor on the show, Rob Lowe, doesn’t appear in many of season 4’s episodes. And by season 5 he’s gone. Why did he leave?

It’s rumored that he was disappointed the network wouldn’t raise his salary. It seems the $75,000 per episode they were paying him wasn’t enough to hold his interest.

And if you think that was a lot of money… 15 years ago, Martin Sheen the lead actor was earning $300,000 per episode.

I bring this up for one reason: Are you possibly thinking too small?

I realize it’s good to have realistic goals that are achievable. But if your goal is, for example, another $1,000 per month, what would happen if you make a second goal to be earning $1,000 per week? And then $1,000 per day?

Odds are you are providing as much value to your customers as actors provide to their audience. In fact, if you are teaching new skills then you are providing more value than someone who merely entertains. You’re just not doing it at the same scale… yet.

Please realize that you are indeed worth more than you realize. Think of this as permission to raise your goals considerably, and take the action needed to get there.

Why is it when we want to be at our most creative and innovative, we resort to using the most worn-out cliché at our disposal? “We need to think outside the box on this one!”

Ugghhh.

First of all, that ‘box’ is there for a reason. It gives us boundaries and guidelines on what we want to accomplish. For example, if I say I want you to write an article on new ways small businesses can use social media, I’ve just given you a ‘box’.

But if I tell you to get to work and give you no idea what to do, you’re going to be totally and utterly lost.

Second, if we want to be more creative, let’s start by abolishing the “think outside the box” phrase and make a pact, just between you and me. From this point forward, if you or I say or write ‘th*nk o*ts*d* th* b*x’, we owe $5 to our favorite charity payable immediately.

Agreed? Good.

Now then, what can we say when we want to express our desire to think differently, get off the beaten track, search for an innovative approach, break new ground and take an imaginative leap?

Seriously, I’m asking you for your help on this one. Even the phrases I used in the previous sentence sound worn out and tired.

I did have one thought, but if you’re a Star Wars fan then you might not like it. For whatever reason, people seem to either gravitate towards Star Wars or Star Trek. I’m told Star Wars is for dreamers and Star Trek is for science geeks. This might be wrong, but I can see some truth to it.

Here’s what I do know: In the very first Star Trek series during the opening credits, we hear Captain Kirk saying…

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before.” What do you think?

Can we boldly go where no one has gone before?

It beats thinking outside some cliché box.

Whoops! That’s $5 I owe… now where did I put that checkbook… 😉

Have you seen, ‘Self-Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker’? It’s a limited series on Netflix, and the first 8 minutes just about hit me over the head with what might be the most important marketing lesson of all.

The scene opens with a small street market in St. Louis, U.S., in 1908. A middle-aged woman stands in her Sunday best next to a barrel, looking shy, a little bit scared and without confidence. But she is determined to see this through.

On the barrel we see a couple dozen small silver tins of, ‘Magical Hair Grower’. It’s clear she wants to sell them but doesn’t have a clue how to start. She’s just standing there awkwardly as people walk past her without a glance.

Finally, she takes a deep breath, pastes a nervous smile on her face, holds the tin up and begins shouting, “Magical Hair Grower, fifty cents a tin, get your Magical Hair Grower right here.”

No one responds.

Taking a different tact, she tries to interact with passersby. “Got dandruff ma’am? Got bald patches? I got your fix, right here ladies.”

Again, there is no response and we, the viewers, fear she might cry.

Offscreen there is a voice: “I’ve heard of that stuff.” We see a woman holding a large basket of laundry, her hair covered in a scarf. “Does it work? Quietly and with emotion, C.J. tells the woman, “It saved my life.”

And then she tells her story. Extreme poverty. Debilitating stress. Terrible work for a pittance of pay. Hair falling out. A once-loving husband turning abusive. She wonders why God even allows her to live.

Then the product appears at her darkest hour. Months later her hair is full and beautiful once more. Now she has her confidence back. She has a new man who loves her. Her life is so much better because of this product. It saved her life.

A crowd has gathered to hear her speak. There is a moment of suspense – will they believe her story? Will they purchase the product? There is one sale. And then a second. And now she has more customers than she has tins to sell.

But while telling you the story of the first 8 minutes of this show, I’ve left something out. Despite her beautiful hair and the new man in her life, C.J. is still working far too hard for too little money. She is a wash woman, which means she spends her days hand scrubbing clothes on a washboard with lye soap. She wants more in life. She wants to sell Magical Hair Grower.

But the Snooty Product Owner doesn’t want C.J. to sell the stuff. Snooty Product Owner wants C.J. to continue doing her wash in exchange for a tin of Magical Hair Grower.

Never mind that C.J. has an incredible testimonial. Never mind that C.J. has already referred 8 paying customers to the Snooty Product Owner. Nope. It’s not said but it is implied that C.J. needs to ‘stay in her place’ because she’s not pretty enough to be a salesperson.

And so C.J. steals those tins to prove she can do it. She is willing to risk everything – even prison – to get herself out of poverty.

There are two lessons here. I don’t need to spell them out for you because you already know what they are. Take a look at your own business and your own life and ask yourself what C.J. would tell you to do.

4 times out of 5, the answer is a resounding YES. Maybe you’ve heard this advice before. Maybe it sounded crazier than clown college to you. But… it works.

It doesn’t matter if you’re creating a lead magnet, a paid product, a video to share with your list or whatever. When you create the sales copy first, you think bigger. You get more creative. You find solutions you didn’t know you had. You’re more excited about your product idea, and the excitement shows in your writing.

You’re shaping a better product than if you had created the product first. You’ll have the best product possible because you sold it first.

But what if you write bullet points or sales points and then realize you can’t fulfill them? Simply remove that portion of the sales letter. You will need to revise and tighten up your letter when the product is done. But 90% of your letter will likely already be finished.

And here’s one of the best benefits of all – you don’t have to write the sales letter after the product is finished. Many marketers find they have just enough enthusiasm to get through the product creation and have none left for the letter. But by writing the sales copy first, you don’t have to worry about that.

I learned this technique a long time ago, and every time I remember to do it, I not only have a better product created with a lot more enthusiasm – I also make a ton more sales.

I just read an article over at HubSpot that touts the ‘10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint’ as created by Guy Kawasaki. I want to state up front that I have nothing against Guy. I’ve read his books and he gives great advice on many topics. But I suspect that one day Guy needed something to write about and was fresh out of ideas. That’s when he decided to share his own 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint with readers, and now it’s gospel among speakers and video creators.

It’s also, in my opinion, nonsense.

The rule says that you must never use more than 10 slides in a presentation, you must never go over 20 minutes and you must never use fonts smaller than 30 point. Even if you don’t do PowerPoint presentations or make slideshow videos, you can tell at one glance this rule is wrong. The clue is a certain phrase that appears not just once, but three times. Go back now and see if you can spot it.

That’s right…

“You must never.”

You must never do this and you must never do that, and it’s all rubbish.

Very few rules apply all of the time. In fact, the only hard and fast rule I can think of right now is that if you want to keep living, you have to keep breathing. But I can even think of an exception to that rule, too.

And yet I see new marketers make this mistake time and time again. Their favorite expert-guru type says they MUST do this and this and this without deviation, and the new marketer will struggle to follow those rules until they collapse in frustration.

Never mind that the expert-guru works in internet marketing and the new marketer works in hobbies. Never mind that the expert-guru has a following of 100,000 with huge name recognition while the new marketer has neither. Never mind that the expert-guru has a staff of 5 with 20 outsourcers at his beck and call while the new marketer is trying to do it all herself.

Almost no rule applies all of the time. While it makes perfect sense to follow the guidance of someone wiser and more seasoned than you, it makes equal sense to adapt their advice to your situation, to your niche and to your audience.

There will be times when you need more than 10 slides, when your talk might be a lot longer than 20 minutes (especially if you are teaching) and when your font might not be 30 point. And that, my friend, is okay.

One last thing… when you become a big shot in your niche, or if you already are a big shot, please do everyone a favor and teach others not to work in absolutes and to instead think for themselves.

And the next time you catch me saying “you must” do anything, be kind. I make this mistake myself from time to time, but I’m working on removing words like ‘must,’ ‘should’ and ‘never’ from my vocabulary.

Emojis aren’t just for friends; they’re also dynamite at capturing your customers’ attention, increasing user engagement and even helping to close sales. The funny thing is that most businesses think emojis are best left to 16-year old girls: “We want to maintain a professional appearance to our customers which is why we will never use emojis in any of our communications,” said the out-of-touch company executive to the marketing team struggling to increase lackluster sales.

In the last 100 years of advertising, there has NEVER been a time when the personal touch didn’t increase the value of business to consumer communication. It doesn’t matter if it’s an email, a social media post, an article or a sales letter. Giving all of your communications a personal touch with emojis just makes good marketing sense.

What are emojis? 👀

Emojis are small icons and images using Unicode Standard. They’re used in all forms of digital communication. Emojis can be yellow smileys or represent common objects such as food, animals, sports, transportation and more.

In marketing, the vast majority of the emojis you use will be emoticons – emojis that represent emotions with facial representations. 😍 And it’s emoticons we’ll be referring to in the rest of this article, even though we’ll still use the term emoji.

Why do emojis enhance your marketing message?

There are many reasons emojis improve marketing, and here are a few:

They capture attention. You receive a hundred new emails. 99 use 100% text in the subject line while one uses a smiley face or a heart. All else being equal, which one do you notice first?

They convey meaning. A text message that ends with a period gives a slightly different feeling than one ending with an exclamation point. Let’s see what happens if we use an emoji, too.

“I’m excited about this.”

vs

“I’m excited about this!”

vs

“I’m excited about this!😁”

The sentiment is the same but the conveyed feelings vary between the 3.

Visual is faster than text. Your brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. And since emojis are images, the brain can process emojis in a flash.

More likes, more shares, more comments. Based on multiple studies, emojis in Facebook posts lead to 57% more likes, 33% more shares and 33% more comments compared to Facebook posts with no emojis. Do you use emojis in your Facebook ads? If not, you might want to start.

Your brain sees emojis as an actual face. A study from the School of Psychology in Flinders University, Australia shows the brain behaving the same way regardless of whether it’s seeing a human face or an emoji. That’s why emoji user engagement is higher than plain text user engagement.

Human faces – and now emojis – increase engagement. For decades we’ve known that people will look at human faces longer than at almost any other image in an advertisement. And now that we know the brain sees emojis the same way it sees faces, it’s pretty obvious we need to use them in all of our written communications.

Emojis make your customers happy. 😊 Not only do your customers feel happier when they use emojis, they also feel happier and like the sender more when they receive emojis, too. And happy customers are almost always more likely to convert, whether it’s to join your mailing list, forward your message or buy your product.

Humanizes your business. Emojis can be the perfect way to convey the fact there is a real live person sending the message, rather than some faceless company.

Better connections. According to the Emoji Trend Report, emojis help users better communicate their thoughts and feelings and connect to people.

How to Find Your Emojis

Because you can’t create most emojis using your text keyboard, you need to download or open a separate one.

Here’s how:

iPhone and iPads

iPhones and iPads have the emoji keyboard built into the operating system. To add the keyboard…

•    Open Settings
•    Tap General > Keyboard > Keyboards
•    Tap Add New Keyboard > Emoji

To access the keyboard, open your Messages or Mail. Tap the 🌐 next to the microphone, which should change your keyboard. If you have any other keyboards added, you might have to tap the icon a couple times.

Android

Newer Android phones have emojis built into the keyboard. But older models require you to download a third-party app like Kika, SwiftKey, or Textra.

From there, apply the new emojis to your keyboard like this:

Settings > Language and Input > Virtual Keyboard > Manage Keyboards

Now select the keyboard you’d like to download.

Mac

On both Mac and Windows you can Google an emoji and then copy and paste it into your message. But there is an easier way to do it:

When you’re typing on your Mac and want to insert an emoji, simply tap Control + Command + Spacebar to pop open the emoji keyboard. 😉

Tap the emoji you want to use or drag and drop if it doesn’t insert automatically.

You can also turn on the emoji keyboard on your Mac by tapping the Apple icon in the top left corner. Then, open System Preferences > Keyboard and click Show Keyboard and Emoji Viewers in Menu Bar.

This places a shortcut in the menu bar, and with one tap you can access all emojis and symbols.

Windows

Again, you can copy and paste if you’re so inclined. You can also use the keyboard shortcut for Windows which is…

Windows Key + Period or Windows Key + Semicolon 😎

This shortcut brings up the built-in keyboard from which you can tap the emoji you want to use.

Most Popular Emojis and When to Use

Laughing Emoji 😂 is the most commonly used emoji on Twitter, and also the most popular according to Apple’s data. Use this in conjunction with humor, such as when you regale your readers on the stupid thing you did last night.

Red Heart Emoji ❤️ and Heart Eyes Emoji 😍 can be used when you are referring to something or someone you love as well as how much you appreciate your customers. A little trickier but worth trying: Use it to indicate just how much your prospect will love your product.

Embarrassed/Flushed Face Emoji 😊 can demonstrate your humility and gratitude when receiving praise or an award.

Side Eye Emoji 😏 is good to use if you want to show the playful side of your brand or if you’re making a joke and you want to indicate that you’re kidding.

Eyes Emoji 👀 can be used to draw attention to a link or image.

Thinking Emoji 🤔 shows you are deep in thought, such as when you’re not sure about a controversial issue, or when you’re explaining the thinking process you went through to arrive at your conclusion.

Sweat Emoji 😅 is used to express a close call. “Whew! That could have been bad!”

Hand Up Emoji 🙋‍ is great for getting social media participation. For example, you could post, “Who thinks smooth peanut butter is better than crunchy? Give me a “🙋‍” if you agree!”

Tips for Using Emojis in Business

•    Let your customers use emojis to give you quick feedback. The preferred choice of customers to let a brand know they’re doing a good job is the thumbs up, 👍 followed by a star ✨ or a smiley face. 🤩

•    Avoid anything cryptic or ambiguous. If the emoji doesn’t clearly communicate your intended message, don’t use it. 🍕 (Pizza, anyone? You see what I mean.)

•    Emojis are for complimenting your message, not replacing it.

•    Since women 👩 tend to use emojis more than men 🧔, consider your target market when deciding how often to use emojis.

•    Don’t think that only young people use emojis because they are popular at all ages, although the meaning of certain emojis can be slightly different for a 20-year old and a 60-year old.

•    Use emotional emojis to break down barriers and humanize your brand.

•    Consider creating your own emojis for your brand. For example, they might look like other emojis except they are wearing something like a hat or bowtie that identifies them with your business.

•    If you are communicating with an individual in business and you are unsure, use social mimicry for clues. If they are using an informal tone or if they use an emoji themselves, then it’s fine to send your own emojis.

•    Use only common emojis that are easy to understand or already universal. The idea is to improve your communications, not bewilder your audience.

Know that a small segment of your audience will be totally clueless about emojis and another small segment will take emoji use to an artform. For example, Cosmo published a 2,200 word article on the importance of choosing the just right color and style of heart emojis for the right occasions.

It’s all the people in between those two extremes that you are targeting with your emojis, so don’t sweat it if you don’t always get your emoji usage exactly right – almost no one does.

Emoji Pop Quiz:

One: What year were emojis invented? Bonus points if you can name the country that originated them.

Two: What year were emojis incorporated into and standardized by Unicode, which allowed them to be used outside of Japan?

Three: How many emojis are on the Unicode Standard list? (Hint: It’s probably a LOT more than you think.)

Four: What were the 3 most popular new emojis in 2020? If you can name just ONE of them, we’ll consider you an advanced emoji user.

Five: Which emojis, according to user votes, best represented the year 2020?

Answers:

One: 1999 by a coder employed by NTT DoCoMo, a Japanese mobile service provider.

Two: 2010. Yup, believe it or not, emojis have only been worldwide for over a decade.

Three: +3,300. Seriously.

Four:
•    First place: The White Heart.
•    Second place: The Yawning Face.
•    Third Place: The brown Heart.
Winners were determined by which were most used on Twitter.

Five: The winner was the Raised Fist with Dark Skin Tone ✊🏾

And the runner up was the Microbe 🦠

Frankly, I thought it would either be the ‘Screaming-in-Terror’ emoji (if there is one) or the ‘Pile of Poo’ emoji. 😉

This isn’t about selling t-shirts, but rather the lesson we can learn from t-shirt sellers that will put money in our pocket before we even create the product.

When you sell shirts on T-Spring, you’re not committed to investing any money until you have the orders in hand. Let’s say your goal is to sell 50 t-shirts at $15 apiece. You advertise on social media and buyers commit to purchasing the actual shirts.

But until you reach the 50 order mark, or whatever number you’ve specified, you’re not obligated to pay for any shirts. Once you hit 50, the customers are billed and the lot is created and shipped. But if only 49 people pre-ordered, then the t-shirts are never made.

Why don’t more marketers use this business model for their own products?

You could open a course for “x” number of people and presell it. The course will start in 3 weeks time, but only if all the seats are filled. Or you could outline a product and presell it. If you get enough orders for it (whatever number you deem that to be) then it will be delivered on the date you’ve specified.

The point is, you are charging for a product prior to creating that product. And if you discover there isn’t enough demand for the product, you simply refund the orders that you’ve received and try it again with a different product.

The benefits to launching this way are two-fold: First, you find out up front whether or not people are willing to pay for the product you propose to create. This way you will never again create a product only to discover no one wants to buy it. Second, you get operating capital up front. If you need to outsource the creation of the product, you can simply use the money from your advance orders to get it done.

Of course, the one thing you need for this business model is a good reputation for delivering on your promises. If you’re completely unknown in your niche, this might not work for you. You’ll need to at least put out some great content and create a following before you use the T-S method for pre-launching your first product, but it will be well worth the effort.

Two more benefits of this business model are the ability to head off problems before you do a full-blown launch, as well as getting proof that your product works. By doing a pre-launch to a smaller number of buyers, you can get feedback on what your product lacks, what might be confusing or anything else you need to improve your product before doing the full-scale launch with affiliates.

And you can ask your first buyers for their testimonials as well, which will help you to sell more of your product once you launch it full scale.

I can’t see any downside to using the TS method to launch any virtual product, while there are tons of benefits to doing it this way. And yet, most marketers won’t do it. Why not? Maybe it’s because they have a belief that things can only be done a certain way because ‘that’s how it’s always been done in the past.’ Which is nonsense.

Just because most everyone else spends a month or two creating a product before they even know whether or not it will sell doesn’t mean you have to be brain dead, too. (Too rough?)

Let me tell you a quick story and then I’ll close with one last thought:

When my cousin’s daughter turned 16, she wanted to get a part time job to make extra money. I suggested a method that I knew for a fact would get her a job in 48 hours, but she flat out refused to do it because, “No one else does that.”

I dutifully drove her around anyway and she put in applications at a dozen or so businesses. A month later, not a single one of them had called her in for an interview, much less offered her a job. I asked if she was now ready to use my method, and she reluctantly said yes.

That’s when I helped her write out a letter that told a little bit about herself and her qualifications. Then we added something like this (I don’t remember the exact wording we used):

“I realize that since I’ve never held a real job, it might seem like a gamble for you to hire me. That’s why, to prove my worth, I want to work for you for 2 weeks for free, to demonstrate to you what an asset I will be to your business.”

I again drove her to about a dozen businesses, where she filled in the applications and attached a copy of the letter. Within 48 hours she had 5 interviews scheduled, and within 96 hours she had 5 job offers and requests for 3 more interviews.

That is the power of doing things differently from everybody else.

If someone tells you that you MUST create the product FIRST before you launch it, just know they have been as brainwashed into ‘right’ thinking as my second cousin.

Frankly, I think it is often best to ignore ‘established methods’ so that you can find a way that reduces risk, increases results and in this case, saves you from creating a product that won’t sell.

A few tips on selling your product prior to creating it:

•    Choose a topic you’re familiar with so that you can make the product quickly.
•    Outline the product prior to offering it for sale. This will make it super easy to write your sales offer.
•    Include plenty of enticing bullet points in your offer.
•    Make it super clear that the product has not been created yet but will be available on “X” date.
•    Also make it clear that if there is not enough response, they will be refunded and the product won’t be made.
If possible, promise to have the product ready no more than two weeks ahead of when you’re making this offer. If you have a list of your own and you’re fast at making products, reduce this to one week. For example, you make the offer on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, with the product becoming available the following Tuesday.

If you offer something like group coaching with one call a week for six weeks, you only need to get the first call ready.

Let them know they are your beta group and you’ll be looking for feedback from them, as well as offering more personalized service. Solicit their questions and comments so you can improve your product prior to doing your full launch.

One last thing… Oddly enough, tests show that conversions for lead magnets are generally HIGHER if the lead magnet is not yet created. I don’t know if this is also true for products, but it may be. I think it’s the allure of a brand new, totally up to date product (or lead magnet) that no one (NO ONE!) had yet to get their hands on.

Action Point: Make a list right now of products you’ve considered creating but you weren’t sure they would sell. Choose one and write an outline for the product and a simple sales page. Then send an email to your list and see what kind of response you get. Start to finish, you can probably do this in less than two hours and begin to see orders come in shortly thereafter.