Hi and welcome to "The Story Sales Machine: How to Double or Triple Any Business With

Email.”

My name is Bill Mueller and I’m really excited today to share what I believe is the simplest,
easiest and fastest way to vault your business to the next level.

What you’re about to see WORKS. I know I’m promising a lot in the title, "The Story Sales
Machine: How to Double or Triple Any Business With Email."

Soooo … Can I really fulfill that promise? Can it really be that simple?

The answer is a resounding “YES."

It's surprisingly simple and effective. But look, like everything else in life, there IS some art and
nuance to it. I’d be insulting your intelligence if I didn’t tell you that it takes some planning and
effort. Don’t ever believe anyone who says they have a “push button” answer to your problems,
or that there is some sort of magic pill.

As they say, “It’s simple, but it ain’t easy.”

So there is no magic wand. But this is close! And I say that because email is the closest thing I
know to being able to push a button, and then see money drop into your bank account. When
done right, it never fails.

There’s also some advanced strategic thinking to all this that I’m going to share with you that will
give you a competitive immunity against everyone else in your market.

So that needs to be said, too, that while this is pretty simple, it becomes REALLY powerful when
you combine it with some of the smart strategies you’re going to learn here.

I’m going to dive right into how you can do this for your own business. But first, let me show you
some quick results I have experienced, along with others I have taught this to.

First, though, I should probably tell you who I am. I’ll keep this short. Here is a mercifully brief
introduction as to who I am, how I came upon these techniques, and some proof that they really
work.

Mercifully Brief Introduction: Bill Mueller

● Entrepreneur and business owner since 2005. Have sold my own products in addition to
helping others do the same.
● Specialties: Copywriting, product developer, high-level strategist and and consultant
● Responsible for millions of dollars in sales for several businesses across various
markets and niches
● Prefers to work “below the radar” and has been referred to as “The Man Behind the
Curtain"
● Specializes in working with coaches, product owners in “how-to” markets, anyone
looking to sell more products
● Married and living in the Seattle area since 2017. Previously lived in San Diego for 30+
years.

All right, so let’s get into this.

I want you to be ready with pen and paper so you can take good notes. I’m giving you very
actionable items and steps here. This is not theory.

Elsewhere in this product package I have broken down a case study that will give you an idea of
what sort of results are possible when you implement the Story Sales Machine.

So I won’t get into that here. Long story short, this company grew their annual revenue from
$153,348 to just over $1 million.

I know those numbers are hard to see, but like I said, I show you all this in detail in one of the
bonuses that come with the program. The point of this video is to show you HOW to do all this.

But I did want to give you a quick glimpse into what’s possible.

And it works because It's founded on one simple truth that you always want to keep in mind.
And that is, that the single biggest asset in your business is YOUR LIST. That’s because even if
Facebook disappeared tomorrow … or Google refused to show any of your pages in its search
results, you could STILL make sales every single day by sending emails to your list. That’s just
a fact.

All right, so let’s get into this. Let’s get into exactly HOW you can double or triple your business
with email.

So what’s this all about? What are we talking about here?

The U.S. Military has an acronym called BLUF, which stands for Bottom Line Up Front.

Here is my BLUF on all this:

The two greatest forces you can leverage to increase your revenue quickly are email and
the power of story.
So let’s talk about this because there’s a lot of misunderstanding about both of these levers.

With email, I’m talking about a system of daily emails that does the opposite of what a lot of
people assume when you email people that often.

Email is the most powerful form of selling you can do. When done right, it's very intimate and
direct. And when you combine it with feedback, which is very important to solicit by the way, you
can take it to another level, because you can then tailor your message for even greater results.
I’ll show you how to do that later.

I’m talking about emails in which:

● People not only are not annoyed by you emailing them often but they WANT to hear
from you that much … and in fact, MISS hearing from you if you go dark on them. (I
have gotten emails from people asking, “Hey is everything okay? I look forward to your
emails and haven’t heard from you in a while”).
● Separate you from the competition because you’re talking to them in a real, authentic
way that no one else does or can.
● Make you BULLET-PROOF from your competitors because your individual YOU-ness
can never be duplicated.
● Has everyone in your market paying attention to you (in a good way)
● You’re now seen by everyone as a LEADER, even a celebrity perhaps.
● You get joint venture opportunities coming your way
● You look like a content machine (and you WILL be because you can turn all these emails
into blog posts, FB posts, tweets, etc)
● You dominate the inbox and most importantly REPEL the people who aren’t in your
wheelhouse and also those who won’t make good customers anyway.
● You build credibility
● You learn more about your audience because they’ll give you feedback.

Proof Email Works

Now I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this because this information is not hard to verify, but
it’s just a fact that email continues to outperform other marketing channels by a long shot:
According to Neil Patel (who you can Google if you doubt he’s an authority), for every dollar that
brands invest in email marketing, they receive about 40 dollars in return

All right, so that’s the email part of the equation. We know that your list is the most valuable
asset you have in your business and that email delivers the highest ROI. And by the way, this
works no matter what sort of business you have: ecommerce, even brick and mortar, and
especially if you are selling your own expertise as a coach, consultant or anyone selling how-to
information or expertise of any kind.

But what about the story part of the equation? Remember, this is about emails combined with
the power of STORY. Well, why is story so important?

I want to spend a minute on this, because this is something that everyone takes for granted.
Which is why you can use it to your advantage. I can guarantee you that your competitors are
NOT using story in the effective ways you’re about to learn here.

Here’s an example of a type of email I get all the time, and I’m sure you have too:

Emails like this are a dime a dozen.

It tells me their training is “game-changing,” but they haven’t said one thing to PROVE that to
me. Or SHOWN me.

They haven’t connected with me on an emotional or personal level. They’ve done very little to
earn my INTEREST and TRUST.

Now, we all know the best way to SHOW someone something is through a STORY.

And so sure, we all know stories are interesting — you’ve been telling them and listening to
them since you were born all day long. And you’ve probably also heard that stories can be
powerful tools in selling …

… but the actual reasons that they are such powerful sales tools is something worth
understanding because it gets at the very heart of taking your ideal person from prospect to
customer.

Now we always knew that humans were built to respond to stories, but only recently have
scientists figured out WHY. This is important to know so that you can incorporate the best
elements that telling stories has to offer …

So let’s start with this: Our brains are literally hard-wired for stories.

It’s how we best consume information. We PREFER it that way. This has been true for over
150,000 years — before there was even writing, there were stories.

This has been put forth by evolutionary biologists. They discovered that because there was no
writing, human beings had to rely on storytelling as a process to communicate and pass along
memories from one generation to the other, what it did was literally rewire our brains to make
sense of the world in stories. So stories are so powerful because they match that hard wiring in
our brains.

Long story short, human beings are hard-wired to be persuaded by stories.

Not only that, but the story all by itself can do all your heavy sales lifting.

I’ll give you an example. After the movie “Sideways” came out — which was a really great
comedy with Paul Giammati set in wine country in Northern California — all the restaurants in
the small town that were depicted in the film were inundated with new customers for many
months, even years, afterward.

The whole valley experienced a surge in tourist revenue … for no other reason than people
liked the story they were told in the movie. The hotels and restaurants didn’t have to advertise,
the chamber of commerce didn’t have to spend time on promotion … tens of thousands, maybe
even hundreds of thousands, of people were inspired to go there because they identified with
the characters and wanted to tell their server, “I don’t want any F%$#!ng merlot!” (It’s a funny
line from the movie. Go see it if you haven’t yet.)

So it’s not surprising that it’s very easy for our brains to remember stories. That’s actually the
secret behind world memory champions (yes, they actually have competitions) and how they
memorize long sequences of numbers. They memorize an image that represents each number
and then they tell a story linking all those images together.

Stories will also bond people to you in a way that no other technique can do.

Here are four ways that stories help you sell more of your products and services:

1. Stories automatically ENGAGE the listener at an EMOTIONAL level so that it allows

the information to flow in and fully hold our ATTENTION in ways that can’t be done
otherwise. And isn’t that what we most want? To hold our audience’s attention?

This is why using LOGIC alone in your messaging will always fall short.

Let me show you an example. Take a look at these two paragraphs and then tell me which one
hits you harder:

Okay, here’s the first:

1. According to the USDA, an estimated 11 million children in the United States are what's
known as "food insecure." It means that in those households there isn't enough food on a
regular basis for every family member to lead a healthy life. This can lead to serious health
problems, poor performance in school, and emotional issues.

Now let’s take a look at the second:

2. When Olivia goes to school in the morning, her stomach is grumbling and she finds it hard to
concentrate in class. Because she's painfully shy, she's reluctant to tell anyone that her
problems are due to the fact that her family often doesn't have enough to eat. She's ashamed
and embarrassed. Her mom picks up on this and gives her daughter an extra hard hug at the
bus stop each morning as if to say, "I'm so sorry, honey, this will get better I promise." Imagine
not having enough food to eat each day. And forget about the problems that come with
nutritional deficiencies for a second — imagine the emotional insecurities that will develop over
time if her situation doesn't improve. No child in America should have to go through that.

The difference between these two paragraphs is pretty clear, isn't it?
They hit you differently, on an emotional level. Didn't the second paragraph ENGAGE you
more?

Of course it did.

The first paragraph certainly gives you a lot of facts that are indisputable. They're all true and
you can't argue with them. It's logical.

But that's also a mistake.

It’s understandable that people would try to "logic" you into buying something. But logic is not
enough.

Stories are always a much more emotional and powerful way to connect and move someone to
action.

2. Stories help you sell more through “projection."

You may have heard of the term “projection” before used in psychology. For our purposes, it
simply means that we humans automatically insert ourselves into the story we’re hearing or
reading, and this is important because it allows the person to feel empathy and it CREATES
TRUST. Obviously, creating trust is crucial to selling. If people can transport themselves into a
story, then they’re more likely to TRUST that story.

3. Stories help you sell more through relevance.

Research shows that if people perceive that a story isn’t relevant to them, then they ignore it
completely. People are ALWAYS primarily interested in themselves. As they say, the most
popular radio station in the world is WIIFM: “What's In It For Me." I’ll be showing you ways to
keep stories relevant to your audience.

4. Stories INFLUENCE.

This is the biggie for our purposes, of course. Stories change attitudes, beliefs, values,
knowledge and behavior.
The truth is this: If you do not fully engage your reader, you will not influence them. And the
way you do that is through memorable stories that move and touch your audience.

All right, let’s get to the juicy stuff …

So here’s where I’m going to transition this into actually HOW to implement this for your
business. Very shortly I’m going to give you a step-by-step process to do this for yourself.

But before we do that, though, let’s EXPAND the definition of what we mean by story.

And I want to do this because all too often I see people get intimidated by the idea of coming up
with stories. They think a story has to be a full-on novel or movie.

It doesn’t. It can be one or two paragraphs. It can even be a single sentence. It can even be
just SIX WORDS.

I’ll give you a famous example. Now there is some debate as to whether the story I’m about to
tell you went down in exactly the way I’m going to tell you, but that doesn’t matter. It’s become
legend and I’ll leave it to Wikipedia to sort out the details.

But the story goes like this: One day Ernest Hemingway was having lunch with friends and bet
everyone at the table ten dollars each that he could craft an entire story in six words.

After the pot was assembled, Hemingway took a napkin and wrote the following six words:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn”

So take a look at that. Look at what he did there. It has the elements of a story. It inspires
emotion. It’s actually quite moving.

Now I’m not telling you to write emails with six-word stories. The point is that you can capture
all the elements of a story in very short order. You don’t have to write novels. You can inspire
action with very few words when you incorporate story-telling elements.

Hemingway, by the way, collected on the bet … as the legend goes :-)

Okay, so with that said, let’s EXPAND your view of what a story is so that you can easily see
how you can include them in your emails.

First of all, understand that this is not just about your own personal story (although it certainly
CAN be if you want. And should if it’s appropriate for your product. Any time you can attach
your own personal story to your product, that’s a great thing to do.)
So what else can your stories be about?

Well ...

It could be about the story of your product, how it was discovered … or made … or refined.

I once worked with a brain training guru who discovered that he could become a better tennis
player if he learned how to play equally well with both hands. He became ambidextrous. It
became the central story we built his product line around. It was quite successful.

So here are just some of the questions to ask yourself in order to jog your memory for the story
of your product:

● How did your product or service come to be?

● What was the backstory?
● What was going on in your life at the time?
● Did you learn the solution to your audience’s problem from someone else? (This is
sometimes known as the “down from the mountaintop” story and how you brought it to
your reader. Not only does it give you a good story to tell, but it gives you what is called
the “halo effect” because now you’re associated with the “master,” and that gives you
new credibility right out of the gate where people trust you implicitly.
● What sort of problem were you trying to solve? Is there a story behind that? Were you
frustrated by other solutions that fell short?
● Or maybe you weren’t trying to solve a problem but your product or service was just
presented to you at some point? Who or what was behind THAT? What were the
circumstances?
● What hurdles had to be overcome in bringing that product about?
● Did you have doubters? How did you overcome that?
● Did you have to travel anywhere to source your product? If so, where was it? What was
interesting or unusual about it?
● Did you have to test your product out in some fashion? How did that go? What
refinement came out of that?

Your stories can also be about the MECHANISM that makes your product work.

What do I mean by mechanism? Well, let’s talk about this because it’s important.

This is one of the advanced strategies I mentioned earlier. I want you to pay attention to this
because it can literally spell the difference between succeeding and failing not only in your
outgoing emails but in your entire business and sales process.
So here’s the deal. You never want to market a commodity … which means you never want to
sell something that is common, ordinary, or something that is also offered by others all over the
place.

You Always Want To Market Your Own Unique Mechanism…

YOUR own mechanism that’s proprietary.

This is how you stand apart from your competitors … even if you’re in a field where everyone
is seemingly offering the same thing!

Let me give you two examples.

Let’s say you’re a school teacher who has a course for other teachers on how to handle
disruptive students. There’s all kinds of books out there that advise you on this sort of thing.
The topic is known as “Classroom Management.” One of my clients was a teacher who had a
particular knack for getting nightmare kids to behave by getting CLOSER to his students when
the instinct for just about every other teacher is to PUSH AWAY these kids and create some
distance by hammering on them with discipline and punishments. Or else they would try bribes
and rewards … which never work very well.

So his mechanism was pulling kids IN … winning them over with a counter-intuitive strategy that
actually worked very well. We helped him define that mechanism to go from being just another
book title on Amazon for teachers to selling multimedia information courses in 43 countries
around the world.

Here’s another example …

There’s a company called Centerpointe Research that sells a meditation program that employs
a type of audio technology called Holosync that alters your brain waves while you meditate. You
put headphones on, close your eyes and over the next 30-60 minutes you are taken to deeper
levels of meditation than you might otherwise be able to achieve if you are just starting. It uses a
technology called binaural beats.

So if you haven’t done this yet, you need to sit down and identify YOUR unique mechanism.
When you have that, when you identify that, that unique mechanism in your product or service,
you create hope in your prospects.

And the thing to understand is that for the most part, having this unique mechanism is a
marketing invention — YOU have to come up with it and define it. Once you do so, it gives you
a huge advantage.

But only by using STORY will you leverage that advantage to its fullest.
Now just so I can give you the best chance to identify the mechanism that fits your business and
product best, let me share with you that there are …

3 Types Of Unique Mechanisms

The first one is you actually have just that – a true unique mechanism.

An example here could be that you have a special family recipe for your baked cookies that is
so unbelievably good that people go crazy for them. You have something unique — a recipe —
that no one else has.

The second one is the “unspoken mechanism.”

Todd Brown is the one who turned me onto this concept. As he puts it, “This is where there’s a
part or piece or aspect of your product or service that competitors also have in their product or
service, but nobody else is talking about it.”

He continues, “Nobody else is talking about it, and so just by YOU talking about it, it becomes
perceived in the marketplace to be your unique mechanism.”

A famous example of this is how Schlitz beer in the early 1900s went from 8th in the
marketplace all the way to No. 1 simply by describing how their beer was purified.

The details were quite routine within the industry — ALL the other brands actually had the exact
same brewing process. However, the public had never been told the nitty gritty details …

… the 4,000 foot deep artesian wells … the plate-glass rooms where beer was dripping over
pipes … the hundreds of experiments required to bring out the “robust flavor … the mechanized
way the bottles were sterilized four times before filling … huge filters filled with wood pulp …
how every pp was cleaned twice daily … plus many other details that are boring to the brewers
themselves but contain enough fascination for the layperson to make them excited to buy the
product.

This one technique — naming their mechanism — earned Schlitz a top-selling position. They
remained there for a very long time.

Now the third type of mechanism is something you could call the transformative
mechanism, where you’re turning something ordinary into something extraordinary.

Let’s say you’re a fitness coach who teaches a ketogenic style of diet. Now keto is very
common, so let’s say you come to keto with your workout routines and instead of naming it keto
you name it, “Beasting, Feasting and Fasting.” I know someone who did this. He built his brand
around this and was quite successful. He simply put a new spin on it by giving it a unique
name. Bingo, he now had the ability to tell stories in a different way than his competitors.

So the bottom line is that when you have a unique mechanism, your entire marketing message
becomes about getting buy-in on how and why that unique mechanism can deliver the result
your prospect wants.

So I would advise everyone watching this to do some serious thinking on what your unique
mechanism is before implementing the Story Sales Machine.

When you do, you’ll instantly have TONS of fodder for story content. You will now have the
ability to educate, share, teach, and show your audience just why your product or service is
superior to everything else out on the market.

And what this means is, by the time you get to the offer, the prospects have bought into
it.

They will ALREADY love it, they want it, and you’ve created demand for your product without
even talking about the product – just by educating them on the unique mechanism… something
that is unique to YOU.

When done the right way — by using the power of story — this can be magical.

So that’s the other thing you can tell stories about — your mechanism. You educate your
audience about your mechanism through stories.

Here’s an example of an email that told the story of a product’s mechanism:

Subject line:
The 8,643 calorie CHEAT day (and other embarrassing confessions)

So yesterday I dished out some truth-telling on one of the biggest blunders I see out
there: restricting your calories in the belief it will help you lose weight and get leaner.

If you missed that email, click here and you'll see what I was talking about.

And today, as promised ...

... I'm going to reveal the better way to reach every possible fitness goal you may
have ever had for yourself.

It starts with one simple fact:

When you master your hormones, you master your life.

Trust me, everything becomes soooo much easier when you truly incorporate this.

It also means ...

... no more useless cardio (unless you're a masochist, of course)

... no more pain-in-the-ass calorie counting

... no more yo-yo “cutting” then “bulking”

... no more "falling of the wagon" every weekend

... no more relying on the doomed strategy of willpower and restriction

OKAY, REALITY CHECK ...

You know what my biggest problem in sharing this information is?

It's that it seems too simple.

But some of the most profound truths are the simplest. This is one of them.

Fact is, we like complicated. We feel guilty if it's easy.

"No pain, no gain," etc, etc, etc, etc.

The truth is, you never have to worry about counting calories again.
This has led to a lot of argents online, as you might imagine ...

Ever since I began uncovering the bulls**t that has been fed to us, and then shared it
with others, I make some people pretty angry.

Some people are SO attached to their own little pet theories, and that’s fine.

And I get trolled a fair amount, but I don’t care. I’m much more interested in those who
put their agendas aside and actually give my methods an honest effort.

So here's how I like to approach things ...

There's an incredibly useful phrase you can use that simply goes like this:

"What Would This Look Like If It Were Easy?"

Seriously, those nine short words deserve a place on a Post-It note where you'll see it
every day.

(It's good for solving all sorts of issues in your life. Try it sometime and see if I'm right :-)

And it applies to your health and fitness in ways that are, frankly, astounding.

Let me tell you about something I call:

"The Thriving vs. Surviving Paradox"

Here's how it works:

Everything in nature operates on a feedback loop. In tough times, our DNA triggers
survival mechanisms that would be quite useful 30,000 years ago during a long, cold
winter.

But unfortunately our culture is filled with distortions in our diets, lifestyles, and
environments that trigger and re-trigger these survival mechanisms on a daily basis.

This is a good news - bad news situation ...

First, the BAD NEWS: These triggers cause our bodies to pp hormones for our
short-term survival instead of our long-term prosperity. This leads to the cycle of
depression and disease that causes so much suffering in our world.

I experienced this first-hand many years ago when I let an injury I suffered at work to
spiral me downward into a nearly bottomless pit of Oreo cookies and pasta while I sat
my ever-growing ass on the sofa while watching "Two And a Half Men" reruns.

(It's a story I've told before. Click here for the ugly details and photographic evidence.)

And btw, restricting your calories will trigger this short-term cycle, too. It causes your
body to hunker down and hold onto your existing calories for dear life (literally.)

Now the GOOD NEWS: Our DNA is also equipped to help us thrive during the good
times. Nature has pre-programmed our bodies for smer on the savanna. This feedback
loop is also triggered and re-triggered by cues from our diet, lifestyle, and environment.

By giving our bodies the right signals on a daily basis we can naturally optimize our
hormones and live in a cycle of ease.

In other words ...

... we need to give our bodies the signals that it’s summertime on the savanna and that
everything we need to thrive is available in abundance.

Tell me which sounds better to you: Which would you rather trigger for YOUR body:
(Hopefully that side-by-side chart shows up well enough in this email. If not, you can
see it clearly on my web page here.)

Now let me give you a quick example of this from my own life to bring this home for you
…

Back in college my friend John and I would go to the Old Spaghetti Factory in downtown
Tacoma. We would eat basket after basket of bread, and then order our spaghetti.

They had a special deal: for an extra $1.99 you could get “hearty size” portions that
were DOUBLE the size of the regular portions.

We’d both eat that PLUS re-order another $1.99 hearty-sized portion.
(I know, I know. Don't say it.)

We’d eat every last bit ...

... which meant that for just an extra $3.98 we had carb-loaded on FOUR times the
amount of pasta of a normal-sized plate … plus baskets of breadsticks … plus
spumoni ice cream.

The result? A massive over-stretching of my stomach to uncomfortable dimensions in

order to accommodate the 8,000+ calories.

For those of you who have done a similar thing, you know that this isn’t all that hard to
do when you’re eating grain-based food that’s been processed and has relatively little
nutritional value.

But let’s flip the script ...

... Let's see what happens when, instead of choosing food with little nutritional value,
you enjoy the type of food that actually trips your body’s natural satiety trigger …

… a prime rib, for example.

A massive 24-ounce cut of prime rib is a full pound and a half of fatty animal flesh.
Prime rib nourishes your body with essential fats, amino acids, and minerals like seleni,
magnesi, phosphorus, and zinc.

It satisfies your brain’s reward pathway and shuts off your hunger.

My wife Randel recently made me a perfect medium-rare prime rib for a special
occasion. And even though I absolutely love prime rib, I literally could not finish my
entire 24-ounce steak, which amounted to only 2,400 calories.

That’s because it’s impossible to overate fatty animal flesh. Your body’s innate
intelligence shuts down your hunger thanks to a hormone called leptin.

Do you see the difference?

Now I’m not saying you have to go 100% carnivorous to meet your goals.

But I AM saying that some very simple and easy food choices immediately toggle you
into the "24/7 Savanna Mindset”

Never forget that every bite of food we take has a hormonal experience.

Every bite of food causes a release of certain hormones, energy and information
systems that change throughout the body: insulin, ghrelin, cortisol, lipase, HGH,
serotonin, melatonin, testosterone, and estrogen.

And over time those hormones are affecting how your genes get expressed.

And THAT, my amigos, is the much better way to meet your fitness goals.

This is a pretty long email, so I'll leave it there.

There’s at least one more piece of the puzzle I’d like to talk about.

I'll save that for my next message.

Till then, remember ...

... you have it in you. It beats in your chest.

P.S. Are these emails helpful? Striking a chord? Something else? Hit reply and let me
know. I read every response.

P.P.S. All week long, I've been urging you to read this letter I wrote, for two simple
reasons: (1) It updates you on why I disappeared for a while, and (2) it summarizes
some of my latest thinking on all matters of health and fitness.

>>> LINK HERE

------- end of email sample ---------

So as you can imagine, there are soooo many stories you can tell having to do with your
product’s unique mechanism. And that’s because it’s not hard to come up with angles involving
MYTHS … or COMMON MISTAKES … etc.

But just in case you think you might run out of stories about your unique mechanism, it gets
even better …

Now it gets even better, because it turns out there are two parts to the Unique Mechanism.

The first is the Unique Mechanism behind the problem your prospect faces …

And the second is the Unique Mechanism behind the solution you offer them.

These are related, of course. And this will work in your favor as you make your case.

The mechanism behind the problem explains why your prospect hasn’t yet reached their desired
goal, and the mechanism behind the solution explains exactly HOW your prospect will succeed
using your product or service.

And here's another point about the "solution" part of this: If the mechanism behind your solution
is something that makes it clear to your prospect they are already THIS close to succeeding ...
showing them that your solution is "the missing piece," well, then that puts you in a very good
selling position.
To put another way, when you can show someone that what they have been doing hasn’t been
all bad … that they’re only missing one tiny secret … just maybe 1% OR 5% … in other words,
they have pushed the football all the way to the 3-yard line but haven’t been able to get into the
end zone … when they’re in that position and you tell them that YOU have that secret to finally
achieving success when they’ve already done everything except this one missing piece … well,
then they’re pulling out their credit card because they are encouraged, and they know they are
SO close to getting the results they’ve always wanted.

And you tell stories about ALL of that.

So let me show you an example of an email that tells a story about a unique mechanism behind
the problem.

Subject line:
Stop Worrying About Money. Do THIS Instead . . .

==
Did you listen to the free audio interview
I sent you yesterday? If not, you can go
do that right here.
==

Hi, it's Michael.

Hopefully my interview with Greg opened your eyes to some exciting possibilities.

It certainly did for me when I interviewed him!

In fact, I was so taken with what amounts to collecting "found money" that's just waiting out
there for everyone (including me and you), that I decided to take this activity to a whole 'nother
level.

It all started one day with this weird looking item I saw at a garage sale:
It's not a robot. It's a nifty little sweeper known as the Clean-Boy 550.

(My kids called it the Fat-boy 550 because I was fat back then. You know how kids are :-)

Anyhoo ...

... the guy who sold me this item?

His name is Mike. Turns out he's something of an underground genius.

He does things that no one else would DREAM of doing for their garage sales.

... Like hosting them during the week, not just the weekend.

... Like getting most of his stuff for free, which means he keeps 100% of the profit.

... And not even lifting a finger to acquire said stuff in the first place.

Would you believe me if I told you that "Garage Sale Mike" generates over $100,000 per year
with his garage sales?

He does. But, I'll be honest with you ...

... never once did I give his business model more than a passing thought.

Why?

Because garage sales are HARD!

(I like easy :-)

I mean, I don't mind working hard, but I have ZERO interest in sitting in my driveway all day,
setting up tables...

... making and hanging signs ...

... pricing all the items ...

... keeping eyes peeled for shoplifters ...

... haggling with people intent on grinding me down.

No thanks. The garage sale life isn't for me.

BUT ...

... But I DO like the money they generate!

I was determined to find a "middle path" that would get me on the garage sale gravy train
without having to serve the actual gravy to nosy neighbors in my driveway if you get my drift.

And so ...

... after much tweaking, researching and experimenting, I came up with a method that combines
the insane profitability of a garage sale WITHOUT having to do any of the actual, you know,
yucky "ball-and-chain” garage sale stuff.

No building a website.

No webinars.

No complicated sales funnels.

No copywriting needed.

No podcasting.

No blogging.

Believe it or not, the only thing you need is a smartphone.

(And sorry, if this is your smartphone, you're out of luck, haha):

So, I’m sure you’re wondering:

"WHAT THE HECK IS THE METHOD?"

Well, I’ll let you know more tomorrow, and the day after that, and for the next couple days
following.
It’s gonna take a minute to explain, so keep checking your emails as I keep dropping the
blueprint for what I’m calling ...

"The Easiest Business Known To Man."

If you’re looking for a dead-simple way to earn an extra $50 to $500 per week, then you’ll want
to pay attention to these emails.

Anyways, more on this tomorrow. Stay tuned.

-M

P.S. If you want a sneak peek at what this is all about … then take a look at this.

------- end of email sample --------

So let’s recap all this about unique mechanisms:

● You tell stories around your product or service's unique mechanism

● You tell stories around the unique mechanism that fuels the PROBLEM your prospect
faces

● You tell stories around the unique mechanism that’s behind the SOLUTION your
prospect faces

And let’s recap all the different ways stories can be used ...

Here again is a list of what you

can — and should — write stories about:

● A story about the pain felt by your prospect.

● A story about the solution of your product.

● A story about any one of your successful customers.

● A story about a customer who WOULD have been successful but they gave up too soon
(“The Cautionary Tale”).

● A story about WHY conventional solutions in your marketplace aren't good enough or
don't work.
● A story about one of the myths in your marketplace.

● A story about what it FEELS like to overcome the problem.

● And more …

● A story about any of the various features your product has.

● A “before and after” story.

● A parable that, on the surface, has nothing to do with you or your audience … but whose
essential point gets to the very heart of your audience’s problems and your product’s
solution.

For example, there is the famous story of how, shortly before he died, Michelangelo left his
apprentice a handwritten note on his nightstand. It simply said, “Draw, Antonio, draw. Antonio,
draw and do not waste time.” You can look up that story on your own, but that’s obviously a tale
that could resonate if you have a product that requires motivation for your prospect to follow
through. You could build an email around that story that would speak to motivating someone to
take action. That’s just one off the top of my head. There are MANY types of parables to be
found everywhere.

And here’s another thing you should be writing stories about …

And that’s a story about your PASSION for this topic.

Now people use the word “passion: for all sorts of reasons and it’s become something of a
cliche to say that you are “passionate” about something, and because that can sound a little
squishy, I will show you an example here that I wrote for a client that does this pretty well.

Here is that sample email:

Subject line:
Subject: Why I hate the phrase "Classroom Management" (really and truly)

In my previous email I showed you how most teachers approach classroom

management.

Don't feel bad if that's how you operate.

It's not your fault. We're spoon-fed ideas that sound good ...

... but in reality they're just hot dogs disguised as filet mignon.
I'm talking about doing things like:

* Rewards (I mean bribes) ...

* punishments (I mean control) ...

* "building relationships" (note my hands lifting off the keyboard to make air
quotes around that) ...

* drawing lines (only to be crossed with a kid prepared to call his mom and hand
you the phone — now what?)

Here's a tweak (well, a few tweaks) that will save you time and keep your classroom
running more swimmingly.

(That's a mixed metaphor. Never mind, I'm on a roll here) ...

First of all ...

Forget "classroom management."

No. Seriously. Forget it.

I hate that phrase and I'll tell you why.

I don't know about you, but every time I hear that phrase it gives me the willies, this
vague feeling of doom ...

It's just so ... bureaucratic.

And vague.

When I hear the words "classroom management" I think of in-service workshops and
some guy on stage with a lapel mic and a psych degree handing out Xeroxed "Do's and
Don'ts" sheets for everyone to contemplate before we all flee to Starbucks at the first
break.

Kids are not something to be managed.

"Managing" is what you do with your investment portfolio.

(Or your expectations. CLUE!!)

Anyhoo ...
We TEACH kids. We LEAD them.

Now maybe I'm weird and this is just all semantics.

(At least half of that sentence is accurate. I'll let you decide which. :-)

But another thing ...

... "management" is just part of that phrase.

"Classroom" is the other.

So forget your classroom, too.

Or at least forget it as a whole.

Instead, realize that 90% of your problems in class will come from just 10% of your
students.

We're talking about only two or four kids in your class that create the vast majority of
your headaches, am I right?

You simply must find a way to deal with that 10 percent, and not let it
handle you, or you’ll never be a fully satisfied, happy and effective teacher.

Period. Full stop.

And I'm telling you right here, that if you approach those few students from an
authoritative point of view, where your stance is “I’m bigger than you, I’m the teacher
and you must listen to me,” then you’re not going to win.

You may win small battles here and there, but taking that sort of approach will take a
toll on you emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

It’s not worth it. That's not a hill you want to die on.

The toll can be so significant, that you will go home feeling wiped out, and you’ll start to
hate your job.

You’ll never reach retirement going down that road.

You'll be one of the estimated 40% to 50% of teachers who quit before five years.

And that would be a shame.

Because there is nothing better — and I mean nothing — than to see that one formerly
"nightmare" kid cross that graduation stage for a diploma when he was surely headed
for jail or worse ...

... But YOU found a better way when everyone else just wanted to draw redder lines,
pass the buck, or worse ...

... and, well, what do you know, from the back of the graduation bleachers, here come
what I like to call "the invisible parents," with 15 other relatives ...

... and there's your tough kid — the one who gave you so much trouble until you figured
out a better way — is smiling from ear to ear ...

... and the school staff is high-fiving each other like crazy ...

... iPhones are taking snapshots from every angle ...

... and everyone is smiling, laughing and crying.

When you have a day like THAT, then you feel a bottomless gratitude for having stuck it
out.

And THAT, my teacher friends ... THAT is why we do what we do.

Okay, in my next email, I'll tie this all together for you and tell you the story about
Kimberly, a teacher whose students were "disengaged, rude and generally ganging up on
me."

(Her exact words, not mine.)

At the end of her rope and losing sleep, she turned to school higher-ups, who observed
her and told her she was doing just fine.

They were actually impressed with her teaching technique!

(Of course, soon as the observers left the classroom, all hell broke loose, lol.)

Kimberly nearly quit. But she didn't. She finally "figured it out."
And is happier than you can imagine.

I'll tell you what she did in my next email.

So stay tuned and see you then …

P.S. Remember at the end of my last email when I invited you to hit "Reply" and tell me
what is the one thing that NEVER changes when it comes teaching in this Brave
New World of smart phones, piercings, disruptions, distractions, medications,
Instagram, Flakebook, tattoos, bullying and the fact that the Internet has sanded down
ALL of our attention spans to about 1.5 nanoseconds?

Well, so many of you responded that I'm still catching up to your replies.
Some of you nailed it. Many of you got in the vicinity. And others clearly either:

(a) just got their teaching degree (awwww, how cute!) …

Or …

(b) clearly enjoyed summer vacation wa-a-a-a-ay too much!

Anyway, sorry to keep you hanging, but I will reveal all in my next email in the next
couple days or so.

P.P.S. Disclaimer: I’m sure I will use the word “manage” as it relates to teaching kids
in a future email. Please forgive me in advance.
—

[If you opened this email by mistake (you were curious, I get it) but now had no desire to
be emailed about this anymore (there will be a couple more emails) ...
… then just click the unsubscribe link below (you’ll be missing out, but no hard feelings,
promise).] :-)

------------ END of EMAIL ------------

Okay, let’s talk about one more thing you should be writing stories about …

A story about "Heaven Island" and "Hell Island"

Here’s what I mean by writing a story about "Heaven Island" and "Hell Island” …

"Heaven Island" and "Hell Island” is a powerful copywriting concept I learned from Kim Roach
that basically just means you want to paint a VIVID PICTURE of what their life looks like
BEFORE they get your product (Hell Island), and what their life will look like AFTER they use
your product (Heaven Island).

Why is this important? Well, you don’t want to just tell your own story.
You also want to tell your prospect’s story. Their history, their challenges, their dreams, the
goals they want to achieve?

And a great way to get into their heads to do that is through the concept of Heaven and Hell
islands.

So what you do is, you imagine what life is like on Hell Island … and you tell stories around that.

Ditto for Heaven Island.

And of course you do that with … you guess it … STORIES!

Bottom line, you can take almost ANYTHING and work it into an email — and the email can
either be short or long, it can work for both.

That’s not a complete list, by the way. I’m sure we could come up with more. The idea is to let
you know that stories can be told about just about ANYTHING having to do with yourself, your
business, your product, and your customers.

The stories don’t even have to be that compelling! They can be almost anything from your life.
I’m willing to bet that there’s at least 12 random things that happen to you every day that you
could work into an effective story that could be used in an email.

Believe me, sometimes the most ordinary things are the most riveting. Let me show you an
example from Ramit Sethi.

The story in this email centers on something as ordinary as it gets …

The email then went on to promote an online course.

Now, come on — if a visit to a hotel bathroom can become fodder for an effective email, then
that means EVERYONE has all the stories they need to last them a lifetime.

Okay, so far we’ve learned ...

Why stories are the best universal selling tool you could ever have.

Why it’s so important to email often (ideally every day).

I’ve shown you proof that stories pull a better response rather than trying to use logic.

I’ve expanded your notion of what a story actually is so that you can realize stories can be:

… very short and that they can be not only about you, but also about your product
… your audience’s pain points and hopes
… about the mechanism that makes your product work
… about the mechanism behind your solution
… about what “before and after” looks like for your prospect
… or about anything at all, really

Now it’s time to tie this all together.

Putting Your Story Sales Machine Together

Now I want to show you how to take all these proven principles and assemble a true STORY
SALES MACHINE.

Remember, the idea is to construct a machine that doubles or triples your current revenue.

So let me ask you …

Have you ever struggled to write emails?

Have you ever stared at a blank screen wondering how to start?

Have you ever wondered if the email you just sent out would result in sales … or just crickets?

Well, we’re going to fix all that.

There are two main problems I see all the time with email copy:

number one is the lack of a good “Big Idea.”

number two is that even if it DOES have a Big idea, it’s usually presented poorly, or in a way
that doesn’t inspire action.

Let’s take these one by one.

First, let me tell you what a "Big Idea" is and why it’s so important.

This is related to the classic “Blue Ocean Strategy” book. If you haven’t read it, it talks about
how companies can make the competition irrelevant by creating and capturing uncontested
market space. The author used “blue ocean” to describe market spaces that were not yet
explored…

And “red ocean” to describe the markets that are crowded… markets where competition is so
cutthroat that it turns the ocean bloody.

A big idea is how you turn the red ocean that you and all your competitors are swimming in …
into a blue ocean of your own making where you essentially have no competition.

So what is a Big Idea? A big idea is creating an emotionally and intellectually compelling idea
with an opportunity for your prospect. According to David Ogilvy, one of the 20th century’s
greatest advertising minds, “unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in
the night.”

So let me clarify something here.

What we’re talking about here is a Big Idea that covers your entire product and service. It’s
the Big Idea behind the premise of what you offer.

So I’m not saying that you need a new Big Idea for every email. What you need is one Big Idea
for your product and service, which we then leverage in various ways through emails. (And I’m
going to be showing you all those ways shortly.)

I hope that makes sense, because it’s important.

So let me show you an example.

A big idea in the fitness industry is NOT …

"Lose weight by eating less and moving more!”

That’s an ordinary idea.

A better and bigger idea using the same concept might be something like this …

“By leveraging natural hormonal responses in your body, anyone can lose weight by creating a
spontaneous calorie reduction simply by changing WHEN they eat — without hunger issues,
without portion control and without the need to workout longer."

See the difference? Do you see the Big Idea there? It’s that rather than diet in the conventional
way you simply change WHEN you eat, which gives you the same, or better, results.
It’s the same idea of creating a calorie deficit to lose weight but presented with a more
intellectually stimulating benefit that presents an opportunity to the prospect.

Now obviously when you present a Big Idea, your mechanisms are going to be needed to
explain WHY your Big Idea is valid.

This is a great thing! Why? Because discussing your mechanisms makes for riveting and
compelling emails. I’ll show you examples shortly.

So to summarize, when you create an effective Big Idea, then you instantly have the foundation
for creating compelling, attention-getting emails that spur your readers to take action.

According to Ogilvy, your Big Idea must have these three things:

It must be emotionally stimulating.

It must be interesting on an intellectual level that inspires curiosity.

It must present an opportunity for your prospects to better their lives.

Let me show you a few more examples of a Big Idea to drive this home for you.

(The following example comes from Michael B. Shreeve.)

Let’s say you sell an office chair. A Big Idea is not:

“Our mid-back swivel office chair adds sensible style to your office."

That’s ordinary.

Much better would be any of these:

Big Idea: The chair that relieves lower back pain because it alters your “hip angle quotient”
Mechanism at work: The way the seat is designed it naturally contours to the way your hips
are supposed to be angled.

Big Idea: The chair that relieves back pain because of special spine relief depressurization in
the back support.
Mechanism at work: The way it’s designed is similar to seeing a chiropractor in that it helps to
extend your spine and relieve the pressure your own back bones are putting on themselves.
The way it does this is through x, y, z.

Big Idea: That chair that is built specifically for people who have large guts and lots of visceral
fat.
Mechanism at work: The way it’s angled makes sure you aren’t slouching over your gut,
crushing your internal organs. It opens up your gut cavity and reduces the storage of bad
hormones.

Do you see the difference?

Here’s two more:

Ordinary idea: Our guitar lessons teach you all the necessary techniques to play songs.

Big Idea: Forget about learning techniques. Focus instead on THE PROCESS of learning
from music itself (where the techniques come from in the first place.)

Maybe you’re a running coach, and you coach people who want to run in marathons … but you
teach how to run a marathon without months and months of preparation … either on very short
notice or with very little training at all. There is actually someone who does this, by the way.
This person literally teaches how to run a marathon with ONE day of prep. Talk about an
immediate, unique mechanism!

(Side note: Even as an experienced runner myself, I do not know how this is done, and I’m sure
you need to have a good bit of training and athleticism I'm going in, but it certainly DOES speak
to the desire of many who “just want to go out and run a marathon” on impulse.)

No matter what you’re selling, it is definitely worth the time to come up with your own Big Idea.
It will fuel everything you do.

So that’s the first main problem I see with emails: They’re not fueled by a Big Idea or “hook."

But it needs to be said that even if you DO have a big idea, it doesn’t guarantee you success.

Why? It’s because emails too often have these problems:

But the Story Sales Machine will fix all this ...

To get started, all you need is a Sharpie marker and a stack of Post-it Notes.

Note: You can also do this digitally by using a spreadsheet. I personally use a spreadsheet tool
called Smartsheet, which is what I’ll be showing you in some images to follow.

STEP ONE:
Formulate your Big Idea.
Once you have your Big Idea written down, make sure it’s something that can be explained
concisely. Aim for a total word count of 100 words or less. When explained aloud, it’s
something that should take less than 60 seconds to explain.

Remember that it should have an emotional component, it should be intellectually stimulating,

and it should convey an exciting benefit to the listener.

Now run your Big Idea past people you know — business colleagues, friends you trust, people
you know in your market, or anyone you think could cast a sharp eye and a keen ear for your
Big Idea.

Solicit opinions and gather their feedback. Ask them what they think is missing. Ask them what
would make it better, even more appealing. If you can do this in a single conference room
where everyone can bounce ideas off each other and gather momentum with ideas they
wouldn’t have thought of otherwise, so much the better. Take good notes or record the meeting
so you don’t miss a thing.

If you have to do this separately with individual people, that’s obviously less time-effective, but
just do whatever you have to do. You could even email people if you have to.

Bottom line: Look at it from all angles and don’t short-shrift this part of the process! Refine and
get your Big Idea as sharp as possible.

STEP TWO:
Run Your Big Idea Through an Objection Gantlet

Once you have your Big Idea, I want you to conduct an audit on it. Put yourself in the seat of
one of your prospects. Imagine every possible objection they could have with your Big Idea.

Write each one down on a separate Post-it Note. This should be a free-wheeling, brainstorming
type of process. Don’t filter, don’t edit. Just write down every single objection, problem or issue
someone might have with your Big Idea.

Enlist the help of as many people as you can. Again, an in-person group meeting is ideal; just
do whatever you have to do to get quality input at the highest vole possible.

When you’re finished, you should have at least two dozen objections, hopefully more.

Let me show you an example ...

Here’s an example of how this might look …

Going from our previous example, “losing weight without counting calories,” here’s a list of
possible objections any reasonable person could potentially come up with.

Here again was the Big Idea:

“By leveraging natural hormonal responses in your body, anyone can lose weight by creating a
‘spontaneous calorie reduction' simply by changing WHEN they eat — without hunger issues,
without portion control and without the need to workout longer.”

Okay, so think about a person hearing about this for the first time. As the product owner, YOU
may know this is a valid idea that works (and hopefully you have the case studies and
testimonials to prove it :-), but what about someone hearing this for the first time.

I mean, think about it. You’re basically promising someone they can eat as much as they want
… and move LESS … and STILL lose weight.

That’s a huge promise. There are bound to be good objections to this.

Anyone hearing that will likely have objections. Here are some of them:

● What do you mean by “spontaneous calorie reduction" — how does THAT work? That
doesn’t make sense to me — what do you mean, exactly?
● How can increasing the time between meals NOT make me hungry?
● I’ve lost weight before by counting calories. How come you’re saying that’s not a good
idea?
● Isn’t weight loss all just a matter of “calories in, calories out?"
● What makes YOU qualified to tell me all this?
● Is this about the ketogenic diet? I’m skeptical of keto. I’ve heard it’s hard to stick with.
● I get a headache if I don’t have something to eat every few hours. How do I get around
that?
● Is this about fasting? Because I’ve heard that’s unsafe.
● Doesn’t fasting lead to eating disorders?
● I’m pregnant. Would this work for me?
● I don’t like the idea of messing with my hormones. Please explain the hormone part of
this.
● I like my long workouts. Are you saying I have to stop those?
● Is this just another diet?
● My schedule changes all the time — would I have to change my eating schedule or does
that not matter?
● I hate skipping meals. Is that what this is?
● I’m a vegetarian. Would this work for me?
● I hate vegetables. Would this work for me?
● Does this require supplements?
● I’m on medications. Could I do this?
● Really? “Without portion control?” So I can stuff myself as much as I want? Sounds too
good to be true.

I typed all those out very quickly. I’m sure I could triple the number of objections if I keep going
or ask others. GOOD. The more, the better.

For now, don’t worry about what you’re going to be doing with these objections, or putting them
in any sort of order. Just write them out onto your Post-it Notes or spreadsheet and keep going
until the well runs dry.

STEP THREE:
Gather the Objections

Now we want to put these objections in some sort of order. Basically, we’re going to arrange
these in order of importance, or commonality.

In other words, what are the biggest, strongest, and most common objections in your list?

Then simply arrange the Post-it Notes in that order from top to bottom. I suggest using a wall
and just stick the notes on the wall and get them arranged with your best judgment. If you’re
using a tool like Trello or a spreadsheet, just drag the cards around until you have them in an
order that seems best to you.

As you go from top to bottom, you should be reading the most credible objections all the way
down to the bottom to the more minor or trivial. Move them around if you have to, but don’t
obsess over the order, it’s not that critical. If we were doing this process for your sales page, it
would be much more crucial, but not as much for the purpose of outgoing emails.

But as you read them from top to bottom, new objections might occur to you. Add those and
stick them in there.

STEP 4
Answer the Objections

Now it’s time to overcome these objections. Leave the Post-it Notes on the wall with the
objections. Now, to the right of those notes, write the answer to each objection and place it next
to the objection.

For example, for this objection:

● Isn’t weight loss all just a matter of “calories in, calories out?"

You would write on a separate note:

“While the law of thermodynamics does indeed exist, calories in, calories out is a myth for
weight loss."

Another example:

● How can increasing the time between meals NOT make me hungry?

You would write on a separate note:

“Explain leptin, ghrelin, etc.”

You’ll notice that I wrote that an incomplete thought. That’s okay. (If you don’t know, leptin and
ghrelin happen to be hormones that are involved in what makes this style of eating work.) The
idea is to just jot enough down to be able to trigger the full explanation that’s in your head for
later.

And yes, of course, all the answers you write down will be the real answers you know as the
product owner.

So now you have two lists of Post-it Notes:

As with creating your Big Idea, this will take a little while. But, depending on how you involve
your team in getting this done, it shouldn’t take you more than a few hours at most.

STEP 5
Fill Your Story Buckets

Take a stack of Post-it Notes — or 4x6 index cards if you need more room — and start jotting
down quick notes about your own stories. The idea is to do a brain dp of stories you have about
your own experience with your product and your topic in general.

Remember, you can tell stories about:

● about your product or service

● about your prospect
● about your successful customers
● about Industry norms (conventional wisdom)
● about mechanisms
● about Hell Island
● about Heaven Island
● share stories in the news about your topic

Write them down quickly without going into a lot of detail. Just write down enough so that you’ll
know how to fill in the rest later.

Here is an screenshot from my spreadsheet in progress using the keto diet example:
STEP 6
List All Your Mechanisms

Next, make a list of all the MECHANISMS you can think of having to do with your product or
service. We talked about this earlier.

To recap, these mechanisms were:

● The unique mechanisms that make your product work

● The mechanisms behind the PROBLEM your prospect faces
● The mechanisms that fuel your product or service’s SOLUTION

Again, you want to come up with as many as you can.

Continuing with our weight loss example, here is how these might look for our keto fitness
trainer:

● The unique mechanisms that make your product work

○ The role of ghrelin and leptin
○ the science behind intermittent fasting
○ a reduction of insulin response
○ exactly how the reduction of sugar in your body benefits metabolically
○ how eating less often allows you to obsess less on food
○ how eating less often frees up more spare time

● The mechanisms behind the PROBLEM your prospect faces

○ What willpower really is from a mental and physical standpoint
○ How willpower is finite, sabotaging your success
○ Why eating a low-fat diet feels unsatisfying, often leaves you hungry
○ How going on yo-yo diets sucks, giving you a sense of failure.
○ How the taste of skinless chicken and steamed broccoli is destined to fail
because it doesn’t sufficiently trigger satiety

● The mechanisms that fuel your product or service’s SOLUTION

○ how reduced hunger reduces the need for willpower
○ how your body burns fat after it finishes burning glucose
○ how an unrestricted diet gives you more choices and more enjoyment
○ how being able to eat as much as you want reduces stress, increases enjoyment
○ how eating a high-fat diet provides more satiety
○ Why your hunger goes away when you start working out on an empty stomach,
allowing you to extend your fast longer without effort.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on the ketogenic diet. These are just for illustrative purposes
only to explain the process. The info listed above may not be 100% accurate. I have written
these out to the best of my understanding of the topic (which is more than cursory but by no
means at a qualified level).

Write them all out on Post-it Notes. Arrange them in a separate vertical coln, but don’t worry
about the order of them.

Here they are in my spreadsheet:

STEP 7
List Out Heaven and Hell Island

Repeat what you did in Step 5, but instead of writing out the various mechanisms, write every
aspect of Heaven and Hell Island you can think of.

To recap the concept of Heaven Island and Hell Island:

Hell Island = a vivid picture of what your prospect’s life looks like BEFORE they get your product

Heaven Island = a vivid picture of what your prospect’s life looks like AFTER they use your
product
The idea is to put your empathy pants on and really get into the shoes of someone who is
“before” and “after” so that you can hit powerful emotional points. So in this step go ahead and
write out every specific detail you can think of.

So for Hell Island, that would mean writing down notes around their pain points and frustrations,
while the notes about Heaven Island will center on the joy of becoming your ideal weight and
being in great shape.

Hell Island for someone overweight and out of shape:

● Hating to look in the mirror

● less confidence at work
● less confidence in the dating scene
● Guilt over your past failed attempts
● The nagging feeling you’ll NEVER be able to be your ideal weight
● Seeing working out as drudgery
● How you can seemingly gain 5 pounds just by LOOKING at a cookie
● Uncontrollable cravings
● Bingeing
● Low energy, need a nap to get through the afternoon
● Clothes that don’t fit well
● Having to wear “fat people” clothes
● The discouragement of not being able to do a single pullup
● Seeing older people than you look much younger

Heaven Island for someone after becoming fit and healthy:

● Renewed confidence. People are taking notice at work!

● Getting compliments from friends and family
● People asking you, “How did you do that!?"
● Having to buy a new wardrobe because you no longer need your “fat” clothes
● The feeling of accomplishment that comes with increasing your strength
● Sleeping better
● Cravings going away
● No longer obsessed by food
● No longer looking to get emotional self-care through food
● More energy
● No more mid-morning “crash"
● No more guilt after smashing a full bag of Oreos

The idea is to get as many SPECIFIC, REAL-LIFE examples written down.

Think cinematically. In other words, if you were filming a movie, what would the characters on
Hell Island be going through every day? How about Heaven Island?

Really try to get inside the heads of both groups. This shouldn’t be hard to do if you developed
your own product.

The key is to SHOW … don’t TELL.

Example: For Heaven Island, don’t just write down, “losing weight feels great.”

Instead, write down, “I had to get an ice pick to bore another hole in my belt because I’ve
already gone past the last hole!”

You get the idea. You want it to come alive.

Here they are in my spreadsheet:

Okay, so let’s consider what you have at this point.

Now you have all the pieces necessary for an effective Story Sales Machine:
● You have an emotionally resonant Big Idea that makes an appealing, attention getting
promise that delivers a huge benefit
● You have effective argents that overcome every possible objection a reasonable
person could raise. (And even if you didn’t cover every single one, guess what? You
can write a new email covering that new objection!)
● You have a list of fascinating mechanisms that buttress those compelling argents.
● You have a list of vivid, real-world snapshots that bring home what the thrill of victory
and the agony of defeat feels like.

Now this is a very powerful state to be in. You’ve essentially made a big, enticing promise. Just
like an attorney presenting his case before a skeptical jury, you've been able to knock down
every objection, effectively making your argument an airtight, open-and-shut case.

So it's time to deploy your machine. Now you can deploy your machine in one of two ways. The
first way is as a prewritten prewritten sequence of emails loaded into your autoresponder that
people receive after they opt into your list. Or they can be emails sent to your list as fresh daily
broadcasts. So let's talk about the difference on why you would want to do one over the other.
Now, every business is different, but let me say a few things to help you here. What I've most
commonly done is send a prospects

a set series of automated emails as soon as they opt into your list and they're delivered as sort
of a welcome series.

And then when that sequence ends, I will send daily emails thereafter. That's actually what I
recommend most. So let's talk about this pre-written sequence first. Now, normally this is done
because you're giving away something for free, preferably something valuable that they can put
into action immediately to solve their problem. And I can talk to you more about that because
there are effective ways to do that and ways that are becoming less effective. But the basic idea
here is that your first email delivers the free thing immediately. And then what you would do after
that is you send anywhere from four to 10 emails over the next one to two weeks. It helps them
use the free thing you just gave them, but it also helps them to stoke their pain points. It helps
them reinforce your expertise and credibility. It also builds trust by giving them results in
advance.

And what I mean by results in advance is when you give somebody tips that they actually use
right away and they see results that really puts a lot in your favor, they're going to be so much
more open to what you offer down the road after that. And it also introduces them to your paid
products. Your, it also allows you to look for additional ways to serve them, solicit feedback and
invite interaction and get them onto a sublist if appropriate. We can talk about all that later.
There's a variety of things you can do most commonly. The free product gives them a good
taste of what you do and the follow up emails in this welcome sequence entice them to take you
up on your paid product.

And I want to mention something else here. It's never too soon to make them an offer generally
speaking. So I'm just pointing out that I don't want you to make the mistake of thinking you have
to “move the free line” and offer nothing but content, content, content to nurture your prospects.
“Moving the free line,” if you haven't heard that term, is basically where you draw the line on
what to give away as a free piece of information and what to charge for. And there is a
philosophy out there that says you should just give away a ton of free stuff. And there’s some
truth in this, but it's true that you can't forget that the timeline on when your prospect is most
likely to buy from you is in direct proportion to how soon they opted into your free thing. So to
put it another way, your prospect is never as hot a prospect as the day they opted into your list.

My experience is that more than half your sales — up to 80% in some cases — occur in the first
seven to 10 days. So you really don't want to waste that window of opportunity. So that's what
I'm going to cover. Now I'm going to show you the first of two ways you can deploy your story
sales machine. I'm going to give you a sample series of emails you can implement as a preset
sequence. And then after that I'll show you how to write daily emails, which will be the main
ongoing engine of your story sales machine. Okay, so here's a great welcome series email
campaign you can model. So it's a 10-email sequence, and you can see them listed here.

We're going to set the table with the first email. We're going to get them from problem aware to
solution aware in the next email.

Email number one is the table setting emails. This is where you deliver your free thing and set
the table. So you want to deliver your lead magnet, you want to get people to actually use your
products, you want to give people helpful information, you want to introduce people to your
brand, your story. You also want to ask people what they want so they can reply back and you
can give it to them. So you want to get their feedback. These are all the elements of that first
email. Okay. This is what I think is a very good example, of a table setting email from a guy
named Scott Phillips. It's probably hard to see on your screen, but again, this is going to be in
your printed PDF slides.

[Here is the email, with commentary to follow.]

So I just want to point out a couple of things he does. Minimal branding up here. I'm not big on
branding graphics. That's pretty minimal, which is good. He really shows some passion here.
And that shows in his writing: “I started this because I was disgusted by most of the trading
advice that's available.”

This is about stock market trading. This says what to expect and not to expect for me, he's
setting expectations. He's got some really against the grain stances here. “Most of the advice
out there is either targeted at beginners and obvious money making scam or just completely
wrong.” He writes in very short, punchy sentences. He does use a little bit of authentic, raw
language which is really good for him. Again, I'm not going to read this email to you, but he does
some really good truth-telling in it.
He admits his own flaws here. He also includes a couple of mechanisms, and then at the bottom
he does deliver the free thing he's promising. But he got his message in first. He also takes a
second to tell people to whitelist him so that his email shows up in their inbox and they don't get
sent to the promotions folder.

I like what he does here: He says, “I'm here to help you with your journey.” So he's asking
basically, how can I serve you? That's really good. He also says, feel free to reach out if you
have problems or questions. He's inviting interaction there and then he's opening a loop here,
teasing them with that he's got a little something to tell them tomorrow.

So all in all, this is a good sample example to use.

Okay. email number two is basically moving your prospect from problem aware to solution
aware. And all that means is that, depending on how somebody comes into the top of your
funnel, they may or may not be aware of you or your product or even a topic. So they might just
be aware they have a problem. So whatever their problem is, they're not aware of your solution
yet. So email number two is where you move them from problem aware to solution aware, and
let me give you an example of that.

This is the email that I wrote for a client. It basically says, “Did you get yesterday's email?” This
is a good thing to do to get people white-listed. They might, they might reply back or it gets them
whitelisted to see your emails so that they don't get sent to the spam folder.
He talks about his mechanism and he gets people aware of the solution so they have a
problem, they're looking to get in better shape or lose weight. And when you master your
hormones, you master your life. He gets into that here.

Okay, now we're getting to email number three — the third email in the sequence. And I
mentioned this before, but if I can show a prospect that what they've been doing hasn't been all
bad … that they're just missing one tiny secret ... or maybe 1% or 5% … that they've pushed the
football all the way to the five yard line ... but they haven't been able to get in the end zone …
and then if you tell them that you have the secret to finally helping them achieve success when
they've already done just about everything they thought of except for this one missing piece.
Well, when you do THAT, then they're really encouraged and they are so much closer to buying
because they realize there's so much closer than they realized.

And this is also a good place to use the “It's not your fault” reasoning. And if you haven't heard
about this technique, well, it's basically the following: So it starts with the fact that guilt is a
powerful emotion. You generally don't want to stoke up a negative, powerful feeling in your
prospects. So people want to believe that their problems are not their fault. And if your emails
can do that for them, if you can convince them and give them some relief, and you help them
realize that even though they don't need to feel guilty, that they can solve their problems, well,
then that can be a good way to go. Now I will say this about this whole, “It's not your fault”
technique. If you're in a market where you can do some real honest truth telling, where you can
actually call them on the carpet about their failures in a way, just like a good, no-nonsense
coach would, by keeping somebody accountable, you know, in a tough love way, then you can
consider that. I actually did this successfully with one client because that really fit his
personality. So I'm just mentioning that as an option, if you feel that could work for you, although
it's a little bit of a high wire walk to pull that off. But basically when you can tell a reader, “hey, it's
not your fault and you're missing this one thing,” then that can work really well.

And here's an example of that kind of email. So, I'm not going to read this email to you, it's in
your printed slides.

[Here is that email]:

enterprise:
Basically a story is being told here of a guy who was not living up to his potential and it goes on
to explain how other mitigating forces were at work and that he was closer than he thought and
didn't realize it. He comes up with a conclusion and here is his 5-line comment:

“The good news is that you already have the key to acquiring this skill, it’s buried deep down in
your subconscious.”

And here he gets to the “It's not your fault” statement.

So that's email number three.

Email number four is what I call the crystal ball email. And this is where you take the reader into
the future so they can see how their life will be better after having used your product. And you
can even show them how this will look in stages: how their life will be better right after buying
the product. Or, say, a month later or in the near future … or, say, six to 12 months … or far into
the future. And, you know, one way to do this of course is to go back to your list of heaven
Island stories and characteristics and you'll have what you need in order to do that. And here's
an example I wrote that does this. It has the future pacing, the imagining into the future.

Here is that email:

You can also see the future pacing down in the P.S. And I want to mention that the P.S. is a
great place to put these future pacings, what I call “the crystal ball elements” in here. It's just a
good way to do it … it's a good thing to put right before the call to action link, which you see
there also.

Okay. So the next email, or it can even be two emails, are what I call the “microwave” email
because this is where you turn up the heat, to try and lead your prospect to purchase. I mean,
think about it. They've been on your list for a few days now and you've pointed out some things
and made some compelling argents. So now you're trying to turn up the heat to get a purchase.
So the first thing you can use is some scarcity.

One common way to do this is to announce that you only have a certain number of an item left
in stock. If you sell a service, you can make the same principle work for you by, say, only taking
on a certain number of clients. There's all different ways you can get creative about this, but
remember to keep it authentic and real because people will quickly see through something if it
doesn't pass the smell test. For instance, you couldn't reasonably say that you only have a
certain number of eBooks for sale. But you can say something along the lines of “this particular
product has material that will be eventually spun off into its own product and is only being
included temporarily until that happens.” But of course only frame it this way if you do intend to
do just that.

Giving a deadline is optional here. You pretty much only want to do this if you're launching
something or there's some other special circumstance, or if you're relaunching a product. But if
you do set it the deadline, make sure you stick to it. Deadlines are very effective, but it's really
important to give a reason. The reason doesn't even have to be that great, to be honest. Any
reason will do. But even if it's something ordinary such as, “I'm only offering this special price
until Friday at midnight as a way to encourage you to take action immediately,” you know, that's
not the strongest reason, but it's better than no reason. And then also think about any other
forms of urgency you might be able to come up with. Is there anything in your product that can
inspire FOMO, fear of missing out? One example could be to get access to a bonus that's going
to be taken away for future customers.

Okay. Email number seven is pretty self explanatory. It's the Frequently Asked Questions email
and this is where you simply answer questions that have been coming in or you come up with
on your own. No stories are required here. In fact, the straighter you play this email, the better it
is. Just tee up the questions and then you answer them one by one. One way to introduce the
email is by saying something like, “Hey, over the last couple of days I've been getting a lot of
questions from folks, people asking me some really good questions. Such as, what is your
guarantee? What do you teach exactly? Is it really worth the money? What do you cover? So I
thought I would take a moment now to answer the most common questions people have been
having about the program and what's included. So here they are …:

Then you just list the questions and knock them down one after the other. You want to pick
questions that are both helpful and that will put your product in the best positive light, obviously.
Some good questions are: “I'm not sure this is for me. How can I know?” And then you would
simply state which part of your audience is suited for the product.

Or: “Will this work for me? How long has this special deal available? What's included?” Those
are good questions for an FAQ email.

Okay. The next email in the sequence, email number eight, is the Testimonials email. And again,
this one's also pretty self explanatory. You simply show a testimonial or tell them the story of a
case study. The more the better. You can simply just listen one after the other and your email.
You can never have enough proof. Use full names and pictures, if possible, if you have them,
and also use social media posts from your fans. Those make for great testimonials. If somebody
said anything great about you in a Facebook comment, you want to grab a screenshot of it and,
or put a link to a screenshot or put the image itself into the email. And of course you want to
have their permission, but if you don't have their permission, you can just blur out their name
and image if you need to.

OK., we're getting toward the end of the sequence. Email number nine, what I call the “Hail
Mary Offer” email. Now this is optional, but I will explain it. So let's take a step back and think
what we've done so far in the sequence. You gave him the free thing. You gave me a taste of
what you do by sending your lead magnet, the free thing they opted in for, and then you moved
them from problem aware, to solution aware, you showed them that they might be closer than
they think to having their problem solved — if only they would take you up on what you're
offering. You've shown them exactly how their life will be improved down the road after they
purchase what you're offering. You've turned on the heat with some urgency that was
appropriate for what you offer. You've shown them testimonials and successful case studies
and yet they still haven't bought. So they've been getting your emails now for almost two weeks
and something is still holding them back. So what to do about that? Well, here's something you
can do to get them off the fence. I learned this from Ryan Levesque. Now let me first say that
this is optional. It's not gonna apply for everyone, but it is worth considering. So basically what
you're looking to do is to make some sort of crazy, irresistible offer for them to try your product
by you lowering the bar of entry somehow. Now you could just lower the price significantly, but
that's not really fair to the fast action takers who purchased it at the higher price. You don't want
to reward people who waited, who didn't take action by saying, “You know what, I'm going to
drop the price to X amount.”

That would create a lot of ill will and your other customers will find out and then they're going to
reach out to you for refunds. Or even if they don't, you will have left a bad taste in their mouth
and you obviously never want to do that. Not only that, but you’re training your list to NOT take
action. You’re training them to actually hold out and they'll figure later on that if they just do the
same thing — not buy — you'll be coming back with a sweeter offer and that's not what you
want.

So, lowering the price is not what I recommend. What you can do however, is lower the bar of
entry somehow without lowering the price. So how do you do that? Well, you can offer a $1 trial
in which they get everything for $1 and get charged the remainder, say, 14 days later. So that's
a risk free trial to try your product for $1., which allows you to say it's for free if you frame it in a
way that says, “Look, you can just pay us a dollar so we can cover the processing charge.
You're essentially getting it for free. And if you like the program after 14 days, you'll be billed the
remainder.”

Something like that. I didn't get that quite right. But, you get the idea. Another option is to offer a
skinny version of the program, which is basically a “lite” version of the product that maybe
doesn't include the bonuses or some of the content has been removed. Or perhaps it only has
the “essential” content. So you'd have to be pretty thoughtful in how you structure that and how
you word it. But that is another option. And you do want to give a deadline if you do this.

Okay. And we get to email number 10, the final notice email. And this is where you just make it
very straight forward, spelling out what your Hail Mary offer was one more time, letting them
know the deadline. And when you do write this email, you want to focus on the deadline first and
foremost. You want to spell out exactly what they're getting. Keep it very straightforward. Do
you want to close with some proof and testimonials? And you will want to restate the deadline
and put the link in the P.S.

So we just covered the first way to deploy your story sales machine, and that was by writing a
preset series of emails that are delivered through your autoresponder. Like I said, that's
optional. It will fit some businesses better than others. So now we're going to cover how to send
daily broadcasts, and this will be the meat and potatoes of your machine. Again, remember my
“Bottom Line Up Front” on this, that the two greatest forces you can leverage to increase your
revenue quickly are email and the power of story. So a common question I get at this point is,

“Should I do one or the other? A preset autoresponder sequence or daily emails … or both?
How do I decide?”

Well, here's what I recommend. If you want to keep it simple with the least amount of prep work
for fastest results, they just start sending daily emails. And I'm going to be showing you that in
just a second. I don't recommend sending up a preset sequence and just doing that alone.

I mean, that is an appealing thought, that you just set up a really long sequence that plays out
over many weeks or even many months and it's just a “set it and forget it” kind of thing. But I'm
here to tell you it doesn't really work that way. It does to some extent, but, there's a problem with
autoresponder sequences, and that problem is fatigue. It's been my experience that there's just
something about a preset autoresponder sequence … that it becomes less effective over time,
for various reasons. Conversions tend to fade and very gradually over time, it's just an inevitable
fatigue. I've seen it over and over and it's got nothing to do with the quality of the emails. It's just
a dynamic that happens. And it just makes the case even stronger for sending daily emails. But
all that said, doing both is a great way to go: a “shortish” preset sequence combined with daily
emails, to my mind, that gives you the best of both worlds. It allows you to step your prospects
through a carefully planned sequence to capture a sale early. And it also keeps ON them, you
know, developing loyalty, which is great for backend or affiliate offers, while continuing to pick up
sales in a compounding ongoing fashion. Like I said, sometimes you just never know when the
time is right for your prospect to buy from you.

So here's a common question that comes up in all of this and that question is, “If I do both a
welcome series of emails followed by daily broadcast, how do I transition to the daily emails?”

Well, the answer is it's easy. You just do, there's nothing special you need to do. You simply
send daily emails to everyone and basically let the chips fall where they may. Remember,
people can unsubscribe any time they want and you should be glad when they do. That means
they're not right for what you're offering. And that's fine. And keep in mind, if you're already
sending engaging, story-based emails, you're giving yourself the best chance to keep them
around as it is. If they don't like it, well they're either not people you want as customers or their
freebie seekers, or they're just not a good fit. And that's fine.

Now here's another common question and that question is, “Won’t this mean people in my
autoresponder series will be receiving two emails per day, one from the sequence and one from
the daily emails?”

And the answer is, yep, that's not a problem. It's really not. And that leads me to covering some
quick points about why we want to send emails every day. Now, earlier in the training, I already
gave you some great justifications for emailing every day. I don't want to repeat them. So let me
just say this. The more emails you send, the more money you make, period.

Yes, it's natural to wonder if it's too much, but if you're thinking that then you're just projecting
your own fears onto your audience and you just can't do that. One reason you think this is
actually for a pretty valid reason. And that's because most other people send emails that are
either too boring … or they don't tell engaging stories … or they hit people over the head too
many times with sales pitches. Just remember these are things you won't be doing!

So you have to look at it like this. It's your duty to keep in touch as much as you can. You're
doing them a favor, you're helping them … and, well, if you're aren't, you know, then maybe you
shouldn't be selling what you're selling. And always remember that they can unsubscribe. You
will not explode into tiny molecules if they unsubscribe. Email is free. For some reason, people
that send junk mail don't worry about people throwing their mail in the trash, but product owners
online worry about people being mad at them for emailing them. So I think there's a double
standard there and there's really nothing to worry about. And as for unsubscribes, yes, they
might go up in the short term. If you haven't been emailing them, if you haven't been emailing
your list very often to this point, then that's actually going to be a good thing (them
unsubscribing). If they're not engaged with the types of emails you're learning here, then they
don't belong in your list in the first place, and they are certainly not going to buy from you
anyway in all likelihood.

So that's also just another reason why it's important from your first email onward to let your
subscribers know what they're in for, that you're going to help them as much as possible by
staying in regular touch. When you set that expectation properly then you've really got nothing
to worry about. And the bottom line is that this is how you develop a really rabid fan base. Also,
remember when I said that more than half of your sales — up to 80% in some cases — occur in
the first seven to 10 days. Well, that's certainly a powerful point for sending them compelling
emails right out of the gate. But you also need to think about what that means. On the flip side, it
also means that a full 20 to 40% of your prospects won't buy until AFTER the first 10 days.
That's a lot of people who will become customers … but just not right away. So if you don't keep
emailing you, you would be leaving way too much on the table by not keeping after them. And
this is why the case for sending daily emails is so strong.

I've actually tracked this with various businesses. Believe it or not, we once had a customer
order 1,044 days after he first opted in. That's 35 months or about three years later. Now, I'm not
saying that happens often, but depending on what you sell, if you sell something that's
evergreen and not particularly seasonal, you're going to be pleasantly surprised by how the
orders just keep coming in for people who were just waiting for when the timing was right for
them. And if you had stopped emailing them a month, or a month or two later, guess what you
had would have lost them forever. I've had many, many customers purchase many months later.
You don't want to lose those people.

So now let me show you how to write your daily emails. And here's how we're going to do this.
Basically, we're going to mix and match the various elements we have assembled.

And those elements are: your big idea; your objections and their corresponding answers; your
mechanisms for your product, for the problem, the solution; your stories; the email templates I
have for you along with subject lines.

So, where do you start? Well, you can start wherever it strikes your fancy. There's no one hard
and fast way to do it. It's not something you need to agonize over. That said, while there's no
right way and wrong way, , let me give you a good method for starting out. Here's what I
suggest. I suggest you start with the email templates or one of your objections from your list. So
the easiest way to understand this is for me just to show it to you right here. So I'm gonna flip
over to my spreadsheet and show you a demonstration right now. This will all make sense when
you see it.

[Refer to video for visual demonstration. It begins at 1:31:51 of the training video.]

Now let me just wrap things up, give you the steps again and answer some frequently asked
questions, and then give you some quick bonus tips.

Okay. So let's take a quick summary of all the steps we've gone through so that you can start
doing this for yourself. So here's a summary of the steps:

Number one, create your big idea.

Next, you want to list the objections to that big idea.

Third, list the answers to those objections.

Number four, you want to arrange the order of the objections from most important to least
important.
Number five, list the various mechanisms that apply to your product as well as the mechanisms
behind the problems and the solutions faced by your audience.

Next, list out the story ideas you could tell about yourself, your product, your audience, and any
other relevant aspects.

And finally, number seven, begin writing emails by combining all the various elements:
objections, mechanisms, mechanisms, and stories.

Okay, so let me give you some bonus tips on how to fine tune all of this. And the first thing we're
going to talk about is how to handle promos. So what we're getting into here is once you begin
sending daily emails, there are some other things to consider. And one of them is how to handle
promotions to maximize your revenue. So here's how to handle promos. Depending on what
you sell, it may make sense for you to run regular promotions. And by regular that could mean
once a month or maybe even once a week, depending on how many new people join your list
each month.

It also depends on how many different products you sell. For example, I worked with one
company that had dozens of products that hit different segments of their market. Guitar is a
market that's good that way. They have, you know, so many different branches students can go
down. For example, there's acoustic and electric, blues, hard rock, all the different genres, old
blues, new blues, soloing techniques, music theory. There's just tons of things to learn on guitar.
And so the company I worked with had a never ending line of products to sell. So it made it easy
to offer promotions on a regular basis. And since this particular company got hundreds of new
email addresses every day added to their list, they had plenty of fresh blood coming into the list,
so to speak, which would justify sending promotions on a little more regular basis than other
people might be able to do.

On the other hand, if you have one main product or a much smaller volume of incoming leads,
then it might be smarter to run a special sale just every month or quarterly. So a lot of it depends
on various factors. But there's also obviously all kinds of holidays throughout the year that you
can do special promotions on, whether it's a “daily deal” or various discount coupon codes you
could create, you know, everything from “Black Friday” to “March Madness” to Labor Day,
Memorial Day, July 4th, all kinds of holidays from which to do a promotion around. Now, with
promos like these you don't have to do so much storytelling, you could run just a straight promo,
but stories can really be used for just about anything. So to sum up, I rarely do just a straight
promotion, but generally you want to tell stories as much as you can.

The other tip for how to handle promos is you always want to have a reason, not just “Here,
we're just having a sale.” Like I said before, it's great to have a reason, even if it's just a “thank
you” sale. So you see a list here, and these are various kinds of sales you can offer:
You'll see the “thank you” sale listed above and that was a very successful one that I've run
many times in which you simply thank the person for being on the list. And as the thank you,
you're offering a sale. It can be that simple. So basically if you're launching a new product, four
to seven days is a typical launch time. One to four days for special offers or relaunches. And
those can include the types of sales you see here. Most of them are pretty self explanatory.
You've all seen flash sales before, penny sales in which you pay a penny and then get billed
later, “scratch and dent” sales, which are basically if you sell a physical product and you've got
some inventory that's been used or returned items but they're still essentially fine, you can't sell
them as new, that's another great reason to do a sale.

So those are some examples of that. Now here's some other quick tips to fine tune your
machine.

You want to map out your promotions into a calendar and the reason you want to do that is so
that you're taking full advantage of all 30 days in a month. You don't want to have any open
days if you can avoid it because, like I said before, the more email you send, the more money
you make. So it is helpful to map it all out on a calendar. And you want to plan these emails so
that you can kind of rinse and repeat these annually, or semi-annually or even quarterly. Think
“evergreen” when you write these emails. In other words, let's say you send daily emails for a
whole year. Well, there's really no reason you can't run those emails the following year and you
might think, well, people are going to be seeing the same emails again.

Well, yes and no. You know, keep in mind that open rates vary. You know, if you're getting a
30%, 40% open rate, that's considered very good. That means 70% of the list never even saw
your email. And as long as you're having fresh leads coming in your system on a regular basis,
you can rerun emails often, not always, but often without a problem or at least make only slight
adjustments to them and run them out again.

The next tip is to mix it up. Don't write the same kind of email. use the templates in a variety of
ways. If writing every day is daunting to you, then go ahead and “batch” your email writing. In
other words, write a week's worth of emails in one day. Just sit down and power through it and
then you're set for the week. So that's kind of a writing tip if the idea of writing a lot of emails
and writing an email every day is daunting. Like I showed you in the demo, you want to start an
idea file and you also want to start saving emails that you like from others if you're not doing it
already.

And the final tip here is to use your stories everywhere. You know, these just aren't for emails.
They're obviously also great for sales letters, longform presentations and new products, presale
pages that you may have created. We didn't get into that, but that's a great thing to do. Presell
pages, blog posts, social media posts, longform social media posts are perfect for stories.

Okay, so those are some quick tips. Let me get to some frequently asked questions. We get this
all the time, at least I hear it all the time:

“Will this work for my business? My business is different, my business and my market will not be
able to handle daily emails.” My answer is, there's almost no business or market I have not
seen this not work for. So I encourage you to give it a run and see how it works for you.

Another question I get a lot is: “Do you ever email with a straight promo or a straight sales
pitch? And I just covered that a minute ago. Very rarely, but once in a while I might. You
basically want to use stories as much as you can.

Another question: “Should I ever do content-only emails?” Yes. Once in a while you can do that,
sure. I always like to offer something, some call to action to purchase something. And you can
get away with that as long as you're offering good stories and entertainment, entertaining email
copy. You can certainly do that and people will still open your emails because even though
you're selling something, it's kind of an 80/20 mix of 80% story and then 20% pitch the product.
And if you're writing the emails in an entertaining, informative, helpful fashion, that's perfectly
fine. You can do that forever. So as far as content-only emails, yeah, once in a while. For
example, let's say you put up a new YouTube video, or you've got a new blog post up and you
don't really want to sully it with a pitch to something, then sure you can do that.

Another question is, “If I keep writing about my Big Idea and Mechanisms over and over, won’t
people get tired of hearing about me hammering on the same points?”

And the surprising answer to this is no. If you've got a signature mechanism or a signature thing
that makes your product work, or if you've got some sort of a tagline principle that you operate
under, repeating that message over and over is never a bad thing. It becomes your brand. And I
have found that people can't get enough of it. And so that's not a concern either.
Okay. So that's it. I appreciate you hanging with me for this training. Thanks for watching.

If you have more questions, I'm happy to help you. If you need any help applying this to
your business, feel free to reach out. Just use the link below to book a call with me and
I will help you the best I can.

Click here to book your free 30-minute consultation with Bill Mueller