How to Get People to Want What You Sell (via Copywriting & Persuasion)

Updated

Category

Reading Time

59 minute read
Sections

Want to sell more digital products? Convince people to join your newsletter? Teach people how to budget more effectively?

“yes, Pete….”

Well, would you believe me if I said there was one skill that could help you do all those things better?

“not really, Pete…”

One skill that’ll make dang-near everything on your blog more effective?

One skill to rule them all? (Not really, but I can’t resist a good LOTR reference)

Copywriting: The words on the screen. As a blogger (monetized or not), you need to be able to influence people and persuade them of your ideas.

Today’s guest, Spencer Lum from Extra Bold, is here to share the persuasion secrets that have generated him millions in sales.

Also, they’re not “secrets” at all and I have no idea if he’s made millions– but I felt like doing a throwback to copywriters of old ????

We chat:

  • Scaling a business vs. working less and being comfortable
  • How to get people to want what you’re selling
  • The best books/resources to learning more about copywriting

Also, Spencer created a nice little opt-in page for his free persuasion/copy/sales course! Click here to grab that and show your support 🙂

Listen to my episode with persuasion & copywriting expert Spencer Lum:

or listen on Apple Podcasts \ Google Podcasts \ Spotify

Resources mentioned:

Here’s the full transcript!

Spencer
Hey, it’s good to be here.

Pete 
Thank you for coming. I appreciate the time, I received a pitch from your wife just to set up the context for everybody listening to this. And I’m going to dive in. I’m going to like, tell everybody what this podcast episode is going to be about. Are you ready? I’m going to read something.

“My superpower is taking Uber complex marketing ideas and turning them down to foolproof instructions.”

I think I stole that from your homepage or your about page. But I thought that summed up nicely kind of what you and your wife were talking about what you guys have been able to do on the blog, go extra bowl.com. By the way, FYI, I decided spoil that for you, Spencer, and everybody listening. We’re going to be talking about well, marketing, but specifically some of the launches you guys have had and some of the “strategies.” I thought, let us let me read this. Sorry, Spencer, I just thought this is too funny to leave out.

“Lately, we’ve been spending a lot of time studying the strategies behind weaponized influence campaigns, like the Russian Facebook ads, but also things like Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and so on.”

I don’t know if it was you or your wife that came up with that. But that looks like okay, well, that was too interesting. So we’re going to talk about that a little bit later.

Spencer, let’s start with something even more important, way more important, I would argue, your favorite food to cook is an egg. My favorite food to cook is also an egg. So why? What’s your specialty? What got you into eggs or breakfast food?

Spencer
I totally I mean, I’m going to tell you, I grew up in a household where we didn’t have a whole lot of eggs at school. Most of my life. I didn’t eat that many eggs and eggs for breakfast wasn’t a thing. But I don’t know, you know, that restaurant? I don’t know, if you What is it Momofuku?

Like, you know, the guy, David Chang, he had a restaurant. And his big thing was this egg. And I went there and I saw the egg. I just kind of freaked out because he has this egg where it’s kind of like it’s cooked, but it’s not cooked.

And so it’s like, really woozy and runny, but it’s still kind of retains its shape. And I was like, What the hell is this thing and I was just blown away. And I realized it is the easiest thing in the world to cook like you just stick it in hot water. And you let it sit there for 45 minutes, and you’ve got this perfect egg.

Pete 
45 minutes. Wow.

Spencer
Yeah, but it’s like I’m like, whoa. And so it you know, you gotta try it. If you haven’t tried it, you get your water up to I don’t know, like something like I’m trying to remember like hundred and 40 degrees, and then you just let it sit there. Come back 45 minutes later, and then you crack that thing open. And it’s going to come out. And it’s just amazing.

And so I started doing this, and I started serving it to people and people would be blown away because they’re like, Oh my god, this is fancy restaurant food. How did you do this? And you know, I think Yeah, you know, really tricky, really complicated. I can’t share the recipe because it’s just too hard. It was nothing. And then I started getting really into it. I just start playing with all sorts of different ways to cook exit, because I realized it’s like, oh, they don’t have to be like my mom’s idea of eggs.

Basically, she’s gonna scramble it up, and she’s gonna do it on super high heat. So it’s gonna be really dry. Sorry, mom. I hope my mom’s not listening to this.

But anyway, that was what I grew up with. And suddenly I realized, like, eggs are amazing. So that’s my story. That’s how I got into eggs. Okay.

Pete 
So for anybody thinking that I’m going to magically whip this into some digital marketing or blogging metaphor, you’re out of luck. Like I literally just wanted to talk about x for a minute.

Spencer
Oh, thank God, you said that, because I was thinking like, what’s the marketing angle here?

Pete 
No, I literally, I’m not joking when I say eggs are my favorite political as well. I love eggs in general. And I consider a personal challenge to make them a little bit better each time I do it. Like I have figured out how to make the perfect scrambled egg, scrambled eggs or top if you get dry, too runny is really, really hard.

I figured out the process over the past seven or eight years. I’m index. That’s all I want to say,

Spencer
Oh, wait, wait, wait, you can’t leave me hanging here. You’ve opened the loop. I’ve got to know. What is it you do with your eggs?

Pete 
Okay, it’s super simple, very low heat lots of patience.

That sounds a little silly. But that’s true. A lot of us when we are making eggs specifically for breakfast, we’re generally in a hurry before work before kids go to school or whatever. And we tend to rush it. The key to good scrambled eggs.

First of all, quality ingredients. I guess that goes without saying. But other than that low heat, lots of butter. and patience. It takes a lot of patience to sit there and watch the egg and stir it constantly and scramble it evenly and constantly over several several several several minutes on low heat. And without saying anything more. I think that’s the recipe that most people can take away.

Spencer
I think that’s kind of the recipe for life. low heat, lots of butter, lots of patients. Perfect.

Pete 
Look what we did there spend

Spencer
Solved life right there. All done.

Pete 
good podcasting here. Okay, so we learned how you got into eggs really quick. Before we dive into anything specific. I’d actually just love the general backstory from Extra Bold. Actually do you call it extra bold? Or do you call it go extra bold?

Spencer
Yeah, it’s funny. Everyone calls it go extra bold, because that was the URL that I managed to get. It’s actually it’s called extra bold. That’s hot friends. But sometimes I even I say yeah, it’s go extra bowl, because I’m so used to everyone saying that because that’s the domain name. So you know, all is good. Whatever you want to call it, it works.

Pete 
So you had started this probably four or five years ago. forget my timing, right. And as I understand it, you were actually coming from running a separate business, I think I read or something like that.

So why don’t you give us a quick backstory, pre online business pre blogging, like what is your background? And and how did you eventually transition your way into this whole online business thing?

Spencer
Yeah, definitely, I’m going to give you the super accelerated version, because I have so much jobs started off, I went from lawyer, graphic designer, brand person, then I did video photography.

Then I did a photography blog, which is the first time I’m finally starting to do online stuff. And then I started extra bold, which is kind of it’s similar to my photography blog, obviously, you’re still using the same strategies, but different audience and different subject matter.

So that’s kind of the big arc without any of the drama that happens in between. But really, I mean, the big thing is like the job that I had before I was doing any blogging as a photographer, and I still do that on the side, but that was my primary source of income, all that and specifically, I shot weddings. And I will tell you, it doesn’t sound like it because you think you’re just hanging out in the wedding. But it really kind of burns through your body because you’re on your feet, like for 12 hours.

Pete 
And it’s stressful, by the way for anybody who hasn’t done it.

Spencer
Yeah, absolutely. And so I’m like, you know, I need a weight out. Because I’m getting older, I can’t do this forever. And you know, at a certain point, you realize that you’ve hit the ceiling, you can only go so far, and the things I’d have to do to kind of bring it up a level, they weren’t things that I wanted to do.

And so you know, like everyone else, you kind of run across, I don’t know, probably like a Facebook ad or something like that, like, I can get rich instantly, it’s only gonna take me 60 days, and I’m set for life. And that 60 days took like, from I’d say what, late 2010 or 2011 until about maybe 2016 to kind of like fully materialize.

So it was a long, 60 days. But but that’s what happened. I naturally since I was doing the photography business, I figured, okay, let’s start a blog that’s meant for photographers that teaches them how to run their business. And I’m going to sell online courses. And eventually I kind of fell into coaching along with it. And those two things kind of happened hand in hand.

So that’s kind of like the backstory about what happens before I start blogging.

Pete 
Okay, really quickly, only because I’m super curious, doesn’t have anything to do with blogging. But when you were, I’m going to say burn out. But I think you know what I mean, when you were starting to get burnt out on photography, specifically photographing weddings.

You mentioned just a second ago, there was something you could have done to like, take it to the next level or whatnot, you mentioned so yeah. And why did you want to do that? What was it and why didn’t you want to do it?

Spencer
Well, okay, so we have to go a little further back here. So we’re going to go back in time, way, way back to when I had my brand agency, by brand agency. I mean, it wasn’t a huge group, like we had 10 people at the peak. So it wasn’t really, really big. But you know, it’s enough that we did a decent amount of business.

Yeah, it’s small business, and you deal with all the managerial stuff and things like that. And it was one of those jobs where I kind of promoted myself to a level where I just wasn’t enjoying anything I was doing, I started off, like I was saying, as a designer, and I love that.

And that kind of kept moving up, up, up. And pretty soon, I’m just managing, I’m not doing any design, I’m not doing any of the fun thinking stuff. I’m just managing everybody. And so again, you know, I’ve had many, many burnouts in my life, and that was one of them. So with my photography, business, like photography is one of those fields where, you know, typically you’re going to start off on your own, and you hit the ceiling pretty fast, if you’re successful with it. And you really can’t, it’s just time for dollars, right? You can’t do anything to get any further because the market has a certain cap on how much is likely to pay. And you’re like you’re stuck there.

So the only way you can move forward is to completely change your structure and bring in like, expand and bring in multiple teams and kind of move yourself into management, which is doable, but it’s almost a completely different type of business at that point.

And I was thinking, you know, I really don’t want to go back into that position again, like I did, way back when.

So that’s, that’s exactly, that’s what I was kind of looking at. I’m like, either I start something new, where I can do it on my own. And you know, I do this business with my wife, but that’s between the two of us. So it’s a small thing that’s personal. And it was that option or kind of expanding. So I’m like, I want to keep it simple.

So I thought I mean, there. There’s nothing simple about birthdays. But that’s how you know, that’s how I thought of it my head at the time.

Pete 
Okay, well put a bookmark right here or going to come back to the story and how that led to extra bold. But just for my own fitness. And again, I had to like tell everybody out there in podcast land. I didn’t actually tell Spencer what I was going to be asking him. So I am putting I don’t do this. No, excuse me, I do do this with every interview. I like never tell anybody what I’m going to talk about, by the way. So the question about the aspects are, he has no idea. So if he like flow mixes for a second, it’s not Spencer’s fault. It’s my fault. They go.

Here’s a question now that I’ve like, hyped it up so much.

What about now this is what may 2019? What about now going forward in your own business? Are you going to try and keep things simple? Are you looking at specifically not scaling in terms of human leverage?

That is like, you know, what I’ve been taking on employees and doing more management oversight, working on the businesses that have in it. What are your thoughts on that going forward?

Spencer
That’s a good question. Yes, actually, I still want to keep it simple.

I think I want to take on I mean, I do have people kind of who helped me remotely, but I don’t have any one full time. And I want to keep it that way. I think kind of the thing is, I want to make a decent income. I want something that generates reliable income, that not only pays my bills, but kind of gives me like, a little bit of breathing room and gives me some luxury to kind of do the things I want. I figure that’s what most people want.

Pete 
That’s what everybody listening to this podcast wants for sure.

Spencer
Yeah, exactly. But I think you know, there was this time where I’m like, okay, it is all about like, Well, actually, there’s this line, there’s this movie called other people’s money with Danny Vito. And there’s this joke in the movie. And so there, Dan and Vito is talking with this other person, he’s saying, you know, basically, it’s all about money and stuff like that. And the person says, Well, what is the point of this? I mean, what are you going to do with all that money? and Danny Vito shoots back, it’s like, No, you don’t, you don’t get it. It’s like, here’s how life works. It’s like, whoever has the most money when they die, they win.

And you know that I always go back to that.

And I think there was this time where that was, my thought is like, okay, I want to get as far as I can, as fast as I can. And I want to think about, okay, how do you know, I want to see my name in lights and stuff like that.

But you get to a point and you realize, well, it’s a lot of work, and what are you really going to do with it. Like my brand business, even though burnt me out. I mean, there was this period, it was making a ton of money, it was doing really, really well.

But I didn’t enjoy any of it as just working all the time. And mostly all the things I did for entertainment, they weren’t because I really wanted to do it, because I wanted to escape all the work that I was doing that was burning you out. So this time around. Really what I’ve done is I’m very careful about kind of my time structure and trying to protect my time, and make sure that I’m working on things that are going to be useful.

And there are plenty of times I slept in that and I work more than I think I should or I do things I think I shouldn’t, because who doesn’t, but I still want to try to use people kind of like less as I less, it’s less than I want like kind of a full time staff and kind of an official like the “overhead.” And I want to keep it nimble.

So the people I work with are typically like right now, it’s always it’s remote. And it’s usually kind of like, okay, they’re doing these basic activities. Or maybe if I need some extra people, all kind of kind of, you know, reach out to my network, or who knows if it’s basic production, maybe I’m even on Fiverr. But whatever it is, I like to keep it simple.

So that way, my wife and I, we can sit around and we can focus on the kids, we can focus on enjoying life, and you know, using the time that we have, I like this.

Pete 
About two weeks ago, I was on a mastermind call, maybe a month ago now who knows. And it was my turn for the “hot seat.”

I’m not sure if you know what that is. Right. So one of the things that I keep bringing up this personal weakness and flaw of Pete By the way, probably said this, like multiple times on the show. So everybody listen to this for a while already knows that.

But I tend to get a little bit lost in the weeds and have trouble pulling back and looking at things objectively, right, a top down perspective, or inside view, so to speak. And so I am like working in my business, and I’m just working and working, I’m doing hard, I’m getting a little burnt out and get a little stressed, not going anywhere. I’m not doing what I want to I don’t have the income to do what I want to I don’t have the time to do what I want to I need to hire, I need to like do all these things just like a typical solo entrepreneur story for where I’m at right now.

And I told some of my close friends us. And they immediately came back with the question. Okay, exactly. What do you need in order to do what you want in order to spend your time doing the things that you want? etc?

Like, how much income do you need?

What employee do you need? Like, specifically, like the details? What do you need in order to live like this?

And I sat there for a minute, I was like up the damn it. I already have all that. No, I’m not making as much as I want to know the business isn’t where I want to. But in terms of what I actually need, at the bare minimum, in order to kind of do the things I want, I already have it to some degree and I was like crap, this forces me to like sit back and audit where I spend my time what I’m doing, what my goals are, and my personal weakness.

Not that you necessarily care about this answer. But I know a lot of people listen to this do my personal weakness is that that’ll last me a good week or two. And then I kind of fall back into the same routines have a little bit lost, and thinking I need more. In order to accomplish more in order to have more free time to spend with my kids. I got free time right now I could literally just take the rest of the day off and go spend time my kids if I wanted to, and my business probably wouldn’t actually suffer all that much on like a day to day week to week thing.

I don’t know, I know a bunch of people out there listening probably fall into the same traps. So I have no answers for you. I just I just thought it was right with you.

Spencer
Well, it makes me think, are you familiar with the term scope creep? Like, like with design firms like this is what always happens or brand agent seems like typically, you know, marketing agencies, etc, etc. But every time you have a project, invariably like it takes way more time than you think. And the trick is always finding a way to get compensated for that.

Because it just like the scope just kind of keeps creeping and creeping and moving along. And pretty soon, like everything starts going off the rails and going in all sorts of different directions that you didn’t plan to. And it becomes like this big time suck. And I feel like the same thing happens, like someone needs to invent the term. I don’t know. I don’t, you know, it’s not popping up in my head like business. Entrepreneurship create something, because it’s like this or entrepreneurial scope, creep, whatever. I’m kind of sucking at the term thing right now.

Pete 
But I think we get you. We get you.

Spencer
the same thing, right? I mean, that’s exactly what happens. And I go through that to all the time. And it’s like, it’s a constant battle.

But I feel like you know, if you keep coming back to it, and kind of keep stepping back every so often and realigning, then you’re going to be able to kind of go wherever you need to go.

Pete 
Yeah, no, I’m totally with you. It’s especially bad. I would argue, I get this question every now and then, like in the Facebook groups or whatnot. I had been blogging for three months. And I just discovered, like, 50 of the things that I didn’t know, that I needed to know and learn about. And it just like, never ends. People like it gets easier, right? It gets better, right? And I’m like, No, no, you just deal with it.

You do it in different ways, and you learn how to suck. What’s the word I’m looking for? You learn how to segment the shiny object syndrome for the experiments, you probably should focus on and do next, or the strategies you’re going to learn next and etc, etc. So yeah, like that.

Spencer
That’s right. Good answer.

Pete 
Okay, Spencer. So let’s go back. That was good. That was a good little side note. That’s good. Yeah. Okay.

So before I really hit you up on this paragraph about studying Russian Facebook ads, which I’m just super intrigued by, let’s do, let’s complete the extra bold story.

You’re in photography, you kind of wanted to get out, you decide to start a photography blog, talk about the business side of photography, and so on. What happened there, obviously, the first six months, you made millions of dollars, and you retired.

Spencer
That was, of course, that I’m still I’m in that retirement phase right now. It’s like, it’s great. I don’t have to lift a finger.

Pete 
Okay, so what happened with that? And how did it end up as extra bowl?

Spencer
Yeah, here, this is the story. And really, I mean, I have so many stories of failure to pick from that sometimes I struggle with like, which failure story do I want to tell, but this is how it goes. So I’m thinking I’m going to launch this big workshop, because that’s the thing in the photography world, you sit around and you run workshops. And at that point, I didn’t have a course ready. And so like, I’m like, Well, okay, I’m not ready to do that. So let’s have this big workshop that’s going to kick things off, that’s going to start my new life running my business, as like an as kind of a blogger, entrepreneur, etc.

Okay, I’m running this webinar, and this is one of those things where you’re like, this isn’t gonna work. I’m an imposter. I feel like a fraud is fake. I don’t really know anything about webinars. But I ask everyone I know, to come on to this webinar, I invite the people on my like my small list to come on to the webinar.

And back then webinars are still a lot newer. Like, if you did the same thing, now it’s like zero, people would show up, like 2000, 10,011, you’re talking about, this is probably like, I’m trying to remember the date, I don’t know, maybe like 2000, we’re, we’ve moved on to maybe 2013 ish, something around then.

And so I mean, webinars aren’t new, but they’re, they’re still they still have like kind of an era of novelty, especially in the photography field, which trails a little bit from, let’s say, information marketing.

So anyway, I run this webinar, and you know, you click the button and the things going, and suddenly, people are actually going in there. And I’m thinking, yes, this is working, this is amazing, I’m going to go and I’m going to launch this workshop, it’s going to be sold out, and I’m going to be set. In fact, I’m just going to keep doing this all year long, like you know, run a workshop twice, and that’s going to pay for everything in life.

So there I am, I’m talking, I’m giving all my best stuff. People are chatting, I am super jazzed about this. And then you get to that point, right, there’s always that little part in the webinar where you switch over to the pitch.

And, you know, in my head, I’m thinking, you know, I really don’t know how to do this, like, I don’t actually know how to go into the pitch, I know I’m supposed to because that’s what everyone does. But I don’t know what to do. And literally, like, you can see those little numbers, like you’re staring at the numbers, and you’re watching this drop, drop, drop, drop, and everyone’s like, bailing out, I’m so awkward, and I’m doing such a bad job with it. And I didn’t set it up, right. And we get to the end of my favorite part is exactly one person stuck around.

And, you know, you know, I’m like selling my heart out trying to say like, I’ve got this great program thinking maybe this at least this one person is going to sign up. And then they’re like, Hey, I don’t you know, I don’t mean to bother you.

But you mentioned I can get a free PDF, what what’s the link for that?

And that that was that. And so it just tanked.

And so I mean, that’s kind of way that’s really actually what sets me off, because that’s the first time I start thinking, like up to then I had been growing, if you want to call it growing, really just by pumping out lots and lots of content. And you know, writing is a great skill to build, if you don’t know what you’re doing with it, it’s not going to do a whole lot for your business.

And so, finally, at that point, I’m like, Okay, I gotta learn how this stuff works, I can understand why it is that some people run these webinars, and they just fill up their programs and why I’m sitting around, and everyone’s bailing on me.

And that’s basically what I go, you know what I go back to, and I kind of realize there’s this big divide between the idea of telling people stuff and giving information and making people actually want what you sell. And that’s kind of where, to me, that’s kind of the dividing line. Because from there on out, with all my marketing with all my content, I’m thinking, How do I get people to a point where they want what I’ve got, and it completely changes my whole approach to everything.

And so the next time I run a webinar, I fill up the program, and that’s the first time I actually get a course that’s kind of running and going, and things are actually working.

Pete 
Okay, so hang on –hit pause on the story. How I literally typed this up a second ago is taking notes, how do I get people to want what I’ve got?

If you don’t mind sharing? What were the I’m assuming you do what all human beings probably did after that first weapon heart in between the first webinar and you having the course set up and then doing it again.

What were the resources that you went to, to? To get the answers to that question, to learn how to do that, right, I’m assuming you went and did some research and looked around you found your own courses and other blogs or videos or podcasts or whatever, or books you do or not?

Spencer
Yeah, I mean, I’m a course junkie. So I went through a ton of different things.

But I think the first place that started to click, well, this isn’t the first I mean, this actually became a little bit later. But it was really a big, big moment. I went through one of the city’s courses on writing. And that was kind of the first time I didn’t know what I was learning. As a stranger. It was even though I’m sitting around thinking, Okay, how do I create want, I didn’t really know what I did, the thing I was learning was copywriting. I just kind of was doing stuff that people would say to do. And I’d hear about here and there.

Like I went through Derek Halpern ins course on launching. And he talks a lot about different things that apply to copywriting. But he doesn’t position at it as this is a copywriting course. And so I got a lot out of it. And it led to a lot of good stuff.

But I think the one that kind of made it crystallized in my mind was when I took Ramit Sethi’s course, which made me realize it’s all about the words and the structure of the words and the way you use them. And that’s kind of that’s the device, and that’s the tool that creates the wand. And I think until then, like I was saying it was kind of this value thing I’d always until I started focusing on what I’d always thought if you just give people lots of really good information they’re going to buy from you.

Pete 
Right? They’re gonna pay you back.

Spencer
Yeah. And, you know, I think there was kind of this time where that was true, like when the markets not hyper saturated in competitive, you can build a following pretty effectively that way, but we’re not in that time. We haven’t been in that time for a long time.

So that was kind of that was the dividing line to me. And that’s always the course that sticks in my mind, because that’s where it was kind of like the aha moment. Okay, this is what I’m trying to do.

Pete 
Okay. So please don’t rip off Ramit’s course or share with us insider info, however, that and help runs course, or whatever courses you took during that timeframe. If I had to make Spencer Lum, write a blog post that is called, I’m gonna make this up right on the spot. The top three ways are the top three things to say. Or something like that, whether it’s copywriting, or talking on a podcast or webinar or whatever, the top three things to do to get people to want what you’re selling, what would be those top three things will be the bullet points of that post?

And again, give me a stall for a second.

Spencer
That is a great question. Okay, so let’s hit number one, I’m just going to say number one, because this is what pops into my head. So I don’t know if this is really number one or not. But this is what’s coming to mind.

The big one, I would say my number one thing is understanding how to tease the right way.

And so it’s really I mean, you can call it opening a loop or whatever else. I like to call it teasing. Because what I find is that a lot of people, they just hate selling. And you know I did for ever, but now I actually love selling.

But the big thing that really changed it is I realized that not giving people all the information and kind of giving them a taste test, but keeping them hungry. I mean, that’s huge, right. And so if you give away everything you’ve got, and you kind of quell whatever hunger people have, then they don’t want to buy. And all the time I started to discover along the way, for example, that you can actually like, never give a piece of value. But if you write an entertaining piece where people feel connected with it, and they like what you’re talking about, and you kind of just give a little bit to help crystallize their thoughts and give them some clarity. Without even supplying the actual, let’s say, the strategy or the tactic. People, they eat it up, and they love it.

But the reason I use the word tease is because there’s this mindset shift, where you have to be able to come in and say, I’m not doing this to torture people. Or if you aren’t, you’re torturing like, in a playful way like you would with a sibling, not with something you really hate. And where you really want to torture them.

So, you know, it’s like, when you’re teasing people, I mean, the key is you have to come in, and you have to own it. And you have to say, I’m going to have some fun, and people have to feel it, they have to feel like you are playing around, and that you’re holding this thing out and you’re saying, Hey, I got this thing. It’s awesome. And, you know, I’m not gonna give it to you right now. But let me talk about some stuff that you got to know about.

And when you open this loop, what starts to happen is that people I mean, you know, people will tell me, they start hunting. I mean, I’ve had this like, have you ever had where you hear about something? But you don’t know the answer.

And you start like, pretty soon you’re stalking someone, and you’re looking at every little thing trying to figure out like, what is this thing they’re talking about. And along, you wind up learning all this stuff about them. And pretty soon, like you’re reading their stuff and get really connected, and you almost forget what you’re trying to find. And you just start to build this connection.

And so, number one thing that pops into my head is that tease is that ability to say, hey, I’ve got something for you. And I’m going to talk a little bit about what it’s about. But I’m not going to give away the whole thing.

Instead, just going to kind of I’m going to talk and I’m going to open up and I’m gonna you know, and just going to like be real.

But owning it is is the thing that kind of makes that work in my mind. And so, I mean, actually, that could also kind of be number one and two, in a sense, because I would say like the other thing is like a lot of people they kind of sell from their heels.

And so in other words, they get really uncomfortable, the moment they sell, and the moment they feel any sense of pushback from somebody, which is usually in their head, I might add not because anyone said anything mean or anyone’s doing it, but because they just imagine this pushback, suddenly they pull back.

And the thing is, if you want to be someone to be enthusiastic about what you’ve got, and think Oh my God, I’ve got to get this. If you come at it with this feeling of Hey, you know, you maybe you want to check out this thing, and it might be kind, I don’t know, see if it’s good for you. I don’t know. No one’s gonna get excited about that, right? It’s going to kill, it just decimates your ability to sell.

And so I think of this is like kind of like, you know, I always hesitate to use the word sell, because I know people hate it. And yet at the very same time, I think if you come at it the right way and understand it is about kind of getting your viewpoint out there and kind of owning your shit, then it’s a completely different ballgame.

And so coming in and saying, hey, I’ve got this thing, you’re going to love it. It’s amazing. And really having this mindset that you’re actually doing something good for the world, because that is why you create hopefully, right the products or the products that you create in the world is to kind of give some someone something useful.

If you push that out there and let that guide the way people are going to feel it. They’re going to see it. And so I would say kind of it’s a mindset thing, but I think it’s a huge mindset thing. And so I would put that kind of as secret number two.

Pete 
I’m sorry, I was going to interrupt.

Spencer
Oh, yeah, interrupt is good. Go ahead. What do you got?

Pete 
Two really, really cool examples of actually number one, and number two, the first two bullet points you laid out. This is awesome. By the way, I’m not gonna make this the title of the episode, I think,

Number one teasing the right way. Glen Allsopp. So I had Glen on the podcast is the old Viper chill guy. He now runs detailed, calm, etc. Glen is brilliant.

First of all, a little bit of a hermit. He’s not super out there on the internet. In fact, there are still a bunch of people who actually don’t even know that name, even though he was like, guest number two on Pat Flynn’s podcast.

And he’s just been all over the place. But he pretty records his webinars he has to because he doesn’t like doing things live. And he’s not very good at it. And he tells people that on the webinar, by the way, he is the master of your bullet point number one, like he’s doing things the right way.

That guy I have no patience for webinars, by the way, only because I’ve seen a million of them at this point. That guy helped me on that webinar for like 45 minutes, which was saying a lot.

He is so so so so good at that opening the loop keeping them hungry to metaphors you threw out there, he’s the master at that. The bad part is that are super hard to find the webinars for people to go like look at this. And look how he does this. They’re incredibly difficult to find all I will say if you’re interested in this at all right? I would argue if you’re interested in SEO at all, go join his email list. Go into the detail calm thing about once a quarter, he’ll do another webinar. It will only be available for like a week. Literally like when Glen says this is only up for a week, he actually means it and then it’s available. Yeah, I like that.

By the way. His webinars are fantastic for that number to Bobby Hoyt from millennial money. man.com. Friend of mine, I don’t know where he got his confidence in life. But it’s absolutely absurd. Nobody. And he told me this one time when we first met, he was like, one of the things that I do really well is I showcase my own enthusiasm, his passion, his excitement.

And that carries over to what I talked about in the blog that carries over to all my selling things. He runs a seven figure blog now.

He’s the master at this, like his things he is so excited about. And he does not care if you don’t agree, people who it’s for people who it’s not for, it doesn’t matter. He knows that he’s going to turn some people on some people off with whatever he’s offering. And he just doesn’t let that faze him. He’s incredibly confident, incredibly committed to this idea behind his products. He’s the master that anybody wants to study that. Go look at Bobby Hoyt, MillennialMoneyMan.com. He’s awesome. But that’s it. So Spencer, do you have a third bullet point, as well?

Spencer
Oh, yeah, I gotta come up. The third. I did. I actually I did. And then it just vaporized on me. So you know, it’s like, you know what I’m going to say?

This is actually a perfect segue, because I don’t just want to say storytelling, because it drives me nuts. Every time someone says storytelling is the secret to everything. And this isn’t because I don’t believe in stories.

I think anyone who creates any content, I mean, they know that stories matter and telling them the right way matters. But saying, okay, it’s just about stories, I feel like kind of misses the heart of the issue, and also kind of it’s just become so it’s like the response has become it’s been blunted by this point, because it’s been said to death.

So what I’m going to do is I’m going to take that idea for number three. And maybe Actually, I can give a little bit of context to that. And something I see that happens with a lot of entrepreneurs, and a lot of content creators.

And so if, if you don’t mind, so I’m gonna go on. And, and, and kind of dive into this, but it kind of relates to that whole thing about weaponization.

So it’s a nice tie in. But this is something that I see all the time, like, people go through these experiences, experiences in life, and they develop these beliefs because of it.

And so for example, everyone has this best way of, let’s say, influencing people of building their business or whatever, right? They develop these opinions. And in their mind, it is stored as this belief, like the best way to do something is blank, or I believe that the right way to do something is blank. And what people usually don’t get is the thing that shapes that belief and leads them to that conclusion is some form of emotional experience in their life.

Like, for example, someone, maybe they want to become a life coach. And they heard this inspirational story from someone when they were down now, and it moved them. And they said, I want to do that I want to help people that way. And they don’t realize that the thing that pushed them that way, it wasn’t this logical thing where someone explained like, if you’re a life coach, you can do behavior that is going to lead to lots of impact in the world. And I’m going to give you lots of clarity.

I mean, if someone walked up to them at this down and out point and said that they would not come around and say, “My God, I’ve seen the light! This is it.” what it was, is they saw something that produced some emotional response, that move them in a direction to start to believe, hey, this is a good path. And this is something that I think is really valuable. And so we all have that, right? We all learn by these experiences that shape us.

But usually, we have no idea what those experiences are. So we get to this place where we think, Okay, this is like in Rational terms, these are the things that work, these are the things that I believe in. But we don’t remember that it was that little story we heard, or it was a time I got mad at someone or it was the time I was inspired by someone that kind of nudged us there.

And so the thing is, if we just share, like the logic, we learned at the end of it, like, life coaching is really good because you help people.

But we don’t deliver those same experiences to our audience, they’re not going to respond, they’re not going to change their opinion, they’re not going to change their minds, they’re not going to react, and they’re not going to take action. In the end, it would kind of like be it’s kind of like the difference between the moral of the story and the story, right?

The moral of the story is the point of the story. The story itself is the whole experience you have that leads you to believe in the moral.

And people all the time I see people when they’re giving value and tips, and they’re talking about like the best thing to do, they get stuck in what I call logic land, where they’re talking about all the reasons, but they don’t deliver the emotional payload that goes along with it. In other words, here’s the moral, but not the story, or it’s like, here, you know, watch the last 10 minutes of this movie, because this movie is awesome, but skip the other hour and 15 minutes, that leads up to it.

And if you do that people aren’t going to respond, and nothing’s going to happen, and nothing’s going to change.

And so when I think of storytelling, right, at the end of the day, what I’m thinking is it’s understanding how to produce that emotional payload that influences people and leads them to change their lives and take action. It’s not like the conclusion, which is what we tend to remember once we become experts, and once we go to the other side.

And so kind of when we go back to that weaponization idea, that’s exactly what happened, right? Like, when you look at what I mean, that’s not the only thing that happened, tons of stuff happened. But when you look at this idea of weaponized social media, what they’re kind of decoding is how to produce all those emotional experiences that lead people to form their rational beliefs.

And so in their mind, people are thinking, This is what I believe, because this is good. But what they don’t know is the along the way, there have been all these pieces of content put out in the world that have kind of pushed and prodded them to head a certain direction and feel a certain way.

And so when I say storytelling, I mean, that is, I mean, I could stick that in as my third thing, and I would feel pretty good about it. But only if it If only if you kind of attach it with the bigger message, which is that you have to understand not just how to tell a story.

But really, you have to kind of understand kind of the influence undertones about really what changes people and what makes them respond to your story.

Pete 
Okay, so this is good, but also relatively incredibly deep.

So I was sitting there thinking in my head, I, this is me, oh, you’re talking about your superpower of taking the Uber complex marketing ideas and turning them into full proof. So Spencer, why don’t we do that right now? And like five minutes flat?

Why don’t we turn that idea I wrote down “share the experiences that shaped us.”

How could we turn that into like a very small, bite-sized first step for anybody who is writing copy for an opt-in page or a sales page or making notes for the webinar where they’re going to sell something, anything for people out there launching products, doing affiliate marketing campaigns, anything? And they’re thinking about your bullet point number three, I’m gonna use the word storytelling as well, just because it’s a good one words, yes.

Spencer
Well, let’s go with it. That’s now become the official point number three.

Pete 
Right. Okay. So what’s the what’s the most logical, simple first step that people can do? Or ask themselves in order to start coming up with the “right,” sort of story? Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense?

Spencer
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the first thing I’m going to hit up. And as always, you know, I just go, you know, I’m going to tell you my superpower is I’m great at taking these really weird ideas and making them usable. My big weakness is I’m great at taking something useless and turning it into a one hour. You know, it’s like, it cuts both ways. But first thing that pops in my mind, I’m gonna say proof, like, Okay, are you familiar with the Amish heater ads?

Pete 
No.

Spencer
Okay, so they have these products, Amish heaters, it’s ridiculous.

They’re basically these electrical space heaters, but they’re called Amish heaters. Because the frames are built by the Amish, I mean, obviously, Amish, they don’t use things made it, like they don’t use electrical devices, right.

So it’s kind of funny that they have that. But they had these space heaters, they’re just like, I don’t know, manufactured in China, or whatever, really, really cheap. And they just have these nice wooden frames that were built by the Amish. And they were wildly popular for a little while. I don’t know how they’re doing right now.

But if you haven’t heard of it, I guess probably not that well. But they were really, really popular for a while. And when you think about it, I mean, the whole reason they’re popular is because they named it Amish heaters.

And if you looked at the ads, what you would see is like they show this picture of these Amish people kind of working like doing some woodwork or something. And they talk about this amazing miracle invention, created by the Amish that, you know, saves all this energy and heats up your room in this incredible way. and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And all they’re describing at the end of the day is what any heater is going to do for you.

Like when they say it saves a ton of power. It’s like, Well, yeah, that’s because if you only heat up one room and like a 20 room house, it’s going to be a lot cheaper than like heating up 20 rooms. Right? Right.

So you know, when they talk about this stuff, obviously, they’re kind of towing the line here. But the point is, the thing that makes it work is the fact that they called it an Amish heater. And so you hear that and right away, you think craftsmanship, and you think that this thing must be trustworthy, and you believe it. And it also elevates the value. It’s like, Oh, it’s this handcrafted thing by the Amish. So this is worth 200 300 bucks. And that’s how much these things cost. Or use the cost.

Even though you could buy like the same thing on Amazon for I don’t know what, like 20 bucks or something like that?

And so I think the other thing to understand about proof is that proof tends to go backwards in the modern world.

In other words, no one actually and I’m not saying like sit around and lie to people and make up stuff. That is the exact opposite of what I believe. So I want to be clear, I mean, because people will use this all the time, and they’ll use it the wrong way. But it’s still you have to understand that the way proof is the way proof is formed in people’s minds, is from seeing cues that suggest value, not from let’s say logic and explanation or some study or something like that.

And so the first thing I think about is like it’s kind of that classic thing, you judge a book by its cover, or you think about how you dress, right? It’s people have it backwards, they think that you need to show kind of authority with like, all the things you like all these really kind of all the things you’ve accomplished. And they think that you have to kind of bring in I don’t know maybe like studies and numbers and everything else.

But the truth is, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, people just assume it’s a duck and this Amish haters campaign, they built the whole campaign off that one idea. And it’s just kind of this is what it becomes is again, like I’m not saying to make stuff up.

But you want to think you want to say to yourself, okay, who like so many people they never bothered to ask Like, who do I want to be for my audience to believe in me? Like if you’re speaking to a certain type of person, right? If I sit around and say the word Patriot, like I’ll bet automatically, you’re going to think you’re going to think that you can imagine, without giving a second thought, a ton of things that are going to make you trustworthy to someone who would say I am a patriot.

Pete 
I thought about Mel Gibson, by the way, but yeah.

Spencer
There ya go. Now you’ve got Mel Gibson. And so I say like, let’s say I flip it around, let’s say I mean, no one uses the term bleeding heart liberal anymore. But you can you know, let’s say, but let’s just throw that out there. Like automatically, you can think of things that you can do to be instantly trustworthy to that audience, you can probably think of things you’d want to talk about how you’d want to dress, what type of look you want to have.

And the first question I tell people to ask themselves when they’re creating content and when they’re talking to people is who does your audience want you to be? And if you think about that, it’s not that hard to engineer exactly who you need to be. And instead of sitting around, and I’m not saying don’t provide like screen capture proof elements, or whatever else, but what I’m saying is people treat it like this barrier. It’s like, Oh, my God, I’m not legitimate. I’m an imposter. I can’t do anything.

And there’s no way for me to prove I’m successful. And the thing is, every person who’s successful in the world was at some point where they had no proof themselves, and they didn’t have a gazillion followers and a bajillion dollars and stuff like that. And they made it work.

And the thing is, if you understand, people believe what they see, that’s the starting point, and you figure out, okay, who do I need to be? How do I need things? Look, what type of things do I need to say to people to make them believe?

And even though it’s an abstract question, you can see like, as soon as I said, like, as soon as I said, like, bleeding heart liberal, or Patriot, I’ll bet boom, instantly, images pop in your head, and you just know, it’s like, oh, this is what I need to be, this is what I need to do. So you define your audience, and then you kind of reverse engineer that.

And automatically, people start to believe and, you know, the reason that I mean, the reason this popped into my head is if you look at the way like the like all the West weaponization worked, like they have these sock puppets, right, you know, sock puppets are these fake accounts. And so the way that they would do things, is the people who would create these fake accounts, there were three types of fake accounts they would create, they would create fake accounts that either number one, where they pretended to represent an organization, number two, where they pretended to be part of some authority group, like, let’s say, a publication or something like that.

Or number three, they would assume the role of some sort of archetype that people are super familiar with, like, like, as a patriot, or maybe a grandma or whatever.

But something where people can relate to that type of person and where it’s kind of like there, there’s this whole all sorts of baggage where it kind of brings in a very stereotypical in typical image. And so you know, you got to ask like, well, what are all the three of these about and what they’re all about is this idea of looking like a duck and quacks like a duck.

And you do that. And pretty soon you realize, like, you don’t sit around, need to sit around and convince people that, hey, this is the best thing for you. And if you kind of look at what most people do, when they begin, they spend a lot of time trying to convince their audience. This is really the best way and they explain things and they get into lots of little details. You don’t need to you Just like if you just act the right way and say the right things.

People just think, Oh, you’ve got to be legit. And they just trust you.

Pete 
Wow, super interesting. Okay. I won’t lie. Spencer, I’m sitting over here. Like, I want more examples. I want more examples. Do you have any? Well, I’ll just leave it to you. Yeah. Do you have any more examples I was going to specify?

But other than creating social media campaigns, weaponized social media, so to speak, which is fascinating. By the way. Are there any other very specific examples you can think of, of people who have said the right things or people who have put down the right things, put out an image that would make people feel or think, or trust them in a certain way? You know what I mean?

Spencer
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, let me give a really easy example. I mean, we see this all over all over the place, right? Like the meme look, like whenever people stick those bars at the top and bottom of a video they put on social media. And if you think about,

Pete 
I’m an idiot old man. What do you mean by that?

Spencer
You know, when you see those videos, and it’s got like black bars, like it’s a square video like you’re in Facebook, or something like that, you got the video in the in the middle? And then on the top, it says something like, “you won’t believe the three things that were going to boost your conversions right now” or something like that.

Okay. I mean, you know, it kind of it looks basically, it’s the same look, as all those memes that people would put out, right.

Okay. So I call it the meme look, I don’t know if other people call it the name, like, that’s what I call it.

Pete 
I gotcha. Now, I understand I’m with you.

Spencer
So you create this look. And if you think about it, like when you create a video, like for example, if I’m creating a video for Facebook, what I’m thinking to myself is I want it to look really amateur. And usually I’m going to do something similar to that mean, look.

And the reason I’m doing that, I mean, yes, you want to be able to put a headline there to get people interested and stuff like that, and blah, blah, blah. But that’s actually not the only motivation. The reason I’m trying to make it look amateur.

And the reason I’m trying to kind of put that bar at the top and bottom is because that’s the type of content that people share, like regular people, not added fertilizers. I mean, now advertisers do too. But originally, that’s the type of content that regular people shared. And so when people see this in their Facebook feed, there’s a higher level of trust, because they look at it, and they say, Oh, this is the type of stuff that my friend might have put up. So it might be interesting to me. So I’m going to take a look at this.

If you flip it around, and let’s say you produce this super slick video, and you know, I mean, keep in mind, I come from like a video background and a photography background. So, you know, I kind of have to fight my natural urge to make things look really, really nice. Yeah. But when you put out something that looks really, really nice.

What does it scream to people like right away, they think, oh, advertising, professional production, something to sell me.

And of course, no one wants to be sold, right? And so automatically, I call it kind of the envelope principle, because you know, way back in the day, when you get those envelopes in the like, you know, through mail, remember that stuff? Like where you actually use paper and all that all those things? Right? Yeah, I mean, I still sometimes I get them.

And every once in a while, I’ll see these ones that look so legitimate, then, you know, I strongly suspect this junk mail, I can’t toss it. And it gets me to open it. And you know, in the back of my head, I’m sure other people get annoyed.

But I always think well done. Right?

So I call this the envelope principle, because marketing. Yeah, totally. So what most people do, like when you look at most junk mail, they try to put like this big ad in there, like this is a super important piece of mail. So you got to open it. And what’s it really saying to you, this is a piece of junk mail. So go ahead and throw it away.

If on the other hand, you create something that looks like mail native, so it blends in, then you think this couldn’t be real. So let me open it. And then you open it and you take a look at the letter and you read what it says. And so that gets you through the first step. And so an example. And this applies all over the place, right?

This applies anytime you create, like any form of content, whether you’re sending out something by mail or putting up a video, if you want to figure out like what is the native content that people regularly look at. And what you want to do is not kind of try to convince people you are like really successful and professional and awesome, which is kind of the mindset, most people come into their marketing with the beginning, right?

They think if I make my stuff look slick, people gonna think Whoa, you’re really slick. So I got to trust you and buy your stuff. But that’s not what happens. What people think is they treat it like junk mail, they think, ooh, your stuff is trying to sell me something. So I can ignore you. You’ve just given me permission to pay no attention to you whatsoever. And so that would be I mean, I’m always thinking to myself, like how do you make content look native? How do you make it fit in? And so I’m usually doing the opposite of what I see a lot of people doing instead of trying to make it look good. I’m always trying to find ways to make things like worse.

Pete 
That Okay, I have a question and an example for you.

So I am in the process right now of setting up. By the way, I actually create sales pages to help me work through ideas. This is how lame I am. I generally start with creating the sales page. And trying to do it as quickly as humanly possible. And that actual creation process will give me lots of ideas and help me solidify like this offering in my own head. I don’t know, statue that would people. But so I’ve been in the process of this, I have my own personal swipe file.

I’m also not a designer, but I am like a design snob somehow. I don’t know how that worked out. I’m not a designer, but I’m a design snob. And so I like building sales pages that look like sales pages you want I mean?

Yeah, so I’ve been looking at some examples and my own personal swipe file. I won’t mention their names, but I have like five or six that I’ve found over the past couple of months, I saved them. I was like, ooh, I want to like copy this little aspect. I want to do this, I want to do this, etc. And now I’m thinking, does this apply? I know it applies at least a little bit.

Would I actually have a better chance at influencing somebody persuading somebody that they need my product that they want my product, whatever that is, if it looked like a normal blog post your enemy? What do you think about that?

Spencer
I just read this thing. Yesterday actually–kind of fits with the whole Russian weaponization thing as well as what you just said.

So there was this fake story in the Atlantic. And actually, the Atlantic just wrote about this fake story in the Atlantic. And they talked about the fact that what someone did was they created this article that was referenced through social media, like through a bunch of bots. So it’s, you know, it’s kind of this fake campaign designed to influence people through a bunch of bots, and etc, etc.

But the core of it was they built this article to look just like a real Atlantic article to the point that even though it’s on this big website, it’s got like links to subscribe to the Atlantic that actually takes you to the real subscription page. It’s got it’s kind of like those fishing campaigns, right? If they do really well, sometimes you gotta pause and say, Wait, is this like a real thing? Or is this a fake thing?

And so they had, like, you know, other articles you might be interested in and just kind of the whole thing, and they just so they just kind of copied it from top to bottom. And it worked? And so I would say, Yes, exactly. That is that. I think if you create content that looks like what people normally want to read, it’s just ingrained into you, right, there’s a certain every person, every audience, and it’s different for different types of audiences, like a liberal intellectual group is going to respond to a different look, than let’s say, a conservative is like someone like the conservative patriot example that we just use, there’s something like that, right?

Every audience out there, and within that, you have subcategories too. And so every audience, they have certain looks that they’re going to respond to.

And they don’t think about it, they don’t sit around, say, Oh, this is kind of nicely. I mean, they might notice it’s nicely designed or not. But really, I mean, that you just feel it, you say this is the type of thing I trust, like when someone looks like if I see red, white, and blue, either you love it, or you hate it, depending on who you are.

But it creates a reaction.

And so when you create stuff looks native that looks familiar to people, they’re going to read, and if your content is good, and you talk about like, let’s say the big thing that they’re craving, and you kind of create curiosity and UTM, once they start reading, they won’t be able to stop. And so I would say the number one thing is to get people going and get people into it.

And so yeah, I mean, I guess that you know that. Yeah, my answer is I would sit around. And the first thing I would think is, how do I make this look like what other people are going to read?

Pete 
This is good. I love this. Spencer, this is great. Okay,

Spencer
Year, this is great , I’m going to tell you, you’re the first person. I mean, I have been reading up on this stuff forever. And I’ve just been following because I didn’t like kind of a geek like that. And you’re the first person really had a chance to talk about it in any public forum.

You’re the first person that had had the chance to talk about this stuff with so this is awesome.

Pete 
Okay, let me ask you this.

And if you have, I don’t actually know what you sell, by the way, Spencer, maybe you can, I’ll let you totally pitch whatever you want at the end of this podcast. Or maybe we should just like keep we’ve been in conversation, like we’ve been talking about for the past 10 minutes. We’ll just casually keep mentioning Oh, buy this buy this…No,

Spencer
I’m joking. And if you really want to know how.

Pete 
No, no. The thing I like, by the way, I like what you said in there about knowing your audience.

First and foremost, I probably say that in every little talk I’ve given a few talks recently, the only reason I say that any presentation or whatever, I generally bring that up, like the most important thing is to know your audience and what they expect, what they want, what they need, that sort of stuff. I like that you mentioned that.

So kudos.

But I can also tell you part of my audience, or what I’ve come to figure out over the past couple years is that they actually just love transparency and honesty, it’s kind of a breath of fresh air and digital marketing.

A lot of times, I’ve actually built my brand around that. So I like I like being able to say to my audience, like you know what, at the end of this podcast episode, Spencer is going to pitch you something straight up, he can try and sell you, he’s gonna try and get your money. And you need to find out what he’s going to do. Like, I have no qualms saying that sort of stuff.

Because I know the people that are had been attracted to my own brand that kind of appreciate that. Like they like yeah, that’s that. So no live audience no violence. God wasn’t even gonna say, suppressor. Oh, I remember. Sorry.

I was opening the door for you to pitch your own products or services, if you want to totally cool.

But resources.

So for winding down the podcast and let you go here in a few minutes. And then you gotta go. What resources would you point people to for? I’m going to say the words copywriting. But this is a little bit broader than that a little bit bigger than that selling persuasion influence all those great things, psychology?

What would be your top books, your top courses, your top resources? If you were making a roundup post Spencer, what would be some of the things that you include for people to go check out?

Spencer
Yeah, number one thing is an easy one. It’s the Gene Schwartz book. So “breakthrough advertising.” I mean, that’s my top go to thing.

And I just want to put a little extra plug in there. Because I think so many people, this is kind of one of my pet peeves. Because I also believe a lot in kind of being open and just being honest about stuff.

And, you know, I find like, I’ve never had anyone Oh, let me take it back. I’m sure people have been turned off. But never anyone who was a fit for who I wanted to wanted to talk to. Right.

So you know, I figured you know, save, say things like you say things and tell people what you got and just be open about it. But there are all these people out there who are basically teaching the same thing as what Gene Schwartz taught. And it’s great that I mean, I have nothing against kind of putting it out there and simplifying it for people so that it’s a little easier to digest, because that book is really, really dense.

But still, with that said, I feel like everyone should study it.

Because a lot of times people don’t realize where the information they’re getting is coming from. And to this day, I think Schwartz still he goes deeper into it, then the vast majority of people out there. And if you don’t know it, then you’re not going to get the full picture on what’s going on kind of out and about and all over the world. So like, I almost like anyone who I work with a decent bit like when I’m coaching people and stuff like that, I mean, I actually go out, and I forced them to sit around and go through that whole process or not to the whole process, but to really kind of read through the book and understand that whole process, because I think it should be mandatory for everybody.

And yeah, you know, it’s like, what, how much does it run like 234 500 bucks sometimes?

But it’s way worth it. So that’s number one.

A second one is this book by Dan Kennedy, “the ultimate sales letter.”

And so there are you know, I mean, you know about sales pages, obviously, I mean, you know, your stuff. But I think the thing about the Dan Kennedy book that I love is it’s dirt cheap. And so, you know, you can sign up for like, for example, John Carlton was one of my mentors, and I went through his program, and I think his information is great.

And what I got out of it was just I mean, the value is imminent, miserable. And so I loved it.

But the thing is, not everyone is kind of ready for that and ready to go through a program like that.

And I think everyone needs to understand how to write a sales letter. And so you can spend 10 bucks, and you can get the ultimate sales letter. And Dan Kennedy does a great job kind of breaking down a bunch of the, you know, the primary concerns and the things you need to think about.

So I’m going to put that number two, because I think it’s such a good deal.

Next thing, okay, so this is, this is where I start to have to think a little bit more. So I’m just going to throw out. Let’s see, what am I going to say?

I love Stephen King’s book on writing. And so it’s not about like marketing, writing or anything else. But I still love his book on writing. Because I feel like, like, my big thing is, I think it’s so much more important to develop the skills and understanding than just to kind of go around chasing the latest shiny object thing.

Because my feeling is like, if you have the skills and you’re directing them the right way, then the results are going to follow. But if you sit around and kind of learn like this latest and greatest trick, invariably, if you don’t understand why it’s working, it’s going to stop working, and you’re not going to know what to do. So my idea of the world is it’s all about kind of getting strong. And by strong, I mean having the skills and having good and having the not having good, being good at what you’re doing. And having that understanding.

Because then you know, you’re going to sit around and you’re gonna say I gotta write this blog post. But you know what, I’m fluent at writing blog posts, so I don’t have a bunch of resistance in my head, and I don’t stall for half the day before I get started, I just do it. And 20 minutes later, I’m done. And it’s out there. And I’ve done a little bit of marketing that goes into the world or something like that.

And so I think kind of the core tool is understanding how to work with words. And so I love the Stephen King book for that reason. And kind of along those lines, I just the whole idea of getting out there and constantly practicing is I think kind of core and so kind of, you know, off the top of my head, gotten you know, I’m literally trying to think like, I read so many books, and I can remember the books I read.

But I mean, I would say those are the top three things I think of like straight, like, straight out of the gate.

Pete 
Okay. Let me also throw out two suggestions, one recent one old.

Before I do those, I’ll actually agree with you, by the way, I think this deeper skill of, I’m just going to say persuasion, quite frankly, persuading people to do things. So it could be buying something or it could be not buying something, it could be selling people on an idea or trying to change the way people think about parenting about money or whatever, like this idea of selling an idea, whatever that may be.

I feel like that is an underlying skill that you can use all throughout your life, like blogging, getting people to join a newsletter, selling things over the internet, whatever that may be running a small business, opening a restaurant, dealing with your kids getting a promotion, quitting a job, like whatever that is, I feel like it’s such a superpower, like a superhuman thing.

You could learn and spend time stuff. I feel like almost anything I invest in a copywriting book course etc. Almost always will pay dividends and all parts of my life.

It’s interesting. Yeah. Yeah. two things. One would be the boron letters. Have you heard of these?

Spencer
Oh, great. Yes, yes.Yes. They’re a great book.

Pete 
So it’s, it’s literally his letters. This guy. I can’t remember that. That the guy’s name quite frankly.

Spencer
Halbert.

Pete 
Yeah, yes, that’s right. letters he wrote to his kids or a son, I believe while he was in prison, on some sort of marketing, direct mail fraud, some sort of it’s, it’s absolutely fascinating.

You have to sift through a little bit of personal letter writing or whatnot. But they’re like little golden nuggets sprinkled throughout that and you can download it for free. You just google search. The boron letters, as in boron was the name of the prison, I believe b o. n. You can search it pull it up, you can print it from your printer, like 30, 40 pages, or whatever, at least. It was longer than that. But there’s one section specifically, that’s like really good on direct mail and advertising and copywriting.

That’s really good, the boron letters.

And then the second thing is interesting. I love, love, love the thought of going deep on some of these subjects and skills like breakthrough advertising.

I’m totally, totally down for that. I also like the flip side, which is not a book that’s like 200 300 pages that it’s actually mostly fluff.

Like, it probably could have been just a blog post. I feel like I read a lot of that and 2019 marketing and business books, I can’t stand those. I like the flip side. And there’s one I just listened to on Audible called “exactly what to say.

Have you heard of this one? Spencer?

Spencer
Oh, I don’t know that one. I’ve got look that up,

Pete 
Literally less than an hour in Audible, the entire, I don’t know how many pages that would be in the physical copy. But I didn’t listen to thing. So it was less than an hour.

And there’s literally no difference wrote to the book. Like the author is also the one reading it, I believe. And he was just like, “Hey, welcome to exactly what to say, here’s number one. Here’s number two. Here’s number three.”

And the entire book is 21 phrases that you could use in both text format, like copywriting as well as selling in person or over the phone or whatever.

And so he literally just list off these 21 phrases, words, and then false it up with five minutes or so of talking about it. And he’s on to the next one. And he’s on to the next one. And there’s a little bit of an intro, but it’s so concise, and it’s so specific, and scalable. I don’t know what that word is, but you could totally like steal these ideas. And it was just great. Exactly what to say. It’s very, very, very short. And totally awesome if you sell things. So

Spencer
Nice. You just made me think of something. Have you read the book “obvious Adams?”

Pete 
No, I haven’t.

Spencer
Okay, so Gary Bencivenga. Right, greatest living copywriter life is, I guess its greatest living copywriter alive is kind of redundant. It’s like, I guess you’re alive. You’re living anyway.

So he always one of the books that he always gave away to people was called obvious Adams super fast read it, like you can read it. Probably like an hour. I mean, maybe less. But it’s really simple. And the whole premise is that really successful business is about learning to see the obvious kind of like what you’re saying, like if you know your audience, you don’t have to get really fancy with stuff, you just got to say what they really want to hear.

But it’s really hard to see the obvious.

And so I really love the because it just kind of distilled this whole idea down. And it says it in a very quick way that kind of hits home where you kind of say, Oh, I get it. And it’s one of those things where it kind of it shifts your perspective.

And it makes you seem like what you really want to do. Anyway, super quick read. I don’t actually remember who it’s written by. But, but yeah, I really liked that book. It’s a nice one. And, and kind of, you know, I gotta admit, like, I’m pretty time-starved, between family and everything else. So even though I love deeper stuff, too, I get, you know, most days, I’m sitting around, trying to figure out like, how do I use my time efficiently? And when things are short? I’m like, Yes, you know, you get paid for that. Totally, totally.

Pete 
Well, Spencer, this has been absolutely lovely. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this, we’re gonna have to catch up again, and just nerd out over the phone or on Skype or something about some of these other interesting marketing things that are going on in the real world outside of digital marketing, I find this fascinating.

So before I let you go, where what’s your pitch, give us the offer could be to where they can best follow you obviously, go extra bowl.com. And on a social channel, people can go there, obviously join the email list, you have a special link, maybe you want to point people to?

Spencer
Yes, the link is the way to go. That’s where everything happens.

So in fact, I’m going to give a two part instruction, just head over to this link.

So goextrabold.com/dyeb.

And first thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to get a full, I think it’s eight parts, I keep changing it. Sometimes it’s like seven, sometimes it’s eight, sometimes of nine.

But anyway, you’re going to get a full course that kind of goes over the principles of influence and how to do it in a way that’s like, where you can actually still be like an honest person and feel good about yourself. And so head over there, and the one plug I have is that the first email that you get, it’s going to talk about this special guide called the Dark Arts version.

And so it’s basically it’s long, but I really I give wholly in there. It’s not one of those things where you kind of go in and you say, Oh, you know, I knew that. And so I really get into it. And it’s like it’s it does what I tell nobody all have nobody to do, which is it is a ridiculously long lead magnet. But people who read it have just like they have any they really I mean, they have used this to kind of power certain parts of their businesses and stuff like that.

So anyway, go click on that, all you got to do is like shared and blah, blah, blah. I mean, I can’t even remember, I’m trying to remember the tool I used. But anyway, for everyone who clicks on the link, they’ll see how it goes.

Really simple. There’s not a lot you got to do. You just click on it, and then you go and you get that download, but well worth it.

A lot of people don’t know about it, because sometimes people don’t read the intro email. But you want to get that because I’m telling you.

Yeah, you know, they people read like half of it, they get through the part like oh, you know, if you don’t like me unsubscribe and here’s your free download, right. But I’ve noticed a lot of people, I have to keep reminding them.

That was one of the changes I had to make, because I realized, you know, people don’t see the promo for that. Anyway, with that said, like, really, I love it. And it’s one of those things, I’m constantly thinking, maybe I should take that down and just turn it into one of my bonuses and stuff like that. So grab it by you can.

So anyway, that’s the plug, go goextrabold.com/dyeb, you’ll get the free course and you’ll be you’ll get the link that’s going to take you to that free PDF.

Pete 
So strong, literally opting in right after we finish this call. I’m excited.

And by the way, let me let me brag This is 110% bragging on my audience here. One of the things that I love every single day and working on my own business right now. It’s going bad. And lots of ways. There’s totally weaknesses that I have. I’m totally struggling in a lot of areas of my business, but this is not one.

My audience is like loyal. I this is totally bragging, totally bragging. And so I’m going to tell people right now like goextrabold.com/dyeb and open the first email, and they’ll do it. You’re watching this or you’ll get like emails after this. All right, I’m watching. Yeah, at least a few. I’m guessing you’ll probably get some emails tribe. Go unite. I love this idea. I think this is definitely valuable information for sure. I’m going to go up in right now. Myself, by the way. And I believe that’ll about do it.

So Spencer. Thanks again for coming on. This has been awesome. I really appreciate your time.

Spencer
Thank you it was areally good talk!

Questions? Concerns? Comments?

Drop it below 🙂

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website.