A few weeks ago, I was on the porch knocking back a Modelo Especial working and I noticed one of my friends walking up to the front door.

So I eased on down the steps, let him in, and invited him to up to the porch to take in the scenery with me.

He readily agreed so I grabbed us both a couple of Mexico’s finest beers and we took our seats.

But something was wrong. My (normally laid back) buddy was all weirded out.

“Poor bastard’s probably suffering from a beer deficiency”, I thought as I went to grab us a few more.

They didn’t do the trick so I finally asked him what was wrong.

Turned out he’d been disappointed with a recent “Guru” experience.  I’m not talking about spiritual guru stuff here …I mean “get-your-shit-together-in-business” stuff.

That type of Guru.

No, there’s no drama to report …nobody felt ripped off or hosed or anything. It’s just that the relationship didn’t work out as planned and my buddy was bummed.

“I really thought this was the guy who would take me where I want to go”, he said.

And There You Have It …The Root Of The Problem Revealed

See …here’s the deal (and this is what I tried to explain to my friend without sounding all high and mighty):

YOU are the only person who can take you where you want to go. There is no Guru, teacher, mentor, author, speaker, shaman, or whatever who can or will do that for you.

Ever.

Sure, they can show you cool stuff. They can show you what worked for them, they can give you encouragement and motivation …and they can help you keep your head on straight when the going gets weird.

But in the immortal words of Hunter S. Thompson,

“When The Going Gets Weird, The Weird Turn Pro”

And what that means in the context of this little rant is simple:

DON’T FUCK AROUND AND EXPECT SOMEONE ELSE TO SAVE THE DAY.

They won’t. Hell, they can’t! Not even if they want to. Only YOU can.

So whenever you’re considering buying advice, coaching, mentoring, seminar tickets, or whatever – understand this:

They Are All WORTHLESS

…Unless you’re bull-headed enough to immediately put what you learn into action. (And then get right back to work when your first attempts inevitably present some challenges).

And if you’re waiting until you get some big amazing revelation before you actually do something, you’re going to be waiting a long time. There ain’t one.

Well, that’s not entirely true. There is one …but it’s just kind of anti climatic. Here it is:

Some Stuff Works, Some Doesn’t.

And the stuff that’s worked for lots of other people will probably work for you too …if you put in the effort.

See …that’s the key word there.

Effort.

Let’s juice it up and add the word “educated” to it.

Now we have “educated effort”. And that’s a hell of a thing.

See, with “educated effort”, you can do anything you want.

Add in a little “determination” and you’re damn near unstoppable.

Then throw in a little bump of what my teacher Dan Kennedy calls “stick-to-it-iveness” and you WILL get to where you want to go.

Let’s take a look at the last part of that sentence.

YOU. Will. Get. To. Where. YOU. Want. To. Go.

We didn’t say “[INSERT GURU HERE] will get you where you want to go”, did we?

Nope.

YOU.

All a Guru can give you is education.

But the fact remains that’s only 25% of what you need.

You still need throw in 25% effort, 25% determination, and 25% sticktoitiveness.

…And that’s the 75% that YOU and ONLY YOU can provide!

So that’s why

YOU are really the only Guru who can EVER get you to where you want to go!

Hell, how much education do you need, anyway?

Imagine a guy wanting to lose weight (ahem). How many books does he need to buy? For the love of God, it’s easy! Put the fork down and walk around for a few hours a day.

Do that for a month or so and you’ll weigh less. (Duh!)

That’s been the winning formula forever, right?

But There’s A Gazillion Dollar Industry
Delivering “New” Weight Loss Stuff Every Day!

There’s a new diet book every 20 minutes or so it seems.

And the books aren’t the problem. I’m sure they all work if the reader takes the education they just got, adds in a lot of effort, determination, and sticktoitiveness.

But that clearly doesn’t happen. People just keep buying books and gizmos that go unused. Same thing happens in the marketing world. We buy courses and seminars and then jump to the next one …without implementing any of the stuff we just learned.

Why?

Because The Short-Term Pain Of Effort Is Often Perceived
To Be Worse Than The Long-Term Pain Of Failure

There it is. The ugly truth.

It’s hard to get out there …try …work like hell … probably hit a few road blocks …and then keep busting ass until you succeed.

It’s a LOT harder (and less fun) than buying the latest “shiny object” and enjoying that temporary mental “high” that comes from the false sense of productivity you get from making the purchase.

But the fact is, the ONLY way you’ll get anywhere is to realize that YOU ARE THE GURU and that ONLY YOU can make it happen.

So if you keep on buying advice without putting forth determined and consistent effort to implement what you’ve learned, you will NOT succeed.

But if you’re willing to endure the short-term discomfort that stems from stepping outside your comfort zone and actually working like crazy for a while, you’ll get to where you want to go.

All the “Gurus” can do for you is give you the car, so to speak. It’s still up to you to get gas and actually drive it.

My Challenge To You

1. Don’t buy any advice this month. Go back and re-read whatever you’ve bought in the past. It’s still good.

2. Turn off the damn computer and write down all the good stuff you learn. On a legal pad. (OLD SCHOOL!).

3. Review those notes and write down every possible action you could take to start making money immediately. Do whatever actions jump out at you. Don’t over think this. Just do it. Life is short.

4. Write a new offer for your products. You’ve probably bought a ton of stuff on writing offers and copy …so dig it out of the closet and put it to use. Nothing happens until something gets sold. So start selling (and quit buying).

5. Take the money you would have spent on whatever new marketing product you were thinking about buying this month (but didn’t) and use that money to drive traffic to your offer.

That’s right! Invest in business instead of buying more stuff about business. Revolutionary concept!

6. Measure the results of your activity (note the word ACTIVITY!) and tweak accordingly.

7. Repeat 1-6.

Oh – and if you’ve ever looked for a magic formula, that’s pretty much it.

I know because I’ve been at this now for 11 years and I’ve tried everything.

It’s simple:

1. See what worked for other people.

2. Try it for yourself.

3. Adjust according to results.

4. Repeat.

Now Let’s Kick Some Ass

We’re heading into the 4th quarter and ’tis the season to SELL THE HELL OUT OF YOUR STUFF.

This is the time of year when people love to buy things more than ever …and that means your odds of success are even greater!

So get to work and let me know how you’re doing with my challenge. Leave me updates in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: frank kern, Guru, Marketing Guru, Online Marketing

At the moment I’m madly running around in an attempt to put together a page to promote the workshop Alborz Fallah and I are running in October in the USA. If you are interested in attending I’ll have full details for you very soon…as soon as I get the page up!

There are two things I need to complete in order to finalize the page.

1. The location for the workshop. It’s going to be in New York City in October, and I think I’ve just found a venue to host it, so this is almost sorted.
2. The sales page video that tells you about the event.

Alborz and I began filming the video footage last week and managed to record some very good blooper reel content, but nothing we could actually use (we did have lots of laughs though!).

I realized one of the main reasons we had such an unproductive day was that I didn’t have a good enough plan for what the video should contain. I went back to some of my study materials and cheat sheets on how to construct a good offer to refresh my memory.

I came across a video from Eben Pagan’s Guru Blueprint course which gave me the reminder I needed. The video wasn’t too long, about 20 minutes, but had a really simple 7 step formula for coming up with an offer. I’ll share it with you in a moment, but first let me explain what exactly an offer is.

What Is An Offer?

An offer is the final place where you tell your potential customers what you are offering them in exchange for their money. It might be a sales page, or a sales video or a pitch on stage at an event or on a live webinar. Whatever the format, the content remains much the same and there are some key points you should cover to help increase your likelihood of making a sale.

I previously became very confused about what exactly an offer is. I thought it was just the buy button on a sales page or simply saying you get this if you give me X amount of dollars. I later learned that an offer is a lot more than that. It includes the obvious component – a price and a mechanism to make the transaction – but it also includes other important things like price justification, risk reversal, background story and other marketing elements.

The offer is absolutely critical because it’s the final piece of marketing your prospect experiences before making a purchase. You might lead them towards an offer with all kinds of different marketing tools, but the offer is the final conclusion.

In the case of the video I am making now, Alborz and I are relying on our reputations, personal case studies, record of results and established relationship with you as key components of our offer. That means the video has to explain a lot, which is why having a framework or even just a checklist, is helpful.

7 Steps To Craft A Good Offer

I’m not going to repeat word for word what Eben teaches. You can take one of his courses if you want his break down. That being said, these are not strictly Eben’s ideas either, he’s taken what he learned from other people, in particular copywriters like John Carlton, and come up with his interpretation.

In the spirit of interpretation, here is my take on the 7 steps, which you can use to craft an offer for your next product.

1. The headline.

This is the element that encapsulates what your product does in a brief sentence or two. It should focus on the core emotion driving your potential customer to make the purchase, and must be clear about specific outcomes. Like writing headlines for blog posts, this is the most important element because it’s the initial attention grabber. For a video offer, I consider what you say in the first 30 seconds equivalent to the headline, or you can include headline text above the video to entice people to click the play button.

2. Set up the scenario and explain the challenge the customer is up against.

In this section you frame what the potential customer is facing and what experiences most people have when trying to achieve whatever your product helps them achieve. This is where you demonstrate you know the problem or desire the potential customer has better than they do. This is very powerful because it shows your intimate knowledge of the situation and that infers you might have something that actually works, because you know so much about what doesn’t.

3. Tell your story.

I’ve relied heavily on this element in many of my offers when it comes to teaching how to make money online with blogs and membership sites. If you’re teaching how to do something or how you went through an experience to come up with your product, going through the before and after story is very powerful. It helps to hook the prospect in because stories are the most compelling content you can create. As you tell the story you should point out your ah-ha moments and how you came up with certain techniques or solutions that no one else uses.

If you don’t have your own story, or even if you do, telling the story of other people works well too. Adding some case studies of previous customers or people who have benefited from your work is a very good idea and another technique I’ve used many times before. Testimonials are good, but stories from other people who were just like everyone else with a problem that you helped them solve with your product, are much better.

4. Dish out a list of the benefits of your product using specific and tangible results.

Eben suggest you come up with twenty dot points you list out of all the amazing things your product or service does, focusing on tangible outcomes and specific problems (avoid abstract concepts like “you will feel better” – instead use phrases like “You will lose ten pounds and be able to play tennis again”). This is a good chance to touch upon sticking points that your prospects might have. If your prospect sees just one point that strikes a nerve that they simply must know about, this could be the trigger that convinces them to buy.

5. Next you state the price, but you don’t just lay it out there, you justify it by demonstrating how much incredible value you are delivering.

Eben recommends you focus on showing how you are charging just 10% of the value you are delivering, for example pointing out that you charge X dollars for private coaching, yet this product costs just a fraction of that. This is a good time to include bonuses, which as Frank Kern calls it – you “stack the cool” – including so many relevant and exceptionally valuable additions to your core product that people can’t help but say yes.

6. The Risk Reversal.

This is where you tell prospects that there is no risk buying because they are protected by a guarantee. The risk is then placed on you to deliver, since they can ask for their money back if they don’t like it. Of course you plan to over-deliver, so this is a win-win, your prospects are protected so compelled to buy, and you are committed to delivering a great product.

7. The Call To Action.

This is straight forward, yet needs to be very specific. Tell your prospects to buy by saying do this (e.g. click the buy button), then this will happen (e.g. you will be directed to our secure order form where you will make payment via credit card or paypal) and then this (e.g. you will receive a confirmation email within a few minutes of processing your order).

Don’t just say “please buy now”, tell them how to do it and say do it now. This needs to be explained as if you are teaching someone how to use the computer for the first time.

Obviously these points can each be dissected to much more depth, but this list is a good starting point. I recommend if you want more details on what to include in a sales page but you don’t have money to invest in a full course on copywriting, try Alexis Dawes Desperate Buyers Only ebook, which you can find my review of here and costs under $100.

I need to get to work and start compiling my answers to these seven points for the New York workshop with Alborz I will be offering you very soon. It looks like we will have about 10 spots available, so stay tuned if you want to come hang out with us in October.

Yaro Starak
Crafting Offers

Taken from: http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/3296/how-to-craft-an-offer-in-7-steps/

Technorati Tags: Alexis Dawes, call to action, crafting offers, eben, eben pagan, frank kern, guru blueprint, john carlton, rick reversal, stack the cool, Yaro Starak

Been doing a lot of consulting with my cousin (also a famous super-model, Frank Kern).  It’s been really interesting, as some of these people we’ve met with are serious badasses.  Many have 1 to 15 million dollar businesses… and regardless if they’ve made a ton of money or a few pennies, most have the same problem.

They ain’t got no funnel!  They have a front in product, but they don’t have a strong back-end sales sequence.

Even though this is kinda marketing 101, most people don’t do it.  It seems like a pain in the ass, but ironically it usually isn’t.  Most people are sitting on a TON of product but they just don’t know it.

I gotta admit that I can totally relate.

In 2007 I created a little product for $49.95.  It sold like CRAZY (over 70,000 downloads sold in under 18 months) but I never built a strong funnel.

So I didn’t have a killer back-end sequence and my average customer value was… well… $49.95.

Here’s why that sucks:

When my front end traffic died (which can happen to anyone at anytime, especially if using Google) then I didn’t have a strong enough customer value to go out and play with the big boys and do media buys.

See, let’s say you have a “football throwing” product that sales for $45 bucks.

If you don’t have any back-end, then your average customer is worth $45 bucks.  If Johnny Utah (from Point Break fame) ALSO has a $45 football throwing product, BUT he upsells them to a $97 a month program… then his average customer value might be $100+ per customer.

So if you and Johnny Utah are both trying to buy some banner ad space on ESPN.com, guess who is going to be able to “out buy” your ass immediately?

Yup, Ol’ Johnny Utah.

So there are two important points here:

1. Don’t get lazy and stick with just a front end product.  You’ll thank me later and it’s not NEAR as much work as you think it is.

2. Once you know your metrics (Demographics, Average Customer Value, Back-End Sales, etc) then move on from just plain old PPC.  Try buying some banner ads and media.

Technorati Tags: Average Customer Value, Back-end, Back-End Sales, Back-end sequence, Demographics, frank kern, google, internet marketing strategy, Killer, Online Marketing, PPC, PPV, Price Point, Product, Sales Funnel, traffic, trey smith, Trey Smith Blog

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Why some “launches” fail…

Technorati Tags: frank kern, mass control, plf, product launch, product launch formula, product launches, trey smith