Copywriting Seminar

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 [Carl] Welcome! I’m very, very pleased to have our next
guest on board. This man is an entrepreneurial expert, he has
and awesome website, over 25k articles on the net. He has over
500 hours of audio training, and has written the #1 bestselling
book on Amazon, which I’m actually holding in my hand right now,
it’s called “Anyone Can Coach”. Now, the reason, I’ve invited
this man on board for the copy writing course, is because he’s
not actually copy writer by trade, but, he is, and writes very
good copy. And, so, without further ado, and without ranting on
too long, may I introduce Mr. Sean Mize. Hi Sean!

[Sean] Well, hi Carl. Thank you very much, and I’m honored
to be here. And I certainly appreciate you choosing me. So,
thank you, thank you very much Carl.

[Carl] Now, as I said, you have a great career in internet

marketing, you’ve got a lot of material on the net. And, you
also write your own copy. Can you sort of explain why you
started off, and how you got started, and the first steps you
made. It’s brave for anybody to writing out sales pages, and
also emails as well, isn’t it?

[Sean] Well, I would say that, maybe that would be the

case. I guess that I don’t see it that way, but now that you
mention it, you say that yeah it is a brave move, but the truth
of the matter is, even with my own clients, I just always make
the assumption that my client is going go write their own copy,
instead of outsourcing it. There’s a couple of deep thoughts,
well, not deep thoughts, big thought that I have on that
particular concept, and that is, if when we’re copy writing,
when we’re writing sales copy, when we’re writing articles, when
we’re communicating, when you and I are just communicating, it’s
really about human communication, it’s one man to another, one
woman to another, one man to a woman, one woman to a man. It is
real live communication. To me, the art of writing a sales
letter, or copy writing in that sales letter arena, is simply
the written form of that human communication. And, I think that
one thing that tends to happen, in kind of the copy writing
arena, and I believe that this can seriously sabotage a lot of
entrepreneurs, is this idea that we can hire one voice to write
a sales letter, another voice to write our emails, another voice
to write our articles, and expect it to all fit together. In my
personal opinion, and again, I’m not a copy writer, so I, again,
if you’re talking a copy writer, you might hear something
totally separate. Someone may say, boy, I’m a sales copy
writer, and I’m going to write you the best copy that will
really convert. In my business, and for my clients, I’m less
concerned about a single page converting, than I am on building
a long term relationship with the other human, even if I know
I’ll never speak with them personally, even if the only way they
get to know me is from hearing an audio recording like this, or
one of the others that I’ve done in the past. Or whether it’s
through reading my book, or whether it’s through reading some of
my articles. Whether it’s through reading a sales letter. So
what I believe is critical Carl, is that when someone is
communicating, that all of the communication that they do is in
the same voice. It’s kind of like if I were to meet you at a
coffee shop, and we were to have a conversation for an hour.
And we were to agree on some things, and I said, hey, I’ll meet
you back here in a week, and we’ll continue. But next week,
when you met at the coffee shop, there was someone that looked
like me, but it wasn’t me, and you just tried to carry on the
same conversation. Even if he was clear that he was my
representative there, it would be difficult for you to get right
into the flow of things with that person, exactly where we left
off, simply because, their voice, with which they speak, is a
little bit different from mine. It would be sort of like you’re
having to build that relationship all over again. What do you
think about that Carl?

[Carl] That sounds very, very interesting. So what you’re

saying is really, there’s one voice, there’s one person,
stretching across the entirety of you products. Is that what
you’re saying?

[Sean] Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. You see, I think that
what happens a lot of times, and, by the way Carl, I don’t want
to say that there’s not a place for expert copy writing, I think
that there is a place for expert copy writing, especially when
you’re getting into really big business, and you’re launching a
new product every single week, or if you’re the type of person
who really wants to be the person that’s overseeing a business.
But, when you have a business like mine, that is, it’s really
centered, the voice of my business is centered around me.
Obviously, what I teach is the topic of what I teach. Coaching
program systems. My business is sort of centered around the
coaching program systems. But, the voice is from me.

If I had a business that had, say, 10 different voices,

then maybe we released a new product every month, and then one
voice was from Carl, next month it was from Julie, next month it
was from Tamarin, next month it was from Jonny. Well, it would
be different, and then maybe what we could say, boy let’s go
hire a professional copy writer to write all of this. Also,
somebody’s just starting out in the business. Let’s say they’re
starting out in the business, they’re starting small even, and
their expertise is creating a certain type of training, but they
don’t communicate well. They don’t write well, they can’t.
They just don’t write well, they don’t even talk well, they
don’t communicate well, with other people. But they have a
genuine skill, which is whatever the training is. They’re
teaching or training a specific thing. Then, for that
individual, I would say, absolutely. You, because you don’t
have a skill at communication, hey, maybe your best bet is to
outsource that particular skill. Just like you might outsource
articles, or you might outsource your audio uploading. Maybe,
you’re a good teacher, but you don’t know how to turn on a video
recorder. So, you outsource the video recording part of that.
Then in that case you’re probably outsourcing the emails, you’re
probably outsourcing the article. And, then in that
environment, I believe we say great, we want the sales person,
the sales letter writer, we want the email writer, we want the
article writer to be able to communicate with each other. So
that we get as close to possible the same voice.

But, if you’re talking about someone like me, like you,

like hundreds of others in the world today, that are
entrepreneurs, that have a business that is centered around the
personal, I don’t even want to say the personal relationship,
but the character that comes with a certain person. And, that
person has the ability to communicate, now I’ll dig into that
deeper in just a second Carl. Has the ability to communicate.
I believe that, that person can do the writing, and I believe
that they can do it without any fancy copy writing technique,
any fancy copy writing training, anything like that.

Carl, I’ll tell you, when you asked me to do this, you

remember, I specifically and I initially, I said. Hey, I’m not
a copy writer, I don’t remember the exact words that I used.
But I’m not really the kind of person you should be
interviewing. I get requests to interview for different things,
and I take some of them, and I turn some of them down. And
yours was just a classic turn you down. There’s no good reason
for me to teach on copy writing. Of course, you came back and
you said, obviously you write copy, I’d love to hear it from the
perspective of an ordinary person. So, I started thinking about
that, well, you know, that would really add a lot to this, and
so that way, you take a person that says, boy, I really, I’m
confused by 17 different parts to my sales letter. I’m confused
with 19 different swipe headlines I need to learn and then
choose one. I’m confused with all of these things. I might be
able to say, hey, maybe there’s an easier way to do it. It’s
something I’ve taught my clients for years, but generally, I
haven’t taught them necessarily under the umbrella of copy
writing. I think I normally teach it under the umbrella of
communication.

What I mean Carl is, I believe that if someone can

communicate, in a way that gets the point across. Just like we
are right now. We’re just chatting here. I’m just sharing with
you, my thoughts on this. Based on your questions, we could
write down the exact words that I’m using, and it would have the
same impact. And the only thing we would have to do is clean it
up, because when people read things, they see the ums, and the
ahs, and the pauses, and the incomplete sentences. I just used
the words, “you know”, I would pull that out if we were writing
sales copy, but if you think about it. Just us discussing this,
is the exact same communication that could be set down on the
sales page itself.

[Carl] You carry on, you just started a couple of things in

my head which John Carlton actually said to me. I’ll let you
continue, we can elaborate on that later.

[Sean] Excellent, excellent. I’ll share with you one more

idea, because I don’t want to dominate this conversation or
anything like that, but I want to share with you. An
illustration that I use with my clients, and then we can dig as
deep as you want, and you can ask me as many questions as you
want to set this foundation. So, sometimes folks will come to me
and they’ll say hey, I’m not really a good copy writer, and
there’s a part of me that’s tempted to go out there and say,
okay, what I would love for you to do is to, go take somebody’s
intense copy writing course. And, in fact, I used to do that.

What I found, people would come back, and they would have
all this information. I would say, great, go write your sales
letter. And they would write a sales letter with all of the 17
points, but it would be so stiff, it would be like reading
cardboard. It was using the masters lines, and I don’t want to
name any masters, we all know the masters. If you were to read
those lines in the masters sales letter, it’s really smooth.
So, you can’t say, oh, they’re using bad lines. You can’t say
they’re using a bad story. But when you read it, it doesn’t
feel right. It’s like it’s wooden. Or stiff.

And so then, I asked the questions, I go, let me ask you

this, whatever it is you’re selling, let’s say that you’ve
recently learned to reduce heart rate just a little bit, by
doing the special 20 minute aerobic thing 3 times a week. Let’s
just say you’ve created a little video training to show other
people how they can aerobics 3 times a week and it will help
their health. I would say, let me ask you this, if your best
friend called you up, and your best friend said to you, hey, I
see that you seem to be more calm, and you’re a little bit more
in shape lately, what have you done? You would probably say,
oh, I’m doing this 20 minute cardio, 3 times a week. And your
friend says, hey, can you tell me about it? And why I should
maybe do this 20 minute aerobics just like you’re doing. You’re
going to say, you know, friend I’d be more than happy to, why
don’t we meed at the local coffee shop, can you meet this
afternoon? Your friend says, yeah. And so you sit down. Now,
you don’t bring a script with you, you don’t bring a sales
letter with you, you don’t even bring maybe any ideas with you.
But, you sit down and you ask your friend, you say, hey friend,
why are you even asking about this? Are you struggling with
something? Your friend says, well, you know, I feel like, I feel
like I just don’t have as much energy as I used to have, and you
look like you have a lot more energy. And so then maybe you
say, well what else do you think this aerobics might do for you?
The friend might say, you know, well, I’ve gained an extra 10
lbs. Lately, and I’d love to be able to get it off. You might
say, well, let me ask you this, have you been frustrated lately?
Maybe a little bit of road rage, maybe irritated with your
husband, your wife. You friend says, yeah, I’m struggling with
that too. You say, well, the thing is, this 20 minute aerobics,
3 times a week that I’ve been doing, it’s really been amazing.
I’ve lost 10 or 15 lbs, and I no longer get that road rage, and
I’m no longer yelling at my husband (or wife), and I have more
energy, I’m able to play with the kids (or grandkids) more. If
there’s a 4 floor stair or elevator, I just take the stairs,
instead of taking the elevator up 4 floors. What do you think
about that? And your friend says, wow, can you tell me more
about it? So, you just tell him all about your aerobics then.
And then your friend says to you, well, how can I learn how to
do this? And you say, why don’t you just come join me, I meet
over there at the gym, 3 times a week, Mon, Wed, & Fri. I meet
for 20 minutes, I meet at noon, and just join me over there, and
I’ll show you what I’m doing. Your friend says, okay.

This sounds really simple and easy for someone to do if

they were just talking to their friend.

[Carl] It sounds extremely simple. I’m getting a gist of

what you’re doing here, I’m just marveling at the ingenuity of
it, and the simplicity of it at the same time. I’m building up
the picture in my head. If you took your friends conversation
away, you would have a sales letter, wouldn’t you?

[Sean] Absolutely, you would have a sales letter. I would

say, hey, are you struggling, or are you frustrated, because you
don’t have as much energy as you used to have? If you feel like
you’re getting older, faster than the clock is ticking. Are you
feeling frustrated because you’ve been snapping at your husband,
or your wife? Have you been getting road rage lately? And, by
the way, have you gained an extra 10 or 15 lbs lately? Then,
you just transition maybe, to if so, I would love to tell you
what I’ve done recently. You know in the last 6 months, I’ve
started this little aerobics program, and you tell a little bit
about it. Wow! After about 2 months of doing this aerobics
program, I’m not snapping at my husband or wife anymore, I don’t
have road rage, I’m a much calmer person, I’m having more
energy, I can walk the stairs, and all of those kinds of things.
And maybe you just ask the question in the sales letter. You
say, would you like to learn how to do that? If so, I’ve got an
… we’ll just roll with exactly the same thing. Mon, Wed & Fri
at noon, I meet, online, and I do this aerobics. We set up this
little video camera, and you do it in your house, and I do it
here, and well, we do this aerobics. And, these are all the
things that will happen while you’re there. That’s how it
works. And, then, if we take this thing one step further of
course, we say, of course there’s going to be a price to join.
Who knows, maybe you’re writing copy for something that’s free,
it’s an intro session so that you can up-sell later on, or
whatever. But, the price is irrelevant, you just say, hey,
there’s a price. If you’re meeting your friend for coffee, and
the friend says, how much is it going to cost? Well, since it’s
your friend, you might say, well, it’s not going to cost you
anything. But, the gym requires a $5 entrance fee. So, your
friend would pay that. Let’s leave it at the friend example.

But, as you said Carl, when we’re doing this, we are simply
talking to a friend, when we’re writing that letter. In my
personal opinion, it doesn’t need to be any deeper than that.
It doesn’t need to have any N L P any special highlighting any
super duper scientific persuasion language that’s going to make
people feel like being bit by the snake behind the snake oil. I
don’t believe that we need to use any special super power
language to be able to communicate the humaness of what’s going
on. In my opinion, and in the way that I like to write a sales
letter, I want it to be like a conversation at a coffee shop.
Obviously, if we take that coffee shop conversation to the next
level, then we might add a price to it, we might tell our
friend, let’s just imagine we’re talking with our friend, but
instead of just inviting them to meet us for a private meet,
because it’s just my friend, maybe I say to my friend, here’s
the thing, I meet with about 12 other people, on Mon, Wed, Fri
at 12:00, and they each pay $50/month to be able to meet with
me. And, you know, friend, if you would like to join me, I
would love to have you join me, come over for the 1st meet. It
won’t cost you anything, and you’re my friend, so it won’t cost
you anything at all. Now, it wouldn’t be fair to everybody else
that’s paying, for you to come and not pay, so the only thing I
ask is that you’ll enroll just like everybody else. So, that
might be the only difference if it’s a real friend, vs it's the
friends we’re making online.

You see Carl, I don’t believe we should sell anything to

anybody that isn’t in some way our friend. Because, let’s say,
when you’re holding this copy writing interview series, let’s
just say that’s what you’re teaching people, and when they
purchase this training, they’re getting copy writing training.
When somebody purchases my coaching program to get some
training, they’re getting coaching program knowledge. But the
thing is, I don’t want to sell my coaching program system to an
enemy. And, I don’t think you want to sell your copy writing
system to an enemy? Am I correct in saying that Carl?
 [Carl] Yeah, absolutely, yes.

[Sean] You want to help people, you’re in the business of

helping people, right?

[Carl] Yeah, definitely.

[Sean] I’m in the business of helping people. If anybody

buys my book “Anybody Can Coach”, I want their life to be
changed. In fact, if they just read the introduction to the
first chapter, their life is probably going to be changed. Even
if they don’t read the rest of the book and learn how to do it.
Their mindset is going to be changed. I want to change peoples
lives. I want to change peoples lives. I want to help people.
So, if you think about it, when we have a friend, what do we
want to do, we want to maybe change their life. We want to help
them, with a genuine, personal. I have 3 or 4 friends we have
in our life, our real friends, not acquaintances, but our real
friends, they help us too. When we’re building our online
business, whether we’re teaching people copy writing, we’re
teaching people coaching programs systems, we’re teaching people
aerobics. Whatever the case is. I believe that the perspective
should be, I want to change your life. I want to help you. I
want to be your friend. Even if our business is so big, that we
can never talk with them personally. We still want to be that
face that says when you purchase my training, you’re getting it
from someone, who, I may not be your friend, but we have
friendly characteristics here. I want to help you. I want this
to be like it is friend to friend. And, I’ll tell you Carl, what
I just shared with you, and I’ll take all your questions now,
but what I just shared with you Carl, is my feeling about how
easy it can be ordinary folks to write copy. Because, to me,
writing copy is no different than you and me chatting, me and
you meeting at a coffee shop, my wife and I meeting at a coffee
shop, and having a chat or a conversation about something. It’s
no different than me attempting to convince her that we really
should do X, Y or Z. It should be no different than her trying
to convince me that we should do X, Y or Z. It should be no
different than me talking with a friend, and, trying to persuade
him that maybe he needs to lose 10 lbs. Or trying to persuade
someone else that he’s spending too much time with the wrong
friend. Me, when I’m writing a sales letter, for let’s just
say, hypothetically, my expertise is teaching people how to set
up a really easy coaching system in their business, if I’m
writing a sales letter about that, I just want to genuinely
impart to you, look, here’s the thing, your business is ticking
right along, but if you don’t have a coaching program, you’re
probably missing something in your business. You’re not able to
help everybody that you would like to help. What I want to do,
I want to convince you, that if you’ll add a coaching program to
your business, 2 things will happen. #1 your income will go up.
#2 you’ll change more lives.

If I don’t convince you of that, there’s no good reason for

you to buy. But I don’t need fancy, scientific, NLP super
duper, highlighted sales copy proven scientific, super duper,
split tested, optimized, sales words to convince you of that.
If I can’t convince you of that, in ordinary, 5 minutes worth of
coffee talk, then you’re probably not the kind of person that
really wants to do a coaching program in your business. If you
don’t buy, it’s okay. It really is. So often, we talk about
wanting to get everybody to buy and all this, I mean a good
sales letter converts at 10%, at the right price point, a good
sales letter can convert at 5%. But, the truth of the matter
is, that means that 90% - 95% of the people that read our sales
letters, aren’t going to buy anyway. It’s okay. It really is.
If I’ve convinced them, just through coffee talk, in my, whether
it’s a coffee shop talk, or personally one on one. Or it’s in
this written letter, if I’ve convinced them that they really
should have a coaching program. I shouldn’t have to beg,
borrow, steal, twist their arm, offer them bonus’s, give them
massive discounts, anything like that. I should just be able to
say, hey, if you want to do what I’ve just shared with you, I’ve
created a training program. It’s 17 hours worth of rock solid
training, it’ll teach you everything you need to know about
creating a coaching program. And, if I want to, I can maybe, if
I want to, and I often don’t do this, I can include some
testimonials that people who have bought it and had life
changing results. Or, I can not! I can just say, look I
personally tell you, that, and by the way, I know this is a
rabbit trail Carl, if we’ve had a coffee talk conversation, in
this letter, they trust me when they get to the end. I don’t
have to make all kinds of gold, bold, super duper promises to
trick you into pretending to trust me, so that you’ll get this
and try it out. You already trust me by the time you read the
letter, and so you say, you know what, I really would like to
purchase this. And, of course Carl, all of this is combined
with everything else that I have. I mean, somebody Googles me,
or they go, you know they say, I want to buy the book first. I
want to sample what Sean does, it’s pretty easy to go online and
find other people talking about me, find other people that are
willing to share a copy of something that I’ve created. Or,
it’s really easy to go over to Amazon and buy the book, and read
it, and they go “Wow! Now I really trust Sean!” I’ve read some
of the articles that have his name on it. Articles that he’s
responsible for. I’ve done these kinds of things, now you come
back and read the sales letter a week later, I still don’t have
to beg, borrow, or steal, or anything like that to twist your
arm to get you to buy. Because, I’m a real person, and you
trust me. Not just because I’ve written a sales letter. But,
because you have learned about me in the context of the entire
web, there’s a trust there, because of the articles, because of
the audios, because of the book. And then, obviously the sales
letter simply wraps that up. I don’t even have to get fancy at
the end of the sales letter, I could say something as simple as,
here’s the thing, if you want to change your life by adding a
coaching program, I recommend that you get my training. Here’s
how it’s delivered, now the truth of the matter is, this could
be worth X, Y, Z to the right person. Just based on what
someone could do with it. But for right now, I’m marketing this
at this particular price, I don’t know how long I can keep it at
this price, you know maybe I don’t want the world to be
saturated with this information. I don’t know how long I can
keep it at this price. But, if you want to change your life,
the price isn’t the issue here, whether it’s $100, $200, $1k,
$10k, if you can afford it, price isn’t really the issue here.
The issue is that you trust me. You’ve read my book. You’ve
read my articles. You’ve listened to some of my audios. You’ve
read my sales letter. You trust me. Do you want to change your
life with a coaching program? If so, invest in my training.

And, to me Carl, what I’ve just shared with you really

summarizes how easy it can be for somebody to write copy on
their own as an ordinary person. One more thought Carl, and I
promise you, I’m going to turn it over. Carl, one more thought.
There’s a place for all those fancy copy writing courses.
There’s a place for it. I believe that there’s a place for it
for somebody that says, I’ve done all of this, but maybe I want
to get better. I want to learn a few lines that will beef up
the letter. Or, I’m natural at this, and I can do that coffee
shop conversation, but then when I go to write it, I get a blank
in my mind. So then you go buy the copy writing course, from a
super, duper, copy writer, you’ll learn the 17 areas, but then,
you don’t just try to copy and paste all their information. You
learn the beginning, the middle, the end of the sales letter.
But, then you go back this idea of having a conversation at a
coffee shop, and writing the entire letter as if it’s a
conversation, and maybe there’s one last category, Carl, and
that’s the person that just can’t have a coffee shop
conversation. For that person I would say, okay, maybe they do
need to jump right into a copy writing course. But, I would
even suggest, Carl, that maybe in addition to the copy writing
course, they buy some books on communication. Even if someone
is not married, a book about communicating with your spouse
would be a great book for learning how to communicate with
anybody. A book about communicating in a business environment
would be a great book for anybody who wants to learn how to
communicate with their spouse! Because why? Because,
communication is communication is communication. If someone
were to go out there and buy 10 books on communication, 1 on
communicating with your children, 1 on communicating with your
wife, 1 on communicating with your husband, 1 on communicating
with your prospects, 1 on communicating with your clients, 1 on
sales communication, all of those and read them all, and study
them. And then begin to practice this in their everyday life.
Not just when they’re writing copy. I believe they’ll find
their copy writing will just soar. And it’ll go to the next
level, because it’ll become, so much more personable.

Alright Carl, enough of my ramble, I believe I’ve given you

the foundation of my thoughts. Any questions Carl?

[Carl] Okay, you talked about this universal personality

that you’re putting across. This humaness, in your writing and
you equate that to coffee shop conversation, or conversation,
how would you spread that out from your actual letter to other
forms of communication such as email, and even blog posts and
articles?

[Sean] Well, the thing is, that’s a great question Carl.

And, I’ll tell you, I think that the thing that happens for me
is when I’m writing an article, when I’m writing a blog post,
when I’m writing an email, I’m not thinking about a formula, I’m
asking the question, let’s say, I’m just asking the question,
what’s the challenge? Why is someone reading this article?
They have to have a reason. What’s their reason. Oh! They have
a challenge. Let’s say they’re reading an article that I’ve
written on, like some of our articles over there at E-Zine
Articles, you know, the easiest coaching program model in the
world. Why would someone read an article. Why would they
respond to an article topic like that? It would be because they
have some interest in a coaching program. So, I assume, that
they’re already interested. And so I say, what kind of problems
do they have? Maybe their afraid that having a coaching program
is really difficult. It’s challenging. It’s too hard. There’s
too many components to it. If those are their challenges, I
want to address those right away. I want to go, hey, if you’re
reading this article, maybe you’re struggling with the fact that
you want to have a coaching program, but you don’t want it to be
too much work. You don’t want it to own your life. You want it
to be automated. You want it to be easy. And, so, in this
article, I’m going to tell you how easy it can be. And, then,
what am I going to do? It’s just like a coffee shop. I’m not
going to use a formula. I’m just going to tell you, just as if
you and I were sitting across a table at a coffee shop, I’m just
going to tell you how easy it can be.

And, then, what do we do at the end? We wrap it up and we

say, hey, if you like what I’ve shared with you, then I have a
training program, and you can click here and buy it if you want
to. If I’m writing a blog post, same thing. I’m going to ask
what’s the challenge of the person, and then I’m going to solve
their challenge, and then maybe if I’m writing a guest blog
post, instead of taking them to a sales page, I might say, hey,
if you want to learn more from me, about coaching programs, you
just go over to my web site. And then I list my web site, and
they can come over, they can read articles, they can do
whatever. If I’m writing an e-mail, to my subscribers. I’m
going to go, what’s the problem, why am I writing this email?
You see, if I don’t have a reason to write and email, there’s no
sense in writing the email. So, if I’m writing an email, I’m
writing an email about, let’s say I’m writing an email about, I
wrote one recently, so I’ll just use that one as an example,
about writing an email campaign. Do you need a better email
campaign in your business? Who am I writing to? I’m writing to
people who are interested, even though my whole list of people
are going to receive that email, the only ones that are going to
read it, are going to be the ones that are intrigued by my
subject line, that maybe says, how to write a better email
campaign.

The only people that should be opening that email, are the
subset of the people on my list that are interested in writing
an email campaign. I already know that. The only people that
should be opening that are people that have challenges. Because
if they already know everything there is to know about writing
an email campaign, they shouldn’t be reading my emails to find
out how to write an email campaign. They should be, the only
people that should be reading my emails, are people that have a
problem with whatever it is. I might just open the email up.
“Hey, are you struggling with writing that perfect email
campaign that’s going to convert people to your way of thinking?
Are you struggling to write an email campaign that helps people
become closer related to your thoughts, so that maybe they’ll
buy from you?”

I’m entering their conversation right there, by asking the

question, are you struggling with this? If they’re not, they
should just close the email, because they’re not a good fit for
my email. So then I might say, if you’re struggling with that,
here’s the thing, here’s 3 tips for making writing an email
campaign easier. Notice it’s the same formula that I’m using
for the article, it’s like, the non-formula. It’s enter the
conversation by asking some questions about the target persons
needs, tell them what they want to know, and then at the end of
the email, I could say “Hey, by the way, if you really want to
take this to the next level, I have an email training program,
the email mastery training program. And, you just click here
and you can get a copy of it, and you can start studying it
tonight.”

Does that answer your question Carl?

[Carl] Yeah, that’s excellent. That’s brought up another

question. You’ve mentioned finding challenges, and you called
it meeting peoples needs. I think that’s one of the issues that
actually comes to people new to the game. Exactly how do you
find out what peoples needs are? How do you communicate with
them enough. Again, what medium do you use to communicate with
them, in order for them to give you enough information back
about what their problems are?

[Sean] That’s a great question Carl. I’ll tell you what

I’ve done over the years. I just write to them via email. I
just send an email out, that says, are you. Let’s just say it’s
email campaigns again. Are you struggling to write an email
campaign? If so, what are your top 5 challenges? Just hit
reply! And, then, they hit reply, and they tell me what their 5
challenges are, and then I can write again and ask them for more
question. If 25 people write me back, and tell me 5 of their
challenges. I’m going to have 125 challenges. Obviously,
there’s going to be tons of overlap. But, what do you think?
Do you think I’m going to have a pretty good idea what people
are looking for with their challenges with email campaigns?

[Carl] You would do, but bear in mind that you would have
to have a certain sized list to be able to do that.

[Sean] You’re absolutely right, so for people who don’t

have a certain sized list, there’s another way to do this. I
believe I learned this technique from Alex Mandossian. I want
to give credit where credit is due. A lot of times I don’t give
credit for stuff, because I don’t remember where I learned it.
Or, it’s something that everybody knows, but nobody talks about
enough. This particular idea I learned it from Alex Mandossian,
and what he taught, I don’t know if he teaches it now, I haven’t
talked with him in a long time. What he taught was what’s
called an ask page. Let’s say you’re just getting started in
the business, and you don’t have a list of 10k people, or 2k
people that you can send an email out to. Here’s what we do, we
create what’s called an ask page. This, I think, would even be
considered a precursor to the squeeze page, and basically, what
you do is. Instead of driving traffic to a specific sales page,
or instead of driving traffic just to a squeeze page to get
people to join your list, you send them to an ask page.
Basically what the ask page says is, are you struggling with
email copy writing. If so, I would love to be able to help you,
and maybe you list a few bullet points, or not. But, ask me any
question you want. Just hit enter. I’ll get back with you
personally. Let’s face it, we talk a lot about automation, and
we don’t want to write everybody personally, and if you’re a
huge $1M company, you might not want to talk to everybody
personally, and that’s okay. But, if you’re developing a new
product, would it be worth it to take somebody’s time in the
office, or, you’re an entrepreneur, to take your time, say 4
hours and just respond to the 1st 25 people that respond. I
think it would be. Even if it’s a $1B corporation, I think it’s
valuable to say, we’re going to do some market research here,
and so what we do is we say, we want them to give you their name
and email address so you can respond again. You can build that
right into an auto-responder web for, you just say, if you have
any questions about email campaigning, and you would like me to
answer it, just fill out the form below. Name and email
address, and then it has a question, what is your biggest
challenge with whatever your topic is. Let’s go back, I’ve kind
of used my example of coaching program systems, and I’ve used
email campaigns, let’s go back to content marketing. Let’s
imagine that my ask page is about content marketing. What are
your 3 biggest challenges with content marketing, and then you
have a big text box where people can write everything that they
want. I’m doing this right off the top of my head, Carl,
totally unprepared here on this next thing, but Perry Marshal’s
book 80/20 Sales Marketing, about 2/3rds of the way through I
think. Talks about a formula that I believe was him and Glen
Livingston came and put together, and basically, I can’t give
you the exact words, and it might be copyright infringement if I
did, but anybody can get the book 80/20 Sales and Marketing by
Perry Marshall and kind of learn the formula. Basically, it
kind of goes like this.

What are your 3 biggest challenges?

Which of those challenges are you having the most trouble

answering?

And then the last question is, on a scale of 1 to 10, how

difficult has it been to find the answer?

Okay, now I used to use the ask page, straight from Alex,
without Perry and Glens kind of secret sauce there. I just used
to ask, what are the 5 challenges? And then I would get the
challenges, I would go create a book, I’d write a book, or
create an audio, that would just answer those challenges. To
me, that’s the best way to create product. Send out an email,
or to do an ask page, that says, what are your 5 challenges.
You just write down 25 peoples challenges, even if it’s an ask
page, with fresh traffic. My goodness, you could run Google
AdWords or Facebook traffic, directly to an ask page, and as
soon as you have 25 people that have responded with 5
challenges. You turn off the advertising. Or, you switch it
over to just plain old list building. You write an ebook manual
that answers all 125 challenges, you now make this your free
giveaway. Would that not blow away every other giveaway, in
almost every niche on earth, if folks were to do what I just
suggested Carl?

[Carl] Yeah, it would.

[Sean] It would be really easy to do, from scratch!

Literally, for $200 on Facebook or Google, someone could
probably get somewhere between 10 and 25 people to give 5
questions. They could write a 50 page manual with all that
information, and just begin driving leads like crazy. Then what
do they do? I’m taking this down a path, Carl, I hope that’s
okay with you, I’m kind of going down a little rabbit trail
here. I hope that’s okay with you. But I think this is going
to add a little value.

Let’s take it to the next level, let’s say you’ve done an

ask campaign, and remember I used to do these the old way,
before Perry and Glen came up with the new way. And, there’s
some psychology to why they do the new way, and I’ll leave it to
anybody that reads the book. I won’t steal all of Perry’s
thunder there. There is some psychology to the new way. And, I
don’t know that I’ve ever done it that way. But I want to give
people a current place where they could learn more about it.
Because I don’t teach on it actively. This is probably the most
I’ve taught on it for years. Folks have a place to go.

What I would do, is I would just run that ask page. You
write your 50 page manual, that answers everybody’s questions.
You could do 1 page per question, and let’s say, out of 125
question, there’s lots of overlap, so you end up with 30
questions net, you have a 30 page manual that just blows away
everybody else in your niche. But, what you also have now, is
you have the blueprint outline for an audio series. If you were
to just talk for 10 minutes on each of the 30 topics, you would
have 300 minutes of audio, which is 5 hours of audio training.
You could then take those 30 points, make those the 30 bullet
points in your sales letter. You could write a few stories
about 2 or 3 of the bullet points. You would have your stories
in your sales letter done. All you would have to do is put at
the beginning of your sales letter, you wanted some questions,
hey, use the same questions you asked on your ask page. You
said, what are your 5 greatest challenges, takes peoples 5
biggest challenges, the ones that had the most overlap, and just
repeat it back to them at the beginning of the sales letter. Do
you struggle with X, Y, Z? Do you struggle with A, B, C?
They’ve already told you what they struggle with, you just tell
it back to them in the form of questions. And then you say,
hey, I understand! In fact, I asked 25 people if they struggle
with these particular things, and this is some of the things
they told me they struggle with. Then you make a big list of
all the things people are struggling with. So, here’s what I
decided to do. I decided to create an all inclusive audio
training program that will teach you everything you need to know
about all of those things. And, it’s 5 hours long, it’s 5 60
minute audio training sessions, where I teach on all these
things. Then you list 30 bullet points, you embellish a little
bit if you want to. You know, with little check marks, and
bullets, and highlighting and all that stuff people do that
makes them feel like it might sell a little bit more. Then at
the end you say, hey, if you want all this training, here’s what
it’s worth. Here’s the price, and go ahead and click the
payment button.

Notice, Carl, we’ve done all of this from the single ask
page. We’ve gotten all of the information we need, to write our
give away manual, to create our 5 hour training program, and to
write our sales letter. Now, here’s one more thing. Are you
liking this Carl?
 [Carl] Yeah, I’m listening, I’m making notes to myself as
you’re talking.

[Sean] Excellent, there’s even one more thing you can do

with this now. You could take those 30 questions and a training
session every week for 30 weeks, and have a 30 week group
coaching program. Where, every week for 30 weeks, you do an
intense training on one of those question, and open the call for
questions and answers. Now you have a 30 week coaching program.
How does that sound?

[Carl] Yeah, it does. It sounds like a very simple way to

get one together, obviously, you are answering genuine problems
that you know people have got.

[Sean] Absolutely, you’re answering genuine problems, and

then what do you do after the 30 weeks? What is that? 7
months? So you do a monthly coaching program after 7 months,
surely you’ll have a few more questions that have come in
somewhere. You just keep teaching a new question every single
week, and you have an ongoing, lifetime, monthly coaching
program, and you’ve done it all from a single ask page.

[Carl] Nice. Brilliant. Okay Sean, so. To bring the

interview back to the sales page, to emails, and things like
that. How would you … how would you integrate that with your
email communication. You’ve said everything about the sales
page really, but what about the integrating that into your
communication email wise. Do you have a formula for that?
Would you write 1 email, or would you write a series of emails,
would you still use your talking to a friend type talk, and
would you still continue to probe people for their problems?

[Sean] Here’s the thing Carl, and I think this is probably

going to be to deep to go into to really give it in this
interview. This is something I’ve probably taught on for 25
hours of all of those nuances on the email campaign. But, the
general theory would be that every email is written to a friend.
Every email is written as if it’s to somebody we know. Then
every email has the purpose. Every email has a purpose. The
purpose is, obviously, let’s just say that this is content
marketing. You have a content marketing email campaign. Let’s
say that there’s 25 different ways to generate traffic through
content marketing. I could write 25 emails queued up every
other week for a year. Every 2 weeks there’s 1 email about a
different type of content marketing traffic. The purpose of
that is just building credibility. I’m just teaching for free.
Now maybe I have a content marketing training program. If I’m
in the content marketing niche, I’ve got content marketing
training program. Maybe if somebody reads one of those
articles, I call them articles, but it’s an email. And I get to
the end, and I say, by the way, if you really want to learn a
lot more about content marketing, take a look at my content
marketing training program. For example.

I could write emails, so I just gave you the example of

writing 25 and spacing them out over a year, you could write 25
and space them out over 25 days. Every day, somebody gets, you
could even, this could be the giveaway. Join my list, and
you’ll get 25 content marketing letters. 25 different content
marketing sources. And, every day, they get content marketing
source 1, content marketing source 2, and at the end of every
email it says, hey, if you want to learn more about content
marketing, check out my content marketing training program.
It’s totally friendly, I used the formula I shared with you
earlier, it’s totally friendly. Remember, if they found me from
an article, they found me from Google, they from my book, they
found me from an interview like this. The already know and
trust me a little bit. Now they read a few of emails, where I’m
freely giving them information, I don’t hold anything back in an
email. I’m just freely giving them information. Whey they
finally get to my sales letter, which is written using this
friendly coffee shop type formula, when they read my sales
letter, they’re just going to bond deeper, and if they would
like to learn much more about all those content marketing
sources, they buy my content marketing training program and I
teach it to them.

Does that answer your question Carl?

[Carl] Yeah, that’s absolutely brilliant! We’ve got about

10 minutes left, in that time, can I just ask you, for a
beginner, for somebody who’s just started off, and they’re
looking at the blank sheet, and they’ve got something to sell,
hopefully their own product, but maybe even an affiliate
product. What could be the #1 thing that you have learned in
your entire lifetime of entrepreneurial that you would like them
to take away with them from this interview, what would that one
thing be?

[Sean] Carl, I’ve learned hundreds if not thousands of

things in the past couple of years, and I implement a lot of
them, and I don’t know that I can boil it down to any, to the
one thing that works greatest. However, given the context of
our conversation here, I would say that if there’s one thing
that folks could take away. That would be. Focus on the
relationship. If you’ll build relationships with people,
everything else will follow. If we think about that, if we use
an ask page to get to know them, and find out what their
questions are, we’re already building a relationship. Then even
once we get to the place where we stop answering the questions
personally, we’re just using it as a standard ask page. We’re
getting them involved. They’re getting a 50 page manual that
because of the fact that we’ve done this with 50 other people,
or 25 other people, that have answered the same questions.
Likely there’s a good chance that whatever question they ask in
that ask campaign box, is going to be covered in the 50 page
manual anyway. And so, when they fill out the name and email in
the ask section, then they get immediately the access to this 50
page manual, you’re building a relationship. All emails should
be building relationship. Relationship, relationship. Even if
you don’t answer emails personally, even if you use a customer
service team. Even if you don’t answer emails period! Even if
everything in your business is automated. Everything we’ve just
talked about builds relationship. We’re building it on the
foundation of relationship. I’ll tell you Carl, I have seen so
many email campaigns, folks a lot of times want me to evaluate
their email campaign so that they see that I teach this kind of
thing, and they say, hey I would like you to evaluate my
campaign and then teach me how to fix it. A lot of times, it’s
25 sales emails, back to back to back to back. I mean, when I
walk into a grocery store, and somebody is trying to sell me a
satellite dish at the front of the store, one person is trying
to do that. I say no thank you. Imagine if every single day for
25 days in a row I did that. I might start shopping at
different grocery stores. If somebody gets 25 please buy me
emails in a row to their email box, guess what, they’re going to
switch to a different grocery store. They’re going to switch.
You know what, I’m not going to listen to Sean anymore. I’m not
going to listen to Carl anymore. Instead I’m going to go find
somebody who’s going to really teach me. When we’re writing our
email campaign, I believe it should be all about relationship.
Because if we write our emails based on relationship, we write
our articles based on relationship, we write our sales letters
based on relationship, then there’s a trust that’s built up.
And people, then they buy, and by the way Carl, when somebody
buys my product, the product just cements the relationship. The
idea is that if you buy my product on let’s say content
marketing. And you read and you study it and you learn a lot,
then when you see my email marketing training program, or you
see my coaching traing program. You see my copy writing
training program. You see any other training program. That
first product simply built the relationship because now you know
I will deliver. It’s kind of like, if you’re meeting a friend
for coffee, and you go and you meet them, and you talk and you
talk for a few weeks, if after awhile all you’re ever talking
about is the weather outside. You might say, this is not a very
interesting person anymore. But if every time you meet them,
you’re teaching them something, and they’re teaching you
something, you’re getting something out of it, you keep coming
back for more.

Well, it’s the same thing, if they buy from you, and you
just blow their socks off with incredible value. What are they
going to do? They’re going to come back and get another
training program. They’ll buy that, if you have a weekly, or a
monthly training call that you hold, or a monthly newsletter, or
whatever you do, they’re going to want to come back and come
back and come back. Carl, I would say the bottom line to all of
this, what I based everything I do on, is relationship. I’m in
this business to change peoples lives. And I do that one person
at a time. Not one sales letter at a time, not one product at a
time, I do that one person, even, Carl, even if every thing is
automated, because of the fact that when you start your
business, it is all genuine response communication, so what that
means is, all your products, all your articles, all your emails
over time, have that flavor of that personal relationship, so
even if you get to the place where people can no longer talk
with you personally, they’re still going to get the relationship
flavor in everything that you do. It’s going to feel tight,
it’s going to build trust, and relationship.

[Carl] You’re right, that’s absolutely excellent. In fact,

that’s exactly how I’ve, why I wanted you to do this mastermind
with me, because I’ve actually bought your products myself, and
I’ve been so impressed by them. It does work, it’s like
everything, you buy a low priced product, you think, wow, this
is good, and then you go to a midpriced one, and my, I mean,
I’ve genuinely looked to invest a lot of money into you, because
you deliver. As a result of me taking your course, and your
coaching, and whatever I do, that you’ve taught, I know that I’m
going to benefit from it, and obviously, I’m going to profit
from it as well.

So, yeah, I’m just agreeing with what you’re saying

basically.
 [Sean] Excellent Carl. I appreciate, I’m just going to
take that as kudos, I appreciate that. I tell you what, I’m
going to brag for just a second, if it’s okay. I tell you,
Carl, obviously, what we’ve done today. I’ve attempted to
deliver, and I really want peoples lives to be changed by
listening to what we’ve done in the last hour. When I create
training, that’s what my, my goal is to change peoples lives.
My goal really is to change peoples lives. I’ll tell you what,
you probably know this Carl, I give God all the credit for
everything I do in my business, everything I’m able to do in my
business, because I certainly couldn’t have done it without my
relationship with him. But I’ll tell you one of the things that
really drives me in my business is knowing, because of that
relationship, that I’m held accountable for everything that I
do. So everything that I do, I want it to be the best. I want,
if I teach on something, I want it to be the very best in this
moment, for this moment, for this client, for this interview,
for this training, I want it to be the very best. Because, I
believe that’s what God created me for. Was to do things, I
want to change peoples lives, in the best way possible. I think
Carl, that goes back to relationship. When the thought is
relationship, when the thought is changing peoples lives, when
the thought is investing in other people, when the thought is,
whether it’s copy writing, whether it’s content marketing,
whether it’s aerobics, whether it’s weight loss, weight gain,
eating better, whether it’s coaching programs, whether it’s
email campaigns, whether it’s, whatever it is, in my opinion,
the goal in everything we should do, articles, blog posts, the
copy, the products, the coaching, everything. Should be
delivered the very best. Here’s the thing, Carl, if we deliver
at the very highest level, we’ll never have any competition.
Because, we will deliver at a higher level than our competition,
because we’re doing the very best. If somebody comes along and,
and says, boy, I really want to take the time and invest the
energy in being better, that’s okay, because, I’m getting better
all the time. What I teach today, is better than what I taught
a year ago. What I taught a year ago is better than what I
taught the year before.

Carl, I never intend to peak.

I believe that next year, what I teach will be better than

what I teach this year. Because I’ll be a year older. I’ll be
a year wiser. I’ll be a year smarter. I’ll be, hopefully, I’ll
have another years worth of personal communications. So I can
reach into peoples lives, and do an even better job changing
their lives. So, we’re constantly getting better. The reason I
bring up that competition thing Carl, is because a lot of time
folks will ask me, and you didn’t ask me today, so I’ll just
mention them. A lot of times, folks ask me, well, what about
the competition? You see, the competition is irrelevant, if
you’re really the best. When you’re the very best, people want
to work with you, and nobody else. It doesn’t matter what the
competition is doing. If you are the very best. Given this
relationship framework, you really can be the best at all times.
You can write the best articles, the best blog posts, the best
emails, the best sales letters, the best products, the best
coaching program. To me, Carl, it’s not even like you have to be
the best in the entire world at your niche, for example, you
simply have to be the very best for the question asked. Since
you are the one that are asking people, what is your question,
once you get those questions, if you simply answered those
questions best, you’ll be the very best, for the people that are
asking that question. You don’t have to be the best in your
niche, you only need to be the very best right now, today, for
the person that is asking the question. If you think about it,
the only competition that you have, in the internet marketing
world, is anybody else who’s sending emails out, to that
particular person. So, for a particular person, so for example,
even for you, let’s say you’re looking into some new topic,
maybe you’re looking into writing articles better. The
competition is not the entire world, the competition for you is
only whoever you discover by doing a Google search, whoever you
discover by writing your friends and asking. Whoever is
emailing you about article marketing. That’s the only people
that are competition for your $. And then, if you’re the one
that’s competing, all you have to be is the very best out of the
people out of those emails that are being delivered. Now, I
would submit to you Carl, that if you are the best out of 10
people, that are writing emails, you’re probably the best in the
whole world, or close. But, I want to defuse this idea, a lot
of time folks say, well what about my competition. They’re so
good at X, Y, Z. Don’t try to be good at that, try to be good
at answering your prospects question. And, if you’ll do that
better, than anybody else, you are the preferred expert, even if
the other guy is smarter than you. Even if the other guy has a
10 hour training, and you only have a 5. Because you’re
specifically answer the core question. Carl, I really believe
that really rolls back to relationship, and building our
products, and writing our sales letters, our articles, our blog
posts, our emails, our email campaigns, everything we do. Based
on the relationship and the relevance for what people need when
they’re joining your list.
 [Carl] Alright, that’s absolutely fantastic Sean. I think
that will actually be a good not to end on, don’t you?

[Sean] Well, sure. I think that you’re right, I think that

in a lot of ways that summarizes things up. Carl, I’ve had a
pleasure, I’ve had an absolute pleasure, I know I got to
rambling a few times, hopefully I answered your questions as
well. I’ve had a pleasure doing this Carl.