Finding Clients
How to identify, attract, and convert your ideal prospects.
92 posts
The 9-Word Email: The Complete Guide by Its Creator
I've sent thousands of 9-word emails over the last few years, and I've never seen anything as effective. People use them in every kind of business you can im...
Nobody Opens Email
The danger of blanket declarations is believing them to be true. Nobody opens email anymore. Direct mail is dead. But here's what I would stake my success on...
Please Open This One
Did I ever tell you about my journey on the path that led me to the 9-word email? I was sitting in my evil scheme hatchery, working on an email campaign, and...
Cute Bikinis for Cute Prices
Here's a little something you might never guess about me. The most watched creators I follow on TikTok are the three twenty-something sisters of the Strawber...
The Van Allen Belt
The riskiest part of sending a manned rocket into space isn't once it's up there. It's getting through the Van Allen Belt. That's where the radiation is high...
Time Travel Instructions Inside
It's easy to imagine the benefits of time travel. I think about it a lot. The main advantage I can see is acting with certainty of future outcomes…knowing wh...
High Status Chimps
I once read about a fascinating study involving chimpanzees. Researchers gave chimps a choice. They could keep a small reward of grapes or juice…or they coul...
ScoreCards
When Dan Sullivan introduced me to the concept of a scorecard, it changed the way I approach conversations with potential clients. A scorecard enables you to...
Yellow Page Roulette
Long before I started the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, there was the I Love Marketing podcast with Joe Polish. One of the most popular episodes we ever...
Consistency and Longetivity
It has been a couple of years since I started my Breakthrough Blueprint Event. It all came from a conversation with my friend Dan Sullivan, the founder of St...
Webinars Vs Books
There are many ways to find your potential customers. But taking a moment to consider the most effective way to do it can multiply your results dramatically....
Secret Weapon
Today, everyone's looking for an edge. However, most businesses are looking for it in the wrong places. Lowering their prices might give them that edge. Addi...
The Greatest Leverage
You've heard me raving about syndication many times before. And for good reason. You see, syndication is one of those things where you do the work once and t...
Words Matter
In a business where everyone is offering the same service, how you frame what you do will be your winning card. Because, as in life, so in marketing, it's no...
Delivering Happiness
I'm sure you've heard of Zappos, their CEO Tony Hsieh and his book Delivering Happiness, The great thing about the whole idea of Zappos is the experience of ...
Core Unit
Have you noticed how every time you think about starting something new... a new venture or pivot for your current business… You always start with the full vi...
Promised Land
The three most important things about a lead-generating book (or report) are: It has to have a title that conveys something your prospects want. You must hav...
Lifetime Customers
Remember how I told you about a company I started in college called Name Droppers? My friend Neil and I would hire college girls to go out into neighborhoods...
More Inside
Sometimes, when you’re struggling with low opt-in rates on your website, it’s not because your stuff isn’t compelling. It’s because you’re giving people too ...
The IM Formula
Have I ever told you about my Internet Marketing formula before? It’s a simple formula that I came up with way back at the beginning of the Internet... and i...
Competition Free Market
Let me ask you something: How would you like it if you had virtually no competition in your niche? If you had the monopoly? Imagine it: You’re the only plumb...
Impacting People at Scale
Everybody knows it: Trading your time for money isn’t scalable. And yet, it’s the main system most service-type businesses operate on. Professions like perso...
Compelling Lead-Getters
I have two front-ends driving most of what I do: My free offer for the Email Mastery book and the free book offer for the 90-Minute Book. And the reason for ...
A-Pile Advertising
If you’ve been around the direct response water cooler for a while, you must've heard of Gary Halbert. And if you’ve heard of him, I’m sure you’ve also heard...
The ''Easy Button" Solution
One thing that we all have in common is; We all want results. I know I do. And I’m sure you do as well. I’m willing to bet all your prospects want results, t...
In Search of Excellence
Have you ever read a book called "In Search of Excellence”? It’s written by Tom Peters, a wonderful management thought leader. He wrote several books on mana...
Integrity Pricing
What’s really interesting to me is that people are so afraid to give away their prices. They'd rather go through many hoops before they tell you how much the...
Commodity vs Advantage
In certain markets, what you sell is seen as a commodity. For example, workplace safety. People look at workplace safety as a requirement. They will do what ...
Customer Avatars
There are two things at play when you're coming up with your single target market: Firstly, you need to have a clear idea of all the different stages in your...
Consumer Awareness Guides
Here’s the thing about consumer awareness guides… If you’re using them in your Before Unit, there are a couple of things you need to be aware of (pun intende...
Largest Check
Selecting a single target market is always tricky. And it’s especially hard early on in your business when you don’t want to limit yourself and deliberately ...
Thinking Bigger
Your business is ready to scale when it provides results and value beyond your need to be involved in delivering that value. But the trouble is… when you’re ...
Commitment and Consistency
Have you ever watched American Idol or The Voice? From the outside, both shows look a lot like one and the same: A singing competition for undiscovered artis...
Convincing Demonstration
A demonstration is one of the best tools you can use to convince somebody of something. It's not about "selling the benefits." It's SHOWING somebody what the...
Send Them Cheese
Here's a way to quickly turn your whiskery B2B emails into cheese for your prospects A company in Florida does all the postcards, printing and mailing for me...
Minimum Viable Commitment
You've heard about the term "minimum viable product" before, right? It's part of the Lean Startup methodology, where you only build the minimum features nece...
What Do I Do Now?
I get a lot of questions about 9-word emails. And they usually ask, "What do I do after I send that initial 9-word email and get all these replies back?" "Wh...
How vs What
Sometimes your business is tied to a specific location. Like a fitness studio, an after-school tutoring program, a tennis or golf course… and so on. And the ...
Future Pacing
When you have a product or service that helps different people at different stages, it might seem difficult to pick just ONE target market and go with it, ri...
Reassuringly Expensive
Let’s talk about pricing… Remember Stella Artois’ campaign? Their whole thing was, “we use only the most expensive ingredients, and we pass the cost onto you...
10 Million Dollar Orange Grove
Businesses have different models of making money. Some are straightforward, one-time transactional types. When selling widgets, that’s the type of business y...
Can you Prove it?
"What would you do if you only got paid if your client gets the result?" That’s the one question I always ask when hatching evil schemes with somebody. (And ...
How To ''Catch'' Invisible Prospects
There are two types of prospects populating your market: VISIBLE and INVISIBLE ones. The easiest ones to sell to are, of course, visible prospects. You know ...
Amplifying Print Ads
Newspapers aren't going away anytime soon. That’s a fact. I honestly believe there’s still much juice to be squeezed from that orange ;) And since everyone i...
Pre-suasive Conversation Starters
Have you noticed how a book can become an instant authority booster? When you are presented as Homer McDonald, author of Stop Your Divorce, people start perc...
Do You Know Your Return On Relationships?
One of the most exciting ways to bring in new business is to go after new leads. Everyone loves and focuses on the Before Unit. But when time and resources a...
Overcoming Bystander Apathy
One of the main reasons why 9-word emails work so well is because they’re designed to overcome something called bystander apathy. Here’s what I mean... Take ...
Infinite Money Loop
I once heard Ben Shapiro describe the back of the napkin pitch he used to raise the $4.8 million dollars they needed to start The Daily Wire. He drew a circl...
I'm here about the book…
One of the games I play when I'm writing emails is to imagine the one person I'm writing to standing right there in front of me. It starts with imagining the...
Five-star prospects
Whenever I send out a 9-word email, the only person I’m trying to reach is my 5-star prospect. There are five things that need to be true if someone is a 5-s...
Big Returns from Little Markets
Did you ever play "King of the Hill" when you were growing up? Everybody wanted to be King, right. But the only way you could stay on top of the hill was to ...
Aim… Then Shoot
Everybody loves the before unit. And really, that’s the most fun way to grow your business, right? There are so many possibilities, there are new leads every...
Pricing guide
I always say that a book is one of the best performing lead magnets of all time... But guess what's the close second? A pricing guide. I've experimented with...
Conversation starter
A book is a great conversation starter… In fact, I’ve found that nothing works better as a lead magnet than a focused, meaningfully titled book. It's the bes...
The oxygen mask
One of the most exciting ways to bring in new business is to go after new leads. Everyone loves and focuses on the Before Unit. However, you may have noticed...
Your avatar
One of the 8 Profit Activators people usually struggle with the most is Profit Activator One. Here’s what it says: Select one single target market at a time....
Consumer awareness guide
Here’s the thing about consumer awareness guides… It’s something Joe Polish and I have talked about a lot on our “I Love Marketing” podcast… Consumer awarene...
Five star prospects
Whenever I send out a 9-word email, the only person I’m trying to reach is my 5-star prospect. There are five things that need to be true if someone is a 5-s...
Start the movement
If you want to change the world with a book, then the best book to do it with is a short book. Something that’s in the 50 to 70-page range. Here’s why: Peopl...
Selecting vs being selected
Do you know who Charles Koch was? He died recently but he was the head of the largest privately held company in the world. Over 100 billion dollars. When Cha...
The Before Unit
Most business owners spend their days in the During Unit. They're driving the sales... They're driving the fulfillment… They're making sure everything’s runn...
Bankable results
When you’re running a business, what you do is create results for people in exchange for money. But not all results are created equal... If you want your bus...
Be a hero
My friend, Dan Sullivan, came out with a great new book recently. It’s called Who Do You Want To Be A Hero To. It's one of the most profound books I've ever ...
Lead magnets
Not all lead magnets are created equal. Some are better than others... But - and this is important - they’re not always the same. Sometimes, a book works way...
Money making gift cards
Remember how I always say that the best-performing lead magnet is a free book or report? Well, for the right kind of business, there’s something else that wo...
The conversation
One of the most famous sayings in marketing is, “Enter the conversation in your prospect’s mind…” However, I realize it can be tricky to apply something so v...
One market at a time
Whenever I talk about narrowing your focus to a single target market at a time… People always think what I’m saying is they must limit themselves to that one...
Huge commitment
Sometimes, you see ads that ask prospects for a big commitment upfront… Like filling out a form, calling in for more information, scheduling a consultation… ...
Ready right now
When it comes to marketing, there are three things you need to know if you want to boost your conversion rates. The first one is, close to half of people who...
Profit centers
When I was in college, my friend and I ran a painting company. But in order to get leads, we started another company called Name Droppers. And through this o...
Overnight success
One of the greatest stories I’ve heard in recent memory is the one about Wayfair… Have you heard of this company? It’s a huge home goods e-commerce site here...
Unlimited budget
Sometimes you have to start in the middle. And what I mean by that is… When you’re just starting out with your new business idea, you have to figure out your...
Books
I’ve said it many times… A book is the highest converting front-end offer you have to start a conversation with somebody. And the reason people respond so we...
Genetic code
Did you know… There are 5 billion characters in our genetic code. But only 5 million of them is what makes you, YOU. The rest are “standard issue human…” Isn...
Transformation
People often think everything starts with the ad and the Before Unit… It doesn’t. Just because the 8 Profit Activators are positioned in a certain order: Fir...
Advertising sophistication
There are three levels of sophistication in advertising… And I’m not talking about your target market’s sophistication levels here. I’m talking about you: Th...
Presuasion
My go-to strategy for identifying people who are in my target market is… to offer them a free book. Now, when I say “book,” I don’t mean a big 550-page full-...
Gift cards
Here’s the thing... When you offer someone a 20% off… a 50% off… a "buy one get one free"… or any kind of offer where they have to pay you money in order to ...
The universal framework
The greatest thing about business is… there are only a limited number of challenges we all face when going from “zero to hero”. Yes, it’s true, there are alm...
Self-interest
I’ve noticed that when it comes to Before Unit and generating leads for your business… most people confuse Profit Activator Two and Profit Activator Three. B...
Invisible prospects
In any kind of market, there are two types of prospects... Visible and invisible prospects. The easiest ones to sell to are, of course, visible prospects. Yo...
Specific vs generic
Last time I told you that if you cast a net too wide when you’re selecting your target market… your marketing message becomes vague... And you’re going to ha...
Single target market
One of the biggest misconceptions people have about Profit Activator One is… They think they can only ever have ONE single target market. But that’s not the ...
The beginning
Everyone starts with a big vision of helping all these people in so many different ways… And that’s the problem. Because that vision is so big and broad and ...
The outcome
One mistake people make when they’re selecting their single target market is… They put too much focus on the demographic aspects of it. Meaning, they’re narr...
Single target market(s)
Several years ago, there was a TV commercial here in US for a diet pill called “Leptoprin”. It started out with a question, "When is a diet pill worth $153 a...
The big idea
There’s a lot of talk going on in the marketing circles about The Big Idea. The discussion is mostly about how to present whatever it is that you're doing in...
Fame vs riches
Most businesses focus on branding and building top-of-mind awareness in the marketplace. While it may seem like a common wisdom and a very wise thing to do… ...
"Largest check” clients
Selecting a single target market is always tricky. And it’s especially hard early on in your business when you don’t want to limit yourself and deliberately ...
Super signature
Imagine that every time you send out your flagship email you’re inviting your prospects into your living room. Then, when people come to your house, you have...
Compelling vs convincing
Here’s the thing about online marketing... You get the best results when: 1) you isolate the work you need to do initially into separate steps, and, 2) you f...
No thanks, I'm just looking
Have you been to a “Jennifer Leathers” before? They're a furniture store and all they sell is leather sofas. But what’s interesting about them is... They’re ...