If you’re new to my channel, my name is Alex Hormozi. I’m the founder and managing partner of Acquisition.com. It’s a family office, which is just a formal way of saying we invest our own money into companies. Our 10 portfolio companies bring in over $250,000,000+ per year. Our ownership stake varies between 20% and 100% of them. Given this is a YT channel, and anyone can claim anything, I’ll give you some stuff you can google to verify below.
How I got here…
21: Graduated Vanderbilt in 3 years Magna Cum Laude, and took a fancy consulting job. 23 yrs old: Left my fancy consulting job to start a business (a gym). 24 yrs old: Opened 5 gym locations. 26 yrs old: Closed down 6th gym. Lost everything. 26 yrs old: Got back to launching gyms (launched 33). Then, lost everything for a 2nd time. 26 yrs old: In desperation, started licensing model as a hail mary. It worked. 27 yrs old: "Gym Launch" does $3M profit the next 6 months. Then $17M profit next 12 months. 28 yrs old: Started Prestige Labs. $20M the first year. 29 yrs old: Launched ALAN, a software company for agencies to work leads for customers. Scaled to $1.7mmo within 6 months. 31 yrs old: Sold 75% of UseAlan to a strategic buyer in an all stock deal. 31 yrs old: Sold 66% of Gym Launch & Prestige Labs at $46.2M valuation in all-cash deal to American Pacific Group. (you can google it) 31 yrs old: Started our family office Acquisition.com. We invest and scale companies using the $42M in distributions we had taken + the cash from the $46.2M exit. 32 yrs old: Started making free content showing how we grow companies to make real business education accessible to everyone (and) to attract business owners to invest or scale their businesses. Today: Our portfolio now does $200M/yr between 10 companies. The largest doing $100M/yr the smallest doing $5M per year. Our ownership varies between 20% and 100% ownership of the companies. Many of them we invested in early and helped grow (which is how we make our money - not youtube videos).
To all the gladiators in the arena, we’re all in the middle of writing our own stories. The worse the monsters, the more epic the story.
You either get an epic outcome or an epic story. Both mean you win.
Keep crushing. May your desires be greater than your obstacles.
Never quit,
I've been in business for 14 years, we spend tens of millions of dollars per year in paid advertising,
and in this video I'm going to share something I've never shared before, which is that I have
12 internal hacks that we use whenever we write any piece of advertising or copy that goes out
to sell stuff, and I'm going to give you all of them. So let's start with number one. Headlines
come first for a reason, and the reason I have it as the first one is that it is the first and
most important. So to quote David Ogilvie, once you've written your headline you've spent 80
cents of your advertising dollar, right? And so that means that the vast majority of people will
only see the headlines in whatever it is that you make, and it almost feels unfair that a headline
is just a phrase or one word or one question, but it is also the thing that is ultimately going to
get the most people to have the biggest lever on whether your advertisements do well. So think
about it like this, because it's the law of small numbers, which is if you go from let's say a one
click-through rate to a three click-through rate, you triple the amount of people who are ultimately
going to see everything else that you have, and so there's very little things that happen in the
rest of the entire funnel that have the ability to triple. Sometimes you get 20% lifts, 50% lifts,
that'd be a monster split test, but a banger or killer headline can absolutely outperform
the control by two, three, sometimes five x, right? That is why it's so important, and it feels unfair
because it's so short, but the thing is is the best advertisers, the more they've been doing it,
the more they obsess on the hook, they obsess on the headline, because they know that's where the
money's at, right? Like if you have a winning hook for your ad campaigns, you keep using it to death
and you try and beat it, and so here's some of the things that I write down, which is
curiosity is king, different is ideal, and sexy works, and never run an ad without a headline,
because the thing is is all ads have headlines, there's just bad ones and good ones, because if
you don't write a headline, you do have a headline, it's just not very good, and so fundamentally the
headlines serve to give us a different wrapping paper for the same offers, and you want this
headline to be so powerful, and I like this visual, it grabs the reader by the throat, right? And so
bonus points is how can I know that something's going to work ahead of time? One of the best ways
to test headlines and hooks is to look at your organic content, or other people's organic content,
or other people's ads, look at the first three seconds, visually and verbally, what are they
saying and what's happening in the background, and those are the first places that I'm going to look
in order to model what headlines apply to me. Now the really sexy hack around this is can I take,
can I steal like an artist from a different industry? Can I look at ads that are working
well in the travel space and use them in business? Can I look at ads in the weight loss space and use
them in business or whatever space you're in? And so some thoughts I have are curiosity, quotes,
questions, are there kind of emotional outcomes or experiences that I'm describing? One of my
favorite headlines of all time is how to yay without boo even if you biggest insecurity,
right? I'll say that again. How to yay, good thing, without boo, bad thing, even if you biggest fear.
How to speak confidently in front of strangers without ever practicing even if you're deftly
afraid of speaking in public. FYI, there are entire books written on each of these 12 pieces
that I'm going to talk about. I'm trying to give you the 80-20 because at the end of the day when
you're writing ads, you're not going to read 12 books before you write the ad. You have a little
mental checklist that you go over and that's the checklist I'm giving you. Yeah, and so each of
these bullets are kind of like the best, like best converting nuggets that I have on each of these
kind of mini topics. And so this is like my little cheat sheet. So whenever I get stuck or I need a
new idea or for a new image or video or copy, this is what I use to kind of remind myself. Number two,
say what only you can say. So if you've done something remarkable or different,
you want to say it. Proof will always outdo promise. So the reason at the very beginning
of this video I said we spent tens of millions of dollars on ads last year between our portfolio
companies. So this isn't like we don't have an agency. That's actually us spending money
in our actual companies. So it's not like me taking credit for all the clients that I have.
Like it's not that. It's like these are companies that I own that we spent money on to generate
revenue, right? So we risk real money behind these things. Now, if you're the only triple
black belt in your local area, say so. If you're the only person who's helped moms over 35 who are
vegan power lifters, say so. If you're the only person who, like the thing is that what you want
to do is you want to be one of a kind. But the beauty is that you get to control what the pond
that you're one of a kind is. And so the friendly reminder here is that competitors can copy your
offer, but they cannot copy your proof. That has to be earned. And so one of the big reasons,
the big defenses that I believe exists for people who have done stuff, which is why you should do
stuff, is that it doesn't matter how many AI avatars come out, the AI avatar can never have
done something in the real world. They can lie, but they can never have done something. And so
no one can take your story or your experiences away from you. And this is one of the things that
excites me about the future of AI is that story is still going to be paramount. Why should I listen
to you is still going to be a question at the top of everyone's mind. And in a world where trust is
going to get diminished very rapidly, where we're not going to know what's real and what isn't,
verification of facts is going to be even more important. So say what only you can say. Number
three, always call out who you're looking for. And bonus points, who you're not looking for,
which is actually even more powerful than the original call out. So because it's one thing to
say, hey, you know, I'm looking for business owners. But if you say, hey, if you're below
$250,000 a year, you're below $500,000 a year below a million dollars a year. Hey, this isn't
for you. Go consume my free content. It communicates very strongly where you position yourself in the
marketplace. And so if you only want to help people who want to lose a lot of weight, not a
little bit of weight, like there's a big advantage. You know, it's funny. I've actually never seen
anyone in weight loss do this, but just say like, hey, only for people who are trying to lose over
30 pounds. Here's the crazy part. There's enough people who are trying to lose over 30 pounds that
you can say no to the people who have less than 30 pounds to lose. Here's the other great thing
about people who have over 30 pounds to lose is that you might only need a couple hundred customers
in order to make your business work. And there's like a billion people, many billions, but maybe
only a billion to speak your language. Doesn't matter. Point is, is that most people are afraid
of saying no to customers. But when you say no to customers, you polarize the customers who are the
right customer to move even more towards you. What you don't want to be is vanilla. If you say I'm
everything to all people, I accept all customers, then it means no one feels pulled to your marketing
because they're never going to think, oh, this is for me. That is the result that we want to have
happen from our advertising. That someone self-selects, they raise their hand, they're like, wow, I feel
like this person's talking to me. And so when you advertise, you never advertise to the masses.
You advertise to one person. And so you want to be very clear when you're writing your copy,
who is that one person? I want to identify the reader. I want to identify the viewer or the
listener. And you want them to think, how does he know my secrets? Well, you can only be that
specific if you're talking about one person. And so as you go through this, you can go through
different levels of awareness, which is like at the top level, someone can be completely unaware.
So you have to hook them with curiosity. At a level underneath of that, you have to have someone
who might be problem aware. Hey, do you get up at night to pee more than two times? Hey, have you
ever had someone cancel a contract before it comes due? These are problem aware. Then you have
solution aware, which is like, have you ever tried to collect using some of these softwares and it
hasn't worked the way it was supposed to? Have you ever tried a supplement and it hasn't gotten
the results that you want? That's solution aware. Underneath of that, you have product aware. Have
you ever tried this type of creatine versus this type? Have you ever tried an ad agency before
that's done meta ads? These are very, very more aware customers. And finally, the most aware
customers are people who already know about you and about your product. And then you have to make
offers to those people. But all the way through the stack, we want to talk to people as though
we know who they are, because you probably do. And the crazy thing is that customers, this is
the crazy part about customers. We all, you want to lean into the fact that everyone is selfish.
Everyone thinks they're the center of their own universe. And when you can say something that
actually affects many, many people, but you can say it as though they think that they're alone in
the universe, when you are specific, that is what creates compelling copy, specificity. And so if I
say, Hey, are you overweight? That's, that's trite marketing. You don't want to use terms like
marketing ease, like, like, like, um, marketing speak, marketing lingo, right? You've read ad
copy before and been like, Oh, this is ad copy. The way that you get out of that is by taking
words that people use and breaking them down into chunks. And so by saying, Hey, uh, instead of
saying, are you overweight? It's, do you have trouble getting upstairs or going on a walk for
a long period of time without a rash forming between your legs and sweating in places you
didn't know you could, when you say that, that's much more specific. And so what we want to think
about is what are the moments that someone's going to experience fatness? What are the moments
someone's going to experience brokenness? What are the moments someone's going to experience
frustration in their marriage or their friendship or loneliness? Like we talk about the moments
because the moments is what they remember. No one remembers the vague words, and that's not what
gets them to emote or have an emotion and then ultimately lowers the action threshold. So they
take the next step. And so for example, I just had a cash cows episode with a gentleman who does
bar consulting. So he helps bars become more profitable, uh, like restaurant bars. And so
when I looked at the copy, it looked generic. It looked like he was just using marketing lingo
rather than saying, Hey, when you look behind the bar, it doesn't look like a bomb went off.
Right. Does it look like this is a homeless shelter behind your bar? Right. The thing is,
is that you probably get a laugh, but the person's probably like, yeah, my bar looks like that. It's
a mess. Right. And the thing is, is that that's a moment when they walk in or they look behind
the counter and they're like, what happened? That's the moment we want to pinpoint because
they probably had that happen in the last seven days. And if that pain is, is fresh, the likely
that they then take that next action is high. So the next one is number four, always have a reason
why, and this is big. So I like to use the, uh, the fraternity party planner, uh, perspective,
which is that it doesn't actually matter what reason you use, but more so that you have a reason
to begin with. And so this, uh, the first real point when I started adding this in was, um, I
think I read one of Cialdini's things ages ago, uh, where he talked about how when people were
cutting other people in line, if they had a good reason, people were more likely to let them cut
in, which is basically a persuasion win. They said, Hey, can I get in line in front of you?
And he's like, Hey, I've got this paper. I've got to turn in. I need to copy it quickly. And so
people said yes. But later they tested it where they just said, Hey, I have to get in line because
my cat is back home. It has nothing to do with getting in line or needing urgency around the
copy. They just basically said, because insert random reason, but having a reason in general
for most people makes it better than no reason at all. And so the word because is one of the
most influential words in the English language use it because it works. And so if you are going
to use a reason, great. Now you get bonus points for a reason. If you can tie it back to urgency
or scarcity in some way, which I'll talk about those two in more depth later. And so when you're
giving your reasons, why, what I encourage you to focus on is giving them the reason why to do the
next step. And just that, right? Every line of copy sells, reading the next line of copy. And
then those lines of copy sell the click. And then the click sells the, and then the, the planning
page that after it comes from the click, the headline of that page sells the opt-in from the
opt-in itself, showing up to the next thing is that we just want to be very clear about our messaging
one step at a time, because someone can't take nine steps. We want to sell one step and be very
clear about what we want them to do next, right? A confused mind does not buy and a confused mind
certainly does not click. And so when I say thinking about this as a fraternity party planner
is what reasons does a fraternity party planner need in order to plan a party? Not many at all.
The bar for having a reason to party is quite low. Timmy got his wisdom teeth out. Kegger,
you know, so John broke up with his girlfriend. Kegger, uh, it's Tuesday. Let's drink, right? And
the idea is that you don't actually have to have a reason that's good in your mind. You just need
to have a reason in general. It could be your birthday. It could have been your birthday last
month. It'd be your wife birthday. It could be your dog's birthday, right? It could be the anniversary
of the business. There's four dates that you can run for a whole month, right? It's my dog,
my dog's birth month this month. And for that reason, we're running this offer, right? It does
not matter. Now, how do we make it even more compelling? And this one's nasty. This may be,
if I had a favorite, which is hard to say because it's like picking between your kids,
which of course everybody has a favorite job. I'm kidding. Calm down. Anyways, uh, is damaging
admissions. All right. There is probably, I mean, in my experience, nothing more powerful than
damaging admissions. Now, what's very interesting about this is they've done research on basically
the persuasiveness of somebody who admits their bias upfront. So if you say, Hey, I make money
from these videos in the following ways, people, even though they know that you admit you have a
bias, they are now more likely to believe you because you said you have a bias because you've
actually been truthful. And so you want to own your flaws and damaging admissions, in my opinion,
are so powerful because they're actually just rooted in truth. So you want to always own your
flaws. Of course you have them. Of course your product isn't perfect. Say so. And what you'll
sacrifice and promise you'll gain in trust and trust Trump's promise. Think about the promises
that you have to give to referral very little. Why? Because you are borrowing the trust of the
introduction of the person. So when you get a referral, you're like, yeah, uh, you helped my
friend Sandy. So I'll buy. You don't need to promise much at all because they trust you.
And so I would rather always sacrifice promise to gain trust. And so there's a, you know,
the famous Eminem story of a, he figured out when he was rapping that if he owned all of his flaws
and he said, I'm short and I'm white and I'm blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. He says
all these things about them. The other person has nothing left to say. He pulls all the wind
out of their sails. He pulls all the punches cause he punches himself with that. And then
they have nothing left. And so basically we want to address all of the concerns they have up front
in our damaging admissions. And so what happens is the, the light, the linguistic power of this
is that you have statement, but other statements and the statement that comes after the word,
but is the part that is the thing you want them to believe. And so you say something that is true
and believable and damaging to you so that they can believe that thing that comes after, but,
so let me show you how this works. So if I said, Hey, these markers smell like ----, but they
write four times longer than other markers and they don't dry out. You're going to be like, wow,
I now believe that more than if I just said these markers last four times longer than other markers
before they dry out. If I said they smell terrible and are, but they do that. It's more persuasive.
Now watch this. Let's flip it. These markers, right? Four times longer than others, but they
smell like crap. What am I emphasizing? I'm actually emphasizing the fact that they smell bad,
not the fact that they write longer. And so we use the first part to gain trust for the second
half of the statement. Viagra only works for four to six hours, but you're going to have the time of
your life, right? And so it might raise your, your blood pressure, but you're going to have an amazing
night, right? Our websites are ugly as hell, but they convert, right? Our systems are incredibly
boring, but they work, right? If I said our systems work, but they're incredibly boring,
I'm going to emphasize on the boring part, not on the fact that they work. And so by how you
organize your language around words like, but with your amplifiers, it allows you to say damaging
emissions in a way that's compelling. And so right now, what I would like you to do
is write down all of the flaws, all the things that people complain about, the things that,
you know, you could do better and claim them. Cause the thing is that the prospect is already
thinking them, but if you can claim them, instead of them thinking them, you acknowledge them,
gain trust. And then when you make your statements, they will believe you more.
So if you want to stand out in a crowded marketplace, tell the truth, it makes you
more authentic. And if you can do with humor, you get even more bonus points. So it's like, listen,
our gym has honestly pretty terrible parking. Our AC is kind of on and off. I don't have the
best equipment, but our sessions are more fun than everyone else's. Cause it's all we've got.
If I said that you now believe me, right? The thing is, is if you saw an ad that said that
you'd be like, I kind of believe this guy, he's probably not so bad, right? He's telling the
truth. And I'll bet you his classes probably are fun. Now, if I just said we have the most
fun session, you wouldn't believe me because anyone can say that, but what people won't say
is the truth. So number six, show don't tell. Now this one is one of those ones that you will
probably nod your head on and be like, yes, of course show don't tell. But the thing is,
is when I say show don't tell, I'm actually talking more about breaking down the reasoning.
So kind of like I was alluding to earlier, which is instead of saying, get more sales,
describe what the experience of getting more sales means, or what that moment would look like,
like selling so many that you're running out of order forms because customers are reading
their credit cards to you over the phone too fast. That is the experience of getting more sales,
right? So you want to note the descriptions of what's happening and the emotions they might
experience the overwhelm of having too many phones ring and not enough salespeople. That's
the experience of getting advertising that works. Don't just say get more lead, describe the
experience of what getting more leads means. That's what they want to experience. They want
to see their gym full. They want to know what it's like to have a line around the corner.
They want to know what it's like where they actually have to reorganize their gym so that
they can actually make room for more people at the session. Those are the good problems that
we would describe, which also, yes, they're problems. But if we describe the future problems
they would prefer to have than their current problems, those are arguably some of the most
compelling things you can include in copy. Because if you can describe the problems they
haven't thought about yet, then it's likely that you've experienced them or how other people
experienced them, which then increase the likelihood that they believe it will happen for them.
And so the big thing here in terms of show don't tell, obviously from a creative perspective,
you want the videos to demonstrate it. You want your creative, your images to demonstrate it,
but your actual copy itself, you want to use more descriptive language that is specific to the
experience they're going to have, the moments. And I'm going to repeat this theme because it's big.
What is the moment that someone's going to experience that they got more sales? What does
that moment feel like? What does it look like? When, what moment will they realize that this
has actually occurred? Show me that sales has occurred. Describe to me that scenario.
That is how you write exceptional copy. And what's cool about this is if you want to write
unique copy, the way you describe that moment will always be unique to you compared to other people.
And so you can always have fresh copy that sounds different and interesting because you're not just
going to use the same words everyone uses. Number seven, tie benefits to status whenever possible.
So a lot of people talk about benefits, not features, which is true,
but I like to take this a step further mentally, which is a cookbook so fast and easy that all
your friends will wonder how you found the time to be fit and cook for your family, right?
That would be, okay, that's one level, right? Of benefit. But the idea is what is the,
like in that benefit, what we tied in is we tied in their friends. Their friends are going to give
them status because of this thing, which is just a cookbook, right? So rather than say, hey, you're
going to cook meals fast and easy. Sure. That might be an element of it, right? But so fast
that their friends are going to wonder how they're doing it is another level of this. And so whenever
we can tie status, and this is why in the, in the leads book, I talk about this on page 140,
I talk about the what, who, when framework. This is where this becomes incredibly important.
And so what we want to do when we're thinking about status and the reason that this framework
works so well is that we're thinking about the who, right? Obviously it's them, but who is giving
them the status because their status within different realms, is it their families giving
them status? Is it their friends? Is it their colleagues or coworkers? Is it their rivals?
Is it their competitors? Who are they? Who are they vanquishing? And so humans are competitive
species. We do desire status because it increases the likelihood that we're able to procreate and
more kids and acquire resources, right? And so we want to tie all of our benefits to what it's
going to do, what they ultimately want, which is going to be status. Now what's interesting is that
the status that people get is going to be unique to that person within their subgroup. So if I'm
going to try to describe status to a mother, it's going to be probably from kids that excel
and other parents wonder how they're parenting, not from getting a Lamborghini, right? Now,
if I'm trying to talk to a hustle bro who's 20 years old, then probably talking about a Lamborghini
might convert. Now it might not convert the type of hustle bro that I would be looking for,
but nonetheless, it would convert some person who's interested in that, right? I'm all about
Mosey mobiles and having cash cars that you can buy for seven grand and then not to worry about
car payment. So you can actually enrich in your bank account rather than in other people's eyes.
But point being, if we're writing copy, we have to meet them where they're at. And so the wording
that we think about this, and also just to give you more color on this, is that we think past,
present, future. So how am I going to create status for them with their spouse, them with
their wife today and in the future and in the past? So now I have multiple different people
who are giving an awarding status to this person through the copy we're writing and different time
periods. It gives you endless variations and angles to approach the benefits, right? And so
you want to think the line so that you can, or so that your friend's mouse will drop with envy,
right? That's what we're trying to describe here. Number eight is that we want to use urgency and
scarcity. All right. Now, to be clear, urgency and scarcity, people lock them together, but they're
actually different things. All right. So scarcity is a function of quantity. Urgency is a function
of time. All right. So that means that I give an unlimited amount of widgets that I'm trying to
sell, but I'm only running my promotion until midnight. It's a, it's a function of time. That's
urgency. If I only have a hundred widgets or I'm only choosing to sell a hundred spots, which
scarcity you can choose to have. Then at that point, once a hundred spots, maybe that takes a
year to sell, or maybe it takes five seconds to sell that line in the sand, no matter how many
people want to buy it after that point, cannot buy it. Now you can't have both, but fundamentally,
all we're trying to do is show that other people want it and that they have to act quickly. What
we're trying to do is decrease the action threshold. So they take action. And the key to
making urgency and scarcity work is making it legitimate. There's actually, I don't even know
if there's really much more to it than actually having it be legitimate. There's, there's really
not another secret. Now there's different types of urgency and scarcity, which I talked about
in the offers books. So I have a whole chapter, uh, in the offers book. So page one of four
for scarcity. And then the next chapter, right afterwards, I have for urgency, which is, uh,
page one 12. And so I talk about four different types of urgency and different things that you
can do to include scarcity, um, in your offerings, whether it's products or services, but no matter
what, you just need it to be real. That's all I can tell you. And the part that people struggle
with is like, but what if someone wants to buy after midnight? What if someone wants to buy?
When I already said I have a hundred spots, it means you say no. And you say no. So you can
maintain the reputation. So that the next time you have scarcity, guess who the first buyer is going
to be the one who wasn't able to buy the last time. So you're digging your well before you're thirsty.
I would always prefer to undersell my demand. So I always have more later. Otherwise you're always
going to be looking for the next kill the next sale, and you're going to be putting the scarcity
urgency up, but everyone knows it doesn't matter because you're not going to sell out. And that's
where you start losing power. Now, number nine is implied authority. All right. Now this isn't,
this is a nasty one in a cool way. So this actually goes back to number one. So if you're
the only double secret black belt in the area, say it right. If you've transformed over a thousand
people to black belts, say so if you're the only, you know, if you have a pro athlete client and they
allow you to say it, say it all of these things imply authority and people listen to and trust
authority figures more. And so that's how we've helped 5,000 gyms or 6,000 gyms over the last
seven years. And so part of authority is also just longevity. If you say we've been in business for
40 years, the likely that you are a legitimate business is pretty high, right? That's actually
a pretty rare feat. So if you've been in business for a while, that's a big thing. Now, maybe you
and your co-founders in aggregate have done over 20 years of advertising. Maybe it's four of you
guys have all done five years, but it sounds better to say in aggregate, we've done over 20 years of
advertising, right? Now, again, the, the key here is if you have something as a hook, like as seen
on Oprah's best bootcamps or best bootcamp in Vegas or best chiropractor in Vegas or best whatever
is this is why these tiny little awards matter so much because you can actually even start a
sales conversation with, did you find us on the biggest, best bootcamps list? Now you might know
that no one even knows that this list exists and that's okay because that list just gives you
applied authority when you actually have the conversation with the prospect. And so at the end
of the day, this is where proof does beat promise. All right. And so we're now getting into the
believability of the claim, right? So this is why it's further down on here because someone has to
want the thing that you're offering first. Once they offer it, then all their, their warning bells
are going to go off. Like, why should I believe this person? And that's where you want to have
the proof that best they can believe you. And this is why documenting and substantiating the things
that you have done and the people that you have helped ultimately makes you more likely to be
persuasive, right? If you have a thousand people who have, you know, you have a thousand testimonials
versus somebody, or imagine you go to a, you see, you're looking between two restaurants
on Yelp, right? One has a five star with three reviews. That's three. There you go. Three reviews,
right? Or you've got 3000 reviews. Why not? Let's just stick with it. All right. But you've got a
4.6, which one are you going for? For sure. No question. You're going to the one that has 4000
reviews. Now it's 4,000, uh, with a 4.6 rating rather than a five, but that doesn't make sense.
This one has five. This is a 4.6. The proof demonstrates the implied authority that obviously
these people have been around. They know what they're doing. They service a lot of customers.
It's social proof. All right. Now, number 10, always have a PS statement. All right. Now,
why do we have a PS statement? So it's a power sentence, which is what I like to think about it.
All right. Is that power sentence? The, the two most red parts of advertising. Number one,
number two, the PS statement. And so if you have the two most red lines in all of your advertising,
you better be sure you're thinking about what you're writing. And at the very least
have a PS statement, right? And so always have them and make sure that they're strong.
And so I have a number of different strategies that I use for PS statements, and I'll tell you
probably my top three. All right. So number one in emails, I prefer to have some sort of sign-off
that gets people jazzed. They're very excited to have, I want to reward them for having read my
email. So this is where I put jokes in. This is where I put fun stuff. That's light. So that every
once in a while, when I do want to put a call to action, I make this PS a call to action. That's
strong because I know everyone's going to read it and click it because I've trained them to click
that link. All right. Now in an advertising setting, that PS statements, either going to be
a disclaimer of who this is not for, which often works really, really well. Hey, by the way,
if you're just getting started, this isn't for you. This is only for people doing X, Y, and Z
click here. That's very strong as BS statement. Another PS statement that works very well is just
recapping everything in one sentence. We've helped a thousand people. We're good at making black
belts. If you're serious about black belts, click here. Boom. Right. And so it's like, Hey, if you
did, if you just read to the bottom and skip to the bottom, like I do, this is the main, this is
the main nuggets, right? Your main points of persuasion all in one place. Now you can also
piggyback on this with a PPS statement and have two PS statements because guess what? The only
thing that's read, uh, less than, or sorry, the only thing that's read more than the normal copy,
but less than the headline in the PS is the PPS. That's the third most read statement in copy. So
I would also include something there too, if you need it. Now, number 11, this one's going to be
this one. This it's like, it's amazing how effective this is and also how simple it is.
And the only thing simpler is to not do it. So you have to have clear CTA. So calls to action.
If you do not tell someone exactly what to do next, you decrease the likelihood that they do it.
So you want it to be stupid, simple, not, you know what to do, you know, you know, you have to,
they don't know. Right. And so if you want X click the button and on the next page,
value your information and select a convenient time for you to come in that you won't miss,
right. We want to be very clear about what they have to do and what's going to happen next,
right. They're not going to guess, but here's a really, really cool sub point about this.
If you tell someone to take an option or take a step, and then you tell them what's going to
happen next. And then what you said is going to happen happens. You increase your say-do
correspondence, meaning you gain influence over them because what you said after they followed
your instruction came true. It's the reason Martha Stewart was such a powerful influencer
compared to other people. She literally gave people recipes to follow. And she said, if you
want to bake a cake, here's the 18 steps for baking a cake. And when you follow these 18 steps,
you get a cake. And then when you get a cake and the cake, the cake tastes good. And then you
tied to status because other people say this cake is amazing. And your family loves you for
baking this cake. Guess what happens? She gains influence over you because the next time she
gives you instructions, you are more likely to follow them. And so we can embed this within
the process of persuasion. So we want to basically make promises, keep promises, make promises,
keep promises, make promises, keep promises over and over and over again, where they actually take
action. And that's the key part is that they have to take action on something you said.
And what you have to say will happen happens. That's what makes it. It's not just saying,
Oh, open loop. Oh, just make promises. They have to take action. And then your promise gets
fulfilled based on their action. So outline step one, two, three, and outline what's going to
happen next, because when it does, they'll believe you the next time you tell them to do something.
And like, I believe in this so much. The reason I called my whole company acquisition.com was
so that the name of my company was the call to action. So if someone's like, Hey, how do I find
out more about acquisition.com? I had someone show up in my building and say, Hey, how do I
apply to acquisition.com? And I was like, number 12. And this is a, this is a, this is so good.
This is so good. I mean, all of these are good. This is why I use these. Like I've really tried
to 80, 20, this for you guys. Third grade reading level. Most copy doesn't convert because people
have to pause to understand it. And the moment they pause, they stop because it takes more
horsepower than they're willing to dedicate to it. So we have to assume that the prospect is in
a rush. Doesn't care about what you have has below a third grade reading level and is distracted.
And that's the person we have to grab by the throat and bring into our world. This is the
$100 million scaling roadmap. And what we did was we broke down the 10 stages of scaling.
And so if you're advertising, whether that be an emails for outreach or writing phone scripts or
video sales letters or web pages, or making content, all of these things are messaging that
include copy to get people to do stuff. And so what we did was we broke down all the different
stages of scaling into these 10 steps where you get stuck and how to break through.