Episode 2: How to mail your list every day without pissing them off

Million Dollar Memos

Most business owners shoot themselves in the foot with deadline funnels, scarcity and fear-based marketing campaigns. We got rid of all of that and just focused on 1 thing: How to send emails people love to read while putting our offer in front of them over and over again. Our high ticket sales calendars are booked out month-round.

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• Book: The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz

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Transcript below:
Peter: All right, welcome to the Million Dollar Memos. My name is Peter Visser and I went from broke to $100,000 per month online business that made me miserable, selling group coaching, and info products. I almost lost that business several times. Then through just a couple of simple changes, I doubled sales hit new revenue levels of $200,000 a month plus, but most importantly, I spent a grand total of 46 minutes per week managing this company.

To join me every week are the two guys that helped me get there more than anyone else, Linus Rylander, and Frankie Frenna. We're here to show you what's making massive sales right now, call out bullshit in the industry, and our journey to starting a brand new business with no following, and no reputation. Hey, guys, how's it going?

Linus: What's up, what's up.

Frankie: What's good?

Peter: I'm still reading that intro. One day, I won't have to read it.

Frankie: Nice.

Peter: [chuckles] What I wanted to talk about, right, you see these sales. Oh, you can't see my screen. I've got to share my screen. I'm going to share it. Okay. You guys see these sales, right?

Linus: Yes.

Peter: All these are high ticket sales. I have weird and sneaky suspicion, we're going to do a whole lot more of them because I want to show you something that I kind of alluded to it yesterday, but I want to show you something with that Performance Max thing. This is just looking at like the last 30 days. I started running this yesterday. I look at the campaigns. Usually, on average, we get about, it's a $10 cost per lead. It's actually $10.00, it's like perfect 10. Usually $10 a lead.

This is my biggest cold audience. It's $9.73 and this is the retargeting $8.63. The Performance Max campaign is currently bringing in webinar registrants at $2.90.

Linus: Whoa.

Peter: [laughs] Yes. I was like, "What? This can't be right. Something's not right here." I went to the tracking software, and I looked at the leads themselves. These are the leads. I looked at them, they are legit leads. Now three of the leads are new and eight are from retargeting. Three of the leads are completely new, eight from retargeting. What I did is I told this Performance Max campaign, in fact, I don't know if you guys know exactly how it works, but basically, you just put a bunch of ads in there, a bunch of different headlines and stuff, I'll show you them in a minute.

Then you just say to them, "I want leads." like, "I want this." Then it just goes out and it'll just find people for you. It'll just go say, "Right, we're going to send these people to the homepage. We're then going to retarget them with a video, then we're going to retarget the people that watch the video. Then we're going to send them to your webinar registration page now that we've warmed them up, and then they're going to convert."

It's like, wow, okay. Then we're going to retarget the people that landed on that page, and trying all different combinations to get them to sign up. It's like the ultimate AI kind of machine. Yesterday, we just started testing it out. Have a look at the assets here. This is how it works. I mean, I can't believe it. I've never gotten results like that before. You got to view details of the assets. These are all the assets that go on.

You have 36 assets. 36, things that are like headlines, descriptions, images, even different logos. You can create, 500 to 1000 different ad tests that you put out there, but it's not just the 500 to 1000 different ad tests, they then test all the pages on your website as entrance pages and stuff as well. Different landing pages get tested on your site and you don't even have to create new pages. They just take whatever you have, even your blog posts, and they might send someone to your blog posts, and everything.

Now, think about it, you have the between 500 and 1000 different ads, then you've got, I don't know how many blog posts I put. We probably have 300 pages on there, because it's been five, six years of posting on that website. Now you got 1000 times 500-- Oh sorry. [unintelligible 00:04:37] just 200,000 different combinations that the AI is going to pluck out there. Then what it's going to do is every time someone converts, they're going to go out there automatically and try and find more people like that.

You give it an initial audience-- Let's go back here. You give it an initial audience and then it starts finding new people. Already, it's retargeted people that we have on our list. Eight of them re-opted in, which is fantastic because some of them opted in like over a year ago. They re-opted in, reactivated those people, and then found three new people just from somewhere, I don't even know where. I didn't put any parameters in there of where to advertise. This could be an absolute game-changer man.

Linus: Yes, like I said yesterday, I think, with AI moving in this direction is just going to eliminate media buyers. The AI will just become too sophisticated.

Peter: I hope so.

Linus: It really all comes down to your offer and your messaging, just getting in front of people.

Peter: Yes. I'm just overly excited about that. I can't get over it, to be honest.

Linus: Let's see how it goes.

Peter: Today, we got on a sales call, me and Frankie. It was kind of a sales call, we were just showing people what we were doing in our business in order to make between $175,000 and $200,000 a month. We're showing our emails and how our daily email that which is sending out an email every day, and how much money he's making. There was one email had like 300 clicks, and it made $20,000. Then the guy was like, "Yes, but our click-through rates higher."

Frankie was like, "Yes, we're looking at the sales. We don't really care about the click-through rate", and he's like, "Yes, what's the open rates on your emails?" so we showed him and he's like, "Yes, our open rates are double that." It's like, okay, yes, but [laughs] you're making $3 earnings per click, we're making like $90. Our average order value is $250, yours is $30. People have so many different [crosstalk]--

Frankie: I think that stems from just people just being focused on the wrong metrics. Obviously, he was already bent on trying to shut us down, I think, because we can't we kind of come in as competition rather than him trying to collaborate. Before I hopped on this podcast with you guys, we missed out a little bit of a conversation, and he said something very interesting. He said, there's two things, there's competition, and there's collaboration.

Those are the two. When you're in a business call like that, it's either one or the other. Either you're trying to collaborate or you're trying to compete, and I think he was in complete mode because as soon as we got in, he was already, "I hadn't made a joke." I was like, "Hey, man," he was all serious with his whiteboards in the back. I'm like, "Hey, man, I'm no prepared for this call. I have no fricking whiteboards." It's a gaming chair behind me. I looked like amateur hour.

He didn't even crack a smile. I'm like, "Dude that's a funny joke." [laughs]

[laughter]

Frankie: Then we had come up with like a-- I was making another joke, just to kind of break the ice a little bit. I said, okay, let me crack this guy's shell. Maybe he's just one of those-- He was like, all buff and stuff, and I'm sure he works out a ton. I'm sure he works out as high as his frickin' CTRs are. [laughs]

[laughter]

Frankie: God bless his heart. Then we were talking about babies and stuff, and Peter, you've been kind of struggling with getting the little one's bed and stuff. I'm like, "Man after this call and you and Marty went back and forth on how babies are when they're four months old." It's this struggle with sleep and stuff, but I'm like, "Well, I wanted kids until this call," and everybody kind of broke the ice a little bit, and he was just there just really flexing.

Like he's like, "Yes, but what about your CTRs?" [laughs] I'm like, "Oh, my goodness." There's two dimensions to all these. Number one is that no matter how you feel about something, you should always be looking to not compete, but on how to collaborate. I think it's because he's kind of in this scarcity mindset, where maybe he feels like we're going to take his position. I don't know what it is there, but I don't want his position.

I don't want any of his whiteboards, but it's like I think he went in with the wrong mindset of like, "Hey, these guys are trying to take my job." so that's one thing. Number two, I think a lot of marketers are focused on the wrong metrics. They see these high CTRs, these high open rates, but let's really break down what a frickin' open rate means. An open rate means that you've caught their attention with this flashy subject line, and you're able to get this high open rate.

There's two kind of open rates that are good, like people that are good, qualified, targeted people that you're reaching out to them with very good messaging. Then there's, "Sorry, Frank Kern, I love you to death. You're one of my heroes", but then there's the Frank Kern like, "Deadline. Last call." Sure, you're going to get a ton of CTR on most things, for sure, or like one of those bait-and-switches, like, "What about our meeting today? What happened about our meeting today?" I've seen that in my inbox, a million times. Like "Are you going to make it to our meeting today?" Nobody's falling for this shit. Even if they are what do you think is going to happen when they open email? "Man you really convinced me out. I thought I had a meeting today, but not really. I want to buy this guy's shit." No, you're not convincing anybody.

Open rates, click-through rates, it's fucking garbage in my opinion. It doesn't mean anything. What I care about is am I, one, building a better relationship with the list that I'm talking to every single day. That's what matters to me. That's utmost because if I can nail that everything else will follow. The sales will follow. The open rates will follow. The CTRs will follow. Number two is what's the actual revenue that you're bringing in?

With this guy, we were talking about CTRs and open rates, but he didn't want nothing to do. He didn't want to touch on any of the sales that we were making. He didn't want to touch on the revenue, which blew my fucking mind. It's like, "Wait a minute. You want to talk about CTRs? Let's talk about how this one email made like 30k. Let's talk about that. You want to talk about numbers? Let's talk about the 30,000." He didn't want to talk about that.

Then what else blew my mind-- I'm sorry to go on a [unintelligible 00:11:09] here. I'm almost done. He was like, "Yes, but you made 30k, but your ticket price is like 20k. That's pretty easy." Wait, what? How is that easy? If it's so easy for you to make 20k sales, sir, why don't you write it on your whiteboard to do for tomorrow? Your to-do list for tomorrow is great. I think an offer starts selling a $20,000 product. Best of luck. You should be able to kill it, man. What are we talking about?

Peter: I think you should do it. You should do a daily release.

Frankie: A daily release man. This is my daily release man. This call was one of the worst calls I ever been on. God bless his heart. This guy, wow. I don't want to say his name.

Peter: Yes. This is the thing, I'm going to share my screen again here because I'm just in a sharing mood. Actually, I'm going to go ahead and share [crosstalk]

Frankie: So am I man, but in a different way. [laughter]

Linus: Yes. Can you guys see it?

Frankie: It's loading up.

Linus: It's loading, yes. Still loading.

Peter: This is so slow man. All right, there we go. This is the last 30 days, so you see the $177,000. Here's the thing that $177,000 basically all of it was generated via email. We generate the leads, but we don't close them within 24 hours or even 48 hours. They going to close over time. That was generated from a 39,000 person list. What we're doing here is-- I don't know what it is when you divide that by that, but, yes it's about five.

It's about $5 per subscriber, per month. That's what it's coming out to. Once you get an opt-in we're making $5 a month from that opt-in every single month. That's what's important. It's not important what the click-through rate is, nothing else even matters. In December we made $211,000 from the same size list. Maybe a little bit smaller, and that's $6. That's $6 per subscriber. People are always-- They are just worried about the wrong thing.

They're not worried about the right stuff and people look at their followers, they look at their likes, and stuff like that. Then someone goes, "Okay, so let's have a look. Let's pull up an email here that we sent out."

Linus: Just to go back to what Frankie was talking about a little bit with the competition versus collaboration, you'll see this everywhere. These are two fundamental frameworks of how you operate in the world. For example, let's say you're a guy and you want to meet a girl. Most guys when they go out they're in this competitive mindset they have to compete against all the other guys, and they also have to compete against the girl.

It's like you're in this mindset of you have to win. What that assumes is, it assumes a mindset of you're not already winning, first of all, and also now you have to defend yourself because you feel like you're not enough as you are. Now, you have to defend, and justify, and prove yourself. It gets you focused on the wrong thing. It puts you in a short-term mindset of, "How can I win in this moment?" instead of, "I'm just a human being. You're just a human being. Can we all connect as human beings? Can we all just have fun together? Can we collaborate to create a shared experience that everybody enjoys?"

That gets you focused on the right things of, "How can I add value? How can I bring value to the people around me?" In business, "How can I bring value to my peers, to my market, to my industry, to my customer?" Just switching out of that fearful scarcity-based competitive mindset, suddenly everything just comes into alignment and people want to work with you and everything gets much easier.

Peter: Yes. You're totally right. Yes. What you just described basically, your a socialist.

Linus: [chuckles]

Frankie: This whole time you've been a socialist? [laughter]

Peter: The whole time. We never knew. No, so I mean what you're saying is absolutely right because the competition mindset it can be so destructive, but because competition is supposed to be healthy, competition's supposed to be this thing that everyone aspires to. I feel it's a very American trait.

Linus: It's also selfish, right? It makes everything about you, and how you can win at any cost. Not, "How can we all win?"

Frankie: I think it's actually a very socialist way of thinking. Let me explain this. If you're a socialist, you are assuming that there's not enough abundance for everybody. If you're a capitalist, you think that everybody has a fair shake in the markets. In the free market everybody is a fair shake. I mean it's competition, but you think that everybody can get their fair share. In a socialist society, rather, you think that it's automatically going to be in balance.

Now you're trying to force it and trying to manipulate the market to even things out. That's what it's really all about. That's why these communist regimes don't work. It's because you're working from a scarcity mindset. You're working from a place of not abundance. You're not thinking about free market, how can we encourage people to all take place in this beautiful thing called a free market.

You're thinking, "Hey, you know what, there's going to be some people that are just not going to be able to make it." You're in a scarcity mindset. It's a scarce mindset where you got to force and tip the balance in everybody's favor by force. By threat of gun, because that's exactly what tax and-- This is not a political podcast, but by threat of the gun, by threat of violence, you're basically forcing people to adhere to these rules.

You're taking away the free market abundance mindset that I think has allowed the capitalist countries to somewhat prosper. It's not perfect, but it's something. Those are two distinct ways of thinking. Honestly, I think a lot of business owners and people, in general, they're always in a scarcity mindset where it's like everything is scarce. Everything is like, "I got to compete for this. I got to win this." Everything's a zero-sum game and that's just the wrong way to go about it.

Linus: What you were talking about before about focusing on the wrong metrics, like "Okay, where does that come from?" Now, that we're showing our stuff and he feels his security threatened, now he has to defend himself, and he's like, "Oh, but what about the CTRs? What about the open rate?" These numbers it's obviously irrelevant. It makes no sense to focus on these things. He just needed to defend himself.

Frankie: I've actually been guilty of this. Let me tell you a little story about one of the businesses that I-- [laughter] Let me tell you a little bit about one of the businesses me and Linus were running before. We were running these Facebook ads you can see for martial arts schools. What that entailed was that we would get people to sign up on a trial. What we would say is like, "Hey, you know what, we're Facebook ads agency. We want to get more people, more kids into your dojo."

That was a real word that they used by the way, dojo. It's not a joke. We would say, "Hey, we want to bring in more," [crosstalk]--

Peter: I don't know anyone would think that's a joke.

Frankie: I don't know that word just seems funny to me.

[laughter]

Peter: [crosstalk] people know.

Frankie: I've just insulted every martial arts guy on this. If you've bumped into me on the street, please do not kick my ass. I'm 5'2, I'm a little Italian boy from the suburbs. I don't deserve anything. I'm just telling a story. I'm trying to be funny. All to say, we were running a Facebook ads for martial arts schools. We're like, "Hey, you know what, let's run a trial. Let's try to bring in some kids into your dojo." What we'll do is we'll run it for free. We'll run it for 24 hours.

All we ask of you-- And this is to get a commitment on their part to get some buy-in. We could have paid for the ads spend, but we were like, "Let's get some buying, let's get some credit cards out, let's get them spending money. Why don't we put a $100 towards this ad campaign? We'll get you to put in a $100. It goes directly to Facebook. We don't get a dime of that money, and we're going to see what we can do in 24 hours. If you like what you see we're going to continue and we're going to move forward."

Peter: It's a great offer. [crosstalk]

Frankie: Yes. It's a great offer, right? Yes. It's got almost no risk. You put up a $100, big deal, and we rolled with it. Sometime, there was two kinds of campaigns, either we'd knock it out of the park, we'd get 30 leads. They were like, "Oh my God, there's more people in my dojo than ever." or there was maybe three to four leads, and they didn't get a single person in through the door. The way that we work is after the trial I'd have a second call with these people. Now, these second calls were where I would close them on a $1,000 a month, $500 a month, whatever we were pricing at at the time.

A lot of the times, let's say, half of those campaigns wouldn't work out. What I would do is I would focus on the wrong metrics [laughs] If any of our old clients are watching this, I apologize, but I got to I had to put food on the table, so I would say, "Hey we didn't make close that many leads. We didn't get that many leads, but hey look, 15,000 people on Facebook saw this ad."

Let's say you had a billboard up on the highway in Sheboygan, Idaho, or something how many people are going to cross that sucker for a day. Not 15,000 people. There isn't even 15,000 people in the whole freaking town. [laughs] Literally because some of these towns are maybe 5,000 people. I'm like, "Look at these metrics." It was like slight of hand. [laughter]

Peter: [chuckles] You're like you didn't make any money, but look at all these 15,000 people you annoyed with your ad.

Frankie: Yes, and you know what, people love these vanity metrics. What I learned is that sometimes it was easier to close people on not the leads which actually freaking mattered, they cared more about how many people saw their business. The vanity metrics were more important to them than the actual like hard sales and leads that they were making. At what point do we say, "Let me not fall focus on what really matters, let me show them what these impressions are doing."

A lot of the times that's what we're all focused on it's the vanity metrics. How many followers on Instagram do I have? How many subscribers on YouTube? At the end of the day you can't feed your family on subscribers on YouTube. Well maybe you could, nowadays, but-- Yes, you probably could. I take that back.

Peter: A lot of people do.

Frankie: A lot of people do, but maybe you can't feed your family on Facebook impressions. It's more app.

Peter: No, but, I mean, if you have YouTube subscribers and you not monetize them, it doesn't mean anything.

Frankie: Yes, that's right. At the end of the day, there's this whole story that we're talking about, it's like two things. It's like, don't be focused on the wrong metrics, and don't try to get a high CTR because in pursuing this high CTR, and just pursuing these high open rates, and pursuing all this stuff you're being like me when I was on those sales calls. I was focused on the wrong metrics. The audience didn't care about it.

The audience don't care about your fricking your misleading headline, or your misleading subject line, they want value at the end of the day. They want relevance. They want something real and that's basically it.

Peter: That's totally true. I've got a email up that we wrote recently. I want to show you practically what that looks like. This is the email that you wrote, literally, last night, right?

Frankie: Yes. It went on today.

Peter: You look at this email, people scroll down, they scroll down, they read it. Look, there's no call to action above the fold. In fact you have to go down, I don't know if this is the correct word, like five folds [chuckles] until you get to the call to actions. Then this says, "Plus whenever you're ready, here's where I can support you on your journey." Then it just gives them some options, but think about it.

Someone went through all of this that opened up an okay subject line-- The best subject lines by the way that work and get the most opens are things like, "See this," or in brackets, shit you now, it says, "Open up," those are the best ones. When these people open up, do they actually consume the email? If you have a subject line like this they're going to consume the email. Then they read this, they go through it, and then they look at these options.

When they click on this high ticket thing, or I [unintelligible 00:24:13] this is a $20,000 product. When they click on this, what frame of mind are they're in? Because they have all these choices they skip this choice, they skip this choice, and then decided, "You know what, I like the sound of this. I'm going to click on that." What is this click worth when you click on that? It's just worth a lot more. I can tell you actually we've gotten $90 earnings per click from stuff like this.

They end up on this page and whatever, but it doesn't really matter. What matters is the fact that this email treated them like a human being, and respected them, and gave them a choice on what to do. This click is just so much more valuable because of it. The open rates are down, the click rate is in the toilet. However, we've had emails. We have an email up here. Let me show you. We have an email up here that has three clicks-- Six, sorry, six clicks, and I made $14,500 from those six clicks.

What the hell does that mean? What does the earnings per on that? Can you guys figure it out?

Frankie: Fuck loads.

Peter: Yes. It's a lot. It's like over a thousand dollars earnings per click. What is it? I'd rather have six clicks that generate $14,000 than 367 clicks that generate $10,000. Even that is really good. These emails, and in fact the reason this one only got six clicks during this period is because it was written like last month, but someone opened it. Six people opened it, and clicked on it, and then spent this money. This is an email that's been generating cash for like two months.

I don't know why, but that's just the way that it happens. My guess is because it delivers value, it delivers progress, and it helps them in some way, and lets them decide in order to buy it. Doesn't give them this external pressure. It's just like the gift that keeps on giving. Who wrote an email two months ago, and then it actually delivered $14,000 in the last 30 days?

Frankie: This is all based on the framework that I used to come up with all this stuff. I think [unintelligible 00:26:27] he said best. He said, "The customer's is not an idiot. She's your wife." like the customer's not idiot, she's your wife.

Peter: My wife is definitely not an idiot, but if you listened to this baby--

Frankie: Yes. [chuckles] You got to treat your audience, and the people that you're talking to, and the people that you're advertising to with respect. Think about it this way, if you get somebody to open up that open up thing, it's not congruent. Once they open up that email the jig is up, they know what's up. Once you say, "open up," or "see this. Okay, great." like whatever. We're not saying be uninteresting or be boring with your subject lines, in fact I think it's the opposite of that.

I think those "see this," and "open up," and "deadline," that's boring because if I look at my inbox now it's like filled with that crap. It's just filled with that crap. If you look at that email, for example, that's an interesting subject line. It's got the E=mc², it's tied into trading, "Wait a minute. What is this all about? What the hell is this guy talking about?" Then they open up the email, they [crosstalk]-- [laughs] Take that [unintelligible 00:27:33] You a fake Italian.

I'm just kidding. [laughs] They open up the email and the first fricking word, the first line on that is E=mc². It's all relevant, it's congruent, so that when they open up the email it's exactly what they were expecting. We're not taking them for idiots, essentially, is what we're doing. That's fuckin' being a human 101. Don't take people for idiots. Be interesting. Deliver value. If you look at that email, we're delivering value in a number of ways.

First of all, we're building a relationship. We're letting people know who we are. We're letting them know what we're all about. We're delivering insight through the stories and the metaphors, and stuff that we're talking about. Only that, but we're being entertaining. People are bored as shit at work, or whatever they're doing during the day. They see this E=mc² email, "Holy fuck. What is this? Let me open this up." It's interesting stuff. They want to read it.

They're not going to be like, "Oh man, not this fricking guy again in my inbox," they're like, "Oh man, I can't wait to read tomorrow's weird funky email." It's interesting, it's fun, it's it's different. I think the world would be a better place. What's beautiful about this, and tying back to the abundance stuff is that there's more than enough room for everybody to be interesting. There's more than enough room for every single Infopark creator to be interesting, to care about their audience, to deliver value.

There's more than enough room for everybody, but when you're in this, "Open up. Deadline. See this," you're in this competitive like, "I need to get the click rather than this other deadline email that's sitting right above mine in the inbox." you're just trying to get this fricking click at all costs. That's a scarcity mindset. When I'm running an email I'm thinking about like, how can I deliver the most value?

How can I write this email that makes them go, "Wow, I learned something from this," or, "Hey, I was entertained by this." That's what I'm thinking about when I'm writing an email rather than, "What's my CTR going to be?" I don't care about that. I really don't give a shit.

Peter: Yes. The thing is like when, in our business, we're making $5,000, $10,000, and $20,000 sales they're so it much easier to make when you treat people with respect and give them value. It doesn't mean we drop the sales principles. We have some serious sales systems in place in order to close people, but we treat them like human beings. What I want to do now, I just want to move on to the next question that I've got for you guys. We have two versions of this page.

It's not the correct video on here right now, but basically this is a video we're going to test out something new this month. The thing we're going to test out is-- Is it like squished? Does it look like squished to you on that screen?

Frankie: No, it looks fine to me.

Linus: Not sure.

Peter: Okay. We've got just basically find out more about this high ticket program, then we have enrollment. Here's the enrollment. You can schedule a call or you can email in. This call to action might look like absolute garbage to most people, [chuckles] but this has made us so much money. Here's the second version. Same top area, we've just changed it here to say, "Whenever you're ready, here are some ways that can help you. Learn it for free. Here's some courses you can get, or we could do it with you."

Do it yourself, do it with you, or here's basically done for you solution. I know which one I prefer, but I'd like to hear from you guys which one you prefer and why.

Frankie: I'd to feel this question first if, Linus doesn't mind. Do you mind?

Linus: Go.

Frankie: Okay. First of all, I love the loop at the beginning of you going [sound cut]. That's attention-grabbing right there. I like that the loop at the beginning of the video. Is that done on purpose, by the way?

Peter: No, I have to pick. I didn't do that. I didn't laugh on purpose. I just actually laugh during this video.

Frankie: [chuckles] Right, but I love that you picked that because it caught my attention.

Peter: I picked that for the thumbnail, yes. Deliberately, yes.

Frankie: Love that. Love that. Love it.

Peter: It's fine.

Frankie: Yes, it's like [crosstalk]--

Peter: This video has made us $50,000 already.

Frankie: Really? Cheers.

Peter: 15 days, last month.

Frankie: God bless. Yes, the reason, I like-- First of all, I'm going to pick the first one, the reason for that being--

Peter: This one?

Frankie: Yes, the first one. The reason for that being is because marketing principles and just psychology principles, in general, tell us that we have an abundance of options. Let me tie this into a metaphor. I'm going to do the whole metaphor shtick with you guys now. For example, the other night, me and my girlfriend are sitting on the couch. We open the TV and she's like, "Oh, what do you want to watch?" We open up Netflix. I swear to Bejesus, I was on Netflix for 20 minutes scrolling through every option.

We had every fricking possibility of movie, TV show, documentary. There was a million fucking options on the Netflix that night. Do you know what we ended up doing? We ended up baking brownies is what we ended up doing. We didn't end up watching nothing because when you're put in front- Yes, the brownies were absolute shit, by the way, they were garbage, but all to say, if you're put in front with a million options, it's the paradox of choice.

There's this book that came out 20 years ago that I never read, but the title was really interesting. The paradox of choice. It's basically that if you're offered too many choices, you're frozen. I'm sure it's happened to everybody that's listening to this right now. Did you ever had too many options and you end up taking no action? That's exactly what I feel is happening on the second. I'm given so many options that I'm suddenly put into the stasis mode where I don't know what to do.

Every bit of momentum that I garnered from wanting this and desiring whatever it is has been sucked out of me because now, I'm tasked with this choice. Whereas with the first one, everything's simple. There's only one choice for me to make. I can either schedule a call or talk to us by email. That's it. That's all.

Peter: Two choices.

Frankie: Two choices, but it's better than, you know. Then you do the same choice, just that different modes of the same choice.

Peter: Yes, I hear that.

Frankie: That's why I prefer the first one just in terms of not putting too many choices because nowadays, everybody, they have a million choices whether they want to watch TikTok, go in Snapchat, go in Instagram, go in Netflix, they have Disney plus, Disney plus is another option. They have a million options to go with. I want to be the saving grace in their world and I want to offer them one option. I want to be the guy that tells them, "Hey, this is what it is." Yes, Linus, go ahead. I'll let you feel the question.

Linus: Yes, I would say the same one, but I think for a different reason. I don't mind the multiple options. We do that in the SuperSignature. I just think it's the wrong place for it because this is a page about the elite. Find out more about the elite. They're not on this page to find out more about how they can trade for free, or how they can join the other programs. Just some of the thought.

Peter: Yes. Absolutely. In terms of the choices, Frankie, you really let us know what you thought there about that. In terms of choices in our industry and in the marketing industry, there's always only one choice. Every email is only ever about one thing. Our SuperSignature has generated $500,000 so far since August last year, since September, when we launched it. $500,000, and that has lots of choices. Some of them have five choices in there. It's generated more money than when we used to give them only one choice.

Frankie: Right. Right thing at the right time is how I see it.

Peter: Yes, yes, yes. This, the reason why I prefer this version is because it filters people out. The problem with this one is that when we ran it last month, we only had one option under the video. We only had one option, and we got so many unqualified people on there, loads of unqualified that just weren't ready for it. Just like with the SuperSignature, if someone scrolls past this and goes, "Oh, I've, actually, have already attended this live event, so I already trust this business. Oh, I already have the course." or "I'm not interested in the course because this actually looks more interesting to me."

When they get down to this point, they're just so much more qualified. This is almost like an assessment call. Let's say, for example, the worst thing comes true. They come here and they go, "Oh, you know what? I'm going to take the free option. We make no more money from them." Guess what, we're going to make money from them the week after, next week, next month, it doesn't matter. Now, they're going to be more sold.

The next time they come to this page, they're going to skip past option one, and they're going to get option two. Sweet. Now, we got a couple of $100 from them. Awesome. There's a daily email that comes out and, eventually, they're going to see this page again. They're going to be like, "Oh, wow, actually." Now, the only thing left for me in this ladder is to jump on this high ticket offer. If people pick this option, or pick this option, it doesn't matter. I actually think it's a good thing because it then prequalifies them. That's why I like the choices.

Linus: I totally agree with the philosophy of it. We've built the whole business around this philosophy of just being low pressure and giving people choices and not pushing people in any which way. Yes, this could totally be the way to do it. Still probably partial to the other version just for the sake of simplicity. All the things we're accomplishing here by giving people different options, we're doing that every day in the email.

Peter: Right, but are we though? Are we though? In the emails, yes. What if we were to run a retargeting campaign and increase the number of people that see this? Now, you can increase the number like this. You can have 10,000 people a month seeing this instead of 1,000.

Linus: This is funny, right? I was thinking about this during the call how priorities change depending on context. If we look at that mindset of sending, let's say, the deadline, emails, and doing all these short-term tactics to get the money now, in one context, that makes sense because you want to make as much money as possible. You think, "Oh, I have to get it. This is the best way to get money quickly. I want to get money quickly."

Okay, but why do you want to make money quickly? What's the next goal? What's the longer-term goal? Where does the fulfillment of that goal lead you? What is actually the end goal? Once you start considering the end goal, everything suddenly changes because if you have this long-term goal and now, you're taking short-term actions, do these short-term actions serve the long-term goal?

If you're pissing off your customer, if you're burning out the list, yes, you make some more money today, but what about tomorrow? The action you're taking today, does that get you further away from or closer toward where you really want to go? Most of the time, when you see people doing these short-term actions, the thing that they think is going to help them get the goal, it's actually getting them further away from the goal.

The more they do it, the further away they get from the goal. Here, now we're adding this retargeting element to it, and that changes the context of the whole campaign. Now, maybe this makes sense. Once you start considering the longer-term perspective or the broader perspective, the priorities change, and you start acting differently.

Frankie: I've actually changed my mind as well. I'll tell you why. While I'm looking at this, I'm thinking this is a question I think everybody should be asking. It's like, if I was a customer, what would I like better? Forget about marketing principles. Forget about all this copywriting bullshit. What would I like better? To be honest, now that I'm looking at this freaking longer page, if I'm a customer, I'm liking it a little better. It's giving me options. It's telling me, "Hey, you know what? You don't got to do this. You can do this."

Peter: Here's what I was thinking, here's what I was going with this because I love the simplicity of this because it's the entire business. Now I've got this from the ClickUp Doc when we were discussing, how do we simplify the business? How do we make it easier for people to navigate and understand their place in our product lineup? I want this call to action on all pages. Just anything that we do, every blog post, every single thing, this is there. This exact structure.

People always see it, and we always give them an option of learning for free. This is a valuable free thing. This is four days of value. What you said, Frankie, now was stunning. It was a beautiful statement. Actually, if you put yourself in the shoes of the customer, how do you feel when you see this page? Do you feel sold to? No. I don't feel sold to when I look at this. What I feel when I look at this, is I feel really curious, because I can see my path, one, two, three, four.

You said to me, Linus, maybe three, four months ago, the Dan Kennedy statement, when he goes, "If you put a ladder in front of people, they're going to climb it. They're going to want to climb it." This shows the ladder so clearly. Learn to trade for free, trade it thyself, the TIT course, the TIT academy, and then tie, trade with you. This one, I said, actually, you can only get it as an add-on to the academy above, so making it even simpler. I'll explain my reasoning behind that to you guys another time.

Linus: What I would really like people to pay attention to, for the one person watching this [chuckles] is just the overall mindset of where this is coming from. Like the stance of where our communication is coming from of not trying to push anything down anyone's throat, and tell them they have to buy this, or they have to do this before this date, or all hell is going to break loose. I was working on the copy for the TIT course.

When it came to the price reveal, the way I chose to do that is I wrote, "The investment for this program is $300. If you're not sure if this is going to be worth it for you, then that's totally fine. I have plenty of free stuff you can check out, and you can come back to this page whenever you're ready." There's no trying to convince people that this is worth the price. Oh, because you get this and that, and like "Oh, look at this value. Oh, $9.97 value, $9.97 value, $9.97 value. None of that today. Today, you can get all for just two easy payments of $97."

None of that shit. It's just, "Here's the price, If you don't think it's worth it, fine. Go back and watch some of my free shit. Eventually, you're going to be convinced."

Peter: Let me find that document.

Frankie: I think of this as a McDonald's drive-thru. When you pull up to the drive-thru, they don't try to sell you on the Big Mac. [chuckles] They put the menu in front of you, they don't say, "Hey, you know the Big Mac, man, what a great burger. It's been all 50 years."

[laughter]

Frankie: "Hey, what a great freaking burger. It's got $20 value, but really you can pay for [crosstalk]"

[laughter]

Frankie: They don't try to sell you on the fucking Big Mac. They put the menu in front of you, and they say, "Hey, what the fuck do you want on this menu? They're all going to kill you, the options. Every single one of them leads to diabetes, but which one do you want?" They don't tell you, "Hey." They're going to put options in front of you, they're going to try to guide you. They make it nice, they put the pictures on there.

There's somebody nice telling you, "Hey, what would you like? Would you like some fries with that?" They don't try to sell you on this stuff. They just presuppose that you're going to buy, which is why I've changed my mind on this a little bit.

Peter: Here it is. This is what you were talking about, Linus. "Here's the deal. The investment for this package is $300. If you're not sure it'd be worth the investment, that's totally fine. I have plenty of free stuff for you to check out. You can come back here whenever you're ready. Click the button below to get started." How does that make you feel, man? You're like just a nice little taste in your mouth. It's like eating foie gras versus burnt toast.

We might even test something out and break a massive direct response taboo that John Carlton drilled into us when we've never met him, we just read his books and stuff. I might even put a link in here to the free thing.

Linus: I like it. I like it. From the long-term perspective, it makes sense.

Peter: So much sense. We might even want to harp on about that a little more-

Linus: Maybe. Yes.

Peter: -inside of the sales letter. Sales letter, AKA, here's what it is. It's not really this huge sale, it just tells them what's in there.

Linus: Look at my intro here, man. All of the traditional things you need to do in a sales letter with the story, and you got to drill in the pain and all this shit. All of those psychological trigger points, we hit on those in the emails every single day. Making the offer becomes so much simpler, too. Literally, my opening line is "The academy contains everything you need to get consistent and profitable trading stocks, forex, or anything else with a chart. Here's what you get."

Just straight to the fucking point, "Here's the benefit. Here's what you're going to get," like "Here's the thing. Here's the price. Here's the guarantee. If you don't want it, fine, come back later."

Peter: I can't wait to see how it performs. The irony is telling [crosstalk]--

Linus: Guess what the headline is? It's a fucking name with a product. [chuckles]

Peter: Yes. [chuckles] The Bad Trader Academy.

Linus: That's the headline.

Peter: Currently, if we go to the website, the course that we're selling right now, the headline is so-- Get the trading course, let's go to that. Let's have a look. "An online workshop for traders who want to retire in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, what if all it takes is just two winning trades per month. Discover the scientifically tested method a former Merrill Lynch trader used to secure a seven-figure retirement nest egg with just a handful of trades per month."

We ran this past a really good copywriter, besides you two being the best two copywriters I know. They were like, "Wow. What a headline. This is just amazing." Look at this page, it's a beautiful page. It has everything that you need. It's got a story. The whole thing is so well thought-out. This page gets a conversion rate right now of 3.5%, 3.6%. That's not to call traffic. To call traffic gets a horrible conversion rate, so I'm very interested.

It costs $57 to get this product right now. It used to cost $27, then we had a conversion rate of about 5%, then I keep increasing the price. Now, it's about 3.2%, 3.5%. I'll be very interested. You see the difference between that and this. We're changing it up completely. We're slowly changing the entire business over to this more relaxed, "Here's what you're going to get." Then we're just showing them what they could get over, and over, and over, and over, and over again.

Increasing the frequency with which they see our messaging, which leads them to an offer. That's it. That's really the trick to this. Literally, it has just generated all of our money, that because we've just been doing that so much. Now, we're doing it even more. We're doubling the number of emails we send out. We're doubling the retargeting that's going out to people, I'm very interested to see where that goes.

If the business goes from $200,000 a month, is it going to go to $300,000, is it going to go to $400,000, $500,000? Where is it going to go from here? I really love this chilled-out vibe. Our refund rates are down. Our chargeback rate has dropped by 75%. [laughs]

Linus: I can go figure, man.

Peter: [chuckles] Yes. There we go, man. I think we could probably end the episode there. It's 48 minutes in.

Linus: Perfect

Peter: Before Frankie starts yelling at people again. [laughs]

Frankie: You've gotten about three to five good clips out of me out of this episode, so I think I did my work for today. I'm going to retire now and that's about it.

Linus: Just put it on YouTube.

Peter: People didn't know you were Italian before this episode.

Frankie: Yes, they definitely know now.

[laughter]

Linus: All kinds of YouTube content in this episode. Like "Italian nerd goes off on--" Online where--

Peter: "Italian nerd goes off [crosstalk]"

Frankie: "Italian nerd tries to sell you a Big Mac." [laughs]

Peter: "5'2, Italian nerd yells about Big Macs."

[laughter]

Frankie: If that shit doesn't go viral man, I'm quitting this whole business. I don't want nothing to do with it.

Peter: Oh man, this podcast is fun. We should just do this anyway. We should just stop doing business. Let's just do podcast.

Linus: Yes, I'm down.

Frankie: My Apple Watch told me that my heart rate was dangerously high for the last five minutes. [laughs]

[00:49:57] [END OF AUDIO]