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97 - The Hook, The Story, And The Offer

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Episode Recap:

How to create the right hook that’ll make it so that selling becomes almost super easy. On this episode Russell gives a condensed version of a training he did for Two Comma Club X, where he teaches about the hook, story and offer. Here are some of the things you will hear on today’s episode:

-- Why it’s so important to have a hook that grabs people’s attention.

-- What he used as the hook for his recently launched Book of Mormon Challenge Podcast.

-- A few other examples of hooks people used to sell their own products, and why they were so effective.

So listen here to get a quick idea of what you need to know about having a great hook and story to be able to really sell what you’re offering.

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Best Quote:

One of the biggest things we talked about and we noticed is the key is like, for the really good offers, there’s three pieces. There’s the hook, the hook that grabs you. What’s the thing that grabs you? What’s the thing that grabs you? And then there’s the story you tell behind that, and then there’s the actual offer that they’re going to get. And then each component of the offer there’s a hook, a story and an offer for each component of the offer. I wish I had more time to share everything, but the thing I wanted to share with you guys today is, it’s one of the most important things. What’s the hook of the story that you’re sharing?

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Transcripts:

What’s up everybody? This is Russell Brunson, welcome to the Marketing Secrets podcast. Today I’m going to be talking about a hook, a story, and an offer.

Alright everybody, I hope that today has been amazing for you so far, whenever you’re listening to this. I want to share with you, a lot of you know that we launched, at the Funnel Hacking Live event we launched the Two Comma Club X coaching program, and it’s insanely good. It’s amazing, but there’s kind of the pros and the cons of it.

The pros are it gives you everything you could possibly need to start, launch, scale, grow your company. The bad thing is there’s like so much stuff that people get overwhelmed. So I wanted to go through and record a fast track that kind of goes through a higher level, like fast track of all the courses in order so people kind of know where they’re going.

So this week I recorded module number two, or fast track number two, which was called hook, story and offer. And went on for like 45 minutes, and I think it was pretty good, and then one of the guys in the group, he’s probably listening to this right now, so by the way, thank you. He said that, “I listened to every one of Russell’s podcasts, I’ve been to two Funnel Hacking Live events, I’ve done every course, every book, that was the best training I’ve ever done from Russell.” I was like, “That’s awesome.”

And I had a 45 minute conversation with Dave Woodword and James Friel when we were lifting weights on Wednesday, talking about it as well. And unfortunately I have to jump on a video here in like an hour, so I can’t go too deep into this, but I did want to share some thoughts with you guys because I think it’s super, super, super essential and I wanted you guys to think through it for yourself.

So what I want to talk about is, what’s the hook and the story of what it is you’re selling? Now, in the video that I did for our Two Comma Club X members, it was like, I was going into offer hacking. How to find people’s offers and hack them and all sorts of stuff like that, but one of the biggest things we talked about and we noticed is the key is like, for the really good offers, there’s three pieces. There’s the hook, the hook that grabs you. What’s the thing that grabs you? What’s the thing that grabs you?

And then there’s the story you tell behind that, and then there’s the actual offer that they’re going to get. And then each component of the offer there’s a hook, a story and an offer for each component of the offer. I wish I had more time to share everything, but the thing I wanted to share with you guys today is, it’s one of the most important things. What’s the hook of the story that you’re sharing?

And if you don’t have one yet, you need to create that. So in the video I went through and I took, if you guys know Drew Manning, he’s one of our Two Comma Club winners, he’s an awesome dude. He’s got a program called Fit to Fat to Fit. And his story is, he was a trainer for his whole life and helped a lot of people get skinny, but he never actually knew what it was like, so he’s like, “You know what, I’m going to get fat and then I’m going to try to get fit again.” So he went and gained like, I don’t know, 100 pounds and told the whole world. “This is what I’m doing, I’m gaining a bunch of weight, it’s going to be a huge thing. I’m going to fat and then I’m going to lose it again.”

And because of this story, this hook of this story he got tons of PR, he was on Jay Leno, all sorts of stuff. And now it’s like, whatever he sells, it’s like, “Hey, I’m Drew, I’m the fit to fat to fit guy. I’m the guy who was a trainer who never knew what it was like to be fat so I gained a whole bunch of weight and then I lost it all again.” And then anything that he says after that, people will give him money. You want to know why? Because the hook of the story is so good.

Drew, if you’re listening to this, there’s a lot of critiques I could give you to help you make your offers better, because that’s…but because the hook, it doesn’t really matter. A good hook and a good story will make up for a lot of other stuff. He’s killing it, and I was like, imagine, there’s stuff that…..anyway, someday I’m going to work with him personally and just be like, “This is how you ramp it up.”

But his hook and his story is so good that he’s making millions of dollars now. I was thinking about this, throughout time. If you guys remember Robert Allen, he has sold over a billion dollars under the Robert Allen brand. And Robert Allen had a really good hook and a story. He told people, “you could take me anywhere in the world, throw me in any city without any contacts or whatever, and within a month I will have purchased a house with no money down.” Or whatever. He told people that and no one believed him.

So he actually did it, did this big PR stunt, went and flew somewhere, did the whole thing and boom, he became Robert Allen because of that, the hook and the story. Natalie Hodson, Natalie spoke at Funnel Hacking Live, she’s amazing. What’s amazing about Natalie is the hook in her story. It’s funny, because there are people now who are trying to knock off one of her products, her first Two Comma Club product. It took her 4 months to go from zero to Two Comma Club with a $37 ebook, which was teaching women who, mothers how to not pee your pants. “Abs, Core, Pelvic Floor.” And she sold like 50 or 60 thousand copies of this ebook.

It’s funny because there are a lot of people now trying to knock her off, and they’re all going to fail because they’re copying the offer but they’re missing the hook and the story. So what’s Natalie’s hook and story. Well she was on a…I think she was actually in a video with Drew, if I remember right, it’s a small world. Anyway, so she’s filming a video, a workout video and in the video she pees her pants.

And instead of hiding it she decides this is a good, I don’t know if she consciously did this, but she put it out there and it’s an amazing hook. “I’m a fitness trainer, I’m teaching people how to lose weight and I’m sitting there live on camera and I peed my pants, here’s pictures of it, it’s so embarrassing.” So she tells that story, the hook and story and people get excited. And then boom, 60 thousand copies of her book later.

The hook and the story were so, so good. And the better the hook and the story are, I’m not saying the offer can be worse, but like, the better hook the story is, you can sell anything.

It’s funny, Drew is actually selling Ketosis stuff now which has nothing to do with his actual fit to fat to fit story, but the story and hook is so good, he tells the story, people are hooked and then boom, he can sell them whatever he wants at that point.

So for you, I want you thinking, what’s my story, what’s the thing? Some of you guys may know, I launched my religion podcast this week actually, yeah this week. I went through the same process here, I could just make a podcast like, “Hey, I’m going to teach you what my beliefs are..” but the hook and story were horrible. I need a hook and I need a story. It’s got o be something that’s going to drag people in.

The good thing about stories is people share stories. They’re like, “Oh, there’s this girl named Natalie..” “Oh this guy named Drew he went fit to fat…” and they tell the story right. So I was like, I need a story. I didn’t consciously do this, but this is what came out. I was like, I need something really, really cool. So the hook for my podcast was basically, “I’m Mormon, I believe in the Book of Mormon, and I look at my house, there’s all these Book of Mormon’s laying on the ground everywhere that I never read. They just sit there. And I realized this thing that’s so important to me, I’m not treating it…I’m treating it lightly.”

And so I was like, I need to make this real to me. So I went online and I found on eBay a copy of one of the original 5000 Books of Mormon, I spent a small fortune on it, and now I’m reading it and sharing my journey because I want to make it special to you again, right. So that was the hook. And now I got all these people who are sharing my podcast that are like, “This dude Russell, he..” all my Mormon friends, it’s kind of fun watching. They’re sharing it and like, “my friend Russell, he’s a Mormon too..” so they’re sharing it in Seminaries and Elders Quorum.

Anyway, it’s kind of fun how fast it’s growing inside the church because everyone’s like, they feel that same way. Like, “Man I feel the same way.” If you’re Mormon and you’re like, “I don’t treat the Book of Mormon like I should.” And all the sudden there’s this guy who felt the same way so now he spent a fortune, bought an original one and now he’s taking us on a journey.” And all the sudden people are like, “Oh, I want to be part of that story.”

I’m sure there’s a lot of people who, I think about Drew and again, I don’t know Drew’s whole story, I don’t know him super well. But you know, one of the biggest things in the weight loss space, I see when people try to teach people how to lose weight, but they’ve never been fat in the past, it’s hard for them to get a lot of traction. A lot of times they can do personal training, but it’s hard for them to blow up as a celebrity, as a guru, as an expert or whatever you want to call it because the masses are like, “Well they don’t know what it’s like to be fat.”

So he told that story and now everyone’s like, “Dude, this trainer who wanted to prove that he could do it. So he gained all this weight.” Now it’s a story worth sharing, it’s a good hook.

Now the same thing happened with this, it was a story so it started getting spread. Then this week I was like, “I need another good hook and good story. What can I do to get people listening to this, now that it’s live and it’s launched?” Some of you guys saw yesterday, I actually, there’s this guy in the Mormon church, his name is Parley P. Pratt, he lived back in the 1800s. And someone gave him a copy of one of the original Book of Mormons, because that’s all that they had back when they first came out. And he started reading it and he read the entire thing in a day. He said that eating and sleeping became a nuisance to him.

Anyway, I found out that yesterday was actually his birthday, so I was like, “I’m going to do a Parley P. Pratt day.” So I took the day off of work, and I went and read the entire, well I tried. I spend 18 hours, I almost got halfway done. It’s a big book. But I read the whole thing. I did a Facebook live where Italked about it. And this is something that I put zero dollars in advertizing behind, I just posted on my personal wall, “Hey, I’m doing this crazy thing.” And from that, I think this morning it had like 3.9 thousand views, over 1500 comments, likes, and shares, like interactions with it. And hundreds and hundreds of people subscribed to the podcast from it.

So it was like this thing. I made a story, an event, a thing out of it and that’s what got people excited. It was the hook and the story. Now people are subscribing to the podcast. If you’re interested in my beliefs and my faith go to bookofmormonchallenge.com you can subscribe and listen in.

But that’s kind of what it is right, you’re creating a story, you’re creating a hook and story that gets people interested.