Your super signature

Stuart: Foreign. Welcome to another episode of the book More Show. It's Stuart Bell here with Betsy Vaughan. Betsy, how's it going across there?

Guest: Super, Stuart, how are you?

Stuart: I am very good. Although ironically, just before we started recording, I was talking about today. The building next door to the office here was having some renovations done. It had been pretty quiet and 20 seconds into the recording they're banging again next door. We might get to the end of this great show and then I'll listen back and it'll be unusual because, because of the noise in the background, but hopefully if you're listening to this, it wasn't too bad. I was recording with Focus last week and had to do a bit of editing around in the middle of the show because in the middle this God awful. Like it almost sounded like something was in the walls and trying to get out, but it was quiet enough. So I wasn't quite sure where it was coming from, but worked out a couple of seconds in. It was some drilling going on next door, but that took a little bit of editing out. So hopefully that wasn't too disruptive of last week's show as people were listening back.

Guest: There you go. That's great.

Stuart: Okay, so today we are going to follow up on a show from a couple of weeks ago where we were looking at some of the immediate steps you can take once you've got your book completed. So we've had a fair few questions come in as feedback and just comments. And then in the calls I think both of us have had, but definitely the ones I've had over the last couple of weeks, this issue or people asking questions to go deeper into this issue has come up quite a lot. So I think it's worth diving into a little bit. Kind of, kind of the, the immediate things that you should do or could do once the book's complete to really get it out there and get using. So how does that sound?

Guest: I think it's great. I think this has been such valuable information and I'm not going to say that at the end of this call, I don't think. But you know, again, I, I've had some feedback from people who've been listening and you know, the things that they're, they're getting from it. That's the, that's the biggest thing. People know what they, what they want to do and what they want to write, what they want to say and then they just don't. And not even just about a book, Stuart. It's about just in general reaching out to people. You know, they're just struggling with that. What is the best way to market themselves or their business or their book or their, you know, program, whatever it is. I think people are really just, I think sometimes I think it's the same old, same old, you know, and they need fresher ideas. And so I think this information that we've been putting out has been, you know what I'm. The positive feedback we're getting is it's been great. People are listening to it, they're excited about it. So I don't think we could ever stop talking about this, to be honest with you. We just hear it, you know, all

Stuart: the time, every day there's someone born that hasn't seen the Flintstones or whatever the. You can never, never cover the basics too much.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: Okay, so with that being said, then let's dive into the Super Signature because this is something that's come up in two or three of the conversations I've had recently as I mentioned. And Super Signature is something that people aren't necessarily familiar with. A lot of people listening now will also be listeners to the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast and are familiar with the Breakthrough Blueprint or Breakthrough DNA framework that we have. And that's a kind of a core tenant in those conversations. But if you're not coming from that space, if that's not something you're familiar with, then the idea of a Super Signature is, is something a little bit alien or that you don't have the familiarity with. So as you're listening to this, if it's something that you're not familiar with, then check out the emails that we send out with the podcasts or the follow up email sequence that we've got after the initial opt ins. And what you'll notice is Super Signature saying, here are three ways that we can help you as soon as you're ready. So the Super Signature that goes with every email or every email of this type, the aim of it is to give people options to progress the conversation, to take their understanding further, to take their thinking further. So your book as it's introducing or going deeper into a particular concept, whether that's just your own concept, your own unique idea, or whether you're elaborate collaborating on someone else's ideas or common knowledge that's out there already. The thing that we're looking to do at every stage is engage a reader in a conversation so that we can progress that their understanding, their learning to take their knowledge to the next level to help them more and ultimately to let them become customers. Getting Distracted again because there's now someone with an angle grinder outside cutting metal.

Guest: I heard it, I'm like, oh, maybe he's not paying attention to it.

Stuart: I'm hoping that they can't. So what are we on there? We're like 6:30 at night here in the UK as I'm recording this, I'd said to Betsy earlier in the day, don't worry, it's approaching five o' clock now. Earlier on when we were scheduling, it'll be fine, they'll have finished. So I'm hoping that they can't carry on for that much longer. So we'll just power through here in

Guest: the US at 5 o' clock. They'd be finished for sure.

Stuart: Yeah, these guys actually should get these guys numbered because they've been going since maybe 9 o' clock this morning. So they've.

Guest: Good for them. Yeah, somebody's getting their money's worth.

Stuart: Yeah, the, so the, the whole purpose of the book is to identify those invisible prospects to get the conversation going and then the whole purpose of the follow on sequence is to get, get someone into conversation and, and actually get them on the phone. Because at the end of the day in everything that we talk about, we're not talking about some huge scale thing where we're looking at attracting millions of people and then having follow up sequence that are all automated because you can't deal with the volumes realistically. What we're talking about is engaging thousands of people, low thousands of people really particularly if you talk about a local business where you're looking at people within a specific geographic area. We're really talking about engaging thousands of people because that's realistically the size of the pool you're fishing in of those. It might be the low hundreds who are ready to even think about a conversation at the moment. The rest of them just either were not interested to begin with or they're just not ready at this moment. And then of those low hundreds that might engage with some further emails, we're really talking about the low tension at people who at this moment in time are really ready to have the conversation. And that volume, when you think about it, if from those low tens you're able to convert a small handful of those into customers, but you're able to do that month in, month out, then that for the majority of people is a nice sustainable business. Because we're not talking about high volume business, we're not talking about kind of app sales where really you're talking about some advertising revenue or a couple of dollars Per app where you need to sell tens or hundreds of thousands to make a difference. We're talking about real businesses in real towns or real coaches online where the numbers don't have to be huge because it's that more ongoing high value relationship with people. So the Super Signature is the thing that in each email gives people the opportunity to self identify and take their understanding, take their journey further by offering another thing. Makes sense.

Guest: Yeah, it does make sense. And the funny thing is I don't know if he'll listen to this or not, but he might. So Dean, we, you know, like he talks about the Super Signature a lot and obviously we send out a lot of emails, you know, Dean does. We do. And I don't always read the Super Signature to be honest with you, because a lot of it I'm. But today, and I didn't even realize we were going to talk about this today, but I found myself in an email this morning going through and actually reading the Super Signature to see, you know, what all information, you know, was there, you know, just that. And there's really just a lot of valuable people probably see it, you know, day in and day out from us, even from us, you know, every few days are, you know, our emails and stuff. But I think some, at some point somebody goes aha, you know, like yeah, that book thing or that email mastery or what, you know, something I want to do that, you know, so.

Stuart: Absolutely. And that's the key because. Exactly as you said, the Super Signature and emails in general kind of communication points in general, unless the person's ready, unless the recipient that's ready, they're not going to see it, it's not going to register, it's going to flash by in the background. But when they are ready, they're more likely to see it because every opportunity or every relevant opportunity, you're putting it in front of them. So it's this whole concept of if you're burning and churning email leads, when you're collecting leads, you're sending people one communication. So take a book for example. Someone opts in for a copy of your book, you send it to them and then never do anything else. The hope is that they were moved enough to take an action at that moment in time. Reality is, that's not the way that most people operate because even the ones who are pretty engaged, it's only the hottest that are going to act now, even the ones that are pretty engaged, they might forget about it because two days go by and something else happens. So by regularly communicating to people and this is where we talk about the flagship broadcast afterwards. And actually you talked about email mastery. Everything that we're talking about here is exactly the model that we use across all of the business units. And the Super Signature as a concept is absolutely Dean's idea. So no, not trying to misrepresent that as a 90 minute book idea. This is. Well apart from Dean is the 90 minute book as well. This is from that and Email Mastery. I would recommend as people are listening to this, head over to emailmastery.com and grab a copy of the Email Mastery book because it talks about several other email techniques that you can use, this being one of them, to up your email game and make the whole process more engaging and more likely to convert. So I'll stick a link in the in the show notes, but definitely head over to emailmastery.com and grab a copy of that book for. For even more email goodness than we're talking about. Now. The point that you were talking about in that even if you see the super signature quite regularly, it might not resonate or you might not take any action on it until the point that it's. You've got a reason to is exactly the reason why we want to include it in all of the opportunities that are relevant. And when I say all of the opportunities that are relevant, the only distinguishing feature that we mentioned that I want to or distinguishing element I want to clarify is that sometimes you'll say to people, okay, well you need an email super signature. And then they'll put it on everything the same way as people will say, oh, you need a book. And all of the concentration is on creating the book. It's not. People don't necessarily always ask why or think about the context in which it's used. So from a super signature we use that in every broadcast. In most broadcasts it's an exception that proves the rule. We use it in every broadcast that goes out that is clearly a non personal email. So like a group email. So the podcast broadcasts that go out have a super signature on some of the follow ups to the opt in sequences. Flip at a certain point and start to have a super signature on. The ones that we don't include a super signature on are the ones that we call the spear emails, the short personal expecting a reply emails like when you first opt in to get a copy of the book. All we've got there is here's a copy of the book. It's a great read. Thanks Stuart, or thanks Dean. The nine word emails that we send out every month or so saying, hey Betsy, do you want to get started on your book this month? We don't put a super signature on that because those emails, the ones that we're aiming or the purpose is that they look personal, that they are personal, they're talking to that one person. Even if it's broadcast to a larger group of people. Those emails, the perception around them, the way they're positioned is different from the broadcast ones. So again, super signature, fantastic thing to have. It doesn't necessarily mean that it needs to be on absolutely everything. It's like salt and pepper. Salt and pepper probably should be included in a lot of food. But you wouldn't just necessarily dump it on everything without considering it first. Right.

Guest: I would say the exception to that, unless you're from the south. And then we just put salt and pepper on everything all the time.

Stuart: I, I was just going to come up with the same kind of caveat. Hot sauce. I'm not a fan of hot sauce, but the kids seem to stick it on stuff before you even catch up on everything.

Guest: Yeah, exactly.

Stuart: So, okay, so we've talked about what the super signature is in its kind of what the theory of it is. So let's look at the specifics of what it is because again, this trips people up. So the aim that we're trying to do is give people relevant options to take the conversation further, to take that understanding further and if, if relevant to, to take the first step. So like with the back cover copy of the book, quite often we'll talk about thinking about putting three steps on the. On the back cover copy. A kind of a zero commitment step where people can find out more. A medium level commitment where without saying get started now or pay me some money now, they can raise their hand so they can be identified as hotter prospects. And then a third level of if you're ready to get started, here's the easy way to get started today. The kind of mafia offer type thing that we talk about sometimes. So those three steps cover the people who are interested but not particularly warm. So go here and find out more. That's just kind of help them enhance their learning to discover more, to increase their understanding and hopefully leading onto their understanding of why it makes sense to work with you. The middle option is here's a step that requires a commitment and that commitment is probably just give me your name and email address or here's a flag in here somewhere that will identify you as being hotter. It might be filling this form or this assessment just kind of take the journey to the next step to start that process towards becoming a customer and then the third one obviously get started. So with the Super Signature you can do the same thing. Now it might be the case that you should include the book in the Super Signature. So depending on how you attract leads, obviously if all of your lead generation is three people requesting a copy of the book, then that doesn't make so much sense because you can safely assume that everyone on the list already has a copy of the book. So like for us, the majority of the large majority of our lead generation work is done through the various books that we have. So it's a pretty safe bet that anyone that we are emailing with already has a copy of the book. So we don't typically include that. If we were running a website where there was a lot of organic traffic, if we were buying leads from elsewhere, if we were working with other organizations and sending emails out, if we did a lot of seminar type traffic where people are, where we're lead generating a seminar where we don't necessarily have the, the name and email address of people, then the first step, saying here are three ways we can help you today. Number one, grab a copy of the book. Here's the book that we wrote about such and such subject. Grab a free copy of it here and direct people to the landing page. You've already got their email address because you're emailing them. So you're not too bothered about the lead generation piece. But what it does is identify them as hotter prospects. It it's a way of, from all of the crowd of people that you're emailing, if they're in that group of not being on that particular funnel already, then it identifies them as joining the top of that funnel. And it could be the case that you've got one webpage out there like the 90minutebook.com that's the download for the book. But then you might direct people to a completely different landing page specifically for this link. So the email link, you might send people to the nightmineybook.com email link and the form on that page flags them separately. There's various ways of being able to flag and tag people so that you've got more of an idea where they're coming from. And the reason that you want to do that is that you can tailor their journey afterwards. So perhaps then it, in this particular example that we're talking about, you already know who they are because you're in each conversation with them already. You've put the book on there as an Opt in. Because these people aren't in this particular channel, flagging them as a certain way might put them in an autoresponder sequence that's different from just the very cold traffic that comes into the regular book landing page. So let's think of an example to back that up. We'd used. For some reason we keep going back to florists as the example. So let's stick with that. So we might have a newsletter based mailing list from the store. So we ask people to opt in when they come into the store or when they've been customers in the past. Because we want to offer them discount coupons or the latest news or the latest styles, we send out this newsletter. So that's a generic list of people, we've got their email addresses, but we don't necessarily need know much more about them. In the florist example, if we go sticking with the book that we talked about in terms of wedding flowers, so what do we have a few weeks ago is kind of like the main guide to autumn wedding flowers or something like that? Yeah. So that is a very specific group of people. So if we've got a big list of everyone identifying people who would be interested in that service, having a super signature that offers that book, maybe in this context we add that, we add a little bit more to the text saying if you want to get, if you're planning a wedding or know anyone that is, head over to this, this page to grab a free copy of the book. Please feel free to share it with as many people as possible. So it might spread wider. But when they go follow that link through to that landing page. The autoresponder sequence that then kicks off is specific to that funnel. It's specific about the wedding venues and wedding flowers and the seasonal differences in this particular part of the country and tailoring that conversation, guiding them towards the outcome. You want them to do this particular thing. So it might be come into the store for a monthly workshop that you've got on or a presentation on how to choose the best flowers for your wedding that seasonally varies throughout the year. Let's say that's the outcome because you know that when you've got people in the room, you can convert 10% of them, 20% of them into buying a service because they're there. So the step before that is inviting them to the free workshop. The step before that is identifying that they're interested separate from the rest of the list. So as the first thing in a super signature, we don't typically Include the book because most of our traffic already has come through a book channel. But as you're listening to this, that might be a super valuable thing to do, particularly where you've got lists that are, I don't want to say big particularly, but substantial lists, depending on the or relevant to the size of your business. A big list that maybe you haven't been particularly engaging with before. First thing might be to add this on the list. The second thing might be to include the workshop details. So all guide. I'm thinking of things that are falling into this second category, this middle category of people identifying themselves as more interested but not necessarily having to commit to part with any money. So it might be the workshop. Sign up for our next workshop or come to our next workshop. It might be a guide or an assessment or something that people can fill in. The aim of this fill in step, this middle step is really that people can evidence to themselves that they're making the right decision, that they're on the right path. So we have the book Blueprint scorecard. It's a scorecard that people can fill in some boxes, put numbers, can assess themselves on their and their competency, their completeness, their kind of overall thinking on creating a book specifically in a business context. So for us we've got in a lot of the funnels, we've got the book blueprint scorecard as the second step. On the coaching side of the business, we've got the profit activator score scorecard as the second step. So I'll stop talking in a second, see if I can find the text on that particular email. But that middle step, that second step in the super signature is really just to amplify the message that you're already putting out there and let people take that next step. So for a financial advisor, you might have some onboarding questionnaires or a guide, a checklist or scorecard where people can score themselves. We've done a lot of work. We mentioned Jim hacking in the past couple of times on the immigration stuff that Jim does their book bring your spouse here about, about spouse and fiance visas. They have a checklist because there's a lot of documentation involved in that process. So they've got a checklist that people can fill in there.

Guest: So. Sorry, sorry, I need to take a breath. I know that was it. So I know we talked. I mean I, we see a lot of assessments like you said, with some of the guys like the financial people or you know, maybe attorneys or something. But I'm thinking on the scale of Like Joe Local, you know, that the local florist, you know, that's doing something. So would you say they put that link there? Maybe it's. They need to figure out. Maybe it's, you know, what their budget is. Maybe they need to figure out what their wants are and they fill that whole assessment. I mean, is that what you're thinking? They would put some sort of assessment there that would go back to these people. So like, you know, and again, I get it with, with some of these big guys that. Bigger guys that we work with or financial guys that may have, you know, a larger obvious already set client list or inactive or active list, you know, but somebody like the local guy, same thing. I mean, I think that.

Stuart: So patient, all the noises today, one

Guest: day Stuart will no longer be in the UK and you won't hear things like that.

Stuart: Yeah, good point. I've only got a few more weeks of UK sirens and then I can replace them with US sirens.

Guest: Right, right. So we're thrilled about. So, yeah, so I'm just thinking of the local person because I think, I think some of, you know, somebody who's in deals with a lot of. I don't always think about that smaller business, you know, and, and we deal with a lot of small businesses, but even the smaller guys who are doing financial work, they're a lot of times they're bigger dollars than, than. I'm not picking on the florist, but maybe as that kind of business or the local plumber or, you know.

Stuart: I know what you mean. And I think as with all of these things, it's. I think in one of the early podcasts that we did, we talked about strategy versus tactics. And the strategy is the high level. Okay, I know that I want to take someone from A to Z and it's, there's 26 steps in between those. It's not just A to Z in one step. It's. That's the strategy. The strategy is moving people, this minimum viable commitment thing of stage by stage by stage, taking people further down the path, revealing the next step to them as they're at the next step, rather than jumping too far too fast. The dating analogy, we've used that a few times. You don't kind of walk into a bar, say, hey, nice to meet you, do you want to jump into bed? It's. There's a, There's a getting to know you stage that's involved there. So that's the, the strategy, the tactic is then the individual thing that you do. And that's absolutely going to vary by exactly some of the things that you say. The nature of the business, the scale of the business, your individual capacity and capability and preference, all those things are going to vary. So I think for. It's easy to think about, talk about an assessment and say, with the financial guys, it's easy to think about because it's all numbers based. Or with Jim and the immigration stuff, it's very checklist based. That's easy, but that's specific to their business. So I think with the florist example, it might be something like a checklist there very easily springs to mind. So something like. And again, this is where the analogy breaks down, because I'm not an artist and it's not a strength, a core competency, but I would imagine it's something like, okay, have you chosen the venue? Do you know what the average temperature is going to be like? What time of year is it? How many flowers do you need? What's the size of the venue? What's the number of tables? Is there some kind of calculation that says, okay, based on the number of tables, you need to pick 10 stems per table, multiply that by the number of tables, then add an additional $10 per bouquet for greenery and stuff around it, and that will give you your budget. So it might be something like that. These assessments don't, and in fact shouldn't be something that someone fills in and it goes to you and then you've got to kind of assess it and give some, give some indication. The only way it works really is that they fill the details in and then the thing that they get back has some generalized but as useful as possible advice. So the scorecard one's a good way of thinking about it, the scorecard, depending on what. So scorecard has eight mindsets and each of those eight mindset has four stages. So. So depending on how your particular scorecard is set up, the email that goes back to them because you're not going to receive everyone and reply in a bespoke way. Again, caveat, unless it's worthwhile, you're doing it. If you know that. A lot of people have heard me talk about before, my brother's a yacht broker in Fort Lauderdale. They've got very low volume but very high commission. So for them, apart from just kind of weeding out some tyre kickers or whatever, the boat equivalent of a tire kicker is some hulk for them, it's worth putting the effort in to deal with people individually because the volumes are very low and the returns are very high to Put that one on one attention for something that's more higher volume. So like stick with the florist example. It could be that again, the analogy is going to break down because it's not. I need to pick an example I know something a little bit more about. Yeah, well, actually. Okay, yeah, let's jump. So the book. So the book. The book. The book blueprint scorecard does exactly this. We've got eight mindsets which we've talked about at length in the last few shows. Each of those mindsets has four stages. When you complete that scorecard, the answers that you get back, the advice you give back is some great things to focus on, but it's relatively generalized. So we say something along the lines of. What we typically see is people scoring in one of three ways. Either they're low across the board, they're somewhere in the middle, or they're high across the board. So if you scored low across the board, that typically means that maybe this isn't something you've thought about, you know, that this is something that you should do, but you haven't spent a lot of time and attention yet. So by taking a look at the scorecard and the Level 4, the highest stage of each of the mindsets, that gives you a very good indication of what you should be aiming for and the level of attention that you should be putting to each of the mindsets. If you score somewhere in the middle, this is what happens to the majority of people. Most people come to us and they spent a lot of time and attention in two or three of the areas that they're very comfortable with, but then haven't thought about the other areas either because it's, it's something that they haven't been aware of or it's something that they just haven't got the expertise to dive into. So one of the mindset number eight is the beyond the book, the follow up sequence. Typically people are very weak in that because of exactly this conversation. It's not something that they think about. So our advice to people who are in the middle is don't spend time on areas where you score highly. If you're confident you score highly, that's it, it's done. Tick that box and move on. Look at the areas where you score particularly low, try and get that to a middling score so at least you've covered it. And then get it out the door, get it done and then kind of react and pivot and improve and feedback on a later iteration. The main thing that you can do is have the confidence to get out the door and know that you've done enough in the other mindsets so that it's worthwhile so you're not thrown away effort. But don't take another three years trying to get everything up to a super high score. The third mindset, so the third stage, we sometimes see people scoring super high across all of them. Typically this means that people are being. I can't remember what the exact words say, but typically this means something like they're being overconfident. And the only thing to be careful of there is that you're not having too much of an internal view of it. So if you've scored high across the board, that probably means you've spent a lot of time and attention on each of them, which is fantastic. But if you haven't yet, get an outside view on it. Get a second opinion of someone who's business adjacent, who knows what you're talking about, but who isn't in the business too deeply. Because you may be able to find, just before you pull the trigger, you may be able to find a couple of things where you can just tweak the dials a little bit and then get a real extra bang for your book as it gets out there. So that that response is specifically useful information, but generic enough and useful enough that it will give value to anyone that fills in the scorecard without us having to manually review each of them and try and craft an individual message. So I think that's the opportunity for everyone, whether you have a local business or part of a big multinational with checklists and assessments there already. I think that word assessment can seem a little bit daunting. But that thing of allowing people to. Because that whole, I mean, scorecards are a great example because it's just a nice framework for the majority of businesses where here's an 8 by 4 full table drop in the things that you know, that make sense. And there's a nice way of assessing themselves because really the job of work of that assessment is for people to evidence to themselves that they should progress and do the next thing. It's not that we're trying to convince people to work with us, it's that we're trying to allow them to evidence to themselves that either I'm on the right track, I should just put pull the trigger and get out the door, or actually there's a lot of gaps here. How am I going to close those gaps? Well, I can either spend a lot of time doing it myself or I can ask these guys who seem to know what they're doing and we're all talking on the right page and they've given me some helpful information already. So that that step is really the people evidencing to themselves that they're on the right path and therefore moving to the next step, which is to do business with us. To do business with you. Makes sense.

Guest: Yeah, it does, absolutely. Next is.

Stuart: Okay, when we started this I just wrote a couple of things on the list and thought okay, well we've got something to get started with here. I'm not sure how much we've got, but we're 30 minutes in. Again, we're just on the first one. I think what probably makes sense this is for us to draw a line under it there. Actually, I'm going to talk about one more thing. We'll talk about nine word emails briefly because that's relevant to emails. But the other things on the list we were talking about complementary non competing partnerships and we can do a deep dive in that in the next show I think because otherwise we'll start running long and we won't do that one service. So let's stick with emails here. So super single. Yeah, well, give me two seconds. I'm just going to wrap up Super Signature because I've got in front of me, everyone that's listening to this will have received the email that or should have received the email that were broadcast out with it. So our super signature is in that email message. So go take a listen to that. If you're listening to this and you're just subscribed to the podcast. If you're not on any of our mailing lists, then head over to 90minutebooks.com and stick in your details there to get a copy of the 90 minute book. And then you'll get the emails that we're talking about as well. So it's a great example of using this in, in practice and everything that we do, I mean we're not precious about it at all. Steal the things that, that we're talking about here in terms of the super signatures and, and the nine word email that we'll talk about in a second. Just tailor it to your business. I mean the more people that start to do this, the better. I mentioned emailmastery.com as a resource to get a copy of the email Mastery book. So absolutely grab a copy of, of that as well because Dean in that book goes into a lot more detail than on a number of different subjects, not just the super signature. Just before we move on then. So I'M going to read the Super Signature that goes to the entrepreneur list. So that's anyone that's on the Email Mastery list or Breakthrough DNA or some of the other ones that I can't remember now. So the emails that go out from there with the Super Signature has the body of the email and then the sign off and then it says plus, whenever you're ready. Here are four ways I can help you hatch evil schemes for your business. Number one, Be a guest on More Cheese, Less Whiskers. My favorite thing is to hatch evil schemes and apply the eight profit activators to all kinds of businesses. Big business, small business, professional service. Click here to be a guest on the show. Number two, Try the new Profit Activator Scorecard. The framework of everything we talk about on More Choose Less Whiskers is based on the 8 profit activators. Find out how they're either growing or slowing your business by clicking here. Number three, join our Email Mastery Academy and become a case study and putting together an email mastery group at the end of the month. Stay tuned for details. If you'd like to work with me on your email sales process, just reply to this message, put Email Mastery in the subject and I'll get you all the details. And then number four, work with me one on one. If you'd like to work directly with me to hatch some evil schemes for your business, just reply to this message and put one on one in the subject line. Tell me a little about, tell me a little bit about your business and what you'd like to work on together it and I'll get you all the details. So those four things then are exactly as we described. There's the initial no commitment step of being a guest on the podcast. There's the middle one of the Profit Activator Scorecard. Head over and fill out the details to evidence to yourself where you sit on that framework. And then 3 and 4 are really the main customer driven things of joining my mastery or work with me one on one. So that example again is another one that as you're listening you can steal those ideas and tailor them for your own business. And every email communication, it's an opportunity then for people to take it forward themselves.

Guest: Great. So the nine word email.

Stuart: Yeah, the nine word email. Again, this is another Dean Jackson idea. Dean's been talking about nine word email for. I mean this idea goes back years now. We've been using it hugely successfully across all sorts of businesses. Particularly anyone that's got a list of over even 500 people that maybe they haven't been communicating with. The nine word email is what we refer to as a spear email. Short, personal, expecting a reply. It's not a cold traffic email. It's designed to re engage leads that perhaps you haven't spoken to for a while or people who are on the list then get a short personal email that kind of is separate from the normal email blast that people would typically see. Nine words. It's not. There's no magic around nine words. But nine word email is shorter than a 29 word email. So the idea is that it's short, asking for one question.

Guest: So sometimes you might get an 11 word email from Dean, you know, you might get an eight word even just, you know, sometimes it happens, you know,

Stuart: and it's funny how many people reply and say oh that's not nine words.

Guest: They do. It happens pretty much once a week. Yeah, but you know what, but it, but there's great, I think if people just walk away with nothing after listening to this today is the nine word email. It, it works, it engages people, is short. It's that it's a simple question and it makes people want to respond. They feel like, they feel like it is a personal email. They feel like their friend. I mean and somebody said this to me two days ago, like I felt like my friend Dean that I don't even know. And that led to an encounter, to a conversation with me and then it led to, you know, them coming on board to do a book and it. And that's the goal, you know, to have that conversation to you know, just, just a blanket statement, nobody's doing anything. So you ask that question, that simple question, that one question and make it like it. Hey Stuart, would you like to get started on your book this month? Dean? And people feel like, wow that you know, it's simple, it engages you and it doesn't have to be like you said 29 words or.

Stuart: Yeah. Even as, as people listen to this. Definitely go and get a copy of the email mastery book because it's nine word is the. I think it's the first chapter in there but it definitely goes a lot deeper than we'll have time to today. But that personal element and the, well, the spear, the short personal expecting reply, that's exactly what it is and it's exactly why it stands out from the kind of corporatized type blurb email that people are typically expecting to receive. Dean talks a lot about the Starbucks test that goes along with it because the language that people use and we've talked about this before I fall into this trap. Having a corporate background, the language that people use gets too official or it doesn't quite sound right. So the test for these short emails is if you bumped into the person in Starbucks and you were saying to them, hey Betsy, do you want to get started on your book this week? That sounds a lot better than hey Betsy. I was sat here thinking about all of the people that write books and I was thinking, I haven't heard from you for a while. And all of this convoluted, long blurby emails that people can write, which is

Guest: probably like who I was before I came into this organization. You know, meeting every email was that long. Was that just to get to the point of asking a simple question?

Stuart: Right. I mean, it's almost like people feel like they've got to talk more. It's like that Glengarry Glen Ross thing of kind of always be closing. And if people are still talking, then I'm still closing. So the people, I always try and translate that into email and they've got to beat people into submission by putting all of the words, it's like the long form sales letter squashed into a landing page for all of the information in there, rather than thinking about it as this is the beginning of a conversation. So from the book perspective, as you're listening to this, you're either thinking about writing a book, you have written a book, you come to the end of the process of having written it with us. What's the first thing that you can do as you're thinking about putting out there? If you've got any size list at all, whether you're regular communication with them or you haven't communicated with them for a while, one of the best things that you can do because you're not. The book is great for generating leads, but it's. These are leads that you've already got. It's people that you already know you've had some kind of conversation with, even if it was a long time ago. So asking them, are they ready to do such and such. So with Phil's example, are you still looking to buy a yacht? With our example, are you ready to get started in your book this month with the florist example, have you booked a venue yet? Are you still looking for wedding flowers? Have you decided on the, the type of flower? Although not those words, better words than that with the financial advisors, have you, have you picked a, have you picked an IRA yet? Have you sorted out your pension yet? All of these things are short. Personally expecting a Reply almost. The book is irrelevant because we're not lead generating with brand new people, we're not offering them something. But the book then comes into play as a follow up. So it's an opportunity to once people reply to engage them in conversation. But if that starts to go dry and they're not ready yet, send them the email saying that's great but here's a copy of the book if you want to find out more information. The florist example, if someone doesn't reply, you've sent them one email already kind of trying to re engage the conversation. Sending a follow up short email afterwards saying hey Betsy, I've just written this book that talks specifically about this thing that we were talking about that talks specifically about flowers in the fall in May. Go grab a copy over here. The short personal one is the way to kind of re engage that list of people with a short personal question that encourages them, it makes it simple for them to reply and really just starts that conversation.

Guest: Yeah, it's, I mean and we see it all the time, the success we have with it and we hear from people who, you know, I think I shared this one time when I was at one of Dean's events and somebody did the nine word email and that night they had you know like an exorbitant amount of emails that came in from that. Do you remember that? Who was that? One of our, it was one of our current clients and it just worked. So

Stuart: the London event last year, there was. What was the exact business. They were property managers in Spain and they were. Yeah, yeah, they were lead generating through third party. So there's a couple of these details aren't going to be exactly right but they're close enough. So they were lead generating through a couple of big third party sites like Zillow or Trulia. There was like some big MLS sites where people who were interested filled out some details but then it went through a third party agent. So there's this disconnect where they were collecting a good number of leads but there wasn't necessarily an ongoing conversation or it went quiet pretty quickly because there was a disconnect between the site that the person was initially responding to and then the emails were coming from a different entity. So there wasn't necessarily a coherent relationship going on. So the nine word email that was sent out there was something like have you bought a property yet? And the response is to that were off the chart. Now sometimes people say I don't want to send out an I word because what if I've got too many responses to handle. Well, that's a good problem to have. All of this is business potential business that you didn't previously know about. So even if it takes you a week to get through them, do it. And then you've identified all these people. And if, even if you follow up with only 50% of them, I mean, don't follow up with all of them. If it was 50% still, it's still a lot more than it was. But that short personally expecting reply, it makes it easy for people to get into conversation. It's relevant to whatever the original thing was that they raised their hand and it's specific enough that they can just reply to that one thing. It's not replying, asking them for their opinion on a big broad subject. I think it's just one short specific question that makes it easy to reply to and therefore easy to to easy to start that conversation. At minimum, viable commitment. Step.

Guest: Yeah. Very good.

Stuart: Okay, that's awesome. I think we're probably done. Good. I think there was, as I say, if you're listening and you're thinking there was a lot there, I'm not quite sure how this fits in or there was a lot of examples that I'm struggling to get in my head all at once. Head over to emailmastery.com and grab a copy of the Email Mastery book because then obviously it'll take you through step by step a lot of these things that we've talked about. I'm going to put some show notes and a couple of the super signature examples on the show notes page. So that will be as always across on 90minutebooks.com podcast or follow the podcast from the resources link on the top of the website. And then this is going to be episode 60 so 060 and then there'll be some of the additional resources there. We mentioned in there the book Blueprint scorecard where you can position yourself against the eight mindsets of creating the best lead engagement, the best business book out there. So for that, head across to bookblueprintscore.com and then you can score yourself against that framework and identify which areas are strong in which which you could do with more help. And then if you need more help, we can obviously do all of this for you and make it so that it just takes up 90 minutes of your time and get it out there and just head across to 90minutebooks.com and follow the get started links and we're here waiting to help and get your book out there.

Guest: Very good.

Stuart: We are okay, so anything that. Any last words?

Guest: No, I think it's good. Good stuff.

Stuart: And

Guest: that's all I'm gonna say. They know. They know the drill. They know.

Stuart: Okay, guys, well, thanks for listening. We'll be back next week with another show. In the meantime, head across to nineminutebooks.com and follow up on some of the resources we talked about. Thanks for your time, Betsy, and we'll catch everyone in the next one.

Guest: Always a pleasure. Take care.

Stuart: Take care. Bye.