How to get your customers to ignore you

A few years ago I was walking down the street in Panama City. Some guy came up to me and said, in a big, booming voice:

“EXCUSE ME, SIR! DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH OR SPANISH?”

In the 30-ish days I spent in Panama City I saw this guy maybe 4 or 5 different times. Every time I saw him, he said the same thing to me in his big booming voice.

And every time he spoke to me in his big, booming voice, I ignored him.

I didn’t look up. I didn’t acknowledge him. I just walked right past him, without saying a word.

Why? I’ve learned that in Latin America, when some random dude on the street starts speaking English to you, you need to ignore him. Because they either want to sell you something, they want to beg you for money, they want to tell you about their god, or they want to rob you.

(If the dude had talked to me in Spanish, I might have responded. The people who speak Spanish to me are usually nice and just want to chat.)

You probably do the same thing when a salesman knocks on your door, or when a telemarketer calls you, or when you see somebody handing out flyers on the street. You instinctively ignore them, because you know nothing good can happen if you talk to them.

Most marketers do the same thing that the guy in Panama did. They do the online equivalent of speaking in a big booming voice: they write in all caps, they say stuff that’s obviously not true, they inflate their authority, and they try to sound as hype-y as possible.

In other words, they try to “sound like a marketer”.

That’s the worst thing you can do!

Because if you sound like a marketer, your audience will tune you out!

At this point, most people know that most people who sell stuff on the internet are full of shit. If you talk like a marketer, they’ll ignore you.

How do you fix this? Just talk like a regular person.

Don’t do weird gimmicky stuff to get attention. Because it usually hurts you more than it helps you.

(Oh, and, the smarter your audience is, the more this rule applies to you.)

If you want help making content that sounds like a real person wrote it, with no weird gimmicky stuff, check this out:

theoseeds.com/brandvoice

How to sell more colonoscopies by making them longer and more painful

Imagine for a second that you are a colonoscopy doctor.

What’s your biggest problem in the world?

Getting your customers to come back!

Everybody knows they need a colonoscopy. And most people bite the bullet eventually. They say “fine, I’ll do it,” and they come to you.

“Come back in 10 years, because we need to do another one,” you say. Then 10 years pass, and you don’t hear back from them.

So you call them. “I know I need to come see you again, doc,” they say. “But last time was too painful. I don’t wanna come back.”

What do you do?

Once upon a time, some psychologists did a study on how to make colonoscopies seem less painful, so people would come back for a second colonoscopy.

They found something really weird. They found that when they made colonoscopies longer and more painful, people remember them being less painful.

Here’s why. When you rip the camera right out, people go from being in extreme pain to not being in pain at all. They go from a 10 to a 0, instantly. So when they reflect back on how painful it was, they remember the 10.

But when you pull everything out slowly, people don’t go straight from 10 to 0. They go from a 10, gradually down to a 5, then gradually down to a 0. So when they think back to how much pain they were in, they don’t remember the 10 — they remember the 5.

Psychologists call this the “peak-end effect”. Basically, when we look back on past experiences, we remember the very end.

This is true for painful stuff like colonoscopies. It’s also true for fun stuff. If you go see the Blue Man Group, or Cirque du Soleil, or fireworks on the 4th of July, they will “save the best for last”. Why? Because that’s what you’ll remember.

You probably see where I’m going with this. I’m about to say that every program you sell — whether it’s a course, a coaching program, a book — is a stepping stone to the next program you sell.

It’s a way better stepping stone if you end it strong.

So finish strong. Give people your most interesting, most useful, and most entertaining tidbit last. That way they come back for more.

-Theo

Bom dia

On Friday morning I stepped onto an airplane. I looked the first flight attendant I saw dead in the eye.

He smiled at me and said “Bom dia”. (That means “good day” in Portuguese.)

“Uhhhh… bommjia”, I said back.

I was confused. Why was he speaking Portuguese?

My flight was between Bogotá, Colombia, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2 cities that speak Spanish. Not Portuguese.

That wasn’t the only time I heard Portuguese on that flight. Once we were all sitting down, they told us the safety instructions… in Portuguese.

Then after we took off, the captain told us he was turning off the fasten seatbelt sign… in Portuguese.

(“I don’t know what the hell they’re saying”, said the Argentinian man in the row behind me.)

Why were they speaking Portuguese? Because they were a Brazilian airline. They spoke Portuguese… and I guess they must’ve thought we did, too.

It was even weirder because the flight crew spoke Spanish just fine. When they came down the aisle to offer us drinks, or give us food, or take away our trash, they spoke Spanish. I have no clue why they spoke Portuguese over the loudspeaker.

Seems silly, right? But pretty much every business owner makes the same mistake. Especially coaches.

A lot of coaches come to me and ask me, “Theo, why isn’t my program selling?” Then I look at their website, and it’s covered in weird jargon and pet theories.

In other words, they’re saying stuff that they understand, that nobody else understands. (They might as well be speaking a different language.)

Some examples include women’s business/spirituality coaches who talk about stuff like “chakra meditations”, and men’s dating coaches who talk about “inner game”.

What’s the problem? Most people don’t know what that stuff is, and they don’t care. And if you try to explain it to them, they’re not gonna understand you.

So don’t speak your own language. Instead, speak your audience’s language.

Put yourself in their shoes. Ask yourself what they know. Ask yourself what their biggest problems are right now. And ask yourself what they need to know before they buy something from you.

Don’t know how your audience thinks? It’s not that hard to learn. Just do some market research.

Market research usually takes forever, but I’ve learned a few tricks that make it way easier. I included them in my mini-book, How To Make 2x More Money From Your Email List.

One of the tricks involves doing a 5-minute search on YouTube.

Wanna know what it is?

You can get a copy of the book here:

theoseeds.com/minibook