My favorite professor, a pot farmer, and how to make your content less boring

Last week I told you about the “favorite professor effect”. Now I’m gonna tell you about my favorite college professor, a guy called Dustin Frye.

Frye was my favorite professor because he understood a secret about how to teach stuff. The best online marketers understand this secret. Most regular people don’t.

Professor Frye was objectively a very bad teacher. Some of my other professors had written books and gotten published in super-prestigious journals and were considered experts in their field. Others were mind-bogglingly smart. But Frye was just a normal dude.

Meanwhile, Frye had just gotten out of grad school and was making a name for himself. And he wasn’t some rising star, either: he actually got denied tenure after I graduated, and went to work at a less prestigious school.

But Professor Frye’s classes were still my favorite, because he was entertaining. Most teachers just kinda read from the textbook. But Frye’s classes were human: he taught, but he also cracked jokes and told us funny stories from his life.

For example. One day we were reading this economics paper that compared people to their brothers. So Frye started telling us about his brother.

“My brother and I couldn’t be more different,” said Professor Frye. “I’m an economics professor at a prestigious university. And my brother is a pot farmer.”

He told us that his brother’s pot farming business hadn’t been doing well lately. “It really cuts into your profit margins when you smoke most of what you grow.”

Now I am doing the exact same thing that Professor Frye did. You joined my email list so you could learn more about selling courses and coaching programs. And here I am telling you stories about an economics professor and a drug dealer.

But that’s my whole point! Learning all by itself is boring. If all you do is teach, teach, teach, then your students will get bored with you!

If you want people to actually read what you write or watch what you record, you need to entertain people.

That means you have to crack jokes, tell stories, and do more than just info-dump all your knowledge.

(This is also why I put memes in my emails. It makes them more entertaining, so you’re more likely to open them next time.)

College professors get paid a flat salary. Meanwhile, you get paid per student who signs up for your programs. So you might want to be more entertaining.

If you want to send entertaining emails (like this one) to your audience, check this out:

theoseeds.com/brandvoice

Why I spent $3500 on a spiritual retreat even though I think spirituality is a scam

Earlier this year I spent $3500 on a spiritual retreat, even though I had absolutely zero interest in spiritual retreats.

I had no idea exactly what my $3500 was buying me. The benefit seemed really vague to me. But I did it anyways.

Why?

In college I got some advice: “if you get a good professor, take every class you can with them. Even if you don’t think you’ll be interested in what they’re teaching.”

Well, my first copywriting coach had a pretty vague spiritual offer up on his website. He was saying that this “ceremony” had helped him tremendously.

If anybody else had said this stuff I would have thought it was a scam. But I knew he’s a super smart dude, and I know he’s honest. So I figured, if he believes in this so much, maybe I should give it a shot.

So I shelled out $3500 and I flew to San Diego for a weekend so I could talk to my inner child with him. (And it was worth it!)

The point is, if you’re somebody’s “favorite professor”, they’ll buy just about anything you offer. Even if it’s not exactly what they’re looking for. They’ll buy it just because it’s you.

(This is super helpful if you have a strange or hard-to-explain offer. If you can get people in the door and prove you know what you're talking about, they'll take a chance on you, even if they're not 100% sure what they're getting.)

2 lessons from this. First of all, when someone buys something from you, that’s not the end. It’s the beginning.

Now that they’re your student, it’s your job to be the most amazing teacher they’ve ever had, so they’ll want to buy more and more stuff from you.

So treat your course content like your marketing content. Make it as good and interesting and entertaining as you can. Cut out as much of the fluff and the boring parts as you can. Dazzle them.

And then second of all, have an upsell!

Your upsell doesn’t necessarily need to be perfect. You can sell a pretty vague 1-on-1 coaching offer, or a weekend retreat in your backyard where you sip margaritas and do yoga. If someone likes you enough, they’ll still buy it.

Just have something.

Best,

Theo

P.S. Of course, before you can be somebody’s “favorite professor”, you need to get them to buy one thing from you.

The best way to do that is to do more of whatever’s working for you right now. If you’re getting tons of clients by posting on LinkedIn or from referrals, do more of that.

The second best way to sell more of your stuff is to get better at email marketing. (Email is the easiest place on the internet to sell anything.)

That’s why I wrote a mini-book about email marketing, which contains all the secrets I’ve picked up from selling millions of dollars worth of courses and coaching through email.

It costs $7 and you can learn more about it right here:

theoseeds.com/minibook

How to make money online as a chain-smoking 70-year-old gramma

One of my former clients goes to thrift stores, buys used books, and then sells them on Amazon.

He also sells courses where he teaches people to go to thrift stores, buy used books, and then sell them on Amazon.

Now, imagine you sold courses about flipping stuff from thrift stores. What would your sales pitch be?

Well, my client’s top-performing Facebook ads were all about his mom.

He taught his 70-year-old chain smoking mother to go to thrift stores, buy used books, and then sell them on Amazon.

Then he bragged about it in his marketing, and his conversion rates went up like crazy.

Now, imagine you’re working a dreary full-time job you hate, and you’re looking for a side hustle. But everything seems so hard, and you have low self-confidence, and you just don’t think there’s anything you can be good at.

Then, you see a 70-year-old, chain smoking grandmother making more money than you by just flipping stuff at thrift stores.

You’ll probably say to yourself, “That’s easy! If she can do that, I can do it too!” And you’ll buy the course.

A lot of your customers are thinking the same thing. They might think your course or your coaching program sounds great… but it won’t work for them, because they’re too dumb, or too old, or too fat, or too young, or too undisciplined, or too inexperienced, or too whatever their insecurity is.

If you don’t address that, you lose the sale.

This goes whether you sell business courses, weight loss, anything. (It ESPECIALLY goes if you sell anything related to dating, because people have tons of insecurities about dating.)

So if you’ve got any 70-year-old grandmothers crushing it in your coaching program— talk about her!

Best,

Theo

P.S. What if you don’t have social proof? You can still address people’s insecurities.

If people think they’ll fail because they’ve never started a business before, say “this program is for you, even if you’re a complete beginner.”

You get the picture.

P.P.S. I wrote a mini-book with a bunch of email marketing tips. I’ve used these tactics to generate 6-figure launches for my clients. If you put them to use, you could double your email revenue.

If you’ve paid me any money in the last 30 days, email me and I’ll give you a copy for free. Otherwise, you can get a copy for the exorbitantly high price of $7:

theoseeds.com/minibook