When I was 17 my neighbors had a garage sale. They were selling a giant cardboard box full of huge hardcover books about former presidents.
They had:
· An 1,100 page book about Harry Truman
· A 600 page book about John Adams
· A 750 page book about Abraham Lincoln
· A 450 page book about the American Revolution
· And more.
I bought them all. (Don’t ask me why.)
I’m way too intimidated to actually read them. So they’ve just been sitting around collecting dust for years, until I decided to take the Lincoln book with me during my travels.
A couple weeks ago I finally got around to reading it. (Which is a pain in the butt: when I’m carrying it around, my backpack is twice as heavy!)
If you grew up in the US, you learned about him in school. You learned how he grew up in a log cabin, and then he gave an address at Gettysburg, and then he freed all the slaves, and then he got shot while watching a play.
What you don’t learn is that Lincoln was never actually supposed to be president. At the time, a guy named William Seward was the hotshot politician considered next in line to become president. But for weird political reasons, Seward didn’t get nominated by his party.
Abraham Lincoln saw those weird political reasons coming a year in advance. He saw that there was a chance Seward might not get nominated. And if Seward didn’t get nominated, his party would need a “compromise candidate”. Lincoln wanted to be that compromise candidate.
His problem was that nobody knew who he was. So he spent the entire year before the election building his reputation. He toured the US, speaking everywhere he could. He published his autobiography. He got his hands on the transcripts of his debates with Stephen Douglas, and had them published. Anything to get his name out there.
Seward didn’t get nominated on the first ballot. Then he didn’t get nominated on the second ballot. Some of the delegates started whispering that Seward was unelectable, he had too much baggage.
But they had to nominate somebody. So some of Abraham Lincoln’s friends said, “hey, what about Abe Lincoln?”
A few ballots later, Seward was out, and Lincoln was in. And you know the rest of the story.
I say in these emails constantly that if you want to sell high-ticket, you need to build your personal brand. People don’t buy high-ticket coaching from people they don’t know.
The more famous you get, the more you can charge. The difference between a $2,000 coaching package and a $20,000 coaching package is mostly just, how much do people recognize your name?
(This is how Tony Robbins can charge people $1,000,000 for a year of 1-on-1 coaching.)
In 6 years, Abraham Lincoln built one of the best personal brands ever. He went from being completely unknown to being an American legend.
How’d he do it? He started by just getting his name out there. He talked to as many influential people as he could. He published as much stuff as he could. He basically went on the 1800’s equivalent of a PR blitz.
You can do the same thing today. In fact, it’s way easier, because of the internet. And because unlike Abe Lincoln, you don’t need to become president — you just need to be famous in your niche.
There are a bunch of ways to do that: you can write a book, you can start a podcast, you can start a YouTube channel, you can post on Instagram. But my recommendation: write emails just like this one.
Want me to help you with that? Then check this out:
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