There’s a video on YouTube that shows Dan Kennedy’s cave. It’s where Dan does his writing, and where he receives clients for consults.
Dan’s cave is underground. That said, it’s as bright and cheery as an underground cave can be. The walls are packed with rare Disney memorabilia, exotic money, and clocks. And then there’s a sign that reads:
“Will work for hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
This connected in my mind to something Jay Abraham said.
(By the way, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to Jay Abraham, including the video I re-watched today. I can imagine he’s said this same thing in many places, but it never registered in my head until just now. It’s another example of why it’s worth going back to stuff you’ve already read or listened to.)
Anyways, Jay was saying how you don’t want to just give stuff away for free. First off, you want to make people understand how valuable your free gift is. Second, you want to set expectations. Jay gave some off-the-cuff copy to show what he means:
We’ve spent five years and 50,000 hours studying this. We’ve come to conclusions that, to our knowledge, no one else has. We’ve spent a year and a half refining it. We’ve now put it into a form where you can grasp it and you can act on it. It will instantly impact your performance. It’s the result of looking at billions of dollars of successful transactions.
It would mean a lot to us to share this with you. We would like to gift it to you without charge and buy it for you. But there is an expectation, and it’s a very respectful one:
If we do that, we’d like if you, first of all, take the time to seriously read it and reflect on it and then take action. And we’re hoping it will help you appreciate what we do so that there will be an inclination to want to do business with us later.
It’s this last bit that finally clicked for me. Jay is basically saying, free stuff ain’t free. And you should let people aware of this. Don’t be pushy. Don’t be needy. But do state the fact.
Speaking of which:
I’ve written almost 900 of these blog posts, each of which is first sent out as an email to my newsletter subscribers. By my estimate, they are the result of ~9,000 hours of cumulative work and experience.
This includes tens of thousands of dollars in copywriting coaching… dozens of courses and even more books on the topics of copywriting and marketing… and the experience of 6 years of working on client projects, with many 7-figure and several 8-figure direct response businesses.
I’m saying this because it means a lot to me to share these posts with you. I hope you get value and entertainment out of them. I also hope they will, as Jay says, give you an inclination to do do business with me later.
Speaking of which:
If you want to do business with me, the first step is to get my free (well, debatable) email newsletter. Click here if you’d like to sign up.