Far too often, people are giving way too many offers to their audience. Far too often, people are kind of hitting them over the head a little too soon. Think about the fact that this is why perhaps we’ll phrase it this way: Some email marketing gets a bad rep. And why does it? Because there’s too many people who do it badly. There’s too many people who have made bad use of the platform, and they don’t understand the value of the one key phrase I’m talking about here this episode, which is that of relationships. We are building a relationship with our audience. You know your business can change people’s lives, but you don’t yet have the right words to inspire them to take action. Imagine the changes you will create in your business as you tap into the secrets of ethical influence and positive persuasion to not only better serve your clients but also to supercharge your financial freedom. I’m your host, Jason Linett, and welcome

[00:00:59]

to the Hypnotic Language Hacks podcast. I help entrepreneurs and business owners just like you to close more premium sales. And no, this isn’t about tricking or manipulating people. Not at all. It’s about helping your prospects to appropriately sell themselves into your products or services. Please hit subscribe and get all the episodes now at jasonlinett.com. Imagine what would happen if you suddenly realized in your business, you were selling the wrong thing. I mean, think about that. You might have put so much effort into building out whatever product or service it is that you provide yet, as soon as it’s all ready, or maybe as it’s already been running, you suddenly realize you’re selling the wrong thing. This week’s episode is all about revealing to you the number-one mistake that people make in business. You’re going to learn how to prevent it. You’re going to learn how to troubleshoot it. You’re going to learn the exact solution to sell the right thing each and every time.

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Before we get started today, if you want to easily grab people’s attention, naturally build authority and organically and have your prospects wanting more from you even before you make an offer, I’ve created a step-by-step strategy to help you to do just that. I call it The Video Influence System. This is your opportunity, now, to discover my highly-effective, entirely free, on-demand workshop at jasonlinett.com. It’s specifically for entrepreneurs who want to deliver premium value to their clients to receive premium value in return. If you want a proven framework to boost your confidence and deliver value every time you go on camera, get The Video Influence System now at jasonlinett.com. I know I just gave you a pretty serious cliffhanger. Right? You know, a little while ago, I promised that I was going to explain to you the number-one mistake that people make in business. And it’s where some of you right now might be thinking I had better listen to what

[00:03:02]

Jason Linett has to say to me because if I skip this episode, I might miss what that number-one mistake is. And if I miss it, I might keep making it in my business. Right? And what if that’s the fatal flaw that results in the ending doom of my entire career? Well, with a promise that hefty, I better deliver right away. Right? But first, a story. So it’s 2003, and there’s this girl at my college that I will admit I had a bit of a crush on, which was kind of a funny situation because we met working on a project together. We had been assigned a specific task in a program together, and we were then working together and we did not get along. It did not go well. We were kind of butting heads the entire way through. Yet, for some reason, in spite of that, even as the project was over, we kept hanging out with each other. Hmm. Think about that for a moment. And I will admit I was terrified, so I didn’t ask her out.

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I didn’t ask her out at least not at first instead…well, you know how with email marketing someone has to click a button that actually gives you explicit permission that it’s okay for them to then send you something you’ve made an offer? And then they go to your website, they type in their email address, and they click a button, which then gives you permission to send them permission-based marketing messages. Right? Well, I wasn’t yet in business at the time. I was in college at the moment, but somehow the principles were already there inside of me. So here’s what I did. One day I said to her, “Would it be okay if one day I asked you out?” Permission-based marketing, right? Well, she said yes to that. And that just boosted my confidence right away. I was so excited. My foot was in the door. Game on. So then I waited at least, like, maybe two and a half weeks. It took me some time to then officially ask her out. Well, she said “Yes.” before. She said “Yes.” this time as well. Woohoo. This was awesome.

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And the rest of the story now really begins to write itself. That was my first date with Michelle November 8th, 2003. From that story, everything then continued where eventually I took a job in another state. This was after I graduated from college about two years later. And as I took the job in another state, we would make trips back and forth to see each other. And then eventually, she kind of reorganized her life to take a job in the same area as well, which is where it made perfect sense. We moved in together. Now, things soon got very serious because we went out and got a cat. That’s how you know it was legit. So as we had the cat, it was a natural progression that eventually I proposed. And she said, “Yes.” That time I didn’t ask permission. I just went for it. I planned it quite a bit though. I asked her to marry me. She said, “Yes.” Now we looked at our calendars. And we realized that if we waited about two more years, we could actually get

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married on the very same calendar date as our first date, which makes the math really cool. First date, November 8th, 2003. Our wedding was on November 8th, 2008, celebrated our 10th anniversary on a trip to Italy on November 8th, 2018. And the story continues from there. So I tell you this because we’re about to talk about the number-one mistake that people make in business because what did I not do? I did not go up to her on day one still as I was, I believe a sophomore and she was a freshman in college, I didn’t walk over and stare her down and say, “You and I are going to have children.” Now that we’ve been married for all these years and I better know her sense of humor, it might’ve worked. But it also might’ve resulted in a smack in the face. It wasn’t resulting in, again, the experience of getting into the nitty-gritty details. All I did first was asked permission for the process to begin. It was a moment of consent-based experience.

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Let’s bring this over to consent-based marketing. So how does this apply to the number-one mistake that people make in business? Too many people in business are metaphorically trying to consummate the marriage on the very first date. They’re trying to jump in way too quickly. They’re trying to jump in way too soon, which is a perfect example of this. Look at the previous episode I just did with Pat Flynn of the smart, passive income, the opportunity to build an audience exactly what he did building out this incredible following even before there was a product ready to offer to that specific market. The same way that, again, I didn’t walk over and ask some very intimate questions way too early. Given the fact we now have two kids, let your imaginations fill in the details there. But this place where we began by just simply getting the next step of the process in motion. So this is exactly what I want to share with you right now.

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The mistake that people are making in business is that they’re trying to go for the sale much too quickly. The old adage that people do business with people that they know, like, and trust. Know, like, and trust and not until we have those three factors in place will they eventually graduate into buy. For those of you that have maybe been active in the group BNI, Business Networking International. In my career over the years, I spent about three years in one chapter and left it behind for various reasons and then joined another chapter a few years later. And if you’ve ever been in that world of BNI, Business Networking International, they teach an acronym of VCP Visibility, Credibility, Profitability where we have to have the sequence in order otherwise…we’ll phrase it this way: it may be difficult for people to naturally want to move to the next step. So likewise, to the story of my wife, and I didn’t go up to her and say, “Hey,

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I’m moving to Baltimore. Come with me.” Right? When she could have at that point said, “I don’t know you.” And that would have been creepy. So, don’t do that. Do you like how we’re also expanding beyond business advice here to also get very much into relationship expertise? Yeah. How about that? A little bit of everything here at the Hypnotic Language Hacks podcast. So how do we apply this to our business? The principles of know, like, and trust, which have to then lead into buy, visibility, credibility, profitability from the BNI world. Let’s give them credit where it’s due. There’s a sequence to this. I was visible to her because we were in this classroom project together. Then it was credible because despite the fact that we didn’t get along as we did the project, we still did quite well in it, which is probably why it became let’s say familiar to keep hanging out. And true story the turning point was that she was homesick in her college dorm with a bit of a bad cold, and I showed up with a can of soup because that’s how classy I am.

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It was chicken soup at least a can of soup as well as the original Nintendo entertainment system. Nothing brings people together like Super Mario Brothers 3, maybe Super Mario Brothers 2 or the first one number three. You and I know that’s the first one. I’m not going to argue with this. You know it’s the best one. Back on track here. There’s one thing you should always be selling in your business. You should always always be selling the next step. And think about this for a moment. Far too often, people are giving way too many offers to their audience. Far too often, people are kind of hitting them over the head a little too soon. Think about the fact that this is why perhaps we’ll phrase it this way: Some email marketing gets a bad rep. And why does it? Because there’s too many people who do it badly. There’s too many people who have made bad use of the platform, and they don’t understand the value of the one key phrase I’m talking about here this episode, which is that of relationships.

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We are building a relationship with our audience. Now, of course, there’s an exception to this. You might be somebody who sells something that’s a little bit more entry-level perhaps, or sometimes we need to buy some little technical gadget. You know, I’ve got a wireless microphone that I’m speaking through right now. And where did I choose the batteries? I went on Amazon. I found here’s this set of reusable rechargeable batteries with, like, 20,000 5-star reviews. And I went, hey, they’re cheap. That’s a good rate. That’s a good deal. That’s a great piece of feedback. I’m in. Now, I can’t tell you the name of that company because again, that’s different. I’m talking to you because chances are you deserve to earn a premium for what you do. And the formula for that is always very simple. Everything I’m going to share with you in this podcast series is always about helping you to provide even more value to your audience even more value to those people who, eventually, that’s the key phrase, eventually, you’re going to sell to.

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Let’s provide premium value so it’s even easier to appropriately receive premium value back. Across the board, I can say this to most people in business: Raise your rates. And don’t price what you do based off of dollars for hours if you’re a service. Don’t price what you do in terms of a product based on necessarily how much it costs you to make it. Ask yourself, instead, what impact is this going to create in someone’s life? And let your pricing be based upon that. The quality of the rate that you ask is based upon three things, the value of the thing you’re selling as well as the quality of the onboarding experience that guides them through the experience, there’s the word once again, as well as we’ll call it out the confidence of the person asking for the sale. So these are three tangible things now. Make your product or service even better, work on boosting your own confidence. I’ll give you some strategies in this series as well.

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Plus on top of that, change your onboarding experience which is perhaps a good moment to kind of sidebar for a bit and talk about the classic sales funnel. Now there’s something that I do with sales funnels, which is by no means meant to be revolutionary because basically, it’s the same sales funnel that’s almost, let’s call it out, public domain at this point, which by the way, for the show notes of this episode, go to jasonlinett.com/5. That will bring you directly over to this because we’ll stick an image in the show notes over there of exactly what I’ve done. I’ve taken the classic sales funnel, and I’ve flipped it upside down. Whoa. I know, right? Revolutionary. But here’s why. And this is just metaphor, mind you. I don’t want to imagine my people falling through a system. Now, there is something to be said about using the natural law of gravity. You know, let’s use physics to our abilities here. But instead, if we flip the funnel upside down, that base level is now

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that entry point. And now the mindset becomes that people are graduating to the next step. And once they’re there, they graduate now to the next step. And there’s some different terminologies that I use for a sales funnel. And by no means do I do this to try to present it as my own original idea. There’s enough of that repurposing out there. Instead, we begin from a place of content, which is free information sort of like right now, you’re listening to a podcast. You might be watching it on YouTube. You might be listening to it on your favorite podcast listener. But then from there, there’s the opportunity to graduate to an opt-in win, which is the opportunity now for someone to exchange some piece of contact information thereby asking for information from you giving you permission to give them more, the exact same way opt-in win “Would be okay if one day I asked you out?” I got permission before I ever went to the next step there.

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Then from there a little bit of an optional thing, some people call that, by the way, a lead magnet, some people call that an ethical bribe. I call it an opt-in win because let’s just call it what it is. And the use of the word win is helpful there because the word win is denoting the fact that this should be a win for both you the business owner as well as a win for the person on the other side. That piece of information should give them a small measurable win and help to kind of activate that mental trigger that if this is good here, what’s going to happen when I pay for the product? Which then we can graduate up to the next level, which would be of what I call a value upgrade. This is also popularized and yes, by other terms as a tripwire or perhaps what’s the other term now? Of an entry point offer is the new terminology I think Ryan Deiss uses over at Digital Marketer. I call it a value upgrade because now we’re attaching value. We’re giving greater value. We’re upgrading the experience as well as starting to receive value back. So this might be where we’re now selling something.

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The thing that built my local business years ago was I offered a 90-minute workshop. I’d sell that 90-minute workshop for $50, very reasonable. However, I packed the room with, like, 15 people. Run the math that was $750 income for an hour and a half’s effort. Not bad, right? However, that was the opportunity to then let those people inside of my value upgrade graduate to the next step which is what we now call a core offer. And I believe almost everyone else who teaches funnel marketing calls it the same thing, core offer. So this would be that main product or service that you provide. And then from there, there may be some more scalable offers be it higher-value consulting, one to one coaching, maybe some sort of done for you service. And again, this is where it’s going to be different based on your business. So I give you that as the foundation and again, jasonlinett.com/5. That’ll bring you to the show notes. That’s where you can see the imagery of exactly how we’ve kind of rebuilt

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the funnel structure. So people are now moving to the next step. It’s a process of ascending to higher levels rather than descending and falling down, which falling down is never good unless it’s a clown, and they’re not a scary one because then it’s supposed to be funny and hopefully it is. The tangents here. I promise you we’ll get even more specific as we keep going. So what is that one thing that people should be selling? Well, the one thing you should be selling in your business is the next step. So you have to ask yourself where is my customer? Where is my prospect, my potential client? Where are they in this journey as to where they are? Which, let me give some credit where it’s due. A friend of mine by the name of Geoffrey Ronning who actually is the pioneer behind an amazing webinar platform called Stealth Seminar. Check the show notes. We’ll give you a link for that. Which for what it’s worth, Geoffrey Ronning was a hypnotist and was one of my original instructors.

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And how cool is it that then here we are in different worlds and kind of lining up once again? He would teach that we’re always moving somebody from a place of being unsophisticated to sophisticated where unsophisticated they don’t yet know what they don’t yet know, the old unconscious incompetence pattern as it were. And so our process in business…and this is great for those of you that maybe are a little bit timid around sales or promotion, or dare I say, advertising or marketing. It’s instead as we’re moving someone from a place of being unsophisticated to then only then once they become sophisticated, that’s when we make the sales offer. Well, the benefit now is our sales process begins to write itself. We’re only ever educating and informing and by doing so then inviting people to take the next step which the benefit of this is why at the foundation of that funnel, as we flip it, the foundation begins with content.

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This could be the writing on your website, which if that’s a challenge for you inside of business influence systems, I teach hypnotic writing for long-form and short-form, whether it’s websites, whether it’s emails, whether it’s the example of doing videos. Again, go to jasonlinett.com. Get the video influence system. That’s going to show you a step by step process to boost your confidence in what you present on camera and deliver value consistently in a way that has people wanting to take action. So that first level of that funnel foundation now is content, which here’s the benefit of that, by the way, don’t sell something to somebody that they don’t want and they don’t need. So the benefit of this content-based foundation of your marketing becomes the fact that some people will see that and go, “That’s exactly what I need. But then again, another group of people we’ll keep reading further will keep watching your videos, listening to your podcast, and maybe they’re realizing what you provide is not exactly what

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they’re looking for. Simple example. There’s a handyman that I’ve used a number of times here at my office in Springfield, Virginia. I used him recently the window blinds fell down, and they were clearly broken. So I did the amazing technical thing that I can do and went to Home Depot and bought window blinds. And then I called him up and go, “Hey, can you come hang them?” And he goes, “Oh, sweet. I’m in your neighborhood.” And they were done that day. How cool is that? Outsource the stuff you don’t know how to do someone else can do it faster and better. It’s worth all the money. Do it. We’ll have to do an episode later on specific outsourcing strategies. So this experience of looking at how we can make that offer and have them begin from that place of the foundation. So here’s my handyman, and it’s where one time I called him up and I explained in a long rant what was wrong with the plumbing in one of my bathrooms. And he let me go on and on and on. And eventually, he goes, “Jason, I don’t do plumbing. But I know you use this company for your heating and air. Call them.

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They do plumbing. That’s who I use.” So if I was on his website, hypothetically now, if I was on his website, by continuing to see all the examples, it may be a reference towards we don’t provide the service. You know, the example of here’s someone who, well, I work with people for punching up their vocabulary, punching up their delivery in terms of hitting headlines that grab people’s attention, working on their scripting in terms of videos and websites. But if they’re then going, “Yeah, but what colors are we going to make it?” While I can work with you on the colors, but when it comes to the actual build-out of the website, well, here’s the Rolodex. Hire one of the people I’ve hired. So I’m not the designer. I’m working from a different perspective of that. So the benefit of that core foundation of content is it allows people to naturally, again, graduate to the level where they already want to take that next step with you even before you make the next step offer. Likewise as well, appropriately, ethically, and responsibly,

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some people will realize oh, this is not what I’m looking for. And they’ll easily and naturally exit the process and everybody’s in good terms. Again, we want to be making the world better with what we do, the old sales adage that anybody can sell something once. And the keyword there is the word once. And for the dozen of you who also loved the movie, Johnny Dangerously you can laugh along with me at the delivery I just shared with you. Again, very specific references. This is how you get to know me. So this is the mistake at its core that I see on people’s websites even their business cards even dare I say it in the 21st century, they’re tri-fold brochures. It all comes down to where are your people gathering? Quick side story. When I opened up Virginia Hypnosis, it was around the height of the financial crisis in the United States in terms of junk mortgages. And one of my first offices was right next door to a testing facility. But if I remember part of the backstory I’ll generalize it here.

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In that world, suddenly, mortgage brokers had to get licensed. Think about that. They had to get licensed to do a job that some of them had been doing for 20 or 30 years. Oh, fancy websites, oh, Search Engine Optimization all that funnels. Woohoo. Well, no. I found the place where those people were gathering and as fast as we could try full brochures out of date as that might seem. And what was that offering? The next step. So what could your next step be? Well, let’s wrap this up in terms of avoiding the pitfalls. I see call this number to book your first appointment. Call this number to sign up for your service. And again, here’s the cynical filter I want you to appropriately assign to what you do in your business. Realize a lot of your audience they’re not yet qualified to make that decision. They’re not yet qualified to decide whether or not they need or even want your product or service. The same way that if I stood here right now and I said to you, “Hey,

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I’m going to sell you a car and it’s $10,000. How’s that for you?” Well, you don’t know yet. You don’t have enough information, right? I’m clearly not a car person. I’m about to mangle these references though for the teaching point. I traded in an old car from 2010 last year. And the fact that they gave me $4,000 on the trade-in was a gift. They were being generous. They wanted me to buy the other car. Meanwhile, I don’t have one. But if I offered to sell you the newest Tesla, which even I believe base model might be, like, $60,000. Well, hey, even if you don’t want that car, buy it, sell it. Hey, turn it around as a gamble or a quick investment, you know, short-term return. That’d be a great deal. So recognize so many people in your potential audience are not yet qualified to buy with you. It’s where I could say here’s an online program of mine that sells for $1,600.

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Is that a good deal? You don’t know yet until you’ve seen exactly what that is. Here’s another program that’s about $3,000. Here’s a private consulting program that runs for this many thousands or this many tens of thousands. You don’t yet know until we have the criteria. This is why it was essential to flip that funnel and introduce that structure to you in such a way that now all we have to do is guide to the next step. The people who were there at that content level if we’re going to follow this classic funnel structure, all we have to do now is sell the next step of graduating to the next level. What could that next step be? I hear you cry. Well, not to worry. Let’s give you a few examples. This could be an asset that delivers value. How’s that for ambiguous vocabulary, by the way? Maybe it’s some sort of PDF of a checklist. There’s an example. Perhaps here is the opportunity of an in-person event. It could be a call, you know, it’s where I found great results in my

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business not by having people just pick up the phone and call me cold, but the fact is the standard application funnel. They fill out a form, they get access to my calendar. I get some details in advance. And then we have a call at the scheduled time. Well, I’m getting their email address and their phone number, or we’re connecting on Zoom nowadays to have that conversation. But again, that was an opt-in. It was an opt-in win because now their questions are getting answered, and I’m getting to then introduce my products or services exactly to them. It could be an experience. So a trending thing nowadays and you could automate this with all sorts of platforms that are out there you could do, like, a five-day challenge. You can do a video that teaches one specific thing and then easily then whatever your offer would be makes the appropriate next step, which might be all the way graduating up to that core offer. Hey, here’s how you can buy my product. Here’s how we can work together. Here’s the premise I really want you to take from this, if you try to sell

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to everybody, unfortunately, you often end up selling to nobody. So let’s turn this into a bit of a homework assignment. Let’s turn this into a task. Oh, one more thing. Let’s tie this all together because I gave you next steps of that opt-in win. What are some clear next steps of let’s say that value upgrade? What others would call the entry point offer or the tripwire. What can you do there? Well, what we can do here is pull out specific parts of our experience. Maybe teach them in a shorter format. In one part of my business, here’s two hours of an online program yet as I deliver it as a value upgrade, people pay a reasonably small amount of money. But they’re taught the same information in about half the time. So it gives them just enough for what they’ve purchased. But then at the end of the process, there’s a natural pivot. You’ve got everything you need for this one specific thing. But what about A? What about B? What about C? And for that, here’s the entire system.

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So there’s a natural way to upgrade the process. You can basically take something out of your core offers that you provide and pull it out and now sell that as another entry point offer value upgrade tripwire, whatever you want to call it. They’re all basically the same concept here. So, what is that number-one mistake people make in business? They try to consummate the sales relationship far too early. Ask yourself, pull out of the experience and ask, “What is their user journey? Where are they now with know, like, and trust? How do we navigate that experience in an ethical and positive way?” So now we’ve got the rapport, we’ve got the right to then make an offer. Similar to that, back to the BNI reference from before, thank you, Ivan Meisner, the experience of visibility, credibility, profitability, maybe at first, they start to see who you are. Or for those of you adapted some sort of social media marketing it’s where very

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often my team will put some videos up and they’re teaching they’re providing value. And then the people who see that now start to get some very specific targeted offers. Why? Because the fact that you watched the video tells us hey, you want more. And it’s from that experience we’re again selling the next step, which might be an experience whether it’s free, whether it’s paid, get this free download, join me on this webinar, schedule time to have a chat with me, figure out the next appropriate step. When you try to sell to everybody, you end up selling to nobody. So the opportunity is now. Just like that classic funnel, the people who have graduated to that level where now they’re just on the cusp. Back to my old story. I’ve got permission to ask her out. She said, “Yes.” Let’s forget the fact that I then waited two and a half weeks. But you’ve got the yes. This is that group of people that here’s the revelation to you. They might already want what do you have to provide.

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They might already be sold on your product or service. And I can think of stories from my experience where I’m in the audience I’m watching someone speak. And even before I knew they had a specific product or service, I was already a yes. And I’ll tell you the experience that I had. And because of this, this is now something I appropriately will reverse engineer and make happen in my business. In those moments where I was hearing this is clearly something that makes sense to me now. I can see what I was doing wrong and if I do it this way, that’s going to work even better. When I hired those people, when I bought their products, it was almost as if it was a courtesy that they told me what I was going to pay them. Think about that for a moment. This is what negates the wow, that’s a lot of money. If you hear that, it’s because you haven’t properly onboarded. You haven’t yet created the user experience, the journey to then ratify why it’s not much money.

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And in fact, for services that I’ve paid for over the years, whether it’s a $3,000 or $4,000 product, a multiple five-figure consulting program that I’ve gone through, by the time it was done, I would have paid that and a whole lot more. Why? Because we have to sell the next step. That’s what creates that following. That’s what creates that audience, that tribe of people who already want more from you. So I’d encourage you go out there and start to produce some content. But while you’re doing that, here’s the mindset I share with you to bring this all to a close, earn the right to make an offer. And then once you’ve earned the right to make the offer, deliver the offer with confidence, with pride, with authority and integrity, and that’s a formula to have the number one method to grow your business. You have been listening to the Hypnotic Language Hacks podcast with Jason Linett. Please stop everything and start exploring jasonlinett.com for even more business

[00:32:03]

influence and persuasion resources. Make it a priority right now to subscribe to this program and listen to every episode because the next one may reveal that one hypnotic influence secret to massively scale your success. Change your words, change your business, change your life. Get even more at jasonlinett.com.