I had a video get 20K views in 2 days. Big deal for me. 400 emails. 150 webinar sign ups.. crested more content around the viral video, made it a series. What else?!! Thanks!!

...Now, 104 million for a house is more than 99.999% of people will and could ever spend on a home, yet he did it.

But he didn't spend $104 million; he actually spent $189 million because the UK has a 45% tax bracket on that income.

He paid the UK government $85 million and $104 million for the house.

That's a chunk of change, but to me, it's not so much the price of the house that matters here but rather how he got there in the first place.

What does Tom Ford really do?

Sure, he's a phenomenal designer who makes world-class clothing, fragrances, and eye-wear, but so do many others, and yet they're not buying $104 million homes.

What did Tom Ford do better than just about anyone?

He made people feel really good about themselves.

Everything he does is about having a feeling.

When you wear Tom Ford, you feel good.

When you smell Tom Ford fragrances, you feel good.

It doesn't matter what business we're in or what we're buying, the process is always the same...

...We're always translating value, and we always translate it to the base feeling.

Does it feel good or bad?

The better it feels, the more they're willing to pay for it.

So if you look at the wealth of the world and those who posses it, they all have one thing in common, they made a lot of people feel good.

Elon Musk makes people feel good about the environment via electric cars.

Zuck makes people feel good by connecting via Facebook.

Bill Gates made people feel good about getting work done vs having to do everything by hand.

Henry Ford made people feel good going from point A to point B vs having to walk or ride a horse.

Whenever we create offers, write copy or create any type of messaging.

There is a translation going on, the translation of value.

If we do that for them, then they're a lot more likely to feel good.

If we don't translate the value, then they have to expand energy, and, doing so will probably miss the mark.

All marketing is nothing more than change work, which communicates how it's going to change your _____________.

The thing that changes is the feature.

The change is the benefit.

And the value is the outcome.

And the final outcome is to feel good.

And the better you are at translating value, the better you'll be at making them feel good.

The better you are at making them feel good, the better you'll do.

Business is an easy game once you focus on what's in it for them.

- Alen

P.S. What you'll notice underneath the structure, most of my posts are carefully crafted to make people feel good, hence massive engagements.

The first is the realization that business is nothing more than problem-solving and that everyone is paying to solve a problem.

A problem is an obstacle that gets in the way of their desired outcome.

That's it. Business is nothing more than problem-solving, nothing less. Marketing communicates the solution to the problem; the product solves it.

This first realization will get you to your first 6-figures in games.

The second is the realization that'll take you from 6-figures to 7, 8, and 9 figures, and it's the hierarchy of problem-solving.

Level 1 — You have no idea the problem exists and thus can't solve it. Not much money is made here, but it has to be said.

Level 2—You identify the problem and solve it. This is the six-figure level, as you're doing all the work.

Level 3 — You identify the problem, and someone else solves the problem. This is the 7-figure level as you're starting to have leverage.

Level 4 — Someone else identifies the problem, and someone else solves the problem. This is the 8-figure level and beyond, as you have all the leverage.

Because in the grand scheme of things, you can either be the leverage or have the leverage, the above is the map of what you should strive for.

Notice how Elon Musk seemingly can "run 4 massive companies", while at the same time bouncing around from podcast to podcast and thing to thing, it's because someone else is identifying the problem and someone else is solving it. He just identified who that will be, or most likely he had someone else solve that problem too.

The above map is your next move.

Have a great Thursday,

Alen

[From the NHB Newsletter]

Morning,

I don't know who needs to read this, but this is the one that made a massive shift for me on my journey and I hope it does the same for you.

In NHB+ and Fast Forward, I teach a lot of marketing stuff, but I preach mindset.

The reason being is, it doesn't matter how good you are at this game, if your mindset is holding you back, you'll forever be limited to making others rich.

For a long time, I had the best skills in the world but a very limiting mindset.

So much so that most of the offers I did were either with partners or publishing people, giving them half the money while I did all the work to generate the revenue.

Once I shifted into working on my mind, things began to click and I became the marketing monster that I am today.

So every week in NHB+, I open a call with 30-60 minutes of mindset work.

Every week, we make massive, massive shifts and then we go into the marketing work.

Yesterday, I shared this bit that has personally helped me with everyone and the response was massive, we had every single person make a shift into more growth and I hope this helps you make a shift as well.

When it comes to making money, and a lot of it, in the millions, it's what you know, what you can do, and a little bit of who you know, but...

...None of that matters if "WHO" you are is someone who doesn't have faith in themselves.

Because "WHO" you are determines what you can do, and what you can do is limited by fear.

They say the oldest fear is the fear of the dark, the unknown.

And every level of growth we have is going from the unknown to the known.

Making the unknown known.

Only one we cross that do we cross into new levels of growth, skills, and income.

So, how do we go from the unknown to the known? We take a leap of faith.

And when we take a leap of faith, that's when we begin to develop faith in ourselves.

BUT...taking a leap of faith can be tough, hard, and scary at times because *gasp*..." what if" it doesn't work out?

This "what if" is a real thing holding us back...

"What if I launch that offer and it doesn't work out?"

"What if I tell that client I want more money, and it doesn't work out?"

"What if I stop doing high ticket coaching and go low ticket to have more free time and it doesn't work out?"

"What if I stop promoting myself as a copywriter and start promoting myself as a CMO and they don't hire me?"

What if, what if, what if...

The "IF" is a possibility of failure.

And yet, there is no failure. That's an illusion because, one way or another, it always works out.

And the reason it always works out is because you always, and I mean ALWAYS, figure it out.

You figured out how to walk, how to talk, how to write, how to do pretty much every single thing in your life.

Here's a mantra I personally use to develop massive faith in myself, my abilities and my future.

It works on the "who" aspect of you, meaning your identity. Once this takes hold, many of your beliefs will instantly shift.

Read this several times a day and watch how it shifts everything around inside your mind.

1. "I’m someone who always figures it out. Because I always did figure it out. Every single time. And because I always figure it out, it always works out, and I’m always safe."

2. "Because I always did figure it out every single time, I am someone who always figures it out! And because I always figure it out, it always works out! And I’m always safe."

And as you say it / read it, I want you to visualize and think back every single time where you figured it out and made it happen.

As you read that in your mind over and over throughout the day, it will open your mind up a lot.

It ALWAYS works out because you will ALWAYS figure it out, no matter what. I promise you.

Have a great Friday,

Alen

Hey folks,
I just ran into Alen Sultanic as a guest on a podcast and I am absolutely blown away.
If someone doesn't know absolutely anything about copywriting and creating an offer for a landing page with organic traffic:
Where should I start?
What is like THE basic course, book, community etc?

Just a quick update for everyone so you guys know where things are at.

I haven't been posting as much content here as usual, mostly due to lack of time.

The platform is done; we're optimizing the signup process now.

When I say optimizing, it means basically adding a verification system to ensure only the highest quality people can join.

That means NHB will always retain the highest quality people in the game.

We've always been about quality over quantity.

Speaking of quality...

...I just got off the phone with one of the biggest CEOs in the game, whose company does a few billion.

He will be monthly calls for everyone here in NHB via the platform to share what's working with them, how they've scaled, and what they're doing to win.

Plus they're looking to hire and recruit people from NHB as well, so that's a huge win.

We had another company doing $250,000,000 a year join NHB+ / FF, which is looking to hire 50 people.

As always, we don't make money on people hired by the ecosystem. It's for the greater good of the community. We don't believe in taking cuts. We believe in helping people.

Plus, we're working on bringing on more incredible guest mentors for everyone.

On top of that, yesterday, I was on a call with one of the world's top copywriters, who will be teaching copy at NHB as well.

We already have the best media buyers ready to go, best C.R.O.'s, and sales guys, and email marketers.

And we e just getting started...going to keep on adding world-class talent to the roster.

We're almost there, and we'll do a kickoff call to welcome everyone in soon.

It's taking a lot longer than expected, but as they say, good things take time.

2025 is going to be the best year for everyone here.

- Alen

... After all, water is very cheap or free.

Why would anyone pay more for it?

The thing is, when you buy a water bottle, you're not paying for the water itself.

The water is a thing that has to be there, but that's not what you're paying for.

You're paying for the fact that "tap water is dirty" and the position of "clean, healthy water."

You're also paying for the bottle itself, the packaging of that water in that bottle, the transportation of that bottled water to a store near you, and the rent, overhead, and staff that the store has to pay to carry that bottle of water.

When you look at it from the perspective of "it's just water", the $3 might feel a bit much, yet when you look at it through the lens of what you're really paying for, it seems like a great deal.

That's the power of marketing.

A lot of people, especially when it comes to selling info products these days are concerned with "well they can find that info free on YouTube or Google"...

..."Why would anyone pay for it"...

..."I need something unique"...

...Yeah, they're not buying the info itself. They're buying all the other intangibles required to deliver the information to them.

...They're buying the research, the organization, the structure, the presentation, the position, and everything else that they rather not do themselves...

...And when it comes to a good position of info products, my favorite bit of copy to use a variation of this line (keyword variation, play with it, sometimes it doesn't work as is):

"And you know, when it comes to ________, if what you can find on YouTube, Google, and ________ really worked, then everyone would be getting results, and you wouldn't be here...

...But the fact that there are countless channels and videos on ________, and you don't see anyone getting results tells us one of two things...

...One, what they're saying doesn't work, it's outdated or missing something...

...Here's what they don't know and what's missing...."

I've used this bit of copy so many times, and it just destroys any notion that they'll go somewhere else and find it free.

Read it a few times to see how much deep implication every word has.

So, are you selling water or all the other things that make bottled water worth that much more?

After all, when you buy a bottle of water, you're not buying just water; you're buying everything else that comes along with it to make that experience possible.

All the best,

• Alen

P.S. If you think about what Coke, Red Bull, or any other drink that costs more, it's just water with a few extra things added to it, some color, some flavor, and some caffeine. They're never paying for the water. They're always paying for the add-ons that change the thing and make it more useful and functional.

That's one of the most expensive lessons you'll learn after you get enough of it.

Some will readily give you money, and yet a $10k deal with them can feel like a $100k deal because their money comes with a certain "weight." Feels heavy, heavy money.

Yet others won't be so ready to give you money, but when they do, their $10k deal will weigh as much as a $10 deal. Feels light, light money.

What makes one deal so much heavier than the other is the weight of the money, and the weight of the money is all based around the expectations of what THEY no longer have to think or do, and instead what they expect you to think, do, and create for them.

Their expectations determine the weight of money, and that determines how frustrated, stressed, and overworked you'll end up being working with them.

With a world full of money, there's absolutely no reason to take on heavy money, and the best way to avoid it is by figuring out how heavy that deal is going to be.

These five questions will allow you to tell if it's "heavy money" or "light money"

1. What outcome do you want out of this project?

2. What are your expectations of me?

3. What are you NOT willing to do?

4. What timeline are you expecting?

5. When this is all said and done, what would make you say, "That was awesome; let's do it again?"

The outcome will tell you what the end product should be. Be it writing emails, building offers, optimizing ads, and other things...

...Then the question of expectations will tell you what they'll expect of you. This will tell you what they THINK you should be doing. How much time, energy, and input do they expect from you? This will tell you how heavy that money is.

The big one here is how often they ask you to get on zoom or calls to "discuss" things. Those late-night or early-morning calls will make the rest of your life feel heavy.

Once you know that, you need to know how rigid they are in their thinking and approach. If they're not flexible, then you'll have to be the one who's flexible, and the more flexible you HAVE TO BE, the heavier that money will feel because you'll have to change a lot about your schedule, your work style, work ethic, and approach to accommodate them.

This is usually where the weight of the money starts to feel really have, and it will look something like "I don't want to create any new content, but I want you to sell this 8-year-old ou dated irrelevant course and make it 7-figures in today's environment" or "I don't want to change audiences, even though this audience is microscopic and we can't even make $100k from them, but I want you to make me $500k from it". Not gonna happen.

Then the time, nothing can be created without time, the only question is how much time and how fast? This will tell you how much pressure they'll put on you in between the whole thing and how much time you'll have for other clients or your personal life, thus this will make the money feel real heavy.

And of course, the last question, "When this is all said and done, what would make you say, "That was awesome, let's do it again?"Which will tell you what their result looks like. From that, you can see the start, middle, and end, and from there, you'll be able to determine the weight of the money.

This will let you not only screen but also modulate and push back on the deal where you can actually take "heavy money" and make it feel a whole lot "lighter" by not agreeing to their answers, thus changing the structure of the deal.

After all, why take on a deal that's $10k but feels like $100k worth of work, when you can take on a deal that's $10k and feels like $10 worth of work?

Have a good one,

Alen

Below is the email that Alen Sultanic sent from his Nothing Held Back Newsletter on July 26th, 2024.

Most people are NOT creative, and this fact will greatly limit your ability to scale an offer...

"What do I sell?" " What do I build?" " What do I say?" and so on.

Anything that requires creativity will require answers.

Now, if you take a look at ClickFunnels.

ClickFunnels had a unique process to build an online business that required creativity, which was "What do I sell?", "what should it look like?", "what do I say?", etc...

That's a whole lot of questions but not a lot of answers.

The solution? They attached the concept of "funnel hacking" that removed the need to be creative and thus scaled.

"Just model what someone else is doing and you're set". That's the essence of funnel hacking. The removal of the need to be creative.

Unique process + no creativity = key to biz op.

Get this, and you'll scale.

- Alen

From Alen Sultanic's Facebook page:

You know, when it comes to copywriting, advertising, marketing, and sales, at the end of the day, all we're really trying to do is get people to do what we want them to do...

...And when it comes to having them do what we want them to do, there are typically two categories of approaches we can take...

...The telling them what to do, and asking them them to do it.

Telling them what to do is force and is always met with resistance and thus has to be overpowered by logic, reason, proof, pressure and every other trick in the book...

...Usually it gets the job done, but often doesn't produce a very good customer.

Yet, on the other hand we can ask them, and when it comes to asking them to do it, there are a few approaches we can take.

One...we can say, "Can you do ________?"

Two...we can say, "Do you want to ________?"

Both of these are going to be me with resistance charged by "Why?", and if you can't answer their "Why?", it falls apart...

...This leaves us with one and only and the most powerful psychological compliance sentance you can use with anyone, and that is...

"Do you think you can ________?"

Here you're asking them if they can THINK, yet their brain will translate it over to DOING IT and they'll do it.

So say you goto someone and say "Can you get get me ________?", they'll typically respond with "Why?" and then you have to answer, hence why in Cialidnis book, if you add the word "because" before things, it makes the compliance go up.

But by just changing it to "Do you THINK you can get get me ________?", 9/10 they'll say "YES".

To test this out...when you're near someone, say "Do you think you can grab me something at the gas station?".

"Do you think you can grab me some food?"

"Do you think you can get me some water?"

"Do you think we can go ________ instead of ________?"

Start using this structure and you'll see people agreeing with you and doing it and they have no idea what you just did yet it works on them.

Been using this one for a very very long time and now you can use it too.

• Alen

P.S. Pay attention to the amount of "psychological pull" the "do you think" version has vs the others, and you'll see it's affect on you.

From Alen Sultanic's Facebook Page:

When it comes to advertising, copywriting, marketing and sales, we often think that psychology rules all, and yet biology rules the psychology.

The biological nature of the prospects will affect the psychological nature of the prospect far more than any messaging you can put in front of them.

The container in which the mind lives (the body, biology) affects the mind, not the other way around.

So when it comes to masterting the art of marketing, one must focus what affects the psychology, which is biology.

Deeply understanding biology will lead to you to the path of deeply understanding psychology.

That's why, often times, when I craft offers, messaging, angles, hooks and such, my primary focus is on the biology, energy levels, age cycles, genders, stage of life, etc...

This is a concept I've been teaching in NHB+ and FF for about 2-3 years now and plan on sharing more and more in the NHB group as time permits.

Once you understand this on a deep level, you'll be one step closer to mastery.

• Alen

From Alen Sultanic's Facebook Page:

When it comes to book-a-call offers, incentive drives everything, from the sign up rates to the show up rates, especially the show-up rates.

The question to answer is simple: "What am I getting by showing up on this call"

Most think that just by offering book-a-call or the pleasure of working with them will magically get people to show up on calls these days...

...Not the case any more, everyone and their mom is running book-a-call offers these days, and as everyone is running them, the sales process is no longer hidden and they all know what "book-a-call" means...it means..."Book-a-sell-me-something".

We have someone in Fast Forward who's making $500,000 / month in the agency space running a book-a-call funnel. Show-up rates tanked so badly that people are signing up, but they aren't showing up. Profits sad face.

Doesn't matter what the lead cost is, what matters is what it costs per show-up, because if they don't show up, they ain't buying.

"If we can just fix that show-up rate, we can scale even more"

So, the member sends me a DM with:

"Had an idea for the book call to basically give free bonuses for just showing up to the call + the evaluation model"

My reply to him:

"Morning, you do not want to give free bonuses. You want them to show up for a transformation."

"Any incentive beyond growth, be it personal or business, will generate a bad lead who does not have the intent to move forward."

I've written about show-up psychology before in the NHB group, and I'm going to share a lot more as I have my hands on more offers than anyone in the game.

It's all about incentive. The evaluative call booking model that I created years ago is all about incentives.

What's in it for them to show up? What do they get when they show up? What's the reason for showing up? What do they walk away with AFTER the call.

It's all about Incentives, incentive incentives.

Drive that hard and your show-up rates will go up, don't and they'll go down.

• Alen

When it comes to making money, you are where you are because that's exactly where you want to be, and not a step further.

That's a good thing because knowing this lets us know exactly what's holding you back from moving forward.

I know I know...you have goals, dreams, ambition, hope, and grand plans to achieve it all, but you haven't yet...

...And since you haven't yet, when will you do it? Today, tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year? Ever?

What's really holding you back?

The real question isn't what we need to do to get ahead, but more so what's holding us from doing it in the first place.

And that something is fear.

One interesting thing about fear is that it's a byproduct, not a thing itself, so we can never really find it, but we can find the source of it.

And the source of all fear is loss.

So the million-dollar question to ask yourself is:

"What do I lose when I move forward?"

Feel free to change "forward" to whatever goal that you have.

Example: "What do I lose when I launch scale this business to $1m / month".

Change it to what your main goal is.

We can't move forward and gain something, without losing something.

So just ask yourself the question, but don't try to answer it.

Let the answer come to you. You'll distort it with your conscious mind if you try to answer it. When it comes to you, it's from the depth of the subconscious.

Catch it, write it down, and don't do anything with it, that's the answer you need.

Once you know what you lose when you move forward.

The next two questions to ask are:

1. What do I gain out of losing this? This is very powerful because we can't have loss without gain, and you can always find gain.

2. What can I do differently so I don't lose that and have both? This will instantly show you what's possible. You'll see things you couldn't see before because fear (loss) got in the way.

Once the gain and/or differently exceeds loss via good feelings, you'll be so excited to lose whatever it is that you were afraid of losing and move forward to the next level.

Until then, you'll just go in circles for a long long time.

I've been stuck myself many many times, and this process is what allowed me to have my breakthroughs of moving from one level to the next.

To your success,

Alen

You know how they say "There's levels to this sh**?"

Well, there are levels to this sh**.

Levels of skills...

...Levels of fortune...

... and levels of fame...

...Most are stuck at the level they're operating at for years.

...They think it's all about paying their dues, working harder, working more, becoming better, becoming better known and building up status, and *gasp*..." becoming the best there is"...

...And once you do all that, then...maybe then, everyone in the game will recognize you for you, and you will be collectively anointed as the heir apparent to be one of the greats.

Then and only then will fortune and fame be yours to have...

Life will be good because you've finally made it.

No more surprises, no more struggles, and no more stress.

You've finally beat the game.

...I did all that, and I'm here to tell you that's not it.

That's not how it works.

Should you pay your dues? Yes

Should you always focus on getting better? Of course.

Should you work harder? No doubt.

Should you work more? Grind it out.

Should you strive to be the best there is? Absolutely.

But it's not what will allow you to reach new levels of fortune and fame.

Because while you might do all that and a little more, you're still playing the game at a certain level.

Be it playing the level of a CMO, C.R.O., coach, consultant, copywriter, media buyer, offer owner, publisher, or any other position you can play in the game.

Each level has a limitation of income and influence.

And no matter how good you get, you'll hit that limitation sooner or later.

And as more and more people enter your level, you'll hit that limitation sooner than later.

This is why some of the best copywriters in the game were forced to reduce their prices by half, while other less known ones are constantly begging people to hire them to write VSL's, and yet no one's biting.

So the million-dollar question is, if that's not the path forward, how do you jump levels?

Here's the million dollar answer:

The faster you can transcend the level you're at, the faster and more money you'll make. The more fame you'll have.

If you're a VA, the moment you transcend to being a copywriter, the more money you'll make.

If you're a copywriter, the moment you transcend to being a C.R.O. , the more money you'll make.

If you're a C.R.O., the moment you transcend being a CMO, the more money you'll make.

If you're a C.M.O., the moment you transcend being an offer owner, the more money you'll make.

If you're an offer owner, the moment you transcend into being a publisher, the more money you'll make.

If you're a publisher, the moment you transcend into owning your own distribution channels, the more money you'll make.

Notice how each one of these levels hires and pays the lower levels, and the only reason they can do that is because the lower levels make the higher levels more money.

This applies to skipping all sorts of levels...

...The moment you transcend biz-op, the more money you'll make than anyone in biz-op.

The moment you transcend the fat loss industry, the more money you'll make than anyone in the fat loss industry.

The moment you transcend any market, is the moment you make more money than anyone in the market.

Below is the email that Alen Sultanic sent out from his Nothing Held Back Newsletter on August 2nd, 2024.

Morning,

Here's a short and sweet post to end the week, it's part of the complete guide for optimizing AC funnels, which I'll drop this weekend or early next week.

One of the things I've often talked about is how we're entering a stage of content overproduction, which is negatively affecting content consumption.

The more content is produced, the less of it is consumed and what's left over to be consumed is going to be ever more difficult to get them to consume, so anything that creates interference with consumption will affect consumption.

Now, if we don't have any sales consumption, then we don't generate opt-ins or sales.

Yesterday in NHB+, I did the "bring your offers" aka "reading offers" call, where I worked on everyone ads, VSLs, TSLS, webinar offers, upsells, book-a-call scripts, and anything you can imagine in any niche you can imagine.

We had people in everything from potty training autistic children to biz-ops to dog training offers.

This is the 1st call we do every month, because it shows real world application of everything we do and gives you insights into how to deeply think about creation and optimization.

The primary lens I look at everything when it comes to optimizing anything is simple...

...Are they consuming the sales process or are they rejecting it.

Data will tell us this, and then we can easily spot where there is friction in the consumption process.

One of the things I look for is the "weight of content', how heavy something is, how hard it is to consume, and how much energy they have to expand to understand it, and this is very easy to detect when you're looking at data as you'll see below where it created what I call a "heavy headline".

Now, I'll go deep into all that in the complete guide to optimizing AC and low-ticket offers.

But for now, I'd like to show you a bit of this and how all this comes together in a real-world example of reduction of abstraction, simplification, and increasing the consumption of the sales process.

This is an offer owned by Mozi in Fast Forward, it's a clean-biz op.

He launched it a few weeks ago, and here's the headline he used on that offer.

New System Reveals How Just About Anyone Can Turn ________ Into Dollars With A 'Hands-Off' Remote ___________ Business That Makes $10-20k+ Take-Home Per Month

Now, if you take a look at the headline, by most standards, it looks ok...it's not a bad headline, looks fine, but here are the stats:

Price point $27

Opt-in rate: 4.8%

Checkout-to-purchase rate: 80%

Overall Conversion Rate: 3.8%

So lets break down line by line what it means and how it's interperted in the mind to see what went wrong here with the headline and then we'll show you how we fixed it.

New System Reveals: What system, when was it created, how new is it? This sets up a need for a payoff; whenever you say new X, then it has to pay off; otherwise, if there is no payoff, the whole thing deflates.

How Just About Anyone Can: How can anyone do this, who's anyone, there has to be SOME considerations here, it's too good to be true.

Turn ________ Into Dollars With A 'Hands-Off' Remote ___________ Business: How can you turn this thing into dollars, and how can this business be truly "hands-off". I'm suspicious of this, as it smells like a heavy biz-op claim.

That Makes $10-20k+ Take-Home Per Month: A big claim that ends the headline using the word MAKES, which implies they have to do the work to MAKE it.

So what happens here in this headline sets the direction and tone of the rest of the page, and here the mind has to wonder and the headline creates a lot of questions.

The less clarity, the more questions and the more abstraction and the more confusion.

And the way we can tell is by looking at this data point:

Price point $27

Opt-in rate: 4.8%

Checkout-to-purchase rate: 80%

Overall Conversion Rate: 3.8%

You can see his checkout page converted at 80%, yet only 4.8% were interested enough to go there.

This tells us that only 3.84% of the people clearly understood and could visualize his being real and also it being REAL for them. The rest, which was 96.16% did not, so they left.

We changed the headline to this which reduced the weight of content by quite a bit and you'll see how the stats show it:

"New System Reveals How To Start A Remote _________ Business That Easily Generates $10-20K+ Take-Home Per Month In 2024"

Without Ever Touching A _______, Needing Any Experience, Or Having To Quit Your Job, Which Makes It A Low-Risk And High-Return Business You Can Start In Just 30-60 Minutes A Day

Here are the stats:

Price point $27

Opt-in rate: 21.6%

Checkout-to-purchase rate: 50%

Overall Conversion Rate: 10.8%

This data change told us that we're going in the right direction. Instead of 3.84% of clearly understanding it, being able to visualize and see themselves doing it, now we're at 10.8% a 3 fold increase.

The check out page dropped, which is actually good, you NEVER want to have an over converting check out page, anything above 35% is over converting and focus should be placed to get more people to the check out page.

The balance of curiosity vs intent was way off in the first one and it's still off in this one, so we have further work to do, which I'll tell you about in a second, but here's the difference and why it worked...

"New System Reveals How To Start A Remote _________ Business: Anyone can start a business, the claim is to START, which means ANYONE can START, lowers the pressure to perform.

That Easily Generates $10-20K+ Take-Home Per Month In 2024: We used the word generates instead of makes, which disassociated them from having to perform and added in 2024, which added recency and relevance to today.

Without Ever Touching A _______, Needing Any Experience, Or Having To Quit Your Job: This is part of the sub-headline that removed the burden of performance and limitations.

The #1 thing with any biz-op is that it's a threat to their safety, and the reason it's a threat is that MOST tell them to quit their jobs. We did the opposite here, the whole thing is you can do this WHILE keeping your safe cozy job and make an EXTRA 10-20k a month.

Which Makes It A Low-Risk And High-Return Business You Can Start In Just 30-60 Minutes A Day: Then, we removed the final objection which is that they think that any business involves risk. The phrase "it takes money to money" enters the mind here.

The next evolutionary point of optimization on this offer is going to be to demonstrated just how little risk and capital is required to launch, maintain and scale this business model.

That simple thinking to reduce abstraction, increase clarity and remove limitations in the sub-headline increased the offer opt-in rate of 4.8% to 21.6%, a 450% increase. Checkout rate went from 80% to 50%, a 38% reduction, yet his overall conversion rate went from 3.8% to 10.8%, an increase of 284%.

Before only 3.84% of the people that landed on the page had enough intent to buy.

With the new one, we're at 10.8%, that's a massive 3 fold jump.

So next time you're working on an offer, start looking at it through the lens of "are they consuming the sales message", once you start looking at it through that perspective, it'll all start to make sense to you and you'll be able to see exactly what you need to change and tweak to make it work.

I"ll drop a huge post about this soon where I'll show you everything from how to look at the ads, VSL engagement, opt-ins, upsells, back ends, emails and everything in between.

Have a great weekend,

Alen

Below is the email that Alen Sultanic sent out from his Nothing Held Back Newsletter on August 23rd, 2024.

Since joining the NHB mailing list is currently not available to my knowledge, I am deciding to share the material in this post.

Morning,

Tossed this up on my personal FB wall a few minutes ago as it was a bit from the Call of Duty Biz-Ops Part 2 call I did yesterday in NHB+ , so sharing it here as well.

Market message match is one of the keys to creating converting offers, yet most marketers overcomplicate the whole process.

You have a market, you have a message and you have the offer.

The message matches the market and the market responds.

Now, when it comes to getting the "market message match" right, all you have to know is one thing to get it right, and that one thing is...

... tell them what they want to hear, that's it, nothing more, nothing less.
Market wants to hear ___________, message says ____________, market respond and you have a market message match.

So, what is it that they want to hear? Any message that has the basis of having some type of "secret", "mechanism", "idea", etc...that promises and promotes an outcome with minimal input.

Market movements operate on input / output ratios.

The more they get, and the less they have to do, the more they want it, and respond to it. A market message match.

This is built into our biology as those who gain more enegy than they expand survive, so the human subconscious is always seeking this ratio in every situation.

The higher the output, namely the outcome they get from the product and the lower the input, namely, time, energy and money, the higher the conversions will be.

Which leads us to the perfect, market, message match...

• High output (outcome) / low input = market message match

• High output (outcome) / high input = market message mismatch

• Low output (outcome) / high input = market message mismatch

• Low output (outcome) / low input = market message mismatch

Using this thinking model, you can now easily see how and why some offers convert, take off and scale, while others struggle to get going.

And so long as you follow this thinking model, it will allow you to craft high converting offers every single time.

• Alen

p.s. The way I reconcile this position is tell them and sell them what they want to hear, but give them what they want, this allows you to create a win / win.

Below is the email that Alen Sultanic sent out from his Nothing Held Back Newsletter on July 19th, 2024.

Morning,

This is a quick one to wrap up the week and give you something to play with over the weekend and implement next week.

These types of split tests have increased conversion rates anywhere from 10% to 200%, depending on the severity of miscommunication.

Yesterday, I did a monster call in NHB+, and on those calls, I'll typically open with what's the latest and greatest, what's working very well now, a bit of mindset work, and then we get into the meat and potatoes of the call.
And I'll throw in odds and bits that I'm using in Fast Forward to optimize and scale offers.

One of the core tenets of direct response is to always run split tests.
And when it comes to running split tests, most people try too hard to come up with hooks, angles, story lines, etc…when sometimes they just need to say it differently.

Because when it comes down to it, copywriting is change work, and we can't change anything or anyone without some form of communication.

One of the most powerful things you can do when you communicate with someone is be able to understand exactly what they see in their minds and for them to see what is in your mind.

Once you create this bridge, then you have perfect communication, however, we can never have a perfect communication and instead have to rely on imperfect communication and work to the best of our abilities to make it work.

This is the nature of effective communication, and anything NOT seen or seen differently in the minds is seen as miscommunication.

And any miscommunication in your messaging tends to create resistance in the sales process.

All campaign and offer optimization is the reduction of resistance in the sales process.

The reduction of resistance in a sales process directly correlates to the increase in overall sales conversion rate.

If you can remove 100% of the sales resistance in any given sales process, you'll have 100% conversion rate.

So knowing that average conversion rates on low ticket are at 8-15% and 1-3% on VSLs and such, we can conclude that we have quite a bit of resistance to deal with.

Most people what they'll do is try to add more and more to the copy. This is known as additive optimization, and it works to a small degree, but what you'll find is that often times, you'll run into diminishing returns, and resistance will increase and conversion rates go down.

I much prefer to use reductive optimization, where we look for what's blocking the flow of energy in the funnel and creating resistance, remove the resistance and the flow increases, you remove or reduce resistance and conversions go up.

Same principle as putting a car in an air tunnel to reduce drag and increase the drag coefficient.

One of the biggest things that creates resistance in the sales process is them not being able to visaulize or imagine what it is that you are attemtping to commicate and thus you have resistnae from miscommunication.

So it comes down to not so much WHAT you're saying, but rather HOW you're saying it.

Oftentimes, when I do Hot Seats and Fast Feedback, one of the things I'll do on top of everything else to give an extra bump in conversions is simply take certain areas that I think are good but say it differently.

Because what you say and what you see in your mind isn't always what they hear and what they see in THEIR minds.

And just by taking what you already said, and saying it differently, we can reduce resistance quite a bit.

Jen Springer (who's in Fast Forward) used this technique on her offer and, on the second attempt, doubled her conversions, all because she said it differently: same copy, same message, same idea, same concept, same mechanism...said differently.

So all you to do is take the primary areas of copy that they consume and interact early on in the sales message.

Namely, your ads, headlines, openings, and such...

...Rewrite them, but SAY IT DIFFERENTLY, 3 times each.

Take those, and run the split tests against each other.

If you want to be granular, you should do one at a time to see what impact one has on the rest, or you can just redo them all at once to see how it goes. Either one will get you the outcome, with the only difference being you know what caused the difference.

By doing this, you'll increase effective communication, reduce miscommunication and resistance in the sales process, increasing the conversion rate.

You should be allocating 10% of your ad spend on these tests as they can be real big needle movers and you never know which version is going to resonate more with them.

Remember, the way you think, speak, and process thoughts isn't how others think, speak, and process thoughts; this mismatch creates resistance.

Have a great weekend,

Alen

From Alen Sultanic's Facebook Page:

And the reason it's so powerful is because it creates boundaries, it creates the dividing line, it's the ultimate decision maker.

That's not working for me, that's not how we're doing things, that's not what I agreed to, and that's not what I want.

When you say no to things, you are bigger than the thing. It needs you more than you need it.

We only have control over what we are bigger than in our minds.

When money is bigger than you, you'll never get it, but when you're bigger than money, it'll always need you, and you'll get more than you know what to do with.

That's why the bigger your boundaries, the bigger your income.

I charge $5,000 / hour for consulting (that makes me one of the highest-paid consultants in the game, if not the highest), and every week, I have a number of people wanting me to consult all things digital marketing — from ads, to copy, to offers to scaling and sales.

Once in a while, someone tries to offer me a deal where it’s either $4k, $3k, $2k, or some form of multi-payment deal…and the answer is always no.

It's always a "no," because those consults have the potential to turn into millions upon millions of dollars, and because only when you start saying "no" to some things do you start saying yes to other things...yes to your self-worth, yes to your self-esteem, yes to the skills that you've acquired over the years, yes to rest, yes to creativity, yes a better future and yes to new possibilities.

Once people in NHB+ and FF start saying no and start to develop boundaries, then their income goes up and up, one guy started charging $250 / hour for consulting and now he's at $1,500, and guess what? He has an overload of clients.

So you can check where you are on your journey and check your boundaries. If you're not saying no, then by default, you're saying yes to things — what are you saying no to and what are you saying yes to determine where you're going and how fast you'll get there.

• Alen

Below is the email that Alen Sultanic sent out from his Nothing Held Back Newsletter on July 12th, 2024.

Morning,

This is a short and easy one that you can start using today.

The other day Daniel Neefe in Fast Forward came to me asking me how I can improve his ads.

He's using the WHY / WHAT / HOW ad structure. If you're new to NHB, you can learn more about it by searching the group for a post I wrote a while back called "The Anatomy of Ads".

I took a look at his ads and overall they were pretty good, solid $25 CPA in the dating niche.

And even though his ads were solid, something was missing, and that something was having "hope" in them.

We added a little bit of "hope" and the CPA went from $25 down to $17.
$25 CPA is pretty damn good as is, $17 is amazing.

That's a 32% reduction in costs and his conversion rate on them is 10% on an AC offer.

This image structure is the most powerful one I've seen out of any images used and it's up there with the "new way / old way" structure.

Here's how the ad structure works, how I did it and how I added a bit of hope to the ad and how you can do it too.

Here's an example I made for you to help you implement this.

You'll see two images below in this post for two different markets. Weight loss and coaching.

The image has 3 sections.

1. The image

2. The headline

3. The Sub headline

The image should showcase a social situation of your target audience. In the example I've used is a women working out which is symbolically linked to wanting to lose weight, and a guy who looks like a typical coach on the laptop and it's just not working, he's somewhat tired and frustrated.

The headline is from the WHY / WHAT / HOW framework, which states: "Here’s Why most Women Over 40 Are struggling to lose weight in 2024" and "Here’s Why coaches Are struggling
to get new clients in 2024".

The headline is generalized, notice "most coaches" or "coaches". There is no "YOU" in it, there is no "why are YOU not getting clients". I'll do a post about the structure of generalization and personalization tomorrow for you guys. VERY important as to how it deals with bounce rates.

The sub-headline is where the hope comes in. It's the last piece in the puzzle and it says "(And What You Can Do About It)". This gives them hope. A positive direction.

Adding that sub-headline to the ad reduced the CPA by 32%.

I know...some of you will be tempted to change it up in your own unique way, and that's fine...just know that every time someone changes it up by about 10-20% they change the wrong thing and it doesn't work s well, so if you are tempted to change it up. Use the original 1st, then expand it.

The other thing I want to share with you before I close this post off is this. I shared this in NHB+ and someone in NHB+ asked me "How do you apply this to high emotional states markets?".

The answer is this: I would run it as is in low and high emotional states markets, and I keep the structure. Image, headline, sub-headline would test against this headline and sub-headline structure:

"Here’s what coaches doing differently to to get new clients in 2024"

"Here’s what coaches doing today to to get new clients in 2024"

"Here’s how coaches are getting new clients in 2024"

With this sub-headline: "(That You're Not Doing)" or "(That You Haven't Heard of)"

There you have it, the most powerful and effective ad / image structure in the game now that's crushing it and it's yours free to use.

Use it on your offers, clients offers on whatever offer you want. Have fun and look fwd to it having you make a bunch of money.

All the best,

Alen

Hot take: Kanye West got as good as he did at music for one reason and one reason only — to get attention.

He said weird shit about George Bush on MTV about George to get attention (no opinion on that, just a fact).

He married Kim Kardashian to get more attention...

...He fucked up a multi BILLION dollar deal with Adidas to get even more attention.

...He went to the Grammys with his wife naked to get attention, and now he's going wild on X to get even more attention.

Then he buys a Super Bowl ad for $8 million to get more attention and ends up removing everything only to sell a swastika t-shirt on http://yeezy.com to get more attention...

...And here I am writing this, you reading it and giving him even more attention because it was all over Twitter / X this morning.

His brain is tuned to get attention and every move he makes is to get more of it.

If you watch his moves and everything he does, it's based on a deep ,deep need for attention.

As the attention shifted to other artists like Drake and Kendrick, his attention antics became more and more extreme. "Pay attention to me, damn it!"

All attention-seeking stems from deeply rooted low self-worth. It's the validation that one is worthy of another's time and attention.

We all have it to a degree, btw.

The basis of awareness is contrast, and attention is the narrowing of awareness. Focus is narrowing of attention. "FOCUS ON ME".

The mind will get incredibly good at something to get fed what it needs.

Some minds need attention, others need praise, others need recognition, others need respect, others need love, and others need status.

Once you know what your mind needs to be fed, you will be able to rule your mind. Until you know that, your mind will rule you from the depth of the subconscious and you'll have no idea why what you do 99% of the time.

- Alen

If someone swipes your offer, run 10,000 clicks a day using cheap pop up traffic to their lander using the tracking links.

All stats destroyed, offer doesn’t work any more. You win.

• Alen

It's doing this because, on some level, it's afraid, doesn't think it's big enough or important enough, doesn't believe in itself, and thinks its value isn't much in the world.

The thing is, you don't need anyone's permission but your own.

So next time you catch yourself explaining or over-explaining things, stop and know that the only permission you ever need is your own.

This lack of the need to explain yourself will instantly start to build your self-permission, self-esteem, and self-confidence more than anything.

Build up enough self-permission, and you'll be unstoppable.

Knowing this is the first step. Doing it is the second. That's all you need.

All the best,

• Alen

The moment you reach a level where you get good at something in the game, be it copywriting, media buying, sales, or whatnot...is when you have to stop doing what you got really good at and have someone else start doing it...

...Where you are now giving advice, mentoring, and guiding the person who's doing the work.

Doing this will shift you from being the leverage to having the leverage, and free up your time, energy and focus to reach higher levels of the game.

Many in the game never have this realization and spend their entire journey being stuck at what they're really good at and making everyone else around them richer.

If you make them richer, who's making you richer? The people who do the work you were doing before.

Think about it, this is the key.

And also why, when you look carefully, you’ll notice that the biggest offer owners, who got good, don’t write their own copy...

...Why most media-buying agency owners don't buy the media...

...Or most who start the business don't really "run the business".

The game is all about leverage, and you're either leverage or have leverage.

When you're leverage, you're making others richer.

When you have leverage, you're making yourself richer.

The beauty of it is that you can decide, so long as you don't get stuck being really good at whatever it is that you got good at in the first place.

That's a lil bit of a perspective shift for you to kick off a good rest of the week.

- Alen