Are You Unintentionally Cheating Your Perfect Prospects?

by NoteTakingNerd2 on November 14, 2019 | CLICK to Follow Him on Twitter

short vs. long copy, mynotetakingnerd

Is your market crystal clear about all the delights you have in store for them?

If you look at any of the major public personalities who are getting crucified by the public, the press, one side or the other of the government, etc. you will find one major commonality… 

Brief, incomplete, and vague responses to negative allegations against them.

You can always count on people who have something to hide having weasel-like, evasive answers to hard questions being asked of them.

This is universally insulting behavior across ANY culture.

So my question is, why would a business owner who has nothing to hide, who is genuinely providing an awesome service or product, engage in behavior common to the dirt bags of the world by giving brief, incomplete, and overly vague descriptions of what they’re selling that leave their perfect prospects saying, “Is that it?” or… “What are you not telling me about this?”

Far too many people make offers as if the only person seeing their invitation to buy are die-hard loyal customers who have been buying from them for decades now and have no other options to choose from.  

The last thing you want your perfect prospects thinking when looking at your offer is, “W.T.F? You must think I’m too dumb to see all the holes in your logic.” 

And this thought is the expression of someone being offended by you.

So let me ask you this…   

When it comes to assembling sales messages, articles, or content, what is your preference… long or short form?  

Next question…

Which do you use most often… long or short form? 

We do what we get positive reinforcement for.

If your knee-jerk response to both of these questions is “short form”, I trust there are definitely some times when this works to your benefit.  

You’ll find one of these instances on the list below which was assembled by the copywriting mentor Michel Fortin back in the early 2000’s.

It was created for the purpose of pointing out when it is best to use short or long copy when selling a product

Convenience products: Fills an immediate need, low price, low thought, short copy.

Shopping products: A little higher priced, more thought and opportunity to “shop around,” a little longer copy.

Specialty products: With exotic goods, luxury cars, expensive jewelry, art, etcetera, longer copy is definitely needed.

Unsought products: When people have never realized that their lives were incomplete without your product, get ready to write some lengthy copy.

When you analyze this list with the common sense part of your brain, I trust you will recognize the usefulness of these distinctions.

Your common sense should also make the connection that these same considerations apply when you’re seeking to enlighten another person with information OR… when you’re seeking enlightenment from another person via an article or interview.

With content marketing being as popular as it is, this begs the questions of…

Part 1:

What Is Your Preference For Being Influenced?

Is This Preference Affecting How You Try To Influence Others?  

I’ve talked at length before about the importance of creating content that touches all four of the learning styles.

But what I had never really considered was why, as a consumer of content, I ignore some podcast interviews… and devote significant chunks of my life to ones produced by the likes of Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, etc.

Sure, I’m aware of the lazy part of myself which likes not having to stop what I’m doing every 10-30-60 minutes to keep going back to Pocket Casts to load up another podcast because the ones I’ve listed above are all 2 to 3 hours long. 

But it wasn’t until I listened to Sam Harris interviewing Shane Parrish of Farnam Street fame for his massively popular Making Sense podcast that I started to understand my bias for long-form interviews at a different level.

Here’s a snippet of what Sam talked about in this conversation…

HARRIS: There’s a consequence of the long-form format (interviews) that I don’t think people have really good intuitions about.

There is a massive difference between having no time limit, where a conversation may last one hour and five minutes vs. a conversation strictly limited to 60 minutes.

Even the longest form radio or television is constrained.

If, as an interviewer, you know you have to get through the questions you have in a limited amount of time, even if you have 60 minutes, which is generous, it changes the nature of the conversation from the very beginning.

PAUSE:

At this point in the conversation Shane and Sam had already been talking for almost 80 minutes and the podcast still had 42 minutes left.

RESUME:

HARRIS: Most people are UNAWARE of how what they hear on live television/radio is the result of the unnatural time constraints through which every conversation is being forced. 

Think about the talking heads appearing on news shows on channels like CNN where you know each person is fighting for their piece of an 8-minute slot.

There is no way this can be an honest conversation.

Everyone feels compelled to get the pre-loaded volley of words out. These people say to themselves, “I know I’m going to feel terrible if I can’t get this paragraph out.

Prepared statements get forced into the mic whether they make sense or not.

They’re like, “I just gotta get this first fucking punch in, otherwise it’s going to be a waste of my day.”

So by definition you’re not disposed to be truly responsive to the thing the other person said first. And there’s just no time to be responsive to anything that happens after that.

PAUSE:

If there are multiple guests, 2-3 additional talking heads on the screen, urgency is heightened as these people are now in a frenzied rush to say their piece for fear that someone else will say it first or… that someone else is going to hog up all the time.

Now let’s get back to finish the point Sam is making…

RESUME:

The whole goal is to not put your foot in your mouth and to say something that is useful to the topic you thought you already understood perfectly when you went on the show.

It can never be a conversation because there is no room to breathe.

From the viewer’s point of view, that is rarely salient. Even for me. I see one person talk. Then I see another person talk. That’s what he thinks. That’s what she thinks.

It should be no surprise that they didn’t persuade each other at all.

They’re on the opposite sides of this question and they were picked to be on the opposite sides, often as the extreme voices on an issue that omits the common ground for most of the people, most of the time.

It gives the false signal of antagonism and the impossibility of resolution on various topics.

And we keep advertising this impossibility to ourselves, saying something like, “There’s no way to figure out immigration.” It’s impossible to talk about. You’re either a racist asshole or an open borders lunatic.

If you come into an interview with someone and you tell them you need a 3-5 hour time slot and that the conversation “might go 5 hours or it might go for 45 minutes, we’ll see where it goes” the person being interviewed comes in with a different mentality.

Non-live, longer-form interviews are more ethical. 

PAUSE:

This makes me think of how a person’s sexual dysfunction/inability to orgasm with lovers related to performance anxiety can be virtually non-existent while masturbating behind locked door in their home when they know they’ve got the place entirely to themselves for the weekend.  

When a person doesn’t feel rushed to perform at their best… RIGHT NOW, THIS VERY SECOND… this frees up the mental bandwidth needed in order for them to relax, listen, appreciate, and articulate.

When more time is available they also have the space to more fully unpack their argument in a way that ensures they won’t be misunderstood.

This is totally different scenario than all the other interviews they’ve participated in where as soon as the clock strikes X their mic is turned off and they’re getting pushed out the door.

In short form interviews, you can feel both the questions and answers being compressed as both parties watch the timer ticking down.

The answers especially get shorter as you get closer to the 00:00 mark.

Curiosity gets killed.

Spontaneity gets killed.

The silence and patient pauses that allow a person to go beyond a surface level answer and say something meaningful as it occurs to them get erased by this HURRY THE FUCK UP discussion model.

One strategy that can massively reduce paranoia in an interview is to NOT stream the conversation live.

When the interviewee knows this piece can be edited, they can relax knowing they can take their foot out of their mouth if need be.

This can make all the difference in the world when you’re going into a conversation where a debate is likely to occur.  

It is also a vastly different scenario when the interviewer wants the BEST version of the other person’s argument vs. the interviewer praying their sleight of mouth and yelling will get the interviewee fall on their face as they watch the clock creeping towards zero.

They celebrate off-screen or on social media like they’ve won when in reality, the rigged format is what is truly responsible for their “victory.”   

Tons of not-dumb people freeze up when put on the spot.

This is why introverts love having time to think and can very often express themselves better in writing.

But most people are far MORE interested in being right than they are in finding synergy and this need of theirs flips the switch that goes for blood whenever they feel attacked.

The double-dipped-cream-dream for a loud extrovert with zero interest in finding solutions via synergy is to have the deck stacked in their favor in short-form live settings that play to their strengths.

With there being no shortage of these settings, there are a fuck ton of extroverts in the world who have mastered the art of getting their way via intimidation.

Being bigger, meaner, sexier, more popular, more influential, wealthier, violent, etc. gives them an edge and they live for the opportunity to crush anyone who dares to challenge their perceived supremacy.

Whereas the introvert’s super power lies in a well-thought out argument laid out on the page in a relaxed setting… the extroverted intimidator’s strength is in getting in your face, raising their voice, threatening violence, demanding an immediate response to their attack right this very second, etc.

The sole intention of their bum rush-style of communication is to get you flustered.

You being flustered is what tips the scales in their favor.

This means they have ZERO interest in arguing with a person who is not in a bewildered or infuriated state of mind.

Bullies of all shapes and sizes have no interest in fighting fair against someone who isn’t afraid of them.

Look at it like this…

If anger was something that made people better, do you think athletes would work so hard to get under the skin of their opponent? Do you think lawyers would try to attack and frustrate witnesses under cross examination? Of course not. It is precisely because anger is blinding, because it makes us irrational, that one opponent uses it to undermine another.

~Ryan Holliday – Author of ten books, including The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, Conspiracy, and Stillness is the Key

Even if Sam Harris 100% disagrees with someone, even if it is someone he’s bringing on his podcast to debate over their smearing his name in public, he STILL wants them to be happy with their argument.

There is zero “GOTCHA!” motive from his end where he’s deathly afraid of verbally knocking someone to the canvas… them having the chance to recover and coming back swinging at him.

Telling the guest in advance that “if you say something you think they’re going to regret, and you want a mulligan, that’s fine” makes it so an entirely different person shows up.

A natural conversation that is free to breathe can occur instead of a hurried ambush where many points are left unsaid.

Now let’s get back to conversation Sam is having with Shane and look at why Sam believes adversarial print interviews can also mangle the point a person is trying to make…

RESUME:

Print interviews are the most hostile context in which to get your ideas out. (context here is for controversial topics)

They are always radically edited. And when raw transcripts are made available, all the junk fillers are left in… the uhhh’s, uhhhm’s, etc.

It’s hostile and verbatim which is a common lazy practice.

If they don’t agree with you, there’s this massive “GOTCHA” component to it because they’ll edit it down to the least charitable, yet actually accurate version of what you said.

(Sam talks about reading an interview where a highly prominent magazine was interviewing an author for a new book he had coming out.)

He says, “The whole purpose of this interview was to harm his reputation. There was no other reason to put this text into the world. It was not interesting. It was a failed interview.

The author didn’t have much to say on the topic that was being foisted on them but that was being amplified. The whole thing was edited to make them look like someone who hasn’t thought deeply about the thing they were writing about.

I guarantee you that 99% of the people who read this didn’t understand the subtext which is that the prominent magazine decided to fuck this person over.

The readers think, ‘He doesn’t have his game together. That was weird and awkward. It didn’t make this person look good and I’m not sure I want to read this book because they haven’t really thought about this stuff deeply.’

This is starkly unethical.

It was clear to see that the author had an axe to grind.

The framing and editing of the piece was calculated in a way to make the person look like a dunce on the topic they had just written a book on.”

Here’s the thing – In the example above, the author may very well speak beautifully to these interview questions being posed to them in their book… and yet the author could easily be one of those people who is hardly their best self when verbally challenged in a time-sensitive setting.

If this is the case or, even if it isn’t, if you don’t read the book, the odds are high that you’re not going to see this author’s thinking at its best.

A goal worthy of striving for in life in life is to postpone judgment until you feel you’ve seen/heard the other person’s argument in it’s best form. 

By not doing so, you’re left making an estimation based on seeing this person operating as the least compelling version of themselves… and if that wasn’t bad enough… if the person doing the interview has an adversarial agenda, you’re not even getting the full picture due to biased editing.

Beware The Agendas Being Presented To You 

As a consumer, I trust it is easy to see how critically important it is for you to fully appreciate the lens through which a perspective is being presented.

It is crucial to get the full picture rather than rely on sound bites and agenda-driven, selectively edited information when it comes to topics of severe consequence to your life.

I mean, who cares if you’re not getting the full picture of a Hollywood actor who is being interviewed as part of the promotion tour for an upcoming comedy movie they’re starring in.

But think about how this is a completely different scenario when a copywriter is trying to sell you on buying from a “business advice guru.” 

Or… when you’re trying to sell yourself to an audience of your perfect prospects or… a potential business partner.

Or… when you’ve agreed to be interviewed by someone for a podcast or an article.

When it comes to non-adversarial conversations, open-ended formats are better suited for learning more about the other person; how they really think, hearing better stories, more stories, and high-quality answers to big questions.

You need to be fully conscious of how your audience could interpret the way you’re presenting yourself or being presented by someone else.

You have to know when a specific kind of interview with a certain person is not going to do you any favors.

You also want to recognize that bowling with the bumpers on i.e. only playing the short-form interview intimidation game is going to look weak to anyone who is a critical thinker.

Now let’s look deeper at this question related to….

Part 2: Influencing Outcomes

What Is The Length of Copy /Content That Allows You To Have Profitable Conversations?

We both know that just blabbing to blab for extended periods of time in any conversational context is actually counterproductive.

And conversely, we know that not making enough of the right points can be equally as counterproductive.

We dread the idea of being thought of as a waste of time and we yearn to be held up as a person who brings value to those who give us their attention.

This creates a paradox in our  minds that makes us afraid to ask for 3 hours of an important person’s time for an interview… and fearful that people will judge our snack-sized content/marketing we put out for fear or content will be seen as nothing but fluff or is pitch riddled with holes. 

When you realize this, it makes more sense to focus on what you’re trying to accomplish with your conversation than it does on fixating on “Long” or “Short”.

Look at this snippet from this post where Copyblogger is quoting Bob Bly…

Bob Bly says that the length of your copy will depend on three things:

The Product: the more features and benefits a product has, the longer the copy.

The Audience: Certain people want as much information as they can get before making a purchase. This is especially true of people on the Internet, and especially true with information products.

The Purpose: What’s the goal? Generating a lead for a service business requires less detail, but an ad that aims to make a sale must overcome every objection the potential buyer may have.

So when it comes to making any kind of selling argument, in my mind, it makes sense to ask yourself… “Have I presented all the features and benefits of what I’m proposing?” and “Have I proven every claim I’ve made beyond the shadow of doubt?”

If the answer is, “Yes,” to both questions then this is when you’re done.

If not, then more copy needs to be added to fill in any holes still remaining in reference to those two questions.

When it comes to AUDIENCE, I think that no matter what you’re selling or teaching, you want to address the four learning styles…

WHAT you’re presenting and the theory/science/rational behind it…

WHY it is important for a person to know…

HOW-TO RECIPES for getting a result and…

WHAT TO DO NOW in order to get started.

When it comes to PURPOSE, obviously the HOW-TO part of the steps above is going to be different in Lead Generation or a sales letter than it is in within an article, book, or a live training.

If you’re strictly teasing, this is where you’re letting people know that behind closed doors there is an actual recipe that leads you to specific, measurable, and verifiable results.

In the training itself is where you’re laying out the recipe step-by-step.

Now here’s a question you might be asking…

Does “Generating a Lead Requires Less Detail” Mean “Short Copy” Is The Only Copy You Use For This Task? 

For the person who is in LOVE with the idea of using short copy, they read Bob’s advice above and say, “SEE! Short lead gen landing pages, 1,000 word articles, 3-5 minute videos, 5-10-30 minute podcasts are all you need!”

But for me, “Less Detail” doesn’t automatically mean “Short Form.”

The rule of thumb when it comes to length of lead generation content is to NOT bog down the conversion.

Artful lead generation is a string of ideas surrounding the service or product that excite the perfect prospect…

A sales letter/video or an in-person pitch is you convincing the perfect prospect that you have something that can bring this string of exciting ideas you’re talking about to life for them.

And yes, in either of these instances TOO much detail can derail a person’s excitement.

But NOT ENOUGH meaningful detail can scare the lead off like an animal who looks and sniffs around at a potential source of food, gets the sense that what’s there isn’t worth the hassle of pursuing it any further, and scampers off to find something more familiar/enticing.

And of course, not enough of the right details in a sales letter can send a prospect searching for someone else to hand their money to.

And this is why you need to always be testing for what the market feels is that Goldilocks spot of “Just Right” relative to what it is you’re selling.

Here is the key to finding the Goldilocks spot…

Work Harder Than The Average Bear To Find Intriguing Subjects and Solutions Your Perfect Prospect Are Interested In

Up until today, I didn’t fully appreciate why I love Costco, a mega warehouse store here in the States.

It’s just a store to buy shit in bulk, right?

Did I only like it because it offered great prices on mega-sized boxes of shit?

Nope.

It turns out that this article on Wirecutter spelled out exactly why I’ve loved Costco for decades now…

Costco is able to offer great deals in part because it has a minimal marketing budget and focuses on buying a very small selection of items in bulk. Costco carries “between 3,700 and 3,800 items,” according to this CNBC article, while Walmart, in contrast, carries an average of 142,000 items.

And unlike most big retailers, the company earns 2 percent of its revenue from membership fees (which start at $60 a year). According to the company’s annual report (PDF), Costco made $3.1 billion in membership fees for fiscal year 2018, with 90 percent renewal rates in the US and Canada.

Costco has good reason to curate only the best.

Its warehouses don’t have a lot of space for options, especially when it’s trying to sell everything from potstickers to HVAC systems.

And then there’s Costco’s generous return policy—you can return pretty much anything at any time if you’re dissatisfied (as long as you don’t abuse that policy). The exceptions are electronics and appliances, which usually have only a 90-day return policy.

It’s in Costco’s best interest to offer high-quality choices that people won’t want to return.

Immaculate curation of the most interesting and best quality products the market is interested in.

THAT has been the secret to Costco’s success.

They don’t try to compete with Wal-Mart by selling 142,000 items.

They narrow their focus to 3,700 items that are HOT.

And by doing this… they’ve set up a situation where people happily paid them $3.1 Billion dollars in 2018 to even be allowed to walk into their store and buy their stuff. 

This is an example of how separating yourself from the herd can give you a special place in the hearts of the market.

But how do you do this with content, marketing, and advertising?

Asking The Right Questions Is The Key To Finding Ideas That Are Worthy of Attention

As of the time I am writing this, Agora Financial is kicking the shit out of their competitors in the investment newsletter niche.

They have been for many years now.

They’re The Incredible Billion-Dollar Hulk… and everyone else is a mere human.

And they absolutely DOMINATE their niche with intriguing long copy.

Listen to what the famed founder of Agora, Bill Bonner, credits this to…

Naturally and normally, most people spend most of their time in the comfortable and familiar embrace of the ordinary.

Floods that last for 40 days and 40 nights, fire and brimstone, market crashes, or world wars rarely bother them.

They watch television. They read the newspaper. Except when they are entertained by ‘War of the Worlds’ style fantasies, nothing in their usual media disturbs their sleep.

But in some part of their brain, they know that the future may not go so smoothly and predictably.

They know that sometimes things go terribly wrong or wonderfully right. People really do lose all their money… or make 1,000% profit.

It happens, just not very often.

And while they believe that it probably won’t happen – why should it?; it is so extraordinary – they know it could happen to them.

They feel they shou1d at least consider it.

Who knows, maybe they will get lucky and make 1,000% on their investments… or avoid a horrible loss?

Agora is in the business of exploring the ‘fat tails’ (non-mainstream information) for them.

Our role, and our relationship with our customers, is not as a news provider. We do provide ‘news,’ but it is of a special sort; it is the news you find out on the extreme ends of the bell curve.

The usual news is delivered by the mainstream media in vast quantities. It’s the news that tells readers that the world is as they have imagined it.

It’s the news that tells them that today will be much like yesterday and tomorrow will be much like today,

It is like a mainstream economists’ projection for the year ahead; it is just what you’d expect.

We are the alternative press. We present views, news, and ideas that are an alternative to those you find in the mainstream media.

We recall the mid-1980s.

Huge changes were taking place in the world – particularly in the Soviet Union and its satellite states.

Our newsletter, Strategic Investment, predicted that the Soviet Union would fall apart and that the Berlin Wall would come down.

We don’t recall a single mainstream magazine, newspaper, or TV station that saw it coming. But our newsletter editors had an idea about the way the world worked … and an opinion that was, at the time, way out on the extreme ‘fat tails’ of the bell curve.

Likewise, in the 1990s, a newsletter we published saw a revolution coming in American eating patterns.

Dr. Robert Atkins said the diet recommended by the American medical establishment was unhealthy.

Instead of eating so much starch and sugar, Americans should eat more meat and fat, he said.

At the time, this view was far from the center of the bell curve. Instead, it was out in the fat tail area; Dr. Atkins was labeled a ‘nut’ for having such a kooky opinion.

Dr. Atkins did not live to see it, but the New York Times eventually came around to seeing things his way – about 10 years later.

This does not mean that our newsletters, emails, books and other publications are always ‘way out there,’ nor that they are always right.

But what we publish is distinctly, tenaciously not mainstream.

We charge some of the highest prices per-word in the entire industry. People do not need to pay those prices to find out what everyone else thinks. They can get the mainstream view much more cheaply.

They pay our prices because they value the ‘fat tail’ opinion, the research and the recommendations.

Investors, for example, are not likely to make more than 3% to 5% on their money.

That is the average return of mainstream investors over hundreds of years. But our editors and researchers work hard to find ways that they could make much more.

That’s why our financial advertising seems so daring or ‘in your face’ to many people.

It offers readers a chance to do something that most people know is unlikely.

Most investors will continue to make 3% to 5% on their money. Only a few will do better – by taking a bet on a ‘fat tail’ event. 

These are but two of the most important counter-intuitive, yet common-sense ideas that allowed Agora to distinguish themselves in the eyes of their market over the decades they’ve been in business.

Bill Bonner knew that if they just showed up saying what everyone was saying, “New Investment Opportunity Shows You How To Safely Get 5% on Your Money” they would sound just like the establishment that this audience does not trust.

Yet, he also knew that the last thing they wanted to do was to sound like hypey scam artists when they are making what sound like wild ass predictions coming way out of left field.

He knew that proving these “Non-Mainstream Prediction” ideas were legitimate could NOT be done with short copy.

And you can bet that there are some razor-sharp experts out there who find hidden, counter-intuitive investment opportunities but are clueless as to how to sell that advice to a 71-year-old male who has been burned by the mainstream market strategies multiple times.

The reason why Agora dominates this field is they’ve figured out how to educate their perfect prospects with long form copy in both their selling and their content in a way that makes prospects and customers feel safe and smart.  

Are You Cheating People Out Of Buying From You Because You Don’t Pique Their Curiosity With Intriguing Conversation That Gets Them Excited About Buying From You?  

What follows is an example that is not all that uncommon…

It is almost the norm for people who sell something that is complex to create either feel like “marketing/advertising” is beneath them or…

…they embrace the idea of “nothing happens without marketing or advertising or selling” and they’re just clueless as to how to talk about their stuff in way that doesn’t make them seem like a pretentious dickhead.

The “experts” who hate marketing/advertising feel that the work should speak for itself… essentially believing people should be beating their door down to get it without them having to do anything but create the products or service.

As the result of feeling this way, these people often go with a cutesy, artsy, or a deadly dull/dry approach to presenting what they have.

The “experts” who have no qualms with advertising/marketing take the same approach for fear of doing it wrong or… for fear of doing something different than the herd. 

There’s a massive difference between short, sweet, and ruthlessly potent by elegant design… and short because you don’t know what to say or… because you see advertising as something akin to cleaning your bathroom – something you don’t want to do… that should be executed by someone who is beneath your pay grade. 

It wasn’t until today that I’d given any consideration as to how a Michelin Star chef who offered a menu that wasn’t cheap but was far from being extravagantly priced relative to the quality of the ingredients and the elaborate preparation strategies used… would deal with this “short vs. long” dilemma. 

I’m a huge fan of “The Dave Chang Show” Podcast hosted by David Chang… the man who has had his restaurant Momofuku awarded two Michelin stars in 2009, which it has retained each year since, who now has restaurants in LA, New York City, DC, Las Vegas, Sydney, and Toronto.

My Pocket Casts account is a VAST array of topics that span from sex, comedy, sports, marketing, food, history, psychology, nutrition, and much more, for whatever reason, I opened up today, went to Dave’s podcast and I downloaded…

Our Own Worst Critics, Vol 1.: Joshua Skenes of Angler LA

Here’s the quick description of this episode…

After the highly anticipated launch of Angler in Los Angeles, Dave sits down with its chef and founder, Joshua Skenes, to assess for themselves the second outpost of the Michelin-starred seafood restaurant.

This was not your traditional “two friendly chefs sucking each other’s dicks” conversation as one might expect from a Chef podcast talking about a new restaurant opening

Instead, this was a conversation where David is beating up on Josh, pressing him with hard questions Josh didn’t want to think about.

(He did something similar for Christina Tosi of Milk Bar fame.)

David had ZERO negative feedback on the food or the service or the décor of the restaurant.

In fact, David raved about all of the above.

So what the hell was he criticizing?

Answer: Josh’s marketing.  

David and Josh are friends and this is one of the reasons why David wanted to push Josh in a way that NOBODY else in this industry would.

What was incredibly refreshing to hear in this interview is BOTH of these chefs being open to the possibility of longer-form marketing being better.

Here is David’s biggest criticism of what Josh is doing at his restaurant…

He’s going through elaborate, 3-Michelin-Star gyrations to prepare his affordably-priced food… AND HE IS NOT even being appreciated for it by the customer because Josh is clueless as to how to educate the diner on what a herculean effort it is taking to produce the food being presented to them.

Here is an invaluable snippet that comes forth 1 HOUR AND 44 MINUTES INTO THE INTERVIEW WITH 40 MINUTES STILL LEFT… (LONG FORM WINS AGAIN)

CHANG: “Caesar Salad, delicious. Was it a normal Caesar Salad?”

SKENES: No, it’s not. Is any of it normal (referring to his menu)? None of its ‘normal’?  

CHANG: What is in your Caesar Salad?

SKENES: Chicory, Spanish anchovies (less salty, more anchovy flavor), that’s my compromise. If I do California Anchovies, that’s 3,000 anchovies that I have to dry and salt and smoke and all that shit. I made a compromise and bought the best anchovies on the market instead of making my own.

CHANG: (Jokingly says) What a sell-out (hahaha)… what a fucking sell-out… you have no integrity whatsoever.

SKENES: Bread crumbs are made out of Chad’s bread from Tartine (one of the best bakeries in the nation).

The Parmesan is just a 6 out of 10 Parmesan.

You know what pisses me off? When people don’t understand a Californian Caesar.

CHANG: What is a Californian Caesar?

SKENES: It’s the old Chez Pannise Caesar. You throw some anchovies and some garlic in a mortar and pestle, throw a good egg yolk in there and some good olive oil…

CHANG: Why are you throwing it in a mortar and pestle, chef?

SKENES: Tastes better.

CHANG: Why?

SKENES: Tastes better.

CHANG: Why?

SKENES: You are basically extracting those oils and flavors from the product instead of warming them and beating them in a blender. Tastes different.

Nobody is gonna notice that.

CHANG: But they do.

SKENES: Some people do. The rewarding part of having a place that is successful but also when people will say, “I really appreciate the real Caesar dressing.

CHANG: It was delicious.

The Radicchio (Radicchio is a perennial cultivated form of leaf chicory sometimes known as Italian chicory because of its common use in Italian cuisine) has become a very famous dish – probably the most photographed salad in the past year.

SKENES: Yeah, radicchio is bitter, right, but the dressing balances it out. But I didn’t know if people were really going to order the dish because its a little esoteric.

It’s leaves of radicchio and there’s two components to the dressing.

There’s the vinaigrette itself and there’s a radicchio X.O.. The vinaigrette itself is made out of vegetables, vegetable juice, vinegar…

CHANG: What vegetables?

SKENES: There’s beet, radicchio leaves – all the broken, fucked up pieces of the radicchio and just good vinegar and that’s it. That’s your base and obviously we process it a certain way.

But then there’s the radicchio X.O. which is all the big outside leaves. We dry those above the fire with garlic and shallots and those basically age above the fire on a rack system I’ve built up here.

Over the course of a couple of days, it takes on a different flavor. It’s deeper and the flavor becomes sweeter and that’s our X.O.. It’s an aged X.O. and that’s crushed up…

CHANG: There’s nothing simple about it though… having had that dish.

I’ve been looking at it. It’s the first time I had it. When I tasted it I thought that this is insanely smart and genius level shit because you took radicchio, which you ordinarily have to have an acquired taste for, and you judo-moved the bitterness.

You made it a desirable trait because of the vinaigrette.

The smoke is what actually makes it work because it masks the bitterness just enough. You brought two to the table and I kept on eating it and I’m like, ‘Motherfucker that’s so difficult to do.’

And it’s not just because it looks good.

The ability to execute that is incredibly hard. It’s INCREDIBLY hard and I don’t give a shit if everyone has that recipe.

Do you know why no one will make it? No one can get the smoke.

It’s an impossibility for people to copy.

SKENES: I’ve never thought about it that way.

CHANG: 100%. Who the fuck is going to copy that dish? You can’t. It’s impossible to get the right smoke. You figured out the perfect balance for smoke… is a smoke that is barely noticeable… but it’s just enough.

SKENES: The right amount of smoke is NOT smoke-y.

CHANG: It’s like having acid in a dish…

SKENES: It’s like three drops of lemon in a sauce… you’re not supposed to taste the lemon.

CHANG: It’s like bass in a band, you’re not really supposed to hear it.

But you did it and that’s what I’m trying to tell you… when you said you can’t tell people, you need to tell people.

When I taste that dish, for me, that’s a lifetime’s worth of work to get that dish because it’s a balance of tricking the brain to like the smoke and the sweetness and the acidity and the bitterness.

It’s a perfect fucking bite of food. It really is.

There’s a reason why people love it. It’s because it’s as close to a 10 of a dish that you could possibly have.

And that dish, symbolizes Angler better than anything else.

We’ll get into the vegetables, they were all delicious. I told you with the Hen of the Woods (Hen of the Woods is a large polypore tasting similar to eggplant), bro, it’s too hard. Why are you making it that hard?

I can tell it takes DAYS to make.

SKENES: It just takes 8 hours – on the grill for like 6 hours slowly… with a buffalo mushroom sauce…

CHANG: Insert sarcastic tone* Oh, it’s so easy to make a buffalo sauce…

SKENES: I try to oversimplify it because I always feel like a dickhead trying to explain why everything is special…    

What You Just Read Is A Prime Example of How “Short Copy” Can Do a Disservice To a Masterful Product

Skenes is one of the most innovative and respected chefs on the face of this planet. This is a FACT.

You see Chang calling Skenes out for cheating himself by only devoting his creativity to that of creating dishes… and acting helpless when it comes to creatively educating his perfect prospects on why his dishes are “the perfect bite of food.”

When it comes to assembling world-class dishes he sees himself as an innovative titan. When it comes to selling them, he is drawing blanks.

He is not alone.

If you’re masterful when it comes to creating products/delivering services but not good at selling them, you are not alone.

One natural reason for this is that we all like to do what we’re good at… and we all want to avoid shit that we don’t think we’re good at.

Hence the reason the chef is willing to risk putting their world class creations in the limelight… but feels resistant when it’s time to put their marketing hat on and assemble words that sell. 

But you don’t need to be “The Greatest on Earth” at marketing in order to be “good enough” at educating your perfect prospects in a way that helps your incredible offerings be appreciated 10X more than what they are now.

In order to be stumped by the question of “Why are not doing a better job of selling your amazing offerings?”, you have to be asking yourself a poor quality of question like…

“Why do I have to do this? The product should speak for itself.”

Or…

“What will my peers think of me if I don’t make my words look “respectable” and “refined” like theirs?”

Neither of these questions are rooted in empathy for the perfect prospect.

And it should be no surprise that the answers to questions like these reflect this and make the business owner seem as if they’re oblivious to the customer. 

Questions ARE THE ANSWER

I just finished taking 70+ pages of notes on the 22+ hours of content that is Agora Financial Copy School System.

The reason I went through this exercise is because A) I don’t pretend that I know it all… B) nor do I think myself above a refresher course on the fundamentals of the skills that pay my bills.

Agora is the 800-pound gorilla in a billion-dollar newsletter subscription niche where words are what they rely on to stay insanely profitable.

What they deemed to be the single most important part of the training was the section where they talked about developing compelling Big Ideas.

What Is The Compelling Big Idea?

A big idea is a premise that is INSTANTLY appreciated and deemed to be important, exciting, and beneficial to the perfect prospect.

It always leads the perfect prospect to a conclusion that makes interested in buying what you’re selling AND makes it easy for you to talk about it in an interesting way.

This is the most important session of the training.

Let’s look at a set of questions they encourage you to ask in this training that can help you generate this big idea in the first place…

Ordinary Approach To Coming Up With a Marketing Idea

1. What is the product?

2. Who is the editor or personality behind the offer?

3. What is the actual investment(s) or strategy, and/or premium set?

4. What is the broadest category you can compare this opportunity?

Most people will only ask themselves some variation of the first two of these four questions… a bare-bones description of what it is and who is offering it.

But when you ask these questions along with the following eight questions, you expand the potential to come up with something tantalizing…

Extraordinary Approach To Coming Up With a Marketing Idea

Include all four questions above and then enhance your efforts by asking these ones…

5. What is the most compelling thing about the editor/personality that conveys instant credibility?

6. Who else has used this investment/strategy, or a similar related situation, that you can use for instant credibility?

7. What is your most compelling historical proof this investment/strategy will make a lot of money, fast?

8. What is the most extreme but believable money-making promise can you make?

9. Why does the reader need to act now? Is there a catalyst you can find with real dates? What urgent problem does your offer solve?

10. Can you create a powerful, tangible or visual metaphor (or name) to describe this opportunity?

11. What makes this different from any other offers in the related broad category?

12. What is the most compelling product feature (or reason why) the promised outcome is near inevitable, and can you invent a name for this mechanism?

If you look at these questions and you’re saying, “There’s nothing special about these questions. There is some variation of these questions in even the most basic of copywriting courses I’ve gone through”… you would be right.

There is nothing new under the sun.

This sequence of questions is hardly a rare revelation.

When you read them, a part of you can say, “Yeah, it’s plain common sense that asking questions that flesh out meaningful benefits and proof would supply you with a better description of what you’re offering.”

But what is rare is the people who A) Know to ask these questions in the first place and B) Are willing to ask them and answer them thoughtfully.

So, take for instance Josh Skenes.

I don’t imagine he’s ever gone through a copywriting or marketing course and yet his dining innovations allowed him to reach the pinnacle of his profession.

This is every business owner/artist’s wet dream – “My work’s supremacy sells itself”.

In Josh’s case, when it comes to this Big Idea concept, it’s a question of “How high is high?”

“How much more successful could I be if explained my dishes/processes better?” or, “Am I giving a beyond average level of education to my diners?”

The high failure rate statistics of new businesses tells you that there are many business owners who don’t have the luxury of being able to succeed in spite of NOT mastering the art of marketing what they offer.

And one of the commonalities of people who struggle to sell is that they don’t look for the common sense questions to ask that make it easy to say something compelling. 

Breathing Life Into The Bland | A Thought Exercise

Chefs make a living by transforming bland/boring ingredients into something exponentially more tasty.

Michelin star chefs pride themselves on being able to turn $100 dollars worth of ingredients into something people happily pay $300 dollars for.

This idea of turning nothing into something with the help of creativity is not completely foreign to them.

So for the sake of example, we’ll ask the Big Idea questions from above for the famous Angler radicchio salad. 

We’re going to look at how we can take incomplete, one-liner descriptions of dishes that the menu offer and brief descriptions often given by waiters like, “It’s delicious” or “It’s a very popular dish” and see if we can use this template to do this dish the justice it deserves.

We’ll do this based on that little snippet of the interview I included here and five-minutes worth of research on the internet…

  Ordinary Idea Template

1. What is the product?

Radicchio with Radicchio X.O.

That’s how it reads on Angler’s sleek menu as of the day I’m writing this.

“Radicchio leaves with pieces of charred radicchio mixed with aged garlic and shallots.” is what the waiter may add to that description if asked.  

2. Who is the editor or personality behind the offer?

The owner is Chef Josh Skenes.

3. What is the actual investment(s) or strategy, and/or premium set?

This is a question that more so applies to selling information where you’re selling something like an Option Trading system that comes with a bunch of bonus reports. 

Since this restaurant offers no “Free toy” with your happy meal premium/bonus or “2 for $5 dollar” specials, this question doesn’t apply.

4. What is the broadest category you can compare this opportunity?

While raving about the restaurant, The New York Times said this about the salad…

A raw radicchio, served whole, is drenched in an extraordinary, messy dressing so that when you carve into it, it looks like something fresh and bloody and still alive.

This, or parts of what  Food and Wine.com said about it might be as much of an answer to this question as you’d get from a busy ass waiter…

All this said, one of the most memorable dishes I ate at Angler was neither seafood nor meat. It was a plate of radicchio. I guess you could call this thing a salad, but the dish splashes and gushes in a way that resembles blood. That’s why you get a bib when you order it. The radicchio is topped with a combination of reduced beet juice, soy sauce, shallots, and garlic that magically creates something like the flavor and texture of XO sauce without any dried seafood or pork. Bar director Brandyn Tepper smiled as he looked at our table and said that the dish comes with “a huge mess.” The mess seems like a vital ingredient.

The first three of these basic answers give you a rough description of the salad.

The answers I inserted for the fourth one are embellished as they are from the minds of food critics – people who actually get paid to colorfully describe things.

But as I mentioned earlier, I think it’d be safe to say that the waiters would at least give you the highlighted text above if a customer were to ask what is in this salad.

What these four questions fail to deliver on is the compelling story that excited David Chang when talking with Josh about this dish.

Let’s see if some quick answers to the questions that follow can be used to shift any responses of…

‘Uhhh… Sounds weird… No thanks…’

to…

‘OH SHIT! HELL YEAH, GIVE ME THAT!’

Extended Idea Template

5. What is the most compelling thing about the editor/personality that conveys instant credibility?

From Joshua’s personal site

Acclaimed Chef Joshua Skenes conceived the much-lauded Saison in 2006 and opened its first location in 2009. He is best known for his unique methodology, innovations in fire cooking, and relentless pursuit of the very best products in existence. Skenes is the first and only chef to garner 3-Michelin stars cooking entirely over open fire. 

6. Who else has used this investment/strategy, or a similar related situation, that you can use for instant credibility?

This is where you’d look for examples of people converting a previously undesired food into something insanely popular…

“Think about the 16th century when the Spanish observed the Central American peoples infatuation with cacao and how they consumed it in its bitter form as a drink. The Spanish took it back to Spain and nobody was excited about it until they started adding in sugar or honey to mask the bitterness. That’s the story of how chocolate went from being something disgusting… to being a billion dollar junk food industry. This example sheds some light on what Chef Skenes figured out when it comes to masking the bitterness of radicchio.” 

7. What is your most compelling historical proof this investment/strategy will make a lot of money, fast?

So, again, not a money-making pitch but nevertheless, we need proof that we’re not just some smooth-talking waiter who is trying to get you to gamble on some abnormal sounding dish that looks gross.

This is where you could point to the headlines of the most famous reviews of the dish… New York Times said this about it… Food and Wine said this about it… David Chang said this about it… etc. etc. etc.

8. What is the most extreme but believable money-making promise can you make?

Again, not a money-making pitch but as the owner and waiter you are still tasked with getting the customer to believe that buying this extreme dish is a good idea.

This is where you could say that not one single person has ever sent this dish back OR… if that isn’t the case… how out of the 11,004 of these salads sold to date… only 3 people have not liked it and asked for it to be sent back.

And if your numbers are impress enough, you could say something along the lines of, “Over 96.3% of our repeat customers, order this salad again after trying it.”

9. Why does the reader need to act now? Is there a catalyst you can find with real dates? What urgent problem does your offer solve?

Most restaurants have a never ending tub of chopped lettuce and bottles of generic dressing on hand. They’re never going to sell out of their “salads.” 

But there is a ton of labor and artistry that goes into producing these salads so it makes sense that there would be limited supply of them.

Of course, if it is not uncommon for you sell out of these salads, this would be the place where you would mention this fact.

Along with the practical value, there might also be marketing value in only prepping to serve a certain number of them per day.   

10. Can you create a powerful, tangible or visual metaphor (or name) to describe this opportunity?

You could liken Josh’s “Open Fire Mastery” to how you can take a nasty ass bitter can of Hershey’s cacao like this…

… and with a few ingredients and additional prep steps, turn it into a container of Hershey’s chocolate syrup, the kind you drizzle on top of ice cream or stir into milk to make chocolate milk, which any kid would joyfully chug on from the bottle if you let them.

11. What makes this different from any other offers in the related broad category?

This is where a waiter might say something along the lines of…

I trust that even an adult who was raised on nothing but fast food and junk diet staples, who absolutely HATES vegetables, would love this salad… and have their socks knocked off after being told that it was one of the most nutritionally dense dishes on our entire menu after feeling they’d just eaten something as tasty as all the 10 cent garbage they feast on daily.

Nobody else is artfully judo-moving the bitterness out of radicchio.   

12. What is the most compelling product feature or reason why the promised outcome is near inevitable, and can you invent a name for this mechanism?

This is the single most memorable salad you will have ever eaten… a dish that may very well transform the world’s perspective on radicchio much the same as the Spanish did with chocolate.

Artful Balance Is The Name of the Game

What you see below comes from the same Food and Wine review I cited above…

Angler isn’t a restaurant that wants to pound you over the head with details about its food. With the exception of oysters and clams, there isn’t any information on the menu about where seafood is sourced. (The menu does point out that the butter served with bread is made with dairy from Petaluma cows, which might answer one question about why bread and butter cost $12. One bite of the wonderful Parker House rolls might answer another question.) Skenes says he likes the fast-paced energy and attentive-but-not-cloying service at restaurants like Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills, where the goal is giving customers a high-end dining experience that also seems simple and fun “without the stories and silliness.”

It is perfectly understandable that you need to find a balance between your waiters being the used car salesman… and your wait staff being worthless when it comes to actually selling your dishes.

With this idea of finding the Goldilocks “just right” amount of selling, let’s look at all the answers to the questions above, put together as a conversational dialogue…

DINER: What is the radicchio salad?

WAITER: It’s radicchio leaves with pieces of charred radicchio mixed with aged garlic and shallots.

DINER: Is it popular?

WAITER: It is wildly popular with both professionals with a trained palate and the casual diner.

Chef Skenes is the first and only person to get 3-Michelin stars cooking entirely over open fire.

Now here is why that accomplishment is specifically significant to this dish.

So, think about the 16th century when the Spanish observed the Central American peoples infatuation with cacao and how they consumed it in its bitter form as a drink. The Spanish took it back to Spain and nobody was excited about it until they started adding in sugar or honey to mask the bitterness. That’s the story of how chocolate went from being something disgusting… to being a billion dollar junk food industry.

This example sheds some light on what Chef Skenes figured out when it comes to masking the bitterness of radicchio in a way that enhances a food ignored by most of the culinary world.

What he figured out is a feat capable of winning over even the most die hard vegetable hater… without completely ruining the nutrients for those who love the benefits of eating vegetables. 

And this is why you may have seen how the New York Times raved about it… Food and Wine.com raved about about it… celebrity chef David Chang raved about it… along with so many others.

But even more telling than this praise is the fact that our statistics show us that over 96% of our repeat diners, non-celebrities included, order this salad again after trying it.

With this being the case, it’s not a rarity for us to sell out of this salad before the end of the night.

To sum up; this the single most memorable salad you will have ever eaten.

END OF EXAMPLE

Long-Winded Stories and Silliness Not Required

If you look at the example above, you can see that in less than 90 seconds, a wait person can thoughtfully and matter-of-factly explain a dish in a way that makes it more likely to be added to the order along with whatever full entrees are being ordered.

Being that more the table orders, the better it is for both the owners and for the wait person, it seems that it would make sense to ensure that the items on offer are being described as interestingly as possible.

You can see how these Big Idea questions can mine the useful details out of what you’re selling. 

Since the chef is most intimate with the dishes, it would make sense for them to look at these questions, craft answers to them, and provide the wait staff with their summaries for them to use.

As the owner of the business, you’ve got the most skin in the game so no one is going to take it as serious as you.

Your wait staff already has a script they’re using to answer the generic questions they get asked about dishes 20-30 times a night.

You can’t just hope that your wait staff i.e. your salesforce is going to take it upon themselves to come up with the most tantalizing answers to those questions.

Doing it for them DRAMATICALLY increases the odds that they’ll start saying what puts your creations in their best light.

And yes, I know 90 seconds is still 90 seconds.

I realize that if you’re a busy ass restaurant, too many of these 90 second descriptions can add up and mess with your ability to serve as many tables as possible. 

So, here’s a way to trim down the number of questions waiters would have to answer…

Save Time By Pre-selling Your Customers

One of the smartest ways for a restaurant owner to not bog down their wait staff is to offer a digital menu – a menu on an iPad/tablet.

As it stands now, the standard paper menus offered give a list of the dishes and at best, the main ingredients in it.

These incomplete descriptions are what lead to diners not being as excited about dishes as they should be or… to having to ask the waiter a bunch of questions… and you, the owner hoping this combination does your dishes justice.   

But what if you made a captioned 60-90-second video for each dish that played on-demand, on bare-bones, no-frills tablets that beautifully display the menu and elegant answers to all or most of the questions above? 

One of the clips in the video could playfully give people of snap shot of all the ingredients within in the dish like they do in The Chef Show…

And of course you can continually build upon a FAQ section of the menu for the questions that come up over and over again.

The customer is being thoughtfully attended to which allows waiters to devote more of their time to the task of delivering service or… actually having the space to bond with guests via small talk.

This frees up the waiter’s from having to hurriedly explain dishes/drinks, memorize all the meaningful details, knowing they’ve got other tables they need to attend to, rushing descriptions for fear that they will overstay their welcome, etc.

Here’s how you help customers make decisions even faster

You can have these same videos posted to your site and if you use a web-based service like Tock to make your reservations, and you’ve got the customer’s email address, this allows you to send them your online menu upon them making their reservations and you can encourage them to cruise through as many videos as they’d like on your digital menu at their own leisure.

The result of this is that you have a fully-educated, next-level excited customer who shows up to the restaurant already knowing exactly what they want.

Conclusion

Stories about dishes and chef’s journeys are what fuel the success of multi-million dollar 60-minute episode series like “Chef’s Table” and “The Chef Show” that Netflix produces.

Netflix hasn’t produced 7 volumes of the documentary Chef’s Table or… 2 volumes of The Chef Show (with no end in sight for either) because people don’t like “stories” and “silliness” mixed in with their food porn.

The key fear people charged with creating content have when it comes to the “Short” vs. “Long” topic is that of turning people off.

Nobody wants to be labeled as a “waste of time.”  

When you see how one of the hottest philosophers of this day, Sam Harris, is telling the A-List individuals he is interviewing to schedule no less than three hours for their interview or… how Tim Ferriss is interviewing A-List personalities for 2 to 2.5 hours, I trust you can see that having a prejudice for only using short form communication for fear of people having too short of an attention span is not valid.

In my everyday life, one of the things I absolutely hate with a passion is feeling like I’m being rushed or hurried into making an argument OR… making a decision.

This is why the following quote resonates so deeply with me…

And that’s what I’ve decided is always worth spending money on: anything that removes anxiety and stress.

~Laura Belgray of talkingshrimp.com fame

With this being the case, it makes sense that ever since I started writing copy for sales letters, content, or even for articles… I’ve always had a preference for longer form copy.

When I very first got my start in writing copy and selling, I was sending 5-7 page sales letter faxes I wrote to prospects while everyone else in the office was sending generic two-page faxes.  

I never needed to be hard-sold, convinced, converted, and then re-wired by gurus in order to trust that writing long form was the way to go.

The gurus preaching about long-form copy being the better option merely served as a confirmation for what already felt natural for me.

And it has always made common sense that a message should never be long just for long sake.

For example, I just sent a 50 page sales letter to a client accompanied by a 14 page – “About Me” ride-along document.

The incredibly impatient person responsible for editing every sentence of it is a poster child for those people in the world who refuse to be bored by what they read.

They removed somewhere in the neighborhood of 29 words.

Yes, you read correctly…only 29 words.

Their job was simplified by my having removed 65 pages worth of copy from the letter while writing it

Significant time and attention was dedicated to this excess copy to the point where I didn’t throw it away, but instead I put it into a separate document to be referenced later for other stuff like emails, social media posts, etc. related to what we were selling.

All marketing communication comes down to saying just enough to touch your perfect prospect in a way that is deemed to be entertaining… or to encourage them to take actions they believe will help them avoid pain and bring them pleasure.  

When we get in tune with what this means for our specific perfect prospect, we become likable and trustworthy.

I’m reminded of this task both you and I are charged with as I was reading an article on Farnam Street related to filtering and processing information that said…

“I soon learned,” (Albert) Einstein said, “to scent out what was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things that clutter up the mind.”

“Who else,” Wheeler writes, “could have distilled this simple central point from all the clutter of electromagnetism than someone whose job it was over and over to extract simplicity out of complexity.”

The better you and I get at sniffing out and presenting in short… OR long form… ONLY what gets our audiences lathered up, the easier it will be for to stay profitable and excited about what we’re delivering.

Gone will be the days of unintentionally cheating our market with descriptions that un-sell them or fail to get people intrigued by the solutions we offer. 

Talk soon,

Lewis LaLanne

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Are You Unintentionally Cheating Your Perfect Prospects?

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