Month: March 2019

Do not put these two words in your offers

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While back I sent my client their email promo.

I’d crafted a fine offer.

Put some “muscle” on it (iii eee spiced it up with a few psychological triggers to help folks buy).

Then, I entrusted them with its care.

When it landed in my inbox, they’d added a bunch of words without telling me.

Where I’d made a point of emphasizing this was an exclusive offer to our subscribers…tacked on was the statement please share this with anyone you think would benefit.

In our next meeting I queried, “so…who added this bit?”

The business owner cautiously admitted “that might have been me”.

I said, “yeah…don’t do that.”

The two words not to put in your offers?

Please share.

Here’s why:

One, exclusivity is one of said ‘psychological triggers that help folks buy’.  Humans are enticed by access.  And our nervous systems are wired to think of what is rare as valuable.  If just about anyone can have your offers, there’s a good chance no one will want them.

Two, it can come off as needy and hurt your positioning with your prospect.

In fact, using please DON’T share often packs more punch.

Finally, to paraphrase Perry Marshall, every time you hit ‘send’ you are training people to read your next email.  You do this mainly by keeping your content interesting, relevant, or entertaining in some way.  But bigging up the exclusivity of your offers doesn’t hurt either.

Who wants to miss out on a great deal?

The only time asking readers to forward your emails can work is if you frame it as “I’m on a mission to help” as I did once with a client who did magnesium infusions to cure headaches and migraines.  The treatment is (a) ridiculously effective (one woman got rid of a 17-year headache her first go), and (b) everyone knows at least one person with this problem.

Such was my logic.

Most offers aren’t like that.

Anyway, take it for what it’s worth – the psychology of this works everywhere, not just in email.

Heed my cautionary tale today.

People like exclusivity.

Why not give it to them?

Happy Excluding,

Conor Kelly

The Muscle @Marketing Muscle

P.S.  I have great news for those who have been asking.  I recently freed up time in my schedule to take on one more local business.  If you’d be interested, just reply “interested” in the comments and I’ll get you all the details.

Weird St. Patrick’s Day

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This is weird.

As we get set to lather on the green face paint, imbibe all things green, and dance a wee jig in honor of the great Patricius…here are a few strange St. Paddy’s Day facts:

*The original colour worn by Patrick and to mark St. Patrick’s Day…was blue.  It became green the more the party went global – ostensibly due to the Emerald Isle’s greenness, shamrocks, leprechauns, every Irish national sporting uniform ever, and the green in the Irish flag.

*Patrick’s real name was Maewyn.

Very Lord of The Rings.

*Herpetologists – i.e. folks who study reptiles agree that there probably never were snakes in Ireland for Patrick to drive out.  Too cold.  So the snakes of legend are thought to be metaphorical.  At least they weren’t the ironic kind – those smug bastards.

*Once upon a time, in the ol’ U.S. of A. the Irish were considered a migrant crisis.

Good one to remember.

As they poured in to the states on the Eastern seaboard, they were discriminated against harshly.  Now they’re a force in American culture and politics.

#Truth

*The world’s shortest St. Patrick’s Day Parade takes place in Hot Springs, Arkansas and is just 98-feet (or 49 leprechauns) long.

Crucially, this allows for more pub time.

*In the town of O’Neill, Nebraska (named for its Irish founder) residents wear green not only on St. Patrick’s, but on the 17th of every month.  That’s dedication.

*On the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, St. Paddy’s Day is a national holiday.  Montserrat boasts a rich Irish and African heritage.

Like me.

(The Conz began in The Ivory Coast.)

*Finally, here’s a clip of one of my fave Conor Kelly productions.  It’s a workout routine I shot while vacationing in Ireland, with just about the most scenic backdrops of any workout video I ever done seen:

Olivia was so inspired she insisted I film her very first Yoga instructional video…

Well that’s all for the weird and the wonderful of the day.

In the words of my ‘bredren’…

May love and laughter light your days

And warm your heart and home.

May good and faithful friends be yours

Wherever you may roam.

May peace and plenty bless your world

With joy that long endures

May all life’s passing seasons

Bring the best to you and yours

Happy St. Patrick’s Day,

Conor Kelly

ENCORE: 5 Anti-Tips For Your Best Summer Body

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Just 12 weeks ’til summer.

Perfect time to start thinking about your plan “swimsuit readiness” plan.

I’ll be real, the following tips aren’t likely to help you with any of that.

BUT…I found this in the archives and it made me chuckle.

Should be worth at least a smile to you.

Enjoy!

-Conor

***

I used to write a lot of lists.

‘6 tips for x…’

‘4 ways to do y…’

It was the format for several of my most popular emails.

Problem is I’m easily bored.  Lists are overdone.

Anyway, the notion of anti-tips jolted my cerebral cortex into bringing forth what follows.

Here’s how it doth work:  do the exact opposite of what I recommend here, and you’ll b-line it straight for a lean summer body with a coke and a smile.  Minus the coke.

I think you get the idea.

Let’s begin…

1. Eat as much of it as you want as long as it’s healthy.  Healthy food is high in nutrients when compared with fast-food, for example.  Ever noticed how you can railroad empty calories at a mighty clip? That’s because they don’t contain any real nutrition, so you’re body barely registers any satiety.

Non-processed, organic, high-fiber foods are so nutrient-dense that your body thrives on much lower intake levels.  This mirrors how sparse food was when we evolved the ability to derive energy from plants and animal flesh.

But if some is good, more is better…right?

Besides, the plump lady behind the lunch counter says I can eat as much quinoa salad as I want because it’s healthy – so it MUST be true.

2. Try a RE-tox diet.  You want to enjoy the fine weather and the fresh air.  The last thing you need is a bunch of washroom breaks slowing you down.  Keep your water consumption to a minimum, and avoid anything high in fiber.  Also, you might like the binding properties of copious amounts of cheese.

Keep that colon on lockdown until the fall.

3. Use a pro-inflammatory approach.  One thing you’d really hate is if your joint pain lessened to the point of inspiring you to be more active.  Really cuts into your investment of sunbathing time.  Just remember the four food groups: pizza, ice cream, beer, and cigarettes.  In fact, eat as much sugar as possible – raw, off a spoon, if need be.

The average Canadian eats 68 kilos of sugar per year.

Ask yourself, are you getting behind?

4. Avoid heavy weights.  God forbid you should build any muscle that might turn your metabolism into a blast-furnace for burning calories.  Then you’d lose your excuse for all that healthy food in #1.  Plus everyone knows that heaps of long, slow walking is how you lose weight.

5. Sleep less, and ‘freak out’ more.  Stress is good for you.  Ever heard of ‘fight or flight’?  Burns fat.  Burns muscle too, and runs your organs on overdrive, but heck, nobody’s perfect.  To really accentuate the effect, fly into a rage at every opportunity (I mean really lose your s**t) and load your system with as much caffeine as possible.

Sleep only when desperate.

Healthy sleeping patterns of seven or more hours per night render #’s 1, 3, and 4 less effective.

Now if your brain hurts from twisting my hints to figure out what I really mean, you’re either taking #5 literally, or you’ll benefit from the un-reversed truths in my 16-Week Transformation Program. 

Call (416) 826-4844 to request your complimentary personal training consultation, and discover the path to your best body – in all seasons.

Happy Freaking Out,

Conor Kelly

#1 reason to build an email list so loyal they’ll eat sheep’s testicles for you

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I’ll be honest…

Yours Muscularly is of the mind that many small biz owners have been “conned” by social media companies promising the moon.

For most, it’s naught more than time and energy quicksand that sucks in the helpless and spits out their weary remains.

While Facebook claims 2 Billion accounts…a full 25% of those are fake.  Email, on the other hand, boasts a hefty 6.32 Billion active accounts, making it 5x bigger than Facebook.

I could also point out that many people go days without checking their social media, yet the average person checks their email multiple times per day.

If I really wanted to make a statement I could add that 60% of business owners rate email as their most profitable marketing channel, more than all the various social media sites combined.

All that would be 100% true.

But the #1 reason to build a thriving email list?

You OWN your list.

It’s yours.

You can download that sucker and re-upload it somewhere else.  You can communicate with your list in the manner of your choosing.  There’s no one who can tell you otherwise.  And there’s no one who can take your list away from you.

You don’t own your social media followers.

If that’s all you’ve got – you’re one policy update away from dead.

Case in point, five years ago I was getting most of the leads for my personal training biz from Google Adwords.  One fine day, Google up and suspended my account.  In order to reactivate it, I needed to add an asterisk with the words “results may vary” under each of the dozens of REAL before-and-after pics and testimonials displayed on my site.

Not only did this make my site look silly…

It sent my conversion rate spiraling down the drain.

And the leads all but dried up.

De-platforming is happening with frightening regularity.  What’s to stop Instagram from following Google’s lead and saying e.g. “we don’t like weight loss products – too scammy,” then make the rules harder for an entire category of health-related marketers?

An email list – especially a responsive one – is an asset.

Arguably the best asset you can have.

Enter my Evergreen List Builder…

I created this custom product a couple of months ago to help my clients with the problem of consistently adding high-quality new leads to your subscriber list.  And it’s quickly become my most popular offering.  It’s not hard to see why.

This is my answer to the moving target that is online marketing.

I’ll be honest, it’s not the fastest way to build your list, but the leads are the highest quality.

Also, because my list builder is centered on free traffic, there’s some sweat equity required on your part.  Such is life.  But if you’re willing to put in a little leg work, the tools I’m going to provide you could be nothing less than a blueprint to double your business this year.

My clients and me are using them to generate 50-200 new subscribers per month, for free.

If you’d like to consistently add top quality leads to your database without dancing to Google’s or Facebook’s ever-changing tune, let’s jump on a stress-free brainstorm call and find out if you qualify:

https://calendly.com/conorkel/emailincome/

Happy List-Building,

Conor Kelly

a.k.a The Muscle @ Marketing Muscle

 

High noon in Columbus, Ohio

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“It always seems impossible until it is done.” –Nelson Mandela

I’m recovering today.

I’ll explain why in a sec.

First, let me take you all the way back to 1954.

That’s when Roger Bannister became the first human to run a sub 4-minute mile.  Up until that point all the experts had called this feat “physiologically impossible”.  But Bannister was a physician.  He knew that there couldn’t be some arbitrary barrier inscribed in our genes.  So he ignored the critics, and concocted a clever program to float across a mile faster than anyone, ever.

And he did.

Within a year, many runners were going sub-four.

Now, it’s standard at the varsity level.

In 2013, a young upstart in the strength world named Eddie Hall predicted he’d be the first man in history to deadlift (lift a barbell from the floor to standing with it at arm’s length) 500 kilograms (over 1,100 pounds).  And the rest of us went, “Pffft!  Yeah right.”

You see the record at the time was just over 1,000 pounds.

Again, ignoring the critics (or indeed FUELED by them, as he claims) Eddie spread ink all over the record books.  He notched up his own world best by nearly 100 pounds in two and half years and became the first lifter in history to put daylight between 1,100 pounds and the floor, successfully setting the all-time mark.  Note that adding 100 pounds to your deadlift in 2.5 years would be great progress for a novice or an intermediate lifter.  When you already own the world record…it’s completely bonkers.

Could the 1,100 pound barrier be broken again?

This past Friday and Saturday, at The Arnold Classic in Columbus, the world’s top pro strongmen were competing.  And Rogue – a sponsor – put up 50K for anyone with the balls to make the magical limit go the way of spandex.

Former 4-Time World’s Strongest Man Brian Shaw and current World’s Strongest Man, the six-foot-nine Icelander Hafthor Bjornsson (plays The Mountain on Game of Thrones) had posted training lifts on YouTube of 1,025 and 1,041 respectively.  Insert multiple “surprised face” emojis here.  For a strength enthusiast, this is the World Cup Final and we’re going to penalty kicks.

Indeed, my fanboy hysteria nearly required a defibrillator.

(Or a change of gotchies.)

Though it turned out not to be the strengthgasm we were hoping for.

After a routine-looking 1,045-pound lift, Thor – as Bjornsson is known in strongman circles – took 1,105 for a brief ride but couldn’t get it above his knees.   Nobody else was even close.  There may come a day when 1,100-pound deadlifts are more common, but it’s not today.

Anyway, here’s what I observe about all this and that I want you to think about:

For most of us, the things we’re trying to do with our lives are nowhere near this magnitude.

No mystical or genetic barrier exists for our goals.  In 99.9% of cases someone has already demonstrated the inherent possibility of what we want to do.  In fact, many people have – sometimes hundreds, thousands, even millions.  So many men and women have businesses they love, a partner who enriches their life, figure out a way to change their financial circumstances, or come back from illness and shed lots of weight.

It’ll do us good to remember that.

We’re all made of the same “stuff”.

Trust your stuff.

Everything you want is not only possible…

It is DONE.

Keep that in mind in those moments when you doubt yourself.   Remind yourself how truly possible and doable your big goals or your PR’s really are – if you’re being objective about it.

Sometimes, all it takes is giving yourself permission to say “I got this”.

Happy PR-Smashing,

Conor Kelly

P.S.  Ever wonder what an “easy” 1,045-pound lift looks like?

Watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1VIZ17ug1k