B (3:48)

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, it's, it makes it so easy to hear it from you. But like, sometimes when I try to articulate like many different benefits, like from free and more like, I know the benefits, but like, I kind of struggle sometimes to, you know, to explain them. Like, I wouldn't say, like to, to make sense to the client, you know.

A (4:20)

Yeah. How many times have you done it?

B (4:24)

Probably not enough.

A (4:27)

I mean, the first time I tried to play a scale on the piano, I really struggled too, you know, I mean, it's like all of, it's not that any of these things are really hard. You know, I, I can help accelerate the learning by saying, here, let's just skip to the answer. I just gave you the answer. Right. But you still have to go through the process of you have to say it 10 or 20 times before it starts to sound natural, you know, and so you'll get there like it, it's not hard, you just have to do it more.

B (4:56)

Yeah. So thank you for answering the first question. And the second is more advanced and it's related directly to the writing part of the educational email courses. I watched a YouTube video that you wrote that you made, and it's the how to write a course module. And there are five parts, which is the, the reason why, which is the benefits, the mistakes to avoid. So the problems, the steps, so the actions, the commonly asked questions, the objections, and the walkthrough examples which are the proofs. And of course, it makes sense to me to build an email course following this pattern. Let's say. So I had a question which is will be like a mistake led email course. Be enough to be like, will perform well. Just a mistake led email course.

A (6:06)

Yeah. So, okay, so just to clarify for everyone, this is a little framework that I've come up with because I use this whenever we're creating digital products called the Perfect Course. Module which is in some sort of digital product or module. These are, these are the different pieces that I'm aiming to have. I want to have like reasons why you should do this or listen to me. The mistakes if you don't, the benefits if you do the steps. Here's how to do it. Commonly asked questions AKA here are all the objections that you probably have swirling around in your head now and then examples. Let me prove to you that this works, right? This is a different framework than the different kinds of EECs you can have. You know, you could make a mistakes eec, you could make a crash course EEC right There, there's all different, different kinds. I don't think in an EEC you need to try and get all of these pieces into each email. I don't know that you have enough space because for context, the average course module that I create for a digital product is somewhere in the ballpark of 3 to 10,000 words. It's like borderline a book chapter, you know. So trying to get all of these things into an email is really challenging. Now I'll skip to the answer and then I'll explain a little bit. So your question is like, can you have just a mistakes eec? The answer is yes. And of all the different types of EECs, mistakes are one of those things that I have found that you could talk about literally for 300 pages and someone wouldn't get bored. Everyone wants to know what not to do. Compare that with reasons, right? If you, if you go back to, to the 10 magical ways sort of framework, right? Like, and I should have this memorized by now, but I don't, but you know, it's like tips and stats and steps and reasons is one of them. And mistakes and personal stories and examples. Right? Reasons. If you were like, I'm going to, I'm going to make a five day EEC about all the reasons why you should start writing online. If the only thing you gave the reader was reasons at a certain point they would be like, I don't need any more reasons. Like, I got, I got. You've convinced me. Like, tell me what to do now. Right? Which is different than if you say, I'm going to point out the five biggest mistakes that people make and I'm going to tell you how to solve each one. Right? And so some, something I think about a lot in writing is that it's not necessarily. I don't like thinking about it like there's good ideas or bad ideas. I think good and bad is a very misleading way of thinking about what we're doing because it's subjective. Instead of thinking about good or bad, I like to think of just helpful or not helpful, valuable or not valuable. And a lot of times that comes down to putting yourself in the mind of the reader and imagining. Okay, if I give them five reasons why they should do this thing, do they really need more? Do they need 10 reasons why? Probably not. Like, I could probably do a sufficient job with five. You know, so you're always just sort of thinking like it's the game of how do I give them enough where they feel like they got something out of it, But I'm not giving them so much that they're like, why are you making me read Crime and Punishment in order to know how to do this thing? You know what I mean? There you go.

B (9:56)

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. You know, while I was watching the video, which is amazing, honestly, I was kind of figuring out like, if of course it will make sense and if it was possible to. I mean, of course it is possible to like extend an email course to answer like different questions, but it was kind of trying to figure out to like it would even make sense in the first place. So.

A (10:26)

Yeah, yeah, a lot of these things. And Mike, you have a good follow up question which is, is it bad to incorporate different ideas into your ec? So can. Can one day be about mistakes? Can another day be about reasons? Can another day be about how to steps? Right. And the answer is always yes. Like, of course you can. You know, it's. It's sort of like when I, when I walk through the 10 magical ways framework and people ask, you know, do you have to do them in a certain order? No. Like the, the only order that matters or the only decision that matters is whether or not you are successfully helping the reader. That's. That's it. It's. It's not that there's, there's a right again, good and bad. It's not that there's like a right way and a wrong way necessarily. It's. I really, you know, the, A different way of thinking about it that I always use is like the coffee shop test. If you were to meet up with someone for coffee and they asked you how to do something, how would you explain it to them? Right. If I met up, if I met up with one of you here for coffee and you were like, cole, explain to me how to write my first 10 atomic essays on the Internet, I could start with. Well, before you start, let me tell you some mistakes to Avoid. Or I could start with here's some reasons why you should start writing online to begin with. Or I could just skip both of those and I could just go right into let me tell you how to write your first post. Right. It's not that any one of those is the right or wrong decision, it's just they're all choices. My job is to present the different choices, present the different ways of thinking about it, and then each of you can decide and go, I think it would be cool to start with mistakes or I think it would be cool to start with reasons. You know what I mean?

B (12:29)

Yeah. Just a quick question as a follow up of what you just said. You know, probably the way reason why you wrote your, your email course that way is because maybe you were, I mean, you were building a, your own product. So like the question is, if I'm doing the same for a client, why wouldn't I do the same thing?

A (12:57)

You should. You should.

B (13:00)

Yeah.

A (13:01)

Like again, not to overthink it. Right? Like, what is the client really buying? What the client is buying is that you tried some things, you figured out, hey, I think that this thing works a little bit better than this thing. And they're like, great, how about we do that? Like that's, that's what so many people misunderstand about services and misunderstand about writing is that the client isn't buying. I now tell you what to write. What the client is buying is you tried some things on your own, you practiced on yourself, you invested in yourself, you showed up to a bunch of these calls and internalized a bunch of frameworks and then went and practiced. Right? You did a bunch of stuff and then you go to the client and you go, I spent a bunch of time doing a bunch of stuff. I have some ideas. Why don't you listen to me? Because I've spent a bunch of time thinking about this. That is what the client is buying. The client is not buying you writing 500 words.

B (14:02)

Yeah. Cool. You know, I just realized that the question in the first place was it's almost like if I kind of put higher the bar of a good EEC that I can do. So it's almost like if I know more ways of how an EEC could perform well. And I, I'm curious to know first of all if that was a good way, which it seems like it is. And in, in the second place, if, like how to, to, to incorporate all of these things in, in one. But I guess it's practice. Practice.

A (14:44)

Yeah, that's, that's all it is I for, for everyone here. Some of my first ghostwriting clients back in 2016 was me going to really successful CEOs and saying, you should write on Quora. Quora was a completely unknown platform. I had like a thousand, two thousand followers. And I was like, I'm getting a lot of views on this platform. I think you should too. Every single person I talked to said, I've never heard of Quora in my entire life. And then they would poke around and they'd get hit with a bunch of weird questions because it's a question answer platform. And they'd be like, this seems really weird. Like I don't know who would use this platform. I explained it to them. I was like, I think this is a pretty cool opportunity. I'm seeing success here. I've figured out how to get a bunch of views on my writing. I think this could be an interesting jump off point for you. I closed like 200 clients writing on Quora and then we added in Medium and then we added in LinkedIn articles when those first came out. Then we added in other things over time. But like, I am such, I'm such a big believer in this because I, I lived it. Is the more that you practice on yourself, what people are ultimately buying with marketing is they're either going to go spend a lot of time and money trying things on their own or they're going to go spend some money working with someone who spent time figuring out things on their own. That's all marketing is. There is no right answer in marketing. If there was, I promise you, I would be sitting in a room by myself pressing that button over and over and over again and just buying yachts. Right? Like there, there is no. If you do this, it's a hundred percent guaranteed and if you do this, it's, it doesn't. Right. Like that doesn't exist. So what people are buying in marketing is trying things. Which is why for all of you, like so much of the value is listening to what we talk about. But then you going and trying things on your own and then you're like, yeah, I figured out this really cool thing and then go sell that. You know, like it's not any more complicated than that.

B (17:03)

Yeah, so true. I just realized that I could probably after the five days of the email course, like put like more days to answer one of these questions that it can be like an objection or something else add value afterwards. So yeah, we'll try that. Thank you.

A (17:23)

Awesome. It's a great question and I hope this is helpful for a lot of other people here, too, because the, there's a lot of different ways about thinking about both EECs, but also just writing in general, but also marketing in general. And so I, I do think it's helpful going back and forth and, and looking through the different lenses and understanding, like, why, why are we approaching it the way that we're approaching it? So thanks, Brian. Great question.

B (17:51)

Thank you.