So welcome, for those of you that may be returning, welcome back to the office hours,
something special I've been doing with expert copywriter, Ugo, and myself.
And this is a benefit for Prosper Reader members that we offered this over this past month.
And it's an opportunity for you to showcase any work you want us to look at,
any ideas you want to brainstorm, any questions you want clarification on, we're here to serve you on that.
And so, Holy Spirit, I just pray that what you want to come forth will come forth powerfully in Jesus name. Amen.
So do you ladies have a question or something you want to show us, or are you just wanting to glean wisdom from the time together?
And you have to unmute yourself. There you go.
Mostly, Lane, I'm kind of in a process I really need to be organizing my content before I can really ask for help.
But the only thing I can think of, I could pull up my last newsletter and get feedback on it, but that's all I can think of.
OK. OK, perfect. All right. And is that true for you, Julie, as well?
Glean. OK, she put a little chat in there. Glean. OK, wonderful.
Well, you know, Ugo, we can we can talk about a lot of things that might be great strategies for them, valuable strategies.
I we were having an interesting conversation. We always do before you guys come on.
And we were talking something that those of you in Prosper Leader have probably heard me say more than once.
And that is the concept to expand when others contract.
See, the natural tendency with fear and there's all kinds of fear being spread everywhere in the media and,
you know, in all the ideas about, you know, recession and inflation and all those things.
And so the tendency with fear, if you look at what happens in the body, is contraction.
And so all your vital oxygen, blood, everything is taken from your limbs and from your brain and goes into your vital organs.
To try to let you survive. It's about survival. Right. And the same thing happens in our life when we contract.
I think I've shared with some of you the idea of a sponge.
If you take a sponge and you just squeeze it with all your might, how much can that sponge absorb?
And the truth is it can't. So whether it's physically we're not as creative, we're not expansive, we're not able to move forward.
And so the idea is opposite. It is to expand.
And how do we expand? By activating flow. How do we activate flow?
Through giving primarily, adding value, giving of your time, giving of your money.
I really believe in tithing. It predates biblical all the way to the Babylonian.
It was known that 10 percent is a wealth principle. So there's a lot of science and interesting spirituality behind that.
For me, it's just honoring God with my first fruits, knowing that he is my source and everything comes from him.
And it breaks the spirit of lack in you because you have enough to be giving.
And there's a certain joy in giving and having fun giving, like the Bible says, with a cheerful heart.
So expanding in the face of contraction, Ugo, what would you say about that?
I know we're going to maybe do some emails on that subject, but what's been your experience around that?
So my experience, of course, like you fully understand, like the big picture, I will say from a marketing point of view,
one of the biggest lessons that I learned that I would like to share with all the Prosper Leader members is that when there is a crisis or when there is a bad period in business,
one of the biggest mistakes most companies make is to reduce their marketing budget.
Now, most, if not all, the most successful companies in the world, they have one thing in common.
When there is crisis, instead of reducing their marketing budget, they double the budget, marketing budget.
Why? Because when they reduce their marketing budget from a paid ads point of view, usually...
the prices starts to go down because the let's take for example Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
all these companies they use the social media platforms to advertise themselves. So when they
see that everyone is not buying anymore of course they have to start getting like try to get closer
because otherwise they also lose money. So they start to decrease sometimes the prices. So that's
why you can buy like you can invest more, you can put more money on paid ads in order to get
more visibility, share the message. Of course also in that case you also have to craft a better offer
because you have to be aware of what's going on in the world and especially your target audience.
So this is one of the biggest lessons that I would like to share. So right now we are in a period
where many people they don't like to spend a lot of marketing because they're like there is this
crisis, there is uncertainty like they don't like there are many problems going on. So if for example
you have to invest something in marketing is a good moment to do that you know. And at this point
one of the most important tips I can give is that it's always better to pick one platform where you
know that you can you feel comfortable. Check if in this platform your potential client is
congregated like he's spending time over there and once you pick the platform you know like the
potential your potential client might be there start crafting a good offer that can really appeal
your clients and then go ahead with like start your marketing your marketing strategy.
I add the next a bonus part is more to it's right now more than ever it's all about
building relationships. So everything is all about networking, building relationships. So every time
you are talking to a potential client or a colleague who might have some of your potential
clients try to build a relationship first before going straight to the point because that might
make a big difference. It might take a bit more time but people especially if you if you go cold
like many people they don't know you so they don't trust you. So by building the relationship
by giving them some value try to understand their current situations of their problems it can really
be like very helpful. So I tried to answer two I did two things at the same time.
That's I love that and there's some really valid points I want to pull out of what you
just said. There's things I know you know 30 years in in business and one of them is that if you are
adding value to people if they're learning from you if they're getting benefits if they're growing
if they feel they're expanding as a result of what you're giving and so of course email is a really
powerful way to be doing that and as is you know social media and other ways if you if if people
feel they're getting value that they're growing they're expanding from you they will be very loyal
and they will stay a long time. Now the next thing we know about that is that the longer they're with
you the more time they they spend with you the more likely they are to buy and the bigger they're
likely to buy. So this makes sense from a lot of angles you know what Ugo just shared of course
relationships are the the building blocks you know when you did the sales master class with me
the first step was creating rapport. Another word for creating rapport would be build relationship
right that came right before identifying the need which as you identify the need and speak to the
need you're also building relationship and now you're in a position to add value so you can see
how these things build. Now bringing that around to what we talked about expand when others contract
well the way that you expand of course is increasing flow right and so that flow as I
mentioned can be value can be knowledge can be awareness can be be very very generous a lot of
times people try to think that they have something so that everyone's going to steal it's so valuable
everyone's going to steal but the truth is you know all knowledge the scripture says there's
nothing new under the sun everything's already out there someone else is teaching it it's
it's not so unique to you but sometimes people tend to contract and say well if I put everything
out they're not going to buy from me
or if I put everything out, other people are going to steal it,
you know, or if I put everything out, they're just going to use that,
you know, and that's all.
And that's very far from the truth.
And so you want to put your very best.
And that actually increases the relationship, activates flow,
makes them stay a long time, makes them more likely to buy,
shows the you know, that you do have something valuable to share.
And so be very generous, you know, with your time,
your talents, your knowledge, your understanding.
You know, I'm looking at this, you know, this office hours.
We just added, you know, four weeks of this.
It was very generous of Ugo,
which I was telling him privately before we got on.
He's a very generous person.
And he he goes way beyond what he does for me beyond what I hired him for.
He goes he always goes so far beyond.
And what that does as someone who experiences that generosity
is it makes me very loyal and it makes me want to keep working with him.
You know, so I can see it played out even with the people I work with,
as well as the people that work with me.
So put in the chat if if this is an aha or what this brings to your mind,
share in the chat what you are
gleaning from this.
Is this helpful?
Is this giving you questions, comments, aha's?
Go ahead and pop something in the chat.
And while they're popping that, Ugo, if you want to add even more to that,
we can keep the conversation going.
And yes, so he's in. Yeah, absolutely.
So one thing that I would add is there is one guy probably you already heard
because it's quite famous in the marketing world.
If not, he's going to hear him very soon.
So his name is Alex Ormosi,
and he made a book called The 100 Million Dollar Offer.
Now, this book, the price of this e-book, actually, the e-book is 99 cents.
And according to pretty much everyone,
this is one of the top three,
top five best business books ever, like over the last 30 years.
And he also made a course that many people think said that this course is
the value is at least five, five, ten thousand dollars.
He made it for free.
In the book, in the course, he shared literally everything,
you know, a lot of information, a lot of things.
So he did that.
So some people might think, oh, he shared everything.
So the truth is that thanks to this book,
many people earned millions of dollars.
And what happened is that then
is all these people that they earned millions of dollars
went to his master class and his master class is 30,000 dollars
per month, I'm sorry, per year, or maybe even more now.
I don't know. But his approach, he always said, I said, I share everything
because I want you to make at least three million dollars a year.
And once you get three million dollars a year,
you will trust me so much because I helped you so much to get there
that then for you, you will immediately join to my to my master class.
The 50,000 dollars master class, you will do it right away.
And not only most like his master class is always full,
but also he became very famous on social media.
He earned a lot of followers, a lot of people.
He has a big influence now.
He's in touch with all the best marketeers and businessmen in the world
because he achieved massive success.
And he all started with this mindset of saying,
I'm going to make the best book ever about marketing,
about offers, about this, and I'm going to share everything.
So a $5,000 course, I will make it for free.
And then so I will be able to help as many people as possible
to to really make a lot of money.
So these people will go back to me and ask me to get to the next level
once they achieve a specific result.
And this is like he was a mindset, a mindset
that very few people have.
But he tried to share with most of his of his readers, clients.
And he made a huge difference because he became famous just by doing this,
which is what Brandy is saying, like is exactly this approach
of sharing as much as possible, because and also even when you share,
then there is the implementation, the implementation part,
which is totally different, you know, like.
Implementing, even if you know that it's step by step,
sometimes you might have doubts, you might need to practice,
you might need the extra guidance.
So that's when there are many factors
like to take into account.
So I'm going to ask a question, and the question
is based on something I see in the chat, OK?
In the chat, yes, I'm relating to it.
I need to organize and funnel that generosity
in a focused way.
And one of the things I think that people desire
to be generous, but sometimes they don't even
know where to start, right?
And of course, the key word is start.
Most people spend so much time getting
ready to get ready to get ready, and they never
start, which is a block in and of itself.
So do something, anything to add value, right?
But if they wanted to organize, let's
talk in your area of expertise, copywriting or email.
If they were only going to do one thing
to start adding value in writing emails, what would that be?
Now, for me, how I started before I had a copywriter,
and it was just me, I was a solopreneur,
I started doing one email a week,
but I focused on consistency.
It was every Sunday, and it was one
where I brought together spiritual and practical.
And those of you on my email list,
I continue that tradition.
Every Sunday, you hear from me, and it's
different than the other emails, right?
But it was a combination of doing something
and consistency, because I believe
consistency creates momentum.
So Ugo, what would you suggest someone just getting started,
they want to start adding value with emails,
what would you say?
So the first thing I will say is start just with the headline.
Just write the subject line, and that's it.
Why?
Because every time, as Brenda said, when you try to get,
you always try to get ready, ready, ready, ready,
but you never start.
Now, for most of the people who are not used to write,
or they are not motivated or whatever,
even saying I write to an email a week,
just thinking about writing a full email,
they will lose their motivation.
So the most important thing is to try
to kind of train the brain, actually,
more than train, kind of trick your brain in a way
that you say, OK, I'm going to open the computer,
and I'm going to do the very minimum, a very, very
little action, which is going to be,
I just write a subject line of five words.
I will take no more than two minutes.
Even if it's a terrible subject line,
that's good.
Why?
Because you just start.
You just build that moment with a very, very little action.
As soon as you do that, within one hour,
you got your email ready.
Because once you start, you break this barrier in a way
that, because your brain, what your brain is telling you
is, no, it's going to be too hard.
It's going to be too annoying.
I don't know if I'm ready, this and that.
But when you tell to your brain, OK,
I'm just going to spend literally two minutes,
no more than that.
I'm just going to write a subject line.
If I just write the three words of a subject line,
random subject line, I already won.
I love that.
As soon as you write that one, you immediately,
you will have the momentum because you started.
And it's like running.
When you run is, some people say,
I'm going to run for one mile.
You will never do that.
You will always be in the be ready mode.
Whereas when you go there, you say, OK, if I run,
I don't know, for less than three minutes, two,
three minutes, for me, it's more than enough.
And then every time you're going to keep, after the three
minutes, you will say, OK, one minute more, one minute more,
one minute more.
In the end, you run for 25, 30 minutes.
It's always like this.
You know, backing that up, it's so funny
that you say that because that's what was going through my head
is even backing that up, put on your sneakers,
put on your tennis shoes.
That's kind of like your headline.
You really have a hard time working out in the morning.
Just have your workout clothes and just
put on your tennis shoes and you're more likely to work out.
So I love that you used the running example.
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly, exactly.
These headlines, put the shoes and just start to do 10 steps,
you know, or even five.
As soon as you start, then 10, and then you start to be running,
and then you keep going.
Because it's always, if you look at the big picture,
if you look at what's going up, you feel, oh, it's too hard,
it's too stressful, it's too much.
Whereas if you.
start very slowly that you trick your brain
because your brain always look for the simplest,
the easiest, the most relaxing thing.
So when you look at this, you kind of trick the brain
because you start, but at the same time,
the brain doesn't know that you're starting.
So, and it's the best way also to improve your productivity
because you're going to realize that if you use this habit
in whatever you do in your life,
it's going to really improve, increase your productivity
a lot in all areas of your life.
I personally started doing that recently
and I became much more productive
because it's a game changer.
And so it's very powerful.
So what you started doing is writing the titles,
just writing lessons?
No, no, no.
Like this habit of starting with very small actions
when you have especially many, many, many tasks
at the same time, that can be very overwhelming.
So I say, okay, pick one task.
And I say, okay, just start very small in this.
And then from there, I move from there.
So it's a very powerful, powerful strategy.
Excuse me to interrupt you.
No, and this is how you get started with the emails,
to write the emails.
You start with that subject,
then once you're onto the subject line,
most 99% you're going to complete the whole email.
It's like this, and then you move.
Yeah.
I love it.
That's such great feedback.
Those of you, you know, breaking into small steps,
those of you that are familiar with the Prosper Leader,
I mean, the Prosper Daily Plan,
okay, available to you is the Prosper Daily Plan.
You can download it and it's under files
and you can just download it and do it every day.
And one of the things that I do
is I have my will do's
and I break that into 20 minute chunks.
And so again, it's just having lots of small parts.
And if you have that done,
you can always jump in without being lost.
You got 20 minutes before the kids got home,
you got 20 minutes before that,
and you can get major chunks done toward,
so you're stacking basically.
If you've got a goal of writing an email,
one 20 minute chunk might be write the title.
One 20 minute chunk might be make an outline.
One 20 minute chunk might be write it or edit it.
When you've got it broken down that way,
and it's true, what ends up happening
is one flows into the other
and you end up doing the whole thing.
But when your brain sees, oh, I can do that.
And for you, it might be, like he said,
it might be three minute chunks,
it might be five minute chunks,
whatever works for your brain.
But when you chunk activities like that,
you're more likely to go all the way
because it's not intimidating and overbearing.
You don't get stuck.
Yeah.
Awesome.
Well, we are at the top of the hour.
Do you ladies have any questions or comments or,
okay, her brain is happy thinking about that.
Yeah, I love it.
Just think in small steps, you guys.
I have a comment real quick.
And it's just like this reminder
that if I could write and create content,
so much content, that's my problem,
is I make my emails too long.
And so I'm like, and I think that's why
I would love a copywriter down the road
to just take my content and turn it into,
like if I could create 15 emails
out of the same content that I'm trying to cram
and be making contact with people
in a much more effective way.
I know a really good copywriter for you, Katie.
I'm kidding there, it's in the plan.
Yeah, that's great.
That's great.
Absolutely.
And that's very true.
That is another principle that you just brought forth, Kate.
And that is the principle of repurposing.
And so many years ago, I don't know, 20, 30 years ago,
I read an article by,
he was the president of the homeschool legal defense.
When I was homeschooling
and he had very progressive multiple sclerosis.
And so he knew his time on the planet
and ability to do was short,
which made him think very differently.
And so one of the ways that he thought differently,
that all of us should think differently.
And that never left me is he said,
I never write or create something
that can only be used once.
And so this brings the principle of repurposing.
And so for everything that you write,
that email can also be a text.
It can also be a compilation of emails.
to an e-book, it can also be a video,
it can also be read as an audio,
it can also become an article on LinkedIn,
it can also become a post, multiple posts.
So everything you create can be used
and repurposed in many ways.
And that's another subject that we could do on another time,
but you're absolutely right.
Always have a folder and keep everything that you write
and you can come back to it
and it can be broken up in many ways.
And this is very helpful.
The other tip that Ugo has helped me with a lot
is stories are the most powerful way of communicating.
Jesus always used stories.
And something to keep your brain from freezing up
is to start a list of all the possible stories,
everything that comes to you
where you just get in the habit,
oh, that'd be a great story, that'd be a great story.
And you just keep a list of stories.
So at the time that you go to write,
you could look down that list and say,
oh, what story might work?
You could do the same thing with a list of titles
or a list of topics.
Just every idea, oh, that'd be a topic, that'd be a topic.
And just have this massive,
it gives your brain this feeling of abundance
to choose from instead of looking at scarcity
and lack of a blank page.
Like, ah, what do I write about?
What story do I tell?
Having a list that you could look at
to kind of start the juices
is also a powerful strategy that I've used.
Any closing thoughts, Ugo?
And we'll wrap it up.
Yeah, no, exactly.
I think exactly the same.
I would just add,
write down the stories that you might have.
And at the same time,
write down also the ideas that you might have
while during the day.
Because sometimes you might have very breakthrough ideas
that can really change your business,
your relationships, your faith, your health, whatever.
But sometimes you said, oh, this is an amazing idea.
Then during the day you forget about it
or you don't remember the exact details.
So that's very important.
That's very important because if you don't have,
when you have these ideas,
write them down somewhere, wherever it is,
because this way you can remember them.
Yeah, that's very important.
And nowadays that's so easy.
I mean, I'll use Siri
and have her make a note right there on the spot,
just however you can get it down
because the ideas do disappear.
Well, Ugo, thank you again for your generosity of your time.
If you guys send some love to Ugo,
if you appreciate him showing up and adding this value,
if you've enjoyed these office hours,
let us know.
If you have any questions or comments
that we didn't address
or anything you want us to think about, let us know.
And from that, I think we're just going to sign off.
Have an amazing blessed day.
Thank you so much for taking time to be with us.
Blessings to you.
Thank you.