You voted! The response was... lukewarm! But while we wait for @Nick Bandy's poll results to turn into a magical new offer... while @Maliha M is mulling over a new auction idea... and while @Svetoslav Dimitrov is riding around on his tractor... ... I've decided it's time to run the highly teased, mildly anticipated 9-Word Email Challenge!!! Forget about the 9-word email for the moment. This challenge is really about getting you out of any of the following grimy and depressing prisons: - Failed promotions and offers that nobody wants - Spending tons of time to write emails, and they still aren't making sales - Having a list, and knowing you should do something with it, but it's such a chore - No opens, no clicks, no replies - An old list that's either gone to sleep or died - No money, and rent is due We'll do this challenge bit by bit to make it easy. Today is Day 1. Step 1. Very easy. Simply ask yourself: ====> 1. What do I wanna sell as part of this challenge? It could be your own coaching or services. It could be a course or membership you're selling, It could be a custom offer you're going to be putting out and want feedback on. It could be an affiliate offer. IMPORTANT: The 9-word email is a handraiser campaign that starts an email conversation that can naturally lead to a sale. That means you want people to reply to the email, and you will then have to interact with them 1-1. Normally, a 9-word email is used to sell something sizable, which justifies the 1-1 contact and the time and effort that requires. A low-ticket offer can make sense, but only if you have other reasons for promoting it than the sales you're making. Otherwise you'll probably just want to send folks to an order page. KEY TO MAKING STEP 1 WORK: Make your offer specific and concrete. Don't say, "copywriting services." Do say, "story-based advertorial an ecom business can just drop into their cold traffic funnel."

This challenge is about getting you out of any of the following grimy and depressing prisons: * Failed promotions and offers that nobody wants * Spending tons of time to write emails, and they still aren't making sales * Having a list, and knowing you should do something with it, but it's such a chore * No opens, no clicks, no replies * An old list that's either gone to sleep or died * No money, and rent is due How we get there is by sending a handraiser email to your list, and starting a conversation. This handraiser email is: * Short (A 9-word email is typical, but +/- 5 words won't kill ya) * Personal (It reads like a 1-1 email, not a marketing, broadcast, newsletter email) * Expecting a reply (The email takes the form of a simple question, rather than a statement or an invitation to click a link) You can find Step 1 of the 9-Word Email Challenge here. Today, we're on to Step 2!!!! (Thanks to @Lawrence Bernstein for cluing me in to the importance of using 4 exclamation points.) Step 2 is just as easy as Step 1, and maybe more so. Simply ask yourself: ====> 2. Who do I know (or know of) who would be perfect for my offer? SUPER IMPORTANT: Think of a specific person. One person. Somebody who would be a perfect prospect for this offer. (Yes, think of just one person even if you will be blasting this out to your entire list.) Do not waffle and describe an "avatar," or talk about the kind of person who would be right for this. You need to have a name in mind by the end of this step. If there's nobody you know (or know of) like this, then you have a bit of extra work. Go online and find a specific person like this. Depending on what your offer is, you can find perfect prospects on LinkedIn, or inside Skool groups (as either owner or member), or on podcasts, on forums, ... you get the idea. I cannot stress this enough. Find a specific, real, living person, with a name, who would be perfect for your offer. This will be crucial for Step 3 of this challenge.

Have you seen it? Have you not? What did you think? Do you refuse to see it? I went to see it Saturday. As per usual, I have some online-business-related takeaway I can make about it, but I'd like to hear first what you thought, or didn't think.

A DEH subscriber (not sure he wants me sharing his name), writes in over email: === I'm signed up for the DEH, but sometimes I'm just sort of a bit lost because the questions are a little bit deep and require a lot of thinking when I receive it. Maybe this is unwanted feedback but is it just me or do I have to think about the question a long time before i answer it. hahah === I followed up and asked which prompts had him thinking for a long time. He wrote: === Alright never mind, it's only one lol. What reader question about my background can I answer today? --> this one for example took me a while to answer. But I would say I'm super like focussed on writing these emails and tying it to my offers, which I find hard to do haha. === So I'd say a few different things going on here: 1. If you do have reader questions, then it's a matter of having a quick way of getting at those questions. I personally use gmail tags. Whenever a reader replies with something that I imagine I could use in an email, I tag it with bej-email-fodder. Then later, when I'm looking to answer a reader question, I can cycle through those tagged emails quickly and find one that fits. 2. If you try to pull stuff out of your head, this is where the "a lot of of time thinking" and struggling happens. One fix for this is some kind of notetaking or journaling system (point 1 above). Another fix for this is the "10 ideas" practice. In my experience, it's much easier to come up with 10 ideas, without judging them for quality, than it is to come up with one "good" idea. The thing is, among those 10 ideas, there are sure to be 2 or 3 or more that are good, and often much better than what you would come up with by trying to come up with one good idea. 3. If you don't have any reader questions, then no amount of thinking or notetaking will help. In that case, the fix is to answer a question that wasn't asked of you directly. It can be a question you saw somebody else answering in a different newsletter... or in some online forum... or on the Dr. Phil show.

You're the first person in all my years online who got me to think I could feel comfortable sending lots of emails, even daily. It came at the exact right time for me. SO I THANK YOU!