IN THIS ISSUE
- The profitable magic trick that could set you free
- The smart tactic that increases Twitter followers and your email list at the same time
- The repeatable model which could pay you $14k a month or lots more
- What I learned about magic after I bought a magic trick
If you’re thinking a little magic power will bring you closer to your dreams, this newsletter is for you!
But first, what is magic, anyway?
You may be shocked by the answer.
And you might wanna go looking for that top hat because you can be a magician too.
Buying the Magic Trick
When I was a kid, I wandered into a magic store and watched the owner perform many fantastic magic tricks.
How did he do them?
Each one more amazing than the last.
This guy made me dream of being a magician and what it would feel like to be mystifying my friends and family with all the tricks I knew.
What a life it could be!
So I bought the only magic trick I could afford, jumped on my bike, and headed home
I pedaled fast and my heart beat faster with anticipation—I was only a few minutes away from a huge life change—the transformation to a real, live magician.
Okay, yes, the owner had used a bunch of magic tricks to sell me on a future as a magician, but if you had been there, you would have turned your pockets inside out too.
I paid with crumbled-up dollars, loose change, and probably pocket lint and a pill bug too.
It all cashed.
But when I got home, things didn’t go as I expected.
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The Thing About Magic Tricks
When I opened up my newly-purchased magic trick—my entry into a new life—I was immediately disappointed!
After I read the instructions, I discovered that the trick was really, really simple.
And it was going to fool no one!
But you know? The magic store owner had somehow fooled me! Multiple times.
I couldn’t get over it and my disbelief and disappointment stopped my pursuit of magic right there.
It was too simple, it would never work for me, and nobody could ever convince me any different.
As an aside, and if we take magic out of the equation here, has this ever happened to you with anything else you’ve wanted to do?
I’ll bet it has.
The Reality
The truth is:
…that the most magical things in life, on and off the stage, are often the result of the correct application of the most basic principles imaginable.
Warren, Blair. The One Sentence Persuasion Course – 27 Words to Make the World Do Your Bidding (p. 10).
I’ve used a quote from a book about persuasion, but I want you to embrace the reality that the magic you see out there is nothing but a combination of skills and techniques that you, yourself, can master.
And they are more basic and attainable than you think.
Finding Secrets
The only loose connection to the book is the fact that I’m wanting to persuade you to think differently about the so-called secrets that you’re perceiving.
These secrets can be yours if you’ll spend some time looking at what other people are doing.
In the digital builder world, it’s pretty easy.
Do some of these things:
- Subscribe to and read newsletters
- Pay attention to landing pages and funnels
- Explore the tools that successful builders are using
- Fill your social media timelines with interesting builders.
It’s never been easier to see what other people are doing and copy their models.
I’m starting to catalog some of these builders in the profiles section of my website to make it easier for you.
A Magic Trick For You
One more quote from Blair Warren about magicians:
…they take these simple secrets that “wouldn’t fool anybody” and build upon them to create illusions that baffle even the most brilliant among us.
With that inspiration, let me teach you a magic trick.
The Pledge
In magic trick parlance, “The Pledge” happens when the magician shows you something ordinary.
So to start this trick, I present before you three online tools.
Together they are unremarkable. Heck, they might as well be ordinary things like an egg, a deck of cards, a handkerchief, and so on.
These tools are are:
- A social media platform
- A content platform
- An online cart.
Most people are using social media platforms to argue, glamorize their lives, entertain themselves, get news, and so on. Nothing magical.
Content platforms are a dime a dozen. It’s just words and images. Boring. For sure, not magical.
And finally, the online cart. As a standalone tool, an online cart is never too interesting. You gotta have two important ingredients: products and buyers. No magic here as far as I can tell.
The Turn
The second act of a magic act is “The Turn” where the magician takes the ordinary and does something extraordinary.
Take a look at these tweets:
Two 20-somethings using the ordinary tools of Twitter, Notion, and Gumroad have built a 24/7 online selling machine and have escaped the traditional rat race.
Now that…THAT seems like magic!
The Prestige
The final act of a magic trick is “The Prestige” where the extraordinary feat from “The Turn” is topped by an astounding follow up.
Here’s what astounding looks like:
What would your life be like making $108k per month?
Almost everyone I know can conjure up a pretty magical existence.
The Reveal
Normally we don’t get to see a magic trick and then learn it’s secrets, but the whole point of this newsletter is to demonstrate that magic is nothing more than a combination of the basics.
You need to put a lot of things in place and it’s going to seem like there is a chicken and an egg thing going on here.
The Value Ladder
You need to figure out what problems you can solve. Hopefully, you also like solving these problems—and there is demand for these problems to be solved.
Ideally, there is a sequence of problems that are ever more valuable to those that have them.
If you productize the solutions to these problems, you have a portfolio of products that help your ideal followers successively solve their problems.
Envision free products all the way up to high-ticket products; whatever makes sense.
That’s your value ladder.
Growing Your Followers
You can have the best products in the world, but if you don’t have any foot traffic, you’ll never sell any of them.
While you’re building your products, you need to be compelling people to become your followers.
At the time of this writing, the Twitter accounts that you saw from the magic trick ranged from ~90k to ~300k, so you’re going to need a lot of followers to duplicate their success.
But everyone starts small, so you just need to get started and don’t stop.
I wrote at length about some Twitter growth strategies in my Shootin’ the Bird newsletter, but I’d like to suggest you start offering one of your products for free in your tweets.
Here’s the technique:
- Write a valuable Twitter thread that previews your free product
- Ask people to raise their hand by
- liking the tweet,
- replying to the tweet with an expected codeword
- following you (to facilitate a direct message reply).
- Reply to their direct messages with a link to the free product.
The like and the reply part of this tactic increases the engagement of the tweet and will cause the tweet to get more impressions.
Of course, the requirement for a follow to facilitate the direct message helps build your follower count which is a key part of your goal.
There’s a sleight-of-hand element to this tactic, don’t you think?
Being Smart with the Cart
The free product link that you send will take your prospects to a landing page where the product will be added to a cart for checkout.
In the most common form, prospects leave their email address, pay nothing as agreed, and get access to your free product. Congratulations, you’ve started a relationship through a micro commitment and added an email address to your list.
Boo-yah! You’re building your core email list asset as I talked about in the Invisible Selling Machine.
If your free product has a successor product, you can provide an opportunity to immediately upsell into that product. If that offer is accepted, congratulations, you’ve found a way to profit off of your innocent little free offer.
In either case, you have an email address and can begin nurturing your new customer into progressive sales.
Your Products
In the magic trick, these people were all building Notion-based products. Notion-based products can be pure module-based content or databases with rich user interfaces.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be Notion. You could use Google Docs, unlisted YouTube videos, ClickUp, AirTable, or any number of other tools.
If you don’t know these tools, it likely takes a week or two of focused time with videos or even online courses to be skilled enough to create valuable products.
You might start by buying the product of others to get a frame of reference for what your products could look like.
I recommend picking a platform and giving it your full focus.
If you have software engineering skills, I’m absolutely certain you have a competitive edge and you recognize and exploit your skill advantage.
That’s it for this week, enjoy your new magic power!
Live long and prosper.
— Bill
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When you are ready, here are some next steps…
- Pick any of my recommended courses to continue investing in yourself
- Build your digital assets using the tools I recommend in my toolbox.