How Comedy Can Help You Sell More with Kevin Rogers

Transcription

Hey guys. How’s it going? Yuri here. Hope you’re doing great. Hope the week is going awesome for you. Hope you’re changing lives. Hope you’re moving your business forward, making lots of dough, and living life to the fullest. Today, I am pulling back and through the archives and bringing you a great interview I did with my buddy, Kevin Rogers, who is the founder of Copy Chief. He is an amazing copywriter, probably one of the most well-known copywriters, specifically in the health space.

That’s kind of how we started to get to know each other. He’s done a lot of copy for some friends of mine, and he’s just an all-around great guy. But here’s the cool thing is that he actually started off as a comedian, and he transitioned into copywriting decades ago now. It’s all actually come full circle, so now he’s getting back into his stand-up acts. He’s traveling around the country doing some cool stuff, and it’s pretty fun.  If you check out any of his work, if you type in Kevin Rogers comedy, I’m sure you’ll find some stuff. He’s a pretty funny guy.

But what’s neat is that he was able to bridge comedy and copy. He was able to figure out, okay, what was it that made a really good joke? Then he understood that that same framework is also the framework for really good copy. He came with this framework called the 60-Second Sales Hook, which is a really great, simple, four-step process that he’s going to share in this interview.  When you write copy or when you write a story or introduce yourself, it will really just simplify your life 100 times. That’s why I wanted to bring this to you, because I think copywriting is one of those things that’s really, really important to develop in terms of your own craft, but it’s also can be complicated. It’s something that requires a lot of time and effort and focus, and yet it’s still one of the biggest needle-movers in any business, especially for online. We’ve talked about this on previous episodes.

The cool thing too is that when we were looking to build out our team, I reached out to Kevin. I said, “Hey, Kevin. I need some copy coaches on our team. I need some amazing copywriting experts to help our clients with their copy, with their webinars, with their Facebook ads and stuff like that.” He introduced us to two amazing people who are now fully integrated in our team and absolutely work magic for our clients, Melanie and Nicole. They’re incredible. They came as a recommendation from Kevin, and so I just wanted to bring this back out to the masses as an homage to him. Obviously, it’ll really serve you.

Without further ado, let’s bring and welcome Kevin Rogers on to the podcast.

Kevin Rogers:                     Yuri, it’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me, bro.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Absolutely, buddy. It’s always great to connect with you, and I’m excited to have you on the show, because today we’re going to be talking about a topic that is near and dear to my heart, which is how to convey your message properly. You’ve got this really cool process called the 60-Second Sales Hook that I want you to take our audience through, because I think a lot of our listeners are not like die-hard copywriting fans or die-hard copywriters, but they still need to be able to get their message out to their potential audience very effectively. Can you walk us through how to do this?

 

Kevin’s 60-second Sales Hook and joke formula

Kevin Rogers:                     Absolutely, yeah. This is a system I came up with back from my comedy days. I was a stand-up comic in a former life, traveled for about a decade on the road, and didn’t realize at the time that I was doing a lot of great research for my future copywriting career. Writing in joke formulas all those years comes in really handy when we need to get a point across very quickly, and joke formula … Everybody has a go-to joke or two. Everybody is able to recognize a good joke-telling from a bad joke-telling. I like to use joke formulas to help people write what I call short sales hooks or sales messages.

This one is particularly useful when you’re having someone visit your world for the first time. Let’s say you have a lead magnet, and you’ve got a really awesome report. You want to invite people to download this report in exchange for, say, an email address. Now, what needs to happen in that short period of time where people land on your site is … The first thing you need to realize is that people are hoping you fail so they can go away, right? I mean, it’s just reality. Think about how we browse the internet, right? We’re distracted. We don’t have much time. We really need someone to convince us quickly that we’re in the right place.

I love to put a short video or even some short texts on the landing page, get right to the point, but I don’t want to waste the opportunity to bond with my best prospects. The best way to do that is to tell some story, just tell a little bit about me and share a struggle that my best prospect can relate to so they understand that I understand where they are, what they need, and I can help you to build trust by convincing that I have something that overcomes that problem. That’s why the 60-Second Sales Hook comes in really handy. I’ll teach it to you as a joke formula, and then I’ll show you how we change it just slightly to become a really great sales hook. Sound good?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Let’s do it. Bring it, buddy.

Kevin Rogers:                     Okay, great.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And maybe I’ll get you to tell a joke after.

Kevin Rogers:                     Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell you a joke in the example here.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Let’s do it.

Kevin Rogers:                     It won’t be my joke, but it’ll be one even funnier than mine.

Yuri Elkaim:                         But you can take credit for it.

Kevin Rogers:                     Sure. By the way, this joke formula, you’ll see this all the time when stakes are really high for a comedian. You’ll see it very often when they make their first national television appearance. They might be on Jimmy Fallon. Right out of the gate, you want to make a big impression. Use a formula like this so your best audience is going to relate to you, understand something about you, and identify with what we call your point of view as a comic.

It goes like this. I call this the Persona Joke Formula for that reason. It goes identity, struggle, discovery, surprise. Identity, struggle, discovery, surprise, and the surprise is obviously why we laugh. It’s the unexpected element. One of my favorite examples of this is from a comedian named Karen Rontowski. On her first Letterman appearance, this was her opening joke. She said, “Thank you so much. It’s so nice to be here today. I’ll tell you, my kids were so bad in Walmart, I actually pulled a fly swatter off the shelf and spanked them. Just as the fly swatter hit their ass, I thought, ‘I don’t have kids.’”

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s good.

Kevin Rogers:                     It’s hilarious, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s good.

Kevin Rogers:                     What is that, 15 seconds? Think about how much we know about Karen now, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, so she’s identified herself as a … Well, initially you think she’s a mom.

Kevin Rogers:                     Right, right, and all of the surprise. That’s what’s great about it is we learn her true identity, which is not a mom, but the struggle is annoying kids, which we can all relate to, whether they’re ours or not. The discovery is the fly swatter, and the surprise is they’re not even her kids. She just smacked random kids.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. Don’t we all want to do that at some point?

 

The formula for marketing and answering “What do you do?”

Kevin Rogers:                     Exactly. Now, if you’re listening and you’re going, “Well, that’s fantastic, but I’m not a comedian and I don’t want to have to come up with some clever twist every time I write a message,” I got you covered on that, because in marketing, people don’t really want to be surprised as much as they want to be convinced and compelled to take action with us. To do that, we need to show them the results of what we’ve discovered. The way I change that for the 60-Second Sales Hook is by just changing surprise to result. The new formula for all of us entrepreneurs is identity, struggle, discovery, result. You’ll notice it’s the same exact formula, but we just changed that last part.

In my business as a marketing consultant and a copywriter, I would use this. It would say, “Hi, I’m Kevin Rogers. I spent years as a dead-broke stand-up comedian until I discovered how a simple joke formula could be used as an irresistible sales hook and began teaching marketers how to use it to skyrocket sales and grow their businesses. Now I’m one of the most in-demand sales consultants online, earning more in one month than I once did in an entire year.” Then I would add a call to action for them to download the report.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So what do you do? No, I think, I mean, you pretty much summed it up nicely there.

Kevin Rogers:                     Right. You know something more about me, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Kevin Rogers:                     You know that I used to be a former stand-up comic. The struggle is just dead-broke. That’s all you really need to know. Nobody wants to be dead-broke. Then it’s mostly about what I discovered, because that’s sort of the meat of this. That’s the thing they’ll want.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice, so you tie that in? Did you follow that up with what’s in it for them specifically, or did you kind of just leave it at that and let them kind of bring pieces together?

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah, and then the next thing is, because if I say I have this amazing formula, they’re going to want to see. Part of it’s just curiosity-driven, right? The way I would improve that is I would say the name of this. I would say, “So I invented what I now call the 60-Second Sales Hook,” and talk about how so many marketers have used it to improve their sales. Then I would want to make sure the thing I discovered is also the name of my report, or my book in this case, where I’d say, “If you’d like to get your own copy of the 60-Second Sales Hook and begin using it to help your own sales and improve your copywriting, you can download it for free right now. Just enter your email address and click go.”

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice. I’m just thinking as you’re talking. Can you turn this into kind of a third-person? I’m just thinking like a quick opt-in banner almost, where it’s like you’re identifying … I’m just going to use an example from my blog, for instance, on my health site. If someone’s coming to my blog and they want to lose weight, so maybe step one is identity what would it be like want to lose weight or struggling to lose weight, or would that-

Kevin Rogers:                     Oh, yeah, that’s good. Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         It kind of identifies maybe one and two at the same time?

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah, that’s really good.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Then discovery’s like, “Here’s seven proven steps that nobody talks about, and to X, Y, Z, whatever result.” I’m thinking more from like an opt-in copy on a banner, for instance, on a website, but still using that same formula. Does that work?

Kevin Rogers:                     I think that’s good, yeah. That’s a good way to sort of reverse engineer it. Now, I would maybe even add a little bit of struggle like that. Just say, so if we’re being specific about our avatar, we might say, “Struggling to lose that last 10 pounds, or do you need to lose 30 pounds or more?” Or you could even say, “Struggling to lose weight? Feel like you’ve tried everything under the sun?” Then the discovery, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yup.

Kevin Rogers:                     You probably almost move results before discovery, or you could say, “Discovered a little-known method that’s resulted in,” however many people finding this result. Yeah, that’s really good.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. Yeah, that sounds awesome, because I love these. It’s such a simple framework for people to follow, like whether it’s just following the guidelines that you just gave, in terms of the introduction themselves, because especially a lot of people listening to this probably really enjoy doing video, right?

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I’ve made this mistake in the past where I’ve spent way too much time rambling, so just like getting right to the point. I think having this type of framework, whether you’re writing this out and then reading the teleprompter, or just having this as your guidelines in your head, I think it’s such a great framework for people to follow.

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah, it’s really helpful whenever you want to be what I call live mic-ready. If, say, you’re going to a conference, and Yuri, I’m sure this happens to you often, even if you’re just attending a conference, there’s influencers there who know you and know that you’re an influencer. They might say, “You know what? You know who could answer this question? It’s Yuri. Somebody run a mic over to Yuri.” If you have these formulas sort of ready and you’re thinking in these frameworks, it’s really easy to introduce yourself to a cold audience, tell a quick story, give a result, and have them go, “Whoa.” Then you’ll be bombarded as much as the speakers will at the break.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. To be very honest, I don’t even think I have this dialed in for myself. I’m going to challenge myself to do this tonight.

Kevin Rogers:                     Awesome.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, because I think it’s so important. I often tell people. I’m like, “I don’t like getting asked like, what do you do, because I don’t know how to respond to that properly, because it could change depending on who’s asking it.” But this is a really nice framework to do that succinctly.

Kevin Rogers:                     That’s a great point. I have another even shorter one, if we have time and you’re interested.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Let’s do it. Let’s do it.

Kevin Rogers:                     This is a great one specifically for that question, what do you do? Again, it’s a great opportunity. First of all, the worst thing we do often is we go blank. We start to stutter. That’s very natural, but it’s so impressive when somebody is able to succinctly describe what they do without it feeling canned, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yup.

Kevin Rogers:                     Here’s a great formula that if you practice it enough and get comfortable enough, then you can share it in a way that won’t feel canned. It’s almost like practice, get the canned version down, so that you don’t sound canned when you need it, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure.

Kevin Rogers:                     It goes like this. I call it the Rebel Yell, because I believe that every entrepreneur is a little bit rebellious, right? Just by nature. I’ll give you the formula, and then I’ll give you some examples. Again, it’s a really important opportunity to get some of your story in there and some of your passion, rather than just state point-blank what you do. It goes like this. My name is blank. I love blank, but was fed up with blank, so I created blank that blanks. Let’s say Steve Jobs. How would Steve Jobs fill that in? Hi, my name’s Steve. I love computers, but was fed up with the snail’s pace of commercial technology, so I created a user-friendly computer that processes information faster than anything else out there today.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice.

Kevin Rogers:                     Right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yup.

Kevin Rogers:                     Here’s another one, Mike Dubin from Dollar Shave Club. He’d say, “My name’s Mike. I love a clean shave, but was fed up with paying through the nose for razors, so I created a simple subscription service that delivers quality razors right to your door for $1 a month.” Again, if somebody hands you a hot mic or if you’re in, say, any kind of networking conference where they go, “Everybody stand up and tell a little bit about what you do,” two sentences and you’ve got everybody’s attention.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s really good, and plus when you tie in the, “So I created,” you’re also tying in the USP to some degree as well as your product or what you do.

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah, and the problem it solves.

 

The power in creating terminology

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yup, absolutely. Ninja stuff, buddy. Well, I don’t even like using the word ninja. This is just smart. This is just intelligence. I wanted to point something out to all the listeners here. I don’t know if you guys have been aware of the fact that Kevin has dropped a couple kind of proprietary names like the Rebel Yell, Persona Joke Formula. Can you talk about, I mean, you probably just do this like intuitively now, but the power in just creating terminology, whether that’s in your copy or around your products or in kind of building a tribe? I think that’s very interesting.

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah. That’s a great point, super, super potent thing to do, and again, something you’ll want to just get in the habit of doing. It is instinctual for me now. I like naming stuff. It comes natural to me. One thing I could do better is being a little more congruent in theme with some of my names, I guess. That’s something I’m conscious of, but I’d say just name everything. You could use an acronym. Some people go a little acronym-crazy. You don’t want everything to be an acronym, but an acronym could be a cool way to name stuff. It really helps people remember what it was and put it into context.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure.

Kevin Rogers:                     Then you want to make the name sort of the most appealing. For instance, it’s one thing to name something, like the Rebel Yell is just a cool little formula. It makes sense why I named it that. But the 60-Second Sales Hook was originally … I used to call it the KLT Hook or the KLT Formula, because it establishes know, like, and trust. When I went to make it a book, I had this big long name, like the KLT Formula, how to systematically create a bond with every visitor to your website and all this stuff. I was talking to Dean Jackson, and he’s like, “Yeah, but does anybody know what KLT means? It takes all this explaining.” He was like, “What else could you call it?” I was like, “Well, the other thing I call it is the 60-Second Sales Hook.” He just cracked up. He goes, “Yeah, well, yeah, of course, that’s the name.” Don’t be afraid to rename stuff, but much better to name it not perfectly than not name it at all, I say.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s awesome. I think it’s really important, especially in today’s world where there is … mechanization is so important, when there’s so many other products in your marketplace or services, like P90X talks about muscle confusion, which is essentially just training your muscles differently, not doing the same thing every single day. It’s not a new concept. They just put a name on it that makes it sound new and is kind of proprietary to them. Yeah, I think that’s awesome advice.

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah, and it gives people talking points too, right? Like you said, all they did was call it something new, but if they taught it to somebody who hadn’t heard it before, now they knew about it, and they knew the name of it, and they could go out and feel smart talking about how they’re going to build muscles.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yup, totally. Kev, before we finish off here, I’m going to have two more questions for you. What do you find, in all your work working with clients, copywriting and so forth, what is the number one mistake you see people make in writing their copy or on their sales pages or in their communication of their message?

 

Bullet writing and when to write your headline

Kevin Rogers:                     Hmm, well, there’s a few different things there. I’d say the number one mistake is people get so hung up on headlines. I wouldn’t get so hung up on your … The mistake they make internally is they try to write the headline first.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s tough. Yeah, I get that, for sure.

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah, let me save you a lot of frustration. Never write the headline first. What you want to write are bullets. If you know how to write a good feature-benefit bullet, go through your entire product, your offer, and think, “What’s sexy about this? What are the features and the benefits?” If you use the formula, which means to sort of break down what the real benefit is, oftentimes the best headline will come out of your bullet writing, and it takes a lot of pressure off, or if you just get jamming on some good body copy, the headline might emerge through there as well. But if you sit there and decide the perfect headline, and then try to write around that, it’s really stilted and confining.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. One of the things that I’ve found is, in writing a lot of my own copy is, I’ve written the copy after doing the bullets and stuff like that. I’m like, “This headline has nothing to do with what I’m talking about in the sales letter.” It’s almost like when you’re writing a book, the first chapter is … You kind of just throw it out afterwards, because you’re like, “Now I know what to write in the introduction,” you know?

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         After writing the whole thing.

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah, we call that throat-clearing in copy. Yeah.

 

Content formula: Concept, authority story, example, and 3 action steps

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s great. Second question for you is, what do you find … I guess in terms of your own business and kind of building that, what’s a strategy that you’re using right now or that you’ve used to either build your own clientele or help other businesses that you’ve worked with build theirs?

Kevin Rogers:                     Hmm, that’s a good question. Well, for me, the big revelation recently has been that it really all comes down to teaching. That’s not maybe a cut-and-paste tactic, but for me, it’s made life a lot easier when I think about what kind of content I want to create. If I just think, “All I’m really doing is teaching,” and that’s what people want, that’s why they read your stuff. Yes, they might like your personality. Yes, they might be able to relate to your story. But at the end of the day, they keep coming back because you always teach them something they can use.

What’s great about that is if that’s what you’re focused on is teaching … I have a little slogan. I say ABT, always be teaching. That’s what I teach my other freelancers who are trying to raise their stock in the industry. I say if you’re always teaching, you’re never out of material, because there’s no shortage of questions that people have about what you do. If you’re an expert, there are people who need the knowledge you have. It’s already in your head. If you’re just looking for opportunities to answer questions and do it in a way that really teaches and gives actionable tactics, then you’ll never run out of content.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure, so let me … Just one more follow-up question to that is a lot of people talk about, for instance, when they’re doing webinars or VSLs, is you don’t want to teach too much. You just want to use story and kind of get people emotionally involved, and then they’ll buy the product more so than if you just gave them a ton of content. How do you balance teaching with storytelling and selling?

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah, great question. I use the formula. It goes like this. I go concept, then I call it the authority story, so a story that puts you in the action of solving the problem, whether for yourself or maybe for a client, and then I say example, and then I say three steps, three action steps. You know who uses this so brilliantly almost every time she speaks is Marie Forleo. She’ll introduce the topic, which is the concept. She’ll always tell a personal story about how it’s affected her life. She’ll give an example of a time she’s used a better way to get a better result. Then she’ll say, “So here’s three things to keep in mind or a number of tricks you can use,” kind of a thing. Then she always challenges the viewer to respond with something very specific.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Beautiful.  This is good. I mean, guys, if you haven’t picked up, I’m just writing. I have a whole page of notes already, so I hope you guys have taken some awesome notes out of this interview. If you have to, rewind it. Go through it again, because Kevin is a gem of wisdom when it comes to compelling, and obviously we use that in a positive manner, but really kind of influencing others in a positive way to get your message or gift or books or products into their hands to really transform their lives. Kev, it’s been an honor, buddy. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your wisdom with us.

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah, it’s been my pleasure. Really appreciate it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Absolutely. What is the best place for our audience to follow your work?

Kevin Rogers:                     Yeah, copychief.com.

Yuri Elkaim:                         There you go. Check it out. If you’re looking for a great copywriter for your own business or if you’re looking to develop your own copywriting chops, check out copychief.com, not coffee chief, copychief.com, and you’ll have hundreds, if not thousands, of amazing copywriters at your fingertips, and also some really great guidance on how to improve your copy and written skills.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, remember to subscribe to the Healthpreneur Podcast on iTunes. If you’ve enjoyed it, remember to leave us a five-star rating or review. That always helps us spread the message and get in front of more people. In the meantime, I look forward to seeing you on our next episode. Continue to get out there, be great, do great, and keep changing lives.

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Follow Kevin Rogers at:

https://copychief.com/

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