Email #1 – Who Are You? Subject: I never should have gotten this far Preview Text: Everything that happened to me screamed “You’re gonna fail!” But I was just stubborn enough to make it. Some of the kids at school made fun of me because my mom and dad didn’t have “real jobs.” My parents worked from home way back when it wasn’t cool to have a home-based business. In the end it was a blessing in disguise because I grew up in a very entrepreneurial environment. We never had much money, but we always seemed to get by. My parents emphasized education and a lot of reading. I used to read all my mom’s old college history books for fun in the summer when I ran out of library books. I got good grades in high school and got into a great college. I spent too much time partying in college, but did manage to graduate (albeit with some help from summer school). When I walked out of school in 1989 I had no clue the beat down life was about to throw my way! I was fresh out of college and thought the world owed me a living. I quit or got fired from 7 different jobs in the first 18 months out of school. Every single one of those jobs was 100% commission sales. I sucked at every one of them. I barely made enough money to put food on the table and my bills were always late, if they got paid at all. One day my life changed when I sold a weight loss program to a lady who said “You’d be great in my business!” Turns out she was in the mortgage origination business. So within 30 days I got a job as a “loan officer” for a mortgage company (Beach Fed Mortgage) after harassing the VP of the company into giving me a shot (I called him 5 times at home... he gave me a job so I’d leave him alone). Over the next 10 years I made (and lost) a lot of money in mortgages and real estate... but I was MISERABLE. I was smoking 2 packs a day and drinking way to much. Then life threw me a lifeline... In 1997 I had a chance meeting at homecoming at my old college and ran into a fraternity brother. We got to talking and he mentioned he and his dad had a web server (a big deal back then) and he was selling web space through their advertising agency. I’d written a book about real estate (which had been rejected by 40+ publishers – I stopped counting at 40) and asked him if he thought I could sell it online. He say yes... and that began a 4 year odyssey of learning how to translate what I knew in the offline world into sales in the online world. After 4 years I was able to go “full time” online and over the last 20+ years I’ve figured out how to not only sell millions of dollars a year online, but to help others do it too! Now I’m doing something I never imagined over 2 decades ago. I’m helping other people who have no clue how to sell, but have a product, message, or ideas they want to get out into the world. In short, I help people who don’t know how to sell figure out how to sell online with ads, emails, sales copy, webinars, content marketing and more! I love helping people who are just like I was not too long ago. Nobody is born knowing how to sell. Nobody is born knowing the secrets to getting people to buy, try, subscribe, signup, call on the phone, or click a link. But the cool thing is all that can be learned. In fact, a lot of times it’s easier for people with no sales experience because they don’t have to UNLEARN anything. They just need to jump into action. This is super important to me because I’ve seen how much life sucks when you have a message to share and you don’t know how to sell your ideas and products to other people. I’ve also seen how amazing life can be when you DO know how to use the right words to get people to click, buy, try, and subscribe. Your ability to use sales copy and content marketing can literally change your life and lives of your family members forever But that's a story for another day... For now, I’d love to get your feedback on what I just shared with you. Do you have a message to share, but you’re not sure how to sell your audience on it? Have you tried to sell stuff in the past, but come up short? I’d love to know more about where you are on your journey right now. Go ahead and hit reply to this email. My team and I monitor the inbox and even though I’m not always able to reply, I read every message I get. Click reply and let me know what you think :-) See you tomorrow, Jim Edwards   Email #2 – What You Do Subject: Everyone needs to be able to do this (EVERYONE) Preview Text: If you’re going to ask other people to send you money in exchange for what you offer, you better get good at sales copy! I realized sales copy was an issue for most people not long after I launched my first six-figure sales funnel – for someone else! I was working for a small company that did search engine promotion (SEO) and sold website traffic (clicks) to businesses based on their keywords. I created a CD-ROM product with video tutorials on it, wrote the sales letter to sell it, did all the promotion, and got the sales up to about $100,000 in 3 months. Not long after that I went out on my own (I got fired because a jealous fellow employee lied about me to the boss – but that’s a story for another day!) and started teaching people how to create their own products on CD-ROM. People did GREAT creating their products, but they really struggled to create the sales letters to sell them. I realized sales copy was a REAL problem for my students because they were TELLING ME they needed help (hey, I never claimed to be the brightest bulb on the tree)... so I decided to teach my first class on how to write a sales letter (following the same pattern I’d learned to write sales letters for my own products). I guess you could say it went well because my students immediately started making sales of their products. Looking back, one student really stands out. He and his wife sold salsa dancing lessons on DVD. He told me on one of our “Jim Boat” cruises that he was absolutely crushing it by doing exactly what I’d taught him to do with his business and his offers... he just adapted what I taught to his existing offline business (teaching dance lessons in a studio) to make sales online. I’ll always remember he and his wife gliding across the dance floor on what was, at the time, the largest cruise ship in the Caribbean without a care in the world. So over the years I made it a practice to always include a sessions or modules in any course that taught people how to sell whatever it was they created in the course. * DVDs * CDs * Ebooks * Coaching * Membership sites * Etc. I never set out to be a copywriting coach. In fact, with one exception 20 years ago, I’ve never written sales copy for anyone else (paid or otherwise). I’ve always been too busy writing copy for my own projects. (I never understood why someone would write a sales letter for someone else for $10K when you could make $100K+ writing it for yourself to promote your own stuff!!) Along the way I discovered a lot about blueprints and patterns in sales copy and content marketing that almost always get results. I found these patterns and blueprints can especially help people who have no clue about selling to get results, if they’ll just stick with the patterns! One thing I’d point out is that my purpose is NOT to teach copywriters the finer points of copywriting. That’s not my deal... I’ve found that those folks want to debate a lot about stuff I couldn’t care less about. I know how to get results in the form of clicks, sales, subscribers and profits... and that’s what I focus on. I also realized that somebody needed to teach the “average person” how to get results without bogging them down with a whole bunch of extra crap they didn’t need to know. I realized I could be the one to do that. I was meant to be the one who taught normal people how to sell without being pushy, manipulative, or sleazy. I was the one who was supposed to help people live their dreams because they literally went from not knowing how to sell to knowing how to put words on a page... words in a video... and words in an email that get people to spend money. What a journey... I’d love to hear from you about this. Are you scared of being pushy or salesy? Are you scared of putting in a ton of work and then nobody buys from you? Does that sound like you at all when it comes to sales? Click reply and let me know what you think :-) Our journey continues tomorrow, Jim Edwards Email #3 – How You Do It Subject: Something I kept hidden for 7 years changed lives Preview Text: I was scared to share tools I’d developed for myself because I was afraid other people would think they were stupid... even though they were PROVEN to work over and over again. So one of the coolest things I do is create “wizards” and “scripts” that help people create amazing sales copy and content they can use to sell like crazy. It’s literally as simple as: 1. Answer some questions in an online form 2. Whack a button 3. Copy and paste With that formula I can literally help someone do all of the following and MORE: * Create an entire customized sales webinar, including the slide deck * Create an entire email follow up sequence * Write a dozen emails customized to their audience * Write 100s of laser-focused headlines that get clicks * Craft bullets that arouse massive curiosity * Write ads, social media posts, and master classes * And much, much more You can even create an entire sales letter or video sales letter totally customized to your audience. I know it sounds incredible, but I’m actually downplaying everything my tools and I can help people do. I figured out how to do this as a complete fluke. I realized one day that I kept using the same blueprint over and over inside my head. I was using a repeatable pattern and plugging new information into it to get a result I knew would work. In this case it was a monthly webinar product launch I was doing for 12 months in a row. I knew the pattern worked and I adapting it to a new webinar each time. On a whim I said, “I wish I had a form I could fill out with all the parts and just plug them into a template.” In that instant I was inspired to have software created to do just that. And over the next 7 years I spent over 100K developing the software just for my own use. I never had any intention of sharing it or selling access to it. I saw it purely as a tool to help me write copy for my own offers. So we fast-forward to 2014 and I was teaching a course on product creation. The folks in the course needed some help with writing their sales letters (as usual), but for whatever reason I decided to let them try my “Sales Letter Wizard.” This was the same wizard I’d been using and perfecting for years. I knew it worked for me and I’d sold millions of dollars worth of products as a direct result of using it. But for some reason I was SUPER nervous about other people seeing it. Could they use it? Would they think it was cool? (Or would they think it was complete BS and stupid?) But, I had to let them try “my baby” out because I knew in my heart it would get them the results they wanted (and needed) faster than doing it the manual way. Long story short, they LOVED it!! And in that moment I knew I had something cool on my hands. Because of that I realized I had to STOP seeing myself as a product creator who knew how to do copywriting and I had to reimagine myself as a copywriting coach. Someone who taught other people how to create sales copy and content to sell WHATEVER they sell (not just stuff I’d taught them how to make). I’d been doing it all along, but I’d never SEEN myself as doing it. And, I’ll admit, there were a few sleepless nights and some battles with “imposter syndrome” even though I had PROOF I knew what I was doing. But, once I fully embraced my new roll as copywriting coach, lives started to change and there was a major shift in the copywriting world... especially when I released my best selling book “Copywriting Secrets”. But you wanna know why I really do what I do now? Because it changes people’s lives! When I get an email from someone that tells me how Funnel Scripts or the Jim Edwards Method or Author Wizards changed their life. How they went from no sales to a full time living. How their business was saved. How they made DOUBLE what they made before just by using my software or following the advice in my book. That’s what keeps me going. To KNOW that I’m making a difference in the world... having an impact that reaches far beyond me! And that's just the tip of the iceberg... I’d love to hear from you about this. Are you struggling with sales in your business? Do you have an awesome idea, but you can’t get people to buy from you? Did this message inspire you or wake something up inside you? I’d love to know! Reply to this email and let me know your thoughts! I'll share more with you tomorrow, Jim Edwards Email #4 - How You Learned It / Earned It Subject: I had a little more self doubt on this than I’d like to admit Preview Text: If I was going to change people’s lives with sales copy and content marketing, I still had (and have) a lot of work to do... but I’m up for it in a big way! About 5 years ago a buddy of mine, Russell Brunson, wrote a book called “DOTCOM Secrets” that took the world by storm. (The book is amazing and if you haven’t read it yet you should!) By that time I’d built up a nice little cult following for my wizards, but I wasn’t really pushing them too hard. I was still worried about whether people would see the value in them (I know, it’s CRAZY looking back, but I was pretty insecure about them even though I had PROOF they worded for other people in huge variety of niches). So I read Russell’s book and I had an epiphany. The scripts in his book were BEGGING me to convert them over into my wizard software (which after 7 years of development had grown into a beast which today even uses a form of artificial intelligence). I contacted Russell and my pitch was simple. “Dude your book is awesome and I have a way to help people get even more amazing results with what you teach!” I explained what I wanted to do and within 10 minutes we agreed to create what is now called “Funnel Scripts.” That software has gone on to change thousands of lives by making all aspects of sales copywriting literally push-button simple. The funny thing is, event thought I’d done so well, I had to learn how to teach people how to create sales copy. (Notice I say “create” not “write” – great sales copy is created, not written.) I realized I had taken on a new challenge – and I still had some learning to do myself. I hate to admit it, but I was more than a little scared, especially when people started referring to me as the copywriting expert. I felt, and still feel, a little uncomfortable with that. The first thing I started doing was tons of copywriting myself and critiques of other people’s sales copy. Russell and I started doing a weekly show called “Funnel Fridays” where, on the spot and without ANY preparation, we would create an entire funnel from scratch for a product we knew nothing about. Talk about trial by fire. I spend the next 2 years really sharpening my sword every single day transforming what I knew about sales copy into practical steps, advice, and know-how that would work for any and every type of business you could imagine: * Ecomm products * Non-profit fundraising * High-ticket coaching * Supplements * Books * Pet products * Nerve pain * Eyelash extensions * Coconut oil You name it, we probably wrote sales copy and put together a marketing funnel for it! So now, after thousands of hours of study, research, thinking, and helping others, I feel very confident that I can take a look at anybody’s marketing funnel and figure out what’s working and what needs fixing. I do between 3 and 5 live shows every week where we get down with real-world sales copy and content marketing situations for real, live people in their businesses. We have also helped tens-of-thousands of people with their copywriting and content creation over the last 6 years with our tools, training, and resources. I honestly feel like I’m living my life’s purpose right now! But that's a story for another day... I’d love to hear from you about this. Have you ever felt drawn to do something but didn’t do it out of fear? I bet we all have. Do you feel fear when it comes to creating sales copy or using content marketing to build your business? Click reply and let me know your thoughts... Hope you have a great day, Jim Edwards Email 5 – Who You Do It For Subject: Focus on sales copy created massive opportunity for a hotel bellman! Preview Text: Opportunity found my buddy Gordon because he focused on getting really good at sales copy, making offers, and helping others. You might be asking yourself who exactly does Jim help? Who are the types of people who use wizards and scripts to get better at sales copy and content creation? Well let me tell you a quick story about a specific person I helped Gordon Watt has been a customer now for about 3 or 4 years. I first met Gordon through social media. Like many people who come into our worlds, he just showed up on day on Facebook and I found out he’d purchased Funnel Scripts. Gordon was working a full time job as a bellman at a major Las Vegas hotel and casino. He worked super hard and made most of his living from tips. What struck me most about Gordon was his enthusiasm and desire to transition from what he was doing to some sort of online business. He wasn’t sure what he wanted TO do, but he knew what he wanted to stop doing. Gordon’s big thing was figuring out what his business would look like or who he would sell to. So he tried a BUNCH of different things in technology and coaching. The thing that set Gordon apart was that he realized no matter what he did, he had to get really good at sales copy. So as he tried all these different things, he kept upping his game with copywriting. Even though many of the opportunities he tried didn’t pan out, his skill at using words to spur people into action improved by leaps and bounds. One of the coolest things Gordon shared with me what that he was practicing sales copy and making offers to live customers at his bellman’s job. He would try out different approach lines (headlines) and then try out different pitches (calls to action) to see which ones got the best results. Since he got in front of dozens of people a day, he quickly learned not only what motivated his ideal customers, but he developed the copywriting mindset. With that mindset, I knew all Gordon needed was to figure out which niche he could use his new skills in to have the biggest impact. The interesting thing is that Gordon also likes to speak to at-risk youth to help get them back on the right path. He loves helping people and teaching. So Gordon just started helping people with sales copy where he saw they needed it. He started doing it for FREE just trying to help out. Then, as people got results, he had the credibility to start partnering with people to help them get better results with their offers, webinars, and sales copy. Bottom line: Gordon started using my tools, read my book, got really good at sales copywriting and content creation, and used what he learned to build a business helping others. It wasn’t exactly the path he imagined when he set out to build a business online, but it worked out great and he’s super happy. Fast forward to today and Gordon’s a new dad to a handsome young son (he’s super cute by the way). He works from his home office and was able to weather the whole Covid19 thing well... especially compared to all the other bellman who lost their jobs when the casinos shut down. The last time I talked to Gordon I got the impression he was done with being a bellman because he’s having so much fun (and doing very well financially) with his copywriting and content creation ventures. He’s working on a book, his speaking and community building activities, while spending time with his beautiful wife and young son. Can’t ask for more than that! What a journey... I’d love to hear from you about this. Does Gordon’s story resonate with you at all? Now I know you might not want to do copy for others as a service (or you might) or partner with others whose sales copy and content marketing needs help (or maybe you do) like Gordon. But do you need help making more sales of whatever it is you sell? By the way, what do you sell (or want to sell)? I’d love to know, especially because it’ll help me know more about my customers and how I can help you do better with YOUR sales copy and content marketing. Hit reply and let me know, I’d love to hear from you! Our journey continues tomorrow, Jim Edwards Email 6 - How You Can Do It For Them Subject: If you want to sell your ideas, products, & services - we can help Preview Text: My whole business is about helping my idea customers succeed at selling their ideas, products, and services... especially if you have little or NO sales experience. My mission is NOT to teach copywriters the finer points of copywriting... that has never been my purpose in life. (Side note: Most “copywriters” want to argue too much about technique or who the best copywriter of all time was.) My mission is to help people with little or no sales experience to actually sell their products, services, or ideas to their ideal customers. I want to change the world by helping non-sales people discover the tools and techniques everyone can use (especially online) to get more clicks, make more sales, and net more profits. I help entrepreneurs just like you go from blank screen to compelling content and money-making sales messages are the push of a button! (No experience required!) This is super important to me because I know what it’s like to struggle. To have a really great product you know will make a huge difference in the world and have no clue how to find customers... to make sales. You spend a ton of time, energy, and money to create it and get it out there into the market, and then you watch it wither on the vine. It sucks. It’s scary. It makes you feel like crap. I also know the THRILL of making sales. Of changing lives (your customers’ lives and the lives of your family). I know what it’s like to have a massively successful product and to wake up in the morning and see that you’ve made more money overnight than you previously made in a year. I’ve been on both sides of the coin (super low and super high) and I want to help as many people as I can succeed. There’s room for ALL of us! The type of person I can help the most is someone who has the following characteristics: 1. You have a burning desire to succeed 2. You’re willing to try something new in order to get a new result 3. The product or service you sell (or want to sell) actually solves a problem or satisfies a desire for your ideal customer If you meet those basic criteria, I can definitely help you with my tools and training! We help people several different ways. My Copywriting Secrets book will teach you my secrets for how to get really good, really fast with sales copywriting. And, you can get the real, physical paperback book for FREE at https://CopywritingSecrets.com My wizards and scripts help you to create amazing copy and content by helping you literally fill out a form, whack a button, and copy and paste an amazing result. Funnel Scripts, Easy Online Wizards, Author Wizards, Fill My Webinar Scripts, Traffic Secrets Scripts and more are literally changing lives because they offer a push-button solution to your copywriting and content marketing needs. My membership site, The Jim Edwards Method Premium, is currently the best way to get monthly training from me and to join a community of like minded folks. I give access to over 14 years of training archives as well as NEW training every single month. My “Jim Boat” cruise is the ultimate experience we offer in our little corner of the online world. Every year we choose a new topic and theme for the cruise (past topics include membership sites, offers, sales copy, product creation, and more). We all set sail in the Caribbean for a week to have an amazing adventure, learn incredible business building secrets, build friendships, and change lives. If you wanted to hang out with me personally, this is where you do it. We’ve built our business this way to create opportunities for our idea customers (you) to get as much or as little as they need wherever you are in your business. No matter where you need help, we can get you the help, education, and knowledge you need to succeed in your own business, no matter what you sell! What a journey, right?... I’d love to hear from you about this. Do you have any questions about how we could help you... or if we can help you? Maybe you’re still concerned that what we do won’t apply to you or your business? If so, let us know. We’d love to make sure we’re a good fit to help you move forward with us for the long haul! Click reply and let me know your thoughts... Talk more tomorrow, Jim Edwards