Good morning!

This blog post is being sent a bit later than usual…

Mostly because I ended up leaving my car at the Las Vegas Strip last night…

And had to Uber back this morning to get it.

I HATE doing the morning “Uber ride of shame”…

But I’m pretty sure I’d hate getting a DUI even more…

So, ya know, it is what it is.

Anyways, I’m at my office now crafting this blog post to you…

And today, we’re going to continue looking at the common mistakes people making when writing their leads.

So, let’s jump on in…

Lead Mistake #3 – “Ron Burgundy Syndrome”

If you’ve seen the movie Anchorman…

You know that the main character, Ron Burgundy, is completely self-obsessed.

He talks about himself, only cares about himself, and has little empathy towards other people or their problems.

When a character acts this way in a movie it can be very funny…

But, when the spokesperson in your copy comes across this way…

It’s disastrous.

Why?

One of the most important things you can do throughout your sales letter (and especially in the lead)…

Is to continue to relate whatever you’re saying back to the prospect.

And yet, one really frequent mistake I see writers making…

Is that they come up with what they think is a compelling and emotional story…

Start their sales copy with it…

But then forget to relate this story back to the reader/viewer.

In other words…

These writers fall so deeply in love with the story…

That they assume anyone who is engaging with their sales copy will feel the same way…

Which isn’t necessarily true.

Since, as we’ve discussed in previous blog posts…

The number one thing a prospect is thinking about as they begin to view your sales copy…

Is “what’s in it for me?”

Now, this certainly doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use stories in your sales copy…

In fact, I personally love starting sales copy with a good story.

The secret, though…

Is to frequently be relating the story back to the reader and the pain point they want solved.

Let me give you an example of a bad story lead:

“I’d been homeless for two months and things were only getting worse.

At the start I’d been living out of my car…

But after it was vandalized in the middle of the night – with me sleeping in the back seat…

I felt safer sleeping on the street than I did inside my Honda.

So each morning I’d wake up on the cold concrete…

Scrape together change for a cup of coffee…

Then walk two miles to the nearest community shelter…

To see if there were any new job postings.

I must have applied to at least 47 jobs in that two-month period of time…

But no matter what I said or did…

Nobody wanted to hire a guy who was living on the street.

It seemed like I’d hit rock bottom…

I felt hopeless…

And yet little did I know that just two weeks later…

I’d be getting sent a check for $2,329…

Or that this check was just the first of many…

Or that, in a matter of just four months…

I would go from homeless and scared…

To living in a guard gated community…

In a 4,600 square foot home that backed up to the 18th hole of one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious golf courses.

What’s even crazier is that I didn’t win the lottery or anything like that…

Instead…

It happened because of a chance encounter with an eccentric but brilliant Real Estate Maverick…

Someone who had found a way to leverage other people’s money to purchase premium real estate at bargain level prices…

And who ultimately caved and shared his secrets with me.

Blah blah blah.”

As usual, I just made that story up on the spot…

But I do think it has some compelling elements.

With that being said, however…

This lead ultimately falls flat.

And a big reason why…

Is because it doesn’t relate anything the speaker is saying back to the prospect.

So, here's how we could fix the lead to make it more compelling:

“Imagine being homeless on the streets of Los Angeles for two months.

Hopefully, it’s not something you can easily picture…

But it was my reality back in December of 2017.

Hi, my name is John Doe…

And just two years ago I was living out of my car in LA.

It was the roughest time of my life…

Because not only was I having an impossible time finding a job…

But I came close to dying on three different occasions.

(I’ll share the scariest of those occasions with you in a minute, and it’s gonna really freak you out).

As awful as being homeless was though…

I’m not writing to you because I want sympathy…

Or even because I think should care about my time living on the street.

Instead, the reason I’m here talking to you today…

Is because of what happened to me on January 27th, 2018.

That’s the day I received a check for $2,329.

It was just the first of many checks I’d begin receiving week-after-week…

And the checks haven’t stopped since.

In fact, the only difference is that today…

Those checks are a whole lot larger.

Now I know what you’re wondering, and the answer is “no, I didn’t win the lotto”…

And I didn’t get “job” in the traditional sense either.

Instead…

These checks are all the result of my chance encounter with an eccentric but brilliant Real Estate Maverick…

Someone who had found a way to leverage other people’s money to purchase premium real estate at bargain level prices…

And who ultimately caved and shared his secrets with me.

This man, who I’ll be introducing to you in just a few moments, utterly changed my life…

And I’m willing to bet he can change your life too.

For me, personally…

I went from sleeping on the cold concrete…

To living in a 4,600 square foot home that backed up to the 18th hole of one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious golf courses…

And while I know that sounds like a pretty incredible turnaround…

The truth is…

I truly believe that anyone can follow in my footsteps…

Because all I did was to start using a simple but genius ‘Water Rights Loophole’…

Something that exists in all 50 states in the U.S….

And that allows you to scoop up highly valuable properties…

For just pennies on the dollar.

It’s actually crazy that more people don’t know about this…

But it’s also probably for the better…

Because if this loophole went too mainstream, it wouldn’t work as well as it does.

So, while I am going to show you what this loophole is…

Along with how it works…

Right inside of this letter…

I also need to urge you to read every word that follows right now…

Without any distractions or interruption…

Because I doubt this website will stay online for very long.

Blah blah blah.”

See the difference?

We basically told the same story and even hinted at the same promise…

But in the second version of this lead…

We continuously related what we were saying back to the reader…

We focused on grabbing their attention…

We built rapport with them…

And then, most importantly, we answered the question of “what’s in it for me.”

In other words, we spoke to their inner Ron Burgundy…

Instead of acting like Ron Burgundy ourselves.

A final note on this…

The idea of relating what you’re saying back to your prospect or audience has a wide range of applications.

It’s the same thing when you’re writing blog posts… doing public speaking… going on a podcast… etc.

At the end of the day, we all have a little bit of Ron Burgundy in us…

And the secret is to speak to others’ self-interest…

Rather than focus on only serving our own.

– SPG

P.S. A little over a month ago I went on my friend Josh Felber’s Podcast. The episode just got released recently, and if you want to hear it you can listen here.

P.P.S. This post originally came from an email I sent to my private list. If you want to see more stuff like this from me, you can apply to join my list using this link.