Last night I saw one of the most powerful uses of the “attractive character” ever. Let me show you how Lindsey Sterling used the “attractive character” to get her audience to fall in love with her.
---Transcript---
Hey, everyone. This is Russell Brunson. I want to welcome you to “Marketing in Your Car”.
Hey, everyone. It’s early, and I’m heading to the gym, but it’s nice, because now that it’s summertime, it looks like noon at 6:30 in the morning. I love summer. I’m excited for it.
I wanted to share with you guys a really, super awesome experience. Last night, my wife and I had a chance to go to a Lindsey Stirling concert. If you don’t know who Lindsey Stirling is yet, go to YouTube and type in “Lindsey Stirling”, and look. There’re a couple of really good videos. One of them is of her playing violin and dancing in fire, and one’s her running through igloos. It’s definitely worth watching.
She did a show up here in Boise in a really small venue called “The Knitting Factory”, where only about five or six hundred people could jam into this place. It’s standing room only. We went to it, and it was awesome. I’ve heard a couple of pretty cool things in my life, and this was one of the neatest experiences in entertainment I’ve ever seen. We were talking about it beforehand, the fact that, if you watch her, she plays the violin while she dances. It’s a really cool blend of talents. It’s just so different. She was on “America’s Got Talent” a bunch of years ago, and Pierce Morgan kicked her off [laughs], and all of this stuff, but she just kept going and going, and now she’s got this. I think this is her second tour, and she’s done really, really well. What’s interesting is, if you look at her, she’s really good at playing the violin. I’d say she’s an above-average violin player, and she’s a good dancer. I wouldn’t say she’s a great dancer. She’s a good dancer, but the fact that she blends those two together makes her unique and different, and literally, the show last night, I felt like was world-class. I can’t even say enough about how awesome it was.
It was interesting, though. There was one thing I wanted to mention, because I thought it was profound from a marketing standpoint. I don’t think many other people really caught it, but as you guys all know, I’m obsessed with this whole marketing thing. I’m looking at what people are doing and why they’re doing it and how they’re doing it and the reaction from the crowd and stuff like that. The one thing that she did that was super cool – she came out, and she played two or three songs, and everyone was going crazy. Then she needed to take a break really quickly to change outfits. She goes off the stage, and all of the sudden, behind, on the main stage, there’s a screen that’s got effects and all of these things happening. All of the sudden, this thing pops up, like a little movie, and it says, “I don’t think we’ve been officially introduced yet,” and then it shows Lindsey when she’s an infant, and it shows her as a toddler, and it shows her as a two-year-old, and a three-year-old, and then five, and six. It’s showing her throughout her whole life – these little video clips of her saying cute little things and doing stuff, and showing her dancing, and showing her practicing violin. All of her experience that got her to this point, basically, you saw in this little three-minute video, and literally, instantly, it went from everyone going there, thinking who she was and seeing her as a fan, all of the sudden, everyone saw her at a different level.
At the event last weekend, I talked a lot about the “attractive character”. I’m sure you guys, if you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you’ve heard me talk about that and the importance of it and what it does for your brand and for everything you’re doing. I would look at that video, and it was just like, “Man, look at how it changed everybody in this room. We all went from Lindsey Stirling and people who wanted to get out for the night to do an event to people who were fans. She did that all in a little three-minute video. It was not professionally done, but it brought out all of the elements of attractive character, and it was awesome.
I’m in the gym, but I want to keep talking about this, so I’m going to pause it, and hopefully when I come back out to the car, my recorder won’t have shut off. I’m going to pause this, and I’ll be back in forty-five minutes.
All right, I am back. That was a hard workout [laughs]. So I’m going to continue where we left off. We were talking about Lindsey’s concert. I was talking about the video and the whole attractive character concept, and I’ve had a lot of people ask me, when we talk about attractive character, “How do you introduce yourself to the audience, and how do you build this relationship?”
A lot of times, I think people are confused. They’re thinking, “How do I do this on the front end before someone meets me?” You create your own squeeze page or on your landing page or whatever, to get somebody in the door, just like Lindsey. She started the concert. She came out. She did two or three songs, and then after we built that initial rapport, it’s like, “Here, let me tell you my story.” Boom – all of the sudden, it sucks you in. For us, usually on your front end or your squeeze page, it’s kind of blind, trying to get somebody in the door. Now if they’re in the door – “Boom.” Now it’s where you introduce your attractive character and everything else.
One of the big questions we had at our event last weekend was from one of the girls that were there. She was really cool. She was talking about how, “How come all of the ads are ugly, and they’ve got red outlines, and you go to these squeeze pages, and there’s no branding? They’re just ugly. I want to have banners that are brown and yellow and that use my colors,” and all of these things. I was trying to explain it to her, and I said, “That’s fine, but there’s a time and a place. Your initial goal is to get as many people in your front door as possible. Because of that, you’ve got to use what works, and what works a lot of times is this cheesy stuff – headlines and color schemes that probably don’t match your brand and your fill, but that’s okay, because your initial goal is to just get them in the door.” As soon as they come through that front door, for us at least, we immediately transition from a kind of a cold, high-conversion funnel to our branding stuff.
That’s the way that we look at the way that we drive our traffic. It’s a two-step process. Step One, bring them in with whatever converts the best, and then immediately, now that you’ve got them, they’re on your list. Now it’s time to start building your brand and your attractive character and all of those things, where now you’re getting them to build the relationship. That’s how you start getting people to convert better on the back end, because I agree one hundred percent. I think that branding on the back end is important. In fact, I think you’ll sell way more.
For example, this week we sold four people our $25,000 package, which is awesome. That’s by far a record for our high-end coaching things in a week. We sold four of them on the phones. I never could have done that off of a cold campaign, where somebody comes in off of a cold squeeze page, and we call them to sell. No, they come in off of a cold campaign, and then after we’ve got them, now we share our attractive character, and we share stories, and we share our branding. We do all of this stuff to warm up that relationship, and get us to the point where somebody will come in at a higher level.
Anyway, I’m not sure how exactly that relates to Lindsey’s concert, but it’s just something that’s interesting. The other thing, and again, this is me, from the marketing standpoint. I always look at situations and stuff from the perspective of, “What would I be doing different if this was mine. If they hired me as a consultant, what would I do?” One of the big things that I notice – oh, and there’s a cop, a motorcycle cop, shooting people with his gun [laughs], and I think I clipped it.
All right, I’m back. I was looking at what they’re doing, and they had this pre-band come out first, and they were great. They sang and got everybody excited, and then they took thirty minutes to reset the stage and everything. Then Lindsey came out, and again, she was just awesome, from the very first second she walked in. What was interesting is I’m looking at this room. There were maybe five hundred to a thousand people, all jammed. We’re all standing-room only, and it’s a really cool facility, and literally, there were probably ten of us – my wife and I, and a couple of others who were jumping around, having fun, and everybody else was just kind of standing there looking at her. I think everyone enjoyed the experience, but we were at the equivalent of a rock concert or more, and nobody’s moving around.
I was thinking a lot about Tony Robbins, when we did his events, and when we were at his event, I’m the kind of person who, I don’t like dancing. We didn’t dance at our wedding. I just don’t do that. At my first Tony Robbins event that I went to, everybody was dancing like crazy, and for the first eight hours, I refused to participate in the shenanigans. I did not want to be dancing, right? [laughs] After a while, he broke me down to where we were all just going crazy, and it was awesome. I remember that next day was the first time I ever met with Tony. We had a little private meeting, and we were talking. We were in Toronto, and he said that it always takes a while to get the audience in a state where they’re willing to jump around and dance and go crazy and leave their inhibitions behind, and he said that at some events, that happens really, really fast, and other ones take a long time. He said that Toronto took a long time. It took five or six hours before he felt like he’d broken through and everyone was playing full out.
So it took a process, but I was thinking about what Tony does. When you show up at his event, he’s got thirty people on stage dancing, and they’re trying to get the whole audience dancing, and everything’s moving, so as soon as he walks out on stage, the whole audience is already dancing and moving and jumping around, and so it’s easy to kind of step into that and start running with it.
At Lindsey’s thing, everyone was sitting around waiting, waiting, waiting, and then she comes out at level ten, but nobody had been moving and dancing and jumping, just people like my wife and I, who’d been to Tony Robbins. We like jumping around now [laughs]. We’re jumping around, and everyone else is sitting there, even after her seventh or eighth performance. It was insane. It was so good, and again, my wife and I are jumping around crazy, and she like comes out to the audience, “You guys are awesome. There’s a pack of girls out there going crazy,” and literally, there was probably twenty of us, maybe in the whole audience who were going nuts.
I think for her I would look at, before she comes out, getting a bunch of people on stage, getting the audience dancing and moving and coach them and train them and get them to get in the right state that you want so that when you show up, their energy level’s at a different level.
Two times ago, when we were in New York, we went to “The David Letterman Show”, and what was really interesting was the fact that before the show, we had someone who took our entire audience and coached us through the entire process and coached us through what we’d need to do. –“This is what David needs. He needs you laughing. He needs you moving. He needs your energy,” and they’d coach us through it, and when we got into the studio, and it was the same thing. They’d coach us through it again, and they got us all prepped. Then Dave came out, and, “Boom,” we were at level ten by the time he showed up. I think from a marketing standpoint, that pre-frame is big.
Now that concept can work anywhere. When I used to do teleseminars and webinars, I would get on there, and they were all quiet and then when we’d get started answering, I’d say, “Hi, this is Russell,” and I’d get started” I remember five or six years ago, I was doing a teleseminar with Armond Morin, and I showed up ten minutes early. He was on there for ten minutes prepping the event, getting people excited, getting them fired up. –“This is what’s going to be happening. You’re going to have a chance to listen to Russell, and it’s going to be great. Thank you so much for coming,” and then he had this loop, where he kept on getting people fired up for this thing, for ten or fifteen minutes before we started. Then, “Boom,” we started, and we were at a level ten.
So that state, the state that whatever people enter into whatever experience – your teleseminar, your webinar, your event, your sales process – there’s a lot of ways you guys can manipulate that. If Lindsey’s crew were to hire me, that’s what I would be focusing on – how to manipulate that pre-frame before she shows up, so that when she shows up, and when she stepped on the stage, it would be at a level ten from day one. And I’d say that idea is for you guys too. Think about all of your sales processes, how to crank that up and get your audience at level ten before you start speaking or selling or teaching.
I’m back home. I’m going to go eat and get ready for the day. I appreciate you guys. I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you have a chance to go to a Lindsey Stirling concert, do it. It was awesome. Worst case – just go to YouTube and type in “Lindsey Stirling” and watch some of her stuff, and you guys will be blown away by her talent, for sure. All right, guys. I’m out. We’ll talk to you again soon.