Episode #89 – AJ Mihrzad on The Selling Machine-Like Power Behind A Good Ole Story

John McIntyre:
Its John McIntyre here, the autoresponder guy and it’s time for episode eighty nine of the mcmethod marketing podcast, where you’ll discover how to get more customers in less time, with less fuss and less hassle, so you can have the business that you want and do all things you wanna do. Today, i’ll be talking to Aj Mihrzad. Now Aj is a great guy, I met Aj in New York when I was there, couple months back. He’s a fitness guy, he’s absolutely ripped. I mean you should check out this guy’s facebook photos. And he mentions his facebook in this interview, so you’ll get to hear about that. Really cool guy, we had dinner together, its bunch of us guys it’s all about business, life, and philisophy.. I really get well with Aj cause we both have this you know, I guess affinity, or lacking or getting philisophical about life about purpose and you know about what we should be doing with ourselves. All that sort of stuff; introvert ions, extraversions. So I really love talking to him. In this episode makes you talk about storytelling process and how it affects the buying process. Now Aj’s got some really, let’s say new ideas about storytelling and how to use it and couple different book recommendations that I never heard of so I learn a lot from talking to Aj about the stories and I think you gonna learn out of this. So this is all about writing stories, using stories to persuade into the facts and benefits. And its great formula that he shares about half way through, about how to really craft those stories that connect with your readers. To get the show notes for this episode of the McMethod marketing podcast go to themcmethod.com/89. Now this weeks’s McMasters insight of the week its another good one. Its similar as last week about opportunistic folk, you know as opportunistic folks is being focused and this one is, you got to take a hollistic view of business instead of just tactical. Now what does that mean. Well some people you know come to me, they join say Mcmasters buy a product of mine or hire *** autoresponder for them and one thing ive noticed with some people I’ve come to work with is that they’ve heard about autoresponder and how amazing I think this wizbank? technique for magically converting leads into customers. You know in some way autoresponders can be very powerful. I’m not denying that but there’s a mindset that some people have with this where they think they’re looking for that latest and greatest tip, latest and greatest tactic that’s gonna explode their business. And its just not, I mean its not how it works you really have to have that hollistic view of business I means that’s a bit of funky word out there but just, like business is business you know, you spend a certain amount to acquire a customer, and then you sell them certain amount of stuff with certain value and hopefully make a profit. So that’s I mean that’s how I breakdown business. Like you spend a hundred dollars to buy, to acquire a customer with advertising or ***. And you spend hundred dollars worth for human resource to acquire a customer and then you sell two hundred dollars worth of products to them, might be one product might be several over the time you and that customer had interaction. Therefore you have average profit per customer of one hundered dollars. That’s business in a nutshell. That is you buy customers and you sell them stuff and you optimize the whole thing so you make a profit and then you make the whole thing repeatable. So that you can you know,buy the customer for a hundred and make two hundred from them and do it over and over and over and over again infinitely. Okay, that’s business in a nutshell. But that means that you can’t just plug in an autoresponder, right? You have to have, you gonna have something, first you’re gonna have people that can buy something that actually have a problem that’s solvable. Then you havr to have stuff to sell them if you don’t have that yet, there’s no point dropping in an autoresponder that runs the business and you haven’t got paid traffic dial, your traffic *** in order for autoresponders I mean its great to get set up first, but its not this magic thing. Like its not just set up an autoresponder then, “bang!” you’re making money. Its not that I mean, I some ways its not that simple but its even simpler. So that’s the McMasters insight of the week today, you really got to take the big picture of your business, that forty thousand worth view where maybe you need an autoresponder maybe you do, right? Or maybe you need to focus more on pay traffic or maybe you need a good you know, good sales phone, sales chart, sales flow. So that’s it for today’s McMasters insight of the week. If you wanna know more about McMasters, you wanna get more insight, business growing insights like this, you should join McMasters a private community, private forum, bunch of products in there and I’m in there everyday posting as well. You get advice from me, from other people in there its a great place to grow your business and get more customers so go know little more about that. That’s in theMcMethod.com/mcmasters. Now, that’s it for now. I want to get with this interview with Mr. Aj Mihrzad.

John McIntyre:
Hey it’s John McIntyre here the Autoresponder guy, I’m here with Aj Mihrzad. Now Aj is the owner of Life Fuel Fitness which is based in Great Neck, New York. He’s the founder of Life Fuel supplements along with the fitness software called the Lean body. He’s also the author of best-selling book The Mind Body Solution train your brain for permanent weight loss which proves that the key for better body that’s in shape, energizing, youthful is a healthy brain. Which I hundred percent agree. Aj is a fitness professional, he’s got a Masters in Psychology and he’s also been featured in men’s fitness and bodybuilding.com. That’s awesome and he’s also key note speaker at various event. I met Aj about a month ago. Its a month ago I think we’re recording in the set or not at the Titans of Direct Response seminar but we actually went to New York one night, had dinner with few guys. Aj is one of the guys that came along. We had a chat and then we had a chat actually a couple weeks back to talk about copywriting and marketing and everything. That was all this guy sounds like he’d be worth to get on the podcast and that part part there about men’s fitness and bodybuilding.com is a hundred percent true cause I’ve seen Aj’s photos on facebook and this dude is ripped. So Aj how you going man?

Aj Mihrzad:
Im doing good John, how you feeling?

John McIntyre:
Pretty pretty good man. Good to have you on. Now before we get into, we’re gonna talk about storytelling today and how to you know use story time with copywriting and how to use it in writing a book. But before we get into that stuff, can you give the listeners a bit more of a background who you know, who is Aj and what does he do.

Aj Mihrzad:
Yeah. Absolutely John you know I’m former a chubby kid turned fitness professional and I really overcame my weight loss you know with the world of fitness empowered me to want to create a business out of it and been in fitness industry for about twelve years now and it really developed different businesses out of that where its a line of supplements and after that I created along with online coaching program and you know its really awesome. I think one thing that helped me to grow my business is understanding how to write copy and understanding Direct Response Marketing at the core of it.

John McIntyre:

Right. Right. And I know you’re a member of at least, a think you and Joe Polish are 25k mastermind man. You’re like members of high level stuff and you know some of this guys personally.

Aj Mihrzad:
Yeah yeah absolutely I mean I do process with 25k group and you know I really am a big believer in investing your education and you know you definitely get a different perspective when you go into this high level masterminds, when you’re around this people that you know had this amazing businesses and lives and it just changes like your mindset to what’s possible so its been really amazing experience being with this group.

John McIntyre:

Yeah. I hundred percent agree man like, part of the value for me when I go to conferences, at seminars its not so much the talks or even just the networking, in a networking sense. But its very much when you have a conversation with someone who’s playing at you know few levels above you, just by hearing nothing specific but like, not the actual words they say but just turn your general mindset for getting the fuel for how they think that changes you know how I think and it creates this incredible shifts that almost like an emotional shift where you see that the barrier that you’ve set up with yourself doesn’t actually exist. And all of a sudden you go from one level, you just start stepping it up without even trying to. You can’t even help it.

Aj Mihrzad:
Yeah that’s right John. You just completely take away a lot of perceived limitations you know when you hear stories of some of the people, like at the seminars and what they’re accomplishing; all of a sudden it puts your wall in a perspective. Also certain things that you tend to I guess really get down upon are little issues and problems you have in life and business. When you hear about some of the crazy things that this people have to deal with you know it kinda brings down to size.

John McIntyre:

One thing I think is funny which I found when you know being in Asia for three years now and met a whole bunch of different people, different business owners, and the interesting thing is that before I came out here I used to think that this business owners would be so serious, so profesional, they must be you know extremely productive and just perfect with everything they do with business and then I met them and was like “oh they’re just like me”. Some of them like to party and you know they have problems with productivity some days. They’re just normal men and women and when you see that you’re like “hang on, if they could do that this normal guy well I can do that”.

Aj Mihrzad:
You’re so right about that John. I think you know when I first went to my first seminar many years ago, a lot of the gurus and experts there, I thought they have like superhuman powers you know, cause I study their products I read their books and when I met them I was like “wow! this people are all just like me”. And it made me realize “they really no different”. You know they just have better strategy than I do. If I get better strategy I could be where they are.

John McIntyre:

Cool man. Alright cool. Well lets get into the story telling process. So tell me about that. You’ve been using stories to grow your business. So lets kinda get a bigger picture, overview of what do you mean by using story telling in marketing?

Aj Mihrzad:
Well you know I really first start it off you know with my own fitness business being overweight and struggling. With fitness being big part of my life, I realized that I have a story to tell you know, and I can get more people if I tell that I used to be overweight and chipmunk chicks and man boobs and I was really insecure with my body and it lead to lot of issues both physically and emotionally and by telling people my backstory I realized that I was having a deeper connection with them even you know my clients we’re abiding more to my program cause like this guys experienced what I experienced every single day and he was worse off than I was. So there is deeper connection and then I just kinda kept that Heroes Journey story throughout my business and I realize that I connected more with people telling them stories as it goes to giving them facts you know, there’s so much like fitness information, nutrition and exercises and it is flooded all across the Internet however when I was really inspiring people to take action it was by telling them stories of issues that I overcame. And then something just dawned on me and I realize that I wanted to use more stories in my copy, in my email marketing, on my websites and that was like a major game changer.

John McIntyre:

Did you? So it sounds like you sort just stumbled upon it you didn’t read it somewhere like stories were a good way to sell, you just happen to realize that by telling these stories you’re really connecting with people and that’s what was building your business.

Aj Mihrzad:
Exactly John, it was kinda like it stumbled you know, in front of me like when I was telling stories is like a shift in emotions and you know my sales increase. When I was always telling people about my struggles in my past and then it dawned on me like “wow!” You know I’m just telling them stories based ony experiences however I really wanna get deeper into storytelling and the art of storytelling and just finding out more about the history of it, the psychology behind it and that’s what I just really dealt deeper into it.

John McIntyre:
One thing I found cause I’ve done some reading about this, I use to hear a lot of stories in the emails, that I write and I send and one thing that I sort of notice, when I get, I mean in seminars are a great example when you go any sort of, when you say any good speaker, he really knows what he’s doing. They don’t sit up there you know and they don’t get their slides up in screen with bullet points and just text and text and facts and all that crap. They have one big story its not always about the Heroes Journey when you know then, you know I used to be overweight now I’m ripped. It can be usually just the story called, story ***. But any sort of leader, anyone who has a message to share and actually good at sharing and you know share with other people sort of has a viral effect uses stories and I think its a funny when you look at religious teachers you go into the bible and you look at Jesus and the parables he told or you look at Buddha or any famous spiritual leader and they all use stories to illustrate you know you might say moral principles, spiritual principles and I think that’s an incredible reason for all of us to start using stories for all of our businesses.

Aj Mihrzad:
Yeah John that’s a really good point you know like back when they have text in written word you know they would tell stories and pass it along generations and the reason why they tell stories we’re because it’s so memorable. You know, the stories really stick into a person’s mind.

John McIntyre:
So what did you learn then? You say you had written books and whole bunch of stuff to find out what was going on with stories and how to use them. So tell me about some of the stuff that you’ve learned.

Aj Mihrzad:
Well a lot of fascinating stuff you know first and foremost when you’re telling a story to someone, all of a sudden part of their conscious minds shuts off and their subconscious minds becomes so much more receptive because they put themselves in the point of view of your story. So lets say you’re telling a story about yourself, their more engaged cause they imagine what they would do in that situation or if you talk about your mom they think about their mother or their father. So it’s a fascinating shift of that person’s attention. Also let’s say when writing a story you know someone is reading it whether its a copy or your website, a person gets a lot more engaged cause they want to know how that story ends. So typically by telling a story you’re gonna get the person to a lot more engaged into reading you know a bigger block of text. And what was really fascinating was this study that I came across. It was about this ceramic horse that this scientist got for like ninety nine cents and they put her on Ebay and basically they split tested two different types of copy. So they had this one description of the horse and it was just basically ninety nine cent horse you know, buy it over here so on so forth. And then the second one was an engaging story about the horse. It was about this girl who said you know that “my father he had the ceramic horse” and you know “he was a drunk” and he was like, he was this, he was that. Its really deep emotional story and the Ebay ad that had the story, the horse sold for sixty three dollars.

John McIntyre: Wow.

Aj Mihrzad:
So that was like six thousand dollars increase and they split tested it across many numerous different types of the stories that always destroyed the logical regular ad.

John McIntyre:
Wow. Well I think right now that some of listening to this they’re thinking “that’s great”. I understand cause I was talking about this before on this podcast with storytelling is great . But one of big challenges you know of life is that, they’re thinking “I’m not a storyteller”, I don’t know how to write stories”. What’s your advice to someone like that?

Aj Mihrzad:
Well that’s great you know because I started with it initially myself and I just read a lot of books on storytelling and a lot about how to even like write a screenplay you know cause it tons of story visuals. And I came across this great book and its called Immediate Fiction by Jerry Clever. And here is a great framework of telling a powerful engaging story.

John McIntyre:
Okay, so what’s the… can you give me like summary. What’s the framework?

Aj Mihrzad:
Sure absolutely. So he discusses this framework and its called “CARES”. C-A-R-E-S, so prior to writing a story or coming up with an outline you put a part of story each with this words lets say C is for conflict, A is for action, R is for resolution, E is for emotion, S is for showing. Okay so lets say for example you want to tell a story. I give one that I did to my clients about a time where I almost got smothered by a pair of breast implants and you know I always start stories off to be very engaging that’s why C is the most important one like its conflict so it has to be something where you know it just stops the reader and creates an emotional connection. So conflict, “I almost got smothered by a pair of breast implants”. Okay, action “I hired a trainer from a local gym to train me”. So basically Im building up some type of action and then I go into the R, the resolution. So basically I discuss a story about me going to a gym hiring a trainer with big breast implants that almost smothered me and then from that point on I wondered about how visuals are very appealing but you know, she wasn’t the best trainer. So discussing how that its better to hire an expert compared to an amateur in a sense that I was telling a story about this experience that I had and that’s conflict, action, resolution and next one is emotion. Okay, so basically whenever you’re telling a story you want to elicit emotion from your reader and instead of using the actual word, you wanna show emotion. That’s the last one S. Okay, so showing not telling and a great example is that is let’s say for example if you want to express in a story that the person is angry, instead of saying he was angry you could say his face was red and his nostrils we’re flaring. Okay, so this creates a powerful visual in your readers mind and it connects a lot more into them and gets them more engaged. And there’s this phenomenal book that I highly recommend its called the Emotion Thesaurus. It is written by a group of psychologists, it discusses every single emotion in human realm and it gives the actual visual interpretation of it. Okay, so lets say anger it will show how anger is expressed externally internally. So its like this amazing resource if you’re writing fiction, if you’re telling stories to really captivate the readers.

John McIntyre:
I love that. I love that. We talked about this a few weeks ago with this idea of.. You got something that I’ve never heard before, this idea instead saying someone’s angry or someone’s mad or someone’s happy or whatever it is you talk about their body language. For example, the behavior and I think that’s such a small thing but also such a huge thing that I think if someone’s talking or they’re already telling stories let’s say sales copy or something like that, if they start using those ways of describing and I think it would connect so much more.

Aj Mihrzad:
Yes. Exactly John. You know for example if you’re trying to tell a story about confident. You know, you could say when I was insecure or you could say he was looking down, his shoulders we’re slumped and he was just walking very slowly you know, and this basically you’re saying the same thing but you’re creating this powerful visual that the reader keeps inside their mind.

John McIntyre:
Right. What’s fascinating about that actually, you learn some of this stuff with Tony Robbins actually they conciously think about what that means my shoulders are down and keep their heads down but its funny that you don’t have to know that, people don’t have to know those things to know what that feeling would be if you described someone with shoulders slumped and the head down and the walking slow, what do you think this guy is feeling? He’s probably sad, probably depressed. Everyones gonna say that. Its crazy how universal this stuff is.

Aj Mihrzad:
Yeah. You know that’s a great point. Im a huge fan of Tony Robbins and his take on human physiology is exactly true and its fascinating to present his book when he goes into confidence and happiness when you actually start to read the descriptions, you start acting them out you notice your state and mood change very quickly.

John McIntyre:
So tell me about, how do you take a story once you’ve got this framework you get a story about, it could be like story like yours where its going from overweight to being ripped or getting smothered by big breasts, big fake breasts implants or any story. How do you take a story like that and use in your marketing? Cause some stories are gonna be better than others.

Aj Mihrzad:
Absolutely you know like I always say start with conflict and the key thing is, you always want the conflict to be your prospect’s pain you know, their biggest struggling point. So when you’re telling a story about that you’re really digging deep into their own personal pain. You’re bringing that out and slowly very implicitly you’re discussing how your product of service is gonna be the solution to their pain. You know its gonna get them out of that hell *** their in. But you know, a great marketer, a great salesman is really a master of trigerring pain cause when you guys trigger your prospect’s pain and then offer solution to resolve that, you could do that very powerfully with a story.

John McIntyre:
I like that. I never heard anyone framing it up quite that way with the idea obviously with the headline is to enter that conversation that’s going on someone’s head. But to think about, what emotion are they feeling? You know, when they wake up what are they pissed off about? What are they upset about? What do they think when they look at a mirror in the morning? And then find the headline or find a hook that kicks off this story. That’s your conflict and thats opening for the story. Here’s what the story is about as I look in the mirror I and I felt like a loser or something like that.

Aj Mihrzad:
This is true. I guess its like sales in the simplest way is, you know you’re triggering someone’s pain and from that point on youR offering some of resolution like you’re trying to get someone so thirsty so parched so dehydrated and then your product of service is gonna be that glass of water that they need, you know.

John McIntyre:
Exactly, exactly. I thought it was funny a minute ago actually when you said that a great marketer is a master of trigering pain and I think that’s so true and actually a couple of weeks ago I did a presentation and one of the parts of the presentation was talking about how really with a story in any sort of marketing. Number one you’ve got to get someone’s attention and number two you just got to agitate them make them. You got to get them feel the pain so much that they take action on whatever you’re offering.

Aj Mihrzad:
Yeah John that’s a great point nobody takes action unless they hit rock bottom you know they had to be in that place where you’re triggering their pain and they realize “wow!” you know “If I don’t make any changes right now my life is gonna be a living hell, its gonna be worst off”. So you’re inspiring them to take action by triggering their pain.

John McIntyre:
And the thing is with this story is its much better way like I mean you could talk about, you can say you’re angry that you’re overweight but if you tell a story about a guy whose body language says that he’s angry because he’s overweight it gets the person, it triggers that pain in someone in much more powerful than if you just talk about you know what sucked about being overweight.

Aj Mihrzad:
Yeah. Exactly John you know, like you give this expressive facts of person, you know the conscious mind will shut it off “I don’t wanna be taught I want the advice”. However if you tell a person a story about yourself or someone else you know the prospect all of a sudden puts themselves in the point of view of the character in the story and all the pain and all the struggle and even the triumph that they go through the prospect experiences that.

John McIntyre:
Right and where I mean what are some ways to use these stories obviously you do it in emails but this is something you can do in sales and any kind of marketing right?

Aj Mihrzad:
Yeah absolutely, in every aspect you know on *** pages, your websites, your email marketing, direct mail you know they go on and on and on but a great story is just perfect way to captivate you know the reader and inspire them to take some action.

John McIntyre:
What like mediums have you used stories with to get really good results, you know obviously you probably I guess done emails restores and you get sales. I mean what works for you?

Aj Mihrzad:
Of course you know sales letters you know, websites, I do a lot of emails marketing with storytelling. The thing that worked really good for me is writing a book actually, you know I wrote a book called The Mind Body Solution and initially when I was writing the book its was based on facts and there was like neuroscience and psychology it was just really you know area to be scientific. I decided to rewrite the book and you know it just became a set of stories, like story after story after story and you know the book really caught on and really engaged the reader. You know, the book became a best seller, I was really happy and blessed about that and I guess the only reason it did so well was because I embeded it with stories stacked back to back to back.

John McIntyre:
Okay, what are some of the mistakes that you think people make or mistakes that you made while trying to do one of your stories or with your business with the book, with the emails. What are some of the challenges that you faced?

Aj Mihrzad:
Of course you know story not being too engaging, not having enough emotional triggers in there, being a bit too bland. You know like I said I find this framework works really well for me from the book Immediate Fiction and so when I kinda stir off away from the framework when I don’t have conflict, action, resolution, when I’m not trigering emotions those are a lot of mistakes that I made in the past and by not really having a lot of emotions in the story, a person’s really gonna turn them off in a sense.

John McIntyre:
I think its one of the cool things in marketing is where its not really about you know your headline, or you know the structure of the sales page, its very much about understanding emotion and how to use emotion to motivate people to do something which is why you know I mention that you’re gonna get someone’s attention that’s step one and step two, to me its only those two steps. Step one get someone’s attention, step two agitate them, cause if you agitate them enough out of their own initiative they will click the link, go and buy something or download, or whatever it is. And its, I think its incredible market the goal is not to become some magician; the goal is really to understand how emotions drive behavior and how to trigger this. And its not about manipulating people in a bad way I think its about understanding that if someone is overweight and they wanna lose weight, they’ve got a whole bunch of limiting beliefs inside their head about why they cant lose weight even though they can. And so the marketers job I mean is to be sort of like an amazing salesman the savings of the world are written I think in email lines which is where nothings gonna happen without a good sales person or good marketer because someone has to help the prospect overcome those limiting beliefs and get to the point like “screw it. I’m gonna make this work I’m gonna do whatever I can to lose weight or to make some money in order to help my family” whatever the case is.

Aj Mihrzad:
That is very very well said John, I told you really. Now that’s so eloquent just putting all that together. I was taking notes when you said that actually.

John McIntyre:
I mean that’s cool its one thing that I talk about in the community, inside like empathy. Where I love bringing things back to marketing fundamentals where instead of looking at you wanna be like a big book or all big cause and things like that and what I found the more experienced I get, you know the guys I meet who are very successful it often comes back to you know just empathy which is you know I always needed with emotion. If you go back to even into further back for the fundamental, its understanding what someone’s going through cause if you have that, then it sort of follow, if you have that you know what to say to get their attention, you know how to agitate them.

Aj Mihrzad:
No John you’re so right. *** to be able to enter the conversations to prospects mind is the ability to understand them better than themselves and connect with them on a very deep emotional level.

John McIntyre:
Have you ever had a bad result from a story? Have you ever had like someone come in, you’ve told a story and been pissed off for some reason?

Aj Mihrzad:
Oh absolutely. You know I guess when you get into story telling a lot of times you could really offend people and yes a lot of women delete you in emails. But the main thing is you know, story is so powerful and so emotionally driven that you could really really piss someone off. *** offend them, you get kinda across the line in a sense because it engages a different part of the brain you know where as I find stories in a sense, its a sense like a person really getting into it. Just like watching a good movie, a person can get really into it they can be emotionally disturbed by the whole experience.

John McIntyre:
Its, I think its like an aspect some people look at marketers are so bad, they’re evil, they’re manipulating people and you know in some cases that does happen because I think part of the problem is the language that you know, we use like get inside someone’s head and really understand what they want and play with their emotion but like this is what guys like Tony Robbins do. When they’re trying to help someone get through their limiting beliefs, its very much about you know understanding behavior and figuring out what motivates them so you can help them get what they want.

Aj Mihrzad:
Yeah. Exactly.

John McIntyre:
And I actually have this theory with like cigarettes for example, so people say you know some people would be like sure I know how to sell cigarettes cause they’re bad and you know I think that cigarettes they’re unhealthy but stopping people from selling them or from selling anything that isn’t actually good for someone isn’t gonna stop people from buying it **** stop desiring so what that means though is that marketers you can’t make someone want something they don’t actually want . You’ve got to find what they already want which, if its weight loss then they probably gonna want more energy, want more time for their family, they want more you know respect from people of the opposite sex or something like that but if they don’t want things you can’t sell them anything. So its interesting about email marketing even with the best story if they don’t want what you’re offering them, no amount of persuasion is ever gonna get them there which is an interesting thing cause you can’t have them do what they don’t want to do. So I think with marketing it really just channeling desire not creating it.

Aj Mihrzad:
That’s a really good point John I just thought about like you know the whole aspect like people moves towards pleasure and away from pain and a great marketer is able to you know push the person so close to that pain that they’ll do anything to get away from it. So they’ll actually go towards something they’ve never done before. And yeah that’s really interesting concept.

John McIntyre:
And what do you think about like this tons of different story formats. Its Kurt? Kurt? What’s his name Kurt Vonnegut. I never know how to say it. He’s got, this info graphic of like eight different story telling format you can look at this online they’re all free I think. Just look at different story telling format. Do you ever use those kind of things?

Aj Mihrzad:
Yeah I mean I’m a huge fan of Joseph Campbell and his Heroes Journey. I think that’s like the best framework for any type of story just because any expert was an amateur. Always going back to how you acquired your super power. You know people tend to really, they’re really close with that heroes journey specially with all these superhero movies. And you know this ability of this like geek to acquire a super power and became this hero and save the world and will always go back to your back story. Whatever expertise you have showing people how much you fail and how much pain you had all of a sudden you overcame to become the person you are today.

John McIntyre:
One thing I just thought of which is interesting when it comes to information products which you might say transformation products, you buy the products, you use it transform yourself. It might be a little more difficult for someone who understands how to use a story to sell say kitchen knives or you know porcelain horses or something like that. So because you don’t have the heroes journey I’m not gonna buy a porcelain horse because its gonna make me a better person. I’m just gonna buy it cause, maybe you can sell this stuff with stories maybe you see the difference with the transformation you can tell a transformation story or a heroes journey story but it doesn’t work the same way if you’re selling a commodity item. So what are your thoughts, how would you sell, you told the porcelain story how would you sell like kitchen knives with a story?

Aj Mihrzad:
That’s a really good question John you know. But really is you know what is the end user’s end benefit you know lets say you’re selling to a housewife and her benefit is to you know, cook a great meal for her family so you could create a backstory now, you know her using the kitchen knives and bringing the family together and some loving environment and you know everyone eats the food have a great time you know like this isn’t have to be the exact knife but its kinda like what that knife could bring, the benefits and just, you know what emotions you could stir up in that type of environment.

John McIntyre:
What you need to talk about when everyone’s smiling, some nice good dinner music in background, everyone’s laughing and telling jokes. You don’t wanna say family’s’ happy right? You just want to make them sound happy.

Aj Mihrzad:
There you go. You created this amazing masterpiece for the readers, yes.

John McIntyre:
I like that I like that. Its pretty much like when your selling commodity items, sometimes it would be about the commodity but its very much about, it’s not really about the products. You know, they want kitchen knives but really they want that feeling of like a great family or a delicious juicy steak that they’ve cook in their brand new barbeque or whatever. It happens like that.

Aj Mihrzad:
My mouth was watering when you said that.

John McIntyre:
Cool man! We’re right on time here but before we go, if the listeners wants to learn more about you about the fitness stuff or I don’t know, if you anything about the story stuff where is the best place for them to go?

Aj Mihrzad:
Sure I’m really active on my facebook you can just add me on there its facebook.com/ajfit. A-J-F-I-T and if you wanna get an example of like storytelling and embedding different facts with it check out my book its like thirty bucks on Amazon The Mind Body Solution by Aj Mihrzad. Yeah, you know anything I could help with in terms of storytelling process or even with just some great research that I’ve used over the years by all means just hit me up.

John McIntyre:
Cool. I’ll just link that up in the show notes at themcmethod.com. Aj thanks for coming at the show man.

Aj Mihrzad:
Hey John thanks for having me buddy.