Story Selling - Yara Golden - FHR #285

Why Dave Decided to talk to Yara:

Yara got her start in online business as a Relationship Coach, but as I worked with couples in strained relationships, she discovered something she just couldn’t ignore... Most relationships struggle because of BAD communication.  She became obsessed with figuring out what makes someone a GREAT communicator, and realized that a simple shift in the way we communication with each other can dramatically repair and build—not just personal relationships, but entire businesses.   As it turns out, the same is true for Entrepreneurs. Most entrepreneurs struggle in business because of BAD communication with their customers and audience.

Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business:

• Giving the reader the win (8:00)
• Encouraging the reply (11:00)
• Being vulnerable (15:00)
• The 6 Steps story selling framework (20:00)

Quotable Moments:

"It’s interesting what happens when you start treating people like people."

"Stop using your list like a booty call."

Links:

www.yaragolden.com FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar

---Transcript---

Speaker 1:     00:00         Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward.

Speaker 2:     00:17         Hey everybody. Welcome back to funnel hacker radio. I am so excited today. I have the opportunity to have a dear friend on the show and it's been. I've had the opposite. I've seen her go through this change and metamorphosis and she's crushing it right now. I want to welcome to the show, Yada Golden. Thank you for coming.

Speaker 3:     00:30         Oh my gosh. I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 2:     00:33         I am so excited. Now. What for those you guys who don't know Jada, she's actually going to be speaking at hacking live. So if you don't have your tickets, you want to go right now to funnel hacking live.com. Buy Your tickets, make sure you're there so you can actually see her speaking onstage. This is such an exciting thing for us. Um, so for those of you who aren't familiar with Jada, she actually got her start as a business, as a business and relationship coach online. But I'm sorry, you were more of a relationship coach online and in doing it it was. I remember when you were an inner circle, you're like, ah, I'm kind of dealing with it, trying to save or get people out of bad relationships. And it was kind of a weird situation, but as we were just talking offline, you have the opportunity of reaching this Aha.

Speaker 2:     01:17         That's the most important thing is communication and you've come, you've found this crazy ability and it's just be honest, probably one of the best email writers out there right now of being able to craft story selling into, into emails that actually touch the heart in a really weird way that most marketers would never even think of. So we're going to dive right into this whole story selling communication piece. But again, if you haven't seen Yada, check her out at Yada Golden. That's why a r a, G O, l d e n Dot Com. And again, make sure you go to funnel hacking live.com, get your tickets are gonna. Want to see her live on stage because of the value she's going to drop. You're just a few minutes. So would that Jada wanting to kind of just dive right into this whole communication thing a and I been talking right about this whole idea that, you know, for a lot of entrepreneurs it's like, oh I've got to send another email and you try to crank it out real fast and you don't really realize that what you're talking to is actual people on the other side and you missed the communication and people get frustrated that their emails don't convert and you've got this crazy ability to do it.

Speaker 2:     02:19         I know Jamie Cross is one of the first ones that I remember you working with. I don't know if she was your first client, but if you don't mind, tell people a little bit about what you've done for them and how it's working and why the story stuff is so important to you.

Speaker 3:     02:30         Yeah, absolutely. Well thanks for that awesome introduction and uh, yeah. If you haven't gotten your ticket for funnel hacking live, make sure you do it because it's going to be the first time that I'm actually speaking on stage and I am just as excited as I am nervous. Like when Russell asked me, I was like, I want to throw up and I want to like scream it from the mountaintops so that should be fun. I'm Jamie Cross was in fact my first client. She is actually one of the, she's actually the main reason I should say why I got into writing, which is what I'm doing now. Um, she approached me in January. She's just like, Hey, I love all this stuff that you write on facebook. Every single piece of content that you put out there. She's like, have you ever considered writing for somebody else? And at the time I had it. It was just my means of communicating with my audience was long form copy.

Speaker 3:     03:20         Um, and so I gave it a shot. I was like, Hey, I'll try it. And so I wrote for her and her audience just ate it up. And what I was doing really was telling the story of how she created her company and why she was so passionate about the products that she was putting out there, like why it was necessary for her to create these products. And so we just started telling the story of her growing up and her father and her children and how all of this kind of came to be. And a really interesting thing happened. Her audience started opening the emails more than they ever had and it became really, really easy to identify what a topics, let's say were important, were resonating with them, what parts of Jamie's story they resonated with. And what was cool that we were able to do with those is that we were able to take the, the, the front runners, the winning emails and turn those into facebook retargeting ads because now we knew that they resonated with the right people, right? The quote unquote right people. And

Speaker 2:     04:22         for context, I want people to understand what Jamie's businesses. That's the crazy part is the type of business. This is not the type of normal business. You expect emails to have any impact on at all, so if you don't mind just give a little context here as far as what type of business Jimmy had and why her stories were so magnanimous in conversion because of your

Speaker 3:     04:42         content. Yeah, absolutely. So Jamie Cross owns Mig soap and body and they sell organic soap. They do a organic skin lotions and face products and all kinds of amazing products, which if you haven't checked out, you definitely should add Mig, souq.com I believe. And so we were telling all these stories about how she was going wild crafting and finding these herbs and putting them in these lotion bars that are helping people overcome things like Eczema and psoriasis and skin conditions of all sorts. And so we started telling those stories and like I said, the front runners became really, really easy to identify and I believe one of the coolest stats that we have out of that campaign was that we took one of one of those emails which talked about her faith, right? How much faith she had and she had asked God for a sign and we took that story, put it on facebook, and I think her cost per acquisition, if I'm not mistaken, went from like $60 dollars per person down to like $3 and eighty four cents, which was just unreal.

Speaker 3:     05:45         Right? And, and the. And the other beautiful thing is that every story email that we sent out for her on the back end was making between a thousand and $1,500. Right? And so you're giving something, you're giving your readers, you're giving your audience something that they can connect with, something that they can be a part of, which is something that Russell is amazing at doing to. Right. Whenever he puts on an event or whenever he has a launch, he gives ownership of that thing to the audience, right? He gives it to the funnel hackers. He's like, hey guys, this is what we're doing. Like we need your help and we need you to show up and here's the t shirt and like this is the date and here's the website and here's a cool video. And he gives it to the audience, which allows them to become a part of something bigger than themselves. And you can do that around anything you can do that. I run a coaching product. You can do that around an ecommerce product, you can do that around an info product. It's just a matter of creating and crafting that story and then giving it over to the audience.

Speaker 2:     06:43         You've done such an amazing job, especially with Jamie story of helping her blossom as this attractive character. And I think that when you're connecting with people and the reason I love her stories because it's a physical product, and so often people think of email as well, I'm just selling an info product. She's selling a physical, tangible product. And the key there for me is I've taken a look at what you've written is you have this crazy ability to draw someone in so deep that they're literally waiting with bated breath for the next email. It's like, oh please, where's the rest of the story here? There's got to be a push. I want to see the next one right now.

Speaker 3:     07:21         How do I do that? Kind of like an innate ability like my, my way of moving through the world is through feeling right, like I want to feel all of the things and that that range of human emotion is just huge. Right? And so when I can wrap words around the emotion or the experience that somebody that's like, that's my, that's my gift, right? It's, it's being able to say, oh, I see how excited you are about this thing. Let me make sure that, that I can convey that to the audience. And so that comes with adding detail. It comes with really getting the story out of the entrepreneur and then conveyed to the audience like this is, this is why this is important, but also following Russell's kind of epiphany bridge story and saying, you know, they're on this side of the bridge right now and they don't understand why this is important or what's happening.

Speaker 3:     08:25         So let us tell them a story that helps them understand. And on the other side of that, one of my favorite things to do is to give the reader the win. So I never sit there as the glue on the top of the mountain saying, and that's why blah blah blah, blah, blah. You know, like, I don't want to be the teacher. I want to be appear. I want to be shoulder to shoulder with them and say, I know that you know this because I just told you this story. So you understand now you like where we get this together. Right? And it's amazing to see what happens because then you them an opportunity. So the call to action in most of my emails is, Hey, just hit reply and let me know if this resonated with you. Let me know if you've ever had an experience like this in your life.

Speaker 3:     09:05         Is this something that you're struggling with? Why don't you go ahead and let me know. My team and I are here to help. So it's a very, very open door and it creates a feedback loop between you and your audience. Like this is what people are missing with the broadcast emails or with the followup sequences that they're sending out. Is that all of the emails that I send out our broadcasts and what that creates is a couple things. It creates a perpetual ask campaign with your audience because you have your finger on the pulse of like, Hey, this is resonating, this isn't, this is what they need, this is what they're asking for. Right? It also allows you to create an audience selected indoctrination sequence because once you have enough email sent out and you know which ones are the winners, you can simply convince those to the very beginning of your indoctrination sequence and you know that there is going to resonate with the right people because your audience who's purchasing from you already have selected those as the winners.

Speaker 3:     09:59         Right? And the third thing is that, like I said, it is a feedback loop. Like you know what's going on with your audience and you know, I don't think that. I don't think that that will ever be a bad thing to have. Right? Like so many, so many marketers have spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars creating these lists only to ignore them. Right? And that's like, that's where your money is made, but I feel like people are scared to talk to them because they're like, if I say the wrong thing, they're going to go, but then leaving your list and you not talking to them, it's pretty much the same thing. It's getting you the same result. Right? So you may as well say the damn thing and see what happens.

Speaker 2:     10:40         I think you're one of the few email marketers I know that actually encourages people to reply. I mean, I honestly, I remember the first time they can wait a second if I reply, where's that really going to go? Someone asked me that is. I mean because most of the time when we send out broadcasts, it's, you know, buy my stuff, go take a look at this or stay tuned for the next thing. And there's really no true communication and that's one of things you really, really great at, Yada, is that ability to communicate with a huge list. I mean it's not like Jamie's only got five people on our list. I mean, she's got a very, very large list he's built and encouraging someone to reply. How do you handle all of them?

Speaker 3:     11:16         Yeah, I think that that's really on the business owner. I have a part in that, but I do warn them ahead of time. I think we, uh, we sent out, I was writing from Mike Schmidt for awhile and he has a digital marketing agency, right? Who helps other digital marketing agencies kind of grow their businesses and he also services his own clients. And I told him, I said, you're going to get replies. And I wrote one email and in 45, in the first 45 minutes from sending it out, he had 75 replies messaged me. He met me in a panic and he's like, they're replying. And I was like, I told you, they were gonna reply. He's like, well, what do I do? And I was like, solving some big.

Speaker 3:     11:57         And that was when it really became clear to me that we were in an ask campaign because the topic of the email wasn't actually a service that they provided, but his list went crazy over it. And I was like, well, just create that for them, right? Like you can't, you have the ability to offer that, so just create it. And so it's just a really interesting thing. You do have to be set up on the back end to receive those replies, um, and to be able to sell them something because I believe that when somebody replies, they're raising their hand and saying, Hey, I'm interested in what you just said. And so now it's the responsibility of the entrepreneur on the back end to say, okay, I understand that you're interested. Let me, let me convert that interest into a sale.

Speaker 2:     12:39         I love it. I think that's the part that people miss in the whole idea as far as email as a means of communication. It's really one of the ways that we start seeing a lot more emails getting opened, a lot more engagement on a lot of our social posts. You never talking beforehand about some of the things Rachel Peterson was doing them with regard to engagement. And the whole idea here is you wanting. Everyone talks about engagement on social platforms, but they never talked about engagement in an email campaign. I think it's one of the things you've done such a great job about doing is is increasing that engagement to where now all of a sudden that client feels like you as the business owner over your clients, as the business owner are actually interested in their success. They're interested in their feedback. They want to see what the next step is for them. How can, how can we help you? Which usually is just kind of given us, Oh yeah, I'm, I'm here to help you have better. I'm really not as to sell you stuff.

Speaker 3:     13:28         Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And people feel that, right? And people know that the entrepreneur, like the CEO of the company isn't sitting down every single day at their desk typing out an email to you. We would love to feel like, Hey, this is Russell's writing specifically to Yada, but it's not happening. You know? And so I think one of the things I've done is I've completely removed the first name. Like I know everybody loves Hashtag first name, right? First name, last name, and I'm like, stop it, respect your reader, like we know that you're not actually writing to us. Just, um, one of the things about the replies, so that I would, that I will say is that when you get replies from an email list, your deliverability goes up to, right? So this works on so many levels because now people are replying to a list that means that they want your email, you know?

Speaker 3:     14:22         So it's, yeah, it's really, really interesting what happens when you actually start treating people like people and you actually do what you say you're going to do by being there and helping them and answering their questions. And this can create your lead magnets for you, right? This can create your next product for you. This can, this can create so many things for you if you just utilize it the right way. And I think that one of the things that a lot of people are scared of is will. If I tell my story, people aren't going to like me or they're gonna leave my list or you know, they're not going to buy from me. And I think it's quite the opposite. I think that when we share the struggles that we're having, like no matter what level of success we're having, like there's still struggles, right?

Speaker 3:     15:06         There's still problems, there's still challenges and that doesn't mean that they're necessarily bad, but most of the people who follow you, they follow you because they see you as somebody that they'd like to follow in their footsteps that they'd Sunday, like to be like or have the results that they have. And so that means that they're somewhere on the path of the journey that you've already been on. Right in Russell says like, you only have to be a couple of steps ahead of somebody in order to inspire them or to motivate them or to be able to help them. And so being willing to be vulnerable and share those steps is what causes those people to come closer. Right? And so that's what your story does. It invites people in and says, Hey, let's sit down and want to tell you the story of how I got to where I am and everything that I've had to face on the road here, and hopefully that can be helpful for you and when you help them in the process of them becoming, you are the natural solution to their problem.

Speaker 2:     16:02         Oh, I love that. I think it's. It's funny. I was talking with Andrew Warner Interviewing Russell just two days ago down in Provo, Utah. Items Fascinating. He did a podcast with Pat Flynn and pat was interviewing him on. Andrea has this crazy ability to interview people and get just. It's probably one of the best. I wish I was more like, can I

Speaker 3:     16:21         them?

Speaker 2:     16:23         He actually, he gets every emotion out of it. It's the weirdest thing, but one of the main things he said was that he found the best way to get someone to become vulnerable, honest podcast was for him to start off being vulnerable, which I thought was really fascinating because usually people, especially on a podcast, if you're interviewing ceos and everything else, it's everybody's posturing. You know? Wait a second, who's who's taking the lead here? And it was fascinating as I was sitting there talking to him, he says, yet I. I learned that actually from reading how to win, how to influence when friends basically, and his whole idea behind that was the more vulnerable he was at the beginning. It almost, it wasn't self deprecating, it was just as being transparent and as he reached out that way at first that the interviewee wasn't real quick to be vulnerable right there, but they saw later on in the interview that it became much more open and much more vulnerable because of his transparency and I think I see the same thing in the stuff that you, right where you have this ability to, to be vulnerable but at the same time to let them know that I've been through it and I can still take you to where you want to go.

Speaker 3:     17:29         Yeah, no, and he is spot on about the vulnerability. I think that one of the things that people get backwards about vulnerability is that we're like, okay, well we'll be vulnerable once we see them be vulnerable and you get to go first. I know that if it doesn't, it's not what you want to hear, but you get to go first. And so if I come on here and I'm just like, Hey Dave, you know, this is like. I mean, I kind of did it in the beginning of the interview. I was just like, hey guys, if you haven't bought your ticket to funnel hacking live, go ahead and do it because it's the first time I'm going to get on stage and I'm just as nervous as I am excited about it. Right? Like that was, that was honest and authentic. But it's also a very vulnerable share if you think about it.

Speaker 3:     18:11         So, so what that does is that it's not, um, it's not a calculated, but it invokes the law of reciprocity. So as the conversation continues, as the weeks and months go by and people actually get to funnel hacking live who listened to this, they'll be like, oh, that's that Jada girl. She was really nervous about getting on stage. You know, maybe maybe I'll have people come up to me and say, hey, you did a great job. Like I listened to that podcast episode where you were nervous, you know what I mean? But it opens them up. And so as a service provider or as a course creator or as an ecommerce like widget creator, right? Or peddler of widgets. I guess when you say those things when you open up and you're just like, man, like I have this great idea and I'm not sure if it's gonna work or not, but like I want to just throw it out there and see what happens or you know, this is something that I can help you with because I've gone through it myself. Can you tell them those stories? The thing that you're going to get back is like, oh my gosh, I've been dealing with that too. Or I had no idea that there was somebody out there that was just like me. Right. One of the most powerful things that you can say to another human being when they're going through something is, me too. I've been there too. I felt that way too, and it just creates an instant bond and it's. It's intimacy, it's honest, it's real, it's raw, and that's where relationships are built.

Speaker 2:     19:31         I love that. Such a difference between empathy and sympathy. Yeah. The more empathetic you can truly be an come across transparently, man, it's so much easier for a person to go, you know what, I, I can connect with you now. I get you and because you're getting me in and we connected and that emotional level. So I think that's just amazing. Well, I know that one of things we were talking about was you've put together six different steps to storytelling or what's.

Speaker 3:     19:55         I did know the details of how all that works. I did. So I created my own lead magnet. It's my first one. I'm super excited about it and as of this podcast, it's not actually up, but by the time you go live it will and it's called the six steps to story, story selling framework. And I basically, you know, as a creative, I was just like, there's no way that I can ever duplicate this. I'm the only person that can do this and having so many a left or right left brain thinkers, the logical people around me, they were just like, you can do it. So as I was writing, I started just kind of. I kept a notebook by my side and I thought, you know, every time I do something over and over again, I'm going to write it down. And so I came up with these six steps and I already mentioned one of them, which is to drop the first name, right? Like you want to assume familiarity, but that will excuse me. That will be up on my website, Yadda golden.com. And you guys can find it there and you know, it's something that you can literally have next to you while you're writing that will help you create that story selling type of email and hopefully connect with your audience better.

Speaker 3:     21:09         What are the other six? So we want to make sure, uh, I think we talked about giving your audience or your reader the win. Um, so I'll just walk you guys through. We can do it really quickly here. So our first step is assuming familiarity, right? That's, that means that you're going to drop the first names. You're gonna start using contractions in your copy. Um, and there's no salutation. So I don't do a hey, happy Monday, like no, nothing. You just go straight into the story. A number two is creating a curiosity based pattern interrupt. And so that would be your headline, your subject line. You want to create something that they're going to cut through the noise of their inbox because there's just a ton of white noise static. If you want to be something that's like what? Like what did that say? A number three is you want to hook them immediately, so if you think of movies that start in the chase scene or the bank robbery, but you don't know who any of the characters are, you don't know what's going on. They just drop you in there and you're like, wow, hydroma. Right? So that's what you want to do. You want to hook them immediately. Number four is you want to guide our. Sorry. Uh, yeah. You're going to guide their epiphany. So you're going to fill in the story. Now you're going to be like, okay, this,

Speaker 2:     22:25         this is one of the things I really like it because I think too often people think you're just going to, they're going to get the epiphany by themselves and you've got this crazy ability to guide them. So keep going on this whole guidance.

Speaker 3:     22:36         Yeah. So you're going to fill in the details. So now you've started with high drama. You're just like, hey, there was a bank robbery and now I need to take you back to where it was all being planned and what happened and who was involved and why it's important, right? Why? What, what's the outcome that they're trying to achieve by doing this thing? Right? So we're filling in the details and at the end of that they're going to understand and so the fifth step is to literally give them the wind. So you're like, so as you know right now, you're just going to assume that they got it. You're never going to posture and be like, because I just told you all these things, or I just explained to you, blah, blah, blah. Right? Like you're going to actually sit back, be a normal person and let them have the win. And then the sixth step is literally just asking them to tell you about it. Did you learn something? Have you ever experienced something like this in your life? Are you experiencing something like that? Do you have something to share with me? Go ahead and hit reply. Right? And what's really cool about this?

Speaker 3:     23:35         Are you serious? You're like, no, don't reply please. And I think most of the companies that I'm working with are, are, have a big enough size that they have a customer service. Uh, you know, uh, I guess people that can kind of feel these,

Speaker 2:     23:53         but I think even if you're small, it's still so important. I mean hearing like right now we just hired a person is going to be head of our head of our speaker team. I'm working with NFL head of our sales and the very first thing Robbie wanted to do is as our head of our sales was, you wanted to get on the phone with people who are leaving clickfunnels and find out why. And I thought, you know, we've been for like four years now and no one's called, people have left, asked him why. That's probably a good thing to find out.

Speaker 3:     24:18         Sure. It's just, it's such great feedback, you know. And, and I have, um, I'm actually going through a Beta launch of a six week course that I'm putting together based on this framework. And one of the girls were in week two, she sent out an email to her list. She's like, I sit down to story selling email to my list and I sold $397 products and I had to unsubscribes, but I had more engagement than I ever had from my list. There you go. It's a win. Do you know what I mean? Like is the people that don't resonate with you are going to leave the people who do are going to come closer and you're just finding information out from your people. So it's good. It's not scary, Dave. I promise

Speaker 2:     24:56         I love it, Yada, Yada. Any parting words before we let you go?

Speaker 3:     24:59         Oh Man. I think my favorite thing to tell people lately is stop using your list like a booty call. Don't email them only when you want to sell them something, right? Like build an actual relationship. It'll be longer lasting.

Speaker 2:     25:15         I promise. Maybe that'll be the headline of the episode. Stop using your list as a booty call. Glad I can make you again. I appreciate your friendship and love having you on. Thank you so much again. So where can people go to get those six steps?

Speaker 3:     25:35         Uh, yeah. You can go to Jada golden.com, it's y a r a g o l d e n Dot com and because it's not up yet, I don't know exactly where it will be, but you'll be able to find it.

Speaker 2:     25:45         Awesome. And again, make sure you go to funnel hack live.com. You want to make sure you're there to see Jada onstage for the first time and we're super excited to have her. So again, thanks so much for your time today. Appreciate your friendship and we'll talk real soon. Okay, thanks Dave.

Speaker 4:     26:01         Okay. Hey everybody. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to podcasts. If you don't mind, could you please share this with others, rate and review this podcast on itunes. It means the world to me. I'm trying to get to as a million downloads here in the next few months and just crush through over $650,000 and I just want to get the next few $100,000 so we can get to a million downloads and see really what I can do to help improve and and get this out to more people at the same time. If there's a topic, there's something you'd like me to share or someone you'd like me to interview, please just reach out to me on facebook. You can pm me and I'll be more than happy to take any of your feedback as well as if you'd like me to interview more than happy to reach out and have that conversation with you. So again, go to itunes rate and review this, share this podcast with others and let me know how else I can improve this or what I can do that do to make this better for you guys. Thanks.