Not sure I’ve ever told anyone this story, but I just remembered my 2nd year in the university when I lost over 30k on sports betting.
Oh, I’m ahead of myself right now.
The story starts from when I won N24k one weekend with just N1,000.
Aside from my scholarship and managing my parents’ business, that was the largest money I’d ever made on my own.
This was 2013/14 and we were in the middle of writing exams, I was living with my friend Somto and that weekend we balled hard.
But what’s even crazy was the next weekend I won another 25k with N1,000 and the whole hostel heard it. Bought beer for all the boys. Come and see hailing!
We even cooked one special pot of vegetable soup to celebrate.
I thought I’d arrived.
In such circumstances, the natural thing is to increase your stakes.
If I’m making N25,000 with N1,000, I could easily make N50,000 with N2,000, N125,000 with N5,000 or even N250,000 with N10,000.
I think it was the Devil talking to me.
Because just before the next semester began, I lost over N30,000 within one weekend.
My school fee was N20,100. I almost dropped out.
Thank God I managed to make it up and pay it though.
Well, why I’m sharing this story is because my friend Gbenga just showed me how to make as much as N400,000 every month on sports betting websites like NairaBet, 1xbet and Bet9ja without placing a single bet, without owning a betting shop and without predicting any game.
According to him, it takes just 3 hours to set up and he explains how he does so in this short video. Click the link below to watch it.
I knew Toyin Omotoso from when I attended Akin Alabi’s YECO event while serving in Ibadan in early 2019.
Started following him, Ronald Nzimora, Biola Kazeem and most of the people who spoke at YECO. Turned on notifications too.
But it wasn’t until late 2019 when he put out this tweet talking about learning Spanish did I get to finally interact with him.
I started with teaching him Spanish 2hrs a day 2 or 3x a week, but by sheer divine providence he took it upon himself to teach me copywriting, sales, advertising and the entire marketing caboodle.
In 2020, I ended up becoming his protege, became the in-house copywriter and Digital Content Manager for 7Star Support Systems Nigeria, and collaborated on several projects too.
All this might not sound like much to most of you but going from teaching Spanish for 2k/hour to working with one of the greatest marketing minds in the whole of Africa, and still making money off of it for me is something you only get to see in movies.
It’s been a crazy ride this past 1 year but below are the 19 things I learned from working with @toyinomotoso in 2020.
1. Everything Is For Sale.
Pet rocks. Sparkling water. Small e-books with all kinds of information. Waist trainers. Diet plans. Exercise routines. People will buy anything, as long as it’s important to them and they can afford it.
That little piece of knowledge you have that seems common to you could be the difference between poverty and massive wealth for you. Someone somewhere needs it. And they’ll pay you for it if you can make it available to them.
2. The Offer Is King.
“I’ll make him an offer he cannot refuse.” – Don Vito Corleone (The Godfather)
Lots of salesman and marketers talk about different tactics and strategies for making a sale, but nothing beats an irresistible offer.
Your customers want to believe your product or service is the best offer (or at least the second-best) they are getting from the market.
Your irresistible offer is how you get the customer and also how you crush your competition.
3. There’s A Marketing Angle In Almost Every Story, It’s Your Job To Find It.
Everything has become an opportunity for me to learn since I started working in marketing over the last year. Books, movies, conversations, experiences etc.
These days I’ve learned to find a marketing angle even in the most mundane stories. This helps with creating powerful leads and story arcs.
People also love it when you share a story with them about an experience they can relate to.
4. Principles Are Everything.
To achieve anything worthwhile in any endeavour, it’s important to understand the principles and roots first.
Those principles form the foundation and everything is built on them. Which is why as a salesman, it’s important to always have it at the back of your mind that even if everything changes, human nature never does.
Human nature is what drives every emotion, which drives every single sale and purchase. You’re making a mistake if you don’t pay attention to how people behave.
5. Focus.
a. Focus on what’s important and ignore every other thing. There are all distractions towards your end goal.
Instead of doing 20 low-quality things, how about you just focus on 2 and make them the highest quality possible?
b. Focus on your strengths, outsource every other thing if you can afford it. This will free up time and energy for you to focus on what’s important. If you can’t afford it, then keep working till you can.
c. Most people are lazy and distracted today. You can become a god in your chosen field if you just ‘outfocus’ them.
6. Listen.
Has someone ever told you you’re easy to talk to?
Well, the truth is you might not even be easy to talk to in the actual sense, but once people notice you listen to them, they believe you’re easy to talk to.
Plus, you pick up more from listening than from talking. People naturally open up to you when they know you’re willing to listen to them talk about their problems. Sometimes, they don’t even want a solution or an answer to their problem, they just want to vent. Most people eventually figure it out themselves.
Listening is also how you become a better copywriter and salesman. You learn about your prospect’s problems by listening and paying attention.
7. Just Do It.
Start first. Make mistakes. Correct them. Keep going. Learn along the way. You never what it’s going to be like until you take risks.
I think I should do this more 😁
8. Stay Curious: You Start Dying The Day You Stop Learning.
Your job as a copywriter/salesman means you have to keep learning till the day you die. You are required to know about a lot of things and how they work.
That’s how you create winning ads. That’s how you create better presentations. That’s how you create powerful leads. That’s how you get better clients. That’s how you do great work.
Read books. Research different topics. Watch instructional videos. Listen to podcasts. Try new things and new experiences. Always be looking to learn something new every day.
9. Quality Over Quantity, But Quantity Begets Quality.
Every day in this digital marketing world, we hear a story about someone who has made hundreds of millions of dollars from putting together an incredible offer. But nobody asks how many times they had to try or how many different things they had to do or how many projects they failed at or how many duds they had put out before or how many years it took them to get to that level.
The truth is to get to the level where you consistently put out quality work, you might have to put out a lot of mediocre work at the beginning. But consistently improving on them and getting better is how you eventually win. Which leads me to the next lesson.
10. Practice, Practice, Practice.
Ask Ronaldo, Ask Kobe Bryant, Ask Michael Jordan. Consistency is how you win. Which is why you have to keep practising every day.
11. Just One Good Offer + One Good Sales Copy Can Change Your Life.
“Just one good sales letter is what will change your life as a copywriter. It changed my life. It changed Ronald’s life. It changed Akin Alabi’s life.” – Toyin Omotoso
12. Garbage In, Garbage Out/What You Sow, You Reap.
What you consume is what you give out. Consume quality and you give out quality. Consume garbage and you give out the garbage.
13. There’s Money Everywhere.
But first, you need to understand the difference between you and the guy who has money is value. And then when you do, add value too. That’s how you make money.
14. Attention Is Scarce But Money Is Plenty.
People will pay through their nose for what they are interested in, but first, you need to find out what is this thing they are interested in and then figure out how to get their attention.
If you can get their attention, manage to hold their interest and then give them an irresistible offer, they’ll chase you down with their wallets open.
15. Strive For More.
Toyin Omotoso once sent out an email where he said he gave himself a target to be one of the best guys doing marketing in Nigeria when he first started. Years later, he feels he should have set his goals higher. I’ve never forgotten. This has stuck with me ever since.
16. Research Is Everything.
Know your market. Know your product. Know your competition. But you can only know all this through research.
Everything required to sell depends on excellent research and it’s on you to do it.
17. The Road To Success/Greatness Is Long, But A Mentor Takes You There In Twice The Time And Probably Half The Effort.
There are a lot of great people on here and in real life I see as mentors and learn from. Some of them I’ve never met physically and will never meet. But that’s not a barrier because the Internet has made it easier to access their knowledge through their books, articles, posts, and materials they put out.
Which is why it’s important to study for the masters or anyone who has succeeded in something you’re interested in.
There’s a reason why they succeeded. If you are humble enough to learn from their experiences and implement, someday you might become a master too.
18. Invest In Yourself.
People get to a certain level, make some good money or get some fame and decide to relax, but Toyin Omotoso has spent around N2million (that I’m aware of) between January and now on new materials just to continually upgrade himself.
If someone at that level keeps adding to themselves, then who am I to stay stagnant?
He once told me the reason why I give you all these books is that I know you’ll read them. That’s my inspiration.
19. Positioning Is Everything.
Everything about your approach to life changes the day you discover this.
There’s a reason why someone would see you and think you’re too cheap and not want to work with you or buy what you’re selling because they think it’s not worth it.
Positioning affects your relationships, your product and service offerings, how people see you and even how they regard you.
People like Toyin Omotoso entirely changed the game for young people.
Aside from opening our eyes to how enormously profitable the sales and marketing industry is, you have to think about the different roads he’s helped pave: Consulting, Advertising, Media Buying, Affiliate Marketing, E-Commerce, Persuasion, Personal Development etc.
I mean, you look at young copywriting geniuses like Andy Mukolo or affiliate marketing mavericks like Bruno Nwogu, or kings like Emmanuel Adiotu & Yusuf Adedeji crushing it in E-Commerce and how much he’s influenced them and then you’d understand.
Lupe Fiasco once said, “Hip-Hop saved me.” Well, Toyin Omotoso saved my life.
So, thank you for the opportunity to drink from your fountain of unending knowledge and learning at your feet. Thank you for everything, Baba mi. Every day I feel like I won the lottery.
And here’s to many more years, Maestro’s Maestro. 🥂
Also, I think I was lucky enough to be in this position. Many people reading this would wish they could. But not to worry, you too can learn from the master himself when you click on the link below 👇🏿
There are five stages of awareness in your prospective customer’s mind which determines whether or not they buy what you’re selling to them.
In order not to waste your time, money and effort, it’s important to know these stages before trying to convince them to buy what you sell.
They include:
1. Completely Unaware.
2. Problem Aware.
3. Solution Aware.
4. Product Aware.
5. Most Aware.
• Completely Unaware
At this stage, the prospect has no idea how your product can help them, but it’s even worse because he/she doesn’t even know this problem exists.
So, how do you help someone who doesn’t even know they have a problem?
This is why this stage is the hardest because you’re dealing with cold traffic who aside from being unaware might not know you also. So, you have to educate them first, then convince second and then sell to them by proving the usefulness of your solution.
Imagine selling sanitary pads to a 10-year-old who hasn’t even hit puberty yet, talk more about having a menstrual cycle. They know nothing yet.
The only reason they might even know anything about menstruation is if they have older siblings or female relatives who teach them about it or they’ve been exposed to external sources of information like friends, neighbours, schoolmates, social media or Integrated Science class.
Can you see it still boils down to education first?
This is how the Devil was able to convince Eve in the Garden of Eden.
He had to tell her about a problem, then tell her the solution and then convince her to try it out.
The blow at this stage is your prospect might never be your customer. Probably because you no longer sell sanitary pads by the time she’s mature enough to use them.
So, as a sanitary pad salesman, you can only teach her enough to be able to understand, and then hope she buys your brand of sanitary pads when she’s old enough. That is if you’re still in business.
But if you’re able to convert your prospects in this stage to customers, then this is the most profitable stage of all.
And why is because when you educate someone and then sell to them, you make them a customer for life. That is unless you or your competition fucks it up.
Because asides from educating them, you also sow in them the seeds of brand loyalty.
Which is why this is usually the starting point of the customer’s lifetime value (ie their age, how long they’ll keep buying from you and how much you can make from them over that time).
• Problem-Aware
Your prospect is aware of their problem, but they don’t know there’s a solution out there.
You become their messiah by showing them a solution.
Take a typical poor village girl in a deeply rural community who uses rags to stem her blood flow during her cycle.
She knows about her cycle and the time of the month, but does she know there’s a better, cleaner and more hygienic option out there than dealing with the messiness the rags cause her every month?
This part has to deal more with convincing and a bit of education. Although the only education you do here is how your product works and how it solves their problems.
• Solution-Aware
Your prospect in this instance knows they have a problem and there are solutions out there.
But either they don’t have access to these solutions because they don’t know what products can give them the solutions they want or they can’t afford it or it isn’t accessible to them.
Here, your job is easy because you just have to sell a solution to someone who is in dire need of it.
The only resistance you might have here is pricing (if you’re serving a market without lots of money). And this isn’t easy to overcome because even if people are willing to pay through their nose for something important to them, not being able to afford it becomes a major barrier.
Think of health care and how many people are just one chronic ailment away from financial devastation.
The poor guy who knows he should go to the hospital, but opts for over the counter drugs or self-medication because going to the hospital would be more expensive.
Another issue here would be accessibility and distribution.
Think of Mo Ibrahim’s Celtel and how they built a wireless cellphone market in Africa (a post for another day).
If someone knows they have a problem, they know there’s a solution and they can’t have access to it, then there’s going to be a huge loss of money, time, effort and manpower. Even intangibles like self-esteem come into play here.
Your second job is to get the solution (which is your product) to them by any means necessary.
• Product-Aware
Here, your prospect knows their problems, knows there’s a solution, knows there’s a product or products that offers the solution. But there’s a problem.
They don’t know if this product is the right fit for them.
Your biggest job here is convincing them on why your product is the best option for them or at least the second-best option in their current situation.
• Most Aware
Here, your prospect is sophisticated.
They know about their problems, they know about the solution and the products on the market that can solve their problems.
They even know the differences between these products – price range, hierarchy (what’s better), the different options, cheaper alternatives and all.
They’ve probably used some of these products already and are disillusioned with the results they got or are lowkey looking for something better. Or even if they aren’t particularly looking, they might be swayed if something better comes along.
Here, what drives the sale is the OFFER.
How do you make them an offer they can’t refuse?
How do you make them an offer that speaks to their specific needs?
How do you make them an offer that appeals to their sentiments or the depth of their pockets?
This is where you have to dig into your inner Don Corleone to close the deal.
It’s important to know the different stages of awareness before sitting down to write a sales copy or crafting a marketing campaign so you don’t waste your time and money on duds.
A common theme in writing copy and in persuasion is the importance of authority and how people respond to authority figures (professionals, experts etc.)
Some of the greatest scams and cons have been pulled by con artists by strategically using authority figures.
There’s a story about how a split test for advertising a certain product on television was done.
In one of the adverts, the spokesperson wore a T-shirt and jeans. In the second one, the spokesperson wore a doctor’s lab coat with a stethoscope hanging on their neck.
Results showed the second advert converted better than the first bringing in more leads, more sales, more revenue and more profits.
And it wasn’t because the second person didn’t speak well or clearly enough.
It was simply because people believed the doctor more. After all, aside from speaking the part, he also looked the part.
The age-old advice of dress how you want to be addressed comes to the fore.
But communicating authority doesn’t necessarily have to be wearing a doctor’s lab coat with a stethoscope around your neck or introducing yourself as an expert or professional.
Authority can also be expressed in how you communicate your ideas and the conviction with which you communicate them.
How much do you know about your topic of choice? Do you speak your knowledge with ‘authority’? Can you communicate it without sounding ambiguous? Is it simple? Is it understandable? Is it clear? Is it concise and straight to the point? How much proof can you show?
Although this isn’t entirely easy because you don’t expect me to listen to a guy dressed as a janitor when I turn up at a hospital after getting bitten by a snake.
But in scenarios where you’ve been able to grab attention and hold your audience’s interest, how you deliver your expertise becomes everything.
The authority you communicate your ideas with is a reflection of how much you know what you’re talking about.
Which is why it’s super important to understand your subject of choice from back to front.
But even if you don’t understand everything about it, you must at least understand the roots and foundation well enough to be able to communicate them clearly.
People respect ‘experts’ who truly know their onions.
But in certain cases where this isn’t possible, you can use an authority prop.
But how do you do this?
First, ask yourself if your ideas are true, and if they work.
Can they stand the pressure when they are put to the test?
Do you have proof?
Then the simple thing to do is to get a professional who can either cosign (legally of course) what you’re saying, or say it themselves on your behalf.
This might cost you money or some form of equity or even your pride or all three of them. But that’s the price to pay for not being a professional 😁
Not easy, I can assure you. But there’s nothing easy about this thing of ours 😁
Spent the better part of last night and this morning binge-watching Lupin and it’s clear two things are paramount when it comes to persuading people:
1. Proof
Whether engineered or framed (I advise you not to lie though), people are constantly searching for what to believe in. Despite how much they might deny it even. And that’s despite how low trust is nowadays.
This is why religion, politics and relationships sit on top of the conversation every day.
People want to believe in a god, a messiah, a leader, a Moses who’d take them out of Egypt, a Joshua who’d take them into the promised land, a product or service which alleviates their suffering, helps them save money, or puts money in their pockets, a person who says they’ll love them unconditionally whether sun or rain (Lori iro 😁).
As a persuader, proof is your bridge over muddied waters.
Waters muddied by low-quality copywriters, direct response marketers who don’t know their scruples, liars and scumbags littered all across the Internet.
Proof is your bridge from obscurity and poverty to crazy money.
Proof is why I almost stole $497 from my mother’s handbag to buy David Deutsch’s course this morning.
Proof is everything.
So, as a wise man told me once, “show, don’t tell.”
2. Speak Their Language.
You see Assane Diop glide effortlessly through conversations with different people (Fabienne Beriot, Claire, Raoul etc.) because of his ability to speak ‘their language’.
Not languages as per dialects, no! But language as per needs, emotions, wants and desires.
When you understand people at the base level, it’s easy to ‘manipulate’ them. It’s easy to convince them. It’s easy to persuade them. It’s easy to sell to them.
Speaking their language helps you create irresistible offers they can’t refuse. Because you know who they are, what they want, what rattles them, what pushes their needles, what they need, even if they lie to your face they don’t.
Hello, Don Corleone 😁
Also, don’t forget to adapt.
This ties in together with speaking people’s languages too.
A 25-year-old and a 50-year-old don’t want the same thing. Neither does a married couple and a perennial bachelor want the same thing either.
When you can adapt to people and situations, it’s easier to speak their language.
I’m sorry this post started with why you shouldn’t watch Lupin and then goes on to make you want to watch it. But that’s the truth. The world doesn’t need more manipulators like you 😁
To start with, there’s a community called WallStreetBets on Reddit (a forum like Nairaland).
And the common discussion on WallStreetBets is financial investments and the stock market.
So, a group of users managed to find out a hedge fund called Melvin Capital had taken a substantial short position in GameStop (a gaming company).
But what’s a hedge fund?
A hedge fund is simply a group of people polling their funds together and letting an investment manager manage this money by using it to invest in different ways or categories.
And what’s a short position?
A short position is simply predicting the price of a company’s stock would go down.
Say the current price of rice is N25,000 and I believe it will go down to N12,000 in a few weeks. Maybe because I have some information about the harvest season or inside information from the Ministry of Agriculture or whatever.
But then I don’t even have a single bag of rice. So, what do I do?
I go to my friend Chinedu and ‘borrow’ his bag of rice on credit. I sell it for N25,000 and hope to buy it back in a few weeks when it goes down to N12,000 or less and return it to Chinedu.
Now the upside of taking a short position is limited, but the downside? Infinitely limitless.
And what does that mean?
Let’s say supposing the bag of rice doesn’t go down to as much as N12,000, I still make a profit (N25,000 minus whatever I sell it for). If it goes below N12,000, I simply make more.
But what if the price never goes down and instead keeps going up?
What if the bag of rice becomes N30,000? Buying the bag of rice and returning to Chinedu will cost me a loss of N5,000.
What if it becomes N32,000 or N45,000 or even N50,000 or N75,000?
I’m bleeding heavily from the losses at this point.
Now, conventional wisdom will advise I hold on and wait for the price to go down. But what happens when Chinedu wants his bag of rice?
The few weeks I promised him is up already and I’m supposed to return it. Or maybe he hears about the increase and decides to cash in by selling. Or maybe his wife and children are hungry and he needs his bag of rice to feed them.
What do I do?
It’s none of Chinedu’s business. I just have to find a way to return his bag of rice however I deem fit.
This is exactly what happened to Melvin Capital.
Because GameStop stocks had been falling for quite some time, they were betting on the idea the stocks would keep going down.
Knowing this, retail traders from WallStreetBets piled into the stock.
And the result was simple. As usual, when lots of people are buying into a particular stock, the prices go up.
In this instance, the stock prices would go up causing Melvin Capital to lose their money and the traders to gain. But that’s not where it even ends.
A short squeeze will also happen.
This is when those who bet against the stock are forced to buy back into their positions to avoid losing more money. And what then happens? The stock’s price keeps rising like yeast 😁
At this point, the guys on WallStreetBets are turning thousands of dollars to millions.
Whereas Melvin Capital will go on to lose their initial short position of $55 million and still incur more losses of up to $2 billion before being bailed out by another hedge fund.
Spectacular something I tell you!
This is the point where Chinedu reports me to his DPO friend at Maroko Police Station and I’m forced to sell my car just to return his bag of rice.
Another spectacular something! 😁
Well, the truth is shorting despite how many billionaires it has made is crazily risky. Simply because it has a limited upside but an infinite bottomless downside. And everyone hopes the price of the stocks they’ve bought will keep going up, but there are a couple of reasons why you might decide to take a short position.
It could be intuition. Or it could be inside information. Or it could be forecasting based on management or product rollout or government policies. Or just plain old prediction. There’s a lot of reasons. But it’s crazily risky.
GameStop went from around $3 in early 2020 to over $300 a few weeks ago. It’s now trading at around $50. A crazy rise and fall.
It’s one thing to be one of the greatest scientists ever and devise the theory of relativity changing humanity’s understanding of space and time, but regularly dropping gems about life that can easily be related to advertising and copywriting puts Albert Einstein on another plane entirely.
The following quotes are exactly why I think Albert Einstein would have been a great copywriter/advertiser.
1. On Why Nothing Taught About Advertising In School Works In Real Life.
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
2. On The Importance Of Value.
“Strive not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”
3. On The Importance of Research.
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.”
“Imagination is the highest form of research.”
“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
4. On Curiosity& Constant Learning.
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
“Life is like riding a bicycle. to keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
“Learn from yesterday, live for today. Hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”
5. On Why It’s Important You Find A Way To EnjoyWhat You Do.
“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”
6. On Humility.
“The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.“
“We still do not know one-thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.”
7. On Inspiration
“I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me”
8. On (Human) Nature
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
9. On Failure & Persistence.
“Failure is success in progress.”
“Adversity introduces a man to himself.”
10. On Simplicity.
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
“If you can’t explain it to a 6-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”
11. On Risk Taking
“A ship is always safe at shore but that is not what it’s built for.”
12. On Understanding Your Craft
“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”
I might as well call this The Albert Einstein Guide For Writing Excellent Copy That Converts 😁
A short story is exactly what it calls itself, a short story.
Whether it’s the size of a newspaper column or a few pages of a hardcover book with a few twists and turns or attempts at suspense, a short story has to be short, precise, engaging from end to end and with a clear message.
Think of Aesop’s Fables and well done music videos.
Copywriters are taught to engage a reader from the headline (a block of words/sentences) up to the lead (a block of paragraphs) and down to the rest of the copy (a block of different things). A short story engages you from the first word.
Because you don’t want to lose your reader at any time. Unless you’re selling what they don’t need or they are just about to reach for their bank cards to buy what you’re selling. This means you have to engage them from beginning to end.
Hard stuff, I know.
So, instead of rambling like the keynote speaker at a bankers’ conference, a short story approach keeps your copy light and tight.
It also teaches the efficient use of characters.
Unlike in dramas and movies, we see lots of extras. And aside from battles and scenes requiring a gathering of people, most of them are people who add little or nothing to the overall story. In essence, the story can do without them.
One of the short story’s strongest powers is minimalism in characters, both in selection and usage.
A good short story writer asks some of the following questions: Do I need this character? What’s he doing in here? How does she add to the story?
And if the answers don’t make sense, the characters are put to death. Sometimes their deaths (ie if they are killed in the story) eventually become opportunities to make the story richer.
This same ruthlessness should show in your copy.
It’s unnecessary having loose ends scattered throughout your work.
You’re not making a series, franchise instalment or documentary, so why bring a character into your story arc or a sentence or paragraph into your marketing argument which does nothing except occupy space?
This isn’t physics, but it’s helpful you know these things matter.
I read a short story last night, Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
And it might have taken just 5 minutes to but while reading it you had a sense every single line was open to another meaning. The entire story had my brain firing.
In the same way, your copy should have the feel of a Molotov cocktail. In the sense, they set your customers ablaze on impact.
I also loved the story and chances are I’ll read it again in future.
This is why in order to avoid buyer’s remorse which might turn into refunds or kill any opportunity for repeat purchases or upselling , your copy should let the customer feel like they made the purchase decision themselves, not like you forced them to.
On the 5th of February, the Central Bank of Nigeria sent out a circular banning the buying and selling of cryptocurrency.
I’m supposed to tell you all the reasons why you shouldn’t buy crypto or why you should sell if you have any, but I won’t.
Instead, I’ll tell you where crypto is at, and then the ultimate decision lies with you.
Here we go.
1. Cryptocurrency is gaining so much acceptance around the world right now.
Aside from Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, constantly tweeting in support of it, many people and institutions are in love with crypto right now.
2 days ago, the largest payment network in the world, Visa, with over 40M merchants on their platform partnered with Anchorage to enable customers to buy and trade crypto more easily.
Coinbase is also offering cards to their customers.
This means customers can spend directly from their Coinbase accounts without needing to move funds to and from their bank accounts.
Coinbase cards will also available in a virtual card format. Meaning you don’t even need to have a physical card.
Add this too:
And this:
And this too
2. The cryptocurrency market in Nigeria is so massive right now.
Someone reported that the value of BTC/NGN trades on Binance today was worth N13.4bn. That’s more than the volume of trade on the Nigerian Stock Exchange at N5.6bn. Binance is just one exchange platform.
Plus, Nigeria has the second-highest peer to peer crypto transaction volume in the whole world. In a way, whatever happens in the Nigeria cryptocurrency market will likely affect the wider crypto world.
And with the recent ban, market psychology and basic laws of demand and supply predict many people will panic and sell. Which means prices will likely drop. Which means you can buy more crypto at cheaper prices.
Plus, whether you like it or not, this present government won’t be here forever.
Looking at crypto’s rise over the years, how do you tell your children in future about how you chickened out because they government banned crypto?
Imagine selling your Bitcoin and then maybe it hits $50,000 or $100,000+.
So, if you can manage to, hold on to your crypto like your pastor advises you to hold on to Jesus.
On the other hand, if history is anything to go by, then cryptos are about to have a spectacular rise.
Why?
Because any time the government or a governing body places a ban on something or calls something taboo, people end up getting more of said thing. Think about drugs, porn, alcohol, weed, sex etc.
On one hand, it’s human curiosity.
On the other hand, just like Eve in the Garden of Eden, we are all drawn to things we shouldn’t be drawn to.
But don’t forget this isn’t financial advice. It’s just my opinion 😁
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was known as the “Prince of Tunnels” “King of Drains” “Master of Tunnels” “King of Tunnels”. But how did he come by these nicknames?
A short story.
You see, after the US Drug Task Force clamped down heavily on the Caribbean drug trafficking routes into the United States, it had become harder to get drugs in. Border security was also tightened. And so, there was a need for alternatives.
So, what to do?
Enter Joaquin Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, popularly known as “El Chapo”.
El Chapo understood the US was the biggest market for the cartel’s drugs and if they wanted to remain in business, they had to find a way to surpass all the security measures already imposed. They needed solid shipping, logistics, and handling.
So, to do this, he contracted an architect and tasked him with the job of building tunnels.
But from where to where?
From Mexico to the US, you dummy 😁
Sounds impossible, yeah?
But not to a resolute mastermind like El Chapo.
He’d eventually go on to build an estimated 100 tunnels on the US-Mexico border. Some of them would take as much as 16 months and cost up to 5 million dollars.
Sounds like a lot of money to you, I know.
But for someone who was ranked by Forbes as the 1,140th richest man in the world in 2011, with a net worth of around US$1 billion, 5 million dollars was just operating expenses. He was even named in Forbes magazine’s annual list of billionaires four times.
These tunnels weren’t just crude holes in the ground like underground coal mines, they were so sophisticated that they were lit by an electrical system, dug so deep that ground-penetrating radar couldn’t detect them and one even had an entrance covered by a pool table that lifted from the concrete floor by a hydraulic system.
Stuff of genius!
El Chapo would go on to become the most powerful drug trafficker in the world and the biggest drug lord of all time. He brought in more drugs into the United States than any other trafficker in history.
Although not as prominent in popular culture as Pablo Escobar, the U.S. DEA strongly believes he even surpassed the influence and reach of Pablo Escobar.
But we all know what happens to drug dealers. El Chapo eventually met his fate when he got caught and sentenced to prison.
And so we’d have thought this would be the end of his tunnels, but no hombre.
In 2015, he escaped from his jail cell through a TUNNEL in his bathroom.
Another tunnel, Mr. Guzman? 😁
Aside from his legendary tunnels, he also moved drugs through trains and canned food.
I’ve seen it somewhere before that druglords and gangsters can teach us more about business than college or business school professors and I think that’s true.
Because while the rest of the world (internet marketers 😜) was focused on funnel building, El Chapo was focused on tunnel building. And can you blame him?
A wiseman once told me “The way up is down,” and looking at El Chapo’s story, I believe him.
