§ 01 · The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Taki opens with 70 seconds of compression: pattern interrupt → 15-year personal vulnerability ("shit scared of asking for the money") → origin reframe ("my content did the selling for me") → authority drop with hyper-specific stats ("13 months without a single salesperson, 5x more clients than we had with a team of nine") → the show's frame-setting anecdote about the workshop client who wanted to see the pitch. That anecdote is the bookend he closes the loop on at minute 33. Tight narrative architecture from minute one.
What the video promised.
stated at 00:38“I'm gonna show you the five things you need to know that I've been doing for fifteen years so that sales becomes easy and even unnecessary.”delivered at 34:30
Where the time goes.
00:00 – 01:10
01 · Cold open — pattern interrupt + authority stack
Coaches preach 'post more content,' Taki preaches 'design content that sells.' 13 months / zero salespeople / 5x clients. The workshop-client anecdote that frames the whole video.
01:10 – 03:20
02 · Frame the show — workshop recording client
Client asked for the recording 'to see the pitch at the end.' Taki: 'you'd be disappointed by the pitch but mind-blown by the content.' This anecdote bookends the whole talk.
03:20 – 06:20
03 · Principle 1 — Teach AND sell (not teach THEN sell)
The Captain Confidence vs pubescent-sweaty-business-genius origin story. The problem is 'then'. Every moment teaches AND sells; every moment is useful AND sets up the offer.
06:20 – 09:00
04 · The pink/blue/white post-it system
Pink = useful (what to teach), Blue = fun (activities/questions), White = sells (where to seed beliefs and install desire). Build all three layers in parallel, then weave.
09:00 – 15:20
05 · Principle 2 — Lines in the sand (old way / new way)
Every piece of content draws a line between an old, dumb, not-good-anymore way and a new, better way. Red column / green column. The Hero's Journey reference (Luke Skywalker, ordinary world → extraordinary world).
15:20 – 19:40
06 · Principle 3 — Stretch the gap (3 R's, 3-4 M's)
Marketing = creation of desire-based tension. Three places to talk: Results / Reality / Roadblocks. Tools: Models, Metrics, Metaphors (and Questions).
19:40 – 22:20
07 · Stretch tools — visual models + metrics
Triangle traffic model (rusted/dripping/flow/flood). Mike's Four-Point Scale (named after his team member). Traffic-light scoring. The 7-Eleven vs in-demand Japanese chef metaphor.
22:20 – 25:00
08 · Stretch tools — metaphors + 3 script questions
The 3 closing questions for any teach segment: what would get better first, how many sales did you miss, what's in the way. Live coaching feel without a sales call.
25:00 – 29:10
09 · Principle 4 — Product placement
John Carlton: 'you can't expect a prospect to take an action they haven't first imagined themselves taking.' Hollywood examples (James Bond watch, Apple laptop, Toyota in every car chase).
29:10 – 30:20
10 · Live demo — offer wrapping + Black Belt offer doc
Taki teaches offer wrapping concept, audience asks for example, he shows his Black Belt offer doc on screen, then tells how it actually sold the workshop. Recursive teaching.
30:20 – 31:15
11 · Product placement — scale session client story
Tells a client's case study story with the 15-min scale session embedded inside. Proves the program works AND seeds the next-step yes without pitching.
31:15 – 33:30
12 · John Carlton's 'mild-mannered Marjorie' story
The classic copywriting story about the green-sweater detail in a phone-number CTA. The lesson: vivid imagined scenes = higher conversion. Taki's tribute: 'Thank you, John. You're the GOAT.'
33:30 – 34:30
13 · Principle 5 — Easy-yes funnel (stepping stones)
'A funnel is just a series of easy yeses.' The client with great content + great program but no bridge. Stepping stones metaphor.
34:30 – 36:00
14 · The bushfire-danger-sign analogy (cold/warm/hot)
Australian bushfire signs as the cold/warm/hot prospect tier. Lead magnet for cold, workshop/explainer (their 'microwave' VSL) for warm, call or offer doc for hot. Tiered close.
36:00 – 36:40
15 · Self-recap + tiered close
All 5 principles re-listed. CTA splits 3 ways: cold = binge the channel; warm = watch Million Dollar Plan video; hot = get the secret code word from that video, DM on Instagram.
Visual structure at a glance.
Named ideas worth stealing.
01:10list
The 5 Principles of Influential Content
- Teach AND sell (not teach THEN sell)
- Lines in the sand (old way / new way)
- Stretch the gap (Results / Reality / Roadblocks)
- Product placement (install action in content)
- Easy-yes funnel (cold / warm / hot stepping stones)
Taki's master framework. Each principle has a named concept, a metaphor, and at least one micro-story. The whole 35-minute talk is built around these five.
Steal forJoe's MCN+ pitch could use this exact five-principle shape — five named principles for owning your stack, each with a story + metaphor + Joe-coined named concept attached.
06:20model
The Pink/Blue/White Post-It System
- Pink = useful (what would you teach if no offer existed?)
- Blue = fun (activities, questions, audience interactions)
- White = sells (intentional belief-installation + desire moments)
Pre-production workflow for designing teach-and-sell content. Build all three layers in parallel, then weave them into a single flow. The white post-its are where the soft-CTAs live, scattered throughout — not bolted on at the end.
Steal forUse this for every Killing Excuses / Sip-Ship-Sell episode. Pre-shoot post-it session forces you to identify the seed-the-offer moments BEFORE you start filming.
15:20acronym
The 3 R's of Stretching the Gap
- Results (where they want to be)
- Reality (where they are now)
- Roadblocks (what's in the way)
Marketing and sales = creation of desire-based tension. Touch all three R's in any piece of content to maximize the stretch.
Steal forJoe's $6 Stack thesis maps perfectly: Results = own your tools; Reality = renting $200/mo SaaS; Roadblocks = no time to learn self-hosting / fear of breaking things.
16:20list
Models, Metrics, Metaphors (3 M's)
- Models — visual frames (triangle of traffic, four-point scale)
- Metrics — score yourself (red/yellow/green, 1-10, Mike's 4-Point Scale)
- Metaphors — concrete imagery that lands the abstract concept
Three rotating tools for in-content stretching. Use one of each per teaching segment to make the gap feel real.
Steal forPre-shoot template for every video — pick a model + a metric + a metaphor for each principle you're teaching. Three-column planning grid.
20:40concept
Mike's Four-Point Scale
Replaces the 1-10 scale (where everyone picks 5 to avoid commitment) with a 1-2-3-4 scale that forces a commit to either 'not good enough' or 'good enough.' Taki named it after his team member who taught him.
Steal forAudit grids for MCN content — every principle gets a 4-point self-assessment. Forces the viewer past indecision.
28:20concept
Offer Wrapping
The product/program is fixed. The wrapping paper at the top of the offer doc changes monthly — fresh framing, fresh urgency, fresh angle. Same Black Belt, new wrapping. Reason to buy this month vs waiting.
Steal forMCN+ doesn't need new features every month. Just new wrapping — different positioning angle each month, different ICP focus, different bonus inclusion. Same product, fresh reasons.
33:30model
The Easy-Yes Funnel
- Lead magnet / micro-magnet (for cold)
- Workshop or explainer video / 'microwave' VSL (for warm)
- Sales call OR offer doc (for hot)
A funnel is just a series of easy yeses — stepping stones from cold to hot, each step asking only what the prospect is ready to give. Make the same offer to all three tiers and you lose all three.
Steal forMCN+ funnel: cold = blog/YouTube/free Killing Excuses; warm = LFB Line landing page or workshop; hot = MCN+ checkout or 1:1 DM. Different offers per tier. Stop pitching everyone the same thing.
34:30model
The Bushfire-Sign Tier System
- Cold = skeptical leads, want a tiny info bite
- Warm = curious, want to go deeper (workshop, explainer)
- Hot = primed buyers, want to take action (call, doc, checkout)
Australian bushfire-danger-sign analogy mapping prospect temperature to content tier. Make each tier its own distinct offer.
Steal forAlready covered by the easy-yes funnel — but the bushfire analogy is the more memorable framing for a Joe video on the same topic.
29:10concept
Super Signature
The block at the bottom of every email: 'Whenever you're ready, here's three ways I can help you grow your coaching business.' Three invitations every email. Take any, take none — no pressure.
Steal forEvery Modern Creator newsletter / email needs the super signature. Three persistent invitations: $6 Stack guide / LFB Line / MCN+. Always there, never pushy.
Lines you could clip.
00:35
“I was terrified of sales and shit scared of asking for the money. So I created an ingenious system where my content did the selling for me.”
00:56
“We haven't had a single salesperson, a single sales call for thirteen months. And yet the number of new clients is literally five times more than it was when we had a team of nine.”
04:05
“The problem's in the THEN. Teach THEN sell makes me think they're two different activities. What we want is teach AND sell.”
04:40
“Every moment is useful, and every moment sells.”
15:20
“Marketing and sales is really the creation of desire-based tension.”
15:40
“People either hire you because they've got a goal that they want but don't have, or a problem that they have but don't want.”
25:00
“You can't expect a prospect to take an action they haven't first imagined themselves taking in their mind.”
33:45
“A funnel is just a series of easy yeses. It's stepping stones.”
47:50
“Don't sell. Invite.”
How they spent the runtime.
Hook length70s
Info densityhigh
Filler5%
Things they pointed at.
04:55personTim Ferriss ($100 question)
14:30conceptThe Hero's Journey (storytelling framework)
31:20personJohn Carlton (copywriter)
01:00productBlack Belt (Taki's coaching program)
01:00productBoardroom (Taki's higher-tier program)
38:20productMillion Dollar Plan (warm-tier explainer video)
How they asked for the click.
34:40product
“If you just found me, dude, play around in the channel. Binge. If you're a little bit warmer, in the description below there'll be a link to the Million Dollar Plan. If you're hot and you wanna book a call — sorry, dude, we don't do calls — read the doc. In that Million Dollar Plan video at the end, I'll give you a secret code word to message me on Instagram. Find that, send me the secret code word, and that'll be our sign.”
Three-tiered close mapped to bushfire-sign cold/warm/hot. Cold gets free content, warm gets the explainer video, hot gets a soft Instagram DM gate via secret code word — which is itself an easy-yes that filters for genuine interest. The 'we don't do calls' line is brilliant counter-positioning — most coaches BEG for calls, Taki rejects them as a status move.
Word for word.
metaphoranalogystory
00:00These days, it feels like every single coach is telling you to create and post a bunch of content so you can generate some sales opportunities. That sounds good, but for the last fifteen years, I've been doing something completely different. I was terrified of sales and shit scared of asking for the money. So I created an ingenious system where my content did the selling for me. I call it influential content. And in this video, I'm gonna show you the five things you need to know that I've doing for fifteen years so that sales becomes easy
00:25and even unnecessary. In fact, this system is working so well for us right now that we haven't had a single salesperson, a single sales call for thirteen months. And yet the number of new clients joining us in Black Belt and Boardroom and clients every single month is literally five times more than it was when we had a team of nine. This thing's cool, and you're gonna dig it. So the reason I wanna share this with you now today
00:46is because last week, I ran a workshop. It was called, uh, it was called Sold Out. It was epic. You don't need to know about that. Just imagine. Taki did a good job. Good job, Taki. One of my clients in the community said, is there any way we can get a recording of the workshop you did to the public? Because I wanna watch it. I really wanna see the pitch at the end.
01:03Fair question. Here's what I replied. If you watch the recording and you see the pitch at the end, you're gonna be really freaking disappointed because it was almost nonexistent. But if you watched the two hours before the little imitation at the end and you knew what to look for, you would have your mind blown
01:21because between you and I, there was some going on in the way I designed the workshop in the first place. That's the key. But even though the inspiration for doing this session was based on a workshop I ran, it's not just about workshops. I've used this same formula for long form videos like this, for Instagram Reels, carousels,
01:39for emails for, like, fifteen years. So if you're creating content and you'd like to sell more, why don't I just show you? So when you think about it, with this presentation you're gonna give, whether it's to camera or to people, you've got two jobs. Yeah. We've gotta teach,
01:56and then we've gotta sell. Teach, then sell. Here's what I've noticed, certainly for me when I was first getting started, when I was teaching, my energy was great. Like it is right now. Like, I love this stuff. I really wanna help you. I'm passionate about it. My energy's awesome. So I was like, .
02:16But then I got to this bit, and something strange happened. My mouth got dry. My heart started beating a little bit too fast. My hands were bit shaky, very sweaty. It was like I went through puberty again. I was like, business, business yeah. I was like, business genius.
02:31Please buy my stuff. It was uncomfortable for me, and people didn't buy because who wants to buy from the ? Not me. But here's the thing. You've got these two jobs. You need to teach. It's what they came for. And you need to sell. It's what your business wants you to do. There's nothing wrong with the teaching. There's nothing wrong with selling. The problem was how I was thinking about it because I was thinking about it like this: teach,
02:52then sell. There's nothing wrong with teach, nothing wrong with sell. The problem's in the then. Because if I say teach, then sell, makes me think like they're two different activities. So just erase that from your mind. What we want to do instead is we want to teach and sell. It sounds simple, but it's profound. Because what I want you to do, what I've been doing for fifteen years,
03:13is every moment is valuable and useful, and every moment sells.
03:19So while I'm teaching, I'm teaching people what to want, setting up the offer. And while I'm selling, I'm doing it in way that feels valuable because it is. If you're crying right now like my pen is, you're right. This isn't good shit. So ,
03:37not just the pitch at the end. Because if you get this bit right, the pitch at the end is a formality. In fact, it's more like an invitation. We'll talk about that later. So there's this question that Tim Ferriss asked all of his podcast guests. He says, like, what's the $100 purchase that you've made in the last little while that's had the biggest positive impact on you? In other words,
03:54we've all bought really expensive stuff that's made no difference. He's talking about this end. What's really cheap, but it's been awesome? If you don't care what I bought for a $100, I don't even remember. But if instead of money, we were spending skill points, this is the micro skill that has made the biggest positive difference. This is the one thing that got me to a million bucks a year, and beyond, it's one of the core skills that makes black belters so deadly in their market. Okay. So I think you get this. Let's talk about how to make this practical. Back to that workshop I ran.
04:23After she asked me that question and I answered, you know, the pitch was lame, but the content was amazing, and that's why it sold, yeah, I looked at my slides, and most importantly, the workbook for the session that we ran live, and I found 21 things that I did on purpose
04:39that made it really useful and really fun and that sold like crazy. So I'm not gonna talk about making it useful here because that's your job, and we talk about that in other videos. This isn't the stuff. It's how you actually design the stuff to make it teach and sell. Well, here's the thing. When I build a workshop
04:56or a YouTube video like this, I got a three step process. Uh, step number one involves pink Post it notes. Step number two, the blue ones. Step number three, the white ones. These are special, so we're gonna we'll come back to those. Remember, . Um, I start with the pink ones, and all I do is I get Post it notes out, and you can do this any way you want. I I use Post it notes. And I just think about, okay. What is all the all the stuff that I could teach them that would be the most useful stuff about this topic? And so here, this is for a workshop I'm running internally for Black Belt tomorrow, um, and there's a bunch of cool stuff. Right? So I just get all my ideas out.
05:30Some of them merge together. They're like duplicates. And I'm just looking for, like, what are the themes so I can get, like, five key points. Like, where in this video, we're in point number one. So pink, what do I what do I need to do to make it useful? Blue, how do I make it fun? And the way I make it fun is by getting people involved. What are the activities I'm gonna do? What are the questions I'm gonna ask? So mostly, these are activities.
05:52Filling in a worksheet, creating piece of content, whatever I can do to help them go from, like, I got the idea to I'm getting it done. So far, we've got fun and useful, and we're looking pretty damn good. But we also wanna make sure that it sells. Because if you don't make sure it sells, you gotta work really hard at the pitch, and you and I don't want that.
06:10That's where these babies come in. The white poster notes are where I go, I've made it useful. I've made it fun. Now how do I make it sell? And I'm deliberately looking for opportunities throughout the content to seed, s e e d, to install a thought or a belief or a new way or to prove that I've got the goods to stretch the gap between where you are and where you want to be so that you're more likely to want what I've got at the end. So the next four points, I'm going to show you exactly how we do that bit. Alright. So we've talked about teaching and selling. The second big piece we need to do is we need to draw a line in the sand.
06:42Every great piece of content, whether it's an email or a video or a workshop, is designed to between the old, bad, dumb, stupid, not good anymore way, to rub that in, and a new, better way. Every short form piece of content, every single thing I do before I create it, I'm like, okay. What's the old way and what's the new way? An old way of doing
07:03or an old way of thinking and a new way of doing the thinking that's better. In fact, I've got two pieces here. I'm just gonna hold it up to the camera. This is from a mini course that we just shot that will come out soon.
07:18And you can see it's got four videos, and each one of them has a really clear old way and a clear new way. This should be really obvious to you, but I'll say it anyway. Anytime you're talking about an old way and a new way, a two column side by side layout is really, really nice. And make the old one on the left because that's the past, and in red because everyone knows red's bad, and the new one green on the right.
07:43I don't if that's useful, but do that. I use this old way, new way framework in a bunch of different ways. Literally, before I write a single email, I'm like, where am I taking people from and where am I taking people to? Why? Because that's my job. That's your job. We're leaders. . In the workshop,
08:01the old way, new way was like how I did it in 2024 and how I did it in 2025 and beyond. You can see red, green, old. We were spending $60 a month on ads. We were relying on traffic and funnels. We had nine people in sales. We did a bunch of chasing, bunch of selling, bunch of,
08:18you know, pursuing, but we were stalled and the business felt heavy. That's a pretty clear not so good way. The new way, we went from 60 k a month in ad spend to 6 from traffic and funnels to magnetic and bingeable content, from nine in sales to zero, from chasing to choosing, from selling to buying, from scaling, uh, from stall to scaling,
08:38and from heavy to light, and I got my mojo back. You don't have to do all of those bits, but there's just, like, a ton of examples right there about old and new. Let's work on yours. So every piece of content is designed around this simple
08:54shift from the old way to a new way. Even this video we're watching right now. Do you remember how it started? It was a few minutes ago, so maybe you don't. Seems like right now, every coach is telling you to post more content, share more stuff, uh, all the time so you can get some sales opportunities. Old way. But I was scared of selling, so I created a new way where the content's doing the selling for me. New way. Does that make sense? That's the that's the game here. And so for every piece of content, want you to think about, like, what's the
09:20what's the old way of thinking or the old way of doing that isn't serving people right now? And what's the new, better way, your way, of making it happen? And so typically, what we've got is we've got, uh, an old and a new way
09:34for each piece of content. And for a longer piece of content, we can make sub shifts as well. So this is a bit of an advanced hack. You don't have to do this. But if you just started with, like, what's the older ones, the new for everything, you'd probably probably be fine. I used to run a workshop to sell black belt, and it was really about how to get to Amino's here.
09:53And we talked about the old way of attracting, converting, and delivering. Yeah. The old way of attracting was, like, man manual prospecting.
10:03And the new way was automated marketing systems. This is going back a I'm talking 2008 here. I'm old. Something like that. Uh, the old way of selling was onesie twosie, you know, one on one. And the new way was one to many. And the old way of delivering was time for money,
10:22and the new way was scalable and leveraged. And so this worked for a workshop. It worked for a piece of content. If it's longer, I think sub points are really great. If it's a short form piece of content, just go one transition. Here's where it gets magic. We If got a bit of time together in over twenty minutes or thirty minutes or, you know, longer if it's a live experience,
10:44I can help you get to the point where you go, yeah. I don't wanna do manual. I wanna do automated. Right? I'm gonna teach you something a bit ninja on the grounds that you'll still respect me in the morning. I think our job is to break and install beliefs. I would say something like, as your coach, my job is to help you make three or four great decisions today.
11:03And so, um, I'd say that at the start. And at the end, uh, in the middle, I go, so, you know, I teach this shift. Like, okay. So as your coach, I said before my job is to help you make three or four great decisions today. Let's make the first one right now. Do you want be stuck in, like, slow manual prospecting or set up an automated system that dah dah dah? And they'll be like, I want that one. I'm like, great. Then after teaching the second piece, I'd be like, so we've a choice. Do want to do it the old way or the new way? And third, the old way or the new way? Remember I said my job is to help me make three or four big decisions? What do you think the fourth one might be? Whatever the next step is. So at the end, if I make
11:33an invitation and I say, Hey, we're doing this thing and it does that and then that and then that, what do you think? People are going be like,
11:45Oh my god. This is what I've always wanted. Why?
11:50Because I've done a good job of teaching you to want those things. Promise you to respect me in the morning? You promised. Alright. That was a little bit advanced. Let's get back up to simple end. Every piece of content should have an old way and a new way. And as soon as you know what the core beliefs you wanna install are, what the shifts you want people to make, that's all your marketing needs to do. I got this friend who teaches people how to, uh,
12:13create a high ticket offer and then use other people's audiences to market them. Guess what his marketing strategy is? Install those two beliefs. You should sell expensive stuff, not cheap stuff, and the easiest way to get leads is to borrow somebody else's audience. I don't happen to believe that, but if that's what he's selling, his whole job is to
12:32like, the old ways are done. The new ways are better. You with me? It's kinda like The Hero's Journey. I don't know if you've seen that storytelling framework. It's behind all of the great movies, all the great books of our time. There's bunch of stuff, but the core of it is there's two worlds.
12:48There's the ordinary world, where Luke Skywalker grew up, and then there's the extraordinary world, the special world.
13:01And our job is to help people make that transition by saying, hey, this world you're in is not that great.
13:10Come over here. Where is better? Okay. So we understand that we're taking people from old to new, but how do you actually do it? How do you stretch gap so they wanna make the change? That's where point number three comes in. I'm gonna stretch the gap. Marketing and sales is really the creation of desire based tension.
13:27It's the gap between where I am and where I wanna be that makes me take action. People either hire you because they've got a goal that they want but don't have, or a problem that they have but don't want. That tension is why people buy. So the third key idea is we need to . And just like in sales, there is three three places we can go. First, we can talk about the results they
13:51wanna have. We can talk about the reality they're currently in, or we can talk about the roadblocks, the things which are in the way.
14:04If we just do this, it'll be okay. That's like stretching a little bit. If we then do the reality piece, that's useful too. But if we have both and then we ask, so that's where you wanna go and this is where you are, what are all the things which are holding you back? The stretch gets bigger. So what I wanna do is just give you a couple of tools that I use
14:21to stretch the gap while I'm teaching stuff and doesn't rely on me having a one on one sales conversation to do it. Let's talk about models. Let's talk about metrics. Let's talk about metaphors. So there's four tools that I use. Models, metrics, metaphors, and questions. This is gonna be fun. K. First up, let's talk models.
14:37I've been using visual models for a long last time. They're a super powerful tool because in a simple shape, we've got circles, triangles, and squares. If you could draw those three things, you can say a lot without having to say a word. There are, 36 of these. Let's just do one that's quick and easy. Okay? Let's do a a triangle. Think, uh, imagine that we're doing a session or it's a video about,
14:59uh, getting traffic and lead flow. Okay? Alright. So let's do a triangle. Uh, pretend where you're watching a YouTube video and it's not about influential content. It's about, uh, lead flow, getting more leads into your business, uh, your traffic. If I drew a little triangle and said, if you if you think about
15:15your the flow of traffic into your business like water through a a pipe, really, your traffic is probably in one of one of four places. First up, maybe maybe your taps like
15:28rusted shot or the pipes are leaky. Like people come in, they put up their hand, they look a little bit, and then they ghost. Breasted leaky. Number two, maybe it's not leaky, but the tap is, like, dripping. There's a trickle.
15:46Enough at least to maybe survive, but not to grow. Maybe there's a flow, or there's a flood. So your leads are in one of four places right now. Which one is you? And people would say, I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. Cool. So it looks like there's four levels, but there's really only two.
16:04You've either got not enough leads, remember what I told you before about red,
16:11or enough leads. So you red or green right now? Guess what I've just done. In a simple picture, I've helped you go, oh, it's not enough, and I've stretched the gap. I've made, you know, you're feeling okay about it, not okay. And I haven't created a just to be super clear. I haven't created a problem that wasn't there. I haven't done anything. I've just made you aware and presence the fact that this needs work.
16:35That's the simple triangle. So, uh, when I think models, I'm looking for how can I use a model to stretch the gap and get people in the position of, oh, I could use some help? The next tool I use in my content is metrics. It does the exact same job. Its job is to calibrate people and make them go, oh, this could be better. So let's talk
16:53metrics. This is kind of funny coming from me because I'm not a maths guy. I like simple simple metrics which help me go, is it good enough or is it not good enough? I'll give you I'll give you three. First up, teach topic and then give people a chance to traffic light score themselves.
17:10Green, this is going great. Don't change a thing. Red, I'm bleeding. I need to fix this. Or yellow. It's okay. Could be better. I mean, if I said, hey. Uh, if you think about your ability to stretch the gap with models right now, are you green, yellow, or red? You'd answer that and you'd go,
17:29oh, this tacky guy might be helpful. I'm just saying. Is that cool? Metrics. The next one's super easy. Uh, it's just a scale from one to 10. You've done it a million times. You get that. Get people to score. The problem that I don't love about one to 10 is people can pretty easily say, oh, it's a five, and they don't have to change anything. It's a bit like the yellow. Like, the yellow's So what I love to do, I've got this guy on my team called Mike. He taught me this years ago. So I'm gonna name this after him. This is Mike's
17:58you should totally use this. .
18:06So you imagine you've got spectrum just like we did with the one to 10,
18:11but it's got like four
18:15options. You could number them. One, two, three, four. You could color them. Red, orange, yellow, green. Here's what I love about giving people like, I wanna just go from one to four. How is it? There's no sitting on the fence. It's either not good enough or it's good enough.
18:34This picture here is that picture there. It's a four point scale. Do you get it? These are some super easy ways to seed in your content, whether it's written or it's video or it's a live experience, where we get people to go, oh, crap. I could use some help. Alright. You can also stretch the gap and seed in your content with metaphors.
18:57Took about this a long time, but we're gonna do this very fast. Uh, in the sold out workshop, we were talking about how most people are too easy, too affordable, trying to take everybody. And the metaphor was really simple. The problem you've got right now is you're marketing like seven Eleven. You're open early in the morning till late at night, you'll take anyone who walks in, whether they're drunk or
19:15qualified or not, and you're selling average stuff at okay prices. And that's a bit of a gut punch. And then later on, that's the old way, the new way was, uh, we talked about this epic Japanese restaurant that Mike, Four Points Gale Mike, had to book six weeks in advance. He only had six seats in his restaurant. You get there, and he would open the door
19:37when your whole party was there and not a moment before because he only wanted to open the door once. He'd come in, you'd sit down, you ate whatever he cooked. It was hand cooked just for you. There was no menu. Was just like, today, I'm making this. You enjoy it. And at the end, you'd leave, and the next route was ready to come in in the whole
19:55seven Eleven versus, like, in demand Japanese chef. That's a pretty clear metaphor. Is this making any sense to you? I've been doing this a long time. Let me ask you this. If you could teach and sell in this sort of a way, what kind of impact do you reckon it would make? Like, what would get better first? Second question, how
20:12how many sales do reckon you've missed out on because you haven't been doing this?
20:18And then what do you think is in the way or making it up, like, stopping you from doing this right now? What skills would you need to develop or learn? They're just three script questions. Remember before we talked about results,
20:32current reality,
20:36and roadblocks?
20:41That's what we just did together. I asked you one of those, one of those, and then one of those. Now obviously, live, you can do that. You don't you don't have to back to back them like I just did. But you could load those into every presentation you do from now on, whether it's to camera or to an audience, and just let people
20:59come to their their own realization about, oh, it could be kinda great if I work with that guy. That's what I'm saying. Alright. That's number three. Stretch the gap. Next up comes product placement. I'll show you what I mean. There was a great copywriter whose writing I loved and studied obsessively for years. His name is John Carlton. John, if you ever see this, thank you for everything.
21:20I heard him once say something like, themselves taking in their mind. So our job is to teach people what to want. We can't just teach it and expect it to be enough. We can also show it
21:35and let them play with it a little bit. So let me give you an example. A Hollywood movie is a big business, but one of the things that's going on in every movie is product placement. Companies are paying money to have their product featured in in the movie, whether it's Apple laptops or James Bond wearing a certain watch or this brand of car is everywhere. Have you ever watched a and, like, why is everyone drawing a why is everyone driving a Toyota? It's because Toyota paid money to be in that movie. Why are they paying these big bucks? Well, they're paying them big bucks because they go, hey. If people see our product, anything that they're loving, they're more likely to want to go buy one for themselves.
22:10I don't know that I've ever, like, wanted to buy something because James Bond wore the watch, but people sure as hell will wanna buy your stuff when you show it in your content. So here's what I want you to think about. First question, what's the action you want people to take at the end of your piece of content? And then secondly, what can I show them during the content that makes them more likely to want that thing? I'll give you an example.
22:31You probably want people to either, at some stage, book a call with you or, in my case, read the Black Belt offer doc which explains how the program works. So I'm running a workshop a week ago, and I want people to
22:46wanna read the doc, get curious, read to the bottom, decide if it's for them or not. There's zero pressure. Like, the it's like a light switch. If it's a fit, of course, will. If it's not a fit, of course, they won't. I'm totally good with that. So as I'm building the workshop, I'm looking for an opportunity. Where can I show the offer doc in a way that adds value to the content? K. I'm never just gonna go,
23:04um, content, content, content, useful. We'll be back right after these messages. Hey. Wanna buy some soap? Like, that's just weird. If it's a natural tie in, of course, we'll use it. So my workshop, I was teaching a concept called offer wrapping. It's the at its most simple, it's like you've got one product that you sell, but we can wrap it with different wrapping paper every single month so that it feels fresh and new and there's a reason to buy it right now. And so I explained to people like, okay. I get it. You've got one product and you've got many offers. Cool. And somebody said, well, can you give me an example? I'm like, of course. Like, I'm not just gonna leave you with the idea. I wanna show you an example. And so,
23:37uh, we talked about what makes a great offer great, and then I showed people how to use that to wrap their offer. In Black Belt, we have an offer doc, like a simple two page Word doc thing, which explains how the program works. And this bit down here, uh, this bit down here never changes. This is like this is Black Belt, the product.
23:56But this bit on the top, the top four or five paragraphs, that's the , and it changes each month.
24:04People said, can I see it? Of course. So I just showed them the offer doc in the book so they could study it for themselves. So this is the wrapping for February. And people read it like that. Okay. That's cool. Now they know what I'm offering. I haven't sold it. I've just showed it.
24:22By the way, would you like to see the whole doc? And they're like, please. Okay. Comment the this is not for you on YouTube. Comment the letter b b. I was live on a workshop. Comment the letter b b if you wanna see the whole thing. People comment b b. Boom. Guess what? They read it, and some people are like, this is amazing. I want that, and they bought it. Well, they applied anyway. Does that make sense?
24:38They paid a deposit. They applied, and some of them, we accept it, the workshop's sold out. So the question you wanna start with is, like, what's the thing I want people to do at the end, and then what can I show in the content to get people to want it? If you're doing an offer doc, that's a great example. If you want people to book a sales call with you, You need to you need to, like, see the idea of sales calls so it's not new information when they hear about it at the end. But if we want to do sales calls, one of the best ways I can to do that is to tell a client's story.
25:04And so while I introduced the the client, I was like, you know, I had this client called blah blah blah, and I'll show their face up on screen. When they came to me, these were the challenges. Problem, problem, problem. Same kind of problems that the people in the audience maybe have. They've thought about joining Sim Black Belt, but they almost didn't join because insert objection here.
25:21But we got on a scale session. Right? A simple fifteen minute conversation that we do with new people to find out if we can even help and start to make a plan. What have I just done? Oh, there's a scale session. That's the thing I'm seeding. On that plan, we figured out that the core problem was this, and what she needed to do was one and then two and nothing else.
25:40She implemented those strategies, and these are the results afterwards. And it all started on a fifteen minute scale session. Back into the content.
25:48What have I just done? Proved the stuff worked, objection overcome, told case study story, and seeded the hell out of book my call. Is that useful? So I said at the start of this session that you can't expect a person to take an action they haven't first imagined taking in their mind. John was a master at sales letters. This is, like, vaguely relevant. I'm gonna share it because I think it's cool. So his was, like, written sales letters that were direct mailed to people.
26:13And the call to action was, like, call this toll free hotline to order the product, whatever it was. It It was usually some kind of DVD instructional trainee thing. And it said, so here's what to do right now. Pick up the phone and dial 555, you know, phone number. It'll ring twice and be answered on the third call on the third ring by a mild mannered middle aged lady called Marjorie in a green sweater.
26:35Like, the green sweater is not relevant. But the moment he said green sweater, you can imagine ringing and a mild mannered middle aged lady called Marjorie in a green sweater with a pleasant voice taking my call. I'm like, I've imagined it, so now I can I've imagined myself doing the thing, so now it's more likely that I'll do the thing. I'm just saying.
26:53Thank you, John. You're the goat. Whether you're selling a call or a doc or just showing how useful your program is, taking opportunities to show people inside your program, inside your content is amazing. There are so many ways to do it, our whole job is just to see that the stuff exists. If it's publicly content like this, it doesn't need to be quite as overt as, like, the sales call thing. It might be there's this tool that we use in Black Belt that does this cool thing.
27:17And so in our workshop, it's like we're gonna sell out in one week a month, in the other three weeks, one of the things you can do is tune the machine. Yep? Build your automations. Set up your VSL. Build your micromagnets. You don't need to understand the concept. Just understand that that was important.
27:35And so in the three weeks, well, how do you actually do it? Like, what are you working on? And I just showed the tools that our clients use inside Blackbaud when they're in their three weeks tuning the machine. And I explained what they all are, and I got people to choose. I would work on that one first and that one next. What have they just done? They've imagined themselves taking an action that later on I can invite them to go do. I think we've done a pretty good job at product placement. Let's talk about how to get people to actually take the action at the very end. It's an afterthought, it's easy, and it's important. So let's do it now. So I've told you those five big ideas. Teaching and selling, lines in the sand, stretching the gap, product placement, and all of that might might have felt like a lot. Honestly, if you do this last piece,
28:13everything else is easier. This is bonus. Next level ninja shit. But even if you didn't do those and you just
28:23did this last one, I think you're gonna do great. The biggest secret to making your content sell so you don't have to
28:32is to reframe how you think about selling altogether. So we're gonna talk about funnels, like CTAs. We're we talk about selling. Here's how I think about selling. . So if you've ever felt uncomfortable about sales, just think about, like, an invitation. Like, if we were mates and you were in my town here in Noosa, and I sent you a message going, hey. Wanna go to dinner tonight?
28:51I've got a few people coming out. I think it'll be fun. That's the level of emotion that I've got to selling. If you say, I'd love to. Cool. Here's the address. If you say, no. Thanks. Can't make it. I'm like, cool. Have a great night. It's like that. Don't sell.
29:08Invite. So now you know what your come from is and then how to deliver it, like a casual invitation. I don't know if you've ever looked at my emails. At the bottom of every email, almost every email, there's this thing called the . It just says, hey, whenever you're ready, here's three ways I can help you grow your coaching business. One, two, three. There are invitations. You can take them or leave them. It's fine.
29:26Let's talk about next steps. I got an amazing client. I love him to bits. He's a great coach. His content's good. His clients love him. And he's been working really hard on his content for the last couple of years. It's going good. Especially YouTube is killing. Uh, but a few months ago, he's like,
29:45I know what's going on. My content's good. I know it's good. People say it's good. The comments are amazing. People love it. My views are up, but I'm not getting any more leads, and I'm not getting any clients from it. Can you have a look? I'm like, of course. So I opened up his YouTube, and his other channels was the same situation. He had two things going for him.
30:08He had great content,
30:12and he had a great program.
30:17But he didn't have the in between them. There was no bridge. And so when people show me their funnel or ask me about how to build one, the core idea is that . It's stepping stones. I like stepping stones as a metaphor because the steps are small and they're easy yeses. So whether you do all of the fancy seating stuff, teaching and selling, I hope you try it. It'd be fun.
30:39Or not. Having an easy yes funnel is gonna make all the difference for you. So what should the CTA be? Well, it really comes down to audience.
30:50Uh, here in Australia, we get these bushfires, and there's these bushfire danger signs that you see in summer. And they're either, like, high fire danger. You're like, don't don't even think about lighting a match.
31:03Or they're, you know, medium. Or is like low fire danger things are safe right now.
31:12Yeah? Those fire danger signs are the same as the prospects who are looking at your content. You've got people who are cold cold, sceptical leads. They're on the outside. They don't know you. They're just checking you out. Then we've got
31:28warm, curious prospects. And then here, we've got hot, primed buyers. It doesn't make any sense to make the same offer to all of these guys.
31:36They need different things. What does the cold, skeptical lead want? Well, they probably want an easy way to get a little bit more info from you. Find out more. Lead magnet. Micro magnet. More content. Get them to binge your stuff. What do the warm, curious people want? Well, they probably wanna go deeper. If this magnet is
31:57trying to draw little things with a fat pen. That's tricky. Um, let's call that the first step. These guys wanna go deeper with you. And so the invitation is just like, you wanna explore this more, if you wanna go deeper, I think you'd love this. So it's either, watch this piece of content or come to a workshop or
32:14watch my video, which explains how the program works. So in our world, like, workshops are amazing for that.
32:21And we've got a video. Ours is called the million dollar plan, which just explains here's what it looks like to work with us.
32:32And the hot prospects, what do they want? Well, they probably want to jump on a call, if that's how you sell, or they'd just like to read your offer doc, if that's how you sell. And so if you think about this as a series of easy yeses, that's what we've got. We've got
32:47lead magnet or micro magnet. There's a video on that. We've got workshop. Maybe we've got a video, an explainer. Some people call it a VSL. We call it a nice and quickly. Or you've got call or, in our case, doc. And that's a series of easy yeses. You don't need all the steps, but we do need something for cold people, something for warm people, something for hot people.
33:07And remember, when we do the invitation, it's just an invitation. So remember right at the start of this video, told you about my client who put up her hand and said, hey. Is there any chance I could watch the recording of your workshop so I could see the pitch at the end? Was like, oh, if you watch the pitch, you're gonna be really freaking disappointed. Why?
33:22Because it was just an easy yes, next step for the people who had seen enough and wanted more. But I said if you watch
33:32what happened in the content before the casual invitation at the end and you knew what to look for, you would have your mind relatively blown. And when I looked back at my slides and the workbook, there were 21 things that I did, intentionally simple things, all designed to make my content more useful, more fun, and sell better. Today, I've given you five of them.
33:52Teach and sell the biggie. We're not teaching then selling. Every piece of content is useful and influential at the same time. Number two, we're gonna draw a line in the sand, an old way versus a new way. And you've a choice right now. You could keep doing content and hoping it sells, or you could
34:07build the new cool way. Stretching the gap, making sure people are clear about, uh, how screwed they are right now, what's possible for them, and what's holding them back. Product placement. If you want people to take an action, install it in the content. And last,
34:20an easy next yes. So what's the next easy yes here for you watching this video? Well, I guess it depends how cold, warm, or hot you are.
34:32If you just found me, dude, play around in the channel. Binge. Find some stuff. You're gonna love it. Go hard. Absorb all of my free stuff. I give the source away.
34:44If you're a little bit warmer, well, if we've got a workshop coming up, you'll probably hear about it if you're on my email list. If you wanna check out the video which explains how we grow coaching business like this, well, there's a way to do that too. In the description below, there'll be a link to the Mean Dollar plan. Click it, and you'll learn our exact system for getting coaches to from 6 figures to 7 figures really quickly.
35:02And if you're hot and you wanna book a call sorry. Disappoint you, dude. We don't do calls. Before read the doc and find out how Black Belt works and what we're doing this month, in that million dollar plan video, at the end, I'll give you a secret code word to message me on Instagram. Find that, send me the secret code word, and that'll be our sign that we had this conversation, and I'll show you what we're up to. This has been really fun.
35:22This is the one microskill that's had the biggest meta payoff for me, and I hope you take it. I hope you run with it. Because if you do, creating content is gonna be way more fun, and getting clients is gonna be a whole lot easier. Thanks for watching. It's been really fun.
§ · For Joe
Steal the entire Taki playbook — it's the closest match to what Joe is already trying to do.
Modern Creator playbook
Taki teaches the exact framework the dossier visualizes. Different niche, same playbook. If you're going to copy one creator's system wholesale, this is the one.
- Steal the 70-second hook structure: pattern interrupt → 15-year personal vulnerability → origin reframe → authority drop with specific stats → frame-the-show anecdote you'll close-the-loop on at the end. Run it on every Killing Excuses / Sip-Ship-Sell intro.
- Adopt the pink/blue/white post-it pre-shoot ritual. Pink = teach (what's useful), Blue = fun (activities/questions), White = sell (where to seed the offer). Build all three layers BEFORE recording, not after.
- Map every video into the 5 principles: teach-and-sell / line-in-the-sand / stretch-the-gap / product-placement / easy-yes-funnel. Use this as a self-audit checklist for any content piece — does each box get checked?
- Use Models, Metrics, Metaphors as a 3-column planning grid. Pick one of each per principle being taught. Forces concrete imagery instead of abstract claims.
- Steal Mike's Four-Point Scale wholesale for any audit content. Replaces the 1-10 fence-sit with a forced 'good enough / not good enough' commit.
- Coin negative-behavior terms aggressively: 'pubescent sweaty business genius' (Taki), 'big boy voice' (Ronny), 'credibility porn' (Ronny). Joe version: 'SaaS-tax voice', 'rental rot', 'Coolify cope', 'subscription stockholm syndrome'. One per video minimum.
- Use the bushfire-sign cold/warm/hot tiered close on every video. Three offers in three sentences, ordered by readiness. 'If you just found me — binge MCN. If you're warm — check the LFB Line. If you're hot — DM me on Twitter.' Replace 'subscribe for more' forever.
- Implement Offer Wrapping for MCN+. Same product, new wrapping every month. Different positioning angle, different ICP highlight, different bonus stack. Reason to act this month vs waiting.
- Add the Super Signature to every Joe email and newsletter. Three persistent invitations at the bottom. $6 Stack guide / LFB Line / MCN+. No pressure, always there.
