Colin Theriot: How to Use Product Creation,

Copy, and Content to Create a Fan Base that Buys

Your Books and Products Over and Over Again
Transcript

The Rev. Dr. Sir Colin D. Theriot is not just a retired

copywriter and premier collector of phony titles which
he bought online. He is also a sought after professional
liar and public speaker.

Most famously however, Colin is also the founder and

current leader of the Cult of Copy – a secretive
organization of over 15,000 professional (and hobbyist)
persuasion agents placed in all 50 U.S. States and her
territories, as well as over 100 other entirely non-
strategic countries and commonwealths around the
world.

Rumor has it that using a homemade rocket, they have recently taken control of an
abandoned WW2 era Nazi moon base, from which they broadcast the secrets of
persuasion, influence, mind-control, and marketing so that the people of earth might one
day be free from their invisible puppet masters.

Colin is going to show you how to develop a cult like following for your content and
products that leads to long term sustainable profits. These are the summary notes of
Colin’s interview, designed to help you to get the core concepts and taking action more
quickly.

1,000 True Fans

This idea originally came from an article by Kevin Kelly. He defined a true fan as
someone who follows you, someone in your audience who buys everything that you
offer. They're just that much of a rabid fan of what it is that you do and what it is you're
all about. The 1,000 True Fans idea was that if you create only $100 worth of products a
year and you have 1,000 true fans, then you have a nice six-figure business, right?

My alternate version is, if you had only 100 true fans, which is super easy on social
media. So if you can get 100 true fans, and make $1,000 worth of products a year,

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the math would work out the same way. I could have a six-figure business and not have
to work that hard because all I have to do is keep feeding the true fans the kind of stuff
they want.

We want someone who is going to be able to get a bigger return on their investment
when buying your stuff. Because if you want to make something expensive, the
customer has to get at least that amount of value out of what you sell. People are willing
to spend more if it's valuable information that they can use to get a bigger return.

For writers, if you are learning how to make money as a writer, how to live a writer's
lifestyle and get paid to do that, then you are the kind of person that spends money to
learn this stuff. There are many of you doing the same thing, so that is your audience.

The people that you currently think of as competitors are your future customers when
you immediately turn around and teach people what it is that you're doing that's working.
You are sort of becoming a journalist, keeping track of your own success and your trials
and tribulations. Things you are trying, things that work, things that don't work. Things
you bought that you like, things you bought that you hated. You just basically tell people
what you're doing and that's where your audience comes from.

That material is valuable and people will pay you for it. You're exploring the options
and making the decisions that they don't have time to do themselves.

I do trainings that are one-problem, one-solution trainings. For example, like a sales
letter template or a video script template. I'll do an hour-long webinar. These trainings
are for pros. So they're unpolished. They're just pure content. We get right into it. Not a
lot of fluff. There's not a lot of sales material because they pre-paid $100 to attend. It's
already sold.

You don't necessarily have to use a whole lot of

polish if your audience can appreciate the
content even in a raw format.

The Bellwether Effect

The bellwether effect means leading from the middle. This is what you’re doing in the
1,000 True Fans model. You are not advanced very far beyond the audience that you're
building up. You're not the guru at the top of the mountain. You're climbing the same
mountain that your audience is. You're just a couple of steps ahead of them and you're
telling them, "Don't step in that hole. Don't trip over that rock."

Sheep: Pretend your audience are sheep. One sheep moves, another follows. Then
another and another and soon the whole flock is moving.

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Shepherd: These people typically pay attention to the sheep and make their living off of
exploiting or consuming these sheep. You have the shepherd who you would think of
that as your legitimate benevolent guru-type person who really wants to help people.
They've mastered whatever it is they're about and they just want to help people, right?
That's the shepherd.

Sheepdog: The sheepdog is typically the kind of person that works for the sheep, right?
They don't do anything new. They're not creative. They're not helping. You can think of
that as the affiliate marketer. They don’t make their own new products, but they serve
the audience by promoting the things that the shepherds make.

Wolf: Wolves are the scammers and the people who are selling get-rich-quick schemes.
In the health and beauty industry they're selling all kinds of potions and pills and
shortcuts and all of those kinds of things. And basically they don't care if the customer
buys and then never buys again. They just want more and more customers.

People who follow the wolf model tend to have to jump from business to business
because once they burn a customer, that customer is burned for life. This is a whole
different model where we want the benefits of what the shepherd gets, being an expert
and having his own flock.

But we don't want the work and responsibility of being a shepherd. And we don’t really
need to build up our own little bunch of sheepdogs to keep our audience in check. We
want to be one of the sheep in the flock. We want to be the boss sheep. So that's
where the term bellwether comes from.

You want to market yourself as a bellwether – the one who moves first who has
the bell on. You're not a guru. You're not the master. You're a person, just like your
audience, who is executing and learning and doing and getting results and trying to
succeed at your mutual interest that you share with your audience.

You move first and you make it easy to follow along with what you're doing because the
content you share shows what you're doing. You end up having a large flock of people
who are interested in what you do. They are following along with you without you having
to position yourself as something you're not or pretend you have experience that you
don't necessarily have.

You don't have to fake anything. You can be 100 percent honest and you will build up an
interested audience around what you do.

Now the trick is over time you get better at what it is that you do. You learn more, you
practice more. You become more skilled. Eventually you will be more of a master at
whatever it is that is your chosen pursuit.

The audience has been following along from the beginning. Some of them are going to
be very successful and give you credit for helping them along the way. But for new
people coming in, they see you as this expert. But if they go back and dig, you've
created a living ‘before and after’ record of your evolution from your humble beginnings
to your awesome present that only seems to get better and better.

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 The 4 Whys
If you answer the following four why questions, it will cultivate the readers to become
fans. The people in the audience who would just normally be a passive reader and move
onto the next thing, all of the sudden you're giving them hooks like Velcro that stick to
them and make them want to read a little more. And then when they read a little more
they're stuck a little closer and so on and it keeps building.

So here are the four questions you need to answer with your writing…

Why you? Why are you the one to deliver this message to them? And what connection
do you have with this product? If you are a person who is pursuing a professional writing
career, that's why you. If your subject is about writing, that's why you are the right person
to be talking about. That is your connection to the topic.

Why me? Why are you bothering them? Presumably in this scenario it's because you
have somehow been able to identify them as being someone who is interested in
becoming a professional writer, whether this is done via a targeted ad or you're in a
topic-specific group or you're just posting on your Facebook wall because you are
professionally and socially connected to people interested in that topic.

You just need to give them a reason so that they understand why you are bothering
them. Why are you talking to me? Of all the people on earth you could be telling this to,
why are you telling it to them?

Why this? Whatever topic or subject it is that you are writing to them about, whether it's
a product or a service or just an idea, an angle, whatever it is, why this and not any other
thing you can talk about?

It should be unique and special and meaningful and not just a little tidbit that won't do
anything for them. But it should no matter what it is in any message you write further
than in your mutual pursuit, even if it's just like an inch. If it's just a little thought for the
day, a little inspirational quote.

All of that is just a slight nudge, but it's better than a cat picture that has nothing to do
with anything. So always be thinking of what is it that I can share that's going to push
people, whether by an inch or a mile. And that's why this. That's why whatever it is
you're sharing with them is valuable to them. And you can express that to them. Explain
why it is.

Why now? This is the big one that really brings the marketing into it. Why is this
message urgent? Why can't they wait or hesitate? Why do they need to get into the habit
of stopping what they're doing and reading what you posted immediately when they
encounter it?

When you include as many of these as you can -- you don't always have to use all four if
you can't think of a good way to -- but you use them cumulatively and it gives people a
reason to understand why they're following you, why they like you. Why they care about
you as a lens for the information they want to know about.

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The reason they start to value you that way is because you're always telling them, "I
made this just for you. I’m sharing this just with you because you are the person who is
interested in this and I thought you would like it. Here's why it will help you. And here's
why it couldn't wait. It makes it seem like you are constantly gathering information from
all over the internet to give it to them right away because you value them so much.
That's the perception it creates when all of your material for your audience answers
these four questions explicitly without them having to ask.

Some final thoughts from Colin:

It doesn’t have to be fancy: You don't necessarily have to use a whole lot of polish if
your audience can appreciate the content even in a raw format. It doesn’t have to be
fancy; it just needs to be finished.

Start today: If your goal is eventually to have such an audience following you and
listening to your recommendations and buying your training and paying you for your
advice, start it today, even though you're just a beginner. Learn something valuable, do
it, record it, share it and then for advanced stuff you teach it and you sell it.

Do it Live: If you do it in front of a live audience and you really do know what you're
talking about, they will ask questions and make the material even better than it would
otherwise be. So basically they do a lot of the work for you and you end up only having
to do preparation that is as big as this mind map you saw in his presentation.

You don't have to do a whole lot more. You just put it together and get it in front of them
in the format that you can share. Just bombard them with your brilliance. Read off your
mind map, share all the ideas, give them everything that you needed to give them.

Set deadlines: You plan to perform the material into existence and record it by doing it
live in front of an audience. You send the deadline for the presentation and lock it in. You
start charging people to attend and you know you have to show up in a week or
whatever and give them the content that you told them you would deliver. You create
this hard deadline. You can't fiddle with it forever. At some point you have to call it done
and show up with what you have.

Sell It: Once you build up your audience, you can sell many things besides your book,
your product or service. A few things Colin mentioned were merchandise like t-shirts,
critiques, mentoring, training programs and speaking engagements.

Join Colin’s Facebook Group at:

http://facebook.com/groups/cultofcopy

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