Hook, Story, Offer

Unpacking the hook, story, offer - plus examples 

All of business really boils down to these three simple rules:

1. Learn how to get someone’s attention.

2. Tell them a story that builds belief, emotion, and trust.
3. Sell them something they want that’s absolutely irresistible.

Isn’t that good news?! Business boils down to three simple rules. No crazy huge
business plan necessary. In Mission #1, I’m going to walk you through these three rules
in detail as we create an offer to sell throughout the challenge.

I want to warn you up front that many people try to skip this part of their training,
because they don’t think it’s critical to selling. They are more focused on the nuts and
bolts of how to build a sales funnel or run a Facebook Ad.

In fact, in our Two Comma Club X Coaching program, one of the coaches - Julie Stoian
- she reviews peoples’ funnels each week. People usually expect that she’s going to
find something broken in the funnel, or maybe she’ll suggest a button color change or
design tweak. But 99% of the time, every broken funnel she looks at is broken because
the entrepreneur forgot to:

1. Successfully get someone’s attention.

2. Tell them a story that built belief, emotion, and trust.
3. Sell them something they want that’s absolutely irresistible.

To make these three rules super easy to remember, we’re going to shorten them.

Every business selling online needs a great:

1. Hook
2. Story
3. Offer

I’m going to dive into each one in more detail, and then we’ll proceed to the offer
creation part of this mission!

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 Hook

A hook is ​a piece of metal used to catch things...most popularly, fish.

When you go fishing, you put your bait on a hook. After all, if you were to just throw a
bunch of bait in the water, it would be very difficult to catch any fish right? But when you
combine bait with the hook, the fish is naturally attracted to the bait, and the hook is
what stops them from swimming in the direction they were going, and instead, takes
them into the other direction (aka your boat).

If you think of yourself on a crowded street in a city like New York, if you had to get
someone’s attention as they were walking briskly down the street, what would you say
to get them to first stop walking, and then turn and look at you?

You’d have to think of something pretty creative, polarizing, or surprising. Without those
two actions happening first, you can’t get your message across. Forget selling anything!

The hook is an essential part of the selling process because it causes two actions in our
potential customers:

1. It stops them from whatever they are doing (scrolling, reading, etc.).
2. It repositions their focus and attention on you (or your ad, your sales page, your
offer).

A lot of people ask me if the hook is a part of the copy. It can be, but it doesn’t have to
be. The hook can be an image, a headline, a word, or a video.

You know you’ll have created a successful hook, because people will usually say this in
their head,

“Wait what?”

Hooks are a part of everything you do online. Every email, advertisement, landing page,
sales page, or webinar needs to lead with a hook or people won’t pay any attention to
you.

Let’s look at a bunch of examples of hooks, since it takes a little while to learn how to
“think” in hooks.

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Example #1 - Fit to Fat to Fit

Drew Manning is the creator of the 60 Day Keto Jumpstart. In the very crowded health
market space, he knew he had to have a great hook in order to catch peoples’ attention.
So, he decided to PURPOSELY get fat, so he could get fit again, and show that it was
possible for anyone. He went from fit….to fat...to fit.

For Drew, his hook is literally the title of his website. What we’ll get into next is story,
since that is the part of the process that bonds people to you once you’ve gotten their
attention.

Example #2 - Bulletproof Coffee

Another example in the health market is Dave Asprey’s Bulletproof Coffee and diet. Just
like Drew, he faced the problem of SO MANY diets. How could he create a hook that
would make people stop and say, “Wait what?”. He did it by suggesting people put
butter in their coffee. This became symbolic of his high fat, no carb Keto lifestyle, and it
was just enough of a hook, to catch the eye of millions.

For Dave, the hook is a two word idea - Bulletproof Coffee.

Example #3 - Funnelhacking

This next example is one of my own. When we first started selling Clickfunnels, it failed
miserably. People just weren’t excited or getting it. It took us several tries to find the
right hook, and the first one that really stuck was “Funnelhacking”.

I took a concept in business that’s already pretty well known - called reverse
engineering - and turned it into something curious, exciting, and accessible to everyday
entrepreneurs. If I had just said to people,

“Hey! Reverse engineer your competitors sales funnels to figure out what works in the
market,” no one would have listened.

Instead, I created this word - Funnelhacking - which gave it new life, a new edge, and
just enough curiosity to get people to pay attention.

In this example the hook was a combination of the word Funnelhacking, as well as the
headline, “How to Ethically Steal All Your Competitor’s Traffic And Get It To Flowing to
Your Stuff Instead.”

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Example #4 - The Book of Mormon Podcast

Veering off of products for a moment here, you can see that hooks work even in
non-sales environments. When I decided to start a podcast about my Mormon faith, I
used my intro in my podcast to create a hook.

In this case the hook and the story were virtually the same. I explained that in an
attempt to revitalize my habit for reading God’s word, I went out and purchased one of
the original Books of Mormon off eBay for thousands of dollars. Even though I knew I
could get a copy for $20.00 at any bookstore, I wanted to feel the weight, the
sacredness, and the history of my faith. So I bought this book to read from.

As you can see, people listening will think, “Wait what did he do?” because not
everyone spends thousands of dollars on one book.

In these examples, the hook is ultimately the idea represented in a word, sentence,
image, video, headline, or even the story. Another way to look at it is to think of the hook
as the ​reason.​ ​If someone receives an email from you, what is the reason for sending
it? That reason is the hook.

As we go through the challenge, it’ll be important to think like your customers. If you
could get inside your customer’s head and hear them ask themselves,

“Why is John offering me this product?”

“Why is Brittany sending me this email?”
“Why is Myles showing me this ad?”

The answer you come up with should be compelling, curious, polarizing, exciting,
and...it should also make logical sense.

How To Find A Hook

I’m convinced one of the reasons why people skip over this is because it’s hard. It’s
honestly one of the hardest parts of the whole selling process. But once you have a
great hook, everything becomes infinitely easier. So don’t skip it!

I told you a bit ago about one of our 2CCX coaches Julie. She describes brainstorming
a hook like a long walk in mayonnaise. The creative process of brainstorming hooks
feels a lot like slogging through dense humid air. It’s hard to walk. It’s hard to think.
Sometimes you get stuck.

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But if you know that’s how it’s going to feel at first, you’ll keep pushing. Because as you
continue to brainstorm, eventually your brain will start activating the creative side of you
and hook ideas will start flowing. Don’t be surprised if it takes you a solid three hours to
find one hook, and then 10 more hooks come in the 15 minutes that follow.

For the purposes of this exercise, let’s pretend we’re trying to sell an iPhone. We know
that iPhones are almost like a commodity right? People just look for the best price or
plan and buy. There’s virtually nothing that differentiates one seller from another.

We’re on the streets of New York City and we want to sell an iPhone. We need to get
someone to STOP walking and turn to look at us.

Here are four ways to look for a good hook:

1. Look in your past or childhood.​ Is there anything that happened that would
make a good story? Pick the juiciest part of the story and lead with that as the
hook.
2. Look at your struggles or obstacles.​ Is there something that you’ve done or
had done to you that will make a good story? Pick the juiciest part of the story
and lead with that as the hook.
3. Try to create a story by doing something cool or crazy. ​If you don’t have
anything in your past or with your struggles, could you do something to make an
amazing story? If so, what’s the one line you can pull out that would act as your
hook?
4. Look at the “common” wisdom and throw rocks at it. ​What are people
currently thinking, doing, talking about, with regards to the common wisdom of
the day? Can you poke holes in it? If so, what would be that one line that would
act as your hook?

In our example, our hook will most likely be the spoken word. But as we do this online,
the hook can be represented in other things.

If I were trying to sell an iPhone on the streets of New York City, in order to create a
good hook, I need to know who I’m selling to. Most people in NYC already have phones.
They are busy. They are rushing around. They are working on Wall Street, closing
deals. If they have a phone and don’t care one lick about me, how can I get them to pay
attention.

Immediately what comes to mind is this: What if I pre-loaded a conversation on the

phone between the two greatest investors in the world - Ray Dalio and Warren Buffet?
That would be insane! Anyone on Wall Street would kill to hear their trade secrets.

Now that I have that idea, I have to think of one quick line I can use to stop someone on
the street, immediately.

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“Hey, quick question for you...I have a 2hr. conversation between Dalio and Buffet
recorded on this phone discussing trade secrets. You interested?”

This is using method #3 - something insane or crazy - to craft a good hook!

You can create a hook for anything, no matter where you sell or how you sell it. In fact,
as an exercise, sit down and figure out how you would sell the following products - to
your neighbor, or to someone on social media.

1. Stick of deodorant
2. A book on budgeting
3. A bag of exotic Colombian coffee beans
4. A new pair of running shoes

A lot of you doing this exercise will naturally feel the need to tell a story as you’re finding
your hooks. That’s okay, because that’s the very next part of selling online - the story.

I separated hook from story here in this book to help teach the concept, but the truth is -
most hooks lead into the story so seamlessly, it’s hard to see them as two different
things.

Story

The story gives the context of the hook. It also serves to bond the seller to the
customer.

Have you ever seen a movie where you don’t even care what happens to the main
character? That’s because the producers and writers didn’t tell the right story. They
didn’t create enough context or meaning to give you any emotional attachment to the
character. The selling process is an emotional one, so we all need to get really good at
telling stories.

One of my friends, Jason Fladlien, he was having trouble coming up with both a hook
and a story for one of his webinars. He wanted to talk about ecommerce but didn’t have
a current ecommerce example in his own business to use!

So he decided to go find a top ecommerce seller, Trey Lewellen, and send him money
so he could ask him a few questions. He sent him $5000 and then screenshotted the
bank transfer and said (during his offer pitch), “Look, there’s this guy who is the number
one seller inside of Clickfunnels. He’s got the only funnel to do $20 million in 6 weeks
selling an ecommerce product. I paid him $5000 to interview him.”

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The hook was the screenshot of the bank transfer. It was the “wait what?” moment. The
story was the context and reason. Jason was showing his audience that he was so
serious about learning from one of the greatest ecommerce people, that he paid him
$5000 for his advice. They happened at the same time in the webinar, essentially
blending the hook and story together.

There are so many things to teach about storytelling, and I encourage you to work on
your storytelling skills long after this challenge is over.

But one of the greatest KILLERS of the story? It isn’t lack of creativity or emotion or
drama. It’s something I call Technobabble. To explain this, I’m going to tell you a story
from my network marketing days.

As the co-founder of a network marketing company that grew really really fast (500
million dollars in three years time), I went to a meeting where I was to give this
awesome presentation to about 120 of our most enthusiastic distributors.

As I stood in the lobby watching all these distributors wait for the meeting to start, they
were pouncing on people hanging out into the lobby...looking for buyers. Now….these
distributors were diehard fans - they had the swag and the t-shirts and everything.

I watched them try to talk to these new people and many of them were committing the
#1 sin of selling...without even realizing it. The ​victims ​prospects looked scared, unsure,
and some of them were even running away!

So what where they doing?

They were talking in technobabble.

My good friend Carrie wrote a book called ​“If your product is so good, why is
nobody buying it?​”​ She has a chapter in there all about techno-babble.

She explains how speaking about the technology, the process, the features, is the #1
killer of sales.

As I walked into the presentation room, ready to give my lecture, I stopped and looked
out over the crowd. I knew they needed something completely different. I saw a few of
the people in the room, the people who were the worst offenders, and I called them out.
I said,

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“I saw you out in the lobby trying to sell product. You were talking in techno-babble and
scaring people off. I know that you’re excited about the product. I’m excited. We’re all
here because we believe what we’re selling is the best.

The problem is that when you use techno-babble, you are logically trying to convince
people that what you have is the best. But people don’t buy things on logic. They buy
based on emotion.

So all of you who did this today, I want you to stand up, and I want you to tell your story.
How’d you find this company? Why did you get into it? What happened in your life that
made such a difference once you got ahold of it?”

One by one they started telling these incredible stories. Stories with emotion, meaning,
and aha! Moments. I drew a little picture of the epiphany bridge on the whiteboard up on
stage, and I started to explain what this script is, and why it’s so effective.

How to Stay Away From Technobabble: The Epiphany Bridge Script

So many people FORGET what it felt like before they got ​ahold of the information that
changed their beliefs and convinced them to buy something​.

Good storytellers don’t forget that. They know that in order to get someone to feel the
same emotion they have, they have to first start where the prospect is at, and then lead
them to the spot they want them to go.

Most of us buy things at the end of a journey. It can be a short or a long journey, but it’s
usually at the end of it.

For example, if you have really dry skin, your journey started with you looking for a
remedy. You tried over the counter lotions, then you went to the doctor, then you bought
some books on skin care, then you tried this “skin” diet, and eventually - after all that
didn’t work, you decided to get a bottle of this essential oil that your friend swears by.

Then….it works. You have this aha! moment. Your journey has ended because you
found your solution. You’re so excited about the relief you’ve found, you start reading all
about oils. You geek out on their properties and history.

Your best friend comes over one day and you try to sell her on these oils, and instead of
explaining your journey, you start spewing all the latest science you’ve geeked out on.
But remember, that isn’t what gave you the aha! In the first place. You were tired,
frustrated, out of ideas, and then experienced relief. That story, that experience -
cemented your belief.

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If you told your journey story instead, your best friend would be sold immediately.

The Epiphany Bridge Script helps your prospect go down that journey too so they can
feel that moment of “Aha!”

This concept is SO important, I dedicated an ENTIRE chapter to it in my book, Expert

Secrets. You should pick up a copy because it will change your life.

An EB script breaks down like this, and once you practice it - it’ll come naturally.

● Backstory - ​What happened, or what is the context that led you to look for a
solution to your problem or desire?
● Desire - ​What did you want to accomplish?
● Wall - ​What problem did you face when you started this journey?
● Epiphany - ​What was the Aha! moment? What did it feel like?
● Plan - ​What was the plan you used to get the result you wanted?
● Conflict - ​What conflict did you experience along the way?
● Achievement ​- What was the result?
● Transformation - ​How did it change you?

Some of you looking at that will panic and think, “I can’t remember all those points every
time I tell a story!”

We can shorten it even more if you want. Let’s use one the 22 Rules of Storytelling by
Pixar.

Once Upon a Time, there was a __1_____. Everyday __2____. One day, ___3_____.
Because of that __4_____. And because of that ___5____. Until finally, _____6__.

1. Who (Backstory)
2. What (Desire)
3. Problem (Wall)
4. Attempt at solution (Epiphany & Plan)
5. The Struggle (Conflict)
6. Solution (Achievement & Transformation)

You can tell these stories in 2 minutes or 20 minutes.

Before continuing to the next step, the offer, let’s revisit the four items you were creating
hooks for:

1. Stick of deodorant
2. A book on budgeting
3. A bag of exotic Colombian coffee beans

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 4. A new pair of running shoes

Can you tell an Epiphany Bridge Script story that gives the hook its context and
meaning?

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to sell!

Offer

A good hook and story create the right environment for your customer to buy....as long
as your offer is irresistible and WHAT THEY WANT.

Notice I’m saying the word “offer” and not product. That’s because products are
commodities.

Think about gas stations.

Everyone sells gas, and there’s a million places you can buy gas. So everyone is selling
the same product. The customer drives to whatever gas station is the closest or
whoever is the cheapest. They all compete on convenience and price.

If that’s your business, that’s a horrible business to be in because now you’re chasing
people down to the bottom and your margins are going to get smaller and smaller until
eventually you have no profit whatsoever.

Offers take you out of the competition entirely.

Another one of our 2CCX coaches, Stephen Larsen, he’s an expert in offer creation.
And he makes everyone in the group promise to NEVER sell a product again, only
offers.

To demonstrate his point, at one of our live events, he tricked the audience into buying
a book he’d never even read!

He started out with a hook.

It was a picture of this book on his slide deck about competition and winning. He told a
piece of a story to reel us in, and then proceeded to give context with the full story. I
can’t remember all the details now, which I guess is a part of my point. I remember how
I felt after the story even if I can’t remember the details. Anyway, it was a story about
meeting the author of this book. After he told the story, he sold us an offer.

He didn’t just ask us to buy the book.

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He told us he was going to give us his detailed cliff notes and commentary as well. Then
he was going to give us a deep dive interview he’d done with the author. Then he was
going to invite the first 50 of us to his house for a two-day mastermind and challenge.

Whereas the book is a commodity (sold everywhere), Stephen had crafted an offer that
made buying the book from him….irresistible.

We were invested in the story, we believed that we could have the same transformation
he had, and his offer was irresistible.

How to Create a Great Offer

This is another one of those topics that you could go deep on for months, and I
encourage you to do so after the challenge. But for now, we’re going to use a simple
process to craft an offer.

Let’s pull up those four products again:

1. Stick of deodorant
2. A book on budgeting
3. A bag of exotic Colombian coffee beans
4. A new pair of running shoes

Using the running shoes as an example, let’s set up our offer with the right hook and
story first.

1. Hook: ​The Shoes That Took A Man Around The World. Maybe this is
represented in a picture or video or headline, but we’re going to get people's’
attention by suggesting that one pair of shoes lasted as a man ran around the
world.
2. Story: ​The story will be about a father whose son was born without the ability to
walk. And this father, in his grief, started running marathons for charity. And with
each marathon, he thought about what it’d be like to run with his son to show him
the terrain and the area where he was running. This gave him a passion to run in
all the most remote and crazy places, to show his son the world.

That’s a dramatic hook and story, but you might already be feeling some level of
emotion at it right?

The offer comes next.

He’s going to sell all-terrain running shoes as a “piece” of the offer, but he’s going to
include other things in the bundle.

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Offers are like bundles. If you’re a kid on Christmas morning, are you more intrigued by
one square box under the tree, or the gift that’s stacked with three or four presents
wrapped up with a bow?

It’s not enough to just throw random products together to create an offer bundle. You
see this sometimes on infomercials at night, where the bonus pieces of the offer have
hardly anything to do with the main product.

Instead, you need to think the way your customer thinks. What would they naturally
need along with the main product? To create a great offer, first write out the things your
customer might be thinking.

1. Will these shoes really protect my feet from rocks?

2. Will they really last?
3. How long does it take to break them in?
4. I have problems with my feet sweating and not getting enough air.

Once you have those beliefs, objections, and thoughts, you can naturally create pieces
of your offer that deal with those thoughts.

So in addition to the ​all-terrain shoes​, he’s going to sell:

1. A “rough terrain” training video to teach people how to run in mountainous

regions.
2. A trade-in for life guarantee so people can return their shoes for a new pair if they
run out.
3. A simple “Break In Your New Shoes” running schedule and workout they can use
to reduce possibly injury or blisters.
4. A pair of sweat-wicking socks that help draw moisture away from sweaty feet.

You see how the offer perfectly matches the beliefs and objections? With each piece of
the offer, you are sweetening the deal, removing yourself out of the competition,
creating an irresistible offer, and crushing objections, all at once.

Once you have an offer, you can do one of two things:

1. You can package it up and sell it as a bundle.

OR
2. You can “unbox” it and offer one piece at a time until they’ve purchased the
whole bundle.

We call this presentation style or unboxing style.

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With presentation style, you do a presentation (think infomercial) and sell the whole
offer as one package and price. With unboxing style, you offer them the coolest/sexiest
thing first, and once you get them to say yes, ask them if they want the other pieces as
well.

No matter which way you choose, your offer has to be filled with product pieces that the
customer wants, and thinks they need.

Remember the iPhone example?

I can create an offer to sell an iPhone to an entrepreneur very easily.

For example, if I’m selling iPhones, maybe I need to sell to entrepreneurs who are trying
to get more stuff done faster. Now that I know that’s the market I’m going for, I can craft
an offer very specific to this.

“When you buy this iPhone, I’m going to also give you…” and then I create an offer.

● I’m going to include a time management for entrepreneurs app

● Weight loss program for entrepreneurs app
● 1:1 Voxer access to me as a coach for their business, built right into the phone

When I sell this product, they can go buy the iPhone for $400 from apple.com, or they
can buy it for $1000 from me, but they get all this other stuff that they don’t get
anywhere else.

This is the point. Not only will you eliminate the competition, you’ll get people to spend
more to buy the same product, simply because you added extra pieces to it.

Podcast Episodes On Hook, Story, and Offer

1. Testing Your Hooks

2. How To Focus On The Hook
3. The Offer That Helped To End WWI
4. Why I Throw Out So Many Hooks
5. The Hook, Story, And Offer

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