A tale of woe and webinars

Oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

You know how it is. A subject matter catches your eye. You hover over the sign-up button and try to convince yourself that this time it’ll be different. The voice in your head says “sucker” but you hate this voice because no one likes a cynic. You click… and fall into a cave of clichés.

Perhaps there’s a template for webinars that some business guru sold, but now that prices are falling, everyone’s trying to offload their stock as quickly as possible. This is the template…

First, begin by saying one of the following… “I’m soooo excited” “I’m super excited” “I’m beyond excited”. It’s essential to convey excitement at every given opportunity, presumably in the hope that some of this excitement will be catching. It’s not.

Next, avoid getting to the end of any sentence by reading on-screen messages, because that’s not annoying. Remember to give endless shoutouts “Hey Sharon from Doncaster, thanks for joining… Ah! Louise from Wisconsin loved our last podcast, thanks Louise! You have no idea how much this means! We have Puerto Rico in the house Woop! Woop! This is awesome. You’re all awesome.” Shoutouts are a way to make Sharon from Doncaster feel special for one nanosecond, thus ensuring she’ll be a lifelong subscriber . Andy Warhol once said, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”. Not even close Andy.

Next, get super excited about the content of an upcoming “offer” at the end of the webinar. The content of this offer is mind-blowing, life-changing, and absolutely essential. Although essential, only sign up “if it calls you”, though I’m unsure of the mechanics of how a piece of digital software makes requests. This is supposed to convey integrity. It just produces confusion. Am I hearing voices? Why not?

Next, make sure your content falls neatly into Pillars, Pyramids, or Pie charts. Bonus points if the words begin with the same letter. If you can’t manage this, then shoehorn the points into an acronym of some kind.

Next, get super excited — again — in case people are starting to think the information is generic or common sense. Ensure the reader that there is no BS but lots of kick-ass (this just means generic content with added swear words). Make some bad jokes then laugh… yes, laugh at your own wittiness! It makes you seem zany and someone people will definitely want to hang out with over the next 12 weeks of the program.

Finally hit them with the price, but… not so fast. First, break down the content into a shopping list of benefits — each with its own arbitrary price tag. For instance, an old interview you did that’s available on YouTube, is suddenly valued at $300. I lie… It’s actually $297 because even numbers have been banned from any online offer. Search the internet as much as you like, you won’t find an even number anywhere.

Make sure that just one of these items on the list is “worth the ticket price alone” because we’ve never heard that expression before.

By the time you get to the end of the shopping list, the total is something like $23,697.75. This is when you hit them with the massive, one-off, never-to-be-repeated (until next month) discount, which now brings the total to $797 so it’s “super affordable”.

After that, you’re home and hosed… no wait!! Add an endless bunch of bonuses. Then do a final edit… go through your copy to look for any word that has anything to do with “selling” and replace this with “serving” because serve is the new sell. Throw in “humble” for good measure.

In 2011 Brendon Burchard wrote a book called The Millionaire Messenger. In it, he told the faithful that there is no one on the planet who doesn’t have some bit of information to share, and that information can be monetized, so that you can achieve the Holy Grail… making money while you sleep. He urged everyone to “get on it” immediately because the market for information “had two years in it at best”. Not even close Brendon. 

Remember when someone at IBM said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers”? This is how badly Brendon underestimated peoples’ desire to talk to the world from a beachfront property.

“Making money in your sleep” is not a creative aspiration. Besides, there’s only so much coastline to go around.

All this is problematic for me because I now want to do my own webinar. I’m fairly certain it’ll be very different from all of the above but it’s free, so if you don’t like it you can leave any time.

It’s on 1^st December – just in time to get some clarity before Christmas. It’s not Ra Ra… You’re so awesome. And it’s not There, there You’re so wounded. It’s Fierce Love which likes to hang out in the centre.

DM for deets.