Intrigue - Story - Go Method: Effectively Deliver Your Message
Intrigue
This is anything that grabs your audience’s attention. It might be an action-packed opening to your fiction novel, or it might be a compelling question that gets a client to question a certain aspect of their life. Whatever it is, it should be designed to incite a deep urge within the person consuming your message to continue reading, watching, listening, click the button or whatever action you want them to initially take. It’s simple to think about but rather difficult to execute.
With the proliferation of online sales, we all have a keen eye for sales copy. We’ve all seen the ads that scream “Buy my stuff!” from an unauthentic mouth hungry for your dollars. If what you offer is action and adventure, then you better give it to them instantly like in the Flash example. If they want to lose weight, you have to intrigue them to ask, “Is this the person that will help me lose weight?” If you want your first date to believe you are a great person, you have 30-60 seconds upon meeting to give that great first impression.
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If they don’t believe within the next few seconds that you can answer the question they ask, they’ll keep scrolling or ghost you when you ask for a second date.
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Once you intrigue them with your opening conversation, scene, headline or fifteen second video, you must answer their next question,
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“What’s in it for me?”
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They’re interested in reading, watching, or listening to more but if you don’t answer this question they will move on. Remember, we all know that if we scroll past one piece of content, another just like it from a competitor will follow right behind yours. This is the same with personal and business relationships. If you don’t get it right for that person, someone else will. The key to all intriguing messages is to deliver them with as much authenticity as possible. Don’t be like the guy whose only desire is to sell you his product or service. It’s easy to see he’s only in it for himself. If your why is truly important to you, it is something other than personal gain for yourself, and you don’t do what the shady sales guy tells you to do, then your why will also be important to your audience.
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When you answer your audience’s question, “What’s in it for me?”, you have to simply tell them what’s in it for them. If the question you get them to ask is how to lose weight, then tell them how to lose weight. If it’s, “What happens next?”, then make sure you give them a way to see what happens next. Your messages should never include “I”, such as, “I want you to do this,” or “I am so great at doing that.” Always phrase it in a way that focuses their attention on themselves, because let’s face it, most people are only concerned with themselves and their own issues. They don’t care who you are or what you’ve done. They just want what they want, and they can believe you will give it to them or they will find someone else that can. Believe in yourself and your why. Speak from your heart even if your content is a cartoon or quote graphic. Ensure you get what you feel into the minds of your audience and they will trust you and consume your message.
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Story
Everyone loves a good story. This is the meat of what your goal is – your “story” is the plot, the education, the health or whatever your goal delivers. It is what you are trying to convey, to do or is a solution to a problem.
Anyone that can educate, entertain, and inspire with their stories will be immensely successful.
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When you incorporate stories to whatever it is you do, your message will be exponentially more powerful. When you craft your message in story form, you have the power to engage your audience’s attention in an entertaining and memorable way. With even the briefest of stories you can subtly include everything you want the listeners to know about you such as interweaving relevant experience and influential facts that help them relate to you and your offering.
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To further relate who you are in all your messaging, add your personal successes in story form to show you can help your audience realize the benefits of continuing to listen. Tell stories about challenges or failures that you overcame that your audience just so happens to share. Tell how what you learned from that failure can help them avoid it.
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I can’t emphasize how important framing your initial message to be interesting is to your success. Express who you are with a fascinating story. Perhaps, tell the story in a meaningful video. Intrigue your intended audience or you will lose them – possibly forever. In the story phase, you answer your audience’s questions and if you’re are especially creative, you answer them in a way they didn’t expect.
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There aren’t many second chances in this fast-paced world. If you don’t intrigue your audience and provide a compelling and interesting story, they will lose the benefit of your great thing which could be detrimental to them. However, your audience will never know because your message was substandard. It was rubbish. It couldn’t catch water with a bucket. You get the point. Don’t spend all your time and effort developing something amazing and then let it die with a poor message. It’s not selling if your audience needs it. It’s not begging if you believe intently that if they don’t hear you, they will be worse off.
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You have to put in at least as much effort in getting your message out as you did to finish the entire project.
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“But I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what words to use,” you may say. It’s ok. Most people say that and use it as an excuse to avoid the work in creating a great message.
People are always looking for something that will improve their lives. However, most people don’t know what that thing is and most of the time it’s not a thing in the first place or other people they think they need. Most think it’s something or someone that will make them “happy”, so they watch entertaining videos or episodes to live vicariously through the actors or go on terrible dates or enter difficult relationships. These “things” activate a place in their brain that temporarily satisfies the desire they want.
Many others look for stuff to buy to make them happy. But what they don’t realize is something I mentioned earlier but worth saying again, happiness is already in them. They simply need to choose to express it. But they don’t know or believe this is possible, so they continue to look for stuff and meaningless relationships – over and over again. Hopefully, your final product will help them find the thing they need but you must first give them what they think they want.
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20%/80% Rule
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Knowing the truth about first giving them what they want then what they need is powerful in getting your message to your audience. When you craft your message, you must show them what they want in an image, video, or compelling words. Once you catch their attention, you must give them at least 20% of what they’re looking for on your first contact with them. Only then will you be able to deliver the 80% that will be what they actually need. There’s no better way. You have to give them some portion of what they want. But that’s often not what they need. They need your completed project; they just don’t know it until they stop to find out. Once you get them to stop and give them what they want, there’s a good chance they’ll stick around for what they need, especially if you mix in their need throughout their want.
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Something else to supercharge your messaging is to acquire the ability to enter the conversations your audience is already having in their heads.
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When you think about what you should say, think about your audience and what they are constantly thinking about. This shouldn’t be too hard especially if you created a product or service intended for them.
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There’s a good chance you had or are still having those conversations with yourself. You may have created your project because it solves a problem you once struggled with. I wanted an AI powered investment platform that could crunch data better than I can, so I built it.
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What to say doesn’t involve catchy headlines or sales tactics. It only has to do with you entering the conversation that they are already having which is probably one you’ve had with yourself and answered with your project.
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So, when you’re creating your message, don’t waste time on a boring self-interested intro. Open with that business failure and what happened after that gave you the skills to help them in their business. Get them to identify with you, to say “me too” to the stories you tell them – the stories that each of them has gone or are going through. You know when you’re doing this as you look into a crowd of nodding heads. Then you know you’ve entered the conversation they are having regarding human resources, accounting, marketing, advertising, or whatever it is that you do.
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You intrigue them with your compelling story and enter the existing conversation. If you don’t have that particular story because you are young and inexperienced, you can either wait until you have that experience, which I don’t recommend, or you can use someone else’s such as a mentor, friend or biography from someone well known. Stories are powerful regardless of who’s in them. Tell a compelling story. Enter the conversation. Give them what they want and what they need in an interesting way and you’ll have the influence you need to achieve anything.
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Go
The Go of Intrigue – Story – Go is exactly what you think it is. Once you Intrigue someone by understanding them on their level and then tell them a Story that enters the conversation they are already having with themselves, the next step is to get them to Go do it – whatever it is you want them to do.
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Your Go for your audience may be to sign up for your course or maybe stick around to hear another song or get a second date,
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Whatever it is, you first intrigued them to listen then you told a story and now you want them to go do something. This is the case in each part of your goal.
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Intrigue – Story – Go works for any message you want to effectively convey. Start working now on each part in relation to the goals you are now closer to achieving.
Quotes Found in the Achieve Book
Stay present in the moment so that it can instill valuable awareness and lessons that stay with you moving forward. – Michael Lee
“Have you ever had an idea that you thought might change the world and it did? If not, what happened to it?” – Reem Kharbat
Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted, in one moment. Would you capture it, or just let it slip? – Eminem
Everyone experiences life from their own personal point of view. – Michael Lee
Substantial criticism for your projects will come from those closest to you –it’ll hurt, and you’ll probably believe them. – Michael Lee
Nothing worth doing is easy or everyone would do it.
– Michael Lee
"You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So, keep looking until you find it. Don't settle." – Steve Jobs
Find something someone wants and make it available to them. – Michael Lee
Big problems equal big opportunities. – Michael Lee
Your why must be more important than the discomfort of delivering the message. – Michael Lee
Why would you trade your precious hours for anything other than something that will positively transform your life or others? – Michael Lee
Live on the edge of chaos. – Michael Lee
To begin, you simply must choose to do so.
The most important thing to do once you complete the first step is to reset your attitude to a state that will enable you to tackle the next step. – Michael Lee
Ask yourself, what is my current attitude toward achievement?
– Michael Lee
Do not be concerned with the fruit of your action – just give attention to the action itself. The fruit will come of its own accord. – Michael Lee
The goal of life is not to merely get to the end, it is to enjoy all the intricate details it brings to us in each beautiful moment. – Michael Lee
Our goals, like life itself, will bring numerous obstacles. And again like life, we must handle these obstacles along the way, understanding many will be our own thinking.
– Michael Lee
You have a powerful voice. Your unique audience needs to hear the message from you and only you. If you have something to say, say it. If you have a product that will help many, build it. If you have love to give, offer it.
– Michael Lee
It’s better to have loved and lost than to F’ it all up because you were too scared to open your heart. Just get in there, give it all you have and enjoy the ride.
– Michael Lee
I want what you have. The world needs what you are building. People desire the love you want to share. Keep learning and pushing forward. Keep the momentum of greatness going project after project. – Michael Lee
Leave it all here when you leave this earth. Don’t take any of your greatness to the grave. Don’t be afraid to dance. Don’t leave your song unsung. Get your voice out there in any way you can and today there are more ways to do that than ever. The world needs you. I need you. Now go do it! – Michael Lee
I offer a service people need and desire. I am doing them a disservice if I don’t get it to them. – Michael Lee
“Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson
You can’t always get what you want. But if you try some time, you find, you get what you need. – Mick Jagger
Complainers always find a problem to every solution.
I must be unattached to the outcome when faced with a decision to act. – Michael Lee
Choices:
You may feel as if you actually have choices to make about where you want to go and what it takes to get there. But in reality, it’s a decision to finish and be successful or not. Anyone who runs a marathon will tell you that the last few miles are the hardest. Anyone who quits running before the finish line will tell you that they were instantly relieved – and it’s true. But days later, when the physical pain is gone, when they read about the people who finished ahead of them – who kept running – they will have a new pain.
Regret.
The only choice you have is to succeed.
Years from now when you look back at your life, all that will be left is what you did - not what you could have done if only this or that happened. If you are someone who believes big – then you don’t have a “choice” about how you finish.
None.
This life rewards people who do it right. This life has demands – you do them and succeed or you don’t do them and you struggle, there is no middle area. – Trevor Moawad and Michael Lee
Rehearsing what you see, playing it over and over in your mind until it becomes as real to you as your life right now. – Emmitt Smith
The future doesn’t exist, and I create it with each next action I take knowing that next action is the correct one. – Michael Lee
Build a new reality that makes the existing reality obsolete. – Michael Lee
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Happiness is not a treasure to be found. It is in us already. – Michael Lee
Love, Abundance and Joy live on the other side of your biggest fear. – Michael Lee
“If you get depressed, be happy that you are depressed and allow the depression to be. Then suddenly the depression will disappear and there will be a breakthrough.” – Osho
“What is important is to be inwardly very simple which is to have a mind not clogged with beliefs, with fears, with innumerable wants, for only such a mind is capable of real thinking, of exploration and discovery.”
—Jiddu Krishnamurti
“…depression is a funny and deceiving thing, that is absolutely something that can leave. It takes some subtle shifts slowly in our thinking, a little momentum in our physiology, a little here and there, forward momentum, even the smallest of steps forward is enough to get us out of the pit, one small shift at a time to reset those things.”
– Khristena Schuzer
Observe the struggle and watch it dissipate. It is not real.
– Michael Lee
Look at this human, experiencing this human emotion.
– Michael Lee
When you participate in observing your mind without giving explanation or judging it, then you remove yourself from the experience. – Michael Lee
Watch how your mind thinks and you disassociate yourself from the emotional thought. In this moment is when you have power over your feeling about the thought or memory and can associate to it any feeling you choose.
– Michael Lee
When the things that prevent happiness are gone, happiness is there – you won’t have to seek it.
– Michael Lee
This feeling isn’t serving me. – Michael Lee
Imagine it all beautiful and happy. – Michael Lee
Forty-five thousand negative thoughts a day for however many years we’ve been having them can etch incredibly deep beliefs that seem impossible to overcome.
– Michael Lee
This moment is beautiful and happy, – Michael Lee
The thing you’re going through now will eventually end and the thing you act on today could be the start of something great. – Michael Lee
Better is always better. – Michael Lee
I choose love over sadness. I choose love over anger. I choose love. – Michael Lee
There is always love, you simply have to look for it. Not in the sense that it is hidden but training your mind to see it out in the open – in the person next to you, in the grasshopper at the door, in the tree in the meadow. Love constantly flows all around and through us. Feel it, taste it, bring it alive in your life. – Michael Lee
Decide what you are good at and let others to do the rest.
– Michael Lee
We get out what we put in. – Michael Lee
If you just try, you aren’t really putting forth the effort required to succeed, and you’ll get poor results.
– Michael Lee
Believe in the end result before you see it. – Michael Lee
Don’t get sucked into unimportant problems. Focus on what is truly important. – Michael Lee
You have to believe that you’re about to F’n die!
– Michael Lee
Do you know what resources and knowledge you need to reach your end goal? – Michael Lee
Compress the knowledge they have into a short period of time, – Michael Lee
This is what you do to be successful. This is what you do to achieve anything. Be flexible, stay calm, make thoughtful adjustments, focus only on the next step, maintain course and achieve your goal. – Michael Lee
“Many of life’s failures are people who do not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
– Thomas Edison
Most brains will take every chance to avoid work.
– Michael Lee
“The consequence [of writing] is that you must start by writing the wrong meanings in the wrong words; but keep writing until you get to the right meanings in the right words. Only in the end will you know what you are saying.” —Peter Elbow
Focus on each next step and not try to get it right on the first try - because you won’t. – Michael Lee
Developing an attitude to fail helps you bounce back quickly and refocus your energy. – Michael Lee
Just get it the F’ out there! – Michael Lee
We live in a three second world. – Michael Lee
“We die a thousand metaphorical deaths. Resurrect those experiences in your stories and you’ll become immortal with your audiences.” — Park Howell
Anyone that can educate, entertain, and inspire with their stories will be immensely successful. – Michael Lee
You have to put in at least as much effort in getting your message out as you did to finish the entire project.
– Michael Lee
Enter the conversations her audience is already having in their heads.
Create scarcity and the feeling of missing out.
Let them sell you on why they should do what you want them to do.
Where there’s cheerleaders you have crowds and where there’s crowds you can’t hear crickets. – Michael Lee
We always underestimate what we can do. – Michael Lee
What you do next is what determines your fate.
– Michael Lee
“You have to feel the pain to lock it in your brain.”
– Slade Lee
You must continue to strive to add value to this world, because ultimately when we’re done, when we take our last breath, when we say our last words, all that will be left is what we did. Let’s all make for certain that on that day, hopefully far in the future, that we are proud of the actions we take today. – Michael Lee
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Achieve Outline
The outline below is what I used to write the Achieve book as well as build recent businesses and complete important goals.
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Identify
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Capture the idea and recognize the opportunities
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Believe it is possible
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What do you want to do?
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Broad
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Specific
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Why do you want to do it?
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What is your end goal?
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Who is your target market – if applicable?
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What is your target market share?
Attitude
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What attitude do you have right now?
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What attitude do you need to begin?
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What attitude do you need to continue?
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What attitude do you need to finish?
Strategy
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Goal-Setting
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Set major end goal
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Set mini-goals
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Set micro-goals
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Identify and attain resources
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Haves/Wants List
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What knowledge do you have that can help you complete this project?
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Assign knowledge to applicable steps
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What do you need to know?
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Assign need-to-know knowledge to applicable steps
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How do you get the need-to-know information?
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Assign how to get knowledge for applicable need-to-know steps
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Who else knows what you need to do?
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Assign person/people to applicable how-to-get-knowledge steps
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Who has the experience to help?
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Assign person/people to applicable who-can-help steps
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Organize your knowledge
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Do Not Do List
Build Your Project
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Build first prototype, draft, etc.
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Modify prototype
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Adjust parameters
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Additional resources
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Proof of Concept/advanced draft
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Test
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What resources are needed for official tests?
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Who can help?
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Where to test?
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How to test?
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Record results for marketing
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Scrap or sell
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Analyze the testing data and make a decision
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Scrap
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Testing wasn’t positive, and the idea has a high probability of failure
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Sell
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Testing confirmed your hypothesis
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Prepare project for the market
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Packaging
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Design
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Logos
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Create sellable product
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Resources required
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Sell It!
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Advertising and marketing
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Tools and content
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Content
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Storytelling
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Intrigue-Story-Go
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Story-Teach-Tool
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20% relatability, 80% what they need
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Let them sell you on why they should be a client, buy your stuff, listen to your music, etc.
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Video
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Images
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Blog
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Sales copy
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Website
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Social tools
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Affiliates/influencers
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Social platforms
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People
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Sales force
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Customer service
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Web/social managers
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Launch process
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Affiliates/influencers
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Hype
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Social proof
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Register
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Live webinar
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Sell
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Sell again
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Expand sales or skills
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Do you need more resources to expand sales?
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Do you need more knowledge to expand sales?
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People and companies
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Advertising/marketing consultants
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Advertising/marketing companies
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Hire professionals
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Affiliates/influencers
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Training
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Courses
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Masterminds
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Books
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Have you reached your target market share?
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Can you expand market share past your initial target?
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What is the market saturation of the product?
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Is there a time limit for the product or service?
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Can another leader expand market share past your initial target?
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Experienced CEO
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Experienced sales development team/leader
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Exit strategy
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Merge with competitor
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Sell to employees, investor, or competitor
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Wind down
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