This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
What's up everybody? Welcome to Cytostal School. Oh my gosh, it's Chris Guillebeau, your host here. So glad you made it. This is episode 14 at 44, Revisiting Key Lessons of the Classroom Series, part two.
Two weeks ago, we did the first part of this, well, two-part series, looking back on some of the more popular episodes that we've had in the classroom series. Now, I started the classroom series in January, 2020, did it every week, every Monday for about six months, and then every other Monday for the second half of the year. It's all about looking at a specific topic as opposed to a story, as opposed to a question and answer, a specific skill usually that you need to have, like how do you set up an affiliate program? How do you review your offer before it goes out to everyone? How do you set up your WordPress site, et cetera?
And the goal was to build an archive of helpful content that you can access whenever you need. You can access that content by going to sidehustleschool.com/classroom. All right, so jumping in today, what have been a few highlights? First, from my perspective, but more importantly, from the perspective of you, our listeners. I did some surveying, I looked at some statistics, I used a crystal ball to see, okay, what resonated particularly well this year.
And one of those episodes was dealing with unsupportive family members, actually very popular, episode 1269. Now, I hear from people all the time who sometimes want to be anonymous and sometimes are okay with me sharing who they are. Basically, a lot of people say, I've got an idea for a project or I've been working on my siteiswell for a while, but my friends or my family, they just don't get it. In some cases, they're actively discouraging. In other cases, they're just, I don't know, they just kind of like make fun of it in some ways or they don't really give me the time and space that I need to work on it.
I don't need to take a lot of time away from them, but I need some and they're just not supportive. What do I do? And in that episode, I told the analogy that I borrowed from my friend Laura Sims, which I really love Laura as an actor. And she uses this analogy of saying, you invite your family members to opening night if you're putting on a performance, whatever it is, but you don't necessarily invite them to every dress rehearsal. And what she means is, yes, you want to be able to show your family your project, but if they might not understand it, or if you think they might not be fully supportive, you don't have to involve them each step along the way.
In fact, that actually might just lead to you being confused or you feeling overwhelmed or, you know, you second guessing yourself, even though you're already on the right track. I also mentioned in that episode that when people are being negative, often they are projecting something of themselves onto your experience, perhaps they are envious. So keep that in mind. And if you need to know more about this topic, episode 1269, 1269. Next on the list was episode 1304, 1304, create content by answering questions.
I talked about this a few different ways. One of the things you'll notice is that people ask questions when they use search engines. You might do this too. If you go to Google and you type something in, you're asking a question. It may not be in the form of a question with a question mark at the end, but you are obviously looking for information.
So guess what? If you're struggling in coming up with topics to write about or otherwise used for content creation, whatever method you're using, it could be a podcast or YouTube channel, something else, this is your answer. You can create content based entirely around answering questions that people are asking. So think about your topic, think about your field, what you're trying to put forward and share your message. And then think, what are all the questions that people might have about that?
Go and make a list. This practice helps you brainstorm, it gives you a task. It also ensures that what you're working on isn't going to be completely irrelevant. I do this all the time, it's very helpful. And in that episode, there was an assignment to look up at least one word or phrase using the Google keyword tool and see what people are searching for.
So some more information in that episode 1304. Next up, the six factors of persuasion, which was a two-part episode, episode 1199 and 1206. As a quick reminder, you can always get to any episode I mentioned by just going to status will school.com/ and then the number. So forward slash 1199 or 1206. And the six factors of persuasion, this is super important.
If you wanna understand why people purchase pretty much anything, why they gain the confidence to make a purchase, which is almost always an emotional decision. And this is based on the work of Robert Cialdini. I went into a lot of details in these episodes, but just to kind of recap the six factors, like what are those six factors? They are, number one, authority. People have to believe that you are a trustworthy expert.
So anything you can do to cultivate and demonstrate that authority will help you build trust with potential buyers. Number two, this one kind of goes together, commitment and consistency. People like to be consistent with their previous actions. They feel a sense of dissonance when they are inconsistent. So you want to reinforce that consistency.
You want to show that their commitment is aligned with their beliefs and values and so on. You also want to encourage commitments wherever possible, even if it's something as simple as signing up for my email list or whatever it is that you're trying to get people to do. Equipment and consistency. Number three, social proof, extremely important. Whenever you buy something, you're worried about making the wrong choice.
'Cause as I said, it's an emotional decision. So you want reassurance from people you trust, or at least from neutral parties. This is why a lot of websites have testimonials on them, because that works. Social proof, and there's lots of other ways to demonstrate social proof, right? But that's just probably the most common example.
The point is this is a way to provide reassurance to those very important potential buyers. Number four is liking, which is pretty simple. You wanna be liked, I wanna be liked, I hope you like me. But also this is about creating relatability. Relatability, you know, I want to learn more about this person, especially if it's that kind of thing where you're putting forward a message, you're trying to be some kind of influencer or influence a conversation, let's say, that's extremely important.
If you're selling something that is completely practical, then this is less important. But if you're trying to build your brand, quote unquote, then liking matters. Number five and number six. Number five, reciprocity. And number six, scarcity.
Okay, so reciprocity, it's built on this principle of, you know, if someone gives something to us, we feel obligated to repay that debt. And I talked about this study that showed where servers in a restaurant would leave a mint, you know, with a check whenever, and they had different control groups and such, and what they saw was, you know, once you leave a mint, you get a 3% increase in your tip. If you leave an extra mint, then you get a 14% increase, like I left you two mints. And then to get the biggest increase in all, you leave an extra mint and you tell them, you say, hey, I left you an extra mint, 23% increase in the average tip. It's all built around that principle of reciprocity.
Scarcity, the last one, what do you stand to lose if you don't purchase now? The price will go up, the class will fill up, the offer will disappear, whatever it is, there's some reason why people need to act quickly. So those six factors of persuasion, there's a lot more to it, but if you remember those, or if you at least kind of think about them whenever you're writing your copy or preparing a launch, or just getting ready to build out an offer, think about these and ask yourself, am I doing something to touch on each one of these points, even if it's just briefly? All right, I've got one more lesson to go over with you. It's an important one, you don't want to miss it.
But first, here is a quick message from our sponsor, really appreciate them allowing us to bring this podcast to you completely free all throughout the year, and actually for four years and counting now. So here's a message from them, and then one more highlight. [Music]
All right, so when I first started putting together these highlights, I realized I could actually do a lot more than two episodes, but I thought it might be overkill to be like, here's an 18 part series, looking back on, you know, the classroom episodes of 2020. So I really had to be picky about my choices. And the last one that I chose was psychographics.
Who are your people understanding psychographics? Episode 1255. And this is built on this concept of how, like you probably know what demographics are. Demographics are like age, location, sex or gender, race or ethnicity, income, et cetera. Thinking about traditional target markets, I'm looking at, you know, 26 to 30 year old women or 35 to 39 year old men who live in the Midwest, you know, with a college degree or without a college degree.
You know, all those are target markets based on traditional demographics. And of course you can get much more specific than that. But psychographics is about shared values and beliefs. So we can actually run across a lot of different demographics. And I have always tried to grow my business and tried to write my books thinking about psychographics much more than demographics.
I feel really fortunate to have pretty diverse group of people out there in this community, both podcast wise and book wise and otherwise. And I think it's because I'm always focused on values. And like, you know, like the podcast is all about freedom, right, freedom, creating opportunity for yourself, finding a way to make extra money, you know, without quitting your job, without stressing yourself out. That's what unites the listeners of this show. They don't actually fit into a certain age group.
We've got people all different ages, backgrounds from all parts of the world. So if you want to think about psychographics, use language that your intended audience understands and practice as much empathy as you can. A part of this is understanding not just what your ideal customer likes, but also what they dislike, what bothers them, and then highlight that as part of your communication. So more on that in episode 1255. As I said, I could keep going and give you that 18 part series, but I respect your time.
So I'm not going to do that. Thank you for joining me all this year. If you've been around all this year, if you have just joined in recently, that's awesome too. Thank you for however long you've been here. This has been episode 1444.
Of course, you can access all those classroom episodes, which go into much more detail, as I mentioned, at sidehustleschool.com/classroom. All right, thanks so much. Much more is coming up. Be sure to subscribe for everybody to get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
