Read time: 3 min, 42 secs

Hey there - it's Brian 👋

I’m at a coffee shop in Colombia with a friend.

She’s on a mission to cure loneliness.

Seriously.

Loneliness is THE biggest problem plaguing the digital nomad community.

We work from a different country every month!

She’s built an incredible solution to a painful problem that will genuinely change the lives of thousands of people.

But…

No one is listening.

Why?

She doesn’t know how to frame the message to get attention!

She’s a business owner. Not a copywriter.

So this morning I taught her what I wish I knew when I first started sharing my message online.

These lessons got me 85,000 followers and 14,000 readers in this community.

And in this issue I’m sharing the lessons with you.

This issue is for you if you’re frustrated that people aren’t listening to your message online.

We’re covering:

• How to frame your message (so people actually read it)

• The simplest story framework ever from Casey Neistat (so people stay hooked)

• How to write visually (so people aren’t intimidated to read it)

Okay. Ready? Let’s get people paying attention to your message.

Let’s make your business an outlier: 👇

Framing: Hook, Topic, Angle

You can spend 9 hours writing the greatest content on the internet.

But if just the first sentence doesn’t get people interested… no one reads it.

That’s the hook.

But everyone seems to think if you find the right hook structure you get attention.

But I think that’s missing the point.

The hook is just one part.

You also need the right topic + angle.

Let me explain:

Topic: What you’re talking about
Why designing a customer journey is the cure to nomad loneliness

Angle: The different ways you can talk about that topic
Story of a co-living that had terrible retention until they re-designed their journey

Hook (structure): The template you say it in
70% of nomads cancel their stay.

How this co-living 3xed their retention (with one simple tweak):

So here’s the tip:

Most topics don’t seem interesting until you find the right angle. Find the right angle and it makes the rest easy.

I come up with 10 angles and 10 hooks for every post. It’s a lot…

But here’s the thing:
• Good hooks get friends to share.
• Great hooks get everyone to share.

That’s when things go viral.

Okay so you write the hook to get attention, but we can’t lose their attention before they take your call to action!

Here’s the easiest way to keep their attention: 👇

The world’s simplest story framework (from Casey Neistat)

You can’t keep attention if you can’t tell a story.

Period.

Stories keep people engaged.

Keep them engaged long enough and they’ll click your Call to Action.

And buy.

But your stories don’t have to be complex.

I learned this simple frameworks from Casey Neistat.

If you aren’t familiar with Casey… he created a story-based vlog every day for over 800 days.

It got him 12.6 MILLION YouTube subscribers.

I took his storytelling course, and here’s what I learned:

Frame your message in “3 acts”:

ACT I: Desire + context
What do you (or the hero in your story) want to happen?

“Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pale of water.”

ACT II: Obstacle (or conflict)
What’s stopping the hero (you, the customer, or the main person in the story) from making it happen?

“Jack fell down. And broke his crown”

ACT III: Resolution
How does the hero solve the problem? What happened? What did the hero learn?

“And Jill came tumbling after.”

The hero is your customer. The obstacle is what pain they go through. The resolution is your solution.

🧔🏻‍♂️ Brian’s nerdy side rant:

Make sure resolution part has a lesson and transitions seamlessly into your call to action.

I’ll admit the Jack & Jill resolution is a little weak, but hey it’s a simple example.

The simple tweak to stop intimidating your reader

Attention is HARD to keep. It’s delicate. It deserves respect.

So here’s the rule of thumb that I go by:

If the reader has to put in mental effort… you’ve lost the reader.

So three tweaks to keep your reader hooked:

1. Use short sentences

Let me prove a point:

Long sentences confuse people because they either pack a lot of ideas into one area or they use a lot of words to explain one idea that really should be shorter.

^^^ that’s a long sentence.

Here’s another way to say that same sentence:

Long sentences confuse people.

Why? They either:

1. Pack a lot of ideas into one area

2. Use a lot of words to explain one idea.

Keep your sentences short.

Easier to read, right?

2. Use simple words (4th grade reading level max)

MAX 4th grade reading level.

I was hesitant when I first started writing simple.

II thought my target readers were more sophisticated. In consulting we use big buzzwords to sound smart.

But what I realized was that if you can’t explain your complex topic using simple words, then you don’t really understand the topic.

If your audience is sophisticated they’ll read MORE of your work when they spend less energy reading it.

That’s how you create superfans.

So drop your writing into Hemingway App (it’s a free tool I use daily) to check what reading level your writing is at.

When I first started writing online, my writing was at grade 12!

Two years later I’m proudly writing at a 4th grade reading level.

3. Visually space out your writing

Paragraphs are intimidating.

You look at a wall of text and think “ehhh reading that feels like a commitment.”

So I stole this rule from Dickie Bush… “The One-Chip Rule.”

Imagine this:
I hand you a bag of potato chips. You grab just one chip.

But you can’t just eat one chip! You’ll grab a 2nd chip.

Then a 3rd.  A 4th…. and… it’s hard to stop.

Your writing needs to be the same way.

It needs to visually feel so low effort that it was too easy to read the first sentence. Then the 2nd. Then a 3rd… and the reader reached the end.

Paragraphs are the opposite of the one chip rule.

➟ It’s effort.
➟ It’s intimidating.
➟ It’s a commitment.

Break up your text visually.

The right post will transform your business

You’ll get your message to the right person eventually.

You just pay with either with time or money.

If you learn to frame your message to hook potential customers your business will thrive.

Don’t have the time to learn copywriting + story?

Want a content writer to just do it for you?

I have global content writers who can write for you (at 70% the cost of US equivalents).

Check it out here.

See you next Thursday 👋

Brian
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