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Lesson 1, Topic 1
In Progress

Crafting Compelling Content

Mike Montefusco October 3, 2021

[00:01]
All right. What we wanna do now is just jump into the nitty gritty of crafting compelling content. So putting the other learning management side of things is, is a wonderful thing. It’s super powerful. However, if you’ve done this kind of thing before, you know, that it is very possible to create con that has information that is totally capable of changing someone’s life, however, it doesn’t squeeze every drop of, of engagement that it outta people. Right. And, and that happens for varying reasons. But what I want to do is I wanna take a little time to make sure that that doesn’t happen, right. We wanna make sure that you put together your kind in a way that keeps your clients, your members fully engaged because we want, ultimately we want to use this to turn everyone into brand evangelists so that you can scale your business.

[00:53]
Right? So, so that being said that what we’re gonna cover today actually is these different talking points, which they are all with the letter T because I wanna be able to make it a little bit more memorable for you. And I like to abuse alliteration. Right? So the first thing we’re gonna talk about is something called topic progression, right? So the structure of what we do matters and the way that we do that we’re gonna talk about time of constraints and we’ll talk about it briefly. Okay. we will talk about title glory, right? Like naming things and how you can leverage that to your best ability. Talk about teach visually using visual aids in the teaching process can be a very helpful, very powerful thing that you can do. We will, will then talk about talking tactics.

[01:45]
So there are certain ways that we should be speaking to people so that we get maximum resonance with them. And we’ll talk about telling stories. We’ve all heard like marketing and storytelling. We teaching a storytelling too. And there’s some wonderful ways of doing that. We will talk about tech matters. So there few bits of technology that we would recommend for you to, to get the best experience out of all of this. And then we’re gonna talk about planning last with take time to plan. And the reason that I have that one last is cuz it’s gonna summarize a lot of what we’ve already talked about in a really cool worksheet that you can use to brainstorm lesson out that you’re gonna use. Right? So, so if we’re just gonna move along, the first one is topical progression and so structure matters.

[02:35]
Okay. You want to be able to look at, and we wanna do this on the micro and we wanna do this on the macro level. Right? So on the macro level, you should be able to say to somebody as you’re like in, you know, introducing them to your course, you should be able to say things like, Hey, you know, here are the different, I guess, major sections. And we would use section headings, which you’ll see in learn dash, here are the major like sections that are in this course. We’re gonna talk about nutrition. We’re gonna talk about, you know, mindset, whatever it is, right. Here’s the mindset say have a logical progression that you are teaching them exists. This helps their brain to organize things. It helps things to feel more. It helps things to flow better. It helps them to feel like they’re actually going on the journey and the direction that you’re taking them.

[03:24]
It also lets ’em know what they should anticipate going forward. And overall, like I said, it helps ’em to organize the information in their brain, which is super, super important. Which I dunno if you noticed, like, I kind of did that right. By just giving you, you know, that of agenda statement. Right. And so we would recommend at the macro level you’re gonna talk about the structure of the course in the micro level. Like when you get in and do a lesson, which was what this is, I’m like, say, Hey, here’s what we’re gonna cover today. Right. And you know, we want to, like I said, have that agenda statement upfront. Here’s what I’m a about to teach you today. Here’s what’s gonna go into this. Here’s why that’s important. That kind of thing. Right. from there. And then the other thing is as far as topical progression is, is using transitions, right?

[04:11]
We wanna feel like we’re going from one point to the next and we don’t want it to feel overly disjointed. Now it’s not always the perfect, smooth this sentence in that sentence, like clearly are together, but you can’t be jumping all over the place cuz you’ll lose people and you don’t wanna just be spraying random facts that you want to be organized. Okay. So next thing that we’re gonna go through is time constraints, right? So for time constraints, what I’m gonna tell you is people are not gonna want anything. That’s more than 10 minutes. Don’t do it. If you have a lot of content you need to put in there, you need to break it up into smaller chunks. There’s just no way around it. If you blast people with super long content, you’re just gonna see, I don’t care how much they paid to be in your program.

[04:56]
Your consumption’s gonna be down and I don’t want that for you. So I’m gonna move on from this reef point and then we talk about title glory, right? So title glory just means that we wanna like create titles that help stand out and help move the process along. Right. And there’s, there’s two criteria for that. See, a lot of times people want to th they think they want to be like cute. Right? I’m gonna be cute, cute, like, okay. But like really what you wanna be is you wanna be clear, first of all, like, what are we doing? This lesson you’re on right now is, you know, crafting compelling content. Right. So I use alliteration there. It’s super clear, you know what I’m talking about? And it’s a little catchy too, right? I’ve got something there. Another thing I love under the section heading, or the introduction, if you want to use a quote, right?

[05:42]
Like you have a powerful quote that proves the point of what you’re teaching on. That’s really, really cool to, to get access to that and to be able to put that stuff in very professional. I’m sure a lot of the, the great books that you’ve read developing yourself have had things like that in it. So so titled glory teach visually, right? So what I want you to do is I want you to use, you know, visual aids. Like, so right now I’m using like a slideshow. I don’t always use a slideshow, but you know, there’s probably a good chance that it would be a good benefit for you to have some of your lessons have some type of visual aid, whether it be a, a slideshow. And you’ll notice when I put the slides together, like I’m not reading you like a script that I have on the slide.

[06:26]
You know, a lot of times we’re doing just put in like one bullet point just to visually anchor them to the point that you’re trying to make. The other thing that you have access to so is using info. So here’s just a sample infographic that we will use in a content video for fitness marketing machine or in a consultation with a client. Right? And if you look at what it is, we call this a fitness marketing machine, business optimization period. Right? And we talk about it for a pyramid to, to, to work. The foundation has got to be really, really broad, really, really stable. And you gotta put first things. So if we look at the bottom of my pyramid, we can see that I’m talking about the first thing that most businesses should do is automate their manual processes. Right? So if they’re spending a lot of time doing administrative stuff, repetitive work, that’s like plugging their time up.

[07:11]
The first thing we wanna do before we even make you more money is we wanna get you more time. Cause as soon as we have more time, now we can strategize on how we’re gonna make you more money. Right. And so you’ll see that on the right side, over here, it says, right, scalability and control, automate manual processes. Next we have automate service delivery enhancement, right? And so this is for retention and results and then automate revenue generations. So this is the second thing that we start to like build on top of this, right. Getting profit and growth. And then we do efficiency the in efficacy within analyze and optimize phase, right? So we’ve been collecting data all this while we’re gonna go through it. We’re gonna take it from there. Now I’m not trying to like sell you in fitness marketing machine right now.

[07:48]
I’m just trying to say, I gave you a visual thing there and you kind of understand a progression about my business, like pretty quickly. So it’s super helpful. The other thing is you can get, you know, just a cool image, you know, that people will like look at that expresses the emotion of what you’re talking about. Okay. And so I clearly like I’m talking about, Hey, teach visually and looking, and there’s a guy with his classes and all that kind of fun stuff going on there. Right. So, so that’s that now we do have assets that we make available to you. So the first one is if you go adobe.com, so this is where you can get all of your like get a whole bunch of images there. So if you’ve done a membership site with us, you get 12 Adobe stock images that we will license for you.

[08:31]
So go to the stock.adobe.com and just search all the images. And then you wanna find the one that you want. If, you know, you need to use it right for your slide shows or whatever it is you’re doing. And then you just need to tell us the number of the actual image. Right? Cause if we are just trying to look visually for it, it’s kinda hard to find, but you ha there’s a number that it comes with of that image. And then we’ll go into little license it for you. So it won’t have any watermarks on it. That kind of thing. And the other thing we have is the slide quest.com. So that’s where I got basically that pyramid deal from. So there is, I mean, everything from like timelines to decision trees, to just go to the slide, quest.com and look around anything you want in there.

[09:09]
Just tell me which ones you want. And then we’ll just go in and, and grab ’em for you. Cuz we have like the unlimited plan in on that. And there are like thousands of different infographics you can use on there. So if you need it for your business, take the time, make it happen. Right. So as part of this, we don’t like design all of your visual infographics for you and stuff like that for your slideshows. But we can certainly give you access to the templates that you can go and edit them yourselves or have your team to you. So, right. So next thing I wanna talk about is I wanna talk about talking tactics. Okay. So I broke this one a couple times already and the first talking tactic is slow the heck down. You have a way more time to talk to people than you think you do rushing through it.

[09:59]
Not pausing is not super helpful. You know, it, it’s kind of tough to, you know, you’ll lose people, right? You’ll go through it. You won’t sound as natural people are always particularly on video processing slower than they are in person. So don’t feel rushed, take your time, put pauses where you need to the other thing and which is what I’m doing right now. And I’m not gonna tell you who it is, but I am pretending that I am talking to one person. Right. So I’m literally standing in front of you right now and I’m talking to you and it’s kind of like helping ground me that I need to feel more, I guess, congruent on what I would feel like if I was actually having a conversation with you. So, so that’s usually a tactic tactic. Don’t pick the most scary intimidating person in the world, right?

[10:40]
Like but take somebody that you’d feel comfortable with that you think that you, you would do well to teach these points too, and you’ll go a long way. Right? So next one we’re gonna do is technology matters. So this four that I’m gonna talk about here. So number one, there’s an app called big view. And so what big view is, is it’s a teleprompter app. So if you’re not using slideshow, you’re doing a video you know, talking head kind of thing, which is a lot, you don’t have to use slideshow, right? You can do a lot of talking and head stuff. You have tons of people do. All of that. Big view is an app that you can download. You can hit us up. We have a few licenses that we rotated and out. So we’ve literally give you access to it for free while you’re building your content, you know, for a couple months, whatever.

[11:21]
And then we revoked the license and we’ll lend it to a new client during their build, but it’s a teleprompter app for your phone. And it literally takes the words and it puts ’em the right where the camera lens is on the phone. So it’s fantastic. So you’re literally sitting there, you’re able to like read it, but it looks like you’re looking right at the camera. So it’s super authentic. It’s, it’s pretty cool. I’m not using it right now. But that’s big view. So just if you need access to this, we haven’t given it to you already just message us and, and we’ll go see if we have a license there. We have like five that we put on rotate. We don’t have any more than that, but typically we usually

[11:53]
Have a, a free slot too. So next one is a microphone. So like I got like this here to be on my computer. This thing was like 35 bucks, us, nothing crazy, but people will forgive you for like, not the greatest visuals. People will not forgive you if your audio stinks. Right. So , it’s good to get a microphone to record. If you’re doing on your phone there, there’s if you’re in the states, we can recommend there’s a Laly microphone that I’ve been using for a while now that’s super, super good, you know, but you’re gonna spend, you know, 200 bucks, 150, $200 on a decent microphone for your phone. But you’ll have it. And if you’re gonna be crafting content, like you kind of wanna be doing it, however, the next one over there is, so this is remaster media. So I have an accountant remaster media.

[12:39]
What remaster media does is you can, we can upload your videos and it optimizes the audio for them. So if your say your voice is low or it didn’t come out super clear, we can upload that video. It’s remaster media, remaster media will give us a few different sound profiles of ways that we can train that we, they can change. It usually boosting the voice, getting like background noise, low, all that kind of stuff or whatever. You don’t have to do it at the, if it sounds okay, but for something like, if you I’ve already recorded this, I’m kind of regretting da, da, da, da, let us know. And then we’ll get you some credits. We’ll help you upload those there and get those, those but out. And the other thing we can do is we can get you, I put these closed captions, but we can get a transcription of your content so that, you know, there’s captions at the bottom.

[13:24]
So it’s helpful, you know, people wanna read while they’re watching get even more retention. So we have software that we can do that it’s the software we have is it’s about 90% accurate. So, so now 90% accurate means that I’m gonna give you a transcript and a video and you’re gonna have to go in there and actually like edit it and make it a hundred percent accurate. So, but if you’re having like five minute videos, like it’s not that huge a deal, cuz there’s, you know, you’re gonna spend for like five, six minutes per video, just read through it, make whatever changes. They spilled my name, wrong, capitalize this, throw a comma there, that kind of thing. So, so those are there for you, but these are available to you. So don’t be shy. Come apply. Right. next thing we were talk about is telling stories.

[14:04]
So I remember when I first opened up my gym my fitness center here in I’m in the Charlotte area, in North Carolina. And you know, I was trying to build up my business and you know, it was, it was sort of like frustrating. Right? And then I realized that I could start to, so I come out of like homeless drug addictions. So I’ve been in seven, eight detoxes, rehabs homelessness, all kinds of craziness. Right. I know people would say, oh, you would never have thought in if you, if you hadn’t said that. And I appreciate when people tell me that. So if you wanna tell me that, that’s great. Cause the last thing you wanna hear is, oh, you were an Ivy heroin addict. I could see that. I know. So anyway, I started telling my story about how I came out of a you know, drug addiction, you know, alcohol and drugs.

[14:51]
Right. And, and talked about you know, how fitness played a role in changing my life. Right. And how I learned to overcome certain behaviors and things like that with people. Well, people kind of get it like, oh, this is a guy that helps people transform their lives. Now I’m not saying you make everything all about you. Cause it’s really about them. Like right now I’m talking to you, I’m telling you what you need to do so that you can treat them well. Right. That’s the foundation of it. But if there’s little stories, anecdotes, experiences that you’ve had along the way that you throw in there, like I just did talking about me and my gym and how that helped me out. People are gonna like, remember that more. They’re gonna kind of resonate with it. It flows really well. You know, it’s just think about it.

[15:27]
You can remember the details of a movie like crazy, but you know, if you’re reading some textbook on, you know, whatever subject it is, like you don’t just hold onto it quite as well. Right. So so let’s tell stories. And then we’re gonna take time to plan. Okay. So this is the big one. And so this is what we’re gonna make. This is there, there will be a link on this lesson below where you can download this and I’m gonna hop out of this for a second and I’m gonna here. And so here’s, this is the lesson planning worksheet that you can make a copy of. And so you don’t have to fill out all these in like super detail all the time. But like you do want to do a lot of them and I’ll go over what these are with you.

[16:05]
Right? So the first one is like, who are you talking to? Who’s your audience, right? The best way you can ever be successful is to care of about the people that you’re serving. So you wanna like, think about like, who am I talking to? What’s important to them, what do they struggle with? Right. Like what’s what’s going on here. Right. Then the, whatever the lesson is, is like, what problems does this specifically overcome? Right? What are the benefits of this teaching, right? What are they gonna get out of it? How does this tie into the bigger picture of the course, right? Like for right now, like we’re talking about having a whole community site and you have these lessons that you want to put before people so that they start taking these like actions, whether it’s fitness or business or whatever it is that you’re coaching, they can take that stuff.

[16:46]
Right. And so we wanna know like, how does it fit in? And now here’s the three big ones I suggested you, these three, every single one without fails. I ask yourself, what do they want? What do you want them to know? Right. Head knowledge. What do you want them to feel? Right. Emotional knowledge. What do you want them to do? If you answer those three questions? Well, you’re gonna do really, really well. Okay. why should they care? Right. You’re always asking yourself like, why is, is important. And usually we summarize with that at the end a lot of times, but you wanna know like, why should they care? Why is this a big deal that you’re telling ’em about this? Or not people don’t automatically know that like you have to like unpack the problems that they might face before you can get them to resonate with you.

[17:27]
Right. And then how you express empathy and how you express authority. So you’re always positioning yourself as the guide, by the, and they’re Luke Skywalker. So if you’re gonna be Yoda, you want to be like, I get you, but you wanna be like, I can help you. Right. So what are you gonna use to your advantage? How are you going to empathize with them and the problems they have and, you know, identify it. If you watch this video again, you’ll see that I did it in the front. Right. Keep creating content. People, not like liking it, that kind of thing. Right. So miscellaneous thoughts, just gotta give you some other place to put it. And then flow. We talked about using whole part hole. So whole part hole is I talked about the whole, like I envisioned you, like, what’s my agenda statement basically.


[18:04]
You know? Like what we’re about to teach for today. And then, then we went into the different parts. Like I start breaking down the parts of it. Right. And then I’m gonna like summarize with the hole again. So you teach the whole, envision them the parts and then the hole again. And the illustration I give is like, say you’re teaching somebody like a complex exercise, like a kettle swing. If you’re like, okay, you’re gonna stand in this hinge position. Then you’re gonna put your arms over. Then you’re gonna start pushing your heels on the ground. It’s like, if they’ve never seen a Keball swing before they have zero context on what you’re telling them at all right now. So they’re literally watching you absorbing nothing, then you’ll show them the full swing. Then they’ll go, oh, that’s what you’re trying to make me do.

[18:42]
They’ll try and do it. They can’t do it. But if you go in front of them, do the whole swing in front of ’em here’s context. Here’s where we’re going. Cool right now. Here’s how I break it down. Boom. And then here’s the whole thing again. So it’s whole part whole, it’s a great way to coach human beings. I use it in mold, a million different areas of my life and I highly, highly recommend it. Right. So hook up with the problem, use visual language and why they should care. So you’re trying to grow your business, but you, you just keep banging your head against the wall. You know, that, that these clients won’t, you know, they won’t comply with what you’re trying to coach them. Right. You know, so banging their heads, anytime you use a visual language, it’s super helpful. These are just best practices.
[19:22]
Tell ’em the agenda with main points, right? So that’s getting into the parts teach the main content, highlight any main points, summary with benefits, which I’ll go there and the next action. What do you want them to do? Like come and tell them that stuff. Right? So here’s some of the flow, how you would use how you would take ’em through that whole part, a whole model there, and then best practices, use stories and illustrations, which we talked about. Don’t rush, pause for effect. Look into the camera lens. I know I look away a lot, but I’m also looking at my screen, come me some slack, come on, cut me some slack. Right? talk to one person. We talked about that. Right? And then the learner is the star. So you are the what matters right now. It’s not me. The more I talk about me.

[19:57]
You’re like, unless I’m talking about me, is it to, to make me relate to you? It’s like people just check out, you know, because you’re there because you have goals that you need to accomplish and that’s how it should be. That’s fine. We’re about, about it. Right? So, so just to get back to where we were at, let’s go presents. And so let’s talk about what we, what we talked about. And so I’m gonna move myself over here, right? So we talk about topic progression, right? Time constraints, title, glory, teach visually talking tactics, tell stories, tech matters and take time to plan. Well, I hope that this is blessed to definitely grab that worksheet. Feel free to revisit this. If you have questions on anything, you can also comment below, reach out to me at slack for doing that kind of thing. Right. And if you’re successful, then I’m successful. So go put this in a practice and, and craft a few, really thorough, well thought out lessons and see how powerful a product you can put together for your clients. See you on the next lesson.