To appreciate Jillian Michaels and how she can help you with your sales page, you will need a brief history of women’s fitness videos, and how they made me feel:
(Scroll down to watch these classics.)
1980s:
Jane Fonda. Reassured, with a vague sense of being talked down to. Burning desire for purple tights.
1980s & 90s:
Denise Austin. Guilty for not being happier. Irritation with her shiny, happy, exercise-y ways.
1990s & 2000s:
Kathy Smith. Admiration at her ability to talk and step-hop at the same time. Feeling short.
2005 to present:
Jillian Michaels. Intense. Ha ha ha! I laugh at weakness. No need to measure my target heart rate—I know I’m about to die. (You heard me, Kathy Smith.) I’m kicking, punching, jumping, squatting, lifting weights, and almost certainly going to die. “I want you to feel like you’re going to die,” she actually says. “I want emails if you’re not breathing hard.” She scoffs at my huffing and puffing: “We’re not even halfway there!”
At the end of level 3, we do real sit-ups.
The worlds of weight training and aerobics have finally united.
Jillian doesn’t pretend this is fun.
If I wanted fun, I’d watch a movie. I’d play two hours of tennis. I’d hike up Mt. Tam and go for Mitchell’s Ice Cream afterward.
These things will never happen on a weekday, despite what Tim Ferriss says.
This is why I love Jillian.
She treats me like I’m in significant distress. I am in significant distress.
So, if Jillian was helping you with your sales page, what would she say?
I have a feeling she would start asking about objections.
She wouldn’t just assume people were magnetically drawn to you and start hammering them with benefits.
She’d want them to know she knows there’s a chance they don’t actually want to do this at all.
I don’t need to be talked down to about all my problems. I just want my resistance acknowledged. She isn’t impressed, because she knows it gets easier. We move on.
It’s okay if your business isn’t fun for your clients. (I’m talking to myself here, too.) It doesn’t have to make them feel great to have to work with you.
While competitors are scrambling to make something not fun seem fun, you could just own the pain. And watch your clients grow stronger. That makes them feel good.
Jillian gets me to take action by acknowledging my resistance and turning it into a benefit. “I know this is hard. Stick with it. If you want to go jean shopping—or better yet, bikini shopping! That’ll get you to the gym, right ladies?”
When you realize what she’s done, it’s kind of amazing. She’s designed the entire workout like a sales letter.
The product itself addresses the objections. It’s built-in.
Working with you makes people feel proud because they’re getting happy endings. It doesn’t have to feel fun and easy, too. Not always.
Looking for objections? Here are a few of the most common objections to workouts—and to anything else:
- This is going to take too long and I’m not sure I can stick with it. (Solution: A 30-minute, extremely intense, “Get Shredded” workout. Benefit-oriented, speaks to the objection of no time.)
- It’s too much money to pay up front. (The fitness video is only $8. You can join her membership site for a flat monthly fee. I’d never do this, but I do think more businesses should consider the subscription model.)
- What if this doesn’t help me? (She’s specific about the benefit: Getting shredded. Not just losing weight, but actually getting shredded. She automatically rules out the people who aren’t committed with that wording.)
- Do I already know all this? (It’s about a daily practice, too. It’s about applying what you know.)
- I’m not good enough to benefit from this. (At the end of the first workout, she alludes to people who have been doing this for the past 7 days. She sets up the expectation that you’ll get better. It’s pretty effective.)
- Will this actually get results or will it just make me feel good? (The focus is definitely not on making you feel good. Which means you actually will feel good, because the focus is on results.)
Oddly enough, I notice I have more fun with Jillian. The better the results, the more fun I seem to have.
I’m willing to make that trade of feeling like I’m going to die—just as long as she doesn’t try to make me feel like I’m supposed to be having fun.
Plus, it gets easier.
I’ve learned to steal fun along the way. To grab it when no one is looking. I think Jillian secretly knows. That was her plan all along.
It’s not hard to compete with this:
Or this:
Slightly better:
Jillian doubles as a babysitter!