(This post is part of a series about creating the MENs story. You can begin at the Introduction.)
If you are telling a story about your offer, where should it start? In the beginning.
Your dream customer is failing at something within your niche. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be your dream customer.
What does it feel like to fail? It hurts. It’s frustrating and embarrassing. It’s no mystery how it feels.
Your dream customer’s current life is not where they want it to be—they have big dreams and desires—but they are stuck in one of two scenarios:
- They are trying to find a way to achieve their dreams, but each time they try, they fail.
- They aren’t trying in any material way, resigned to their lives and their frustrations.
In the Fire Came Later Story Outline Framework, this place is called The Current Normal.
How do we create The Current Normal in a story? It’s easy:
- Take away what someone would gain in their lives from your offer.
- Remove all the improved health, wealth, or better relationships they would have.
- Eliminate all the social status gained from your offer.
Do you get the picture? Everything your offer does for someone—describe life without that. If your offer:
- Makes someone strong – describe a life of weakness, fear, and a lack of self-confidence.
- Builds a mailing list – describe a life of desiring cash flow and an audience but not having either.
- Strengthens marriages – describe a life where two people used to be in love, but now they don’t talk anymore.
Once you establish this beginning, the rest of your story is about how someone got to their ending—a better life—because of your offer.
This beginning will attract the same type of person—your dream customer. They will identify with the dreams and desires in your story, as well as the hurt, frustration, and embarrassment. Your dream customers know all about how it feels to be stuck in that way. They think every day about their dreams of something better, but they are unable to make progress.
Create that type of beginning, and your dream customers will demand to know what happens next.
Tip: This beginning will also drive away everyone else, who doesn’t connect with the story, or who doesn’t ‘get it.’ That’s the point, attract your dream customer while filtering out those who will never buy from you.
For MENs
The Company
MENs is a fictional collective whose members mentor, educate, and nourish one another. Members pay a monthly subscription to access the collective and its resources, mentors connect with new members and nurture them, members ‘graduate’ to become mentors to new members, and give back to the overall collective.
The Dream Customer
The dream customer isn’t part of a collective, who doesn’t have mentors and support in their lives, who wishes to be better for themselves and those around them, but they don’t even know where to start.
The Story’s Character
Steve, the character in our story, is a 36-year-old portfolio manager at a Wall Street bank.
Steve’s Current Normal
Steve works 15-hour days, barely sees the sunlight or outside during the day, eats junk food and delivery in his office, barely has friends, or even thought about meeting a significant other. Why would they even like me? He looks in the mirror and is not happy with what he sees—he is only 36. He wants to change, but he wouldn’t even know where to begin.
Conclusion
The Current Normal is just one part of the Fire Came Later Story Outline Framework. Each part will help you tell a great story about how one of your dream customers found your offer and changed their lives.
Remember, this post is part of a series:
- Introduction – an overview of the process
- Pre-story – a few exercises before you create a story
- Story outline – let’s look at an aspect of the FCL Story Outline Framework (this post)
- Write – let’s understand how to write an FCL story
- Final story – one of the story lengths the FCL Framework helps produce
- Headlines – let’s write some headlines for ads, sales pages, email campaigns, etc.
- Story summary – let’s distill the story down to its essence
Each post will link to the rest, so it will be easy to see the entire process.
Remember, the FCL Framework helps create very specific types of stories—that will make your dream customers see you as their guide and your offers as their path to success.
Ready for the Fire Came Later Framework?
The FCL Framework is the best method for structuring and writing stories that create belief—belief in you as the guide and your offers as the path to their success.
