Imagine spending $4.4 billion, yes, billion with a B on a shiny, magical dream project, only to nearly watch it flop. That’s what happened to Disney when they opened their Paris theme park. They had the magic, the money, the characters, the castles… but they almost lost it all. Why? Because of a massive marketing mistake.

Now here’s where it gets real: coaches and course creators are making the exact same mistake every single day. You could have the best product in the world, the most powerful transformation, the juiciest offer, but if you mess this up, it won't matter. You’ll hear crickets instead of cha-chings.

The good news? You don’t need $4.4 billion to get it right. In fact, you can learn the fix right here, for free, in the next few minutes. What nearly sank Disney could be the reason you finally break through and explode your sales.

So let’s break it down and make your marketing unmissable.

Useful Episode Resources

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Join The Email Hero Blueprint

Want more? Let's say you're a course creator, membership site owner, coach, author, or expert and want to learn about the ethical psychology-based email marketing that turns 60-80% more of your newsletter subscribers into customers (within 60 days). If that's you, then The Email Hero Blueprint is for you.

This is hands down the most predictable, plug-and-play way to double your earnings per email subscriber. It allows you to generate a consistent sales flow without launching another product, service, or offer. Best news yet? You won't have to rely on copywriting, slimy persuasion, NLP, or ‘better' subject lines.

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00:01.11

Kennedy Kennedy

And just like that, I'm back here in the warm office. Look, only a quarter of you who actually tune in are subscribed to this show. So make sure that you hit subscribe so I can keep making more and more of this amazing content for you. Now, since my background is in psychology, I'm always tinkering away and playing with adding different psychology into my marketing. And there are three principles that I added to my email marketing that multiplied my sales of one of my offers and took it from $27,000 to over half a million dollars. And I've described that, and gone into full detail in a new course of mine called Email Marketing Sorted. And you can get it for free just for tuning into the show by going to emailmarketingsorted.com. Literally, just go to emailmarklingsorted.com or click the link in the description.

00:52.76

Kennedy Kennedy

So Disney, wow. I mean, what a time we had over New Year. And just like you, Disney had an amazing product. They spent all this money building a brand new park in Europe, just outside of Paris in France. But the marketing almost made them lose the whole damn thing.

01:14.35

Kennedy Kennedy

And I speak to coaches all the time who know you've got something amazing. And you know that if more people knew how amazing your thing was,

01:27.45

Kennedy Kennedy

you know they would buy it. And if that's the case, good news, you've got a marketing problem and we can solve that together. It's not like you've got a product problem. If people really knew how damn good your thing is, you know they would buy it, then that means it's a marketing problem. It's how you're packaging up and presenting your what you've got, right? It's not the actual problem itself.

01:48.50

Kennedy Kennedy

but the product itself, right? So let's see what this massive company actually got wrong that we can all learn from because they spent a lot of money, which means they have a lot of data, which helped them figure this stuff out. The first thing they absolutely cocked up that we can learn as coaches is the name.

02:06.17

Kennedy Kennedy

I see this a lot in the coaching business too. they When they first launched Disneyland Paris, it wasn't called Disneyland Paris. It was called Euro Disney.

02:17.11

Kennedy Kennedy

What does that even mean? Is it a knockoff Disney? Is it a real Disney? Is it for American people, Disney brand American, who live in Europe?

02:29.14

Kennedy Kennedy

Or is it for European people? it was very confusing as to who it was for just from the name, right? So they changed it to Disneyland comma Paris. That made it perfect. It was part of the Disney brand and it was located in Paris.

02:47.45

Kennedy Kennedy

The second mistake they made was the actual style itself of the product. So, Yes, they were, what they needed to do is they needed to speak to Europeans. They were trying to speak to all these people from France, from Belgium, from the UK, from Germany, from all the beautiful European countries, from Spain and and and Greece and all over the place.

03:11.10

Kennedy Kennedy

But everything about it when you got there was super American. it had It was run by American bosses. All the American directors were there, making it really ship-shape and super tight customer service. Everything was well-polished and flawless.

03:28.79

Kennedy Kennedy

But for us Europeans, that feels fake, doesn't feel genuine, and it's really not good for Europeans. There was a cultural clash. Americans in in the Disney parks really like things to be super perfect, super tight, pristine uniforms, whereas we like to really feel like there is something human behind all of this.

03:54.15

Kennedy Kennedy

Okay? next thing they really got wrong when they got into the product itself, into the parks, was the pricing. The pricing of everything inside the parks, as is in America, in in the in the Florida and California parks, was all premium.

04:09.11

Kennedy Kennedy

It was, you expect to go with theme park and basically be rinsed for everything. It's gonna be $8 for fries, it's gonna all these premium prices. That doesn't sit well with European culture either, because what Europeans expect is value.

04:26.26

Kennedy Kennedy

To be honest, I was really surprised, pleasantly surprised, at how reasonable the food and the drinks were in the disney in the Disneyland Paris Park. Like, I was amazed. Like, I was thinking, yeah, it's slightly premium, but it is definitely nothing compared to what I expected. And for all of these reasons, I preferred the Paris experience to the Disney disney World Florida. But then again, i am European.

04:53.62

Kennedy Kennedy

What does it say? We have to know the customer. And I know people say, oh, you have to know the customer. We have to know the customer. It's kind of boring, right? But think about it. You've got to think about, does everything in the wrapper of your program say this is definitely for you?

05:08.65

Kennedy Kennedy

Because when someone's looking at the sales page, when someone's looking at the name, when someone's looking at the content of your program, how you talk about it, the webinar, the sales video, when they look at every email you send about it, what they're actually doing is looking for red flags. They're looking for reasons not to buy, things that just don't align. And that might include currency.

05:31.70

Kennedy Kennedy

If the person is saying, hey, this is a thing for people who are based in Germany, it's based in Germany, based in Germany, but then the the currency is, i don't know, American dollars, it's going to be a bit of a disconnect. It's a bit like if I say, hey, this is for Americans, this for Americans, it's based in America, but you're going to buy in euros or British pounds or any of Australian dollars, it's a disconnect. It doesn't feel like it's for you.

05:57.62

Kennedy Kennedy

The name of it. Does the name of it sound like it is for you? So if you're targeting women, you probably don't want to have a super macho masculine name in in most states. There are obviously always exceptions to these things. What about the colors, the color scheme?

06:13.98

Kennedy Kennedy

I know someone who has a very dark, gothic vibe to them. So people who don't like that are going to be put off straight away. And she's going to attract way more people who are into that sort of color scheme and are into that much more dark, spiritual, do things at night, that sort of vibe it is. And does all of everything, every single thing, does it all apply to the person you're trying to target? For example...

06:43.51

Kennedy Kennedy

If you mention stock levels, then you've immediately lost the coaches in the audience because we don't have stock. If you mention bulking and you're in the lose weight crowd, then you've lost that crowd.

06:58.84

Kennedy Kennedy

Right. So here's some questions that I ask myself when I'm really thinking about this. I'm thinking about, OK, first of all, what is the problem that this solves? And oftentimes most of our programs will solve many problems. Oftentimes, if you're a coach, you are going to be solving mindset problems. You are going to be solving practical problems. You're going to be solving research problems and understanding problems. We're going to be solving a lots of things. But what is the main problem that it solves?

07:27.45

Kennedy Kennedy

And figuring out which problem to focus on is going to be part of the testing that we're going to do, right? So one of the things we often will test is what is the primary problem that we are going to put as the headline, as the lead in our ads, as the main thing we're going to talk about. So i a great example of this is in my Email Hero Academy membership,

07:48.70

Kennedy Kennedy

There are but a bunch of really amazing deliverables. And we're constantly just making sure that we're talking about the right deliverable that most people want. So one of the things that I know that people can be helped with inside of our academy is that you are going to know exactly what to send to your email list every single month because they give you a brand new bunch, a package of email frameworks every single month. You never have to worry about what should I be emailing today. ever That's one of the main deliverables. But another major deliverable is you get to have a group coaching experience with me where I personally will direct your email marketing for your business, for your products, the way you want to do things. That's a very different experience. So what is the, and I could be testing both of those two things. And there's actually three or four more things we could be testing too. And you should be the same thing. What is the main problem that your your coaching, your course, your membership actually solves? And then within that, I really want you to ask yourself, what are the words that they, your perfect customer, what are the words they actually use to describe the problem?

09:01.43

Kennedy Kennedy

I read a really good book. I highly recommend it. It's called Clean Language. And it's really about this... They talk about this thing called parrot speaking. right Don't paraphrase. Parrot phrase is one of the things that i remember from reading that book over a decade ago now. maybe Maybe a decade ago. And one of the things they talk about is...

09:19.19

Kennedy Kennedy

Your audience, when they're thinking about something, their subconscious has decided on the particular specific words to describe that problem. Don't then go and change those words because the words they've chosen are the words that they feel resonates the best for that problem. So what do they use? a great example is we discovered, I don't know, five years ago or something, that when I was doing lots of interviews, I'll talk about interviews in a second,

09:45.05

Kennedy Kennedy

But when I was interviewing a lot of prospective clients, um that um that they never used the word profit, ever. Nobody ever talked about profit to me. They talked about sales. They talked about having cash in the bank.

10:01.40

Kennedy Kennedy

They talked about bringing in clients. They never said profit. So we never say profit in any of our marketing, ever, because we want to use the exact words that resonate with that audience. The third question I ask is, when will they get a result? What is the timeline that we can promise a result on? That result might be number of views. It might be launching a thing, pressing go, losing a certain amount of weight, to so all these kind of things. okay So what was a good timeline for seeing something happening?

10:32.31

Kennedy Kennedy

Next question is, what have they actually tried before? Most people when they come to you, this is not their first rodeo. This is not the first time they try to solve this problem. So what have they tried before?

10:44.57

Kennedy Kennedy

And ask yourself, what is the thing they think they have to do to get the result, but they really don't want to? So a great example of this is when people come to me and they're watching my videos and they come into my programs, they they think that in order to grow their business, they need to grow their email list and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on on Facebook ads or meta ads or something. And the thing that I know people don't have to do is have a big email list. So when I talk to people about this, I say, you don't need a bigger email list. You just need to do a better job of monetizing and making sales from the people who are already on your list, who've already collected, who are already joining.

11:23.58

Kennedy Kennedy

big sigh of relief so most people think something about what it is that you do if you teach something musical they might think that already that they already have to have some kind of musical ability or they already have to have an instrument or or something like this show them they don't need to do that next why have they failed so far what are the reasons they have failed so far Is it because of their own ability?

11:47.53

Kennedy Kennedy

Is it because the process was too complicated? is it What are the reasons they failed so far? I used to date someone who, she was in the fitness space and she was very much about clean eating and having to do that 100% of the time. And it's really unreasonable to ask anybody to eat clean A hundred percent of the time it was very unachievable for her clients and for her.

12:10.90

Kennedy Kennedy

Right. So nobody could do it. So it felt like a big uphill battle to expect people to even buy into this idea of clean eating and only eating, you know, protein and and veg and having no processed or complex carbs. Like that's that's impossible. So they failed before because in this case, the expectation of of the process was way too difficult to be practical in a real person's life. When they've got kids and they've got they've got social lives, they've got birthday parties, they've got Christmas parties, they've got all these things in their lives. It's not it's not realistic. And

12:45.75

Kennedy Kennedy

and Think about where is this person? Where are they? And where is where are they really will help you understand things like currency. Time zones, for example, is another one. Like if you're saying, hey, this is for the American market, but then you put on a live event and it started 2 a.m. m a Pacific time, then it's not very, it's again, that's that red flag. that makes you go I thought this was for me, but actually it's really not for me.

13:11.81

Kennedy Kennedy

right? I had that recently, I was enrolling in ah and a program with Tony Robbins and the program starts at like, I think it's 2 p.m. UK time. It doesn't finish till midnight. And I'm like, I said to the guy, is this going to be, i even said to him, is this going to be relevant for me in the UK? Because obviously the stuff that we're talking about, it's a financial program. It's about finance and personal finance because it's the thing I'm currently um wanting to go deep on. And, um,

13:38.74

Kennedy Kennedy

I said to him, is this even going to be relevant to me in the UK? The thing that triggered that thought about whether the financial systems that he's going to be teaching in this program are going to be relevant to me in the UK was the time zone, the fact that I realized it wasn't finishing until midnight. And that seemed like a very late night for me because I'd like to be in bed for like 9.30 PM if I can be. Another one like to do with where people are are located is turns of phrase.

14:03.74

Kennedy Kennedy

like Even if they're another area who speaks the same language as you, maybe they also speak Spanish, or maybe they also speak English, or maybe they're whatever it's going to be, but we use phrases differently. a perfect example is the difference between the UK where we express the date versus America. So you might if you if you're talking an American audience, you might say October ninth Whereas in the UK, we'd say the 9th of October. These little subtle clues are the things that are saying to your audience, this is for you.

14:35.16

Kennedy Kennedy

So how do you figure these things out? What we're going to do is we're going to do the scary thing. And I know it sounds really scary, but I'm going to really encourage you to do it. And that is, I want you to go and interview someone.

14:46.49

Kennedy Kennedy

two groups of people literally get on zoom calls and talk to two groups of people the first group of people you want to talk to is buyers people who have bought from you who have bought this program from you or who have bought other programs from you and speak to them. Find out what language the people who buy from you are using. Find out all the things that we've just been talking about. The second group of people are non-buyers. People who are showing interest. You can see from your emails, they're opening your emails, they're clicking on the links in your emails, they're going to your sales page, or they're going to the application page, and they're just not enrolling. They're not applying for a call, or they are applying for a call. but they're getting on their sales call and they're not converting and we want to speak to them.

15:35.96

Kennedy Kennedy

So we're going to send them a really simple email. Here's the kind of email that I send. It just says, hi, Sam, really odd request for you. Hope you don't mind. So I noticed you checked out my automated email engine program, so the name of your program, but you haven't jumped in yet. And for what I can see, you're the exact kind of person i created it for.

15:58.65

Kennedy Kennedy

But... It's a new offer I've just launched, and so I wondered if I could steal 20 minutes of your time on a Zoom call this week to ask you a few questions. This won't be a sales pitch. It's just to help me understand how I can improve the messaging. Would you have 20 minutes this week if I send you my calendar link over?

16:16.28

Kennedy Kennedy

Right? Now, when you do that, when you send that message over, you're going to get some people replying, going, yes, please. Notice I don't say, here's my calendar link, book in. I want this to be very human. The person comes back, I tell them it's not going to be a sales pitch. All the paragraphs are really short. It's overcoming this objection of like, oh, this person's trying to sell to me. This is really you trying to get on that call to ask those questions we talked about earlier. So this is what we have to do. This is what Disney did not do. It didn't consider the culture of the audience. And that's what i want you to think about. I want you to think about the culture of your audience. Using all the questions we've talked about, we're going to understand how do they think

16:57.85

Kennedy Kennedy

What are the words they use? What are the problems they're facing? How do they describe them? And why are they paralyzed from taking action to go to the next level and actually fix the problem that they've obviously got? Otherwise, they wouldn't be in your world.

17:11.20

Kennedy Kennedy

Now, of course, to send these emails, we need to have a subject line that actually gets the email open. If you want to know the exact email subject line formula that I'd use for this email, check out this video here where I share with you a really unconventional subject line method That is absolutely crushing it.

17:29.66

Kennedy Kennedy

See you next week.