Busking is the art of performing in an area with a lot of people walking around.
Stop them in their tracks, get them interested enough to watch you, & then have enough fun that they give you money.
AKA: The skill I learned at 13.
One of the best ways to keep the crowd engaged?
Borrow a $20 bill from someone, put it “somewhere safe,” & then refer back to it through the act.
Everyone wants to know what’s going to happen to the money. Now they can’t leave.
Genius move that works for movies, emails, etc.
It’s called “opening a loop” and once you do that, the audience feels compelled to stick around so they find out how the loop is closed out, or resolved.
The money is usually destroyed with fire & then found in a miraculous place: usually in the lemon I was juggling.
Now the guy has a wet $20. Is he going to walk around with that in his pocket? Nope. It’s easier to let me keep it, and he’s getting a story he gets to tell for the next 30 years.
That’s worth a LOT more than $20.
Plus, that helps me transition into the pitch.
That’s when I invite everyone to fold their money (can’t do that with coins), and drop it in my hat.
I’ve made them laugh enough, blown their minds with impossible feats, and they are more than happy to throw in a couple bucks.
And that’s how you do it.
The exact same framework is effective for email marketing. Trade show lead generation. E-commerce abandoned cart sequences. Retargeting campaigns on Google’s display network.
I’m 39 years old. I started this when I was 13. That’s how I have 26 years’ experience.
If you want deeper looks into this kind of thing, you should join my Secret Email Society where you’ll learn unconventional approaches to business that you’re not going to see from your business school gooroos.