A few days ago, long-time reader and personal development coach Miro Skender sent me a message with a highlighted passage from my new 10 Commandments book which says:
===
Expose human beings to anything constant — even incontestably good things like compliments, security, or money — and people soon stop responding. Like Macknick and Martinez-Conde say, we need contrast to see, hear, feel, think, and pay attention. Otherwise the world becomes literally invisible.
===
Miro then said how he knows this fact of human psychology well. He knows how to apply it in his work with coaching clients. But he doesn’t know how to put it to use with prospects on his list. Do I have any ideas?
It’s a good question.
Prospects get bored and leave if you expose them to a constant stream of the same — even if it’s good, valuable, well-written same. But not only that. You make fewer sales with the prospects who stay, because your emails are simply less persuasive than they could be.
I thought of how best to answer Miro’s question in an email. Should I give an example from my own previous emails? Or from a sales letter written by an A-list copywriter? Or would a metaphor be needed to really get the point across?
There are benefits to doing each, I thought. So why choose among them and risk doing a sub-optimal job?
I soon realized that answering Miro’s question properly would involve a ton of work, way too much for a daily email.
Fortunately, I remembered I had done it all already, and more, inside my now-retired Most Valuable Postcard #2, code name “Ferrari Monster.”
The background on the Most Valuable Postcard is that it was a short-lived, paid, monthly newsletter I ran back in the summer of 2022.
It was short-lived because I found it was way too much work and stress to write up something as in-depth and researched as I wanted to make each of these monthly guides to be.
I pulled the plug on Most Valuable Postcard after the second issue, but not before I got glowing reviews from a group of initial subscribers that I let in.
For example, email marketer Daniel Throssell, who was one of those early subscribers, wrote me to say after the first issue:
===
Seriously though, dude, I know it’s issue #1 but this program you’ve created is amazing. You’ve honestly made me pause and reconsider some ideas about how I want to do my own newsletter because this is just so excellently executed. I love pretty much everything about how you’ve done this, from the format to the content to the value you deliver in your insights. Really impressed.
===
I don’t make back issues of Most Valuable Postcard available regularly. Most Valuable Postcard #2 wasn’t available yesterday. It won’t be available tomorrow. But it is available today.
If you’d like to find out more about what’s inside, and how you can use it to push-pull the prospects on your list: