I’ll pay off that subject line in a second. But first, let me tell you about the great Nick Bandy, who I mentioned in my email yesterday.
Last December, Nick won my “I endorse YOU” auction by bidding $31k, and boy was I lucky Nick was the one who won.
Because Nick Bandy is GREAT.
Nick works as a fractional CMO for a massive reverse mortgage company. He collects a lot of money for a little bit of work each week ($12k/month for 15 hours/week). That gives him expertise, credibility, and a unique perspective in the direct marketing industry.
Last year, Nick decided to start a personal email list about marketing and online businesses. Using his fractional CMO skills, Nick built out a great cold traffic funnel that pays HIM to add new buyers to his list every day.
On top of that, Nick has since created great courses he’s been selling to his list, like Ghostbuster Sequence, which I’ve promoted repeatedly and which I myself have used to shockingly good result.
And finally, Nick writes great daily emails. I read them pretty much every day, and I think they are funny, clever, and interesting.
Not everybody agrees with me though.
Yesterday, like I said, I sent out my daily email, not about Nick, but mentioning Nick. I got a reply to that from a long-time reader and customer, who wrote me the following block of text:
===
So given Nick Bandy has recently come out in all his socially and democratic-ly regressive Trump (and MAGA aligned) ‘glory’, and given that he is platforming his prejudices and his views in his newsletter now in full stereotype, you might want to mention that in future eulogies. I understand he paid you a lot of money and you’re kind of stuck with him (and who knows you may genuinely like him), but I certainly won’t buy anything more off him. I did buy one product before he out-ed himself but the internet and marketing is toxic enough without financially enabling that. I am still on his list as I like to ‘know thy enemy’ although most emails now go into a file rather than read (said enemy is a tad predictable after a while). I do realise you’re not selling him in this email but the lucrativeness of your skool group, but the epithet was still promoting him. Maybe that cesspit-corner of the world is lucrative enough, I don’t know, but no promise nor amount of money is worth that.
===
Ok. so let me address this reader’s comment step-by-step.
First, Nick is American, and from what I can tell, he is happy and even proud to be American.
He recently hammed up his patriotism around the Fourth of July, including putting a “Proudly made in America 🇺🇸” line into his email signature and calling his promo the “Freelance Freedom Jubilee.”
I personally found it funny and even wrote Nick to say so, but again, I like Nick and his emails.
Second, as for Nick being a Trump and MAGA supporter, that was news to me.
Not that Nick is or is not pro-Trump — I have no idea either way. It’s just not something I’ve ever seen in his emails or heard him talk about anywhere else.
In fact, I just searched for both “MAGA” and “Trump” in Nick’s emails and Skool group. I found four mentions in total. Here’s the most recent and relevant one, and the only one that was anything more than a passing comment or third-party rant:
===
I woke up at 4 am for this appointment SOLELY to get the “Trump” passport.
It’s only available in DC, and only available for in-person appointments.
But I put “Trump” in quotation marks because to me, it’s a semiquincentennial passport. It’s not a “Trump” passport unless you think one picture of Donald Trump among dozens of pages makes it a “Trump” passport. By that logic, it’s also a “Mount Rushmore” passport because there’s one page with Mount Rushmore.
It’s also a “Nick Bandy” passport, since there’s a big picture of ME inside it, too.
People see what they want to see.
===
Nick’s final line leads into my final point about my reader’s comment above.
People see what they want to see, and most often, that’s a reflection of their own mental state.
Like I said, that reader who wrote me yesterday has been on my list for years, and has replied to dozens of my emails in the past.
One time, after I wrote an email casually mentioning Ben Settle, she replied with a 562-word response, calling Ben a “toxic, insulting, method-acting control jerk.”
Now the same reader is calling Nick toxic, prejudiced, and “socially and democratic-ly regressive.”
You can draw your own conclusions.
My conclusion is that this reader is the toxic, prejudiced, and socially and democratically regressive one.
I mean, if you go around saying nasty stuff about people based only on your own whims, what is that but toxic?
If you assume that anybody who is patriotic must also be pro-Trump, what is that but prejudiced?
And if you think that everybody who doesn’t agree with you is your enemy, what is that but “socially and democratically regressive”?
Anyways, that long-time reader is not a long-time reader any more. I’ve unsubscribed her from my list and banned her from my Skool group. I don’t want people like her hanging around.
As for Nick, like I said, the guy is great. GREAT. I endorse Nick Bandy, wholeheartedly.
Yes, that’s because Nick won my auction. It’s also because I genuinely believe everything I’ve written in this email about Nick’s emails, courses, and marketing expertise. Plus I like the guy personally.
If you want to get on Nick’s list so you can be shocked by his funny, relevant, and patriotic emails — “Proudly made in America 🇺🇸” — then here’s where to go: