Frankly, I’m a little filled with dread as I sit down to write this email. I mean, just a moment ago, I realized it was time, but I had nothing. No ideas to write about. In a last-ditch attempt to put off work, I decided to check my own inbox.
And whaddya know?
There was something interesting in there:
My monthly report from Google Search Console, telling me which pages on my site have gotten the most visits.
So what are my most visited pages? And how are people finding me? Here are my top 3 Google queries:
1. Dan Ferrari copywriter
2. Evaldo Albuquerque
3. Daniel Throssell
Is this fair?
I mean, I’ve written way more emails/posts in the categories of motivation, positioning, and insight marketing than about any of those three guys.
But as the numbers show, that doesn’t matter.
What does matter is a really fundamental and very valuable idea — valuable if you are ever trying to influence people and get them to change their minds. I’ve previously summed this up as:
Sell people, not ideas.
Ideas are smoke.
But people have meat to them.
It’s just something about the human brain. In any pile of random data points, we are pre-progammed to search for human actors, for faces, for names.
This is just one example of something I call “membrane theory.”
Rather than dealing with a bunch of loose stuff, people want to put a membrane around it, and deal with it as a unit.
That’s why we love clearly defined scenes and events, with a ritualized beginning and an end.
That’s why we love to get a medical diagnosis, as bad as it may be, rather than keep living with a bunch of vague, threatening, on-and-off symptoms.
That’s why we love to categorize ourselves and others. We want to stop the world from being fluid and flexible, and instead we want to see ourselves as an INTQ while the other guy is an EFBJ and so of course we cannot work well together.
But you know what?
I’m not applying my own lesson here.
Because “Membrane Theory” is a horrible-sounding and abstract idea.
So let me stop talking about that. And let me talk about myself instead.
As I finish up writing this email, I’m a lot less filled with dread than I was just 20 minutes ago.
I’m looking out my large balcony doors, to yet another sunny and hot day in Barcelona. A scooter just drove up my street. Man those things make a lot of noise.
As soon as I finish up here, I’ll get back to work on my Most Valuable Email project. I’m turning that into its own complete course, and it should be ready soon.
Also, a bit later in the month, I will convert my Copy Riddles program from being delivered by email, only a few times a month, to a standalone, web-based, evergreen course.
In the meantime, if you want to help me get the word out about 1) myself and 2) Copy Riddles, I created an optin page/too-valuable post for that.
And if you share that optin page publicly, I’ve got a little bribe for you. It might be of interest in case you are a freelancer — it can help you get clients.
For the full details on that offer, which I have membranized under the name Niche Expert Cold Emails, take a look here: