Daily email battleship

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One of the most eye-opening and mind-expanding collections of direct response insights I know of is an interview with Michael Fishman.

For context:

During Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar, the only person to get up on stage and present, besides the great Gary himself, was Michael Fishman.

Gary was an A-list copywriter.

Michael was an A-list list broker. (A-list list broker broker?)

In other words, while Gary’s expertise was to come up with creative words…

Michael’s expertise was to find creative lists of people to send Gary’s subtle sales letters to.

But what’s that? You say there’s not much to be creative about in choosing lists?

Well, that’s why that interview was so eye-opening and mind-expanding.

Sure, some of Michael’s work was routine. He had to keep a close eye on which lists were interested in related topics… which lists were hot… which lists were made up of recent, eager buyers, spending good money.

But sometimes, list picking was much less routine. Some of Michael’s work involved a real leap of insight and intuition.

For example:

One offer that Michael worked on is Boardroom’s Big Black Book. This was a typical Boardroom book of secrets — what never to eat on a Greyound bus, that kind of thing.

The Big Black Book​​ was many hundreds of pages long, and it was sold through a sales letter filled with fascination bullets.

And yet, get this:

Michael had the idea to promote the Big Black Book to a list of buyers of manifestation audio course, sold on TV through an infomercial.

Totally different products… totally different markets… totally different formats for marketing… totally different everything.

So why did Michael recommend this manifestation list and why did the list end up working?

That’s the crazy thing. Because this list was made up of buyers of a product called Passion, Power, and Profit.

Get it?

​​Big Black Book… Passion, Power, and Profit.

Michael had the insight that some buyers really respond to alliteration in the name of the product. That’s why the BBB offer turned out to be a good fit for the PPP list.

Like I said, eye-opening and mind-expanding.

This brings me to my offer to you for today:

It’s a little game that you and I can play. I call the game Daily Email Battleship.

This is how you play:

Sign up to my email newsletter. When you get my welcome email, hit reply and write me the names of all the daily emails newsletters you are subscribed to.

I’m not talking about just copywriting and marketing. Anything. Magic, manifestation, or medicine. Any topic or person or business is okay, as long as they email, more or less daily.

And then:

1. If you tell me a newsletter I also subscribe to, it’s a direct hit. I will tell you that. So if you write me to say, “I am on Ben Settle’s list,” I will write back and say, “Great, so am I.”

2. But if you tell me a daily email newsletter I don’t subscribe to… I will counter. And I will tell you a newsletter I subscribe to, which you don’t subscribe to.

3. And if I can’t do that, because you are subscribed to more novel and interesting daily email newsletters than I am, then you win.

And as your prize, I will tell you why I am collecting these email newsletters, and what this has to do with the Michael Fishman story above.

This information might be valuable to you. Or it might just feed your curiosity.

In any case, if you’d like to play, the opening shot is yours.

Don’t start your sales letters like this

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“This was not a guy you wanted to mess with before lunch. He was large and threatening… Half his face was covered with a kind of breathing apparatus… He spoke in a strange, mechanical voice. And to make it all the worse, he was as cool as a gherkin and seemed prepared for any eventuality. That’s why his minions followed him blindly, and even his allies feared him. Who was this dangerous man? All we know is his name. He was called Bane.”

So begins Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.

​​With the above spoken-word monologue, the narrator introduces the main villain, Bane.

It’s only after this intro that we get into the rest of the movie, where Bane and Batman work out their relationship problems in sewers and on rooftops.

Maybe you’re puzzled. Don’t be. You’re not going crazy. This of course is not how The Dark Knight really starts.

The real movie starts in a plane, where Bane pretends to be a hostage. Except of course he’s not. ​​His minions come in a bigger plane, use a crane to lift up the first plane, blow a hole in the tail section. Whatever. You’ve probably seen the movie. And even if you haven’t, the point is simply this:

Hollywood blockbusters do not start with a narrator talking you into the story. Instead, they start with a dramatic scene, which introduces the characters and sets the mood.

There’s a valuable lesson in there. Here’s why I bring it up:

A lot of copy I see starts in the narrator style above. “I have a problem. It’s really bad. I’ve tried all the solutions but nothing is working. It is making my life miserable.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not picking on anybody. I used to write like this myself until I learned better. Even now, it’s still easy for me to slip into this narrator style. And at least I’m talking about the problem.

The trouble is that many people who make good direct response prospect won’t respond to this copy. They have either seen too many such ads and they won’t get sucked in… or they don’t (yet) identify with the problem you are calling out — and they won’t get sucked in.

The solution comes straight out of Hollywood. Don’t talk. Don’t tell. Instead show. Start your sales letter — or advertorial or whatever — with a dramatic scene. “This happened and then there was an explosion, and I winced in pain.” By the way, there’s got to be pain. Or at least anxiety, anger, or envy. We’re talking direct response copywriting, after all.

Want more copywriting lessons? Or just more fake Hollywood intros? Sign up for my daily email newsletter.

About that time Israeli jets bombed a US Navy ship

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“We’re under attack, send help!” is probably what Captain William L. McGonagle yelled over the radio.

McGonagle commanded the Navy spy ship USS Liberty, stationed in the Mediterranean sea, in international waters off the coast of Egypt.

Four Israeli jets had just fired rockets and dropped napalm bombs on the Liberty.

In that initial attack, nine US navy men died. 60 were wounded, McGonagle among them.

Then Israel dispatched a second attack, made up of high-speed torpedo boats.

These boats fired torpedoes on the Liberty, and strafed the lifeboats that the Liberty had launched.

McGonagle succeeded in evading all but one of the torpedoes, which damaged the Liberty heavily. He also finally made contact with the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga.

The Saratoga dispatched 12 US jets to defend the Liberty. But when word of this reached Washington, US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered the jets to retreat. It was never made clear why.

All in all, in the combined air and torpedo-boat Israeli attacks, which lasted for two hours, 34 Americans servicemen died and 171 were wounded.

Shocking, right? I’d never heard about this incident until today. I found it surprising and new. I thought you might find it surprising and new as well.

The truth is, today I had no ideas for a story to open up this email with.

I also had no valuable takeaway to give you.

I didn’t even know what offer to make.

So really I had nothing, zero, in all three main dimensions of your standard copywriter’s daily email.

The good news is I figured out a takeaway eventually.

Takeaway: You gotta have an occasion for your copy. In other words, your sales copy has to answer the question, why now?

I first heard this idea from A-list copywriter Dan Ferrari. An occasion is standard in financial copy. But it’s a very powerful idea that works in other markets just as well.

For example, Dan once wrote a sales letter in the health space that tripled response over the control. In large part, he did it by using an occasion to frame the promotion.

So that’s the valuable takeaway today, have an occasion.

What about the offer? I also figured that out:

My 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters Book.

I just told you Commandment IV.

And really, if you comb through my emails over the past few years, you will also find all the other nine commandments, in more or less disguised form.

But if you would like to read them all, undisguised, in a quick and fun package, for just a few dollars, you can get a copy of the entire 10 Commandments book here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

So that takes care of the marketing takeaway and the offer.

And clearly, I also figured out a surprising story to open up with.

I did that by reading a bit about what happened on today’s date in history. Because the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty happened on today’s date, June 8th, exactly 55 years ago. That’s why I’m telling you this story today.

This “on today’s date” is not something that will work as an occasion for a long-running sales letter. But it’s a good fallback for daily emails like this one.

So let me wrap up this email and the story of the Liberty:

Israel apologized later, paid a $6.5 million restitution, and said it had mistaken the Liberty for an Egyptian warship.

But many American officials and military personnel, including those who served on the Liberty, believe the Israeli attack was intentional.

One theory is that the Liberty was attacked because it was a spy ship. It would have intercepted and discovered Israel’s secret plans for the controversial invasion of the Golan Heights, which happened the next day, on June 9th.

I might use the occasion of that Golan Heights invasion to write another email tomorrow.

But for today, I gotta make you my offer. I won’t even make you scroll up for it. In case haven’t yet got a copy of my 10 Commandments book, you can do so here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

How to hypnotize people even if you’ve never done it before

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Are you sitting down? Good.

Let me try something I haven’t tried before.

I’m going to count down from 3. And when I get to 1, I will snap my fingers and give you a suggestion.

Ready?

3…

2…

1…

[snaps fingers]

*SLEEP*

.

.

.

.

.

.​​​​

What?

You’re still reading? Not asleep? Hm. Let me check my manual and see where I went wrong.

[Flips through book. Aha!]

Confession:
​​
I’ve been reading Derren Brown’s book Tricks of the Mind. Brown is a UK TV personality whose toolkit combines a lot of topics that interest me.

Comedy… magic… showmanship… classic influence techniques… NLP… and of course, the magical and mystical art of…

Hypnosis.

Brown says he started hypnosis in college. He would hypnotize his friends and then give them a post-hypnotic suggestion.

​​That way, when he saw them next and snapped his fingers and told them to sleep, they would pass out instantly, as though they’d been punched on the jaw by Mike Tyson.

And it worked. People would collapse on command.

But then a funny thing happened. Brown had a friend visit.

The two of them had talked about hypnosis before. But Brown remembered wrong, and he thought he had also hypnotized his friend before, even though he hadn’t.

So this second time, Brown snapped his fingers, and told his friend to sleep, expecting the post-hypnotic suggestion to kick in.

And sure enough, the friend collapsed and went to sleep.

In other words, hypnosis worked… even though there was no hypnosis. Or as Brown put it:

“I realized that day that hypnosis works not because of a carefully worded magical script from a self-help book, but because the subject believes the process is effective.”

Maybe that’s why my email induction above didn’t put you to sleep.

It wasn’t my fault. Rather, it was your fault. You didn’t believe it would work.

Of course, if it’s all the subject’s doing, then what is the good of a hypnotist?

Well, the hypnotist creates a setting, an environment, an experience, which allows the subject to believe. There are lots of ways and techniques to do this, and that’s what the skill and expertise and extensive training of the hypnotist are really all about.

But don’t despair at the words “extensive training.” There is one thing you can do right now to hypnotize people, even if you’ve never done it before. In Brown’s words:

“Bear in mind that you are not really inducing a special state, although you will talk as if you are. Instead, you are utilizing the subject’s expectations and beliefs. So if you appear unconvinced at the start that he will be a good subject, the chances are that he won’t respond well. You must be confident, unflustered, and act as if you’ve done it a hundred times before, even if you haven’t.”

Aha! So maybe it wasn’t your fault after all. Maybe it was that sentence I squeezed in at the start, “Let me try something I haven’t tried before.” It violates Brown’s rule about being confident, unflustered, and appearing experienced.

Yesterday, I told you a story about my friend Sam.

Sam confidently used the nonsense phrase “I’m from Los Angeles” to hypnotize a guy into renting us a sailboat.

That situation ended in shipwreck an hour later, because Sam and I had never sailed before.

But there are many situations in life, in which you are be perfectly skilled, able, or deserving.

But you still lack confidence.

And in spite of all your preparing and striving and wishing, confidence won’t come.

So that’s the point of my email today.

Whenever you don’t have internal confidence, then find something external, a mechanism, a process, a person, to believe in.

That’s why hypnosis works. That’s why I told you the story of Sam and me. That’s why I told you about Derren Brown.

Now that you have these stories in your head, you will be able to summon them up on command, along with a surge of confidence, just with the [snaps fingers] snap of your fingers.

I’m sure of it.

In fact, I’m sure that in the next 24 hours, you will have an opportunity to turn on your confidence to 100. When that opportunity comes, do it. And then write me and tell me all about it.

You just got a valuable treatment with the magical and mystical art of hypnosis.

Now, on to the magical and mystical art of making money.

Specifically, my email newsletter.

That’s where I share persuasion and marketing ideas that business owners can use to make more money… based on the hundreds of businesses I’ve already worked with… the thousands of sales emails I’ve personally written… and the millions of dollars of products and services those emails have sold in total.

If “more money for your business” makes your ears perk up, then you can sign up for my newsletter here.

The “I’m from Los Angeles” persuasion technique

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A few years ago, I met up with a friend named Sam in Tel Aviv.

​​At the time, Sam was working for an Israeli tech startup as their high-confidence, this-is-how-it’s-gonna-be sales guy for the US. He came to Tel Aviv for work for a few days. I flew out from Croatia, where I was living back then, to meet up with him.

One day, Sam and I went to the beach.

The Tel Aviv beach is a miles-long strip of sand, filled with good-looking people sunning themselves or hiding under parasols, and the sparkling blue Mediterranean sea rolling up with mid-sized waves.

At the corner of the beach, we saw could rent little two-person sailboats.

I’d never been in a sailboat before. Sam had been once or twice. Even so, we had the idea to go try it.

“Have you ever sailed before?” the sailboat rental guy asked.

“Oh, I live in Los Angeles,” Sam said with 100% conviction.

I frowned when I heard this.

The rental guy frowned as well. “So you have sailed before or not?”

“It’s no problem, Sam said. “I’m from Los Angeles” He put a lot of emphasis on the word “from”.

Sam and the rental guy stared at each other for a few moments. Then the rental guy shrugged his shoulders. And he rented us the sailboat.

There’s a lesson in that story.

Perhaps it’s obvious. And if not, I will tie it up for you tomorrow, and tell you how it connects to an unexpected area of persuasion and influence.

For today, I just want to finish up the cautionary tale above.

Sam and I went out on the sailboat. We sailed around for an hour.

It was a fairly unpleasant experience, slow and hot and slightly nauseating, since I knew nothing about what we were doing, and Sam knew very little.

Eventually, it was time to bring the boat back in.

We headed straight for the sandy beach without a specific plan of what exactly we would do.

But then, the wind caught the sails.

The waves grabbed the hull.

The beast picked up speed.

People on the beach first grew curious, then alarmed, then started running.

Mothers were screaming and pulling their children out of the water.

Old people stood at a distance, pointing and shaking their heads.

Boys cheered and waited for the inevitable crash.

And sure enough, as Sam and I sped up to the beach, out of the sea, and into the separating crowd, the keel of the boat, which we didn’t think to pull in, caught in the sand.

The entire boat toppled over with a crash.

The mast dug in among beach towels and picnic baskets. Sam and I wound up face first in shallow water, eating sand.

The boat rental guy came running over, holding his head in his hands, yelling. I’m not 100% sure, but I think he might have been yelling something like, “But you said you’re from Los Angeles!”

Or maybe not. Maybe he was just yelling how we should have pulled in the keel and lowered the sail, and how we could have killed somebody or at least ourselves.

So that’s my story. The message, again, if not clear, I will make clear tomorrow. In case you want to read that, sign up for my email newsletter. It’s okay. I’m from Los Angeles.

What’s working on Substack right now

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I’m currently subscribed to 27 Substack newsletters. Not all of those mail me anything regularly. But the ones that do have largely become my source of news, randomly interesting articles, and pop culture contact.

Since I write an email newsletter myself, every day, which you are reading right now, I’m very curious about the Substack phenomenon.

Could this be an opportunity for me? Should I start a persuasion-themed Substack newsletter?

Should I reposition myself as a Substack marketing expert?

Should I simply start publishing serialized fantasy literotica, inspired by Greek and Roman history, under some flowery pseudonym, and host it on Substack?

More on all those questions in a future email.

For today, I just want to share a bit of what’s working on Substack right now.

I recently signed up to Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter. That’s where Simon publishes his analysis of the media and publishing industry, including digital formats like Substack.

Owens’s most recent article says that across the media landscape, companies are struggling to corral new paid subscribers.

It’s not just Netflix, which I wrote about a few days ago. Other traditional and online publishers, from The Atlantic to Quartz, have either reached the limits to the growth of paid subscribers, or are actually seeing their paid subscriber numbers shrinking.

But as Owens says, “the longer you spend in publishing, the more you realize everything is cyclical.”

And so it seems the trend today in various publishing businesses is to loosen up the content behind paywalls… rely less on paid subscribers… and rely more on…

Ads.

Guess who’s back? Ads are back.

You’ve probably seen ads if you are signed up to any big-name email newsletter like The Morning Brew. The Morning Brew was bought a couple of years ago, for $75 million, on the strength of its advertising reach alone.

The Morning Brew has millions of subscribers. But even smaller newsletters, like Josh Spector’s For The Interested, which I wrote about recently, is making a healthy $48k per year, just by showing ads to a fairly small audience of 18k subscribers.

And what about Substack?

​​Well, Owens’s newsletter is hosted on Substack. And since the guy analyzes what’s working in media right now, you might conclude his own Substack might be a clue to what to do.

Owens does have a subscription option, but it’s only to be able to ask him questions. There is no content that is hidden behind the subscription. ​​

On the other hand, you can buy a 200-word ad in his weekly newsletter for $400.

Owens’s newsletter has fewer than 5k subscribers. Is $400 a lot of money just to reach some fraction of 5k people?

Apparently not, because the ad slot was filled in each of Owens’s recent issues. And perhaps it genuinely pays for the advertisers — Owens says that of his 5k subscribers, many are executives at big name media outlets or tech companies.

So what’s the point of all this?

No point. I’m just trying to give you a different perspective on how you can make money, even if you’re a hardcore direct response business, with a classic-themed daily email like this one.

The world is always changing. Exciting opportunities are popping up all the time. And the only thing that’s constant is the demand for ancient-Greece-themed fantasy literotica.

In other news:

I am not opening up my own daily emails to advertising, at least not yet. But if you’d like to read more articles like this one, and maybe see how I make money from my daily email newsletter, without ads and without a subscription, then you can sign up here.

The top 3 factors to your success in life, ranked

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This morning, following a walk down to the beach, I rushed back to my apartment, jumped onto the couch, and started clapping my hands in excitement.

It was a close call, but I made it in time!

The next episode of my favorite new show was about to start. I wouldn’t want to miss it for the world.

The show is soooo good. You should definitely check it out. It’s called “How to Speak” and it stars a very funny and charming guy named Patrick Winston.

“How to Speak” was recorded in 2018. And really, it consists of only one episode, or maybe episode is the wrong term.

“How to Speak” is really the recording of a talk, given by Winston, at MIT, the university where he was a professor for over 40 years. For most of those 40+ years, Winston gave his “How to Speak” talk, each year to bigger and more enthusiastic crowds.

So fine. You got me. The only “true” bit of my story above is that I keep watching “How to Speak” over and over, like a favorite new TV show.

I watched it once already… now I’m on episode 2, I mean, the second rewatch… and I will probably keep bingeing on it until nausea sets it.

Why watch some MIT professor like he’s Seinfeld?

Well, Winston gives you a good reason right at the start of his talk. Your success in life, he says, will be determined by:

1. How well you speak…
2. How well you write…
3. The quality of your ideas…

… in that order. This “in that order” part is super important.

Yesterday, I talked about Stefan Georgi and a recent email he sent out about a $500k project he just finished.

The point that stuck out to me was that, here was Stefan, one of the best copywriters in the world, full of relevant samples and industry status… repeatedly writing unanswered emails to a business owner he had never met, trying to follow up and close a copywriting project.

Crickets. No response.

And then there was Stefan again, some time later, running into the same business owner at a conference, and instantly, deal gets closed, and for much more money than before.

In my mind, this is part of what Winston is saying above with that “Speaking, writing, ideas — in that order” stuff.

Of course, Stefan wasn’t at that conference to give a job talk, or to present his new research paper on “The Unreasonable Effectiveness Of The Unique Problem Mechanism.”

But the story still shows the power of personal, high-definition, warm interactions over even the most effective “cold” marketing and networking techniques.

That’s something to keep in mind, whether you are looking for success in your own product business… or as a copywriter working with clients.

All right, I gotta get back to bingeing on my cool new show. So my offer for you today is simple.

A few days ago, I sent out the first Most Valuable Postcard to my first 20 subscribers.

The premise of MVP that it’s an un-newsletter. Rather than telling you sexy secrets that sell for a lot but aren’t really worth much… MVP is all about fundamental factors to your success, which need to be regularly practiced, but which are guaranteed to produce big results.

The Most Valuable Postcard is not open to new subscribers right now. And given the amount of work it took me to produce the first one, I’m not sure it ever will be reopened.

But in case I do reopen it, and you would like to be notified, you can sign up to my email newsletter. The next episode of that particular show airs tonight.

I got paid $10k to listen to a dude talk for 20 minutes

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Last night, before I went to bed, an intriguing email landed in my inbox. The subject line read:

“I got paid $500k to write a 12-minute VSL”

The email came from copywriter Stefan Georgi. If you’re not on Stefan’s list or haven’t read the email yet, the gist is this:

* Stefan talked to a business owner about doing a VSL
* Stefan quoted $120k + a share of revenues
* The deal never happened
* Stefan kept following up, but got no response
* Months later, Stefan bumped into the business owner at a conference
* The business owner agreed to hire Stefan for a new project, a short 12-minute VSL
* Stefan ended up getting $500k in total, $250k up front, and another $250k as a “we’re so happy” bonus

Pretty crazy, right?

​​$500k for a 12-minute VSL?

​​Probably a thousand words total? $500 per word?

But there is a catch.

This business is a crypto project. And Stefan got paid in the tokens of that project.

These tokens might really be worth $500k one day. Or they might be worth more. Or they might turn out to be worse than monopoly money — not even the value of valueless paper.

If it sounds like I’m harping on the obvious like a jilted lover, that’s because this is a highly sensitive personal issue.

Back in 2017, a friend and I started a crypto news website.

2017 was the year of ICOs — crypto projects raising funds by selling their own tokens. Some projects were legit. Many were scams.

I had the idea to interview the founders of various ICO projects on camera. This would give investors a more realistic feel for who is a shyster and who is genuinely genuine.

The first founders I interviewed were from a project called CanYa, a kind of crypto Upwork.

I got on Zoom and listened to the founders of CanYa talk enthusiastically about their business for 20 minutes.

Once the call ended, the CanYa CEO said he wants to say thanks for the publicity (our YouTube channel had 4 subscribers). So he sent over $2k worth of CanYa coins.

“Pretty nice,” I thought, “though it might turn out to be monopoly money.”

But then, it happened. A few days later, CanYa started trading on a public exchange. And CanYa coins jumped from $1 to $5.

Suddenly, my 20 minutes of listening to some dude talk was worth $10k!

This was a hell of a business. “So long copywriting,” I said to myself. “Hello listening to people enthuse about their project at an effective hourly rate of $30,000 hour!”

Well.

​As you can see, I’m still in the copywriting and marketing world.

I no longer have that ICO news website with my friend.

And my former $10k treasure of CanYa coins, which I continue to sit on like a greedy dragon on his hoard, is today worth $22.02.

I’ve personally lost almost all my interest in crypto. I think that today, as in 2017, there are a few legit projects. As for the rest, it’s a bunch of hype and scams.

But you know, none of this is the point of why I told you about Stefan’s experience above.

The point is up there, hidden among those bullet points.

Maybe you can spot it. And if not, then read my email tomorrow. That’s where I will tell you the valuable point I have in mind, because today’s email is getting long.

To get that email when it comes out, you can sign up for my newsletter. The newsletter is free, though contributions of worthless crypto tokens are always welcome. Click here to sign up.

How to get all of Ben Settle’s best stuff for free

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A lot of value in today’s email. Let me set it up with a response I got to my email yesterday:

Not gonna lie, ever since you did that presentation about Daniel Throssel’s emails I’ve noticed you’ve been writing in a similar style.
But more subtle which is your approach.

This email had no value at all. But who cares? I was still reading all the way to the end. and I actually really liked it.

Hope the furnishing all goes well in Barcelona!

Let me tell you a personal, and very valuable story:

Many, many years ago, I subscribed to Ben Settle’s daily emails for the first time.

And right off, I was annoyed. Ben would send out emails claiming to be filled with “value,” which were just pitches for his Email Players newsletter, or testimonials which he slapped in and claimed were valuable in themselves.

What a crook.

Eventually though, all that shameless self-promotion wore me down. I got curious.

So I subscribed to Email Players see what Ben’s real secrets were.

I got his Email Players Skhema, the how-to workbook that comes with the subscription. I read through that.

I also finally remembered I had a free copy of the first issue of Email Players, which Ben gives away on his site. I read through that also.

And then I read the first month’s issue, which revealed the “secret” Ben had been teasing for weeks.

And you know what?

The damnedest thing happened.

It turned out Ben wasn’t lying all along.

His emails were packed with value. More often than not, the most valuable stuff in the paid newsletter was right there, in his emails, sometimes explicitly stated.

I didn’t see that before just because Ben’s emails are structured as infotainment. The value wasn’t bolded, highlighted, and explained as it would be in a textbook. It took what Ben likes to say “reading between the lines” or at least a slightly more careful reading than I was giving his daily emails, or to any emails for that matter.

Was there stuff in the paid Email Players print newsletter that wasn’t in Ben’s daily emails?

Sure. And by not paying for Ben’s newsletter, you will miss out on that.

At the same time, by a close reading of his emails, you will get the best stuff. You will also find stuff Ben doesn’t reveal in his newsletter, or probably even in his books, stuff that he wants to keep for himself.

So that’s my response to the claim above that my email yesterday had no value at all. And if you don’t see how that’s a response, well…

In any case, here’s another thing I learned from Ben Settle. It’s to end your emails with “Okay, on to business.”

If you want to get my best stuff for free, both stuff I’ve learned from Ben Settle, and from my own experience, working with 8-figure direct response businesses, and managing large and very profitable email lists myself, then you can sign up to my very valuable daily emails here.

Spoons and forks considered harmful

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Earlier this morning, I had what I can only generously call breakfast.

​​I tore off a chunk of baguette and stood barefoot on the balcony, gnawing on my bread and looking over the city.

Then I went back to the kitchen. I have two cans of sardines. I also have a small ceramic bowl, but no forks. I considered opening one of the cans, pouring out the contents into the bowl, and eating the sardines using my fingers.

I got near to the can, then stepped away. I got near again, stepped away again. “I’m better than this,” I convinced myself. The sardines will have to wait.

I then took a small pot and boiled some water. I took a package of espresso coffee and cut it open — thank God I bought scissors this morning.

But I don’t have anything resembling a spoon. So I shook the coffee package over the boiling water.

Was that about a teaspoon of coffee? Or two? Maybe add some more? The coffee came out cocaine-level strong.

All this is to say that last night I moved into my new apartment.

The apartment is furnished — there is a bed and a couch and things like that.

But many of the absolute necessities of daily life — spoons, forks, shot glasses — were not included. I have to buy them. And in the meantime, I have to make do, or do without.

Some usual things are an absolute no-go. I can’t wash clothes until I get a rack on which to dry them.

Other things, like those fingery sardines, I decided to postpone for later.

Still other things, I figured out some new method of doing, like shaking out half a pound of coffee over a boiling pot of water.

I don’t mind any of this. In fact, I find it kind of stimulating.

In another few days or weeks, I will buy the necessaries, get used to this apartment, get back in the usual groove, and live here much like I’ve lived everywhere else.

But right now, I’m very awake. I’m seeing and experiencing new things and having new ideas — even if they’re terrible, like eating sardines with my hands — that I never would have had otherwise.

But you know what? I have a lot of shopping to do. And later today, I have to send out the first batch of postcards to my Most Valuable Postcard subscribers.

So let me get to the idea I want to share with you quickly and without much ado:

One of the people I’ve long admired the most is computer scientist Alan Kay.

He’s the guy who said a change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points, which is a hope I keep clinging to desperately.

Kay is a bit of a tech visionary. Much of the technology we take for granted today and that underlies our world, like windows interfaces and object-oriented programming, was Kay’s work.

Kay is also interested in design and education and creativity. And he has many interesting things to say.

For example, back in 2009, Kay gave a talk titled, Normal Considered Harmful. In it, he said the following:

“You don’t want to think every time you take a step. You can cripple yourself by questioning everything that you do. But on the other hand, every once in a while, instead of doing meditation on a flower, meditate on all the assumptions you’re making about the world that you’re just taking for granted for efficiency reasons.”

Kay says he performs this exercise every day. Literally every day, 15 minutes to think about all the assumptions he’s making and that he’s taking for granted.

Sure, sometimes you’re forced into this situation, because there’s just no spoon in your apartment.

But like Kay says, there might be value — even big value, maybe 80 IQ points worth of value — in making this no-fork, no-spoon meditation into a daily habit.

So try it.

Or don’t.

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