Breaking the code of the highly successful person

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The sun is shining, I have an egg sandwich and a bottle of water for the road, and I’m ready to get in the car and drive across three countries in about as many hours.

But before I can do that, I have to finish this email and two more things. And that’s my point for you for today.

I recently read Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs.

​​I long resisted doing so because the very words “time management” sound repulsive to me, a throwback to the time of Fred Flintstone slaving away at the rock quarry until the foreman yanks the pterodactyl’s tail to signal the end of the work day.

But boy was I wrong.

Dan Kennedy’s book is fantastic. I recommend it to anyone who is a driven go-getter (it will help you focus and get more done) or, like me, a lazy layabout by nature (it will still help you focus and get more done).

Anyways, towards the end of the book, Dan quotes a bit of wisdom he heard in his young days from success speaker Jim Rohn.

Dan says that, for him, this bit of wisdom broke the code of the highly successful person. It took all the mystery and mystique away. And here it is:

When you look closely at highly successful people in any field, you walk away saying to yourself, “Well it’s no wonder he’s doing so well. Look at everything he does.”

That’s what Jim Rohn used to say. To which, Dan Kennedy adds, “… and look very closely at the one thing or two or three things he gets done without fail, every single day.”

So there you go. My point for you for today. Figure out one or two or three things you will get done each day, without fail.

Perhaps you’re curious what my “without fail” things are.

Like I said, this email is one. Another, which i started only recently, is working on a new offer. And the third, which I’ve been practicing for most of my life, is reading. Because reading is really the fuel that drives any achievements I’ve had.

I’m not telling you to pick up these specific daily habits. Make your own choices.

​​But if reading is something you want to do every day, both for your sanity and for your success, then, again, I can recommend Dan Kenendy’s Time Management book. It’s a smart investment right now, because it will pay so much in time dividends tomorrow.

In case you want to check it out, you can find the Amazon link below:
​
https://bejakovic.com/time-management​​

“Sign of the Elephant Guarantee”

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Right now, the top seller in the competitive “manifestation” niche on Clickbank is an offer called the BioEnergy Code.

The VSL for this offer tells the story of Angela Carter, a woman on a journey to find wealth, health, and a feeling of connectedness… by following the golden thread of the elephant.

Elephant?

Yes, elephant.

First, Angela walks into a bookstore in her home town. She closes her eyes and prays for guidance. And she spots a travel guide with an elephant on it.

Next thing you know, Angela’s traveled to Nepal. A boy on the street tugs on her shirt. “Go see the elephants,” he says, and he points across the street.

This leads Angela to a guru who tells her the secret of manifesting anything she wants.

She manifests a new and amazing life for herself. She’s ready to head back home. And she wants to make the guru’s secret public, so others could benefit also. But the guru balks.

“This knowledge stays in Nepal!”

But our hero is prepared. “What if we contribute a portion of each sale to a save-the-elephants charity?”

The guru mulls this over for a second. “Deal!”

This explains why you can now buy the BioEnergy Code for $37 on Clickbank. Pretty standard stuff and not particularly inventive. But this next part is.

When it’s time to close the sale on the set of guided meditation mp3s and chakra-release PDFs, Angela makes the following guarantee:

I call it the “Sign of the Elephant Guarantee”.

Here’s how it works.

Within 24 hours of saying “yes” to The BioEnergy Code…

I guarantee you’ll receive an unmistakable “sign” that you’re on the right path.

It’ll feel like something just got unblocked so you can see your path more clearly than ever.

It may not be an “elephant” like it was for me in Barnes & Noble and the tea shop in Kathmandu…

But it WILL be so clear and so unmistakable, it will be the “Elephant in the Room” – a sign that your fields of BioEnergy are about to be cleared and unleashed.

All I ask is that you give your source 24 hours to manifest this elephant in the room sign.

And if you don’t experience this elephant size sign, simply email me and I’ll promptly refund every penny.

I thought this was genuinely clever. This short bit of copy does so much.

I sat down, and off the top of my head, I wrote 7 good things that come out of this guarantee. I was going to highlight the most valuable of these 7 things in this email, but I realized they are all too important.

So I will make you an offer with a 100% no-questions-asked money-back guarantee… for a full 24 hours.

I call it the “Sign of Clickbank Insight.”

Here’s how it works:

Within 24 hours of reading this email, I guarantee you will receive an unmistakable sign having to do with Clickbank.

Oh, it might not be a big Clickbank logo on a sales page that you visit. But it will be there if you watch for it.

It might be some email newsletter mentioning Clickbank… or it might be an online run-in with a copywriter or marketer, such as Stefan Georgi or Ian Stanley or Chris Haddad, who has been closely tied to Clickbank in the past.

Once you see the sign, you will feel a clear and unmistakable lightbulb moment. “Aha! So this is what that Bejakovic guy was talking about!”

I guarantee this will happen. All I ask is that you give the universe 24 hours to organize this moment of insight for you.

And when it happens, then sign up to my email newsletter.

Reply to my welcome email and tell me about the sign that you saw… and I will spell out the 7 chakras of the “Sign of the Elephant guarantee.”

I mean, I will tell you what I thought was so good about this guarantee… and how you can use this in your own marketing and copy to one day make it to the top of your own Clickbank category.

Or… your money back.

A brief and noble email

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The land of the ancient Spartans is Laconia, and so from the ancient Spartans we get the adjective laconic. It describes speech which says much in few words. Example:

When Philip of Macedon was tearing through ancient Greece, he sent an envoy to Sparta with a menacing yet indirect message. Should Philip come to Sparta as friend or foe? The Spartan answer:

Neither.

What! Nobody talked to Philip this way! So he rushed back a second envoy, with a more direct message. If he invaded Laconia, he would rout the Spartans and kick them out from their lands. The Spartan response:

If.

So Philip shrugged, picked up his armies, invaded Laconia, routed the Spartans in battle, and kicked them out from many of their lands.

And my point is — well, I guess you see my point.

Terseness might sound noble or clever. But it has little to do with effectiveness. So don’t rely on it for persuasion. But do keep it for entertainment. Like this:

A group from the island of Samos once came to Sparta seeking aid. They were starving.

They made a big, long speech, as was customary at that time.

When the speech finally finished, the Spartans said they could no longer remember the first half, and so could make no sense of the second half. Petition denied.

The hungry Samians glared at each other.

And they asked for a second hearing.

This time, they brought an empty bag. They pointed to the bag and said, “The bag wants flour.”

The Spartan magistrates shook their heads. “You could have done without saying, ‘the bag’.” But fine. They granted the Samian request.

And now:

I won’t make a big speech. I will just point to my empty newsletter optin form. And I will say, “wants your information.” I hope you will grant the request.

“START, EVERY TIME, WITH THIS INVIOLABLE RULE:”

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Last night, I had a few extra hours left at home before my flight to warmer climes.

So there I was, sitting in the kitchen, talking with my mom. Suddenly, she looked at the clock. Her eyes lit up.

“Do you want to watch Scent of a Woman?” she asked.

It’s her favorite movie, or one of them. A 90s Hollywood melodrama about a blinded army colonel, played by Al Pacino, who really enjoys women and yelling at the top of his voice.

If you’ve never seen the movie, I’m about to spoil it for you:

The entire two-and-a-half hours is the colonel’s last grand tour around New York City before he attempts to kill himself. Disabled life isn’t worth living, he believes.

Of course, the colonel doesn’t succeed in killing himself.

There’s a climactic scene in a fancy hotel room in which the colonel’s chaperone, an earnest 17-year-old boy, wrestles, cajoles, and begs the colonel for his gun and his life.

“Give me one reason not to kill myself,” Al Pacino yells at his usual 11, while shoving the gun in the boy’s face.

“I’ll give you two,” says the chaperone, tears running down his face. “You can dance the tango and drive a Ferrari better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

The colonel exhales. His shoulders slump. He turns around. “I’m gonna need a drink,” he says. And he starts disassembling his gun.

I hope you’ve been sufficiently emotionally aroused. Because now I’d like to sell you a piece of writing advice by film director and playwright David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross, Wag The Dog, Hannibal).

At one point, Mamet wrote up a short guide for a few writers working under him. Like Al Pacino, Mamet also enjoys yelling, at least in print, so he wrote his advice mostly in caps:

“START, EVERY TIME, WITH THIS INVIOLABLE RULE: THE SCENE MUST BE DRAMATIC. it must start because the hero HAS A PROBLEM, AND IT MUST CULMINATE WITH THE HERO FINDING HIM OR HERSELF EITHER THWARTED OR EDUCATED THAT ANOTHER WAY EXISTS.”

Going back to Scent of a Woman, you can see how neatly the hotel scene fits this rule:

The colonel has a problem. He’s lost his self-respect and he believes he cannot enjoy life any more. But he finds himself thwarted in his desire to end his misery. And he is educated that, in spite of his disability, life is still worth living.

So there you go. A simple way to write melodrama, which is really all you should be doing when you write sales copy. Just follow Mamet’s rule.

…

Yes?

What, you want more?

Solid copywriting advice is no longer enough for you?

Jeez. All right. Let me try impressing you with another quote. This one comes from a miserable German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer:

“Pedantry also is a form of folly. It arises from a man’s having little confidence in his own understanding, and therefore not liking to leave things to its discretion, to recognize directly what is right in the particular case. Accordingly, he puts his understanding entirely under the guardianship of his reason. Therefore, the pedant, with his general maxims, almost always misses the mark in life, shows himself to be foolish, absurd, and incompetent.”

The point being, you can write serviceable melodrama by following rules, like the one that Mamet lays down. But you’re not likely to ever write something really great. Or even to produce a breakthrough piece of sales copy.

That’s not to say that rules don’t have their place. But maybe Mamet was wrong.

Maybe you shouldn’t start START, EVERY TIME, WITH THIS INVIOLABLE RULE.

Maybe you should just END BY CHECKING YOUR LIST OF RULES, to make sure you HAVEN’T WRITTEN ANYTHING IRRETRIEVABLY STUPID WHILE TRUSTING YOUR INSTINCTS.

Ok, enough shouting. Here’s a quiet message instead:

Every day, I write about marketing and copywriting. Often I include movie illustrations for the points I’m making. If this kind of thing makes your eyes light up, consider signing up for my email newsletter here.

Blessed are the proud

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“No man succeeds in everything he undertakes. In that sense we are all failures. The great point is not to fail in ordering and sustaining the effort of our life. In this matter vanity is what leads us astray. It hurries us into situations from which we must come out damaged; whereas pride is our safeguard, by the reserve it imposes on the choice of our endeavour as much by the virtue of its sustaining power.”
— Joseph Conrad, The Duellists

Here’s one thing that’s kept me interested in direct response copywriting for so long:

The best sales letters are not really selling what they seem to be selling on the surface. So they are not really about 100x stock gains… or getting your ex back… or ways to travel free on luxury cruise ships.

Rather, they are about being a man of vision… or being a man with a hole that nothing can fill… or being a man who knows others are always plotting behind his back.

That’s why the seven deadly sins and their offshoots are so powerful to think about when you write copy.

And even though I’ve thought about this quite a bit, I always thought that the two most powerful human failings — vanity and pride — are overlapping or even synonymous.

The passage I quoted above was the first time I heard anyone make a distinction between vanity and pride. The passage even puts them in opposition.

This made me think what the difference between pride and vanity might be. After some thinking, here’s what I’ve come up with:

Pride – the internal belief in your own worth or superiority

Vanity – the desire for others to acknowledge your worth or superiority

So for example:

If, as in the Conrad story above, an old soldier enters a woods with two loaded pistols, with the intent to kill or be killed by his opponent, according to the norms of civilized, honor-bound men…

Then pride is doing it to prove to himself his courage and his greater skill than the opponent. It doesn’t matter at all if nobody else will see it or know it.

But vanity is doing it so others will witness and acknowledge his courage and his greater skill. The audience is the whole point. If nobody sees it, the victory itself means nothing, or is worse than that — a wasted opportunity.

So pride and vanity are really two fundamentally different human drives, and I suspect, motivate different types of people.

At least that’s my interpretation. It might be relevant to you for two reasons:

One are those pesky hidden motives that underlie so many purchasing decisions. Again, it’s not really about the stock returns, the toxin-free pots and pans, or the better golf score.

Instead, it’s about vain status-seeking and wounded self-respect. Understanding these things, and having a good name to attach to them, can help you when it’s time to write breakthrough copy.

The other thing is something I’m personally curious about:

Why we put so much emphasis as a society, at least historically, on the evils of pride. Pride is even supposed to be the head of all the deadly sins, from which all the others spring.

Which brings me to one of my “competitors” I mentioned yesterday.

He might have something to tell you about why our society says pride is so bad.

The man’s name is Jason Leister. He started out as a direct response copywriter. He then wrote daily emails for years about clients and why they suck and how copywriters can cope with that fact.

But gradually, Jason drifted off into new and uncharted waters.

He now lives somewhere off the grid with his wife and ten kids.

And he’s stopped writing about copywriting and clients.

Instead, he writes about… well, check it out at the link below. That’s where you can sign up to get on Jason’s email newsletter and get Jason’s lead magnet, “How the World System Was Constructed to Make You a Slave and What You Can Do About It.”

You might find Jason’s ideas repulsive, conspiratorial, or like me, intriguing and sometimes enlightening. If you want to check them out, here’s the link:

https://sovereignbusiness.org/

Things “worthy of compliment” in 12 of my competitors

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I recently finished reading a book called NLP about NLP by two NLP experts, Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner.

I’m interested in somehow patching a few Y2K-sized bugs in my own brain software, and so this kind of neural programming stuff is right up my alley and then through a little door.

Anyways, at one point in the book, Andreas and Faulkner advise the following:

“Find what’s worthy of compliment in your competition. Since you have been encouraging yourself to be complimentary to others, your senses have been opened and relaxed. You will have undoubtedly found yourself acquiring the skills of others without directly concentrating on them.”

Too easy? Who knows. I decided to try it out.

But then right at the start, I hit a snag. I had trouble coming up with my “competition.”

There’s nobody I really think of in that way. That’s the whole point of writing daily emails and creating unique offers like Copy Riddles.

But ok — ultimately, I am competing for people’s attention, for space in their inbox, for their hearts and minds, and possibly for their learning and growth dollars.

So I made a list of 12 such competitors. They all either write daily emails or have something to do with direct marketing.

For each competitor, I listed the first thing that came to mind — stuff they do, which I admire.

​​It turned out to be a surprisingly fun and eye-opening exercise. I suggest it to you — whether you’re a business owner, marketer, or freelancer.

Perhaps you’re curious about my list. You can find it below, with the names stripped out. After all, my goal today isn’t to name drop in bulk or to call people out.

But perhaps you can still guess who I have in mind — all are people I’ve mentioned previously in my newsletter. And here’s what’s worthy of compliment in each:

1. Willingness to get on camera regularly in spite of having the charisma of a bag of lentils
2. Community management
​3. High-priced offers
​4. A business built around a single core product that’s been running for years
​5. Emotional copy in spite of being very emotionally flat as a person
​6. Personality-based emails
​7. Writing fast
8. Surprising historical anecdotes
9. List building
10. Self-aggrandizement
11. A deep trove of personal experience and interests
​12. A really unique viewpoint

If you’re in the marketing and copywriting space, all these people will probably be familiar to you.

​​Except perhaps #8. He is well-known, but is not in the marketing space.

A​nd #12. He was once a direct marketer, but is today something… not quite definable. If you’re curious, I’ll tell you more about him, including his name, in my email tomorrow. You can sign up here to read that.

The most tastless and offensive Christmas song ever?

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“I’m not singing that line. I’ll sing anything, but I’m not singing that line.”

“You have to. That’s the line I saved for you. That’s the one that’s going to make them hurt the most.”

Here’s a potentially offputting and offensive Christmas eve story:

Some 37 years ago, on November 25 1984, dozens of British and Irish pop stars gathered at 10 Basing Street in London.

The event was Band Aid:

An attempt to record a hit song in just one day and get it to the top of the charts before Christmas. All proceeds were to help relieve the crisis in Ethiopia, where drought had put 7 million people at risk of a slow and miserable death.

Against all odds, Band Aid turned out to be a success.

The song, “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” became the fastest- and biggest-selling single in UK history. It raised some some $25 million outright. It also spawned later efforts like Live Aid and USA for Africa, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars more.

In spite of all this, “Do They Know It’s Christmas” has had many critics over the years.

People hate the song for different reasons, but one strain can be summed up by the disgust at the line that fell to Bono of U2 to sing.

Bono initially refused to sing the line.

But Bob Geldof, the organizer of Band Aid and a personal friend of Bono’s, was too persuasive and won out in the end.

And so at the end of the first verse of “Do They Know It’s Christmas”… after contrasting the world of British plenty to the world of dread and fear in Ethopia, Bono belts out:

“Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you”

Was this necessary? Would the song have worked as well without it?

We won’t ever know. But going by how much controversy, attention, and outrage this one line has caused over the years… it’s possible it tipped the scales of guilt and shame needed to stir action.

So that’s the rather harsh and out-of-season message I have for you tonight.

You might feel reluctant to offend, to say something that people might find provocative, shocking, or tasteless. You might put it off and say, “It’s not the right moment now. I’ll do it after the holidays… in the New Year… once corona passes… when the Cleveland Indians win the World Series.”

Sooner or later though, this attitude means you will miss an opportunity to make a real difference.

So Merry Christmas. And let me sum up my message with a few words by the original Grinch of direct marketing, Dan Kennedy:

“There is never any need to be or behave like a prick in order to be successful, but you must be okay with some, possibly many, people thinking of you as an insufferable prick.”

And on that note, I’d like to advertise my email newsletter. It’s been praised by many people in the direct response industry… and it’s been ignored by others. If you’d like to check it out, you can sign up here.

A bit of magic and faith to persuade hardened cynics

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I hear it’s Christmas time, so here’s a little gift. It’s taken from the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street.

If you’ve never seen the movie, it’s about department store Santa who just might be the real Santa Claus.

He looks like Kris Kringle…

He acts like Kris Kringle…

He even calls himself Kris Kringle.

Of course, while Kris Kringle soon makes some folks believe that magic is real and he is Santa… a few cynics refuse to allow faith into their hearts.

And so Kris Kringle winds up in the kounty kourthouse. He’s on trial and the point is to prove he is not really Santa, because Santa doesn’t really exist.

And then there’s the following scene, which I thought you might find valuable:

KK’s lawyer and the opposing lawyer both approach the judge.

KK’s lawyer holds up three letters from kids to Santa, which have been delivered to Kris Kringle.

Since the USPS is legally bound to deliver letters to the intended recipient, the lawyer argues, the US Government is throwing its authority behind the fact that Kris Kringle is actually Santa.

The opposing lawyer says, “Come on, three letters to Santa, that proves nothing.”

“I have additional exhibits,” KK’s lawyer says. “but I hesitate to produce them.”

The judge is intrigued. He insists. “Let’s see them. Put them here on my desk.”

“But your honor…”

“Put them here on my desk!”

It turns out KK’s lawyer has been holding back. Three letters not enough? How about this:

A dozen mail carriers carrying sackfuls of letters come into the courtroom. They pour them out onto the judge’s desk. The judge ends up buried in letters, all addressed to Santa, and now delivered to Kris Kringle.

Case closed!

Look, it’s a family movie, and it’s about Christmas and faith. It doesn’t have to make 100% sense.

But sense or not, I think that courtroom gambit is a powerful technique, and something you can benefit from in your own marketing.

Maybe you can see exactly what I have in mind. Or maybe you’d like me to spell it out.

​​In that case, write me an email and simply state your wish. You can address your email to the North Pole or to me specifically. Google will deliver it either way. Oh, and don’t forget to sign up to my newsletter before Christmas.

My #1 favorite editing tool

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Do you ever have a turkey on your table, a tired, beat-up, ugly old bird… but you still try your damnedest to turn it into a powerful and proud eagle?

You know what I mean:

You squint at the turkey, you look at it from the left and the right…

You primp the tail feathers a little to make the thing seem bigger and healthier than it is…

You tuck in that wattle to give your bird a more raptor-like profile… and then you watch with disappointment as the saggy skin expands again…

You’ve had all this happen, right?

Well, I’ve definitely had it happen. All the time. In fact it happened just last night.

Last night, I spent an embarrassing amount of time to write today’s email. This involved much research and thinking and shuffling of possible things I could say. The basic idea was an old personal story, which I was hoping to tie into a specific copywriting moral I had in mind.

And so there I was, tilting my head to the left, squinting a little, and trying to smile.

“It’s almost there,” I said to myself. “Just tuck in this saggy bit… fluff up up the end part here… and it will be great.”

But then, in a moment of weakness or maybe luck, I took a break. I checked my inbox. It turned I had an email myself — another copywriter’s newsletter.

“Let me just read it,” I said. “Maybe it will help me finish my own email.”

The other copywriter is someone I won’t name to protect my pride. But perhaps you’ll be able to guess who I have in mind.

His newsletter yesterday was making fun of people who tell lifeless stories as a way of drawing an uninspired moral.

He even included a short sample email he’d whipped up just to mock the kind of tired stuff he had in mind.

I shifted in my seat. I swallowed. Slowly, I took this mocking, fake email from the other copywriter’s newsletter… and I put it side by side with the email I was planning to send out. In parallel, I ran down both pages:

Same saggy wattle… check.

Same bony, unmuscled carcass… check.

Same scraggly tail feathers… check.

No, it wasn’t the exact same bird. But it was definitely the same species.

Which brings me to my copywriting moral, or rather, a piece of advice I keep repeating to myself.

I keep repeating it because I keep forgetting it, and I waste a ton of time as a result. Perhaps my reminder will be useful to you as well:

In my experience, the most powerful editing tool is the backspace key.

If a phrase, sentence, paragraph, section, or even entire email isn’t quite willing or able to fly, right now, as it is, without primping and massaging… then out it goes. The sooner, the better.

I have much, much more to write on this topic. In fact, I did write much more. And then, I threw it out. Trust me, this turkey — I mean this email — is better off for it.

“That’s fine for today,” I hear you say. “But what about tomorrow? Will that bird fly?”

I can’t say for sure. If you want to give it a try, you can join the club here.

How to turn failure into prestige

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In the year 52 BC, the Roman army, led by Julius Caesar, secretly advanced their massive siege towers towards the Gallic walled city of Avaricum.

The sentries on the walls were hiding from heavy rain.

Caesar took advantage of the situation, and he took the walls without much fight.

The remaining Gallic soldiers grouped themselves in the middle of town. They were set on a desperate fight to the end.

But the Romans just stayed on the walls, watching the Gauls from above.

Gradually, panic took the defenders. They started running out the city for dear life.

They didn’t get far.

The Romans massacred them along with everyone else in the city, women and children included.

Out of 40,000 Gauls inside Avaricum, only 800 survived.

The leader of the Gauls, Vercingetorix, was stationed outside the city with his army. He had been tasked with fighting Caesar in the open and keeping the city of Avaricum safe.

Vercingetorix had failed spectacularly. The fact that he had vocally opposed the idea of making a stand at Avaricum didn’t help, either.

As the few remaining survivors from the city dragged themselves into Vercingetorix’s camp… there was a real chance that the soldiers’ sympathy with the survivors and general anger at Vercingetorix would cause a riot.

But let’s pause for a second with the massacring and rioting.

Take a moment. And ask yourself, what might you do if you were in Vercingetorix’s sandals?

It’s not just an idle hypothetical.

Say you have an online presence today and you hope to position yourself as a leader in your field. There’s a good chance that sooner or later… you will be involved in some kind of scandal, failure, or controversy, whether deserved or not.

When that happens, discontent might bubble up among those who normally follow and support you. It might even break into a riot that lands your metaphorical head on a metaphorical plate.

So what can you do? Let me tell you what Vercingetorix did:

He called a council of war. He spoke to his troops and asked his army to not be disheartened by the loss.

The Romans didn’t beat them through superior courage in a fair fight. Instead, the Romans did it through trickery and their knowledge of siege warfare.

But Vercingetorix would soon repair this setback. He would lead his people to greater successes.

He was well on the way to uniting all the Gaul tribes against the Romans. And when Gaul was united, the whole world could not stand against her. In the meantime, it was time to get to work fortifying the camps.

Maybe it’s not clear from this what Vercingetorix’s real message was. So here’s an explanation, in Caesar’s own words:

“This speech made a good impression on the Gauls. What pleased them most was that, despite a signal disaster, Vercingetorix had not lost heart or concealed himself or shrunk from facing the multitude. And so while a reverse weakens the authority of commanders in general, his prestige, on the contrary, in consequence of the disaster, waxed daily greater.”

So here’s my takeaway for you, if you are a leader or you hope to be one some day:

The crowd mind hasn’t changed any in the past two millennia.

Today as then, when you face a crisis or setback, the crowd will tear you apart — as soon as you back down, apologize, or show weakness or fear.

The good news is, it’s easy to show no weakness or fear when you have a computer screen to protect you. And when your angry army is armed not with sharp swords… but with dull Twitter accounts.

Keep this in mind, and when disaster hits, you will see it’s really an opportunity. Not just to survive. But to get the crowd to love you even more.

Ok, so much for the history and leadership lesson. If you want more like this, you might like my daily email newsletter. You can give it a try here.