A simple habit for enjoying yourself at parties and inventing almost irresistible offers

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Today I want to tell you how to enjoy yourself at every party you go to from now on… and how to come up with offers that your market is 98% sure to love.

Let me set it up with a bit of drama:

A few days ago, a friend I have from my decade of living in Budapest, Hungary, forwarded me a screenshot of the following Instagram post.

The post was written by a Lainey Molnar, a Hungarian illustrator now living in the Netherlands.
​
​Lainey became an Internet star recently because of her “women empowerment” illustrations.

As an Internet star, she was fielding some Internet questions recently. One question was why so many Hungarians choose to move away from the motherland and live abroad.

​​Lainey responded:

​Because the mentality is simply unbearable for anyone who aspires for a healthy psyche (and let’s not get stared on the political system, we already clocked in like 12 years with a Trump before Trump)

It’s a culture of mediocrity, always dragging everyone down. They’re jealous, petty, always blame everyone else for everything, They constantly gossip, meddle, and walk over others for gain. Brrrrr, I can’t stand being there for more than a few weeks.

So here’s what got through my skull:

If Hungarians really are as miserable of a people as Lainey makes them out to be — not true in my experience — then going by the tone of her two paragraphs above… she sounds like a perfect Hungarian, whether she lives in Amsterdam or Budapest.

And that’s my point for you today:

Whatever the apparent topic of conversation, people are almost always talking about themselves.

Once you realize this, you can have fun at every party, just by listening to others and asking yourself… what is this guy really saying? What is he revealing about himself that he doesn’t mean to?

And same thing with your customers and prospects.

Everything they say about you… your competition… the world at small and at large… is mostly about them.

And just by listening or, as Ben Settle likes to say, reading between the lines, you can get a lot of valuable intel. Intel you can use to inform your marketing and your offers… and give people what they truly want — even if they could never express it directly.

At this point in my emails, I usually like to take the core idea I am talking about and do a demonstration. But today, we can do the opposite.

If you like, you can probably read this very email, and find I am talking about myself. Maybe in ways that I didn’t even mean to expose, some perhaps quite negative.

So if you have some insights that you’ve gleaned about my personality through this email or other emails… and if you want to shock me with them, I am here, ready.

Just write me directly and fire away with your piercing observations. Do it for me. And do it because you will be starting a habit which will benefit you for years in your personal and business life.

Don’t call me insecure

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“All right, all right, I apologize.”

I want to quickly share with you a scene from my favorite comedy, A Fish Called Wanda. This scene might be instructive if you’re a marketer or copywriter.

In this scene, Kevin Kline, playing an ex-CIA assassin called Otto, forces another man to apologize.

That other man is who we see in the scene, standing stiffly against a brick wall, making the apology.

“You’re really sorry?” asks Otto, somewhere off camera.

“I’m really, really sorry,” says the other man. “I apologize unreservedly. I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice.”

As he says this, the camera rotates right side up.

It turns out the other man — a barrister named Archie Leach, played by John Cleese — is not really standing against a wall. Really, he’s being dangled out of a window, held at his ankles by Otto.

And here’s why this might be relevant if you do marketing or if you write copy:

Otto the CIA assassin fancies himself a bit of an intellectual. He reads philosophy books all the time, and he’s fond of quoting Nietzsche.

But he also thinks the central message of Buddhism is “every man for himself.” And he knows for a fact that the London Underground was a political movement.

In other words, Otto is a bit of an idiot, and somewhere deep down, he knows it. That’s why his tagline throughout the movie is, “Don’t call me stupid.”

So when he secretly overhears Archie… right as Archie is about to say that Otto is stupid… well, that’s how we end up with the scene at the window.

The point is, when someone is insecure about a quality, they take any challenge to that quality very seriously.

But you probably know that already. It’s standard playground psychology.

What you might not know is that there’s another possible reaction to being very insecure about some personal quality. And that’s buying direct response offers.

Because if you are insecure about a thing… you have the belief and maybe life experience that this is a part of your life that you cannot get sorted on your own. God knows you’ve tried. That’s why you’re in the market.

Of course, not everybody who buys direct response offers is insecure. Some small fraction of people are successful already or will soon be. They are just looking for a slight edge.

But those people are the tiny minority.

For the vast majority in any direct response market, you can count on a wounded ego… at least in relation to the problem you’re offering to solve or the promise you’re making.

So if you’re smart, you’ll be aware of this self-esteem thing in your marketing and copy.

On the positive side, it can be very valuable if you just soothe and calm that insecurity.

On the negative side, it can be even more valuable if you poke and prod that very spot.

That’s why one of the most successful direct response ads of all time had the headline, “Do you make these mistakes in English?”

And it’s why Gary Bencivenga… the most celebrated copywriter of the past 50 years… used the same “Do you make these mistakes” formula when selling his own book on job interviews.

In fact, If I had anything to sell you right now, I might subtly prod some secret insecurities I know about.

But I won’t do that. I’ve got no direct response offer for you today. Well, nothing for sale. Just the free offer to sign up to my newsletter, in case you’re looking for a slight edge.

An inspiring story of blindsight

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One day in 1988, a woman named Diane Fletcher was taking a shower when she passed out and fell to the floor.

​​The water heater in her bathroom wasn’t properly ventilated. It was leaking carbon monoxide. That’s why Diane passed out.

She survived – her husband found her some 20 minutes later — but there were consequences.

For one thing, Diane was completely blind the first few days. Then gradually, the crude basics of her vision returned — some color and texture. But she never regained the ability to distinguish or recognize objects.

Put two wooden blocks in front of Diane, and ask her which is bigger. She would just shrug — she didn’t see either one.

But then, ask Diane to pick up one of the blocks. Her hand would shoot right towards it. Along the way, her thumb and fingers would adapt so she could grab the block perfectly.

And it wasn’t a one-time thing, either.

Put a box with a slit in it in front of Diane, and ask her which way the slit is facing, horizontally or vertically. Again, Diane couldn’t say.

But put a letter in Diane’s hand and ask her to put that letter in the slot. She did this perfectly each time — regardless of how the box was turned, even though she couldn’t “see” the slit.

It turned out Diane had “blindsight.” That’s the clever name some scientist gave to the condition.

From what I understand:

The neural pathway that goes from your eyes to the rest of your brain splits in two along the way.

One fork of this pathway goes up. It leads to the regions of your brain that interpret what you are looking at. This part of your brain also seems to cause the conscious sensation of seeing.

But another half of the pathway goes down. That part of your brain actually moves you around in space, based on visual input.

In some cases of blindsight, the consequences can be even more total and extreme than for Diane.

Some people with blindsight can be completely blind. They can’t consciously see anything. No color, no texture, nothing.

And yet, they can still see fine when it comes to movement. Another part of their brain, in charge of another part of vision, outside of conscious experience, is still working perfectly.

I don’t know about you, but I thought this blindsight stuff was absolutely incredible. It made me wonder how much people like Diane can get done on faith alone.

Yes, she had the absolute personal experience of not being able to see. But could she walk down an unfamiliar staircase without tumbling to the bottom… even though she couldn’t “see” the stairs?

Could she go outside and walk around a park? Could she avoid tripping over roots and never slam face-first into a tree… just by putting one foot in front of the other, over and over?

I don’t know. And I don’t want to get all Robert Collier-y, “Secret of the Ages” on you, and claim you can manifest anything you can imagine.

Bit I will tell you I’ve been to both extremes in my life.

I’ve spent many years sulking in the corner, arms crossed tightly, frown on my face, lower lip pouting out… because I knew for a fact, based on hard personal experience and intuition as well… that I didn’t have the biological talent needed to achieve the things I wanted.

But then I’ve also had moments in my life, which sometimes stretched out into months and years. During these moments, I tapped into magical new ways of being. I suddenly found myself with innate skills and abilities I never dreamed I could have.

Maybe that sounds a little abstract. Maybe you want some specific examples of these transformations I experienced.

Fine. But let’s keep that for another time. Right now, I just want to leave you with the following possibility:

You might have your own blindsight. Or maybe many of them. Not through brain damage. But just by virtue of being human.

The fact is, the unconscious part of our existence is a deep and mysterious thing.

There might be quiet little zombies inside you, working away right now… solving complex problems and providing you with unique and powerful talents and skills… completely outside of your consciousness or awareness.

And yet they are there, working on your behalf, or ready to do so.

All you have to do is to put yourself in a situation where those zombies have a chance to apply their diligent work. Well, that… plus you gotta have some faith.

Ok, that’s all the inspiration I can give you for today.

I might have something new tomorrow. If you want to read that, consider signing up for my email newsletter.

Everything is free

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I know a lot of people in the marketing world worship at the altar of Seth Godin. I myself have had no contact with that religion, until today.

Today, I read an article that Seth wrote earlier this month, with a provocative title:

“Customer service is free”

Seth says that because of word-of-mouth and the value of loyal customers, you should stop looking at customer service as a cost.

That’s a point I’ve heard Ben Settle make before. Ben says that customer service is the #1 sales skill, which will allow you to charge higher prices… give you an advantage over your competitors… and allow you to make up for your shortcomings.

But here’s something that puzzled my mental squirrel:

Ben Settle has been making this point about customer service for years. It never made as much impact on me as the Seth Godin article. Because Seth’s presentation was more powerful.

Perhaps, and this is just a hypothesis based on my own experience today, the power of “FREE” is greater than the power of “profitable” for getting into people’s heads. Sure, once you open up a path into somebody’s brain with the ice pick of FREE, then you can bring in the “profitable” argument. But not before. And that’s what Seth Godin does — FREE in the headline, profitable in the very last sentence of his article.

But whether that’s a universal truth or not, one thing is universally true:

All your offers, whether ideas you are pitching or actual products you are selling, should be FREE. Of course, not free today. But FREE. Here’s what I mean:

The next time you are faced with a prospect who’s holding your offer in his hands, interested but still not sold, then apply the following free idea, and it will pay for itself immediately:

Put your arm around your prospects shoulders and point to the rainbow on the horizon. Then point back to that product of yours, there in your prospect’s lap. And then once again, point to the rainbow.

“Do you see now?” tell your prospect. “In 9 weeks, it will pay for itself. So really, it’s FREE. And after that, it will even start to make you money.”

Speaking of making money:

I have an email newsletter in which I share money-making ideas about marketing and copywriting. You can sign up to my newsletter today at a small up-front cost. But really, don’t think of it as a cost, think of it as an investment. One that will pay off before the end of the day.

Exciting copywriting breakthrough from an unlikely source

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A few days ago, I had an absolute breakthrough.

It started when an unpromising-looking email landed in my inbox. It was the newsletter of a copywriter whose emails I’ve tried reading in the past, unsuccessfully.

It didn’t look like this email would change things. It had a preachy subject line — and I lingered over the delete button for a moment.

“Uff, it’s your job,” I said to myself. “Just read the damn thing. The guy is obviously successful at what he does. Maybe he will surprise you.”

So I clicked to open the email.

And a kind of warm light descended upon me.

Pieces of copywriting knowledge, which had floated around in my head for years, without meaning or purpose… finally snapped together to form one magnificent Voltron-like insight.

Suddenly, the most elusive and profitable kind of front-end marketing — selling premium-priced supplements to cold Facebook traffic — became clear and simple.

I’m not sure why I had to wait for this email to have this insight. After all, I myself have had success writing front-end copy for cold Facebook traffic, including for supplements.

Perhaps it was this guy’s authority on the topic.

Right now, he has the respect, attention, and endorsement of the best of the best in this field.

​​I’m talking about the most successful copywriters out there, like Craig Clemons (who cofounded the billion-dollar Golden Hippo family of brands, and who even gulled Joe Rogan into sharing a VSL as a real documentary)…

… ​​and Dan Ferrari (who had a string of controls for the Motley Fool and Agora Financial, and who I got copy coaching from a few years back).

So maybe it’s authority.

Or maybe it was the way this email phrased it. Sometimes, a few words can make all the difference. And really, it was just one five-word sentence in that email that set off the breakthrough in my mind.

So what was the sentence? And will it set off a similar breakthrough in your mind?

Well, if you’d like to find out, then I’ll tell you that the copywriter in question is Stefan Georgi.

If you subscribe to my newsletter, odds are good you also subscribe to Stefan’s. So if you want to attempt your own copywriting breakthrough… just search your emails for “greens powder,” and Stefan’s December 2 email will pop up. The five-word sentence that I mentioned is the heading to point 2 in that email.

And if you’re not subscribed to Stefan’s list, you’ve got two options:

Option one is to simply read over my email today a little more carefully. Because I’ve got a habit of implementing good marketing ideas in my own emails, and today is no exception.

Option two is to go to Stefan’s site, jump through a few hoops, and get on his list.

After all, the guy is one of the most successful direct marketers and copywriters out there right now. It only makes sense to keep tabs on him.

Plus, it seems like he’s genuinely helpful, and if you ask him for a copy of his December 2 email, I imagine he would oblige. If you want to give it a try, here’s where to get started:

https://www.stefanpaulgeorgi.com/about/

The status pirate game

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Imagine a large and hairy sailor, wearing a striped blue-and-white shirt and a bandana wrapped around his head, looking nervous.

​​The year is 1717, and he is the navigator of an English trading vessel that’s sailing through the Carribean.

A few times, the big navigator makes like he’s going to say something. But he stops himself.

His eyes keep darting forward — out toward the horizon – and then at the captain next to him, who is looking through the telescope.

It’s dusk and there is a ship up ahead. It’s very strange — there is nobody on board.

“It might have been the plague, sir,” the large navigator says. “Sudden plague could have taken them all.”

The captain shakes his head. He’s not at all worried. “Pirates,” he says. “Dusk is their favorite time. Have you readied the cannons?”

The navigator starts shifting his weight from one foot to another. “It would be a very simple matter for us to alter course, sir,” he says.

The captain squints his eyes and looks back through the telescope. “I — never — alter — course,” he says.

That’s the opening scene of a movie that never got made, called Sea Kings.

As you probably guessed, it’s about pirates.

And it’s also about how the human brain determines value.

In this case, start with a large sailor. From his physical size and job title, you would assume him to be a brave man. And he might be, in most situations. But out here, faced with pirates on the open sea, he’s nervous.

Then contrast that to the captain. He’s at another level of coolness and bravery. Unlike the navigator, he’s not afraid of pirates. He’s seen it all before and he won’t flinch.

And because the screenwriter — William Goldman in this case — set it up this way, it makes the next moment all the more dramatic and impressive.

Because in the next moment, a figure appears on the ghost pirate ship. It’s human shaped. But it’s entirely black and it’s enormous. It also appears to be on fire. And then the figure starts to speak. Its deep voice carries across the sea.

“Death or surrender… surrender or die… the Devil bids you choose…”

The big navigator starts screaming and running around. “What is that? WHAT — IS — IT?”

And the captain, who until a moment ago was so determined and tough, suddenly isn’t any more. He’s turned pale. He drops the telescope.

“Run up the white flag,” he whispers to the navigator. “It’s Blackbeard…”

That’s how you make an entrance for your main character.

Not by showing a closeup of him, scowling and looking scary and ugly.

Not by his credentials — the many cruel and daring things he’s done in his career.

Not by an action sequence in which your main character — a hulk of a man — fights a dozen frightened and incompetent soldiers.

No, if you want to make your main character frightening and awe-inspiring, you just put him at the top of a pyramid:

Blackbeard
Normally tough captain
Big and strong sailor who shouldn’t be afraid
The audience, representing the rest of soft and weak humanity

The fact is, the game of status is only ever relative.

You can think of it as a Ponzi scheme, or an MLM. The more people you recruit beneath you… and the more people they recruit beneath them… the better and more valuable your position.

And perhaps you’re wondering how you can specifically use this in marketing and sales copy.

The fact is, there are many ways. I could tell you what they are, but instead I’ll make you an deal:

Get a few people who are interested in direct marketing and form a little study group. With you as the leader. And then get them all to sign up for my newsletter. I’ll share my insights then.

If you repel people, charge accordingly

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I gave away today’s lesson in the subject line — if you repel people, charge accordingly. But maybe you want a bit more explanation about what I mean. So let me set it up:

Yesterday, I moved to a new apartment in an old town.

The last time I was in this old town was in May. Back then, I had to look for an Airbnb, and there was one uniquely horrible listing that flashed back into my mind yesterday.

This Airbnb had a sea-and-fish motif:

On the wall, a tiny lifebuoy, about the size of a donut…

On the mantle, cheaply framed photos of fish carcasses dangling from hooks…

In the cramped bedroom, navy blue and white stripes. In fact, the navy-blue-and-white design was everywhere, making the apartment look like a crowded barber shop.

But none of this was the worst part.

The worst part was that this listing offended my marketing expertise. Because this apartment was very affordable — about 20% cheaper than everything else on offer.

So that’s my point for you:

I thought this apartment was hideous. According to the availability of this place on Airbnb for the next few months, most other people agreed with me. And yet…

I’m sure somebody out there would love this place. Probably some modern-day Stede Bonnet, with unfulfilled childhood dreams of adventure on the high seas.

In my email yesterday, I told you how there’s good money to be made by selling people on the idea of work, struggle, and even suffering. But I have one caveat to that hideous idea:

You’ve got to charge accordingly.

Because work, struggle, and suffering will turn many people off. So you have to make up for it with the few people who don’t run away.

Same thing if you have a uniquely and tastelessly decorated Airbnb apartment. Don’t apologize with your price. Charge more for it. ​​

The bigger point is that marketing comes down to just two things, psychology and arithmetic.

The psychology says the more unique and niched down your offer, the easier it becomes to sell the thing to the right prospect.

The arithmetic says that the more unique and niched down your offer, the fewer right prospects there will be.

I don’t have a formula for how to choose just the right tradeoff between the two. But I do know how you can give yourself some insurance.

And that’s a higher price. ​A higher price is the lifebuoy that keeps you afloat and alive… even when you cast off from the dry land of everyday, acceptable promises… and find yourself tossed around by the dangerous but exciting seas of uniqueness.

Ok, so much for pricing strategy. Now about business:

I have an email newsletter. Some people have called it the “most underrated list in copywriting.” Still others find it too bizarre or unique for their tastes. If you are curious and want to give it a try, here’s where you can get on board.

Don’t read this if you can’t stand harsh glaring lights

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“It is important that you get clear for yourself that your only access to impacting life is action. The world does not care what you intend, how committed you are, how you feel, or what you think, and certainly, it has no interest in what you want and don’t want.”
— Werner Erhard, founder of est

Last week, after I sent out my Copy Koala Millions™ email, a reader named Lester wrote in with this interesting point:

“The one other thing I remember from Carlton is how in almost all business segments, the customers want easy/painless/low effort results. BUT the body building/fitness guys want the opposite. You have to sell how fucking painful and hard it will be with what you are selling.”

It’s true — 99% of sales copy promises quick/easy/foolproof results, preferably accomplished by an external mechanism, which you activate by pressing a large red button that reads “INSTANT RESULTS HERE.”

But like Lester says, not every market is like that. Bodybuilders for one… maybe also small business owners and entrepreneurs.

For example, yesterday I wrote about Dan Kennedy’s “#1 most powerful personal discipline in all the world.”

Dan promises that this one discipline can make you successful beyond your wildest dreams.

But honestly, I didn’t need that promise to buy what Dan was selling. I became hypnotized as soon as I read the words “powerful personal discipline.” At that point, I was 86% sold already.

That’s why I said yesterday that I don’t need to sell this idea to you either. Because if you feel the twitching of this same drive for overcoming inside you… you probably perked up just because I kept stuffing the terms “self discipline” and “personal discipline” a dozen times in what I wrote yesterday.

The fact is, there’s a very real need inside most people for occasional struggle, suffering, and proving their own worth.

Suffering and struggle might not sell in front-end copy going out to a cold list of people who are already suffering and struggling with a problem.

But it definitely does sell, including in sister markets to direct response. Such as the seminar business, for example.

Werner Erhard, the guy I quoted up top, ran est, the biggest personal development product of the 1970s. est consisted of two weekend-long seminars where people would literally piss themselves because they weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom — in a giant hall filled with hundreds of strangers.

On day two, attendees would go through the “danger process.” From the book Odd Gods:

“A row of the audience at a time would go on stage and be confronted by est staff. One person would ‘bullbait’ all of them, saying and doing things in order to get them to react. Other volunteers would be body catchers for those who fell, a common occurrence.”

Like I said, this went on for two weekends in a row. In other words, people would show up one weekend, get humiliated and brutalized, and come back the next weekend for more. When it was all said and done, people found it transformative, and enthusiastically recommended est to their friends and family.

My point is simply a reminder. We are no longer living in the world of one-off sales letters pitching a book of Chinese medicine secrets. Today, there’s plenty of money to be made by being strict, demanding, and harsh. Yes, even in your sales copy.

… well with one caveat. I’ll get to that in my email tomorrow. Read it or fail.

The #1 most powerful personal discipline in all the world

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Today, I want to share with you the #1 most powerful personal discipline in all the world.

It struck me like lightning a few days ago when I came across it in Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Time Management book.

Dan says everybody he has ever met who sticks to this discipline ends up hugely successful… while everybody who doesn’t stick to it eventually fails.

In other words, this one discipline is the difference between the winners and the losers… the Bugs Bunnies on the one hand, and the Daffy Ducks on the other… the Jerry Seinfelds and the George Costanzas of the world.

So with that intro, would you like to know what this discipline is? Get ready:

It’s punctuality.

“Gaaaah, come on!” you say. “Next you’ll be telling me to brush my teeth and make my bed each morning!”

Keep yer shirt on. I’m not telling you to do anything, tooth-wise or punctuality-wise.

I just want to share what Dan says about punctuality. He makes a big case for punctuality being a proxy for trustworthiness. According to Dan’s research into the brains of the rich and successful, the higher you go up the wealth ladder, the more people will judge you based on your punctuality.

Even so, maybe punctually genuinely is not an issue for you.

It’s never been an issue for me. I show up to meetings on time, I deliver client work at agreed-upon deadlines, I do stuff when I tell people I will do it.

But here’s the lightning bolt that struck me when I read Dan’s praise of punctuality:

I realized that while I’m punctual in my contracts with others…

I’m not at all punctual in my contracts with myself. Rather, I’m very sloppy and lax with myself.

The fact is, I’m lazy by nature. I take advantage of working on my own, with no evil boss standing above me with a big wooden ruler, ready to rap me on the knuckles as soon as I start to lag.

So I show up to work when I feel like it. I take long lunches. I pay no mind to the clock. Why would I? It’s the benefit of working for myself, by myself.

​​Here’s Dan Kennedy again:

Good news. bad news.
Good news! You are now your own boss!
Bad news! You are a lousy boss with one unreliable employee!

So all I want to tell you is that I’m now taking punctuality a lot more seriously. Yes, even when I’m by myself. Even when no one around to judge me or distrust me or make me feel unprofessional.

I can tell you I’ve been more productive as a result while spending less time working. And more importantly, I feel better. I also feel a little morally superior to that undisciplined sloth who lived in my skin until just a few days ago.

Normally, this might be the point in my email where I suggest the same change of attitude to you.

I certainly won’t advise you against taking up the personal discipline of punctuality. But I won’t advise you to take it up either.

Because I don’t have to.

If you’re curious how I can be so cavalier and confident about your self-discipline habits and your future success… well, sign up for my newsletter. My email tomorrow will explain everything. I’ll send it out at exactly 8:37 PM CET.

My second brush with death

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A few days ago, I sent out an email about a girl who secretly reminded me of a bear — in all the best ways. After I sent that email out, I posted it to my site as a blog post… and then I got the following message:

“A bear huh wtf!”

It turns out that every few months, this girl checks on me via my blog. And thanks to famous female intuition, she picked just the right day, with just the bear story right at the top.

As soon as I saw her message, I spun around and looked at my front door. A thin, half-inch board of plywood.

A cold sweat ran down my back. I imagined her showing up at my door at any moment… and with one mighty swipe, tearing it off its hinges and— well, I should be careful what I say. She might be reading.

So let me switch gear:

Yesterday, I wrote about my more real recent brush with death — a car that fell out of the sky in front of me.

When I wrote that email, I hadn’t yet thought of any clear marketing takeaway for you.

Well, I’ve since thought of an obvious and powerful takeaway. And since it goes just as well with the topic of today’s email, I’ll share this idea with you now.

This marketing idea was a revelation to me when I first heard it. That’s why I even included it as Commandment IV in my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

The commandment is simply to give an occasion to your promotion. Give the reader an excuse to buy by answering the question, “Why am I hearing about this now?”

Of course, crap, transparently false occasions won’t do much and can even hurt you. (“Oh no! We’ve overstocked our warehouse again! Tee hee, so naughty we are! Oh well, time for a sale…”)

But if you can make your occasion feel real — cars falling out of the sky, a furious girl on a rampage — then you might have yourself a sales multiplier.

That’s one reason why I think Daniel Throssell’s Black Friday campaign this year did so well.

His feud with Matt Bockenstette gave it an occasion and made it feel real. People are starved for things that feel real, and so this feud made people pay attention and maybe gave them an excuse to buy.

And that’s the key point. Maybe, an excuse to buy.

Because I’ve seen so many successful and competent marketers lately… gnashing their online teeth and shaking their online jowls. “That Throssell character! And his shameless controversy seeking! Rrrr… rrreprehensible!”

I don’t know what this reaction is about.

It could be some honor among thieves thing. “Of course we want to agitate the shit out of our prospects — it’s ultimately good for them. But come on, not when we’re the prospects!”

Or perhaps it’s just shortsightedness. Thinking that Daniel somehow cheated his way to a big win.

I don’t doubt the occasion of the feud helped. But it would have multiplied a big fat zero had Daniel not had by far the best offer… and a relationship with his audience that’s tighter than anything I’ve personally ever seen.

And if you’re wondering what my stake is in all this:

Daniel’s been generous to me and we are on good terms. But perhaps you can believe me when I say I’m not shilling for him.

In part, because he doesn’t need me to.

In part, because I have my own offers to promote.

Well, that’s not really true. All I have is one single, tiny offer.

Because while my Influential Emails training is wrapped up for now… while Copy Riddles is in the hangar, getting spit-shined for its January 2022 flight… and while I work on new offers that I will launch over the coming months…

All I really have on offer is my tiny Kindle book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Among other things, this book will give show you A-list occasions, done right.

And speaking of which, if you haven’t bought this book yet, I’d appreciate if you’d do it now. I could really use the money — I’m looking to invest in a steel door for extra protection. Here’s how you can contribute $5:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments