Nobel-winning scientist cuts brakes on “most powerful killing system in the world”

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How’s that for a sensationalist headline? But before you turn away in disgust, here’s the story that pays it off:

Back in the 1890s, a surgeon named William Coley was searching for information on sarcoma, a type of bone cancer that killed one of his patients. He came across the record of a house painter with sarcoma, who had had four surgeries to remove the cancer.

Each time, the sarcoma came back. And then…

The house painter developed a severe streptococcus infection, which was close to killing him. He somehow recovered from the infection.

And when he recovered, his sarcoma — which no surgery could eliminate — was also gone.

Coley concluded that the infection killed the cancer. So he went around the country, preaching the new cancer-killing gospel, and purposefully infecting many cancer patients with streptococcus.

​​All the infected cancer patients got very sick. Some of those who didn’t die wound up cancer-free, just like the house painter.

As a result, Coley’s ideas and methods became popular in the early 20th century. But eventually, they were forgotten as radiation and chemotherapy started to develop.

It was only in the 1970s that Coley’s ideas resurfaced again. Scientists realized it wasn’t the streptococcus infection that killed the cancer. Instead, it was the body’s own immune system.

Long story sh-, scientists started trying to figure out how to activate the immune system to attack cancer cells, even without infecting the patient with a dangerous disease like streptococcus.

It would be a kind of holy grail. Because as one scientist working in the field put it, “the immune system is the most specific and powerful killing system in the world.”

Anyways, one big breakthrough came in 1996, when a harmonica-playing immunologist from Texas named James Allison located a “checkpoint” on a specific type of immune cell known as a T cell.

This checkpoint acts as a kind of brake, stopping the T cell from going on a rampage against foreign invaders and local slubberdegullions such as cancer cells.

Allison figured out a way to “cut the brake lines” of this checkpoint, activating the T cells, and killing the cancer.

Fast forward a few more years, and this new approach, known as immunotherapy, started becoming a standard cancer treatment.

That’s a giant breakthrough, because until now, there were only three major ways to get rid of cancer cells — cutting (surgery), burning (radiation), and poisoning (chemotherapy).

Immunotherapy is a fourth way, and it seems to work well in some otherwise hopeless cases. (A famous instance was former president Jimmy Carter, who had advanced melanoma successfully treated with a immunotherapy drug in 2015.)

So yeah.

It’s kindofa big deal.

And it was all cemented last year, when James Allison and another scientist, Tasuku Honjo, received the Nobel Prize in medicine for their discoveries of mechanisms related to immunotherapy.

The end.

What, you’re wondering what this has to do with copywriting?

Well, not much. And also quite a lot.

There’s no direct lesson from immunotherapy itself that I can spot right now.

But there is a general rule of copywriting that says you want to present convincing and credible proof to buttress your sale and to make the close.

And if you’re doing anything related to health (the way I often am), then there are few better pieces of proof than being able to say:

“Based on a Nobel-Prize-winning discovery”

This is something I’ve spotted often in top health sales letters, and I’ve also had it confirmed, in a throwaway comment during a webinar, by Parris Lampropoulos, who is the equivalent of a Nobel-Prize winner when it comes to copywriting.

And that’s why I’ve decided to regularly go back in the annals of Nobel Prizes, and see exactly what those folks did to win.

Anyways, now we’re really at the end.

Or as the brothers Grimm might say, my tale is done, there goes a goose; whosoever catches it, may make himself a pillow out of it. In other words, if you need more guidance on how to write effective sales copy, including strong proof elements, you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Ask a silly question, you get a dopey look

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A few weeks back, in a moment of weakness, I answered a question in an online copywriting forum.

In my answer, I mentioned negotiation coach Jim Camp, the guy who (among his other accomplishments) revamped the FBI’s negotiation strategy.

Now here’s the thing. Even though full access to Jim Camp’s methods and coaching (while he was alive) cost thousands of dollars in fees, the man also wrote a book called Start With No, which covers about 95% of his negotiation system and costs around $15.

Anyhow, all of this is just setup for what I want to talk about today. Because when I wrote up my response and when I mentioned Jim Camp, another commenter slid in with a new question:

“Where to study Jim Camp? Looking for his education pieces but everything is paid (and expensive). I’m aware of Start With No.”

If this guy were sitting in front of me when he asked this question, I think I’d have to scrunch up my eyebrows, smile a dopey smile, and shrug my shoulders.“I know, buddy. It’s tough.” After all, what else could I tell him?

I bring this up because top direct-response copywriter Roy Furr just shared a very simple, very effective method of getting work with premier copywriting clients.

This method is something I’ve done in the past. It has been responsible for some of the longest-running and most profitable client relationships I’ve had to date.

It’s also something I’m going to start doing again, beginning this week. That’s because I want to pad out my schedule for the coming few months, and increase my rates once again.

And here’s how this ties into studying Jim Camp:

Roy says wannabe copywriters often ask how they can get clients…

And then when they get a valuable, proven suggestion, they do nothing with the information.

Instead, they spin on their heels, face forward once again, and ask, “But how can I land a copywriting client?”

To which the only response can be a dopey look.

Anyways, I’m sure that’s not how you operate.

So in case you want to read Roy’s advice so you can apply it in your copywriting business, here’s where to start:

https://www.breakthroughmarketingsecrets.com/blog/i-was-right-did-you-listen/

Fezzik is a giant and that explains it

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I recently re-read the Princess Bride, the original 1973 novel that William Goldman wrote and later pared down to make the screenplay for the popular 1987 movie.

I love both the movie, which has the perfect cast, and the book, which has more background material.

Such as, for example, the history of Fezzik the Giant (played by Andre the Giant in the movie).

In the book, Fezzik was Turkish, born to normal-sized parents, and was always huge. In fact, when he was born, he already weighed 15 lbs, but the doctors weren’t worried because Fezzik was born two weeks early.

“That explains it,” they told Fezzik’s mother. But as Goldman points out:

“Actually, of course, it didn’t explain anything, but whenever doctors are confused about something, which is really more frequently than any of us would do well to think about, they always snatch at something in the vicinity of the case and add, ‘That explains it.'”

It’s not just doctors, of course. All of us look for a coherent story in order to make sense of our worlds. We will run and leap at the chance for a coherent story much sooner than we will absorb a complex but drearily true explanation.

This is because of evolution. The hypothalamus, the pea-sized complex of neurons which sits directly behind the right and left eyes and is therefore the first part of the brain to process incoming information, is also, according to Harvard Medical School, the part responsible for interpreting stories (and that’s probably why it’s considered to be the seat of the story chakra).

Anyways, if you’re in the business of selling things to people, this information might be useful to you in some form.

And if you want another thing that’s useful, in the form of sales emails that snatch at something in the vicinity of the case, then you might like the following offer because it is valuable:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The sales secret of girls who “AirPod” it in

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I read an Atlantic article today titled, The Case for Wearing AirPods All the Time.”

The case, according to author Marina Koren, is that it keeps women safe — or at least a bit safer – from various sidewalk catcallers, escalator harassers, and assorted bus and subway pervs.

And you know what? I agree with Marina. And this is coming from one such sidewalk harasser.

As I’ve written before, I have previously had and continue to have the habit of occasionally stopping a girl on the street to tell her she looks nice.

Most of the time, the girl will say thank you and then continue on her way.

Sometimes, we get into a short conversation.

On occasion, it goes much further.

The thing is, it’s never stopped me if a girl has her headphones in. But I know other guys, who would like to do the same thing I do, for whom it’s a deal breaker. “She must be on the phone,” they say. “If only she’d take her headphones out, I’d go and talk to her.”

So yes, I definitely agree with Marina Koren. I encourage more girls to wear headphones all the time to discourage all those other guys.

The incredible thing, however, is that the girls who seem most unapproachable are actually “airpodding” it in.

Sure, they have those things in their ears to present a barrier to guys they don’t want to talk to. But once that barrier is overcome, many of those girls turn out to be very ready to stop and chat — and yes, even to a stranger on the street.

At least, that’s been my experience.

And I don’t think I’m completely crazy or so far down Harasser Lane that I’ve lost touch with reality.

In fact, I think this approach of “airpodding it in” is a common feature of human nature.

I remember listening to an interview with sales trainer Stan Billue who discovered that leads who seem most guarded, off-putting, and hostile to a sales pitch were that way because they were actually the best and easiest opportunities — if you could only get past their spiky exterior.

Maybe that’s something to keep in mind the next time you’re evaluating an opportunity, whether personal or financial. And maybe consider that the more repulsed you are by the difficulty of a situation, the better the situation might actually be.

You might even find that closing such opportunities is very simple. You might just have to say something like:

In case you’re looking for info on how to write effective sales copy — specifically emails — then I might have a thing to help you out. Simply go here and see if it’s a fit for you:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

6 sneaky ways to use reciprocity in marketing, part 2

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… continuing on from yesterday, here are 3 more ways to “give with the one hand while holding the other hand ready”:

#4 Take ’em out to a banquet

Claude Hopkins was at it again, selling Cotosuet, the fake butter. This time, he showed up at a client’s doorstep and said, “I’d like to take you to a banquet tonight.” The client pointed to his dusty work clothes and said he wasn’t dressed for a banquet. “No matter, I’m also going in my plain clothes,” Hopkins told him, and whisked the man away to the banquet.

The client had a great time. “Please don’t come to my office on Monday, he begged Hopkins when it was done. “I can’t refuse you anything after tonight and I’m loaded with your product already.”

But come Monday, there was Hopkins again — not to talk about Cotosuet, but about how he could help the client with his regional advertising. Which, incidentally, included buying more wagonloads of Cotosuet.

#5 Take a bet on ’em

I have one more Claude Hopkins story, and if you’re wondering why I keep going back to that guy, it’s because he worked so hard and did so much. In his career, he profitably advertised chicken incubators, automobiles, cough medicines, felt boots, beer, tires, soap, oatmeal, toothpaste, “germicides” (for people, not plants), plus probably a hundred other products.

And each time old Claude had to advertise something, his go-to method would be to offer a free sample — preferably a cut-out newspaper coupon, which could be redeemed for the full-price item at a local grocery store or pharmacy. In other words, the advertiser would actually pay retail to have prospects try the product.

Crazy? Likely to lead to ruin? Not if you think long term, says Claude:

“Try to hedge or protect yourself, and human nature like to circumvent you. But remove all restrictions and say, “We trust you” and human nature likes to justify that trust. All my experience in advertising has shown that in general people are honest.”

#6 Take an interest in ’em first

Zooming forward to 2019, here’s one I saw from email marketer Josh Earl. Josh has his own email list where he talks about marketing and copywriting. But at one point recently, he turned off his automated welcome email that people get first thing when they subscribe.

​​Instead, Josh goes in, does a bit of Internet sleuthing about the new subscriber based on the email address, and then writes a custom welcome email just to that new subscriber.

Costly? Yes. Not scalable? Yes. Likely to kick off the relationship on a much stronger note? Yes.

And there you go — 6 ways to use the principle of reciprocity in your marketing: give them your trust first. If you take a bit of time and put in a bit of thought, you should be able to apply at least one of these ways to make your current marketing more effective. And a couple of points to wrap it up:

In many of the stories above, the reciprocity happens before (and not instead) of the actual selling job. In other words, after you do something that elicits reciprocity, you don’t talk about your product or ask for the sale. Instead, you say, “I have this plan for how to help your business be more profitable…”

And finally: Don’t get needy. Yes, reciprocity by definition means you are taking the first step. That doesn’t mean you have to become needy — about being liked, about getting a response, about getting the sale, about getting a yes.

Instead, come up with your plan, carry it out, and move on with your life. If it works, great. if it doesn’t, that’s ok, because you now know you should make your great offer to other prospects instead.

And of course, if you want to know about other ways to make your business more profitable or to make more sales, then I have this plan that might help you. It involves writing emails to your prospects and clients along the following lines:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

6 sneaky ways to use reciprocity in marketing, part 1

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A few weeks back, I wrote about the essence of the con game:

“It’s called a confidence game not because the con man gains your confidence in order to cheat you. Instead, it’s because he gives you his confidence.”

Today, I want to share some stories of big-name marketers who have used this simple idea in sneaky and subtle ways:

#1 Ask ’em for advice

Claude Hopkins came to a bakery and asked to talk to the owner. Hopkins was selling Cotosuet, a kind of early margarine. The price of Cotosuet was higher than the competition. The baker knew this, and he was raring for a fight.

But Hopkins didn’t say anything about Cotosuet. Instead he took out a drawing of a pie, which his company was planning on using in advertising. He asked the baker for his opinion of the pie drawing.

As the baker started giving feedback, Hopkins kept putting his own drawing down. The baker went on to praise the drawing, and eventually got convinced this is the perfect drawing of a pie. He said how his business would prosper if only he had these pie cards as his advertisement. Hopkins offered to give him a bunch of cards with the pie drawing if he would only make an order of Cotosuet. Which the baker did.

#2 Ask ’em for a favor

Robert Collier was selling coats by mail. After a time, the usual appeals became exhausted. So Collier sent out out a new letter, along the following lines, which again pulled in heavy sales:

“Will you do me a favor? We have these new coat designs. We want to gauge demand for them. As one of our best customers, would you try it out and let me know what you think? I’ll send it to you right now for free if you just send me your size. And if you decide you want to keep the coat, you can have it at a special low price.”

#3 Make damaging admissions

Gary Halbert ran ads selling his book How to Make Maximum Money in Minimum Time. But he didn’t kick off the ad by talking about his sparkling Rolls Royce or his cliff-side Malibu mansion. Instead, he wrote:

“My name is Gary Halbert and, some time ago, I was dead broke. My business was almost bankrupt and I couldn’t even pay the rent. Actually, I wasn’t just broke, I was desperate. [He then had a money making idea, and…] I was living in Ohio at the time and my friends laughed at the idea. They thought it was a big joke. They said I was a dreamer and that I had no ‘common sense.’ In fact, one guy said I was just a nerd and that my idea was so silly, he felt sorry for me.”

This ad apparently did very well for Gary, and it launched an entire industry of “amazing secret” headlines.

I’ve got three more of these reciprocity examples, but this message is already as long as a bushy tail on an old fox.

So I’ll continue tomorrow, along with some conclusions and warnings if you do decide to use any of these ideas.

How to stop worrying and start making better decisions

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In the summer of 2004, I was snorkeling at the Dry Tortugas off the Florida Keys.

The sand at the Dry Tortugas is white.

The water is warm, blue, and perfectly clear. It’s also shallow, so there are many coral reefs, full of colorful tropical fish.

So there I was, mask clamped to my face, salty snorkel in my mouth, swimming along in the sun and having a nice time.

Every so often, I’d see a school of hand-sized green fish. Cute.

Then I saw a single striped blue fish, the size of a football, with yellow markings near its fins. Interesting.

And then for a while, I saw nothing of note.

So I swam further away from the shore and into the ocean. All around was the blue-green water. Below me, there was  white sand which stretched out as far as I could see.

And then a cold wave of fear washed over me.

My heart jumped into my throat. My body froze.

Because right in front, maybe about 10 feet away, was a giant, silver, slithering sea monster.

Its head looked like a boxing glove.

The scales on its back glittered in the sun.

And it wasn’t alone. Behind it, there was another monster. And another. And another. Dozens of them.

I had unwittingly snorkeled my way into a large school of tarpon, one of the biggest game fish you can catch in Florida. They grow up to 8 feet long — about 2 meters. I’m not sure how large the tarpon that I saw were, but out there in the water, each of them looked the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

Fortunately, the school of tarpon didn’t care about me. They just leisurely continued on their route, off into the ocean, past where I could see them.

Once they were gone, I slowly recovered control over my arms and legs, turned around, and swam back to shore.

Now, there’s a little lesson in this story about how to stop worrying and start making better decisions. Here’s what I mean:

Most humans, me included, react much more strongly to negative events than to positive ones.

The thing is, we often willingly expose ourselves to feedback, which can be positive as well as negative.

Imagine checking how your Bitcoin investment is doing in the last hour… or how many visitors your website had yesterday.

If the outcome is positive — Bitcoin is up 2%, or you had the usual number of website visitors — it’s like snorkeling and seeing those little green and blue fish. Cute. Interesting.

But if the outcome is negative, the feeling can be much stronger. It’s like being punched in the gut by a giant, boxing-glove-headed tarpon.

But hold on, you might say. Shouldn’t you always know how things stand — and if you’re swimming into dangerous waters — so you can take corrective action if needed?

Maybe. But maybe checking too often will just cause you stress. And if you get a few negative results in a row, it might also cause you to make a bad decision — to turn around, swim to shore, and get out of the water. And this might be a tragedy.

Here’s a formal way to illustrate why, which I got from Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow:

Let’s say I offer you a bet. 50% chance you win $200. 50% chance you lose $100.

Many people won’t take this bet. The possible loss of $100 (with a 50% chance) seems too big compared to the possible winnings of $200. The fear of the tarpon is too strong.

But what if the same bet happens 100 times in a row?

In that case, it would almost certainly make sense to take this “aggregate” bet. Your expected winnings would be $5,000 — and your chance of losing any money would be just 1 in 2,300.

And yet, if you don’t look at the aggregate view — but you only consider each 50%-50% bet in isolation — chances are you will never get this large, almost guaranteed outcome. ​​

In other words, it can pay to take the long view. And to have a system. And to stop worrying about short-term results.

Granted, of course, that you’re not exposing yourself to catastrophe in the form of a hammerhead shark or a loss of money that will land you in jail or at the bottom of the sea.

Anyways, that’s my motivational sermon for today.

One last thing: If you need a system and a long-term view to help with marketing your business, then daily emails might be the answer. And if you want some proven advice on how to write such emails, you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Sticky gotcha for socialist students

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A guy named Cabot Phillips recently went onto the campus of Florida International University and asked students:

“What is your opinion of socialism?”

Many students, at least in the edited video I saw, were all for it:

“I support it.”

“Socialism is more geared toward helping the governed.”

“I have family in Europe, they go to college for free. Their health care is paid for, they don’t have to worry about it at all.”

Next, Cabot Phillips asked those same students:

“So if there’s a GPA disparity on campus, would you support a policy where people at the top spread the wealth and give some of their GPA to people at the bottom?”

Uh.

Hem.

Haw.

The same people now said:

“Give? Like help them? I’m all for helping. I’m not about giving.”

“No one’s gonna work for it.”

“I sacrificed a lot to get my GPA, and I wouldn’t want to help people who didn’t make those same sacrifices.”

Now, I’m not here to poke at pro-socialist college students.

And I’m not even sure this anti-socialist “gotcha” really changed anybody’s mind.

But I thought it was a great illustration of a sticky message, as defined in Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick.

By my count, this “socialist GPA” idea satisfies all but 1 of the 6 SUCCES principles that the Heaths say lie behind most sticky messages.

I won’t spell those SUCCES principles out here. I recommend Made to Stick for that.

However, if you want some concrete examples of how to write sticky, SUCCES-ful sales emails, check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Selling empty cans to pale, dirty Internet addicts

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Imagine a dark, airless room.

A pale, young man who hasn’t showered in five days is sitting there, lit up by the light of a computer monitor.

He has headphones on his head and he is completely absorbed as one hand bashes on the keyboard and the other twitches at the mouse.

And on the desk, next to his computer, is a steaming can — a new warning symbol for our age.

At least, that’s the argument I just read in an article by one David Courtwright, a professor of history at the prestigious University of North Florida.

Courtwright’s article starts off by talking about the spread of computer gaming addictions: Young guys who spend their entire days and nights sitting at the computer, playing World of Warcraft.

And it’s really entire days and nights.

Some of these guys keep cans by the computer so they don’t have to take time out to go to the bathroom.

Courtwright argues this is a symptom of “limbic capitalism” — selling goods and services that are actually addictive.

Limbic capitalism is not a new phenomenon, Courtwright says, but it’s definitely been helped by the spread of the Internet and the growth of entrepreneurial culture (and opportunities).

But if guys want to pee while sitting at their computer, then why not sell them the can, right?

This might have been the right attitude some time ago.

Once upon a time, you needed large numbers to make a business (and marketing for that business) profitable. And if that meant selling to addicts, so be it.

Even if that was true once (and I’m not sure it was), it’s not true any more.

In the online marketing sphere, guys like Sean D’Souza and Ben Settle make a good living by selling to a small number of curated customers who are willing to spend a lot of money — and get a lot of value — from their offers, year after year.
​
The same systems that have allowed for the rise of limbic capitalism have allowed for the rise of this other kind of capitalism (maybe call it forebrain capitalism, since it’s designed to appeal to deliberate decision making).

So what does this have to do with you?

Maybe nothing.

It’s just something I think about when choosing which projects I will spend my time and effort and lifeblood on.

But maybe this resonates with you in some way, and maybe it helps you when you have to make your own decisions about how to run or grow your own business.

Anyways, enough philosophizing.

If you do have a forebrain business that sells something worthwhile to people who aren’t addicts, and you want sales copy (even limbic sales copy) to help your sales, then you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

How big is your…?

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I saw the following size-measuring question today:

“How big is your confidence in copywriting? I know this is the softest metric of one’s success, but I wonder greatly. How confident are you in your job and what’s your confidence based on?”

This is honestly not a question I’ve thought about ever.

I don’t worry about confidence. Instead, I think about having a system for moving forward, and about following that system. As long as I do that, I feel I’m safe.

(Or maybe I’ve been influenced too much by dating coach Tom Torero, who said something like, “Confidence is just when you’ve seen the same situation many times over.”)

But if you’re looking to start out as a copywriter, maybe this doesn’t help you.

So let me give you another quote, this one by Claude Hopkins, the great-grandfather of modern direct response marketing.

(About a century ago, Claude wrote a book called Scientific Advertising, which the famous David Ogilvy, the “King of Madison Avenue,” said is so important that “nobody, at any level, should be allowed to have anything to do with advertising until he has read this book seven times.”)

Anyways, back when Claude was just a wet-behind-the-ears lad working for peanuts at the “Felt Boot Company,” he got to talking to a successful businessman in his town.

The businessman was impressed when he heard that Claude would work from 8 in the morning until after midnight, and be back the next morning for more of the same.

So the big businessman offered Claude a new, higher paying job. And here’s what Claude concluded from this:

“In the early stages of our careers none can judge us by results. The shallow men judge us by likings, but they are not men to tie to. The real men judge us by our love of work, the basis of their success. They employ us for work, and our capacity for work counts above all else.”

Maybe this will help you if you are agonizing about where you are on the copywriting totem pole.

And in case you want to grab a free copy of that “must-read” Claude Hopkins advertising Bible, so you can add a bit of length or girth to your copywriting confidence, then here’s where to go:

https://www.scientificadvertising.com/ScientificAdvertising.pdf