Influential Writing

The mystery deepens: Scientists shocked, Robert Collier not so much

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Somewhere outside of time, in an alternate dimension made up purely of destiny, growth, and power, the eternal essence of Robert Collier is shrugging its shoulders and saying, “Didn’t I tell you so?”

A few days ago, I read a fascinating article on the pop science site Quanta Magazine.

It was a summary of recent physics research that’s threatening to break down how we’ve thought about science for, oh, the past 500 years or so.

The situation in a nut is that particle physicists are find value in a radical idea, anti-reductionism.

The standard view of science, the one we’ve had for those 500 years, is reductionist. The trees explain the forest. If you want to know more about the forest, learn more about each tree. And if you want to learn more about each tree, learn about its cells. And so on, down and down.

Well, once you get all the way down, where these physicists are looking… it turns out influence might go the other way too.

In other words, you can’t tell the whole story by looking at the trees. The forest as a whole contributes some fundamental part of the picture, and explains the trees also. At least that’s the latest theory.

So what does this mean?

Does it mean that mystery merchant, Robert Collier, was right when he wrote the Secret of the Ages? Will anything your mind imagines trickle down to the subatomic level? Will your intent change the very fabric of the universe?

I have no idea. I imagine the physicists would say absolutely no, and that it’s a huge and unwarranted leap.

It’s all a deep mystery, if you ask me.

But you didn’t ask me. In fact, you might be reminding me impatiently that this is a newsletter about marketing.

So let me map this to the matter of influence in writing.

I have long tried to look at successful copy — and influential writing more generally — and break down why it works. After all, it’s got to be all there on the page.

By looking closer and closer, at each sentence and even each word, I’ve found out the answers to many influence and persuasion mysteries, some of which I’ve shared with you in this newsletter.

And yet, it’s never the whole story. Like Dan Kennedy once said about Gary Halbert’s copy, there is some magic in there. Even somebody as deliberate and trained as Dan himself can’t see where the magic lies… but it’s there, because of how customers responded.

“You’re really killing me here, John,” I hear you say. “What exactly is your point? Can you just tell me what to do and let me be on my way?”

Well, I’m telling you to spend time looking at the small scale of copy. The arguments, words, and structure.

But there’s something else that makes up the total effect of what you write. Something on a much bigger scale. The overall feel, intent, or — shudder — even vibration of what you are writing.

You might be looking for practical advice. The best I can do is leave you with these words of another mystery merchant, Matt Furey:

Truth is, everything you write – whether a simple note to a friend or an advertisement for your business or a chapter going into a book – carries a vibration of some sort, and the stronger your personal vibration while writing the greater the likelihood that those who are somewhat sensitive will feel it.

If you’re in a bad mood when you write, don’t be surprised if the reader doesn’t like what you wrote. Conversely, if you’re in an incredibly positive and vibrant state, the reader may feel such a strong current coming from your words that you lift him from the doldrums of depression into an exalted state of mind.

Then again, if you’re somewhere near neutral when you write, don’t be alarmed if no one bothers to read anything you put out. Make no mistake about it, if you want your writing to get read, it better have some ZAP.”

Last point:

For more anti-reductionist writing and influence advice, you might like to join the destiny and power movement, also known as my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

Reddit vs. Hacker News: How to get better customers, clients, readers, and business partners

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Paul Graham is a computer programmer, writer, and early-stage tech investor.

His startup fund, Y Combinator, helped start a bunch of famous companies, like Airbnb, Dropbox, DoorDash, Instacart, Zapier, and Reddit.

The total valuation of all Y Combinator companies is now over $400 billion. Y Combinator owns 7% of that, or roughly $30 billion.

Really, the only reason I know this is because I’ve been a regular reader of Hacker News for the past 14+ years.

Hacker News is a news board. Graham started it in 2006 as a way of sharing interesting ideas and getting connected to tech talent. Today, Hacker News gets over five million readers each month.

I’ve been thinking about creating something similar, just with a different focus. So I was curious to read Graham’s 2009 article, What I Learned From Hacker News, about the early experience of creating and running HN.

This bit stood out to me:

But what happened to Reddit won’t inevitably happen to HN. There are several local maxima. There can be places that are free for alls and places that are more thoughtful, just as there are in the real world; and people will behave differently depending on which they’re in, just as they do in the real world.

I’ve observed this in the wild. I’ve seen people cross-posting on Reddit and Hacker News who actually took the trouble to write two versions, a flame for Reddit and a more subdued version for HN.

Maybe this only stood out to me because something I’ve thought and written about before.

Your content, marketing, and offers select a certain type of audience. That much is obvious.

What is less obvious is that your content and marketing and offers also change people. Because none of us is only one type of person all the time.

So if you want an audience that’s smarter, that’s more respectful, that’s more thoughtful and less scatterbrained, then make it clear that’s what you expect. And lead by example.

This can be transformative in your everyday dealings with clients, customers, readers, and prospects. And who knows. It might even become the foundation on which you build a future online community.

If you found this interesting, you might like my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

The secret of the weasel

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I was talking to a girl once and she said, “What do you think, if I were an animal, what animal would I be? What animal do I remind you of?”

The fact is, she reminded me of a bear — in all the best ways. But I couldn’t say that.

​​I tamped it down and said she made me think of a lioness.

“Hm ok,” she said. “Do you wanna know what animal you remind me of? But wait, I don’t know the name in English.” She went rooting around her phone.

“This!” she finally said with a big smile. “So cute it is!”

I looked at the picture. My animal doppelganger was staring back at me with dark, beady eyes. I started to laugh. It was a weasel.

The girl, who was not a native English speaker, just shrugged. For her, the story ended there. I’m sure she’s forgotten all about it since.

But I knew the double meaning of the word “weasel” in English. And so, my brain lit up and I laughed. I wrote down this story as soon as I could, and here I am, telling it to you now, a few years later.

And in case you’re wondering what my point is:

Many people will tell you that the secret to good emails is so simple. Just talk about what happened to you today. Then milk it for some sort of a lesson and presto! Immediate influence.

I disagree.

For the vast majority of people, myself included, I think this “bland breakthrough” style of emailing is a terrible approach.

Because except for a few rare storytellers, those types of emails rarely come together to surprise and delight. They rarely light up the reader’s brain the way my brain lit up at being (favorably) compared to a weasel.

Instead, all you get is the girl’s reaction — a shrug, and on to the next thing.

Maybe you don’t see the distinction I’m trying to make. So let me give you an example of an email that turns the light on.

It comes from one of the bonuses I’ve been putting together for my now-ended Influential Emails training. This bonus — “My 12/4 Most Influential Emails” — includes my 12 most influential emails, as well as 4 emails by other marketers that influenced me the most in my copywriting career.

The example I want to give you is one of these “other” emails. It was written by Ben Settle and it’s been stuck in my head for years.

I asked myself today why this email had such an impact on me.

​​I came up with two things. I won’t spell out what they are, but I will tell you I worked both of them into this email that you’re reading. Plus you can also see them in action in Ben’s email at the link below.

And in case you’re wondering whether it’s really worth your time to click and read another email right now… let me put it this way:

If you could write something today… and have it stick in other people’s minds so strongly that they share it and promote you to their own attentive audience, even years later… do you think that could be valuable to you?

If you say yes, then take a look here:

https://bensettle.com/blog/the-secret-of-the-beer-thief/

A quick and valuable moral about storytelling

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Today I’d like to tell you a fable and before you run away…

​​I want to highlight that this fable can be very valuable and worthwhile to you. At least if you write regular emails or if you tell stories to persuade or sell. So let me jump into it:

A rooster was pecking his way through the manure. Click — his beak hit on something hard. “Why, it’s a diamond,” said the rooster. “Such a precious thing. To somebody else, it might be worth a fortune. But it does me no good. I’d much rather have a grain of barley instead.”

And the moral is:

Impractical, luxury items are foolish. They offer no help when your stomach is empty.

Agreed? Agreed.

Except…

Perhaps the moral is this:

The finest, most valuable things are wasted on those who cannot appreciate them.

Umm… who’s right?

You probably know this already, but a single story can have many morals. So why not use the story many times in many ways?

I’m telling this to you as much as to myself. Because I’ve written over a thousand of these emails to date. Some of them contain great stories that I “spent” to illustrate a specific idea. Silly.

So the moral is:

If you write regular emails or if you have to persuade or sell to earn your barley… then start collecting your stories. Even the ones you’ve told before. You never know how you will be able to use them in the future… to impress a new moral on set of roosters who finally appreciate your value.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another story and another moral. Well, the story might be the same. In any case, if you’d like to hear more from me, sign up to my newsletter here.

Announcing… an email training with a new name

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We all make mistakes. I made one yesterday.

That’s when I made an offer for a new training I called Invisible Email Manipulation.

But as I lay in bed last night, bed sheets pulled up to my eyeballs, staring at the ceiling in the dark, I realized…

It was the wrong name.

For one thing, Invisible Email Manipulation is a mouthful.

But more important, Invisible Email Manipulation doesn’t sum up what’s unique about these emails. Or the unique stuff this training will reveal.

Unique? Yes, unique. But not necessarily new. As somebody smart figured out approximately 25 centuries ago… there’s nothing necessarily new under the sun.

These emails I write are not sales copy. At least not in the way that sales copy looks when it goes to a cold, skeptical audience.

At the same time, these emails are not plain content either. Even when I don’t sell.

Instead, these emails are an alloy of DR ideas and content — along with a few of my own subtle ingredients. It’s a mixture that gets results that neither of sales copy nor content could get alone.

And as I realized last night, and as you might know already, there’s a name for this style of writing. The name comes from Dan Kennedy, who brought to light and identified so much in this industry.

Dan calls it “influential writing.” As distinct from “copywriting.” And that distinction informed my new name for this training:

Influential Emails.

The ultimate goal of Influential Emails is to get you writing influential emails for yourself… or your brand… or your clients.

Because if you do, good stuff happens. Such as the following:

1. You influence your prospects, and you get them to open up their minds to new ideas you want them to believe.

2. You create positioning and authority and even traffic by words alone. Even if you got no status to start… or no markers of expertise… or no bright feather boa to draw attention to yourself.

3. You sell stuff, while sidestepping the stubborn reactance more and more of us feel when we notice a smiling persuader reaching his hands into our personal space.

Maybe you don’t believe me influential emails can do all this. Or maybe you just don’t believe that Influential Emails can do all this for you.

I’ll try to change your mind in the coming days with a few more emails. The offer to join Influential Emails will be open until next Sunday.

In the meantime, you can find the sales page below. It’s still very minimal. Like the initial release of Google Chrome… it will magically upgrade itself to full functionality throughout the next week.

But if you want to check it out… or you want more details on what’s included in the offer behind Influential Emails… or if you’re even ready to sign up now… then try this link:

https://influentialemails.com/