Business Ideas

So bad they can’t ignore you

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Yesterday, I published two posts on this site, where normally I publish one.

This wasn’t part of any strategy or new trend. It was just a goof-up. One of those two posts was meant to come today, and I scheduled it wrong.

There was a second goof-up in one of my posts yesterday, which was that I claimed the free bullets mini course is kicking off today. In fact, it is ​​kicking off tomorrow, Thursday. So if you opted in to get it, you will get it starting tomorrow, as promised initially.

Now that I’ve cleared the air of those painful topics, we get to something even more painful:
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What valuable thing can I say today, since I don’t have a post ready the way I planned?

By blind luck, I’ve been forcing myself to write down a list of 10 “Flaubert moments” each day for the past few days. These are things I spot in the real world, which catch my eye or make me chuckle or wonder. So let me tell you about a fascinating Flaubert moment from two nights ago.

I was walking through the crowded old town at the center of this island. I came out from the medieval city walls and started down the steps to the main plaza.

There were people everywhere. There was chatter everywhere. There was music everywhere.

And yet, above all this noise, I heard it:

The nursery rhyme Frere Jacques. Played on a saxophone. Very badly, with each third or fourth note flat like a honking duck.

I found myself drawn toward this mysterious sound. It kept playing while I made my way through the crowd.

Fre-re-Ja-cques
Fre-re-Ja-cques
HONK-HONK-HONK

Finally, I had my answer. There, in the middle of the main plaza, surrounded by hundreds of ambling and ogling tourists, was a boy. Age about 10. Holding an alto saxophone, which was about as large as he was. With a hat on the ground in front of him for collecting tips.

By the time I got there, the boy stopped with the Frere Jacques and did some arrhythmic improvisation for a half minute. Then he got back to work, honking out Frere Jacques again, again missing each third or fourth note.

I stood there mesmerized.

Because every few seconds, a new tourist family came to drop some change or even a few bills into that hat on the ground. Each time, the boy nodded and kept at his task.

And if you’re looking for a lesson from this, here’s a lesson I’ve heard from very successful people, including Mark Ford and Dan Kennedy:

In any business, there are more important things than the quality of the product or service. In fact, excellence is optional for success, especially at the start.

Maybe you think I’m being silly by drawing this lesson from the honking saxophone boy. So let me spell out just how many things that boy did right, in spite of the awfulness of his playing:

1. He got into the middle of a crowd of hundreds of people who were in the mood to throw away a bit of money.

2. He made it clear he would accept some of this money by putting down his hat on the ground.

3. He drew attention to himself by blaring his saxophone. (Compare this to the little girls sitting along the edges of the same plaza, and selling statues made of shells, which nobody was buying.)

4. He played a simple tune which everybody knew and everybody could identify with on some level.

5. He entertained, whether consciously (by his playing) or unconsciously (by his shamelessness).

6. He kept at it. He didn’t play one round of his four-bar melody and quit.

All right, I think I’ve made my point. And maybe you can get some use out of it. Particularly if you still believe success will be yours one day… when you just become so good they can’t ignore you any more.

And now, here’s my hat on the ground:

I write a daily email newsletter. Each day, I honk out a new four-note tune, about marketing and copywriting. If you’re in the mood for getting a bit of entertainment (either through content or through my shamelessness), you can sign up here to get those emails.

You, the publishing magnate

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The first American magazine to ever reach a circulation of one million subscribers was called Comfort. Comfort was started by William H. Gannett, in 1888, in Augusta, Maine, the birthplace of direct response advertising.

Gannett did not have any experience with magazine publishing when he started Comfort. Instead, his business was selling Oxien, a patent “nerve tonic.”

Much like other patent medicine pitchmen, Gannett had a natural knack for marketing. So he decided to start a women’s magazine, filled with advice columns, recipes, fashion tips, songs, poems, romantic fiction, and of course advertising. Because his real goal, at least at the beginning, was selling more Oxien.

That’s a possible business idea for you also.

If you’ve got a product or a service, and you want to sell more of it, then stop selling.

Instead, start publishing.

You can start a magazine. Like Gannett did.

Or you can create a reality TV show. Like the UFC did with The Ultimate Fighter.

Or you can start a podcast. Like a million businesses and marketers do.

“Gotcha!” you might say. “There’s nothing new with what you’re saying here. It’s the same damn thing as everybody else is saying, and that’s to start a podcast or a daily email newsletter.”

And there’s definitely overlap with that.

But what I’m suggesting is for you to take an extra step away from your current offers… to put still more focus on entertainment… and to make your publishing venture capable of standing alone.

The result can be massive growth for your core business. Maybe even a new business that makes more money than the business you started with. And who knows, one day… when all the other patent medicine pitchmen are forgotten… you may be remembered as a publishing magnate.

And now, in other news:

I still have some back issues of the free bullets mini-course I ran in January.

This course collected some of the best lessons I figured out by looking at the source material that A-list copywriters used to write their bullets… and then looking at the bullets themselves.

I eventually took this free email course, expanded it significantly, made it interactive, and turned it into my Copy Riddles training.

​​​​But you can now get your hands on your own copy of the original free course. You’ll first have to sign up for my email newsletter by this Wednesday. Once you do that, then watch out for the next email in my newsletter, and just click the link at the end of it.

Marketing in a Terminator world or Abyss world

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A couple days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “Silver medal: Writing how you speak.” To which a reader named Andrew wrote in.

He said the email had landed in his promo folder, rather than his main inbox. “Maybe it’s the subject line?” Andrew wondered.

Maybe.

But I decided a while ago that I will not write with Google in mind.

You might think this is another one of those, “I’m an edgy marketer and I’m too cool to care about tactics” speeches. But I’m not that cool.

In fact, a few years ago I paid for a training by marketer Ian Stanley. It was all about how to get your emails into your prospect’s primary Gmail inbox.

I experienced first hand the endless and mindless work it takes. I decided very quickly I didn’t want to do it, especially for daily emails like this, and the ones I was writing for my biggest ecommerce clients.

In the time since, I’ve only gotten more fixed in my belief that I cannot win against Google and Apple, any more than I can win against the federal government or the WHO.

It’s like the Terminator movies, with the leftover humans trying to resist the monolithic and mechanical Skynet.

The human beings put all their grit and smarts to defeat the latest killing machine that Skynet sends back in time… and they succeed. For about five minutes. But then it starts all over again in the next round, except this time the robots are faster, smarter, and meaner.

So I don’t feel it makes sense to fight these monstrous entities or their steady flow of new terminators.

Instead, I feel the only way to win is to ignore them as much as possible. And create little communities of real live human beings.

For example, my email newsletter goes out to a small group of people all around the world. Some of these people like to read what I put out. These are the people who might seek out my content even when Google or Apple hides it. Ultimately, that’s who I write for, maybe including you.

The good news is, this is not a futile exercise. Plenty of people have proven you don’t need an audience of millions to succeed today. A few thousand or even a few hundred can be enough. Tiny communities of people… within a much larger indifferent or hostile world.

So maybe the question is which metaphor you prefer to live in.

Maybe you like the constant conflict of the Terminator movies. Maybe you like the idea of being a general in a war… of fighting for a cause… even if the chances of winning are slim.

But maybe you’re more like me. And maybe you prefer the metaphor of another James Cameron world.

​​Maybe you like to imagine yourself in The Abyss, with its floating and content jellyfish humanoids, living in a harmonious city, hidden deep down at the bottom of an indifferent or hostile ocean.

But enough philosophy. Here’s something more practical:

Last spring, I ran a free email course about writing bullets. It collected some of the best lessons I figured out by looking at the source material that A-list copywriters used to write their bullets… and then looking at the bullets themselves.

I eventually took this free email course, expanded it significantly, made it interactive, and turned it into my Copy Riddles training.

But if you like, you can now get that original free course. You’ll have to sign up for my email newsletter first by this Wednesday. If you do that, then watch out for the next email in my newsletter, and just click the link at the end of it.

Become a scheme man

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“How the Grecian Mother Bathed her Baby”
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“Fine oils were cleansing agents for young and old. The Grecian mother used nothing else to bathe her babies, together with soft, tepid water. Modern science prescribes the same method for new-born infants.“

That’s from a 1915 ad for Palmolive soap. The ad was written by Claude Hopkins, who was on the Palmolive account back then.

Copywriters today are told to study Hopkins’s ads like this one. For the intriguing headline that gets attention… for the appeals to self-interest… for the proof in the form of reason why copy.

Fine. That’s all important stuff.

But you know what? Hopkins wasn’t primarily a copywriter. Primarily, he was a scheme man.

That was the term at the time for somebody we might call a marketer today. Because what marketers today do is really just apply and adapt ideas that guys like Hopkins invented at the start of the 20th century.

For example, do you know how Claude Hopkins took Palmolive from a product with almost no sales… to the biggest soap brand in the U.S.?

He didn’t do it with clever copy. He did it with a scheme.

Local grocery stores at that time didn’t stock Palmolive. Why should they? Nobody had ever heard of Palmolive, and there were plenty of other decent soaps.

So Hopkins ran ads. First, in one local market. Gradually, all over the country.

“This Coupon Gets You Something Worth 10¢”

The “something” was a bar of Palmolive soap. It cost 10¢ in 1911, and that was something. Something women wouldn’t throw away. Something they would demand from their local grocer.

Hopkins knew that they would do this… so he sent the same ad to grocers before running it in the newspaper. The message was clear:

“Women will come to you asking for their 10¢ gift of Palmolive soap. If you don’t have it, they will still get it, even if they have to go across the street to your competitor.”

So grocers stocked up on Palmolive soap before the newspaper ad ran.

And Hopkins’s initial Palmolive campaign… after the free giveaways were paid for… well, it created a 4-to-1 return on ad spend. With that kind of math, Hopkins soon had almost every woman in America holding a bar of Palmolive in her hand.

Frighteningly clever.

Because at the heart of it wasn’t the appeal to the fine “cleansing agents for young and old.” Sure, Palmolive soap was good enough for women to keep buying. But that wasn’t the key thing that sold it in the beginning.

It also wasn’t the free 10¢ Palmolive bar giveaway. That was important, but it wouldn’t have worked if women couldn’t get their hands on the actual soap.

No, the key was something else.

The key was the fear that Hopkins drove into the hearts of grocers across the country.

Because Hopkins didn’t try to appeal to the grocers’ greed. He didn’t say, “We have a great new soap. Stock it and you will profit.”

Nope.

He effectively threatened. “Stock Palmolive,” he quietly said, “or else you will lose your existing business.”

That’s a scheme. And if you’re a marketer, it’s a scheme that might be worth applying and adapting to your own brands and businesses today.

Anyways, that’s just one foundational thing I’ve learned from Claude Hopkins.

And clever as it is, it’s not nearly the most important thing I’ve learned from him.

The most important thing is something I wrote about in Commandment VI of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

That commandment is not about copywriting tactics… not about marketing schemes… but about something much more fundamental that Claude Hopkins preached.

​​And yet, if you follow this one commandment, you will become a success… even if you’ve failed in everything until now… and even if you make all the mistakes you want going forward.

But you gotta read the book to find out the full story. Because if you don’t, other copywriters will. For more info:

https://www.bejakovic.com/10commandments

A-ha moment that makes millionaires out of creative workers

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HER: Started at age 28 with a net worth of $88k. Worked first as a writer. Then as a photographer. Each year, managed to save a bit more. Now, 10 years in, makes a steady six-figure income, still doing consumer photography. Net worth is $1M+.

HIM: Started at age 34 as a freelance artist. Net worth of -$39k. (Yes, $39k in debt. Lots of fancy trips and partying, and not a lot of income.) Switched to a salaried position while continuing to freelance. Now, five years in, has a net worth of $673k.

A few days ago, I read the financial independence journey of a husband and wife team. Their stats are above.

How did a photographer make a million in 10 years? And how did an artist go from -$39k to +$673k in 5 years?

Well, it was some of the usual. Work and budgeting and avoiding foolish financial bloodlettings.

How depressing. Was there anything else? Anything more inspiring? Yes. From the wife:

“I was exercising the same skill set, but applying it to an industry where they valued it and paid much more for it. This was the a-ha moment that really helped propel my professional life forward, (and later helped my husband as well).”

I’m telling you about this a-ha for two reasons:

First, because I think this idea is genuinely powerful.

I once heard marketer Greg Rollett say how he sold Internet marketing advice to broke musicians… $27 at a time. Then Greg took the same information, repackaged it so he was selling it to lawyers. He made $2700 now, for the same product. And my guess is he actually sold more units at $2700 than at $27.

So whether you’re a copywriter or a marketer, evaluate whether there aren’t people who would pay you 5x, 10x, or 100x for the exact same work you’re doing now.

That’s reason one.

Reason two is that the above story, about the husband and wife team, was part of presentation I gave last night.

The background is that, over past year, I wrote daily emails to two large lists. With each email, I promoted various affiliate offers and in-house products of the ecommerce company I’ve been working with.

Our best month in terms of email profit (not revenue) was over $70k. Typical days were between $1k and $2k. It all came from sending an email a day to each of these two lists.

And because this was secondary work, and there was a bunch of other copy to write as well, I had to make these emails as easy and quick as possible. Which is why I came up with a very streamlined process to stamp out these emails each day.

And when marketer Igor Kheifets asked me to speak to members of his mastermind, it was this process that I went through in detail. That was the presentation I gave last night.

So here’s the deal:

I’ll share the recording of this presentation with you, if you like, and if you take me up on my free GrooveFunnels offer.

In case you haven’t been reading my emails over past two days:

I’m trying to get you to sign up for free account to GrooveFunnels.

And if you don’t know GrooveFunnels, it’s a marketing funnel software like ClickFunnels. Except if ClickFunnels is an iPhone, then GrooveFunnels is a tin can with a length of string coming out the bottom.

So why am I pushing you to try it out? And why am I even willing to bribe you into signing up?

Well, I’m counting on some reckless person out there going one step further, either today or in the future.

Because GrooveFunnels is free for three sites if you sign up right now. But a premium lifetime license, for an unlimited number of sites, is not free.

In fact, the premium license is expensive. I know, because I bought one myself last week.

You might say I’m reckless or even foolish. After all, Groove is still a half-baked product, full of glitches and bugs.

It’s a gamble I am willing to take. My reasoning is that GrooveFunnels, while only functional now, will get good soon. And a premium lifetime license to Groove, at the price I got it at, is still a fraction of what just a year of ClickFunnels would cost me. But it’s not clear how much longer this will last.

Anyways, you don’t have to make the decision about a premium license now. Or ever.

Because you can sign up to GrooveFunnels for free, without a credit card. So look at it this way:

In the worst case, you do nothing with your free GrooveFunnels account.

In the best case, you get at least a 3-website license for a service that will one day rival ClickFunnels. This is potentially worth hundreds of dollars a month to you, when Groove starts charging a monthly fee.

And maybe you can use your free Groove sites to test offering your products or services to entirely new niches… ones that might pay you 10x or 100x what you’re getting paid now.

Or maybe you can use the simple email system in my presentation to promote some affiliate stuff in a new niche. (Groove will soon have an email service also, and you will get it if you sign up for the free account today.)

So that’s my pitch. Nothing to lose, and maybe something good to gain.

If you’re in, sign up for the free Groove account at the link below. Then forward me your confirmation email, and I’ll send you the email marketing presentation. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/groove

Name your own price: how about free?

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In 1998, Priceline went from nothing to being worth $23 billion. They did it thanks to radio ads starring William Shatner and ending with the famous appeal:

“Priceline. Name your own price.”

In 2010, Fiverr launched. Their basic appeal was fixed freelance services, all for just $5. No need to haggle, negotiate over scope, or pay a lot. Fiverr went public in 2019, and is worth a little over $7 billion today.

Eventually, both Priceline and Fiverr backed off from their original appeals. You can’t name your own price on Priceline any more. And most services on Fiverr will cost you much more than a fiver today.

But those initial appeals were powerful. They made those companies worth billions of dollars.

Why?

What was so good about those two original appeals?

Direct marketer Fred Catona, who ran those Priceline ads in the 1990s, said that Priceline’s appeal was an “empowering statement.”

People felt in control, Catona argued, because they could name their own price. And so they took action and jumped on the Priceline website.

There might be something to that.

But Fiverr’s appeal was just the opposite. No control. Not only could you not name your own price… but you couldn’t even name the service you wanted. Five dollars. Fixed services off a menu. Take it or leave it.

And like I said, both appeals worked great.

So here’s my feeling:

Both Priceline and Fiverr appealed to simple greed.

“Name my own price? Hell yeah! I’ll take a ticket to Maui for $10, please!”

“$5 for an email sequence? Hell yeah! I’ll become an Internet marketing millionaire without doing any work!”

So my takeaway for you is to come up with new packaging for “cheap.” It might make you a billion dollars. Or 7. Or 23. And you don’t have to keep making the same “cheap” appeal forever.

Speaking of which:

There’s a new marketing funnel company in town, aiming to rival the $2B-valued ClickFunnels. The upstart is called GrooveFunnels.

GrooveFunnels does everything ClickFunnels does… and more. But while ClickFunnels costs hundreds of dollars a month to use… GrooveFunnels is free. For up to three websites… and for now, until they grab their share of the market.

Can you say cheap?

Of course, with cheap comes a whole host of headaches. I’ll tell you about a few of them tomorrow. And I’ll also tell you why it still makes sense to try out GrooveFunnels… and to even pay to get lifetime access for it, for more than three websites. Hell, I’ll even give you an incentive to do it.

But that’s tomorrow. For now, if you want to find out more about (FREE!) GrooveFunnels, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/groove

Start a profitable repositioning business… with your own home as headquarters

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If you sell a product people don’t want — whether physical or information — then I’ve got an idea for you.

​It will allow you to get into a completely new business, without any startup costs, and without any of the hassles you’re currently facing. Plus demand is almost guaranteed.

All right, you ready?

Then let me tell you I’ve been reading a lot of old ads that would still work today. I referenced one of them a few days ago — a real estate opportunity ad from the 1920s in Popular Mechanics.

But I kept flipping through old issues of Popular Mechanics. And I found a bunch of other ads that kept running over and over. Here are a few from a 1956 issue:

1. “New Rubber Stamp Business Pays Beginners Up To $9.20 an hr. Start at home in spare time with this little table top machine”

2. “Start a profitable manufacturing business in spare time with your own home as headquarters”

3. “Make up to $18 per hour! With this NEW PLASTIC SANDWICH MACHINE!”

Mmm… plastic sandwich…

But do you see what’s going on here?

How much demand was there in 1956 for lamination machines or plastics manufacturing equipment?

Probably not that much. Certainly not in a typical household.

But a business opportunity? A chance to be your own boss… work when you want and how you want… make more money than you’re making now…

So here’s my idea:

If you sell dog clippers today and nobody’s buying, then bundle your clippers with a video. Tell people how to set up their own dog grooming business in their back yard in their spare time.

Charge 10x what the clippers cost… and find yourself in a marketplace of one, instead of a commodity market.

Or, if you sell an information product nobody wants, reposition it as a business opportunity.

I did this last year by accident. I was promoting a Clickbank course on reconditioning car batteries. In a moment of inspiration, I wrote the main appeal:

“How to resurrect dead batteries and save (or make) money”

This sold strong at the start — to a group that normally NEVER buys information products. And it keeps selling today.

But maybe you don’t buy any of this.

Maybe you’re glad you didn’t pay for this advice… and in fact you’re sure you never would pay for it.

In that case, I’d like to announce I’m launching a new training and certification program.

It will allow you to make tens of thousands of dollars a month… all from home… in your spare time… by helping struggling business owners reposition their offers.

I’ve prepared a step by step instruction manual that not only tells you how to reposition offers, but also tells you how to get business coming in at a profitable clip right from the start.

I’m giving away a free copy of this book to any serious-minded man or woman. Reading it will not cost you anything. Simply follow the instructions here.

Unethically creating demand

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Earlier this year, NY Times reporter Aaron Krolik went on a site called cheaterboard.com. And he wrote this nasty post about himself:

“Aaron Krolik is a complete loser. Will do ANYTHING for attention. ANYTHING.”

The post included an ugly selfie of Krolik and a caption that read BUSTED.

Cheaterboard is a site that allows burned men and women to out their cheating exes. Except… is there more to it than that?

Within a few days, Krolik’s post had spread to a bunch of other sites, like bustedcheaters.com and worsthomewrecker.com. Similar concept to Cheaterboard.

Soon, these posts made it to the top of Google Images when you searched for Krolik’s name. Bing helpfully suggested “loser” when you started typing “Aaron Krolik.”

In a nutshell, Krolik had successfully ruined his own “cool guy” reputation.

Now was time to fix it. So Krolik contacted 247removal.com, a company specializing in cleaning up online slander.

It was easy to find them because they ran ads on sites like Cheaterbaord.

​​For a paltry fee of $750 per individual post (typically adding up to thousands of dollars to cover a bunch of sites), 247removal offered to scrub “Aaron Krolik is a complete loser” from the world.

Let me pause here and ask you…

Do you suspect any foul play here?

Krolik did. In fact, that’s why he went through the experiment of slandering himself.

It turned out that hundreds of online slander sites, and dozens of reputation management firms, all boiled down to a few people. Specifically, a programmer in India and a man and woman in Dayton, Ohio.

They would encourage and spread the slander (or who knows, maybe you really did cheat on your wife)… and then for fees up to $20,000, they would take it down.

Unlike my usual posts, this is not a business idea I’m recommending.

Although there is a kernel here that can be useful and even not so unethical.

And that’s the practice of serving a specific customer, rather than selling a specific product. So put Cheaterboard out of your mind for a second, and consider these examples instead:

Example 1: Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis Presley’s manager. He secretly sold buttons that said something like, “Elvis sux!”

Why slander his own star? Because some people didn’t want to buy any Elvis… but they sure needed to buy something.

Example 2: Copywriter Abbey Woodcock has a clever page that you hit once you unsubscribe from her email list.

​​”Sorry it didn’t work out,” it says, “but here are a few resources that might be a better fit you.” And then, Abbey puts in a bunch of affiliate links to other copywriting programs.

Example 3 is apparently standard practice in the newsletter industry:

If you have a company with a bunch of different gurus and newsletters inside it… what do you do when a subscriber fails to renew? Of course.

You offer them any of the other newsletters to subscribe to. Maybe they didn’t like that first guy. But they’re clearly interested in the promise of getting rich with financial advice… so maybe they will like guy #2.

So that’s my advice to you. Once you identify demand, think beyond the product or products you offer.

And if there is no demand… then sometimes you can create it, ethically. But this post is getting long already, so I’ll leave that topic for another day. If you want to read that when it comes out, you can sign up for my email newsletter.

Prophet positioning

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“Let me explain something to you right now,” the goofy looking guy said to the camera. “Here’s a $10 bill.”

And he started to tear the bill up into small pieces in front of the interviewer’s face.

“This is garbage. This is going to zero. Euros are going to zero. The yen’s going to zero. All going to zero… against bitcoin!”

The Bitcoin prophet got louder and his voice started to crack.

“If you don’t understand this, you’re going to be impoverished! You’re going to be out on the street! You’re gonna be begging! You’re gonna be out of business!”

That’s from a little clip I saw today. It went viral so even somebody like me, who doesn’t follow crypto news, got to see it.

The question is why.

It might be because the Bitcoin prophet looked like a kook. He was dressed like Elton John. Even the interviewer was giggling at him. Maybe people who shared the video just wanted to make fun.

But I’ve got my own theory.

Which is that making strong predictions, saying X is dead, Y is the future, is a great way to grab attention and carve out a position for yourself in the mass mind.

Now the clip I saw had a tongue-in-cheek element to it. It seemed even the Bitcoin prophet was about to crack a smile as his performance built up.

But if you don’t hedge your bets like that…

If instead you have the conviction (or connivance) to paint the future black and white… and you do it in a way where people can believe you really mean it…

Then that’s the road to being seen as an authority. A leader. A prophet.

And that’s something all of us crave.

Because few things are scarier and more motivating than the uncertainty and lack of control that come from looking at the frosted glass window that is the future.

Which is why it doesn’t matter if your predictions are right or wrong. People will follow you, or at least some will. Even if you’re wrong. And even if the rest of the world thinks you look like a goof or a kook.

But perhaps pretending to be a prophet doesn’t suit you. Maye you think that’s garbage.

What’s not garbage is your need for positioning in the market. If you don’t understand this, you’re gonna be out of business, begging, out on the streets.

I write about positioning on occasion. I have many ideas about it. If you want to read about them as I write about them, sign up to my email newsletter.

What never to say when somebody’s angry, upset, or riled up at you

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In a small town bar, a drunk farmer pushed his way through the crowd and got in the face of a meek and proper-looking man.

“You sent that tornado that leveled my house,” the farmer roared as he grabbed the meek guy by the lapels. “Now you’re gonna pay for that!”

A flash of panic spread across the other guy’s face. He threw a glance to the door. No bouncer to help.

So in another flash, this meek man changed his panicked face into a convincing scowl. And he grabbed the farmer by the lapels in turn.

“Yeah, that’s right about the tornado!” yelled the previously meek man. “And I’ll tell you something else! I’ll send another one if you don’t back off!”

Which the farmer did. “Hey buddy… take it easy! I was just kidding…”

You might know this true-life anecdote because Robert Cialdini used it in his book Influence.

The meek guy at the bar was a local TV station weatherman. Cialdini used the story to illustrate the power of association, which hounds weathermen with threats, insults, and occasional beatings whenever the weather they announce turns bad.

Yeah, that’s right about association. And I’ll tell you something else:

This same anecdote is also a great illustration of another social phenomenon, the power of agree-and-amplify.

In many situations, when somebody’s angry, upset, or riled up, the worst thing you can do is to try to calm him. Instead, it often works much better to agree with what he’s saying, and to push him further into the negative.

It’s like pushing the rug out from under him. Yes, pushing. Because instead of having a firm piece of ground to stand and fight on, your adversary finds he’s moving away from you. And so his natural instinct becomes to give up his spot, and to take a few steps back towards you.

Which might be interesting if you’re meek by nature and you ever find people attacking you, expecting you to buckle.

But what about copywriting?

Would you ever want to use agree-and-amplify in your copy?

I would say no, not as I just described it above. But this agree-and-amplify stuff connects in my mind to a copywriting and marketing topic I wrote about recently. This other tactic allows you to take something negative, and use it in your favor, even in your copy. In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/a-transparent-but-effective-marketing-ploy-thanks-jay-abraham