Business Ideas

Stop asking your clients for referrals

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Stop asking your clients for referrals. At least until you’ve read through this article.

You’ve probably heard the Ben Franklin book-borrowing story:

Franklin had a political opponent he wanted to win over. But he didn’t want to butter the opponent up with flattery of tenderize him with gifts. Instead, Franklin used another tactic. He asked his opponent for a favor — the loan of a rare and curious book.

The opponent obliged. Ben Franklin returned the book a week later, with a note expressing his strong “sense of the favour.” After that, Franklin’s opponent opened up. The two eventually became great friends.

What does this have to do with referrals?

Well, as Franklin put it, “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another.” it’s a matter of consistency, that fundamental human need. If I do you a favor, I have to justify it to myself somehow, and that will affect how I act in the future.

But it goes in the other direction, too. And that’s the connection to referrals.

If you ask a client for a referral — and he doesn’t oblige, for whatever reason — then he has to justify that decision to himself. And like Franklin says, “He that has once done you an unkindness will be more ready to do you another.”

Of course, not every book you borrow will make you a new friend… and not every referral you fail to get will lose you an old client.

But I want to raise the possibility that asking for a referral in a haphazard way can have its drawbacks.

“Just go ahead and ask, it can’t hurt.” Maybe. Or maybe it can.

So does that mean you should get paralyzed with fear and avoid referral marketing?

No. But it might make sense to have a smart system that works.

Such as the systems you can find in the following video. I’ve linked to it before, but I’ll do it again. It’s a recording from a Jay Abraham seminar where various clients of Jay’s shared 93 referral getting-strategies that actually worked for them.

Some of these methods are simple and obvious. Some are involved and very clever. But they’re all worth knowing about if you want more referrals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_13FI1zE94k

A return to Mad Men-era Ulcer Gulch?

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There’s a scene from Mad Men that’s stuck with me for years:

Grey-haired Roger Sterling, the senior partner of the Sterling Cooper advertising agency, is on the phone with his wife.

“I am drinking my milk,” he reassures her. And sure enough, he’s got a half-full glass of milk in front of him. He then tops it up with vodka and drinks it down.

The vodka was there because it feels good. The milk, on the other hand, was supposed to treat ulcers. Turns out, ulcers were considered a badge of success on Madison Avenue, because all the high-ranking executives like Roger had them.

In fact, around the middle of the 20th century, Madison Avenue was popularly known as “Ulcer Gulch.” Which made me think of something I heard in an interview with marketer Rich Schefren. Says Rich:

“Most entrepreneurs make the mistake of putting their self-growth goals ahead of their business success.”

This made my long, furry ears perk up. It sounded like Rich was advocating a return to Ulcer Gulch. But no.

What Rich was really saying (as he explained a bit later in the interview) is that you need a business that you can do now, as you are. In other words, you shouldn’t wait to become a different person before you can start a successful business.

This sounds right to me. What business success I’ve had – my copywriting career, those Amazon bestsellers I mentioned a few days ago, a few recent partnerships — used the skills, experiences, and mindset I already had. And that was good enough.

On the other hand, whenever I’ve tried to start some kind of venture that sounded great on paper, but was more than a step removed from where I was currently, I always failed. That’s happened more times than I can count.

So what does this mean for you? Probably nothing. But perhaps, you can get out a pen and a piece of paper, pour yourself a glass of cold vodka-milk, and start listing ideas for services or products you can offer to the world right now — without mastering a new field, becoming a better public speaker, or getting more motivated.

​​Putting these kinds of restrictions on your idea generation can stir up creativity. And who knows, you might hit upon something that leads to real business success, without the ulcers.

My little-known history as an Amazon ebook hack

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A-list copywriter Bob Bly just sent out an email about the National Emergency Library. I’d heard of this initiative but I didn’t bother to look it up until now.

Turns out, the Internet Archive is scanning books and making them freely available online during the corona situation. That’s the National Emergency Library. To which Mary Rasenberger, director of the Authors Guild, said (and I quote from Bob’s email):

“[It is] no different than any other piracy sites. If you can get anything that you want that’s on Internet Archives for free, why are you going to buy an ebook.”

I don’t know about you, but to me this sounds like the old argument about sex and marriage. Why buy the cow, when there’s an app that hooks you up with free milk, even at 3am.

And yet… plenty of people are still getting married these days. How come? Riddle me that, Mary.

But seriously, here’s a little-known fact about me:

For about a year of my life, I eked a meager living by writing ebooks and selling them through Amazon Kindle publishing. (Don’t search for the books because they were all published under pseudonyms.)

I actually sold thousands of copies of these books — but it didn’t mean much. Kindle ebooks sell for a couple of bucks each.

Thing is, had I known as much about marketing back then as I do now, I wouldn’t have failed or given up on my Kindle publishing dreams.

That’s because selling books on Amazon (or really, on any outside platform) is not a good way to make money. It is, however, a fantastic way to get highly qualified leads who have tried a glass of your milk, and who want more.

That means you can get these folks over to your site and sell them more milk — maybe at a higher price than what Amazon encourages you to charge.

Why stop there though?

If somebody likes you and knows you and trusts you, why limit your offer to a carton or two of milk?

Instead, take your new-found customer by the hand to the back of your property… open the barn door… and introduce her to your gorgeous cow. It might be just the bovine your customer has been looking for all her life.

In other words, if the National Emergency Library, the National Milk Authority, or any other pirate institution starts giving away samples of your money-maker for free, it might not be the end of the world. It might even be the start of something great. As multi-millionaire marketer Joe Sugarman once said:

“Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem. The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem & turned it into an opportunity.”

Sharing news about new in five minutes or less

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There are two things I want to share with you today. One is news, the other is new. Let’s start with news:

I read an article today about how the media failed to predict the corona situation — and that’s why their initial reporting was so complacent.

To which I made the Scooby Doo “huh?” noise. Because from what I’ve seen over the years, the media doesn’t do prediction, at least not seriously. Instead, the media reports on the status quo.

Before the corona situation exploded, the status quo was complacency. Now, the status quo is panic, and the media is reporting accordingly. When the pandemic begins to wane and it’s time for things to go back to normal, the media message will likely be obliviousness that anything bad ever happened.

Which brings up this distinction between news and new. I first heard it from computer scientist Alan Kay. Says Alan,

“News is stuff that’s incremental to what we already know. This is why you can tell the news in five minutes. ‘Hey, a train just crashed.’ We all know what that means. […] New is by definition not like what we already know. There’s no news about new. There’s nothing you can tell somebody in five minutes about what new is.”

So I got two takeaways for you:

First, I’m not sure if it’s possible to do a good job predicting the future. Perhaps, among enough people, a few just get lucky.

But, if it is possible, then like Alan Kay says above, it’s unlikely you’ll find the future on the evening news, on Facebook, or on Vox.

But really, we’re here to talk about marketing.

So the other thing I want to tell you is how this news vs. new business can make you money. This is something I heard from marketer Todd Brown.

I didn’t know who Todd Brown was until recently. Apparently, he’s a big name in the IM space, and he’s worked with Jay Abraham, Clayton Makepeace, and Rich Schefren.

Todd’s message was that, whenever you’re positioning a new offer, you should never present it as an incremental improvement over the status quo (ie. news). Instead, always look for a way to present your offer as something entirely new and different — a marketplace of one.

“But hold on,” you might say. “Your offer should be something new… and yet there is no way to share news about new. So how do you convince prospects to buy in?”

That’s a good question. And it’s something I’m trying to answer in my new book on the use of insight in marketing. I’m making good progress on this book, and I hope to finish it in the next six to seven years (just kidding, hopefully another month or so).

If you’d like to get notified when it comes out, sign up for my daily email newsletter and you will get more emails from me about it.

A planet where it rains dollars in the evenings

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There’s a planet out there called WASP-76b where it rains iron in the evenings.

(I’m not making this up.)

One side of WASP-76b always faces its star. This side is super hot — 2400 degrees Celsius — and iron melts there and rises into the air as vapor.

The other side of WASP-76b is always in the dark. It’s a balmy 1500 Celsius there.

In between the light side and the dark side, there’s a shadow area, or you might call it the evening area, where the iron vapor condenses and comes raining down.

Like I said, I didn’t make any of this up. Scientists reported it in a new paper published in Nature just a few days ago.

But what if I did make it up?

Well, I might be on to something profitable in that case.

Because as Ben Settle said in one of his recent emails, there’s a lot of value in “world building.” That’s what fantasy and sci-fi authors like JRR Tolkien and Frank Herbert do: They invent entire worlds or universes, including made up ecologies, histories, languages, mating rituals.

When done right, these made-up worlds have a coherence of their own… and they suck readers and fans in like magic.

Of course, maybe you’re not interested in writing a fantasy or sci-fi saga. Fear not.

World building also applies to marketing your stuff online.

Ben Settle is actually a good example of this, with his gooroos and Maynard trolls and conemtptible new product junkies — all characters who keep reappering in his emails.

But you know who’s even better at world building?

It’s somebody I call the “Ben Settle of Facebook.”

Much like Ben, this guy has a rabid audience that will pay outsized fees — $2k or $5k or more a month — just to sit at this guru’s feet and learn from him.

Much like Ben, he’s also a student of the classics of copywriting (Gary Bencivenga) and persuasion (Jim Camp).

The only difference is that, while Ben is abrasive and loves to mock and shame, this Facebook world-builder is all smiles and cuddles.

I’ve mentioned him many times in these emails, but in case you don’t know who I’m talking about, his name is Travis Sago.

Travis has a bunch of micro-groups on Facebook and each group is like a miniature part of a bigger story. Each group explains one aspect of Travis’s money-making mythology — things like tapping, the 30 year wealth shortcut, and the mini monopoly. It’s a masterclass in world building… and in making money rain down every evening.

But The Lord of the Rings is pretty lame if you hear me retell it. You have to read it for yourself. Same with Travis Sago. So if you want to see how he builds his worlds in all their detail and complexity, here’s the entry point into his orbit:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/milliondollaroffermojo/

Outrage with stupidity to milk info out of cagey or indifferent adversaries

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[Dear reader, in Hungary or elsewhere: In spite of saying I would quit it, I’m back posting my daily newsletters to this blog. I have two reasons. One, I never got going creating bigger articles out of these newsletters the way I planned. Two, I don’t want to kowtow to Google — they prefer fewer, longer articles — and I would rather write specifically for people like you. Thanks for reading. And now onto this inflammatory post:]

Two days ago, the president of the UFC, Dana White, got trolled into revealing a highly guarded secret. A bit of background:

The UFC hosts mixed martial arts fights, and on April 18 they were supposed to host the biggest and most anticipated fight in their history, between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson. These two fighters are both on 12-fight win streaks in the UFC, and they were scheduled to fight four times already. Each time, the fight was cancelled at the last minute for some reason.

This time around, as sports organizations around the world cancelled events because of corona, my man Dana White refused to give in. “We’re going ahead with the fight!”

The only problem was they couldn’t figure out where to host it. It was originally supposed to be in Brooklyn, but that was now out. In fact, any other location in the US also became untenable.

“The fight is still on, guys!” White would repeat whenever asked, though he wouldn’t give any more details. So over the past month, speculation kept increasing. Fans were alternating between getting resigned to the inevitable fifth cancellation… and hyped when some new possible location for the fight surfaced. Meanwhile, even Tony and Khabib, the fighters who were supposed to be fighting on the 18th, didn’t know for sure if the fight was still on.

So that’s the background. The update from two days ago is that somebody created a fake Twitter account, mimicking a well-known MMA journalist, and tweeted:

“#BREAKING: Dana White and Vladimir Putin have reached an agreement on travel arrangements for UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov to come to the United States. He will fight Tony Ferguson. It’s happening folks. #UFC249 will go on as scheduled April 18.”

To which Dana White, big goof that he is, immediately blasted out a Tweet saying that it ain’t so, that Khabib is not fighting on April 18, and then to prove it, he finally revealed the whole card that’s scheduled for this corona-infested bout.

Which brings us to the present day, and something called Cunningham’s law:

“The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer.”

The sad fact is that in business, in love, and on online forums, there are many times when people are unwilling to answer your questions. Maybe the person you’re talking to is indifferent, or cagey, or hurt, or they just don’t like the implied power dynamics that come with you asking and them answering.

So if you ever find yourself in this situation, swallow your pride, and publicly make a dumb, completely wrong assumption about the right answer. If Cunningham is right, and I suspect he’s at least a little bit right, then an outraged somebody will jump in and say, “No! You’re so wrong! Let me tell you how it really is…”

But I think this Cunningham and his law go even farther. If you just swap out “right answer” and you swap in “response,” you get a good recipe for how to get yourself publicity and an audience online.

Of course, unless you want to be just a troll, you’ll have to figure out a reasonable argument to justify a seemingly “wrong” opinion that you use to attract attention. But it can be done, and guys like Matt Stone and Ben Settle prove it. Outrage and reason are a powerful combination. Aloe vera on its own is pretty bland and slimy, but it sure feels good once you burn your hand on the stove.

Agora finally gets into Internet marketing

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I remember back in 2006, when Amazon announced its new Amazon Web Services.

How clever, I thought. Like Donald Trump selling golden mailboxes at Trump Tower to entrepreneurs who want the ritzy mailing address.

After all, Amazon already had all of the computer boxes and wires and know-how for connecting them together. Other businesses didn’t have this — but wanted it. So Amazon could make a nice business by making its internal IT resources publicly available on a per-use basis.

And what a cash cow it turned out to be. AWS is now estimated to bring in $25B a year — more than McDonald’s — and is one of the main profit centers at the famously profit-free Amazon.

Now here’s a puzzle for the marketers out there:

What’s lying around your desktop (literal, computeral, or mental) which you could sell like Amazon sold AWS?

Don’t just shrug if off, but think for a minute.

Because even some of the most successful marketing businesses out there don’t collect this free money. Case in point:

Agora.

Agora is probably the biggest direct response company, with dozens of subsidiaries, and hundreds (thousands?) of offers, mostly financial newsletters.

You can bet that with all this experience selling high-margin info products online, the people at Agora know a thing or three about copywriting and Internet marketing.

And yet, in spite of its tremendous proof elements and branding, Agora doesn’t have any offers in the profitable and growing copywriting/IM niche.

Or at least… they didn’t.

Right now, Agora is spinning up a new division focused on Internet marketing.

I’m not sure what it’s called, but they have an email newsletter called Daily Insider Secrets.

On different days, you can read insights from Evaldo Albuquerque, one of the most successful copywriters at Agora Financial in the past few years…

…from Peter Coyne, also a successful copywriter and the youngest publisher inside Agora…

…and finally, from Rich Schefren, a big name in the IM space for the past decade or two.

I’ve been signed up to these emails for a few days. So far, it’s been like they say — IM secrets you can’t get nowhere else.

Except perhaps, in my own email newsletter. After all, my only fun in life is scouring the Internet for new marketing and persuasion ideas, and then giving them away in my daily newsletter. Usually packaged up in some kind of story.

If that sounds like the kind of thing you might be interested in, then you can try out my (FREE!) email newsletter here.

Simple price negotiation with long-term clients

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Yesterday I talked to a previous client about a possible new job. He offered me to handle emails for one of his businesses on a straight-up commission basis.

At this point, a lot of copywriters would start running and screaming “Red flag!” But I got no muss with getting paid all on commission, at least with this client. I’ve worked with him already… he’s legit… and his business is making money and growing.

At issue is how much commission I would get paid. The client wrote:

“What’s the minimum amount you’d want to be making for the volume of emails that I’m proposing?”

Hmmm. That’s not a question I have a good answer to. So I thought for a minute. And I responded using a strategy that I saw described on Mark Ford’s blog.

Mark says he saw his client/partner BB (I assume Bill Bonner, the billionaire founder of Agora) using this strategy throughout his career.

It’s a way of negotiating that’s very simple, but effective if your main goal is a long-term relationship and a fair outcome for everyone involved.

I think Mark’s post explains it very well, so I won’t rehash it here. It’s worth reading if you find yourself negotiating prices with clients, and you hope to do business with them again. Here’s the link if you’re interested:

https://www.markford.net/2019/10/23/11059/?doing_wp_cron=1576003704.1623599529266357421875

Nicolas Cage’s shamanic sales secret

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I read today that Nicolas Cage has a hot new movie coming out.

It’s unlike any movie he’s done before.

And frankly, it’s unlike any movie anybody has ever seen.

But can that really be true?

Because it seems like in each movie, Nic Cage is basically playing himself. He screams, makes faces, gets mock-serious. And while the costumes and makeup are different in each movie, the audience is basically coming to see Nic Cage, making a spectacle of himself.

It’s an acting system Cage has described as “Nouveau Shamanic.” And his new movie should take this to the 3rd power. Literally.

The movie is called The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. It will be about Nic Cage, and will star Nic Cage, playing Nic Cage. If that’s confusing to you, here’s a brief description from an article in The Independent:

“In the film, Cage apparently talks to an egotistical Nineties version of himself, who mocks his future self for not being famous, as well as for making too many low-budget films.”

Who will go see this stupid new movie? ​​Probably lots of people will. Maybe even I will, because, over many years and many ridiculous movies, I’ve gotten comfortable with Nic Cage and his antics, and I can look at the guy and feel better about myself.

​​As on the big screen, so on the little screen. What I mean is, the same thing that holds for Hollywood stars is true for any other kind of business too — including online businesses.

The fact is, your customers aren’t really buying the product or service that you’re selling. Your customers could just as well buy one of a number of alternatives, which would probably work as well or better than what you’re selling.

What your customers are actually buying is you. And if you can build up a strong enough fan base, or brand, or “Nouveau Shamanic” spectacle, then you will be able to keep selling people tickets to your show, for many years to come, just because you’re you.

Averting the condom catastrophe

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A few months back, I was driving on the highway when I realized I’d seen the same billboard over and over. I forget exactly what it said, but it was along the lines of,

“It’s time for great HEX”

It turns out Hex is a new brand of condoms. They claim to be revolutionary and better than the status quo.

Now, maybe Hex condoms really are so good that they will spread by virtue of the product quality alone. That’s their best shot, because their marketing sucks.

Condoms suck in general, and you’ve already got a bunch of brands out there. Trojan and Durex are the default, depending on where you live. Then there’s Magnum for the talented guys, as well as a bunch of alternate no-name brands you might pick up in a convenience store at 2am.

So there’s no place for Hex — unless they find one for themselves through clever positioning.

Maybe they could try to be the “Apple of condoms”… or the condom what women prefer… or the condom for the climate-conscious. But all those ideas are contrived. The real place to look for positioning is in the market.

And if you do any reading about the, ahem, male performance market, which I’ve done plenty of, you will see that most men do not complain that their condoms aren’t classy enough… or that they turn women off… or that seagulls are choking on runaway rubbers.

But there is something that many men do complain about.

Fact is, there’s a significant group of men who simply lose their erection once the condom comes on.

So maybe Hex could target the guys with poor blood flow. “Hex, the condom for pre-diabetics and others who want to avert the condom catastrophe.” Hex could even copy one of the most successful positioning campaigns of all time and say,

“Hex is only no. 4 in condoms. So why go with us? We make you harder.”

Now that’s a campaign I’d like to see as I’m driving on the highway next summer. Maybe I’ll write to the CEO of LELO, the company that produces Hex, and suggest it.

The fact is, long gone are the days when you could simply say, “New product! Why don’t you try it?”

If you are promoting something, you need a new mechanism into the mind. And often, that’s not found in the product itself. Keep this idea in your own mind, and you’ll have a much better shot at success, whether you’re promoting your own condom brand or something less shocking.