Business Ideas

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

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Two years ago, just as the whole world was shutting down due to the first wave of corona, 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 in April 2020 they were supposed to host the biggest and most anticipated fight in their history, between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson.

These two fighters were 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, 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 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 as the fight date neared, 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, didn’t know for sure if the fight was still on.

So that’s the background. Would the fight happen? Would it get cancelled a fifth time?

The answer finally came when 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, and then to prove it, he finally revealed the whole card that was scheduled for this corona-infested bout.

Which brings us to an eternal truth, 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 your outraged adversary 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 (aka Buck Flogging) 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.

And if you want less outrage, not more:

You might like my daily email un-newsletter. I avoid outrage, even though I know it’s good for business. Instead, I try to make my ideas appealing in other ways. In case you’re curious, you can give it a try here.

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.

Back to the Boardroom era?

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Last autumn, I was writing a few sales emails for an SEO agency. So I spent an hour on Google, trying to find stories of people who had been penalized, by Google, for doing shady SEO stuff.

And after an hour, I had little to nothing to show for it.

Not because such stories don’t exist or because people haven’t written about them online.

But because people’s actual stories have been crowded out by billions of SEO-optimized listicles with titles like “10 Google Penalties That May Be Affecting Your Site” and “The Complete list of Google Penalties and How to Recover.” ​​And then there’s worthless Medium, which showed up at no. 2 for a Google search on “Google penalty stories”:

The most insightful stories about Google Penalty – Medium
Read stories about Google Penalty on Medium. Discover smart, unique perspectives on Google Penalty and the topics that matter most to you like SEO, …

Page after page of Google results like this gave me no actual, credible, human info. And I guess it’s not just me that it’s happening to.

A recent article in the New Yorker talked about the growing mass realization that Google search sucks. Partly because Google as a company has decided to go fully evil. Partly because we have all started to rely so much on Google… that the Internet has warped itself to appeal to Google’s tastes and preferences.

The result is page after page of horrible, inhuman fluff, broken up perfectly with H1 and H2 headings, made up of regurgitated and repurposed low-quality information or even flat-out lies.

Which is something you can either be frustrated about…

Or if you’re like me, you might decide to see it as a business opportunity.

The tech nerds on Hacker News can try to come up with a new search engine to beat Google.

But this is a newsletter about marketing. So let me tell you it smells to me like we might be headed back to the days of Boardroom.

The past 15 or so years, coinciding with rise to monopoly of Google, have also seen a rise of personality-based marketing businesses.

Coaches, gurus, and experts of various stripes have been selling information at high prices — not based on the quality or quantity of the info — but based on their own perceived authority, trustworthiness, and the relationship they have built with their audience.

That was the only way you really could charge for information online.

The days of Boardroom — charging $39 for a book of tax-saving or health or consumer tips — without a face you could trust and a guru you could feel is your friend… why pay for that?

After all, it seemed that Google made that kind of information available for free.

Except again, we’re now in an age where there’s so much information, and so much bad information, all available for free, that there might be an opportunity to simply start a business curating good information and selling it online.

So if you’re looking for a side project, new business, or a way to help millions of people navigate their lives better, consider reviving Boardroom.

Bring together valuable, trustworthy information. Charge for it. Build a list. And then do it all over again.

You probably won’t ever be able to charge thousands of dollars for a single book or five-hour video course, the way you can if you are selling based on personality.

​​But you will be able to reach a much bigger pool of people — which creates valuable opportunities of its own.

Or you can watch me do it. I’m planning to take my own advice. I will write up the results in my email newsletter. You can sign up to join it here.

Cheap, easy, and definitely worth it

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A few days ago, I sent out a George Foreman-themed email asking for testimonials. Either for my newsletter and products… or for me personally.

I got back some good responses. Just what I was hoping for. For example, copywriter David Patrick wrote me to say:

“If John is behind anything, then I’m sure it’s going to be good. In fact, he may very well be the best thing to happen to America… at least when it comes to persuasion and influence! No, really!”

Others wrote in to say that I’m not only the best thing for America, but “maybe even the world”… that I am a “vital resource”… and one person, who shall remain unnamed, wrote in all seriousness with:

“John Bejakovic and persuasion. You can’t beat that. He made me like cats. Even though I used to hate them and they used to hate me. So he’s a great person to find out about a new product that’s about persuading stubborn prospects. Or cats.”

I also got less flamboyant, perhaps more useful testimonials. I will drip those out in good time, in upcoming emails and sales pages.

For today, I just want to point out something obvious that you might already know, but that I had to learn. In fact, I didn’t learn it until only a couple years ago, when I was writing a VSL for a get-rich-in-real-estate guru.

In one of his content videos, this real estate guru talked about his “buyers list” — the list of people you can flip a house to.

But a buyers list is so much more than that, the guru said.

​​He then rattled off all the connections, employees, business opportunities, sources of funding, and personal relationships that resulted from his list, and from the personal emails he would send to them on occasion.

“Huh, interesting,” I said, a dim light slowly flickering to life in my head.

​​Time passed. I stared into space.

​​The light flickered a little brighter. “Ohh… yeah… I get it now!”

Because it’s not just a “buyers list” that can do all that. It’s the same with any email list, when it’s built right and managed right.

The fact is, my newsletter list has given me — often without me even asking — business partners… JV partners… copywriting clients… consulting clients… free products… insider tips and valuable ideas I wouldn’t know about otherwise… job offers… podcast appearances… mastermind appearances… and many, many new relationships with people, some of whom even became my friends, mostly online, but in real life as well.

Like I said, I had to have somebody point this out to me. That a list is a relationship, and that it’s good for a lot more than just a certain kind of one-way traffic.

Maybe you’re amazed I could be so dense.

But I am far from a natural when it comes to promotion or marketing or business. And yet it doesn’t matter.

You can find a spot for yourself, and be successful in time, even if you’re not a natural showman, salesman, or “scheme” man.

Lots of people have walked the road before you. Many of them are willing to point out, sometimes even for free, just where you should put your feet to take the next step to success.

Such as for example, starting and running your own email list. It’s cheap. Easy to do. And it’s definitely worth it.

If you want to see, how I do it, sign up to my list. You might learn something about copywriting and marketing and business along the way. Here’s where to get started.

Who wants to be a billionaire?

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The oldest rum brand in the world, and also the oldest living business in Barbados, is Mount Gay Rum.

The Mount Gay distillery, sitting in the middle of wind-blown sugar-cane fields, dates back to 1703. For hundreds of years now, Mount Gay Rum has been a favorite of the pirates, sailors, and tax evaders who landed in Barbados.

When you look at the oldest businesses in other countries around the world, the picture is similar:

Ireland – Sean’s Bar, founded in the year 900

China – Ma Yu Ching’s Bucket Chicken House, founded in 1153

Ukraine – Drohobych Salt Mine, founded in 1250

Looking at businesses that are still running after a few hundred years or more, you will find lots of small breweries… small inns… small mints… small mills… small mines… and an occasional bell foundry thrown in.

Which led author Ted Gioia, who wrote about this topic recently, to conclude:

“You might assume that the best corporate survival strategy is to get bigger and bigger, but empirical evidence tells a completely different story. These long-term survivors are far more likely to be small, focused companies that do one thing very well, rather than ambitious growth-oriented megacorporations.”

Is Gioia right? I don’t know. But it resonated with me. And so I want to warn you:

A business owner recently tried to motivate me into working with him. “This could be a billion dollar company,” he said, “and you can be a part of it!”

I didn’t say so at the time, but I shuddered at the thought of being part of a billion-dollar company.

Who wants to be a billionaire? My idea of being rich is having more money at the end of each month than I had at the beginning — without scrimping, scrounging, or worrying along the way.

I know that when I don’t work, I get depressed. So I’m more interested in enjoying what I do, and being able to stick with it for the long term, than in making a lot of money and cashing out.

So now that you know that, it’s time to make a decision to avoid my email newsletter or not.

​​You might be wasting your time by signing up to my newsletter. What’s worse, you might be exposed to dangerous ideas that steer you away from your primary goal, in case that goal is to get very rich.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for enjoyable work, for the long term, and if you’re ok focusing on one thing and doing that very well, then it might make sense to sign up.

Who knows?

Maybe I can give you good ideas so you can run a business that you enjoy.

​​Or maybe, even so you can build a little legacy. So a hundred years from now, your great-great-grandkids are still running the direct response brewery you start today… while pointing proudly to your picture on the wall.

If you’re interested here’s how to sign up.

Update on that Super Bowl ad

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Last week, I wrote about the “best” ad from Super Bowl 2022. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a bit of recap:

The whole ad was a QR code bouncing around for a minute, like an old-school Windows screensaver.

If you scanned the QR code, it took you to a page to sign up for a Coinbase account.

The ad drew a lot of response. So much so that the landing page crashed.

But in spite of the big response, it’s unlikely that Coinbase recouped the $13 million it cost to run this ad.

So that’s the recap. And now for the update:

A few days ago, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, wrote a Twitter thread talking about the making of this ad.

It was mostly about how cool and creative his team is, and how he likes to pat them on the back, and how he also enjoys having his own back patted.

But the thing that really caught my eye was— “and of course the production budget was tiny, less then $100k.”

Hmm. A tiny budget, less than $100k, for a QR code bouncing around on the screen… something you could get done for on Fiverr for $30?

This brought to mind something copywriter Dan Ferrari wrote a few years ago. Dan was writing about big changes in the DR world. This bit has stuck with me ever since:

Because I’m not sure you’re aware, but there’s still a HUGE world outside of the digital players I’ve been talking about so far.

They’re now entering our world as well.

Specifically, I mean big direct response TV spenders and “brand” companies.

Why? Because their channels are drying up. Everything is moving digital.

I recently met with one of the top execs for a HUGE direct response TV company.

They make even the $200M per year financial publishers look small.

Guess what they’re doing?

Moving online. TV doesn’t work nearly as well for them anymore.

So watch as companies with products and businesses that don’t really fall into our little world of internet direct response start to require the services of people that know how traffic, copy, and funnels work online, at mega-scale.

Just to be clear:

I’m not suggesting you try to sell direct marketing to clueless brand businesses. If their idea of good advertising is a glossy page in a magazine, showing a man in a rowboat, in the middle of a lake, with the company logo hiding somewhere in the corner… well, you won’t change their mind.

But like Dan says, we might be in the early days of a giant opportunity.

So if you are enterprising, now might be the time. The time to take standard DM insights… and sell them to a virgin direct advertisers like Coinbase. The production budget? A mere trifle — $100k or $300k or maybe just a mil.

But perhaps you don’t know enough about how traffic, copy, and funnels work online.

In that case, sign up to my email newsletter — because these are all things I write about regularly.

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.

“If you got an area of excellence… then rich can be arranged”

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The Color of Money is green and it’s also the title of an 1986 Martin Scorsese film about pool hustlers. The movie contains a valuable truth about business, so let me quickly spell it out.

The Color of Money has two main characters:

An old pool shark, named Fast Eddie Felson, played by Paul Newman, and…

A young pool shark, named Vincent Lauria, played by a 24-year-old Tom Cruise.

In the beginning of the movie, Fast Eddie tries to recruit Vincent and so he says:

“If you got an area of excellence… if you’re the best at something, anything… then rich can be arranged.”

Vincent knows he’s the best at pool. He likes the idea of being rich. So he agrees to team up with Eddie.

It’s only later, once the two are already on the road, driving around in Eddie’s big white Cadillac and cleaning out dirty poolhalls around the Midwest, that Eddie tells Vincent the whole truth and nothing but the truth:

“Pool excellence is not about excellent pool. It’s about becoming something.”

Becoming what exactly?

Well, a businessman. In pool, it means being a flake… tanking on occasion… hustling the other guy and sometimes even the audience.

Maybe your business is not pool. And maybe you really dislike the idea of tanking on purpose or hustling anybody.

Fine.

So just take this as a reminder that excellence in whatever you do is about working on your business as well as in it.

And also:

If your business happens to be freelance copywriting, then take this as a reminder that my copy Zone Offer is now in the oven and is baking at 475°F.

I want to make sure the final result — all about the business of copywriting, as opposed to the craft — is fully baked before I put it on the table. More info on that soon — sign up here if you want to get notified.

A reader tries to disturb me but ends up turning me on

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Last night, in response to my “Don’t vote for just some guy” email, a reader wrote in:

Hi John! 🙂
What is your sexual preference? Gay or straight?
Sorry if this question disturbs you!

I don’t know if I would call it a sexual preference, but I will tell you what really turns me on:

It’s when Internet strangers take the time to write and try to get a rise out of me. Because it means I’m doing something right.

The way I look at it is:

Your online persona is like a sales bullet.

You have to reveal enough to get people involved, like the guy above. But you have to withhold enough to keep people wanting more.

Now if you’ve been reading my emails for a short while, you might say I rarely share anything about my life, and so I fail hard on the first part of this equation.

The fact is, I’ve been writing these emails, every day, for over three years.

​​During that time, I’ve shared a lot of personal stories, including some about my colorful-if-patchy dating, sex, and relationship history.

And I guess that’s really the point raised by the come-hither question above. The point being:

If you want people to know anything about you online, you have to repeat yourself to no end.

New people join your list. Then they skip some of your emails. Or they don’t skip, but they don’t listen. Or, in the words of Fast Eddie Felson, they listen, but they don’t hear.

So if there is anything you want to make sure people online know about you… you have to say it often, and then repeat it, even when it starts to get nauseating for you personally.

Fortunately, I don’t rely on my email newsletter as my only or really my primary source of income (you can sign up for the newsletter here if you like).

That’s why I don’t have to keep repeating my stories, or reveal personal stuff, past the point where I myself find it amusing. (Maybe there’s a lesson in there too.)

But there are a few things I want to make sure you know about me.

Such as, for example, the rare and choice items I have for sale.

Like my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters book. No, it doesn’t have anything about my sexual past… but it does have a few personal stories to help illustrate the valuable lessons I learned from some of the world’s best copywriters.

This book is cheap, especially considering the value that’s inside.

It’s available on Amazon.

It’s called the 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Did I mention it’s available on Amazon and that it’s cheap and yet valuable? The link to it is here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Gary Halbert’s ghost determines the hand-in-cap odds

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In my email yesterday, I offered you a wager if you wrote in and picked the winner of this year’s SuperBowl.

The betting office is closed now.

But if you wrote me in the past 24 hours, and if it turns out you picked right, you’ll get my upcoming Copy Zone offer for 50% off.

As things stand right now, the Bengals are the clear favorite, with 17/10 odds. That’s according to all the picks I got from people on my list.

But maybe it’s not yet time to run out and put real money down on Cincinnati. Because the most persuasive handicapping analysis I got came from copywriter Thomas Crouse:

“I know nothing about football, so I will bet on the Bengals purely on the basis that tigers are superior to sheep.”

This simple comment set me off on a search for the strange origins of the word handicap.

It turns out it comes from an old trading and betting game, called hand-in-cap. Here’s how that worked:

Imagine for example, that you and I each own a football helmet. You own a Bengals helmet… I own a Rams helmet.

We want to trade. But you think your Bengals helmet is worth more.

“Come on,” you say, “look at those amazing stripes!”

Fine. But how much more?

“Let’s not haggle like lettuce-peddlers. We’ll get somebody else to decide.”

So you get out your A-List Copywriters-edition Ouija board. And, holding hands, together we summon the great ghost of Gary Halbert.

Gary will be the umpire who determines the odds — how much more the Bengals helmet is worth than the Rams.

In a flash of light, Gary appears from the after-world, wearing flip flops, a torn t-shirt, and a red baseball cap that says, “CLIENTS SUCK.”

He looks over your football helmet and mine. He strokes his beard.

“It’s a damn tough one,” Gary says. “I was born and bred in Ohio. And so I have a soft spot, I mean real soft, quite mushy, for the Bengals. But then I made Los Angeles my adopted home. And I gotta say the Rams are looking good this year.”

He thinks some more.

“So let’s just say the odds are $70. The Bengals helmet is worth the Rams helmet plus seventy bucks.”

At this point, Gary takes off his CLIENTS SUCK cap.

You and I each put $5 of forfeit money in the cap. And we each also put our right hand in the cap.

The rules are this:

If you agree with the odds, you pull out your hand from the cap, palm open.

If you don’t agree with the odds, you pull out your hand from the cap, with a closed fist.

The same for me. Result:

If we we both agree, the trade happens. We exchange football helmets. I give you an extra $70. Gary pockets the $10 worth of forfeit money as reward for umpiring, and he flies off to copywriter heaven.

If we both disagree, the trade doesn’t happen. And Gary still pockets the $10 worth of forfeit money.

And finally, if one of us agrees but the other doesn’t, the trade also doesn’t happen.

Except in this case, the $10 of forfeit money goes to whoever agreed to the trade… and poor Gary goes back to copywriter heaven empty-handed. (Really, it’s okay. He can write a new sales letter tonight and make a million dollars by tomorrow morning.)

So that’s hand-in-cap.

People played it for hundreds of years.

The term then got transferred to horse racing — an impartial umpire chose the odds between different horses — and sports betting in general.

​​Eventually, it morphed into the modern word (disability, disadvantage) we know today.

I’m telling you all this because 1) I like etymologies and 2) I’ve long been fascinated by how a few simple, well-chosen rules can produce complex, interesting, and valuable behaviors.

Like hand-in-cap.

The rules are simple. And yet they make it so you and I and Gary each have a stake in working towards, and agreeing to, a fair trade.

That same idea can be applied much more generally.

You might want to manage a few people who work for your business… or create a thriving online community… or just mold a group of your customers into a tightly-knit, devoted “herd.”

So my advice to you is to start by thinking of a few simple rules to drive the behaviors that you want.

That, and sign up for my email list. Sure it’s a wager. But maybe you can win some valuable insights.