Insight Marketing

In defense of bad headlines

by

I like to get my contact with the world through a news board called Hacker News. It works just like other news boards — popular and interesting article stick around for a longer time. In general, even the most popular articles stick around for only a few hours.

Yesterday, I went on Hacker News and I saw a terribly uninteresting article had appeared on the front page. The headline ran:

“What’s SAP, and why’s it worth $163B?”

“Geez,” I said, “who cares? I know all I need to know about SAP. It’s some big enterprise software company. Why would I ever want to read more about that?”

So I ignored this article.

And I had to keep ignoring it because a few hours later it was still there, getting more and more upvotes.

This morning, I sat down on a park bench with a croissant and checked Hacker News again. “What’s SAP” was still there, with about 10x the average upvotes of all the other posts on the HN front page.
​
I sighed, hung my head, and clicked to read this stupid article.

​​And you know what?

It was fascinating.

I won’t repeat the article here. I will just tell you that it put the current moment into a bigger context and taught me something new about my world. (And yes, that new thing was about enterprise software.)

But this article did more than that.

For example, did you know that until the 1990s, 90% of software sold was custom-built, and not off-the-shelf?

Of course, today, it’s the exact opposite.

Which made me think about the direct response business. Could we be in a similar, pre-1990s situation right now when it comes to DR marketing funnels and sales copy? As in, 90% of copy today is still custom-written, instead of off-the-shelf?

You might say it’s a stupid question, and that it’s impossible to have off-the-shelf sales copy and marketing.

​​Or you might say it already happened, with companies like Clickfunnels, and with niche marketing providers like Vyral Marketing for real estate agents.

Whatever.

The point of this email is not this question of custom-built vs. off-the-shelf marketing. The point is simply that the “What’s SAP” article got me thinking in a new way.

And that’s really what I want to share with you today. A defense of bad headlines.

Because if you find yourself magically attracted to a headline — “I gotta read this!” — odds are good it’s because you are looking for confirmation of previously held views… or perhaps some small update on a topic you already know too much about.

On the other hand, when you find yourself completely repelled by a headline (“What’s SAP”), it might be time to stop and say, “Sounds horrific! But let me see what this is about.”

A couple days ago, I shared a talk given by a very successful and very influential marketer, Dan Kennedy, about thriving during a recession. In that talk, Dan said:

You pay attention to everybody else who’s in your business. It’s like being Amish. It works just like real incest. Everybody gets dumber and dumber and dumber until the whole thing just grinds to a halt.

So you can’t do that. You’ve got to pay attention outside your little Amish community of jewelers or carpet cleaners or whatever it is that, up until tonight, you thought you were.

You’ve got to pay attention to other stuff because you ain’t going to find any breakthroughs in the five other people standing in a circle looking at you. They aren’t any smarter than you are. They are probably dumber than you are.

I think that covers the M and the B in my M+B+C email formula. Now as for that C:

You might or might not already know that I offer an Email Marketing Audit.

So far, I’ve been selling my Email Marketing Audit by referring to results I have achieved for businesses I’ve worked with. The increases in conversion rates in email funnels… the millions of dollars of sales made by writing emails and managing email lists.

But there’s another good reason you might want to get me to look at your email marketing:

​​My non-Amish breadth of of experience in this field.

Off top of my head, I’ve consulted and worked on email funnels to sell weight loss supplements… shipping containers… pet supplies… sex and dating info products… essential oils… Internet marketing… fermented food preparation kits… realtor services… and real estate investing education.

Do you think this breadth of experience might help you and your business get out of incestuous and closed-minded marketing practices?

In case you do, ​​here’s where to go to get my Email Marketing Audit:

https://bejakovic.com/audit

Gratuitous fun to make readers stand up and beg for buttermilk

by

For the first 20 or 30 years of my life, I had this serious mental defect where I couldn’t enjoy a good bangemup action movie.

“So unrealistic,” I snuffled. “So predictable.” That’s how I wasted decades of my life.

Thank God I’ve grown up.

​​Because now I can watch and enjoy movies like True Lies, James Cameron’s 1994 action comedy.

​​True Lies stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as super spy/boring suburban dad Harry Tasker, and Jamie Lee Curtis as his stodgy/talented wife Helen.

The initial reason I watched True Lies was the following famous line. It’s delivered by a used car salesman who’s trying to seduce Helen and is unwittingly confiding to Harry about it:

“And she’s got the most incredible body, too, and a pair of titties that make you wanna stand up and beg for buttermilk. Ass like a ten year old boy!”

Which modern Hollywood screenplay would dare have that?

But even beyond the risky dialogue, I was surprised by how fun this movie is. I guess that’s the only word to describe it. For example, as the movie goes on, you get to see:

– an old man sitting on a public toilet, calmly reading a newspaper, during the first shootout between Harry and the bad guy

– Harry riding a horse into an elevator, and an aristocratic couple in the elevator getting whipped in the face by the horse’s tail

– Tia Carrere (the evil seductress in the movie) rushing to grab her purse before the bad guys drop a box with a nuclear warhead onto it

– a pelican landing on a teetering van full of terrorists and sending it crashing off the bridge

– Harry saving the day flying a military jet, perfectly landing the plane on a city street, and then accidentally bumping a cop car

The point is that all these details are what I call “gratuitous fun.”

They weren’t in any way central to the action of the movie… and even the comedic part of the plot could have done without them.

They were just pure, unnecessary fun that made the movie sparkle a bit more. And I guess they helped it become the success that it was, netting almost $400 million in 1994 dollars.

I think the message is clear:

This year, surprise your readers with some gratuitous fun in your online content, in your sales messages, and even your one-to-one business communication.

​​People love James Cameron’s movies. They will love your stuff, too. In fact, you’ll make them wanna stand up and beg for buttermilk. Whatever that means.

And if you are too close to your own marketing to know what “gratuitous fun” might look like… well, maybe you can get some ideas from my own marketing. If you like, you can sign up for my daily email newsletter here.

Announcing: Membrane Theory

by

Frankly, I’m a little filled with dread as I sit down to write this email. I mean, just a moment ago, I realized it was time, but I had nothing. No ideas to write about. In a last-ditch attempt to put off work, I decided to check my own inbox.

​​And whaddya know?

There was something interesting in there:

My monthly report from Google Search Console, telling me which pages on my site have gotten the most visits.

So what are my most visited pages? And how are people finding me? Here are my top 3 Google queries:

1. Dan Ferrari copywriter
2. Evaldo Albuquerque
3. Daniel Throssell

Is this fair?

​​I mean, I’ve written way more emails/posts in the categories of motivation, positioning, and insight marketing than about any of those three guys.

But as the numbers show, that doesn’t matter.

​​What does matter is a really fundamental and very valuable idea — valuable if you are ever trying to influence people and get them to change their minds. I’ve previously summed this up as:

Sell people, not ideas.

Ideas are smoke.

But people have meat to them.

It’s just something about the human brain. In any pile of random data points, we are pre-progammed to search for human actors, for faces, for names.

This is just one example of something I call “membrane theory.”

Rather than dealing with a bunch of loose stuff, people want to put a membrane around it, and deal with it as a unit.

That’s why we love clearly defined scenes and events, with a ritualized beginning and an end.

That’s why we love to get a medical diagnosis, as bad as it may be, rather than keep living with a bunch of vague, threatening, on-and-off symptoms.

That’s why we love to categorize ourselves and others. We want to stop the world from being fluid and flexible, and instead we want to see ourselves as an INTQ while the other guy is an EFBJ and so of course we cannot work well together.

But you know what?

I’m not applying my own lesson here.

Because “Membrane Theory” is a horrible-sounding and abstract idea.

So let me stop talking about that. And let me talk about myself instead.

As I finish up writing this email, I’m a lot less filled with dread than I was just 20 minutes ago.

I’m looking out my large balcony doors, to yet another sunny and hot day in Barcelona. A scooter just drove up my street. Man those things make a lot of noise.

As soon as I finish up here, I’ll get back to work on my Most Valuable Email project. I’m turning that into its own complete course, and it should be ready soon.

Also, a bit later in the month, I will convert my Copy Riddles program from being delivered by email, only a few times a month, to a standalone, web-based, evergreen course.

In the meantime, if you want to help me get the word out about 1) myself and 2) Copy Riddles, I created an optin page/too-valuable post for that.

And if you share that optin page publicly, I’ve got a little bribe for you. It might be of interest in case you are a freelancer — it can help you get clients.

For the full details on that offer, which I have membranized under the name Niche Expert Cold Emails, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/free-offer-niche-expert-cold-emails/

I grinned when I sat down in the metro but when the doors closed!~

by

A few days ago, I got on the metro here in Barcelona and I spotted a rare empty seat. I jumped into it, grinning with satisfaction. But in the very next moment, my face sank.

“Oh no…”

A trio of busking musicians — a guitar, a fiddle, and a drum — had entered the metro car right after me. They were getting ready to play and make me listen.

In a panic, I looked to the doors.

​​​They had just closed.

​​There was no escape.

I sighed and settled in. There must be something worthwhile I can get from this, I said to myself. And there was.

The metro started rumbling and the musical trio started their act. A song about love and flowers, from what little I could understand.

Most of the passengers ignored the music and stared at their phones. A few people looked on and smiled. And the guy sitting next to me, he even clapped along silently.

After all, the buskers were singing and playing well.

They kept playing through the next stop. As the stop after that neared, they wrapped up their act.

​​Hat in hand, they walked up and down the car, modestly asking for money.

From where I was sitting, it looked like they didn’t get a single euro cent.

Not a cent. Not from any of the dozens of passengers who paid or didn’t pay attention… not from my clapping neighbor… and not from me, certainly.

Sad? Not sad? Serves them right? The trio made their way to the next car. And they got ready to do the whole act all over again.

​​Now let me tie this up to something you might care about if you are a copywriter or for-hire marketer:

A lot of service providers in this field, including myself at an earlier day, do something similar to those metro car buskers.

They naively think that if they provide a good service – copywriting, ad management, singing and playing the fiddle — then, in a big enough group of random and disinterested people, they are sure to hit upon at least a few who will want to pay for that service.

So these service providers collect a bunch of emails of business owners… they craft the perfect cold email… maybe they even take the time to put on a little song and dance, in the form of a custom sample.

But there’s a problem with this kind of thinking. It doesn’t take into account the disastrous “buying context” that’s working against them:

Prospects who are in the wrong headspace… negative positioning/social proof… technical problems… a suspicious odor of pushiness and neediness… the time, work, and emotional toil of putting on a show, over and over, for people who don’t want to hear it, and who give you no feedback, encouragement, or money in return.

That’s not to say that cold email cannot or will not ever work.

I mean, millions of buskers around the world do well, much better than those guys on the metro.

Just one day after that metro performance, I was sitting in Madrid, and I watched a busking duo — a guitar and an accordion this time — clean up a pedestrian street filled with bars and restaurants. They must have made a hundred euro or more, for about five minutes of playing.

These guys were providing pretty much the same service as those Barcelona metro buskers. But in a different context. With different positioning.

And it’s the same with cold email.

In spite of giving it a good go a few times, I’ve never had success with “standard” cold email, the way it’s talked about online.

But I have had success with cold email a few times, in a different context, with different positioning.

After some thinking, I even formalized this into a system, one I call Niche Expert Cold Emails. And I’ve prepared a training all about it.

And it’s free. ​​

Well, free as in, it won’t cost you one euro cent.

But there is a catch. In case you are curious, you can read more about it here:

https://bejakovic.com/free-offer-niche-expert-cold-emails/

Storytelling recipe for disaster that ended up succeeding against all odds

by

Tom Hanks sauntered into the office, and he didn’t look pleased.

A few months earlier, Hanks had won the Best Actor Oscar for Philadelphia. With movies like Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 coming out soon, he was perhaps the biggest star in Hollywood.

Hanks sat down and picked up the script. He frowned. He shook his head a little.

“You don’t want me to sing, do you?”

I just watched a TED talk about storytelling.

The talk was not great. That’s because it was too valuable, with too many good-but-different ideas packed into just 19 minutes.

The emotional highlight of the talk, to me at least, was the Tom Hanks story above.

As it turns out, the filmmakers didn’t want Hanks to sing. Even though the movie in question was an animated film, and even though the only imaginable animated films at the time looked like The Lion King, filled with Hakuna Matata.

But no. There would be no Hakuna Matata and no Under the Sea in this new animated movie. And not only that.

There would be no love story.

There would be no “I want” moment.

There wouldn’t even be a villain.

It sounded like a recipe for disaster. It broke all the rules of how a Hollywood cartoon was supposed to go.

And yet, the movie in question ended up earning $735 million (in today’s money), making it the second biggest film of the year… it got rave reviews (a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes)… and it was nominated for the Oscar for best original screenplay (the first animated movie ever to be nominated for a great story).

That’s why, if you’re into storytelling, or more broadly, if you want to create salt peanuts content that people can’t help but consume, my advice to you is:

Watch this TED talk. In fact, watch it two or three times.

If you’re curious why I would say this talk warrants rewatching, then watch it once first. And maybe you will get a hint. In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/story

Cool-o & Sexy-o: I kill a bad joke even more dead for your benefit

by

In my email yesterday, I wrote about a tricky anti-tobacco campaign, “Tobacco is whacko.” ​​​I played on that phrase and explained how you can make your appeals “cool-o” and “sexy-o”. To which a friend lovingly wrote me:

“Cool-o. Sexy-o. This is the corniest email you’ve ever sent. You old man. Watching too many Joe Biden speeches?”

Let me take a Joe-like ramble and say:

Marketers and copywriters are often told to study only the successful advertising. The controls. The winners.

But I have personally found a lot of value by looking at stuff that flopped. Particularly if it was done by somebody who should have known better.

In my view, flops shine more light on valuable techniques than situations when everything goes perfectly.

So for example:

Maybe — though I admit nothing — the jokes in my email yesterday were lame-o and corny-o.

And yet, if you look at what exactly I was doing, you will be able to identify a powerful email copywriting technique I use all the time. Often to very good effect.

Rather than killing a bad joke even more dead by explaining what exactly I have in mind, let me just get to today’s point:

Read more bad advertising.

I’m not joking.

Ads that flopped might turn out to be the cheapest, though corniest, education in effective writing and marketing techniques you can get.

Of course, not all bad advertising is created equal.

Like I said, you want to look at stuff that flopped, but was written by somebody with sufficient other success. Somebody who was reaching for a technique that works in general, but for whatever reason, didn’t come out right-o that particular time-o.

If you want an example of that, pull out your copy of Joe Sugarman’s Adweek book.

Joe was great copywriter. He sold hundreds of millions’ worth of stuff with his infomercials, catalogs, and magazine ads.

But not every piece of Joe’s copy was a success. And his Adweek book includes a bunch of failures, where Joe’s copywriting techniques, including some he doesn’t highlight explicitly in the book, become obvious.

And if you still don’t have a copy of Joe’s book… well, what are you waiting for? Get it here, daddy-o:

https://bejakovic.com/adweek

I just remembered Cialdini’s best way to teach anybody anything

by

I’ve just awakened from a hypnotic trance.

I spent the last 16 minutes watching a video of a fridge repairman from Alabama disassembling a failed fridge compressor.

As my hypnotic trance cleared, I began to marvel at this mystery.

After all, I don’t have a fridge compressor to fix. And I’m not looking for DIY advice.

In fact, I have zero interest in fridges or handymanism. I wasn’t familiar with 95% of the technical terms the fridge guy was using. I really could gain nothing practical or pleasurable from his 16-minute video.

So why did I watch it, with rapt attention, from beginning to end?

Perhaps, you say, I was just looking to waste time instead of writing this email.

I certainly do like to waste time instead of working. But why not waste time doing something I like, like reading the New Yorker, or watching some Bill Burr on YouTube?

No, it wasn’t that.

But perhaps, you say again, I just enjoy feeling smug and right.

After all, the dead fridge compressor was from 2009. And the fridge repair guy specializes in maintaining long-running, old fridges that go back to the 1940s. So maybe I was just looking for confirmation of my belief that old is good and new is worthless.

Maybe. But if that’s the case, why did I have to watch the video, and all 16 minutes of it? I mean, the video’s title gave me all I really needed to feel smug:

“Declining quality of consumer-grade products – 2009 fridge compressor autopsy…”

So no, it can’t be that.

But perhaps I just wanted to share something cool with a friend.

Even though I have no interest in handymanism, I do have a friend who is into it. I wanted to forward him this video, and maybe, you say, I just wanted to make sure it was worthwhile.

But that doesn’t hold water either. After all, this video popped up on a news aggregator I frequent, where it got 2-3x the usual number of upvotes. That’s a lot of tacit endorsement of quality. And I could tell within just the first minute or two that my friend might find this video interesting, and that I should send him the link.

So why did I myself watch the entire thing?

In trying to figure out the answer to this puzzle, I jumped back to a critical point in the video at minute 5:54.

The fridge guy has just tested whether the compressor failed because of electrical failure. No, it turns out, it wasn’t electrical.

So he decides to cut open the locked-up compressor and see what’s going on inside. As soon as he cuts the compressor open, the motor moves freely, and is no longer locked up.

The fridge guy is in wonder.

“I don’t understand at all,” he says. He decides to try to power the compressor up again. “My guess is it still won’t start.”

“Aha!” I said. “I get it now!”

Because I realized what was going on. I realized why I had been sucked into this video so hypnotically.

It was the structure of the way the fridge guy was doing his compressor autopsy.

He was using the exact same structure I read about once. A very smart and influential professor of persuasion spelled out this structure in a book, and he said it’s the best way to present any new information and teach anyone anything.

I don’t know if the fridge repair guy had been secretly reading the work of this professor of persuasion.

But I do know that if you’re trying to teach anybody anything, whether in person, in your courses, or just in your marketing, then this structure is super valuable.

It makes it so people actually want to consume your material. They will even want to consume it all the way to the end (just look at me and that 16-minute fridge video).

This structure also makes it so the info you are teaching sticks in people’s heads. That way, they are more likely to use it, profit from it, and become grateful students and customers for life.

And this structure even makes it so people experience an “Aha moment,” just like I did. When that happens, people feel compelled to share their enthusiasm with others, just like I am doing now with you right now.

You might be curious about this structure and who this professor of persuasion is.

Well, I will tell you the guy’s name is Robert Cialdini. He is famous for writing the book Influence. But the structure I’m talking about is not described in Influence.

Instead, it’s described in another of Cialdini’s books, Pre-Suasion.

Now, if you read Daniel Throssell’s emails, you might know that Daniel advises people to skip Pre-Suasion. He even calls it the worst copywriting book he has ever read.

I don’t agree.

Because in Chapter 6 of Pre-Suasion, Cialdini spells out the exact structure I’ve been telling you about. Plus he gives you an example from his own teaching.

This is some hard-core how-to. ​And if you ever want to get information into people’s heads, and make it stick there, for their benefit as well as your own, you might find this how-to information very valuable.

In case you want it:

https://bejakovic.com/presuasion

How to force insight

by

I woke up very early this morning while it was still dark. I have some personal stuff on my mind, maybe that’s why.

Rather than rolling around in bed or sitting down in front of the computer, I got dressed and I walked down to the beach. And on my way back, I saw…

1. A blind jogger? It was a couple, a man and a woman, jogging towards me. They were jogging very close to each other, almost hip-to-hip. As they got near, I realized they were holding a short length of rope between them. The man had a sun hat on, pulled down over his eyes. He was more speed-walking than jogging, and he seemed intently focused on the rope.

2. Two Dutch guys stumbling home. One was tall, very drunk, and constantly talking. The other was short, a little less drunk, and trying to get his bearings on which way to go. And then, the tall, talkative one aggressively stomped his foot on the ground and scared a bunch of pigeons which flew at my head.

3. Another couple, dressed all in black. As they passed me, the man looked at me. And perhaps because I also wear all black, he smiled and nodded.

Ben Settle once shared a metaphor which has stuck in my head:

The cookie jar of ideas. It represents all the valuable knowledge in your industry.

As you get going in your industry, you take, take, take from the cookie jar for a long time. Eventually it’s time to add something back in.

But how do you do it? How do you create new cookies out of thin air? How do you come up with new insights for others to use? Do you have to be a genius or to have supernatural inspiration?

I’m sure that would help. But if you’re short on genius or inspiration, you can do what I do:

Simply describe what you see.

If it catches your eye, actually take notes and spell out what’s going on.

Do it over and over.

​​And once you have a bunch of detailed and interesting observations, then put your head in your hands, and stare at your observations for a while. Out of thin air, a cookie will suddenly appear.

And now for something entirely unrelated:

I would like to remind you of my consulting offer, and specifically my Email Marketing Audit.

I could try to tie this offer up to my cookie jar message above. I could try to tell you something like, “This observe-and-abstract method is how I have gained the many email marketing insights yadda yadda…”

But the fact is, one thing I genuinely have learned by observing successful email marketers is that it’s often better not to tie up your content with your sales at all… rather than to do it in a ham-handed or cheese-fisted way.

So no, this promotional add-on has nothing to do with the cookie jar.

Instead, if you want more info on my Email Marketing Audit, for no other reason than because you think it might benefit you and your business, you can find that here:

https://bejakovic.com/audit

How to write for influence

by

A while back, while pondering lazily how I could become more successful in life, I came across the article:

“How To Be Successful”

“Hmmm maybe I will read this article,” I said to myself, “and it will tell me the secret I have been missing.”

It looked like a good bet.

The article had 894 upvotes on a popular news aggregator. It had 300 comments. And it was linked to repeatedly ever since it was published, popping up every few months, each time with a big new response.

So what did this article say to justify this level of influence and interest?

Well, it had 13 insightful and surprising ideas such as:

* Work hard
* Focus
* Build a network

No?

​​You say these ideas aren’t tickling you with their novelty?

You don’t feel any insight from hearing these secrets of success?

Well, that’s kind of my point.

The article is solid. But it’s hardly novel or uniquely insightful.

It could have been written by some diligent high schooler in a 2,000 word Quora response.

But if the quality of the content is not it, what possibly explains the success of this “How to be successful” article?

Is it the presentation? The copy in the headline? The story in the lead? Is it just blind luck?

I’ll quit teasing you.

The article was written by Sam Altman. Altman is a 37-year-old tech investor worth some $250 million.

At age 26, Altman became president of the startup incubator Y Combinator (Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase).

Currently, he is the CEO of OpenAI, the Elon Musk- and Peter Thiel-backed research lab that is looking to replace every creative job on the planet with better, faster, cheaper software.

Maybe none of that means too much to you.

So the point I am trying to make is that within the venture capital and tech world, Altman probably could sign his name on a cocktail napkin… then take a photo of his napkin… post it on Twitter… and get thousands of people liking his autographed napkin photo and enthusing, “This! This is what makes the difference between the hugely successful and all the wannabes!”

And that is how you write for influence.

First, you become somebody famous, admired, and elite. And then you say whatever you like, even if it’s just “work hard.” People will still upvote, share, and spread your message on their own.

That’s not to say Altman’s “How to be successful” advice is not solid. It probably really is where it’s at.

Just nobody would hear the message it if it wasn’t coming from the mouth of Sam Altman.

But since it is coming from him, maybe you will hear it. Maybe you will even hear it right now.

So in case you are more ambitious than I am, and you want to read all of Altman’s 13 well-trodden points, and 1000x your chances of becoming a lightning success, here’s the full article:

https://blog.samaltman.com/how-to-be-successful

The destructive power of analogy

by

Today I’d like to start by sharing an inspirational quote:

“If you feel you’re under-motivated, consider this: the word ‘motivation’ is used only by people who say they don’t have it. People who are ‘motivated’ rarely use such a term to describe themselves. They just get on with the task at hand. ‘Lack of motivation’ is an excuse: it’s giving a name to not just getting the job done.”

I read that in Derren Brown’s book, Tricks of the Mind. Brown seems like somebody I might have become in another life, had I only craved attention instead of shying away from it. And so when I read Brown’s quote, I nodded along and said, “Hmm that’s interesting. Maybe that’s even profound. Hey maybe there’s hope for me!”

Well, it wasn’t really me saying that. It was the little angel who usually sits upon my right shoulder.

“Psst, you there,” said the little devil who usually sits upon my left shoulder. “You wanna go smoke some cigars and drink some hooch? Or do you wanna hear why that D. Brown quote is bunk?”

“Err no,” I said. “This quote is inspiring. Please don’t ruin it for me. I’d like to believe it. Plus it makes sense. After all, if motivated people don’t know the feeling of being motivated, clearly it’s not a real thing.”

“Well let me ask you this,” said the little devil. “Do you know any 9-year-old kids?”

“No.”

“Well pretend like you do. Or just think back to when you were 9. Do you ever remember waking up in the morning after a blessed 10 hours of deep sleep… jumping out of bed… and with a stretch and a big smile on your face, saying, ‘Boy I feel so healthy today!'”

“Oh no…”

“Yeah, that’s right. Kids don’t talk like that, at least not the vast majority, the ones who have been perfectly healthy their whole life. But does that mean that there is no such thing as health? That you can’t be in good health or in bad health? Or by extension, that there’s no such thing as motivation and lack of m—”

“Get thee behind me Satan!” I yelled. But my mood was already spoiled and the quote above was ruined for me.

Maybe I managed to ruin it for you as well. If so, it was all for a good cause. I just wanted to illustrate the destructive power of analogy.

Fact is, Brown might really be right. There might not be any such thing as motivation.

But the fact he tried to prove it in a specific way (“motivated people never use the word”) was easy to spoil with my analogy to kids and health. And maybe, just maybe, your brain made the same leap after that which my brain did.

“Well, health is real… and if health and motivation are alike in this one way… then motivation must be real.”

​​But that’s not proven anywhere.

Anyways, now I’m getting into ugly logic which is really not what persuasion or this email are about.

I just want to point out that, if you want to persuade somebody of something, or if you want to dissuade somebody of something, then the most subtle and often the most persuasive thing you can do is to take two pushpins and a piece of string.

​​Stick one pushpin into an apple. Stick the other into an orange. Tie the string between the pushpins. Make it tight.

And then hold up your creation to the world and say, “Draw your own conclusions! But to me, these two look fundamentally the same! Just look at the string that connects them!”

Anyways, D. Brown does not talk much about analogies in his Tricks of the Mind. That’s his only omission. Because this book really has everything you need to persuade and influence — and from somebody who is both a serious student and a serious practitioner of all this voodoo.

In fact, the last time I mentioned this book in one of my emails, a successful but low-key marketer wrote in to tell me:

John!

Maybe you didn’t get the memo! You can’t tell people about Derren Brown’s “Tricks of the Mind”.

It’s against the rules.

As a friend of mine said, “That’s too much in one book. Don’t give the chimps tools.”

LOL

Well, maybe my mysterious reader is right. So don’t buy a copy of Derren Brown’s book. But if you do want occasional chimp-safe tools from that book, or from other valuable persuasion and influence sources, then you might like my daily newsletter.