Insight Marketing Archives - Page 7 of 18

I’ve done my best to hide a valuable lesson inside today’s email

October 8, 2022 by John Bejakovic

“I was in hell. I knew all the salesman’s tricks. Why wasn’t I rich? Why wasn’t I successful? I opened the Bible, and I read the 18th Psalm. ‘The Lord is my rock and my fortress.’”

That’s from the “Christ in Commerce” sermon in Elmer Gantry, a 1960 film that I believe should be required viewing for anybody interested in copywriting, marketing, and influence.

Elmer Gantry should be required because fun should be required. And Elmer Gantry is a fun, loud, and entertaining film starring Burt Lancaster, possibly the most manly man of all time.

But Elmer Gantry should also be required because it’s about a huckster, a scammer, a traveling salesman turned revivalist preacher, once he figures out that preaching pays better than selling electric toasters.

Elmer Gantry tells of a time in US history that also gave birth to direct response advertising.

In fact, the Elmer Gantry type of big-tent sermonizing was a cousin discipline to direct response marketing.

It continues to be so to this day. Just think of people like Dan Kennedy and Tony Robbins — and the thousands of marketers who have learned from them — speaking in front of an audience of ten thousand, while a hungry sales team waits near the exits.

All right, that’s it for my email today. In case you’d like to learn how to write emails like this, you can find that inside my Most Valuable Email training. The link to that is below.

“Whoa there,” I hear you saying. “Why in the Elmer Gantry would I want to learn to write emails like this? Just something from an old movie? Where’s the cleverness or the conceit in that? Where’s the valuable marketing idea? What exactly did I learn here?”

I promise there’s a valuable idea in this email, and it’s not just that Elmer Gantry is a fun film.

Perhaps you can figure out this idea on your own.

In any case, you can find it explicitly explained in MVE #14 in the Most Valuable Email Swipes, which is something you get with core MVE training. In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Feelings of entitlement may signal copywriting potential

September 27, 2022 by John Bejakovic

Today I read a viral pop-science article that made my head spin. The article reported research from Stanford University. The research consisted of two parts.

In the first part, the scientists tested a bunch of people to see whether those people were prone to feelings of guilt.

In the second part, the scientists had those same people interact in group settings, like planning a marketing campaign.

And get this:

The scientists found that the people who tested the most guilt-prone… were also voted as being the most leader-like. That’s according to the other participants in the study.

The underlying message of this research was clear:

If you yourself get burdened with deep guilt from time to time, there might be hope for you yet. In fact, it might be a sign that you secret talents – maybe even a purpose, a mission — that you just aren’t aware of yet.

Inspiring, right? No wonder this article went viral, with billions of upvotes and trillions of comments.

Aye, but here’s the rubbety rub:

The Stanford scientists didn’t just test whether subjects were guilt-prone or not. Instead, they actually tested whether subjects were more prone to either guilt… or to shame.

Guilt? Shame?

Maybe you’re not sure what distinction there is between those two. I wasn’t sure. But the Stanford scientists have their own definitions of the two terms.

Guilt is proactive: You feel bad about something you did, and you want to make amends.

Shame is passive: You feel bad about something you did, and you want to hide and not be seen.

Aaahhh…

So it turns out this inspiring Stanford study was really a bit of clever categorization and reframing. The article I read was titled, “Feelings of Guilt May Signal Leadership Potential.” But really, it could have been more honestly titled, “Proactive Behaviors May Signal Leadership Potential.”

But whatever. This article cannot in any way help us with persuasion and influence. So let’s just drop it.

And in entirely unrelated news, let me pay off today’s subject line:

Perhaps you sometimes catch a sneaking sense of entitlement coming over you.

Perhaps you get angry when you cannot get what you want… or you feel you are special and should not have to accept normal constraints… or you cannot discipline yourself to complete boring or routine tasks… or you become easily frustrated… or you have trouble giving up immediate gratification to reach a long-term goal.

All those might sound like very negative behaviors and thought patterns, ones that are destined to keep you from success.

But what if I told you that feelings of entitlement might actually signal copywriting potential?

The missing thing you might not have realized is that there are two related but actually distinct states.

One is entitlement. Entitlement is thinking you are better than others, and is rooted in a sensitivity to outside stimula, to social cues and responses, as well as to your own internal states and your place in the world.

The other is arrogance. Arrogance is thinking you are better than others, but is based in dullness and a lack of sensitivity, both to outside and inner sensations.

And that’s why arrogant people cannot make for good copywriters. They are not interested enough in observing the world, in how others behave and react, in what it all means.

On the other hand, entitled people, well, their sensitivity actually predisposes them to become immensely successful as copywriters.

I won’t name names here, but when I look at some of the most successful people in the direct response industry, both now and in the past, I suspect they felt a strong, even dominant sense of entitlement. Even if they appeared to be modest, self-effacing, humble people.

All right, let’s wrap up this pop science article.

Final words:

In case you are trying to make it as a copywriter, and you’re wondering where to start, then here’s a resource that may help you make the most of your latent copywriting potential:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

The sales secret of Man on Wire

September 26, 2022 by John Bejakovic

Last night, in a desperate hunt for a movie to watch, I turned to the Rotten Tomatoes 100% Club. That’s a list of some 370 movies that have had uniformly positive reviews — a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.

This led me to Man On Wire, a 2008 documentary about a man named Philippe Petit. In case you haven’t seen this movie, the gist is:

Petit was a tightrope walker. And obsessive.

Back in 1968, when he was just 18 years old, Petit hit upon the idea of walking on a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center.

Problem:

The towers hadn’t been built yet. So Petit spent the next six years scheming, practicing, and waiting in preparation for his audacious August 7, 1974 walk between The South and North Towers, which lasted 45 minutes.

But here’s a question that maybe immediately pops into your head, as it did into mine when I heard about this stunt:

How exactly do you stretch a wire across the two towers? The wire weighed 200 kilograms, or about 450 lbs. Petit was doing his setup clandestinely, in the middle of the night, while hiding from security guards, so helicopters and cranes were out of the question.

So what the hell do you do?

You can’t just hoist the wire up from the ground — it’s a 400 meter drop (over 1,300 feet). You can’t just toss the heavy wire across the 40 meters (130 feet) that separate the corners of the two towers.

A hint comes early in the movie.

You see a silhouette of a man packing things into a bag. It’s supposed to represent Petit.

Along with other unrecognizable equipment, the silhouette gives away something familiar — an arrow.

The fact is, one of Petit’s henchmen shot an arrow with a bow from one tower to the another. And that arrow had a fishing line attached to the end of it.

They used that first fishing line to pull across a slightly sturdier string.

Then they used that string to pull across a strong rope.

And finally, they used the rope to pull across the actual wire, which like I said, weighed as much as an adult melon-headed whale.

Maybe see where I’m going with this.

Because when I saw this in the movie, a lightbulb went off in my head.

“I know this technique!” I shouted in the darkness.

But not from tightrope walking. I know this technique from sales. I first read about it in one of Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullets. Gary called it one of the “the most powerful master strategies I ever learned.”

You can find the explanation of this sales technique below. But not just that.

You can also find lots of inspiring personal stuff about Gary at the page below. Such as for example, that for a long time, Gary was such a bad copywriter that he considered giving up and becoming a mailman. He even went to the post office to pick up a job application.

The only reason Gary stuck with copywriting, the only reason he persevered and eventually became so successful, the only reason we know of him today, was that he was told at the post office that they are not hiring at the moment, and when they do start hiring again, thousands of prior applicants will be ahead of Gary in line.

So Gary stuck with copywriting and marketing.

And one of the biggest things that Gary learned in the years that followed, and used in all his copy and marketing, from his sales letters to his olive oil business, was this “Man On Wire” sales technique. In case you are interested:

http://marketingbullets.com/bullet-15/

How to infect customers with the desire to do what you want

September 16, 2022 by John Bejakovic

Envy the killifish.

Normally a shy and reserved animal, the killifish is always a bit nervous. It’s always looking left and right, trying to avoid danger and trouble.

It’s not a great way to live.

But for a few days of its life, everything changes for the killifish. It’s suddenly filled with energy and passion. Its fears melt away and it finds itself enjoying the wonder and joy that was always there, surrounding it.

In its new-found optimism, the killifish swims up to surface of the water, splashes in the sun, and even turns its scaly belly to the sky for the pure pleasure of it.

And then, a seagull or some other predatory bird, spotting the shiny belly of the killifish glistening at the surface of the water, swoops down, snatches the killifish, and swallows it whole.

Turns out the killifish had actually gotten infected by the Euhaplorchis californiensis parasite.

The E. californiensis gets into the brain of the killifish. It messes with its serotonin and dopamine levels. In this way, it makes the normally wary fish action-oriented and fearless.

And here’s the key point:

The parasite does this not out of spite, and not out of random destructiveness.

Instead, the parasite does it because getting the killifish eaten by the seagull is crucial to completing the parasite’s own complex lifecycle (a bizarre story, one that’s worth looking up).

A couple days ago, I wrote an email about tying in your marketing emails to news items.

I wrote something about princes Harry and William, and about “unity.” Then I stumbled onwards, towards my point and sales pitch.

Honestly, that email was nonsense. It was something I did just to demonstrate the point I was talking about. I would never write an email like that if I were trying to really sell something. I wouldn’t ramble on about a random news item and then milk it for some kind of aimless point.

Because here’s something I’ve learned from the best marketers out there:

The best marketers don’t just tell vulnerable personal stories, or just share interesting news items, or just make mind-expanding analogies.

In other words, they don’t just share ideas or provide changes of perspective for the sake of being helpful, friendly, or educational.

Instead, they do everything — story, news, change of perspective — for the sake of furthering the sale.

Perhaps that’s super obvious to you. In that case, you’re smarter than I am, because it took me some time to realize. When I did realize it, it was a huge mental shift that changed both how I consume marketing and how I produce marketing.

Now, it’s popular in the marketing world to say your marketing should be all about your prospect, and not about you.

And maybe that’s true.

But what’s not true is that your marketing should be about who your prospects are, what they want to become or achieve, and how your product or service can help them get there.

Instead, here’s the key point, once again:

Your marketing should be about what you want your prospects to do, and the beliefs they need to have in order to move in the direction you want them to go.

Maybe that sounds mercenary or even parasitical.

Maybe it is.

And maybe it raises the question, if what you are reading right now is marketing, then what is it I want you to do, and what do I want you to believe?

I’ll leave the question of beliefs hanging for now.

As for what I want you to do, I just have an offer, my free daily email newsletter. It’s for you to decide whether you are action-oriented enough to take me up on this offer. In case you feel that you are, here’s where to go to sign up.

In defense of bad headlines

September 10, 2022 by John Bejakovic

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

September 9, 2022 by John Bejakovic

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

September 6, 2022 by John Bejakovic

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!~

September 5, 2022 by John Bejakovic

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

September 2, 2022 by John Bejakovic

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

August 29, 2022 by John Bejakovic

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: