Problem Mechanism

My diagnosis is that you’re trying to normalize rather than pathologize

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I first wrote about Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes in this newsletter in August 2021. Clance and Imes are the two psychologists who, back in 1978, wrote a paper in which they defined something called imposter phenomenon.

The interesting thing is they called it imposter phenomenon, not imposter syndrome. From a recent article in The New Yorker:

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Every time Imes hears the phrase “impostor syndrome,” she told me, it lodges in her gut. It’s technically incorrect, and conceptually misleading. As Clance explained, the phenomenon is “an experience rather than a pathology,” and their aim was always to normalize this experience rather than to pathologize it.

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It might seem like a trivial difference, phenomenon rather than syndrome. It’s not trivial. Like Clance says in that quote, their goal was just to point out, normalize, say, “it’s okay that you feel like a faker, because others do too.”

But that’s not what the public wanted.

The public wanted a concrete disease, a disorder, or at least a syndrome — something unique and special they can point to and explain why they feel uncertain or uncomfortable or why their life is not how they imagine it. The pathological imposter syndrome does that, the wishy-washy, normal, everyday imposter phenomenon does not.

So the public took Clance and Imes’s idea, and they made it their own. Imposter syndrome.

But my real point for you is not the word choice of phenomenon vs syndrome. Sure, it is important, but it’s also the only part that Clance and Imes didn’t get right in their original paper, at least from a persuasion perspective.

My point for you is that difference between concrete vs. wishy washy, unique vs. everyday, pathological vs. normal, all of which Clance and Imes, whether they wanted to or not, definitely did get right in their paper.

People are looking for answers. They want to know to why their life is the way it is, and now the way they want it to be.

If, like Clance and Imes, you give people a satisfying answer to that eternal question, it can literally make you a star in your field, and can have your ideas spread on their own, like fire among dry brush that hasn’t seen water for years.

Maybe this entire email speaks little or not at all to you.

In that case, my diagnosis is that you’re being too nice, and you’re trying to normalize your prospects’ experiences, to give them small incremental improvements and understandings, rather than a total change in perspective in how they view their world.

My prognosis in that case is that you will struggle to be heard, and struggle to make sales. It could even be fatal to your business.

If you want a fix for that unfortunate and dangerous condition, then there’s a pill you can take. I even named it for you above.

But enough of playing doctor.

Back in my own house, the fact remains that I’m still in the process of spring cleaning. I’m throwing out old furniture and old courses, dusting off wardrobes and sales letters, and planning out how to redecorate my living room and my newsletter.

While that’s going on, I will just point you to my only book that’s currently available for sale, and also the only offer I have that doesn’t cost $100 or more. If you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Flash roll: The following presentation has been paid for by Desert Kite Enterprises

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I’ve been on a hiatus from the usual marketing mailing lists over the past few weeks, so it took me a while to find out that Joe Sugarman died recently.

I’ve written a lot about Joe and his ideas in this newsletter.

In part, that’s because Joe’s Adweek book was the first book on copywriting I ever read. It gave me a lot of ideas to get started in this field, and to a good extent influenced my writing style.

But also, I’ve written a lot about Joe just because he was such a successful direct marketer, who was willing to publicly share the many million-dollar insights he had over his long career.

I found out Joe had died from Brian Kurtz’s email last Sunday. Brian also sent out a link to the infomercial for Joe’s BluBlockers — which became Joe’s biggest success, bringing in over $300 mil.

I actually bought a couple pair of BluBlockers a few years ago. So I was happy to finally see the full infomercial. In a nut, the entire 28 minutes is just a frame around a bunch of on-street testimonials that Joe collected for BluBlockers.

But ok.

Maybe you’re starting to wonder if this email will have any kind of marketing lesson, or if I will just reminisce about Joe Sugarman.

I do got a lesson for you.

​​Take a look at the following bit of sales patter delivered by Joe in the infomercial. It comes after some testimonials by people who say that BluBlockers allow them to see as well as they do with prescription sunglasses.

“I know BluBlockers aren’t prescription sunglasses,” the host babe asks Joe, “but why do so many people think that they are?”

Joe responds:

“BluBlockers block 100% of blue light. Not only the ultraviolet light but the blue light as well. Blue light does not focus very clearly on the retina. And the retina is the focusing screen of the eye. Now all the other colors focus fairly close to the retina. But not blue light. So if you block blue light, what you see is a lot clearer, and a lot sharper.”

If you have read Oren Klaff’s book Flip the Script, you might recognize this as a flash roll. It’s basically a rapidfire display of technical language used to wow — or hypnotize — the prospect into thinking you’re legit.

(To make it clearer: the original flash roll was a term used by undercover cops. They flashed a roll of cash to a drug dealer to show they meant business.)

For over two years, I’ve been collecting ideas related to the use of insight in marketing. That’s when you say, “Ahaaa… it makes so much sense now!” And in that way, you become open to influence.

Several people have suggested to me to include Klaff’s flash roll idea. I resisted.

After all, what is there to intuitively make sense of in Joe’s argument above? He’s just throwing some technical facts at you. They could be completely made up. You have no way to actually experience or validate those facts for yourself.

But it doesn’t matter.

The people who told me the flash roll creates a feeling of insight were right. I was wrong.

That same feeling of deep understanding — which is usually triggered when you experience or understand something for yourself — well, it can be triggered, on a slightly smaller scale, just by an adequate display of authority.

“So you’re telling me to include more authority in my sales copy?” you ask. “That doesn’t sound very insightful.”

What I’m actually telling you is that there are better ways of creating insight. But if you got nothing else, then some technical jargon, or perhaps a scientific study, can be good enough to get people to say, “Ooh… I get it now!” Even though they really don’t.

As for those more powerful ways of creating insight, I’ll write about that one day, in that book I’ve been promising for a long time.

For now, I’d like to tell you about an interesting article. It’s titled “Beware What Sounds Insightful.”

This article points out the unobvious truth that there are mechanisms of creating the feeling of insight… and that they can dress up otherwise mundane or even ridiculous ideas as something profound. It even gives you some more examples of flash rolls, by some of the most insightful writers out there on the Internet. In case you’re interested:

https://commoncog.com/blog/beware-what-sounds-insightful/

How to be seen as a more credible source of solutions and advice

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Today, YouTube served me with up a recent interview that PBS did with Garry Kasparov.

Kasparov was World Chess Champion for 20 years and then an opposition leader in Russia.

“Unfortunately,” the interviewer said in his opening move to Kasparov, “you turned out to be right. Back in 2015, you wrote a book called ‘Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped.'”

The interviewer took a breath after reading out that title. He went on:

“Now that we see what he’s doing, what should our response be?”

Given Kasparov’s book, this might seem like a reasonable question to ask.

And that’s just the point I want to make to you today. There’s something important hiding inside that question.

In the words of Mark Ford and John Forde from Great Leads… the fact that you understand what’s wrong can help make you seem like a more credible source for solutions, too.

The fact is, just because Kasparov wrote a book critical of Putin gives him no special insight on how to stop the raging war in Ukraine. The two are about as related as knowing that “heavy turbulence makes for unpleasant flights” and knowing how to land a jumbo jet.

And yet, it doesn’t matter. The human instinct to jump from one to the other. Because when we’ve got trouble, it’s natural to look outside ourselves for the solution. And at those times, we are willing to accept a lot of things as qualifications and authority.

The takeaway for you is clear:

Don’t build a better mousetrap.

Instead, write a book. Educate your prospect about the dangerous breeding habits and expansionary intent of the eastern harvest mouse. “The eastern harvest mouse is coming,” your book should say. “And it must be stopped.”

Ok, let’s get to the business end of this post:

If you want more advice on building credibility with your audience, you might get value from my email newsletter. That’s where I regularly write about reasons that credibility fails. You can sign up for it here.

Deeply and irrevocably intimate

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Be warned:

Today’s email is long and intimate. I saw no other way to make the point I wanted to make.

But if you stick with me, I hope to make it worth your while with a deep truth about persuasion and belief.

So if you’re still here, let me tell you a personal story, which I’ve only told a few people:

One evening when I was 15 years old, I was sitting at the dinner table. And then things started to go wrong.

My mom was sitting across from me at the same table. She was speaking — I could see that and I could hear the sounds. But I could no longer understand a word she was saying.

She must have realized something was wrong with me. She stood up.

But before she could walk over to my side of the table, a buzzing built up in my ears, and then the world went black. I keeled over and fell to the floor.

Turns out, I’d had a grand mal seizure. Basically, an electrical storm built up in my brain, and all my neurons started firing at once.

My mom called 911 and I wound up at the hospital. Over the next few days, I stayed in the hospital and had a few more seizures. Eventually, they put me on some meds and sent me home.

“We’ll keep an eye on it,” the neurologist said a few days later. “But it’s nothing to worry about. These kinds of seizures are frequent in adolescents, and they usually go away on their own.”

And that’s how it was for me. I was on that anti-seizure medication for a couple years. Eventually I got off it.

And it was all fine, just like the neurologist said. During my medicated time and ever since, I never had any more seizure episodes. I was sure of that (a bit of foreshadowing there).

Fast-forward to age 20. I was attending college in beautiful Santa Cruz, California.

The campus is on top of a hill in the middle of a redwood forest. So while walking between class and dorm, you go among these monumental, swaying, 300-foot-tall coastal redwoods.

And because there are natural gullies and canyons in the Santa Cruz hills, you also get to walk across wooden Ewok bridges that make you feel like you’re flying 80 feet up in the air.

It was summertime and the campus was empty. I was walking on the path through the redwoods and there was no one else around.

I reached one of the Ewok bridges. And as soon as I stepped onto the first plank, it washed over me:

A 100% real, eyes-wide-open, religious epiphany.

I am not joking or making this up. It was hard to describe it then, and it’s even harder now, years later. But the essence of it was an absolute certainty — coupled with a vision — of the oneness and total rightness of everything in the universe.

Like I said, the epiphany came on suddenly. It faded gradually, over the course of what I guess was about a minute. The whole time, I didn’t stop walking, though I probably slowed down a bit in wonder of it all.

So what happened to me that day? Who the hell knows.

Had I been brought up in a religious environment, I might have interpreted it as a revelation from God.

But I wasn’t brought up like that. So I filed this epiphany away as a mysterious one-time experience.

I still think of it often but I almost never talk about it. In fact, until today, I only told two people about it.

And this brings us to last night.

Last night, I was reading a book about the human brain and all the unusual things that can happen to it. Such as, for example, focal seizures — seizures that don’t engulf the whole brain.

Some of these seizures happen in the temporal lobe, the part of the brain that’s in charge of emotion.

These temporal lobe seizures don’t cause fits or fainting. But they can cause “deeply moving spiritual experiences, including a feeling of divine presence and the sense of direct communion with God.”

“Hmm,” I said to myself, as a buzzing started to build in my ears. The book went on:

“The seizures — and visitations — last usually only for a few seconds each time. But these brief temporal lobe storms can sometimes permanently alter the patient’s personality so that even between seizures he is different from other people. This process, called kindling, might permanently alter — and sometimes enrich — the patient’s inner emotional life.”

“Well that sounds nice,” I said, “but it definitely doesn’t apply to me.” Still I kept reading:

“Patients see cosmic significance in trivial events. It is claimed that they tend to be humorless, full of self-importance, and to maintain elaborate diaries that record quotidian events in elaborate detail — a trait called hypergraphia.”

At this point, I almost fell out of my chair. Instead, I just laughed in my usual humorless way. “Haha! And all this time, I thought I was just writing long-winded daily emails about persuasion!”

But I shouldn’t try to joke, because I was dead serious about this. This book was describing me. It listed other common traits of this “temporal lobe personality”:

“Argumentative, pedantic, egocentric, and obsessively preoccupied with philosophical and theological issues.”

Confession time — I don’t know how well I manage to hide it in these daily emails… but these traits all fit me to a tittle. As just one example:

The reason I was reading this brain book in the first place is because it’s part of my big and so-far secret research project. That project has been mushrooming on my computer desktop for years — in a folder labeled, “RELIGION.”

But I feel I’ve forced you to read my elaborate diary for long enough. So let me bring this around to persuasion and make it useful for you.

I don’t know for sure whether I really had a seizure that day in Santa Cruz. I certainly don’t know whether I have “temporal lobe personality” or really, whether such a thing even exists (neurologists are not in agreement).

But last night, as I read the book that seemed to describe me to exactly, I felt both enlightened and depressed.

Enlightened… because these few paragraphs made a jumble of moments, behaviors, and tendencies in my life snap together into a single, easy-to-understand, unitary diagnosis.

But it also made me depressed… because who wants to be diagnosed as a self-absorbed, argumentative blowhard?

In other words, had somebody offered me a magic pill… and promised to rid me of my “temporal lobe personality” and the “rich inner emotional life” it’s supposed to bring… well, I would have paid good money for that pill.

(The fact is, such a magic pill does exist. It’s cheap and it’s usually sold in liquid form. It’s called alcohol.)

Anyways, that’s the truth about marketing I promised you at the start. If it’s not clear, let me evangelize:

You might not be able to trigger a seizure in your prospect’s brain. But you can get your prospect on the path to an epiphany.

And all it really takes is a disease name (“temporal lobe personality”)… a bagful of symptoms (hypergraphia, humorlessness, interest in religion)… and, optionally, an etiology (seizures in the limbic system).

Perhaps you get what I’m saying. But perhaps you want more explanation of how to use this to make sales.

In that case, you might like to know I’m working on a book about it. Predictably, the title of it is The Gospel of Insight Marketing.

But that’s all in the future. My plan is to get that book out in March.

For now, the only offer I have for you is the much less religious, potentially much more useful Niche Expert Cold Email training.

I’m been harping on about this for a few days. But in case you managed to ignore me until now, here’s where you can enlightened on the details of this free offer:

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

INSIGHT

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“Will you accept this opportunity to learn at my expense absolutely, how to be rid forever of all forms of stomach trouble — to be rid not only of the trouble, but of the very cause which produced it? Write today.”

Or rather, read today. Read the rest of this post. And then maybe do what I say at the end, which will take you at my expense absolutely to the ad which I quoted above.

The headline for the ad was INDIGESTION. The offer was a patent medicine called Dr. Shoop’s Restorative.

The copywriter may or may not have been Claude Hopkins, author of Scientific Advertising. He cut his teeth writing for Dr. Shoop’s. Right around the time this ad came out.

Or maybe the copywriter was John E. Kennedy, author of Reason Why Advertising, and inventor of the concept of “Salesmanship in print.” Kennedy also wrote copy for Dr Shoop’s.

Whatever the case is, this ad shows you the future.

Yes, it was written more than 100 years ago, and it ran all over the country starting in 1905.

But trust me, it shows the future.

I’m writing a book right now on insight marketing. This is a new concept that only a few smart marketers, like Stefan Georgi… and Travis Sago… and Rich Schefren are using consciously right now.

​​But if you look at this ancient patent medicine ad… it’s like an insight fossil. It shows you the moment where the insight fish crawled out of the sea of promises and onto dry land — and even grew some legs to start walking.

I resisted sharing this ad with anybody for a long time. But I guess the time has come.

​​So if you can read between the lines, and you want to see the future of direct response advertising, then sign up to my email newsletter. That’s my condition for sharing this ad with anybody. And once you’re signed up, reply to my welcome email and ask for the insight fossil ad. I’ll send you the link.

Free business idea: 9 Chambers of Pain

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Here’s a free business idea for you to run with, if you so choose:

Just a little over a week ago, a new study was published by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh.

They studied over 21,000 patients who came for treatment at pain management clinics around Pittsburgh.

The scientists measured these poor people… probed them… interrogated them… and then fed all this data into a large tube-based computer.

And then they waited.

36 days later, the computer printed out a result:

There are exactly 9 types of chronic pain.

Such as group F (lower back pain radiating below the knee)… and group D (upper and lower back pain).

Each group varied in the location of pain… the severity of pain… as well as in the severity of other problems that went with the pain, like depression and anxiety.

So here’s my business idea for you:

You create a quiz. “Which unique type explains your chronic pain?”

People go through the quiz. You categorize them into one of 9 groups, based on their physical and emotional symptoms. For extra points, you can give it a Wu Tang flavor, and call it the 9 Chambers of Pain.

And then what?

Then you sell them something that helps them. It can be your own offer or an affiliate offer. For example:

Any kind of anti-inflammation supplement…

Or a course on meditation techniques…

Or a visit to a chiropractic clinic or some kind of other physical restructuring.

And here’s the incredible thing:

You can sell the same thing to all 9 groups. Of course, you say something like,

“Based on your unique scientifically-proven pain type… we recommend a free + shipping bottle of our doctor-formulated turmeric dust.”

As I’ve written before, this quiz => same offer funnel works like magic.

Because people like to feel unique… because they want a new understanding of their chronic problem… and because they aren’t very skeptical or critical when they get this new understanding.

Which is why RealDose Nutrition, the first big-name direct response company I ever worked with, built an 8-figure business in record time on the back of exactly the model I’ve just described to you.

And now, if you like, you can start doing the same. You already have the entire marketing concept. All you need is to decide which helpful product you want to sell… and to be quick, so other people don’t swipe this idea from right in front of your nose.

To end:

If you’d like more Wu Tang-flavored business idea, you best protect ya neck and sign up to my email newsletter here.

Harmful coping behaviors for smart people

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Bear with me for just a moment while I try to write a bit of empathy copy. In fact, bear with me for just four personal and probing questions:

1. Do you often cover up what you really think and feel, and instead hde behind the ideas of people who are your superiors, or who have more authority than you do?

2. Do you regularly put in extra work on projects you care about, fiddling and futzing forever because you’re afraid to have a single mistake present when the work is delivered or made public?

3. Do you sometimes rely on charm and social sensitivity, listening with attention to important people… or feigning interest in their ideas and their lives… so you can win their approval?

(… and when that approval comes, do you find that it’s hollow? Either because you used charm and guile, rather than relying on your true self… or because people who are really worth a damn don’t have to seek others’ approval to begin with?)

And one final question:

4. Do you have some negative beliefs about the high cost of success? And do you find that that high cost of success is ultimately ok… because you yourself are NOT successful, not really, even in spite of what others might think of you?

If you answered yes to one of these questions… and in particular, if you answered yes to more than one of these questions… then I would like to offer you a diagnosis:

Imposter syndrome.

Because the four questions above describe coping behaviors I dug up in the original science paper that described imposter syndrome. Clance and Imes, 1978.

And here’s something else I got from that paper:

People who come down with a bad case of imposter syndrome tend to fall into two groups:

Group A, the sensitive group. These are people who had a sibling that the parents praised for being smart… while they themselves were praised for being sensitive or socially adept.

Group B, the smart group. People in this group heard from their parents that they can achieve anything they want in life… and that they can achieve it with ease and without effort.

“All right,” I hear you saying, “so what’s with the psychology lesson?””

For one, it’s because Google says there’s been explosion in interest in imposter syndrome. Almost exponential since 2000.

Which makes it possible that you suffer from imposter syndrome yourself. And maybe by reading what I’ve just written, you can understand what’s really going on in your head and in your life.

But this is also a newsletter abut cold-blooded persuasion and marketing. So let me tie it up:

It’s powerful to have your prospects believe that bad things in their life are not their fault. That’s why most every sales letter these days jams that phrase somewhere around the middle. “I’m here to tell you… it’s not your fault.”

But as marketer Rich Schefren says, that’s weak on its best day.

Because if the prospect is not to blame, then who is? Most marketers have no answer to that, or they have an unconvincing answer only.

But I just gave you one option, which is other people in your prospect’s environment or past. Parents, for example. But you probably knew that already.

So I gave you another option, too. I won’t spell it out, but you can find it in this post. And with almost no effort. Because I know you’re smart like that.

And whether you smart or merely very sensitive, I think the cure for imposter syndrome is simple. I reveal it in the pages of my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

The power of the fake diagnosis

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“Please spit in the cup,” the nurse said. “And now we take the test strip and wait a few seconds. Oh… you see how the color changed? I’m afraid that means you’re positive for TAA deficiency.”

Back in 1988, a bunch of undergrads at Williams College got tested for Thioamine Acetylase (TAA) deficiency.

TAA is a pancreatic enzyme, the undergrads were told. People who don’t have enough of it can experience mild but irritating pancreatic disorders.

Turns out TAA doesn’t really exist. The point of the charade was to see how the undergrads would react to the fake diagnosis. Because next they were given a questionnaire.

The questionnaire had a list of common symptoms of TAA deficiency (“headache, diarrhea, backache, …”).

It also had a list of common risk factors contributing to TAA deficiency (“taking aspirin or Tylenol, getting less than seven hours of sleep, skipping a meal, …”).

Perhaps you can see where this is going:

The deficiency group of students noticed 50% more symptoms in their life… and 20% more risk factors … than the control group did. (The control was people who didn’t have the test strip change color.)

But as I said, in reality, both groups had the same levels of TAA coursing through their bodies — zero.

The authors of this study call this “confirmatory search.”

It’s the underlying mechanism by which our brains get infected by medical student syndrome… personality tests… and horoscopes.

We look for proof, we ignore disproof.

My point is there is power inside these made-up diseases, syndromes, and categories. Even when they don’t explain anything. And even when people who get a diagnosis are not given any way out.

So imagine what would happen if you actually diagnose a real and troubling condition for people… point out the symptoms and risk factors so they can convince themselves… and then give them a solution that can fix it.

It might make you immune to empty lobby syndrome… for the rest of your life.

If that’s something you currently suffer from, and if you experience the anxiety and lack of cash flow it brings, I have a solution for you. It’s the ideas and suggestions I share inside my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

Why you’re not getting anything done

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“What do you want me to say?” I snapped.

My mom gave me a call yesterday. “What’s your plan for today?” she asked.

“I’m trying to work,” I said, “but I’m not being very productive.”

That was a mistake. Because it was really an invitation for my mom to ask me the worst possible question:

“Why do you think that is?”

I’ve written before about Tony Robbins. I’ve learned a lot from the guy. Perhaps the most valuable thing was the power of asking the right questions.

It really works.

By asking myself the right questions, I’ve made my way out of seemingly impossible situations, by doing less and by having more fun than I would ever have believed possible.

And vice versa.

By asking the wrong questions, I just agitate and muddle the mess I am already in. It starts to feel hopeless.

“Why do I think I’m not being productive? Let’s see… because I’m lazy? Because I’m frustrated with the project I’m working on? Because I feel the deadline looming… because I worry that I will miss it… and because I’m not strong enough to control my own brain, so this is turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy? What do you want me to say?”

Well. I didn’t say most of that stuff. But I was thinking it, while biting my lip. So I told my mom I would talk to her later, and I got back to staring at my half-complete, frustrating project, head in hands, wondering where it all went wrong.

Because asking WHY primes your brain to focus on failure and shortcomings. And while that might sound smart, it’s actually a bad way to spend your energy, and unlikely to do anything to move you forward. So don’t do it if you’re trying to be productive.

BUT!

Focusing on WHY is a great thing to get your prospect to do. Particularly if you have a new answer to that question.

As I’ve written before, a new answer to “WHY do I always fail” can allow you to “get one up” on jaded, hostile prospects who think they are too smart to fall for your marketing. And if you do it right, you can even become a star in your niche.

I won’t lay out the whole case for you here. That’s because I’ve written about this topic in detail already. You can find it as Commandment VII of my short book, The 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters. In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Guilt deflection

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Here’s a powerful persuasion tactic for your copy and private life. Let me illustrate it with a dramatic scene from the Seven Samurai, in which the samurai find the farmers’ hidden stash of armor and weapons.

A bit of background in case you haven’t seen the movie:

A poor village is being strangled by marauding thieves. So the farmers hire seven samurai for defense. The samurai aren’t getting paid much, but they agree because of the honor of defending the poor helpless village.

And then they find the hidden stash of armor and weapons.

How did the farmers get it? There’s only one way. They must have killed and robbed to get it. And they killed and robbed retreating samurai.

Six of the seven samurai are disappointed and angry. Then the seventh samurai, Kikuchiyo, played by Toshiro Mifune, starts to fume.

“Well, what do you think farmers are? Saints?”

Nooo, he explains. Farmers are cowards who lie, cheat, pretend to be oppressed… and yet they have hidden stores of food where you will never find them.

“They are the most cunning and untrustworthy animals on Earth,” Kikuchiyo says.

And then, he suddenly stops.

“But who made animals out of them? You!”

The other samurai are stunned. How are we to blame, they seem to say.

“Each time you fight,” Kikuchiyo explains, “you burn their villages, you destroy their fields, you take away their food, you rape the women and enslave the men. And you kill them when they resist.”

And then Kikuchiyo falls to his knees and starts to sob. It turns out he is not really all that samurai… he also comes from a farmer family.

Anyways, the point is that in the movie, this works. The samurai accept the farmers for what they are, and they stick around to defend the village.

I call this guilt deflection. It’s a powerful technique to use in your copy.

Because where there’s trouble, there’s guilt being assigned. As I’ve written before, in the copywriting space, that guilt is often directed inwards.

People feel there’s something wrong with them… that they are the ones to blame for their ongoing unsolved problems.

You can’t just skip over that. If you do… if you jump straight into your promise and how great it will be to finally get there… you will just make your prospect disappointed and maybe angry.

So here’s what to do instead.

Yell at your prospect. “Yes, it’s true! You are the most cunning and untrustworthy animal on Earth. But who made you that way?”

And then deflect your prospect’s guilt. Give him an explanation that shifts that guilt somewhere outside him. To other people… to institutions… to ways of doing business.

And like I said, this can work in your private life, too. I learned this from a friend who told me the best way to deal with a woman’s accusation is to accuse her of something in turn. I tried it and… well, I guess that’s a story for another time.