Reframing

Climate change is bullshit

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If you identify as right-leaning, at least in the American sense, then there’s a good chance you already suspect climate change is bullshit.

In that case, I’m not telling you anything new.

On the other hand, if you identify as left-leaning, at least in the American sense, then you should know that “climate change” is in fact bullshit.

The term was a kind of red herring proposed back in 2002 by a Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, in a memo to the administration of President George W. Bush. Luntz wrote:

“‘Climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming.’ As one focus group participant noted, climate change ‘sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.’ While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.”

Luntz later distanced himself from this memo and the effects it may have had. But it was too little, too late.

The Bush administration had already taken up the fight for “climate change” at the expense of “global warming.”

​​Over the course of 2023, they started seeing results.

​​Climate change gradually became the standard way to talk about the environment — not just in Bush administration press releases, but among news media, left-leaning politicians, and ultimately the general population.

It’s now 20+ years later.

​​Yesterday was Earth Day.

Mainstream media like the BBC and CNN wrote about the occasion.

So did left-leaning media like NPR and the New York Times.

They all bewailed the fact that not enough is being done. And they all used the term “climate change.”

I have no interest in trying to change your mind one way or another about the environment. I identify as neither right- nor left-leaning, but upright, like a refrigerator.

​​My point is simply to talk about the persuasion aspect of all this, and to highlight what it means for you.
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Because you might think the lesson here is to simply come up with a sneaky new phrase like “climate change” and snap your finger to make your customers, constituents, or even competitors play the game you want them to play.

Not at all. Here’s a story from George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics and a kind of Democrat version of Frank Luntz. Lakoff wrote:

“I was once asked if I could reframe — that is, provide a winning slogan for — a global warming bill “by next Tuesday.” I laughed. Effective reframing is the changing of millions of brains to be prepared to recognize a reality. That preparation hadn’t been done.”

It’s possible to reframe the minds of thousands of your customers and even your competitors so they play your game… use your preferred language… and fume against you in a way that only serves you and reinforces what you want.

But it takes some preparation to do that.

There are lots of ways to do that preparation. I’m sure many of them are fine. But my preferred one is simple daily emails like the one you’re reading now.

If you haven’t tried writing daily emails yet, I can recommend it.

​​If you have tried writing daily emails, I can recommend keeping it up.

And if you want some guidance on how to keep it up, and what to put in your emails so you prepare all those minds to recognize a new reality, here’s my “intro to daily emailing” course:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

When orcs were real

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Three years ago, I read a viral, trending article titled, “When Orcs Were Real.” And three years in, I’m still thinking about it.

The article starts like this:

All cultures have stories of creatures that are like humans but more beastly, frightening, strong, and cruel than us, and that live by night instead of day.

Gotta scare the kids with something, right?

The question is why this story in particular is scary.

According to the argument in that article, it’s because this story taps into some kind of genetic memory in us.

There was a time, says the article, when orcs were real.

The orcs were bigger than us. Stronger than us. More brutish than us. They were the night to our day.

We, the race of men, were at war with the orc.

For a long time, the orcs’ strength and size meant they were winning. In fact, the orcs came to a rusty scimitar’s distance of wiping out mankind.

But for reasons we can only guess at today, the tide shifted. Men started to win the battles with the orcs. And then we won the war and wiped them entirely, to the point where now they only exist in our nightmares and on our Netflix viewing history.

Now here’s the kicker. This isn’t just some kind of evolutionary psychology handwaving to explain scary bedtime stories.

The orcs were real, and this is backed by the latest archeology and genetics research.

There was in fact an orc race that lived in the shadows, alongside men, for tens of thousands of years.

From what we know of them by their remains, they were like us but bigger. According to their skeletons, they were packed with muscle, and were several times stronger than the strongest of us.

Based on the shapes of their throats and mouths, it seems they couldn’t speak the way we can, but they could communicate in grunts and snorts.

They had a snout-like nose, large teeth, powerful jaws. Going by the size of their eye sockets, they had enormous eyes, meaning they lived by night. Most probably, they were covered in thick fur.

From their dwelling places, we know these orcs were experts in the use of short- and long-range weapons. They fed mostly on raw meat. They were deadly even to the most deadly animals — mammoths, wolves, cave lions.

They were also cannibals. And along with eating their own filthy kind, they hunted and ate men.

Who were these monsters? Today, we know them as the Neanderthals.

When I read that article and I got to the part about the Neanderthals, I said, “Whoa! Never knew that! Or never thought about it that way!”

The little that I knew about Neanderthals before, and what I learned about them through this article, suddenly snapped together into a new consistent picture, which fit what I had experienced first hand — which was about 10 hours of Lord of the Rings movies and a few months’ of reading Tolkien books when I was a teenager.

“So that’s why it’s so intriguing and dramatic,” I thought to myself.

When Orcs Were Real is an example of what I call insightful writing.

​​The article produced that feeling of insight in me — and not only me. That’s why the article went viral online, getting hundreds of likes, reshares, comments, and even YouTube videos being made after it.

I had this article in mind when gave the Age of Insight presentation a little over a year ago.

In fact, call 2 of that training (there were three calls in total) was all about the how-to of writing for insight using the underlying technique that’s there in the Orcs Were Real article.

That technique is the same technique that you can find in the “American Parasite” video sales letter by Craig Clemens, which went so viral that Joe Rogan tweeted it, not realizing he’s pushing a 40-minute ad to his audience.

The same technique is also there in the End of America VSL, which brought in something like 500,000 new premium subscribers and doubled Stansberry Research’s revenue.

But let’s talk turkey.

Until tomorrow, specifically until Monday, March 4, 2024, at 12 midnight PST, I’m promoting Kieran Drew’s High Impact Writing.

​​High Impact Writing shows you how to write on LinkedIn in and Twitter to build an audience and grow your business.

As a free bonus to High Impact Writing, I’m also offering the recordings of Age of Insight.

​​Age of Insight shows you how to have something insightful-sounding to say when you do get on Twitter or LinkedIn.

High Impact Writing sells for $297 until tomorrow night. Age of Insight sold for $297 the one and only time I offered it before.

So you buy one, you get one free. But more importantly, with these two trainings together, you get influence skills and techniques that can change the trajectory of your life and your business for life.

For the full info on High Impact Writing:

https://bejakovic.com/hiw

How the mosquito built Rome

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In my email yesterday, I wrote about my home town’s curious plan to stop the coming mosquito hordes by importing a hundred thousand sterile mosquito males. To which I got a mosquito-themed reply from an Insights & More member named Jordan (not sure he wants me to share his last name):

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The talk about mosquitoes and books reminds me of the… mosquito book.

The Mosquito – Timothy Winegard

It’s actually very very interesting and showcases:

How the mosquito Built Rome
How the mosquito bested one of the greatest conquerors
How the mosquito ended slavery

(hows that for bullet point build out)

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I found this intriguing so I looked it up and yes — it turns out there’s a credible case to be made for the mosquito having built Rome.

​​In its early days, Rome was surrounded by hundreds of square miles of wetland, called the Pontine Marshes. Perfect for mosquitos. Perfect for malaria. Perfect for dying. Says Winegard:

“Armies coming to attack Rome — beginning with Hannibal and the Carthaginians, and then the Visigoths, Attila and his Huns, and the Vandals — couldn’t essentially either take or hold Rome because of this malarial shield.”

Based on a quick search, it seems Winegard’s Mosquito book gives you:

1. Lots of surprising or even contrary ideas like the one above

2. A credible, well-researched reinterpretation of history

3. A new context for familiar things

… all of which means it might make a perfect choice for the Insights & More Book Club in the future.

Speaking of, the same Jordan who wrote me about the Mosquito book earlier wrote me about the last Insights & More book, the one we just finished. He said:

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The book was mind blowing (even thought I havent finished it yet)

Can’t wait for my first call experience and the next book

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It’s unfortunately too late to join for the next round of the Insights & More Book Club, because the doors have closed. But if you’d like to have the chance to join in the future, get on my email list. It’s the only place where I actually advertise and open up my book club.

Joy instead of failure, hope instead of humiliation

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For the past 14 months, ever since December 2021, I have been patiently going through Parallel Lives. That’s a heavy, dusty, four-volume e-book, equivalent to some 1,900 print pages, of biographies of famous Romans and Greeks.

I’ve been patiently going through Parallel Lives so I can bring you insights that have stood the test of time.

Take Lycurgus, the legendary lawgiver of Sparta. He did such a good job training his populace that they became bees, ready to sacrifice themselves fully for the collective good of the hive. And not only physically, by sacrificing their bodies.

Lycurgus got the Spartans to gladly sacrifice their honor and burn their egos, while being told to sit down and shut up.

Example: A noble Spartan named Paidaretus was rejected when he tried to join the Three Hundred, the Spartan royal guard of honour.

Paidaretus went away rejoicing. “Wow!” he said. “I am a good man, and yet the city has 300 men better than myself. What good fortune!”

You might say this anecdote shows the power of identity. It does that, but it shows something else also.

It also shows the power of a change of perspective.

Paidaretus did not just sacrifice his ego and his honor to the welfare of his city. He did not just do it willingly. He actually felt joy over it.

That’s the power of giving somebody a change of perspective. A different way of looking at the exact same situation. Failure becomes joy, humiliation is transformed into hope.

If you’re wondering where I’m going with this, it’s to sell you something. Well, to give you a new perspective on gladly opening up your wallet.

Six days ago, I got a message from a marketer named Adrian Chann, who had recently bought my Copy Riddles program. Adrian wrote:

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I realized why your emails (and sales pages) are addicting: they are packed with a-ha moments. It’s more entertaining and enriching to read your emails then watching uninspiring Youtube videos marketers who rehash the same advice without any additional insight.

I’m a huge Ben Settle fan and open up nearly every single one of his emails, yet I ended up buying something from you rather than him (not that it is a competition). The a-ha moments you created are what got me to gladly open up my wallet!

===

Maybe you got no a-ha moments from today’s email. Or maybe you did.

In any case, if you’d like to get Copy Riddles yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

My trivial mistake and maybe a profound human insight

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I went for a walk this morning and I passed by a small public park. The gate was closed. On the gate, hand-written in white paint, was a quote in Spanish. It said something about a man sitting in the shade, and it was attributed to actor Warren Beatty.

I’m a big Warren Beatty fan, going back to the movie Shampoo. As soon as I saw this quote, I imagined this handsome, confident, and yet accommodating Hollywood star smiling at me as he said whatever the quote said.

But what did the quote say?

My Spanish is still not so good. I googled “warren beatty tree quote” on my phone, hoping to find the original. Amazingly, the quote popped right up:

“‘Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.’ With this quote, Buffett was speaking to long-term investing…”

That was the original quote all right. But Warren Buffett? Giving a metaphor for investing? I did a double take.

I checked what I had googled. Sure enough, I had searched for “warren buffett tree quote.”

I looked at the handwritten quote on the gate. It too was attributed to Warren Buffett.

And yet, in spite of processing “Warren Buffett” on some level, the conscious part of my brain had confidently seen actor Warren Beatty’s face and heard Warren Beatty’s voice — not Warren Buffett’s.

That might seem like a trivial mistake. But to me it’s not. Consider another anecdote:

A couple years ago, I was driving a car on a mountain road. Turn after turn, all I saw was forest around me.

It got a little monotonous but I kept my eyes on the road and kept focused — the way was windy and narrow.

And then, as I was staring ahead at the next turn, straight into some bushes, in a flash, the bushes metamorphosed and became a deer that was standing in the road.

Of course, I realize the bushes probably didn’t jump into the road and turn into a deer.

What I guess happened is that my brain kept predicting “bushes, trees, turn, trees, bushes, turn…”

But then that monotonous picture became unsustainable, and a more useful picture — there’s a deer in the road — popped into my consciousness.

I’d like to suggest to you this is what the human brain does all the time. It makes up guesses, predictions, images, stories, in line with what we expect and what we hope. But it does something else also.

The brain also gives us an incredibly powerful feeling of certainty that whatever we are seeing right now, right in front of our eyes, is real and right — even when it’s far from what the “reality” is. We just don’t usually see the counter-evidence as clearly as I did today or on that mountain road.

Anyways, these are things I like to think about.

I also like to think about how to play with that feeling of “certainty of rightness” that we all experience at the core of who we are.

And that’s connected in some subtle way to my Most Valuable Email.

Today is the last day I will be promoting that program for a while. That’s not any kind of real deadline, except for the benefits you could be getting if you went through this course today.

Maybe you’ve been interested in Most Valuable Email. Maybe you’ve been telling yourself you want to go through it and apply it. But maybe you’ve been postponing it because you think there’s time and I will keep reminding you day after day.

If so, then your brain might be fooling you with certainty that isn’t very useful.

In case you want to get a jump on your brain while the image of MVE is still in your consciousness, here’s where you can get the Most Voluble Email:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Fear v. glory

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This past weekend I finally broke down and listened to an interview with Dr. Andrew Huberman.

Even though I’ve never listened to Dr. Andrew speak before, I’ve written about him in this newsletter.

That’s because the man is a phenomenon.

He’s been the fastest-rising podcaster of the past year or so. An international celebrity. I’ve heard talk of him from a half dozen entirely unrelated people, living in as many separate countries.

Anyways, among the many novel recommendations Dr. Andrew has for your health, one is:

Several times a day, practice panoramic vision.

Find a place that allows you to look off into the distance, so the immediate details around you melt away.

It’s a physical equivalent of mentally seeing the bigger picture. And like with so many other things, the physical and mental equivalents are linked, or so Dr. Andrew says. According to the research in his lab at Stanford University, “panoramic vision practice” lowers stress hormones yadda yadda.

All right, and now for marketing:

Yesterday, the “Wizard of Ads,” Roy H. Williams (not a doctor), wrote a very interesting email.

Even though I’ve never listened to Roy H. speak before, I’ve written about him in this newsletter.

That’s because the man is a phenomenon.

He’s written several books about advertising that have sold well. He appears to head an international advertising agency. Plus he has a weekly email newsletter.

Anyways, among the many novel recommendations Roy H. has for your marketing, one is:

Reframe pain v. gain as fear v. glory.

People are very reluctant to experience pain, says Roy. But they are only modestly motivated by gain. Pleasure is not much more motivating.

Instead, what you want is for your prospect to look off into the distance, so the immediate details around him melt away.

It’s a mental equivalent of panoramic vision practice. And like so many other things, the physical and mental equivalents are linked, or so Roy H. says. According to the research in his kitchen somewhere in Texas, reframing pain as fear and gain as glory lowers your prospect’s buying resistance yadda yadda.

All right, and now for sales, our last topic for today:

Ever since I started selling my Most Valuable Email training, one of the claims I’ve made is that you can get through this course in an hour and start applying the MVE trick right after.

And it’s true, but it’s also marketing hype. As Spanish A-list copywriter Rafa Casas wrote me:

“Thanks for the course. It’s true that it can be read in an hour, but it needs more resting time and practice to get the full potential out of it. Which is a lot.”

You know, and I know, that if you do go through this training, quick and brief though it is, that’s when the real work starts.

In order to get any real-world benefit out of my Most Valuable Email, you will need to apply the MVE trick yourself dozens or maybe hundreds of times, over the course of months or maybe years.

Maybe that amount of work scares you. Maybe you’re afraid of the commitment, or maybe you’re simply afraid to set your mind to it and then fail.

Those are serious things to worry about. I won’t lie to you and say that they’re not.

On the other hand, imagine the acclaim, praise, and yes, even pride you can win if you do manage to get the full potential out of this course. Imagine:

Readers writing to you regularly to say you’ve blown their minds…

Industry heavy-hitters sending you endorsements and treating you like an equal…

And most important of all, the knowledge inside that you’ve accomplished something in spite of your own fears, that you’ve got a valuable skill that nobody can take away from you, that you can feel good about yourself for doing something that few other people were willing to do.

The choice is yours. If you’re willing to act:

http://bejakovic.com/mve/

The most shocking, daring, even Robin Hood-like exploit ever to happen on board a Boeing 727

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Today is Nov 24, 2022, which marks the 51st anniversary of NORJAK.

NORJAK was the most shocking, daring, even Robin Hood-like exploit ever to happen on board a Boeing 727.

On Nov 24 1971, Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 took off from Portland to Seattle. A short time after takeoff, a passenger calling himself Dan Cooper called over the stewardess and handed her a note.

“I HAVE A BONB,” the note read.

“A bonb sir?” said the stewardess. “What exactly is a ‘bonb’?”

“A bomb,” whispered Cooper, “I have a bomb!” And he opened a bag that was lying on his lap to show a mess of wires, clocks, batteries, and what appeared to be red sticks of dynamite.

To make short tale:

Flight 305 landed in Seattle. Cooper allowed the 36 passengers to get off. But he kept the crew on the plane. ​​He demanded $200k in 20-dollar bills — about $1.2 mil in today’s money — along with four parachutes.

And he got ’em.

Cooper then demanded the plane be refueled, and had it fly for Mexico City, at altitudes of less than 10,000 feet, at speeds of less than 200 knots.

And then, somewhere over Ariel, Washington, Cooper lowered the rear stairs of the Boeing 727.

He took off his tie, put on a pair of wraparound sunglasses, strapped on his parachute — and jumped.

In the weeks and months that followed, the FBI conducted one of the longest and most exhaustive investigations in its history.

Agents interviewed over 800 suspects.

Other agents calculated wind speeds and flight paths and then still other agents combed probably areas for traces of Cooper.

But it all led to absolutely nothing. The hundreds of FBI agents and millions of dollars in government resources couldn’t find a single trace of Cooper.

And that’s how it stood for years — until February 10, 1980.

​​That day, the most unlikely thing happened. A few of Cooper’s 20-dollar bills surfaced, but in a place that nobody had expected.

Let me pause my story here because I really just wanted to set up a question I got.

The question came from a reader named Alex, who signed up for my Age of Insight training.

​​I’ve been following up with everybody who signed up to ask why they signed up and what they are hoping to learn. One of Alex’s wanna-learn topics was:

“How to give readers new insights into what they already know. So, for example, perhaps everyone knows a good subject line needs the curiosity element. But how can I retell this in a way that is different and insightful?”

My email today is one possible answer to Alex’s specific question about curiosity in subject lines.

As for Alex’s more general question — how do you take worn and familiar points, and make them sound insightful and new — well, there is another, very powerful strategy for that. I won’t talk about that today. But maybe I will tomorrow. In any case, if you’d like to read more of what I write, then click here and sign up for my email newsletter.

Contradicting and fulfilling the most effective thing ever found in advertising

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This morning, I woke up to find a bunch of different emails in my inbox from a bunch of different marketers, all on the same topic.

All these people are promoting a run of webinars, which will happen tomorrow, staggered two hours apart, to be given by Rich Schefren.

You might know Rich as “the guru to the gurus” — the guy who coached big-name Internet marketers like Russell Brunson, Ryan Deiss, and Todd Brown.

So now Rich is promoting something, and he has enlisted a bunch of other people to promote him. Which is proof of something written by the “godfather of modern advertising,” Claude Hopkins, some 100 years ago:

“The most effective thing I have ever found in advertising is the trend of the crowd. That is a factor not to be overlooked. People follow styles and preferences. We rarely decide for ourselves, because we don’t know the facts. But when we see the crowds taking any certain direction, we are much inclined to go with them.”

So that’s the harmonious part one. Here’s the clashing part two.

I don’t know what the content of Rich’s webinars tomorrow will be. But I have an idea.

Because speaking a few years back about what really made his messaging and marketing powerful — what made his 40-page reports like the Internet Business Manifesto go viral and bring in millions of dollars of new business — Rich had this to say:

“I really experimented with a lot of different approaches over the years. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best core concept is a paradigm shift on their problem and your solution to their problem.”

Now let’s put our two pieces of music side by side:

Part one is Hopkins saying, 100 years ago, that the “the trend of the crowd” is the most effective thing he has found.

Part two is Rich saying, today, that a “paradigm shift” is the most effective thing he has found.

Those two claims might sound contradictory, and rightly so. After all, if your prospect forms his beliefs based on what others think and do… and if you are giving your prospect a paradigm shift… then you are by definition going against the trend of the crowd.

So maybe it really is a contradiction. Or maybe not.

Maybe, paradigm shifts — insight techniques as I call them — are not here to abolish the old laws of advertising, but to fulfill them. After all, that’s what Rich’s own marketing seems to show.

The fact is, like promises, like social proof, like urgency, creating a “paradigm shift” in your prospect’s mind has been around as long as prospects have been around, or maybe as long as minds have been around.

Giving people a new perspective has always been a powerful way to influence people and move them to action.

​​It’s just that until now, it hasn’t been mandatory. But that’s changing, thanks in part to smart marketers like Rich, who are consciously creating paradigm shifts and aiming to create feeling of insight in their prospects’ minds.

Now here’s a promise for you:

Insight techniques is something I have been thinking and even writing about for a long time. If you’d like to know how you too can consciously create paradigm shifts in your prospect’s mind, then as a first step, join a lot of other smart marketers and entrepreneurs, and sign up to my email newsletter.

Once upon a time

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It was a dark and stormy morning, and the anti-hero of our story, Bond Jebakovic, was sitting in a dimly-lit coffee shop — one of the few dimly-lit coffee shops in this otherwise-sunny Catalan town, for Barcelona is where our story takes place — sipping a latte, his bloodshot eyes glued to the door.

Bond was on a top-secret mission, and he was desperate for intel.

Suddenly, a woman walked in.

​​She was wearing a raincoat and sunglasses, though, as mentioned, it was a dark and stormy morning, and sunglasses were really not required. ​​Maybe it was for effect? Or maybe she had something to hide?

The woman looked around. The coffee shop was empty except for Bond, who was sitting on an uncomfortable bench in the corner.

The stranger walked to the counter and ordered. “Double espresso,” she said, “and one of those little pistachio cookies.”

While the barista busied himself with the order, the woman ambled around the coffee shop. ​​She approached and examined the large monstera plant in the corner. She walked to the large window and looked out to the gray street outside. Finally, she took a few steps towards Bond. ​​Without a sound, she dropped an envelope on the bench next to him.

​​Bond grabbed the envelope. ​On the face of it was a typewrittten title: Monday Morning Memo. Bond tore it open and started to read:

From: Research Dept. Head Roy H. Williams
21 Nov 2022, 7:11AM CET

Bond —

I was most pleased to hear you are still alive. Unfortunately, we can’t allow you any rest. You must deliver the following message immediately to AK. it’s a matter of life and death.

Start of Message:

Most stories should be told as fiction, even when they are true. When confronted with facts we are always on our guard. But the words, “Once Upon a Time” dispel doubt, open the imagination, and create a willing suspension of disbelief.

Case study from Agent William Lederer:

“I was a journalist and none of my books had sold very well, so I showed Jim the manuscript for my newest book. He told me to go back and fictionalize the name of the country, the characters, everything. Jim said to me, ‘The public is more willing to believe fiction than non-fiction.’”

Outcome:

* The resulting book, The Ugly American, stayed on the New York Times list for 78 weeks

* It was directly responsible for the creation of the Peace Corps

* Then-President John F. Kennedy bought a copy of the book for every member of Congress

* Historians speculate The Ugly American did more to change American Foreign Policy than any document since the Declaration of Independence

Bond rushed out of the coffee shop and started running down the street. AK’s apartment was just a block away, but as headquarters wrote, it was a matter of life and death.

Would AK be at home? Would Bond deliver the message in time? And what about those little pistachio cookies — were they any good?

All that, and more, on tomorrow’s installment of Bond Jebakovic Action Adventures. For a free trial subscription to this pulp daily email newsletter, click here and fill out the free trial subscription form.

How a nobody can get on a podcast with an audience of millions

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I care little about the news and even less about crypto. But even I couldn’t escape the news this past week about the fraudulent FTX crypto exchange and its owner Sam Bankman-Fried.

I couldn’t escape the news because of the half dozen people I follow online — in the health, marketing, or being alive niches — all talked about it in some way.

That must mean there are hundreds of thousands of people online right now, analyzing and pontificating their best and hottest takes on FTX and SBF.

So here’s a riddle for you:

Who did James Altucher bring on his podcast yesterday to talk about FTX and fraud?

Who did James Altucher — who has an audience of millions, and who normally interviews “billionaires, best-selling authors, rappers, astronauts, athletes, comedians, actors, and the world champions in every field” — think was interesting and competent enough to comment on the current moment?

It wasn’t a world champion in any field.

It was just some no-name guy. Ok, the guy has a name. It’s Antonio Reza, but that’s not what got him on the podcast.

Reza got on the James Altucher podcast because he wrote a prescient and insightful Twitter thread a few weeks ago.

The thing is, Reza wasn’t writing about FTX and how it was bound to collapse.

Instead, he wrote about Enron, the big corporate fraud from 20 years ago, and how all frauds are really alike in key ways.

So hold on to your stomach, because here’s the recipe for how to get on a podcast with an audience of millions, even when you’re a nobody:

Write something insightful and prescient, connected to the current moment, but also from a different perspective than everybody else has.

I hear you groaning. But wait, I’m just getting started. Since I’m on a roll with giving advice, let me also tell you how you win the lottery:

First, you pick the winning numbers. Then you buy a ticket with those numbers, and then you collect when the numbers are publicly announced. Easy!

And yes. Getting an opportunity to speak in front of an audience of millions, when you yourself are a nobody, even an insightful nobody, is much like winning the lottery.

The thing is, having something insightful to say dramatically improves your chances that somebody somewhere, with an audience bigger than yours, eventually plucks you out of obscurity and says, “Wow! This guy has something really interesting to say. Let me share it with my audience!”

At least that’s how it’s been for me, on multiple occasions, in multiple niches, even when I was a total nobody. I wrote something that sounded insightful, and I got rewarded for it.

There are techniques and writing tricks to doing this. Maybe you can spot them if you read more of my writing. If you’d like to do that, click here and sign up for my daily email newsletter.