Sticky Messages

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

We groaned when she pulled off her boots, but when she propped her feet up on the seat!

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I was on a train a few months ago. A woman sitting across from me was wearing a face mask, even though nobody else on the train was wearing one. Perhaps a sign of things to come?

The woman had wool-lined boots on her feet — way too hot for the warm and sunny afternoon. So as the train rumbled along the Catalan seaside, she pulled off her boots and propped her feet up on the seat opposite, to cool them off.

The other people around her, myself included, started exchanging looks — disgusted, amused, incredulous. And yet the woman kept sitting there, eyes beatifically closed, mask on her face, her sweaty feet drying in the sealed wagon air.

I talked to a budding email copywriter a few days ago. He said he wants to learn storytelling.

I feel there’s been a lot of mystification around that topic. It’s something like the guy who wrote a book all about breathing — you’re not breathing optimally, you need to read this book to find out how to breathe better.

People breathe fine. People tell stories fine. You don’t need a course or even a book on it. You just need to do it.

That said, there is something approaching a “secret” that makes for better stories, particularly in print.

At least that’s how it’s been in my experience. When I first heard this advice, I felt enlightened; I felt the doors of perception opening up. Maybe I’m just very dense because I needed to have this pointed out to me:

I used to think of a story as a timeline, a series of facts that need to be laid out and arranged in some kind of order. Then you pepper in details to make the important parts come alive.

“Once upon a time, I was born, a baby with not very much hair. The date was February 19, 1939. My family stock was originally from England but my ancestors had settled in Gotham City many generations earlier. My father, Thomas Wayne, a kind, gentle, mustachioed man, was a highly respected physician here…”

The secret is that you often don’t need any of this — the timeline, the explanatory facts, the logical order. If anything, they probably make your “story” less effective.

A much better option is to think comic book, to think movie, to think of a story as a series of snapshots. Even one snapshot can be enough — like that thing up top with the woman and her wool-lined boots on the train.

Anyways, that’s really the only big storytelling secret I have to share with you.

Maybe you don’t think it’s much. All I can say is that if you apply consistently, it produces real results.

And this brings me to my current offer, my Horror Advertorial Swipe File. Each of those advertorials starts out with a snapshot — scary, disgusting, outrage-forming.

​​You don’t need this swipe file to learn storytelling. But you might want this swipe file if you have a cold-traffic ecommerce funnel, and you want to squeeze more results from your cold traffic. In case you are interested, you will have to sign up to my list, because this is an offer I am only making to my subscribers. If you’d like to do that, here’s where to go.

How to make your content eternally interesting even if it’s not very “good”

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During my 11 years living in Budapest, Hungary, I walked up and down Nagymező street perhaps a thousand times. Each time, I looked up at the Robert Capa museum and I told myself, “I should really go there.”

As you might know, Robert Capa was one of the most famous and influential photographers of the 20th century. What you might not know is that the man’s real name was Endre Friedmann, and he was Hungarian – hence the museum on Nagymező utca.

I did eventually make it to that museum, and I did eventually find out some curious Robert Capa facts. They might be useful to you if you write or take photos or build elaborate Lego creations.

​​For example:

Capa published his first photo as a freelance journalist in 1932. The photo showed Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky giving a speech in Copenhagen.

The photo is a little blurry and Trotsky’s hand is in front of his face. But there is an undeniable energy in the shot — you can almost hear the dogmatic and impassioned Marxist on stage.

Capa really made his name a few years later, in 1936. His photograph of a loyalist soldier during the Spanish civil war, falling after being shot, has become one of the most famous photos of the 20th century.

During World War II, Capa took pictures of the Allied landing in Normandy, and he took photos of the liberation of Paris.

After WWII, Capa hung out with and photographed famous and celebrated artists — Henri Matisse, John Steinbeck, Alfred Hitchcock.

There’s a photo from the summer of 1948 that Capa took, which shows an old man grinning as he holds a baby on the beach. It could be any old photo of any old grandpa with his grandson — except that old man is Pablo Picasso, and the grandson is actually Picasso’s son, Claude.

The point is this:

Capa made a point of going to out-of-the-way places, meeting important and influential people, being at the right spot at the right moment. Many of his photographs are not technically great or even very good. But they are inherently interesting — even today, almost a hundred years later — because of their content.

The past few days I’ve been promoting my Insight Exposed training. That training talks about the tools to capture snapshots, and the process for developing those snapshots into something valuable.

But what’s the content of those snapshots? If the content is plain, familiar, or uninteresting in itself, you will have to work hard to turn those snapshots into something interesting and insightful.

On the other hand, if you make a point of going to out-of-the-way places, meeting important and influential people, being at the right spot at the right moment, you won’t have to be technically great or even very good. Your work will be inherently interesting because of the content. So I talk all about that in the final section of Insight Exposed.

Insight Exposed is an offer I am only making available for people who are signed up to my email list. If you’d like to get Insight Exposed or you’d like to get on my email list, then click here and fill out the form that appears.

I have not been paid to stuff this email full of “hyper”

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Disclaimer:

I did not receive an email last night around half past 10 from CIA special agent Dallin Carr. I have in fact never been in contact with special agent Carr or anybody else from the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. Furthermore, I have no plans to start writing a daily email newsletter on behalf of the CIA, either to be sent internally to CIA employees, or covertly, on behalf of the CIA but under my own name, to any hyper-sophisticated audience around the world.

And now on to business:

I am a big fan of the Brain Software podcast. In fact, it’s one of only two podcasts I listen to.

Brain Software is put out by hypnotists Mike Mandel and Chris Thompson. I listen to Mike and Chris because the topics they cover are often interesting to me personally and useful for the business of persuasion, manipulation, and influence.

But really, really, do I keep listening because Mike and Chris share interesting and useful content?

No. I keep listening because the two of them are fun, in fact hyper-fun, to listen to.

And because I like to kill fun, I decided a while ago to reverse-engineer what exactly it is that Mike and Chris are doing.

One thing I discovered is that they repeatedly use hyper-specific, absurd denials. They often open with a sequence of them, and they also pepper them in throughout their podcast episodes.

So if you too are looking to make your content more fun, add in some hyper-specific denials.

And no, special agent Carr did not tell me to tell you that, nor did anybody from the CIA promise me that I would get $15 each time I use the word “hyper” in this email.

Perhaps you found this whole thing fun and useful. In which case, go and listen to Mike and Chris, and try to reverse-engineer their podcast, like I’m trying to do.

But perhaps you did not find today’s email very fun or useful. In which case, consider that an argument against trying to reverse-engineer how other people communicate.

Instead, consider that an argument in favor of my Copy Riddles program. Because:

Copy Riddles teaches you to create intriguing, persuasive communication, and it doesn’t do it through reverse-engineering anything. Instead, it does it by looking at source material and the ways that source material was transformed by master communicators in order to make it more persuasive and intriguing.

You can find out more about that at the link below. Click, because it’s hyper-interesting:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Bare metal: Poor single mom risks death to feed her family

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A couple days ago, I sent out an email about charging out, King Arthur-like, to fight dragons on the borders of your kingdom. That was my metaphor for defending your business interests.

I got lots of interesting replies to that email, and none more so than from Shawn Cartwright. Shawn runs TCCII, an online martial arts academy. He wrote:

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While I sympathize with your position on this, I’d just like to ask this question…

Why are dragons always made out to be the bad guys?

Seriously…

Imagine you were the millenia old beast who woke up one day to find a bunch of unwashed simian descendants using your pristine mountain stream as a latrine?

Or erecting god-awful ugly structures made from your trees they took without so much as a please or thank you.

And shot at you when you went down to have a little chat with them to sort it out.

And then organized some sort of genocidal campaign to eradicate you and take all your stuff.

Is it any wonder they might be a little ill-tempered?

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Shawn asks a great question. In response to it, my mind jumped to a tense scene from the 2015 Disney documentary, Monkey Kingdom.

The scene shows a tiny and cute macaque monkey dangling from a vine a few inches above some murky water.

This monkey is a single mother, the narrator tells you. But not only that. She’s also at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Higher-caste females are safe up in a tree eating figs. But even though there’s plenty to go around, these higher-caste females are not willing to share any food with the low-born single mom.

So she is forced to roam deep into the jungle to feed her family. That’s why she’s now dangling above the murky water, so she can harvest some water lily seeds.

And then the scene shifts. It suddenly shows a monitor lizard.

The lizard is huge. It’s seven feet long, three or four times the size of the tiny monkey mom.

The lizard is ugly. It’s thick and black and scaly, with a long flame-like tongue flickering in and out of its mouth.

And worst of all, the lizard is treacherous. At first it’s lurking at the edge of the water. But then it slips in silently, and swims under the surface to where the water lilies are.

So why are dragons always made out to be the bad guys?

Because our race and their race have been at war since time immemorial. Because this feeling is baked into us. Because it’s bare-metal.

Bare-metal is my term for the fact that if you keep asking why long enough, you eventually always get to the answer, just because. Because it’s how we humans are. Because it’s right, whether or not it’s historically fair to the dragons, whether or not it makes sense in today’s world.

If you want to influence people, then write about bare-metal topics.

It’s not just slimy, treacherous serpents.

I gave you a few other bare-metal topics above, in that monkey scene setup. But there are many more.

I rewatched Monkey Kingdom last night. And because I’ve become obsessive through writing this newsletter, I took notes every minute or two.

I found 40+ bare metal topics in Monkey Kingdom. They are brilliantly illustrated because it’s monkeys. Monkeys are close enough to us to be relevant, but different enough to illustrate each bare-metal topic distinctly.

So my advice to you is, watch Monkey Kingdom. And take notes.

If I ever create my mythical AIDA School, this movie will be a part of the first-semester curriculum.

And now for something completely different:

Specifically, my Most Valuable Email course.

That course is connected in some way to today’s email, though only lightly.

That don’t change the fact that, as the name of it says, this course is about a type of email that has been most valuable for me.

If you also write about marketing or persuasion or copywriting, this type of email might be just as valuable for you.

To find out more about it — and about love, death, and politics — go here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

“Steal” a secret from the master email copywriter

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Yesterday I read an article about an American named Ryan Neil, who spent 6 years living in Japan, apprenticing to become a bonsai master.

During those 6 years, Neil was beaten, humiliated, exploited, and encouraged at every step to quit. In between the abuse, he didn’t even get taught anything, not directly. From the article by Robert Moor:

“Neil learned that an apprentice is rarely given overt lessons; he is expected to watch out of the corner of his eye and ‘steal’ his master’s secrets.”

This reminded me of a curious thing I had spotted recently by watching Ben Settle out of the corner of my eye.

Day after day, I noticed the same pattern. Something Ben was doing, probably consciously, to make his emails easier and more fun to read.

But maybe it was all in my mind. So I went back this morning and checked the past 30 days of Ben’s emails.

It seems elBenbo has been busy recently, because the past two weeks of his emails have almost all been reader questions or testimonials, leading quickly into an offer. Those emails didn’t show the pattern I had spotted.

But the two weeks before are where I noticed the pattern. I spotted it in 8 out of 14 of Ben’s emails during that period.

Now as a matter of transparency, let me say:

1. Yes, you can really call this a secret, because it makes content much more engaging and easy to consume, and yet most marketers don’t use it nearly as often as they could or should…

2. Yes, you can even call it a trick, because it’s quick and easy to do…

3. No, it will not sound particularly sexy or revolutionary when you hear it. But such are most of the things that Ben does. And yet he’s still really the master of email copy.

And in case you’re wondering:

I’m not talking about teasing, trying to get a no, or writing bullet-inspired subject lines.

I’m talking about a specific trick to do with infotainment. It’s more subtle than any of the techniques above, and probably more powerful as well, at least for getting people to come back and consume more of your writing.

Also, it’s something I’ve never seen him talk about in any of his paid products, or for that matter, anywhere else.

So here’s the deal:

If you’ve bought my Most Valuable Email training already, and you have a hunch of what trick I’m referring to, then write me and make your best guess. I will confirm if you’re right, and I will spell it out otherwise.

And if you have not yet bought my Most Valuable Email training, and you’d like to know this trick, then can consider this secret an extra bonus, live for the next 24 hours.

Buy the Most Valuable Email in the next 24 hours, until Tuesday Dec 6 at 8:33 CET, and along with the other bonuses I offer with the training. I will then write you separately, explaining Ben Settle’s infotainment secret and giving examples from his emails.

Of course, a​fter the deadline tomorrow, you can still buy the MVE training. But if you buy after tomorrow, I won’t share this extra bonus with you.

To get a jump on that deadline:

https://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.

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.

My recipe for writing a book that influences people and sells itself

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I just spent the morning reading statistics about the best-selling books of the 20th century so I could bring you the following curious anecdote or two:

The year 1936 saw the publication of two all-time bestselling books.

The first of these was Gone With The Wind. That’s a novel that clocked in at 1,037 pages. “People may not like it very much,” said one publishing insider, “but nobody can deny that it gives a lot of reading for your money.”

Gone With The Wind was made into a 1939 movie with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, which won a bunch of Oscars. Without the monstrous success of the movie, odds are that few people today would know about the book, even though it sold over 30 million copies in its time.

On the other hand, consider the other all-time bestseller published in 1936.

It has sold even better — an estimated 40 million copies as of 2022.

And unlike Gone With The Wind, this second book continues to sell over 250,000 each year, even today, almost a century after its first publication.

What’s more, this book does it all without any advertising, without the Hollywood hype machine, simply based on its own magic alone.

You might know the book I’m talking about. It’s Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People.

One part of this success is clearly down to the promise in the title. As Carnegie wrote back then, nobody teaches you this stuff in school. And yet, it’s really the fundamental work of what it means to be a human being.

But it can’t be just the title. That’s not reason why the book continues to sell year after year, or why millions of readers say the book changed their lives.

This includes me. I read How To Win Friends for the first time when I was around 18. It definitely changed how I behave.

For example, take Carnegie’s dictum that you cannot ever win an argument.

​​I’m argumentative by nature. But just yesterday, I kept myself from arguing — because Carnegie’s ghost appeared from somewhere and reminded me that I make my own life more difficult every time I aim to prove I’m right.

This kind of influence comes down to what’s inside the covers, and not just on them.

So what’s inside? I’ll tell ya.

Each chapter of Carnegie’s book is exactly the same, once you strip away the meat and look at the skeleton underneath. It goes like this:

1. Anecdote
2. The core idea of the chapter, which is illustrated by the anecdote above, and which is further illustrated by…
3. Anecdote
4. Anecdote
5. Anecdote
6. (optional) Anecdote

The valuable ideas in Carnegie’s book can fit on a single page. But it’s the other 290 pages of illustration that have made the book what it is.

In other words, the recipe for mass influence and continued easy sales is being light on how-to and heavy on case studies and stories, including personal stories and experiences.

Maybe you say that’s obvious. And it should be, if you read daily email newsletters like mine. But maybe you don’t read my newsletter yet. In case you’d like to fix that, so you can more ideas and illustrations on how to influence and even sell people, then I suggest you click here and follow the instructions that appear.

A man, a woman, a gun, and some crickets

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Picture the scene:

It’s dark.

Crickets are chirping.

A beautiful school teacher is moving quickly around her empty and isolated prairie house.

She’s undressing after a long day.

She gets down to her white chemise. She turns around from her closet to her bed and— SHRIEK!

She sees there’s a man sitting there in the dark, hands crossed on his chest.

“Keep going teacher lady,” he says with a hint of menace in his voice.

The school teacher stands there, breathing heavily, her hand at her chest, with a look on her face that says, NEVER.

The man slowly reaches over, picks up a gun, and points it at the school teacher.

“Don’t mind me,” he says coldly. “Keep on going.”

The woman looks down at her chemise in shame. She starts to untie the top. Now her face seems to be begging the man to let her stop.

But the man is obviously enjoying the show. He looks the woman up and down while still keeping the gun pointed at her.

The woman continues to undress. She’s now down to just her britches. She holds her chemise against her body to keep some dignity.

The man takes a deep breath.

“Let down your hair,” he says.

She does. The chemise drops to the ground and she’s just left in her one-piece underwear.

“Shake your head,” the man says.

She does. Her hair falls across her face.

The man doesn’t say anything more. Instead, he just gestures with the gun. He wants the woman to do away with the remaining underwear also.

She hesitates. There’s a mixture of fury and resolve on her face. Eventually, with decided movements, she starts to untie and unbutton her underwear.

She stands there, almost naked, with the underwear barely on her shoulders, ready to slip off.

The crickets keep chirping.

The man lowers his gun. Slowly, he takes off his gun belt. He stands up and walks to the woman.

He reaches inside her untied underwear.

The woman can barely control her fury.

“You know what I wish?” she says with her teeth clenched.

“What?”

“That once you’d get here on time!” And she puts her arms around the man and they kiss.

As you might know, that’s a scene from the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

It’s the first time we see the character played by Katharine Ross, the school teacher who was Sundance’s lover and who accompanied Butch and Sundance all the way down to Bolivia.

I’m using this scene to express an idea by Mark Ford, which is itself an expression of a much older idea:

“Ideas in and of themselves have little value. The value lies in the way they are expressed. New ideas are never new. Nor are they the product of a single mind. Rather, they are the particular articulation of general ideas that are in the common marketplace of ideas, repeated endlessly until one particular articulation catches fire. Remember this when you have a new idea that you are excited about. If you want to have it accepted, you must be willing to express it in dozens of different ways.”

A man and a woman in love. Not new.

A man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. Not new.

An apparent rape, which turns out to be a man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. That’s something you win an Oscar for, which is what happened to screenwriter William Goldman after he wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Whatever. Maybe you see where I’m going with this. And maybe you don’t. If you don’t, then I guess I’ve done my job, and that job ain’t easy. As A-list copywriter Jim Rutz said once:

“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy. This takes time and toil.”

Do you see where I’m going now? I want to make sure that you do, so let me spell it out:

I write a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. If you’d like to be surprised on occasion, and maybe get exposed to some valuable ideas as well, you can sign up for my newsletter here.