Stories

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

by

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.

The ring of truth

by

Here’s a quiz question for the criminal mastermind in you:

How might you sneak into Buckingham Palace?

How might you make your way over the castle-like walls and fences, past the hundreds of armed guards, the thousands of staff, the sensors, the alarms, and the vicious and bloodthirsty packs of attack corgis?

​​How might you get make your way to the heart of the labyrinth-like structure, all the way to the queen’s bedroom, so you can breathe on her, while she’s asleep in her own bed?

Think about that for a moment, but only for a moment. Because really, it’s quite easy to do. Here’s how, in just five steps:

1. First, climb up the 14-foot wall and over the barbed wire and rotating spikes.

2. Then, shimmy up the side of the palace. If you need help shimmying, use a drain pipe or something.

3. Then, find an open window. There’s sure to be one.

4. When you get into the palace, then walk around aimlessly. Don’t worry about the staff and the guards, because they will arrange themselves in just such a way that not one of them will notice you.

5. Finally, stumble upon the queen’s bedroom. The door will be unlocked. Open it, enter, approach the bed, pull back the curtain, and start your heavy breathing.

Does that sound like it would work? Does that sound like a credible plan?

Well, credible-sounding or not, it actually happened. At around 7am on July 9 1982, a certain Michael Fagan did just what I told you.

Fagan, an unemployed and not very mentally stable English man, climbed over the walls of Buckingham Palace and into palace itself, then rambled around, unnoticed by all the guards, staff, and corgis, making it all the way to the sleeping queen’s bed.

This is a true story, a slice of real history.

And if you found it interesting or surprising, then that’s kind of my point.

In order for the above story to have any worth at all, you have to believe that it’s real, that it’s documented history. You have to believe that it really happened, and you have to believe that you can go and check the details yourself if you want to.

On the other hand, imagine if instead of being a historical incident, this unlikely “story” were part of a Disney cartoon or an Ocean’s 11-type heist film.

“So stupid,” would be the only reaction that the audience would have as they walked out of the movie theater. “The corgis would have smelled him a mile away. Couldn’t the writers have thought up something a little more life-like? A little more believable? Something with at least the ring of truth to it?”

So that’s actually my point for today.

Truth isn’t where it’s at. But having the ring of truth — now that’s a different story.

And as in cartoons and heist films, so in sales letters.

A couple days ago, I did a copy critique for a business owner of an ecommerce brand.

He had written an advertorial telling his own true story.

Only problem was, his story, dramatic and true though it was, sounded unbelievable. The tears… the sleepless nights… the worried looks from his wife…

I mean, this guy’s business is selling dog food. Literally.

So it didn’t matter much if his dramatic story was true, which it was. It didn’t ring true. And so my advice to him was to tamp down his true story, or to swap it out altogether, and find some other stories, which, true or not, at least have the ring of truth to them.

And now, you might think I will transition into an offer for consulting or copy critiques, where I point out obvious but damaging flaws in your advertising.

That won’t happen.

I had those offers, consulting and critiques, during this past summer. But I closed them down as of today.

Because I now have a regular offer to promote at the end of each of my daily emails. It’s my Most Valuable Email course. And I’ll tell you the following curious fact:

While the core MVE training is about a clever email copywriting trick, the course also comes with a Most Valuable Email swipe file. This file collects some of the most effective Most Valuable Emails I have personally written.

Each of those emails contains a valuable marketing or copywriting idea.

And MVE swipe emails #17, #18, #19, #20, and #22 contain five valuable ideas about how to write formulaic stories. Stories that sound like other stories that people have heard a million times before. Stories that, because of their familiarity, ring true to your audience.

So if you are trying to figure out how to shape your own personal history into something that your prospects won’t reject as A) boring or B) a manipulative lie, then these specific Most Valuable Emails might be worth a look.
​
They are available inside the complete MVE training. ​​

In case you want to get your mastermind paws on them, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

My storytelling advice to a “storytelling coach”

by

Yesterday, I got an email from a well-known copywriter. The subject line read, “It’s story time for your business.”

This email was obviously a solo ad – somebody paid to send an advertisement to the copywriter’s list. The advertised offer was a free training held by a “story coach” who happens to be “one of the world’s top storytelling experts.”

I was intrigued. What might I learn from a top storytelling expert?

The suspicious thing was, the story coach’s email was itself not written as a story.

“Maybe she’s trying to tease me,” I thought. “I must see what kind of wondrous Harry Potter-like yarn a story coach can weave.”

So I went to the website of the story coach herself.

There were no stories anywhere on the front page. But there was a promo video. I watched a few minutes of it. No stories in there either.

The teasing was starting to get a little annoying.

So I went to the about page. Still nothing! All I found was how important stories are, and how life is too short not to share your true story, and how storytelling can help you make more money.

But then finally, at the bottom of the about page, I found it. The story coach’s story. It was there, under the heading, “The Story.” It went like this:

ONCE UPON A TIME, the story coach was born in a country far, far away
She then moved to another country for university
She then worked at some NGOs and got married
She then realized her “passion for adult learning”
She then started working as a corporate trainer
She then specialized as a story coach
She then became, and today still remains, “honored and delighted to empower people and businesses world-wide”
THE END

Maybe, maybe, this story coach has some valuable advice to give to her students.

If so, then she clearly forgets to apply her advice to her own business. Because the above “story” is so un-riveting that it immediately sabotages the claim she is a storytelling expert.

The way I see it:

if you want to sell with a personal story today, you better make sure your personal story is remarkable. Barring that, you better make sure you are a remarkable storyteller.

The trouble is the vast majority of people — most copywriters and “story coaches” included — do not have any remarkable personal stories and are not all that remarkable as storytellers.

So does that mean most people in business should stay away from telling stories?

Well, if I were coaching the story coach, I would advise her, for two good reasons, to pony up $75 and get my Most Valuable Email training before the price goes up on Sunday at midnight PST.

Reason one is that Most Valuable Emails are perfect for anybody who sells services or info products about topics like marketing, copywriting, or writing. If you write about those topics, then the Most Valuable Email trick is immediate and instant to use.

Reason two is that each time you write a Most Valuable Email, it makes you a tiny but significant bit better at whatever it is you are writing about.

So ​​If you are a marketer writing about marketing topics, it makes you a better marketer.

​​If you are a copywriter writing about sales copy, it makes you a better copywriter.

​​And if you are a so-called storytelling expert, then writing Most Valuable Emails at first make you decent and then maybe even good at telling stories.

So that’s my advice. In case you want to find out more about the Most Valuable Email training, take a look at the following, non-storified, sales page:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Storytelling recipe for disaster that ended up succeeding against all odds

by

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

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

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

“You don’t want me to sing, do you?”

I just watched a TED talk about storytelling.

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

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

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

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

There would be no love story.

There would be no “I want” moment.

There wouldn’t even be a villain.

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

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

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

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

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

https://bejakovic.com/story

A chance meeting of star-crossed lovers, in the business district, next to a fancy hotel

by

I was walking this morning through a business district, next to a fancy hotel. I saw a very beautiful blonde girl walking quickly across my path.

She was wearing a white top, which was too short for her, and a white skirt, which was also too short. She slowed down for a moment to adjust her skirt and pull it down into place. I guess she was excited about something coming up, because her eyes lit up with a smile and she picked up her quick pace again.

Suddenly, she spotted me staring at her.

​​Her face got stern, she focused her eyes on the ground in front of her, and she adjusted her skirt again.

She walked on out of my peripheral vision, and I resisted the urge to turn around and look after her.

​​I could hear her pressing a buzzer — I guess the staff entrance to the hotel. In a moment more, the door opened, and she slipped inside. She was gone, and we were both safe — her, from my calf-like staring, and me, from the daunting prospect of having to go and talk to her.

But wait, there’s more.

I mean, not with this girl, even though, who knows, maybe she was THE ONE.

But staring at girls is not all I did this morning. I also read an article about writing. It was written by a certain Jay Acunzo and was titled “Nothing Is Boring: How to Tell Gripping Stories About the Seemingly Mundane.”

Acunzo’s article gives you a simple three-part structure for writing engaging stories from mundane life events.

I will not tell you what the three-part structure is. That’s because I’ve already spent enough time in the past month talking about story templates, and because the conclusion of all that work was, story templates are best forgotten.

But I will share just one bit from Acunzo’s article, which is really all you need to know:

“All it takes to tell a meaningful story from the mundane details around us is some tension, however fleeting, however subtle. These tiny differences make all the difference in the world.”

So did the tension in my little story above grip you?

​​Well, maybe grip is too strong a word.

But maybe you did feel a certain contraction and then relaxation as you were reading.

​​Maybe you felt enough tension to turn this short story from just a random collection of personal facts into something that was sufficiently stimulating, that you enjoyed having communicated to you. And really, that’s the main point. As the original A-list copywriter, Claude H., put it,

“People will not be bored in print. They may listen politely at a dinner table to boasts and personalities, life histories, etc. But in print they choose their own companions, their own subjects. They want to be amused or benefited.”

In case you’d like to be regularly benefited, and occasionally amused, you might like my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

A watermelon-headed politician walks into a flat-earther’s house…

by

I’d like to tell you a story but first I have to give you a bit of background. Our story has two characters:

First, there’s Pericles, a famous statesman in ancient Athens.

Pericles led the Athenians at the start of their war against the Spartans. He was also well-known for having a watermelon-sized head. That’s why statues most often show him wearing a helmet.

Second, we have Anaxagoras, a philosopher who came from Asia and settled in Athens.

Anaxagoras brought with him the spirit of scientific inquiry, which wasn’t common in Athens before. He also happened to be a flat-earther.

Now, on to the story:

When Pericles the Athenian was a young man, he studied philosophy with Anaxagoras.

Later, Pericles became a powerful man. When he needed to make important political decisions, he still consulted his wise old teacher.

But as Pericles sailed the seas, leading the Greeks in battle, Anaxagoras grew older and poorer. There aren’t many drachmas to be made in explaining rainbows or what the moon is made of.

In time, Anaxagoras became so poor he could no longer afford even a bit of cheese and wine. So one day, he did the only philosophical thing:

He covered his head with a robe, and determined to starve himself to death.

When Pericles heard about this, he rushed to Anaxagoras’s house.

He started begging his old teacher to live. He lamented his own hopeless future if he should lose so valuable an advisor.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

Then Anaxagoras yanked the robe off his head, looked at Pericles, and said, “Pericles, those who want to use a lamp supply it with oil.”

So that’s the story.

I don’t know about you, but when I first read it, it made me laugh.

And because I like to kill a good joke, I asked myself why I found this story funny.

Was it the idea of an old man starving himself to death?

Not really funny.

Was it the lamp analogy at the end?

Not so funny either.

I realized it was the robe.

​​Anaxagoras put it on his head and then pulled it off. It made him seem like a petulant child. It was such a contrast to the image of a sage and self-possessed philosopher.

So there you go:

Seemingly irrelevant details give all the color to a story. They can create suspense. Enjoyment. Or, of course, humor.

But perhaps I didn’t kill enough jokes for you today.

If so, then subscribe to my email newsletter, so I can kill another joke for you tomorrow.

And then, then take a listen to the 2 minute and 45 second clip below. It’s a recording of a young Woody Allen, delivering a standup routine in the 1960s.

Then listen to it again. And notice all the detail — seemingly irrelevant, but really, just what makes the skit funny. it might be something you can use in your own writing.

​​Here’s the video:

Knock twice before you open this email

by

Welcome. First, let me share the traditional greeting:

“Email is great! Yes it is.”

And now, you and I can get started with today’s content:

A few weeks ago, I was rea​ding a New Yorker article. In that article, I came across an interesting idea that’s stuck with me since. ​​I’ll share it with you in today’s email and then we can wrap up this part of our lives and move on to other things.

The article I read was about how good technology is getting at reading our minds, in a very literal sense.

You can now scan people’s brains and have a good idea of how their brains are lighting up in real time.

Combine this with a lot of data of other people’s brains and a lot of fancy software… and we are nearly at a point where somebody can know exactly what you’re thinking… even if you’re just sitting there, eyes closed, doing nothing but smirking.

Anyways, the idea that stuck with me had to do with “event boundaries.” From the article:

He had the class watch a clip from “Seinfeld” in which George, Susan (an N.B.C. executive he is courting), and Kramer are hanging out with Jerry in his apartment. The phone rings, and Jerry answers: it’s a telemarketer. Jerry hangs up, to cheers from the studio audience.

“Where was the event boundary in the clip?” Norman asked. The students yelled out in chorus, “When the phone rang!” Psychologists have long known that our minds divide experiences into segments; in this case, it was the phone call that caused the division.

In other words, neuroscientists now know something that writers have known for millennia:

Our brain loves to create scenes, snapshots, and scripts as a way of making sense of the immense complexity of the world.

This is so obvious that it might not sound like much of a breakthrough. But it has some interesting consequences. Again from the article:

Walking into a room, you might forget why you came in; this happens, researchers say, because passing through the doorway brings one mental scene to a close and opens another.

But perhaps more interesting is the basic influence idea of exaggerating what people already want and respond to.

​​For example, is it any wonder so many religions have strict rules for entering and leaving a place of worship?

When entering the church, dip your fingers in holy water and make the sign of the cross… do not enter or leave the sanctuary while the ark is open… leave the mosque using your left foot while reciting the dua.

And the point of this sermon is:

People want scenes… clearly marked beginnings and endings… so give it to em. Create doors, entrance rituals, dramatic event boundaries.

You will be helping your audience make sense of both you and of their world. They will thank you for it, with their attention, trust, and perhaps even money.

And that all I wanted to say. Except of course the traditional farewell:

“This email is finished! You can sign up here to get more. Yes you can.”

Fake stories in copy

by

A man sat down at a classy restaurant. It looked great.

There was a plant next to his table. A big ficus.

“I’ve got one of these at home,” the man said. He passed his fingers over the leaves and—

He realized they were plastic.

The plant looked real, but it was fake. In fact, on closer examination, the man realized the plant looked fake also. There were things that gave it away.

Suddenly, the man found himself questioning the whole restaurant, even before he had a chance to order.

Speaking of ordering, I got a couple questions recently. They were on the topic of, “What do you think of using fake stories in your copy?”

One question had to do with the claim that fake stories are illegal to use.

I don’t know about that. I’m not a lawyer. But I doubt it’s illegal. At most, I think you might have to add some kind of disclaimer, like they do at the bottom of TV commercials. “These are paid fitness models, and they have never used the Ab Rocket and would in fact never use the Ab Rocket.”

So I don’t have a problem with fake stories from a legal standpoint. But I have a problem with them just because they sound fake and made up. Because people will spot a fake story, just like they will spot a fake plant. And then they will doubt everything that follows.

“But what about parables and fairy tales?” That was the second question I got on this topic.

That’s something completely different, I think. Parables are powerful. Pop culture illustrations are great also, even if they come from a comic book or superhero movie. Fairy tales work too, whether you made them up or somebody else did.

The key is the subtext.

A fake plant in a restaurant signals tackiness and makes you doubt the quality of the food.

A fake plant as part of theatrical scenery, during an engrossing play that leaves you with some sort of lingering moral… that’s a welcome aid to imagination, understanding, and maybe, to being persuaded.

Now if you feel persuaded by this fairy tale:

You might like to read some other stuff I write. In that case, you can sign up for my email newsletter.

Conflict produced this legendary ad — do you know it?

by

“We’ve spent a fortune,” screamed the red-faced exec, “but this damn thing still won’t sell! What the hell am I paying you people for?

The gray suits around the table hung their heads.

The time was 1911.

The executives at Colliers Publishing had heard an incredible idea. It came from Harvard University President Charles Eliot.

Eliot said any man could get a world-class education in 15 minutes a day, just by reading a few books. All the books could fit onto a 5-foot shelf.

So the Collier’s people asked Eliot which books exactly… and Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf was born.

Collier’s ran ads in their own magazine to get leads for the Five Foot Shelf. The ads talked about the joy and satisfaction of owning and reading great books. They featured the Harvard coat of arms.

​​And yet the damn thing wouldn’t sell. It looked hopeless. But it turned around, by accident.

Advertising man Bruce Barton had to fill some empty advertising space. So he flipped open one of Dr. Eliot’s great books and landed on a picture of Marie Antoinette in a rickety peasant cart. He ripped the picture out. And he scribbled the headline above it:

“This is Marie Antoinette riding to her death. Have you ever read her tragic story?”

According to Barton, Marie Antoinette outpulled the old “joy and satisfaction” ads 8-to-1. She kept running successfully for years, and helped sell hundreds of thousands of copies of the Five Foot Bookshelf.

This shows the power of a dramatic snapshot. This is a great way to start your sales letters, advertorials, and even emails.

Of course, that’s not the only good thing Barton’s ad has going for it.

The whole thing is full of copywriting and marketing tricks which worked in 1921… and continue to work in 2021. It might be worth taking a look and seeing how many you can spot.

And if you’d like to do that, I’ve tracked down a copy of Bruce Barton’s original Marie Antoinette ad for you. You can find it below. And if you’d like more occasional trips down 1911 marketing lane, you can sign up for my email newsletter here.

Parents and frenemies in stories of fear and shame

by

When I was 23, I had this accident. It was quite serious.

I was gripping a dull butter knife. In a moment of anger, I decided to stab the knife into the wall.

Stupid.

Because the wall was fine. The knife was fine. But I was not.

There was a lot of blood. I wound up in the ER. And my right ring and pinky fingers would no longer obey when I told my hand to close.

A few weeks later, I had to get surgery to fix those two fingers, if they could be fixed.

And I remember when I got back from the hospital.

I was living in something like a crack house, with four other college guys, including one who was actually dealing drugs.

So I locked myself in my room, which was empty of furniture except for the mattress on the floor.

I was still groggy and confused from the general anesthesia.

I had this giant plastic-and-wire contraption on my right arm to keep my fingers and hand in place.

And panic came over me. I was alone out here, I realized. My closest family was thousands of miles away. I felt vulnerable and in pain, a step away from death.

My point in telling you this personal anecdote:

Human beings have twin drives. To preserve face… and to preserve body.

Preserving face is about avoiding shame and humiliation.

Preserving body is about getting free from pain and fear, like in my story above.

Now I’ve recently been looking at stories I’ve written in sales copy. And I noticed something in each type of situation:

It makes the story more powerful to either bring in an audience (face threatened) or to make the hero isolated (body threatened).

When I think back on my post-surgery panic, the biggest thing that sticks out is the loneliness and isolation of it.

Because we have a weird relation to other people.

Sometimes others are good. Sometimes they are bad.

I felt especially vulnerable because I was alone curled up in my empty crack house bedroom after a three-hour surgery. It would have been great to have somebody there.

​​But had I been in a situation where I had done something shameful… the last thing I would want is an audience to witness it.

So that’s my takeaway for you for today.

If you’re telling stories, you can can selectively bring in an audience… or take out a community. Do it right, so it matches your primary emotion, and you will get people more motivated than they would be otherwise.

But community or the lack of it can also influence the attractiveness of your offer. That’s something very intriguing I learned only recently… which I will talk about in my newsletter email tomorrow.

In case you want to read that when I send it out, you can sign up for my newsletter here.