Structure Of Copy and Content

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In May 2014, I quit my secure, full-time IT office job and I started spending my mornings writing stock analysis articles for the Motley Fool.

It was great. I was working from home. I was working for myself and doing work I didn’t dislike. I could organize my own schedule, my rates were quickly increasing, and the future was looking bright.

Then in July 2014, just a couple months after my new barefoot writer lifestyle had begun, I got the following email from the managing editor at the Motley Fool:

it is disheartening for us to say that effective today, we will not be able to continue our writing relationship and further this mission together.

This is no fault of your own; it is the simple result of our business model and the corresponding structure we’ve built. It has been our pleasure to work with you, and we hope you consider yourself a Fool for life. We certainly do.

“Well, shit,” I said to myself. “Fool for life, indeed.”

I wrote to the MF editor I had been in touch with. I asked if there was any chance I might be kept on — while hundreds of other writers were being let go. I never heard back.

I wrote to my friend, who was also writing for the MF and who got me this gig. “It sucks,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s not looking good.”

So there I was. I had no job, and I needed money. I had rent to pay, food to buy, plus I had a cat at the time, and maintaining those things in life is not exactly free.

What to do?

Getting an office job again was inconceivable. For one thing, I wasn’t sure anyone would hire me — certainly not the people at my old job. For another, it was just a matter of pride, plus the fact I had always been a bad match for office work.

I looked at my arm, and briefly considered sawing it off. But I soon realized that’s another story, although with the same structure. In any case, losing the arm wouldn’t help.

So I took a deep breath. I gritted my teeth. And I did what I always do:

I made a list of ideas. In this case the list was titled, “10 ways I could make money by the end of this month.”

#6 on that list, between #5 (stealing) and #7 (begging) was “Write and publish some Kindle books.” And that was my start as a Kindle publishing magnate.

I’ve written about this history before. But the gist of it is:

That first month, I wrote three short Kindle ebooks, on three related niche topics. The total word count was around 15,000, and 10,000 of that was reused among the three ebooks.

I sold $285 worth of books in that first month.

The next month, I wrote 3 new tiny books. And then some more. Within a few months, I had a stable of a dozen titles, and I was making a steady income that was getting close to what i was making at my IT job just a few months earlier.

Ta-da! Who needs the Motley Fool? Who needs a stupid office job?

​​I had a found a way to survive and even thrive, working for myself, on my own terms, with “up” as the only direction to go.

​​The end. Well, almost.

Yesterday, I told you about the riches-to-rags story type, which can be represented by \. The day before that, I told you about rags-to-riches, represented by /.

Combine those two, and you get \/ aka the “man in a hole” story type.

“Man in a hole” is a common format for complete stories — like that of Aron Ralston, who sawed off his own arm to survive after being pinned down by a boulder.

“Man in a hole” is an even more common plot element of bigger stories — think James Bond losing $14.5 million in a poker game in Montenegro, because he’s been suckered by the fake tell of the main villain.

Which brings up the following storywriting rule:

It matters where you cut you your story off.

For example, after those first few glorious months, my Kindle sales cratered. It turns out I wasn’t going to make a living selling $2.99 ebooks. So I got into writing sales copy for other business… then a few years later, I got back into Kindle publishing but with a different approach… then I met this guy who told me about crypto and we went to London for a conference…

You know what that’s called? That’s called rambling. It’s definitely not called storytelling.

Human brains want neatly tied-up episodes, and they want the satisfaction of having story elements fit and click.

One powerful mechanism you have to make things fit and click is the stop button. So think of the effect you want to have, and use that to decide where to cut your story off. Speaking of which—

Sign up to my email newsletter. That’s been the point of this entire email. To show you I have something interesting to say about writing and persuasion more broadly, and that I can even be entertaining about it. Are you convinced? If you are, here’s where to go.

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Boris raised the famous golden trophy over his head, and the crowd erupted in cheers and applause.

​​They had never seen anything like this before.

Boris had become the youngest man ever to win the most prestigious tournament in tennis, Wimbledon.

For 17-year-old Boris, the acclaim was nice. The $169,000 prize winnings — equivalent to $446,000 in today’s money — didn’t hurt either.

Throughout the rest of his tennis career, Boris Becker won 48 more tournaments, including 2 more Wimbledon titles.

​​When he retired from tennis, in 1999, his entire career winnings totaled over $25 million. Combined with various endorsements and sinecures, his total earnings came to over $50 million.

But it’s not hard to squander a fortune. And over the years, Becker has worked hard to squander his.

Luxury apartments around the world… expensive divorces… a child begotten in the broom closet of a Nobu in London… by the mid 2010s, Becker’s resources were strained. And his debts were mounting.

Finally, it became too much. In 2017, Boris Becker filed for bankruptcy.

The tennis world, and the world at large, shrugged. It’s hardly a new story — a talented star makes millions in his youth, then squanders it all in middle age. Besides, bankruptcy is not the end of the world. People routinely recover from it.

But then just this past week, things got a lot worse for Becker.

It turns out he has been under criminal investigation for failing to report some of his assets during the bankruptcy hearings.

So now, not only will those assets be seized, but there’s a very real possibility that on Apr 29, Becker will be sentenced to jail time for his bankruptcy jiggery-pokery.

​​He might have to spend the next 7 years in prison… pushing the library cart around, fighting off advances in the shower, and trying to get used to the gruel — no Nobu behind bars!

Yesterday, I told you about the first canonical story type, rags-to-riches, which can be represented by /.

Today is about the second canonical story type, riches-to-rags, \. There are plenty of illustrations of this format. But I had been reading about Becker only a few days ago, and so he popped into mind.

And here’s an extra tip if you are massaging a story, whether riches-to-rags or any other type:

It matters big time where you start your story. Not just for sucking the reader in and getting his attention. But for the total effect.

For example, I could have started today by talking about the struggles Becker experienced only weeks before his first Wimbledon. Or I could have talked about the sacrifices he made as a kid.

Those might be valid places to start — if I were after a different effect.

​​But if the point of my story is to get you depressed and scared about losing everything you’ve got — after all, if it can happen to somebody as talented and blessed as Becker, why not you — then the best place to start is the highest, most pure moment of his career and life.

“Yeah about that,” I hear you saying, “this riches-to-rags structure is kind of depressing. It’s also kind of preachy. Who wants to read this kind of thing? I feel like you’ll just turn people off.”

Fair concern. But the fact is, some of the most influential and powerful stories in human history basically follow this basic riches-to-rags structure.

Adam and Eve had it really good in the Garden of Eden and then—

King Lear had three fair daughters who loved him and then—

And an Ikea lamp had a happy home and—

​Well, maybe you don’t know the most famous Ikea commercial ever.

​​It was directed by Spike Jonze. And people still talk about it today, 20 years after it came out.

​​You can find it below. And if you watch it, you will find a second crucial thing you need to do to make your riches-to-rags story work well.

​​In fact, it’s something I screwed up with my story of Boris Becker above.

​​It’s too late for me and my story in this email. But it’s not too late for you. Watch below and learn. Oh, and sign up for my email newsletter — I will write more about story types tomorrow.

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Today I’d like to tell you the story of a boy who became known as Thee-Thee.

When Thee-Thee was just ten years old, his father died. The family wasn’t rich before, but now they were poor. Thee-Thee had to go to work — every day, before and after school, weekends too — to help support himself and the rest of his family.

Thee-Thee kept working. And he kept studying. He finished high school and even some college.

But his first job out of college paid so poorly that Thee-Thee couldn’t afford a meal every night. His budget could just support the room he was renting, occasional laundry service for his two shirts, and dinners only five nights a week. The other two nights he had to go to bed hungry.

But Thee-Thee didn’t stop, and he didn’t quit. He kept working hard and being honest. He made his employers more and more money. And as a result, he himself progressed, further and further.

Thee-Thee started getting paid higher wages. Then he got commissions on the money he was earning his employers. Then he was given shares of businesses he helped grow.

In time, Thee-Thee became rich. He bought an ocean-going yacht. He lived in a palatial house surrounded by flower gardens admired across the state. He died a multimillionaire, back when that was the equivalent of what today is a billionaire.

You might recognize who I’m talking about. It’s a famous marketer and copywriter. Perhaps the most famous and influential of them all:

Claude C. Hopkins.

(Thee-Thee? Hopkins had a lisp. When he introduced himself — C.C. — it came out as Thee-Thee. This became his nickname around the Lord & Thomas offices — behind his back of course.)

I’m telling you the story of Thee-Thee Hopkins for two reasons:

First, because it shows what you can earn — “at a typewriter which you operate yourself, without a clerk or secretary, and much of it earned in the woods” — if you get really dedicated to this marketing and copywriting thing.

The second reason is that Hopkins’s life is a perfect illustration of a rags-to-riches story.

Back in 1995, scientists from the University of Vermont looked at 1,700 popular stories, spanning all eras. The scientists used some fancy computering to analyze all these stories.

The upshot was they found these 1,700 stories all boiled down to just six fundamental structures.

The first of these can be concisely represented by the character /. It is the rags-to-riches story, which I just told you about.

If you’re curious about the other five fundamental story structures, you can go look them up for yourself. Or you can just sign up to my email newsletter.

Because over the coming five days, I will illustrate each of these five other canonical story types in an email. And will tell you some extra storytelling tricks and ideas that can help you also.

So if, like me, you get off on the hidden structure behind everyday things, my next few emails might be interesting for you. And who knows, they might even be profitable for you. As Thee-Thee Hopkins almost said once:

“Our success depends on pleasing people. By an inexpensive test we can learn if we please them or not. And if some guys from the University of Vermont have already done that testing for us, all the better. We can guide our endeavors accordingly.”

In case you want to read those emails when I send them out, here’s how to get a spot on my newsletter.

Sub-format trumps copy

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The point of today’s email may be very obvious to you. But it wasn’t obvious to me, not for a good many years. And yet it’s very valuable — the numbers don’t lie. See if you agree:

​​I recently wrote about Joe Sugarman’s BluBlockers infomercial. It had a candid camera feel – Joe going up to people on the street, giving them a pair of BluBlockers to try, and recording them as they look around in wonder and say, “Wow, it’s so much sharper! Brighter, too!”

What I didn’t write about recently, but found interesting nonetheless, was a presentation given by top copywriter Evaldo Albuquerque. Evaldo was talking about tips and tricks to make an interview-style VSL a big success.

And then, there was an email I wrote a couple years ago about video ads my clients at the time were running on Facebook. The ads were very successful, and more successful than any other we had tried. They were modeled after BBC science videos — using stock footage, with overlaid subtitles that told an intriguing and dramatic story.

A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos likes to say, “Repeat after me: FORMAT TRUMPS COPY.”

The thing is, it’s easy to be shortsighted about what format means. Text sales letter? VSL? Podcast? Magalog?

The three examples I gave you above – Joe’s candid camera infomercial, interview-style financial VSLs, BBC-style stock footage ads — all three are formally video ads. But each is really a unique sub-format of video ads, which makes all the difference in their final effectiveness.

So repeat after me: Sub-format trumps copy. ​​

This brings me to a cool resource I’d like to share with you. It’s a steady source of analysis of some of the most persuasive, interesting, and influential sub-formats coming out today.

I’ll share this resource in exchange for something you can do for me:

Tell me about a unique format you enjoy.

For example, I’ve written recently about the YouTube channel Soft White Underbelly. It has a unique, consistent format across each episode, which I’ve grown to like.

I’ve also written about the Axios email newsletter about world news. It has another consistent format that I like.

So take a moment. Think about about a source of news, entertainment, education, inspiration — whatever — that you enjoy regularly and that has a strong, consistent format that you’ve grown to rely on and appreciate.

Then get on my newsletter if you’re not already on it. And when you get my welcome email, hit reply and let me know what this thing is, and if you want, tell me in a few words why you like its format.

In exchange, I’ll share with you the cool resource I mentioned above, all about interesting and emerging new formats. This resource might be enlightening and even very profitable for you, if you write or invent new DR advertising.

Knock twice before you open this email

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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.”

The plagiarism trick of James the Baptist

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James Altucher is a kind of modern day John the Baptist. He rails against college, owning a house, or paying your dues in any industry.

I first heard about him from entrepreneur and copywriter Mark Ford. Mark cares about good writing and interesting ideas. I guess that’s why he’s friends with James.

James has a colorful life history. He has a talent for making and then losing millions of dollars… he’s neurotic and nerdy… at one point, he lived for a year straight in Airbnbs, and owned only 15 things.

But people follow him. Online. Huge audiences.

James also has a podcast. The world’s elite comes to him to promote their causes. He’s interviewed Tony Robbins… Richard Branson… Robert Cialdini… and hundreds of others among the rich and influential.

James interrupts his guests while they’re speaking. He asks out-of-left-field questions. He makes his guests pause. And then relax. And then answer honestly with real insights.

A while back, James published a brilliant idea. It allows you to avoid agonizing over your writing, and create content that’s guaranteed to light up your readers’ minds.

James’s post gives an example of how he got crazy spikes of online traffic using this idea. He spells out exactly how you can use it too. You can use it to write your own popular online content, winning sales copy, or even a bestselling book.

In short, James just shared a way to stop trotting along on a lame copywriting mule… and to start galloping on a copywriting thoroughbred.

I even used this technique to write this email. It’s been a revelation. And I want to share it with you now:

https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/i-plagiarized

A bit of magic and faith to persuade hardened cynics

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I hear it’s Christmas time, so here’s a little gift. It’s taken from the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street.

If you’ve never seen the movie, it’s about department store Santa who just might be the real Santa Claus.

He looks like Kris Kringle…

He acts like Kris Kringle…

He even calls himself Kris Kringle.

Of course, while Kris Kringle soon makes some folks believe that magic is real and he is Santa… a few cynics refuse to allow faith into their hearts.

And so Kris Kringle winds up in the kounty kourthouse. He’s on trial and the point is to prove he is not really Santa, because Santa doesn’t really exist.

And then there’s the following scene, which I thought you might find valuable:

KK’s lawyer and the opposing lawyer both approach the judge.

KK’s lawyer holds up three letters from kids to Santa, which have been delivered to Kris Kringle.

Since the USPS is legally bound to deliver letters to the intended recipient, the lawyer argues, the US Government is throwing its authority behind the fact that Kris Kringle is actually Santa.

The opposing lawyer says, “Come on, three letters to Santa, that proves nothing.”

“I have additional exhibits,” KK’s lawyer says. “but I hesitate to produce them.”

The judge is intrigued. He insists. “Let’s see them. Put them here on my desk.”

“But your honor…”

“Put them here on my desk!”

It turns out KK’s lawyer has been holding back. Three letters not enough? How about this:

A dozen mail carriers carrying sackfuls of letters come into the courtroom. They pour them out onto the judge’s desk. The judge ends up buried in letters, all addressed to Santa, and now delivered to Kris Kringle.

Case closed!

Look, it’s a family movie, and it’s about Christmas and faith. It doesn’t have to make 100% sense.

But sense or not, I think that courtroom gambit is a powerful technique, and something you can benefit from in your own marketing.

Maybe you can see exactly what I have in mind. Or maybe you’d like me to spell it out.

​​In that case, write me an email and simply state your wish. You can address your email to the North Pole or to me specifically. Google will deliver it either way. Oh, and don’t forget to sign up to my newsletter before Christmas.

Welcome to Horneytown

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First, a warning:

Today’s email contains several dirty, obscene, lewd — and I’m afraid to say this — even French names. I see no other way to make an otherwise important point. If this upsets you, I suggest you stop reading now.

But if you’re still with me, here are some real places with unusual names:

* Blue Ball and Intercourse, Pennsylvania
* Eggs and Bacon Bay, Tasmania
* Pee Pee, Ohio
* Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands
* Y, France
* Pett Bottom, England
* Whorehouse Meadow, Oregon

I’ll tell you in a moment where I’m going with this.

But first, let me tell you how I found all this out. It was in a book called “Welcome to Horneytown, North Carolina, Population: 15.” I spent the last 40 or so minutes reading it.

It was my email yesterday that did it. It mentioned the town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. I saw the name again today when going over replies I got to my email from yesterday. This led me to the Horneytown book — as well as a surprise.

Because I’d known about Truth or Consequences for years. I even made plans once to travel there with a girl I’d chatted up one evening when I was feeling uncharacteristically outgoing.

But all these years, I assumed Truth or Consequences started out as some fundamentalist Wild West community. Fear of God and the Bible, let any stray cowboy riding into town know exactly what he’s getting into, that type of thing.

But no. Truth or Consequences was founded in 1930. It was originally called Hot Springs. It renamed itself in 1950 after a popular radio show as a publicity stunt.

I could keep going on about this. But I once heard A-list copywriter Parris Lampropolous share a valuable lesson he himself learned from A-list copywriter and entrepreneur Mark Ford.

Mark advises copywriters NOT to go on for more than a page about the same thing. Page, page and a half max.

Then Mark advises you to say, “I’ll tell you more about that in a moment, but first…” And then hit them with something new.

Perhaps you wonder what this has to do with obscene, unusual, and French place names. In that case, perhaps today’s email deserves a closer reading. And so do some of my other emails.

Because this page, page-and-a-half-max thing is so important that I try to respect it in each email I write these days. Only, expectations are different in emails than in sales letters. A page and a half in an email is too long to talk about the same thing. I’ll explain why in just a bit, but first…

Understanding really influential writing

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Let me warn you ahead of time that today’s post is vague and speculative. I’m sharing it because I think the core idea could be very valuable, and maybe you will agree.

​​But if you are looking for a quick tip to improve your conversion rates, you won’t find that in today’s post, so maybe it makes sense to stop reading now.

And now that you’ve been warned, let me jump to the big question:

What’s up with consciousness? It seems to be a trendy question these days. And since I am a trendy person, I clambered onto this bandwagon.

So I just finished reading a book about one theory of how consciousness arises, called The Feeling of Life Itself. The book was written by Christof Koch, formerly a professor at Caltech and now chief scientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science.

At the heart of Koch’s book are two diagrams. Each diagram shows a network of logic gates, the kind of stuff computers, or human brains, are built of in the abstract.

One diagram shows a network with three gates. The other diagram shows a much bigger network, with 66 gates.

And here’s something non-obvious:

The 3-gate network and the much bigger 66-gate network actually do the same computation. In other words, start with the same inputs, run the thing for a while, and you will end up with the same outputs with these two very different-seeming networks.

How is this possible? Well, the 3-gate network is richly interconnected, with each gate doing double and triple duty. On the other hand, the big 66-gate network is much more linear, with each gate serving just one tiny role.

Rich interconnectivity is why the 3-gate network can punch above its weight, computation-wise.

And it just so happens — so says Christof Koch — it’s also why the tiny 3-node network has some small bit of consciousness… while the much bigger 66-node network has none.

In other words, Koch’s claim is that consciousness is the same as how tightly integrated a network is, and how many distinct roles its elements serve.

​​That’s why certain parts of the human brain give rise to consciousness… while a computer, no matter how fast or smart it gets, will never be conscious.

I can’t judge Koch’s argument one way or another. But I feel there’s something there, because his idea stimulated an analogous idea in my own mind. I think something similar happens in writing and communicating ideas.

Let me show you. Here’s the intro to the 1994 reprint of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media:

“Thirty years ago this past summer Herbert Marshall McLuhan published Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, and within a matter of months the book acquired the standing of Holy Scripture and made of its author the foremost oracle of the age. Sel­dom in living memory had so obscure a scholar descended so abruptly from so re­mote a garret into the center ring of the celebrity circus, but McLuhan accepted the transformation as if it were nothing out of the ordinary, nothing more than the inevi­table and unsurprising proof of the hypoth­esis that he had found in the library at the University of Toronto.”

How did McLuhan go from obscure scholar to oracle in a matter of months? From the same intro:

“Despite its title, the book was never easy to understand. By turns brilliant and opaque, McLuhan’s thought meets the specifications of the epistemology that he ascribes to the electronic media – non­ lineal, repetitive, discontinuous, intuitive, proceeding by analogy instead of sequential argument.”

So that’s the idea I wanted to share with you.

A textbook and a book of the Bible both convey information. Possibly even the same information.

But a textbook creates no experience, no consciousness in the reader’s brain. A textbook might be useful. But it’s too linear, and that’s why it’s forgettable, and it inspires nothing.

On the other hand, take writing like the Bible or McLuhan’s Understanding Media.

​​These are non-linear, self-referential works, where each passage is doing double and triple duty. ​The more integrated the writing, the more it creates an experience of consciousness in the reader’s brain.

That’s why these books are remembered, absorbed, and acted upon. That’s why they can transform somebody from obscure to celebrity. And it just so happens, that’s why they punch above their weight, influence-wise.

Split-brain persuasion

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Imagine a table in a science lab. At one end is a man dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, smiling and looking around. At the other end is a scientist in a white coat, holding a clipboard.

“I’ll ask you some yes-no questions,” the scientist says. “But don’t answer me in words. Instead I want you to point to YES or NO on this board here. And for each question, I will tell you which hand I want you to point with. Makes sense?”

The other man nods.

“Let’s start then. Right hand: are you at Caltech right now?”

The man points to YES with his right hand.

“Left hand: are you a woman?”

The man points to NO with his left hand.

“Right hand: is chocolate your favorite ice cream flavor?”

YES.

“Left hand: are you asleep right now?”

NO.

“Ok… here’s a more personal question. Right hand: do you believe in God?”

The right hand points to NO.

“Left hand: do YOU believe in God?”

The man’s left hand flies to point to YES. Because the left side of this man’s body, and the right side of his brain, are believers. But the right side of his body, and the left side of his brain, are atheists.

The crazy thing is, this experiment really happened. And so have many other related experiments.

They were all done on patients who had their corpus callosum cut. That’s the bridge between the two islands of your left and right brain hemispheres.

People with a cut corpus callosum do just fine in normal situations. But in a lab setting, you can tease out that they have two brains… two personalities… and two different consciousnesses inside their skulls and skin.

In a person with a normal corpus callosum, these two parts somehow merge. But my guess is these split-brain conflicts remain in all of us, just hidden beneath the surface.

Anyways, now that I’ve told you about the man who might be going to both heaven and hell, here’s the point of today’s email:

According to split-brain research, the right side of the brain responds to images, humor, surprise, and metaphors…

While the left side of the brain responds to facts, argument, consistency, and logic.

So you’ve got to both SHOW and TELL. Because you don’t want the two sides arguing with each other beneath the surface. It might sink your message.

And here’s another tip:

If you’ve tried and failed to persuade somebody before… even though you have a good point… then you don’t need better logic.

The left side is happy hearing the same sound logic over and over.

But you do need a surprising new presentation. It doesn’t have to be logical. It just has to be dramatic. How dramatic? Ideally, heaven-and-hell-type stuff.

Did you find this post enlightening? If you did, then use your left hand to click here and sign up for more ideas and images like what you just read.