Change Of Perspective

Chicken soup for the marketer’s, copywriter’s, and salesman’s soul

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“In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it’s not impossible that some of these people in SUV’s have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he’s trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he’s in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.”

The above quote is from David Foster Wallace, from his famous “This is Water” commencement speech at Kenyon College.

At some point in your life, you’ve probably either heard this exact quote on something very much like it. It’s basically cognitive behavioral therapy:

1. You only ever have a few pixels of evidence about what’s “really” going on.

2. Those pixels can fit into multiple consistent pictures.

3. Some of those pictures are more pleasant and useful for you to look at than others.

4. So you might as well focus on the useful and the pleasant pictures.

Pretty good advice, right?

Except, I happen to be professionally warped through my work as a direct response copywriter.

And so, while most people might see a healthy life lesson above, I see a sales technique.

A couple days ago, I talked about Sam Taggart, the door-to-door salesman profiled in a New Yorker article.

I showed you one way that Taggart deals with objections. But here’s another way, from the article:

Usually, once the customer realizes she’s being pitched, she’ll say anything to make the salesman go. When I canvassed with Taggart, I often felt anxious: They really want us to leave! But he interpreted every objection as an appeal for further information. He heard “I can’t afford it” as “Show me how I can afford it,” and “I already have a gun and a mean dog” as “What else do I need to fully protect my family?”

Taggart always takes objections as a request for more info, and questions as a sign of interest.

And why not?

Like DFW says above, it’s not impossible. In fact, in at least some situations, it’s exactly what’s happening.

When a potential customer or client asks you an accusatory question, or when they raise an insurmountable objection, those are just air bubbles on the surface of the ocean. You don’t really know what’s going on underneath the surface to produce those bubbles. So you might as well imagine a colorful and fun underwater party, populated by singing crabs and smiling tropical fish who really want you to succeed. “Darling it’s better down where it’s wetter, take it from meeeee…”

Anyways, the New Yorker profile of Sam Taggart doesn’t paint a very flattering picture of the guy. But that’s mainly New Yorker propaganda. And in any case, there’s a lot of value in that article, if you only, as they say, read between the lines.

I might write about some of that valuable stuff in the future. If you want to catch that when it comes out, sign up to my daily email newsletter.

Spoons and forks considered harmful

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Earlier this morning, I had what I can only generously call breakfast.

​​I tore off a chunk of baguette and stood barefoot on the balcony, gnawing on my bread and looking over the city.

Then I went back to the kitchen. I have two cans of sardines. I also have a small ceramic bowl, but no forks. I considered opening one of the cans, pouring out the contents into the bowl, and eating the sardines using my fingers.

I got near to the can, then stepped away. I got near again, stepped away again. “I’m better than this,” I convinced myself. The sardines will have to wait.

I then took a small pot and boiled some water. I took a package of espresso coffee and cut it open — thank God I bought scissors this morning.

But I don’t have anything resembling a spoon. So I shook the coffee package over the boiling water.

Was that about a teaspoon of coffee? Or two? Maybe add some more? The coffee came out cocaine-level strong.

All this is to say that last night I moved into my new apartment.

The apartment is furnished — there is a bed and a couch and things like that.

But many of the absolute necessities of daily life — spoons, forks, shot glasses — were not included. I have to buy them. And in the meantime, I have to make do, or do without.

Some usual things are an absolute no-go. I can’t wash clothes until I get a rack on which to dry them.

Other things, like those fingery sardines, I decided to postpone for later.

Still other things, I figured out some new method of doing, like shaking out half a pound of coffee over a boiling pot of water.

I don’t mind any of this. In fact, I find it kind of stimulating.

In another few days or weeks, I will buy the necessaries, get used to this apartment, get back in the usual groove, and live here much like I’ve lived everywhere else.

But right now, I’m very awake. I’m seeing and experiencing new things and having new ideas — even if they’re terrible, like eating sardines with my hands — that I never would have had otherwise.

But you know what? I have a lot of shopping to do. And later today, I have to send out the first batch of postcards to my Most Valuable Postcard subscribers.

So let me get to the idea I want to share with you quickly and without much ado:

One of the people I’ve long admired the most is computer scientist Alan Kay.

He’s the guy who said a change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points, which is a hope I keep clinging to desperately.

Kay is a bit of a tech visionary. Much of the technology we take for granted today and that underlies our world, like windows interfaces and object-oriented programming, was Kay’s work.

Kay is also interested in design and education and creativity. And he has many interesting things to say.

For example, back in 2009, Kay gave a talk titled, Normal Considered Harmful. In it, he said the following:

“You don’t want to think every time you take a step. You can cripple yourself by questioning everything that you do. But on the other hand, every once in a while, instead of doing meditation on a flower, meditate on all the assumptions you’re making about the world that you’re just taking for granted for efficiency reasons.”

Kay says he performs this exercise every day. Literally every day, 15 minutes to think about all the assumptions he’s making and that he’s taking for granted.

Sure, sometimes you’re forced into this situation, because there’s just no spoon in your apartment.

But like Kay says, there might be value — even big value, maybe 80 IQ points worth of value — in making this no-fork, no-spoon meditation into a daily habit.

So try it.

Or don’t.

Maybe you’re smart enough already. In that case, you definitely won’t enjoy my email newsletter. Otherwise, you can sign up for it here.

The bad news opportunity

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“It’s easy to give lip service to, as well as to try to be entertaining about it… but it’s really a very serious point. And the people I’ve been around, who really have the Midas touch when it comes to money, they’re really very good at this.”
— Dan Kennedy, Wealth Attraction for Entrepreneurs seminar

The ancient Greeks believed in a goddess named Nemesis. Her role was to punish people who’ve had an excessive run of unbroken good luck.

The Greeks knew, just the same as every other people in history has known. Just the same as you know right now:

You can’t have an infinite run of good luck.

Maybe. Not unless you make your own.

I talked a couple of times in the past week about Joe Sugarman. And I’ll keep talking about Joe, because there’s a lot more to the guy than just the hundreds of millions of dollars he made with his orange-tinted BluBlockers sunglasses.

One thing was that Joe saw every problem as an opportunity.

For example, one time when he ran an ad in the WSJ, selling a calculator, Joe screwed up. The price in his ad was cheaper than retail. The manufacturer was furious.

“I have dealers all over the country calling me and complaining,” the manufacturer screamed at Joe.

“Don’t worry,” Joe said, “I’ll fix it.”

So he ran a second, smaller ad announcing the mistake, raising the price, and giving consumers just a few days to respond at the old price. The new ad outpulled the original ad.

That’s what Dan Kennedy is talking about above.​​ People who have a skill for making money — like Joe — have really quick recovery when something bad happens.

​​After all, everything can ultimately be some kind of opportunity, they figure, and looked at in the long-enough term, all news is good news of some sort. Might as well see that sooner rather than later.

Sounds impossible?​​

Last year, I decided to try this idea out for a week.

“Have quick recovery,” I told myself. “All news is good news.”

As I made that decision and wrote it down in my journal, I felt an unpleasant sensation, like I got hit by a big wave. Something was wrong with me physically, and I felt like I might suddenly pass out. I have no idea what happened, and it was gone the next moment.

Normally, if something like this happened to me, I would get concerned, maybe hesitant, maybe look for signs something else bad is about to happen.

Instead, this time, I just shrugged my shoulders, smiled, and got curious. “What good is going to come of this?” I wondered.

Try it yourself. It’s liberating. Plus you might have good ideas come from it. You might even make some money that you wouldn’t have made otherwise.

Make the decision, right now, that for the next week, whenever something seemingly bad happens, you will remind yourself that something good will come of this. You might not see it yet. But what are some ways it could happen?

Maybe it will happen by you signing up to my email newsletter. Or maybe not. Only one way to find out.

How not to get stupider and maybe even get smarter

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Last Thursday, I tried to access the RT website. As you might know, RT used to stand for Russia Today.

RT is the Kremlin’s answer to CNN — a source of generic news, more or less fact-based, which are nonetheless filtered and shaped to push a certain viewpoint and agenda.

I tried to access the RT website because I had gotten sucked into reading news about the Ukraine war. But all the news sources I was reading were American or European journalists and analysts, and their data sources were ultimately either the Pentagon or Ukrainian government announcements.

​​So I wanted to see what the Russians have to say.

It turned out I cannot.

​​The RT site is blocked throughout the EU. When I type in the URL, I get some kind of security exception which none of my browsers can get around without special evasive maneuvers.

I remembered hearing something about this early when the war started. And sure enough, I soon found a video of Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, saying that Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik are now banned across Europe because they spread lies and threaten to “sow division in our union.”

Like I said, there’s no doubt RT is manipulative, biased, and has its own agenda. But so are all of our other sources of news, including the ones that get state funding either in the EU or the US.

And when a politician like von der Leyen says she is restricting access to information because she doesn’t want division among the people she rules… well, this reminds me of something I truly believe:

A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. That’s a statement by Alan Kay, who is something of a genius inventor, technology prophet, and expert on learning and education.

The inverse also holds:

A consistent and uniform perspective, designed to minimize division, leads to a loss of IQ. Maybe not 80 points, but 15 or 20 for sure.

Perhaps you don’t agree with, not in the current situation, not when there’s a black-and-white crisis like the current war in Ukraine.

But perhaps you’re like me, and you intuitively believe in the value of broader viewpoints and longer-term thinking.

If you do, I’d like to suggest you take on other position even when it seems repulsive. Even when you firmly believe it to be propaganda, manipulation, or even straight-up lies.

At worst, it will turn out to be a topic for a new email to your list. At best, it might mean a transformative change in perspective, worth an extra 80 IQ points.

For more possibly perspective-shifting ideas:

You might like to know I write a daily email newsletter, mostly about persuasion, influence, and copywriting. You can try it out here, until the European Commission blocks me from spreading divisive ideas.

How to win an argument by not really trying

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About 20 years ago, when I first read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, I came across a clever aphorism.

“You cannot win an argument,” wrote Carnegie.

That’s stuck with me ever since, even though it goes against my argumentative nature. The fact is, I like to debate and argue and show people how I’m right and how they aren’t.

Except, like Carnegie says, you cannot really win. You cannot argue people over to your way of thinking. And even if you do get them to admit that you’re right and they’re wrong, you’ve gained nothing except their hatred.

So most of the time, when I find I’m about to let the debating crow out of its cage, I bite my tongue and I stuff the ugly black bird back where it belongs. I smile. I nod. And I think to myself, “Boy, how wrong you are. But you won’t hear it from me.”

This is an improvement over losing friends and alienating people. But it’s hardly a creative and productive way to deal with new ideas.

There’s gotta be something better, right?

Of course. It’s just that I wasn’t clever enough to think of it myself. But I came across this better way to win arguments in an interview with billionaire investor Howard Marks.

Marks was asked what early advice helped him become so successful. He said there wasn’t any investing advice that did it.

Instead, it was just an attitude, and he’s not sure where he picked it up. He illustrated it by describing how he deals with his longtime business partner:

“Each of us is open to the other’s ideas. When we have an intellectual discussion, neither of us puts a great emphasis on winning. We want to get to the right answer. We have enormous respect for each other, which I think is the key. When he says something, a position different from mine, my first reaction is not, ‘How can I diffuse that? How can I beat that? How can I prove he’s wrong?’ My first reaction is to say, ‘Hey, what can I get from that? What can I take away? Is he right? Maybe he’s right and I was wrong.'”

“Yeah, yeah,” I hear you saying. “Enough with the high-sounding billionaire lessons. Why don’t you get off your preachy pony and give me some ideas for how I could money? Like today?”

Well I never… the ingratitude!

Honestly, this intellectual humility thing was my idea for you to make money. But you are right. It might take some time to bear fruit.

If you want to make money today, then I don’t have much advice to give you. Well, none except what I wrote up a few years ago and put inside my Upwork book.

“Upwork!” you now say. “I’ve tried it! It doesn’t work. It’s a cesspool.”

You may be completely right. I certainly won’t argue with you.

But if you want to see what I have to say about success on Upwork, and what you might be able to take away from it and maybe even make money from, today, then here is my Upwork book, still available for some uncertain time on Amazon:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork

How to get your worst customers or clients foaming with rage at you and impotent to do anything about it

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I was walking home down a dark street just now. It was empty and quiet and I was lost in thought when — screaming and scratching — a cat scrambled out of a dumpster right next to me and bolted away.

I won’t lie. The bitch startled me. I might have missed a step and my heart definitely missed two beats.

I cursed out the cat and collected myself. I turned around to make sure nobody saw me in my unmanly state. And I picked up my path home, still a little alarmed.

“But what about the cat?” I thought. “I bet I gave her a good scare, too. Must be why she bolted like that! But she deserved it.” And a sly smile spread across my face.

You might think I’m a miserable person to gloat over possibly scaring a cat. Perhaps you’re right. But I’m reporting the more shameful parts of my life to bring you an idea. A copywriting idea. A copywriting idea which I think might be powerful.

It goes like this:

1. Think of your prospect

2. Think of other people who are around your prospect, and who are causing your prospect fear, harm, humiliation, despair, etc.

3. Write your headline: Here’s how to cause fear, harm, humiliation, despair, etc. to those other people

You may this is deranged. Again, perhaps you’re right. But aren’t you at least curious to see this idea in action? If so, here are three successful examples:

1. Gary Halbert. Selling his own newsletter. His prospect? Anybody who’s trying to sell something… and is finding it frustrating or even humiliating. Gary’s headline:

How to make people line up and beg you to take their money!

2. A top Clickbank offer right now, called His Secret Obsession. It’s targeted at women. Who want to win a man’s “love, attention, and total devotion for LIFE.” But not just any man! There’s a very specific guy these women have in mind, because (my guess)… they are OBSESSED.

3. John Carlton. Like Gary, John also poked into dark places of the soul. It might be horrible… but it works. Even to sell golf instructional videos:

How Does An Out-Of-Shape 55-Year-Old Golfer, Crippled By Arthritis And 71 Lbs. Overweight, Still Consistently Humiliate PGA Pros In Head-To-Head Matches By Hitting Every Tee Shot Further And Straighter Down The Fairway?

“The answer will shock and delight you!” writes John.

​​I bet. After all, just imagine. You’re not as disadvantaged as this overweight, crippled golfer… and Tom, Dick, and Horace down at the country club definitely aren’t PGA pros… so the humiliation will be immense! But they deserve it.

By the way, if you’re curious about the “How to” promise in my headline today… you can find these special client management strategies inside my daily email newsletter. Here’s where to sign up.