Creativity

The six-word email, with examples

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I’m sitting on the couch as I write this, next to the open balcony doors, in my underwear, eyes bleary, hair looking like a lawnmower went over it, in a press to write a personal and yet valuable email to you before.

Before what?

Before it’s time for me to rush out of the house and go pick up my rental car and then drive up the coast for the day. The idea is to give myself a chance to burn in the sun, on a beautiful beach I will visit for the first time in my life.

But what to write about?

Fortunately, I wrote down a concept for today’s email almost two weeks ago:

“The six-word email, with examples”

That concept is based on an idea from Hollywood.

​​Your story should fit into six words, say Hollywood screenwriting . Here are a few examples from Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work, a series from Scott Myers’s Go Into The Story blog:

1. Human Spy on an Alien Planet

2. Loner cop. New partner. Police dog.

3. Infatuated boy. Dream girl. Find condom.

“Fine,” I said to myself when I read this idea. “Let me put it into action and try it out.”

So ​​I made a list of 10 possible email ideas, each just six words. And then, over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly sending them out. Example:

1. Emails without offer: stupid. Hence, consulting.

2. Results of my “rape” subject line.

3. What’s working on Substack right now?

And of course today’s email is another example of the six-word email.

Because it’s not that the email has to actually be six words itself. But rather, the core idea should be simple and easy to express, in just six words.

In some of my example emails above, I ran on too long and covered up the core message with too many words.

I won’t make that mistake today.

So let me just say, if you think you have no time to write daily emails, then do what I did.

Make a list of 10 six-word email concepts. Flesh them out a bit in an interesting and insightful way, and then send them out.

And if you say you don’t know how to come up with interesting six-word email concepts… or a way to quickly and easily flesh them out in an interesting and insightful way, then you might like:

A free presentation I will be putting on in the next week. It’s called the Most Valuable Email.

The details of this presentation will come tomorrow. If you’d like to read those details when they come out, or even sign up for my Most Valuable Email presentation, you can do that by getting onto my email newsletter. Sign up for it here.

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.

Sales copy written by hallucinatory voices

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True story:

An otherwise healthy woman, identified only as AB, suddenly started hearing voices in her head.

The year was 1984. The place was England.

The voices reassured AB they were medical professionals trying to help her. They even gave AB some convincing secret info to prove their claims.

But AB concluded she was going insane. She went to a psychiatrist and was prescribed an antipsychotic medication.

The voices stopped. AB, relieved and happy, went on holiday.

​​But then the voices returned. They told her to head home. They sent AB to an unknown address. It turned out to be a medical center specializing in brain scans. The voices told AB to get one of those brain scans on her own noggin.

AB’s doctor was initially reluctant — brain scans are expensive and the woman was crazy — but in the end, AB got her brain scan. And then another.

It turned out that, even though she showed no symptoms, she had a large tumor inside her skull.

One brain surgery later, and the tumor was removed.

After AB regained consciousness following surgery, the voices told her, “We are pleased to have helped you. Goodbye.” AB never heard from them again, and she continued to live a normal and healthy life.

AB’s psychiatrist, who wrote up this report, said that his colleagues fell into two camps:

Group one thought this was proof positive of benevolent telepathic communication.

Group two thought AB was a big ole grifter, and that she was inventing this story as a way of getting free access to the UK’s health services (AB wasn’t born in the UK, but she had lived there for 15 years before this case).

The psychiatrist offered a third explanation. Even though AB wasn’t manifesting any symptoms, it’s likely that the large tumor in her head made her feel somehow off. It’s possible that her unconscious started slyly gathering relevant information and making its own diagnosis. Eventually, this erupted in AB’s head as hallucinations.

I find this third explanation plausible. And I bring it up for two reasons.

First, it meshes well with how I imagine my sense of self. And that’s a flimsy wooden raft, floating on the surface of a dark and deep loch.

Reason two is that this might help reduce your workload.

Because writing is work. But you know what’s not work? Having ideas pop up in your head without any effort.

For example, I sometimes just “visit” what I want to write. I look over the topic and any research I might have collected. I then go do other stuff and allow the monsters under the surface to digest that information.

For me, there’s no work. I don’t have to do it. All I have to do is simply write it down.

Maybe you can try the same. Just put a lump of an idea into your head. Then go about your day. When you start hearing voices, calmly reach for a writing apparatus and take dictation. And when the voices finish, don’t forget to say thank you, and invite them to visit you again.

“Sign up,” a voice in your head is saying right now. “Sign up to this guy’s email newsletter. He has interesting and valuable things to say.”

What’s that? You say you want to sign up to my email newsletter? Well, I don’t usually do this, but all right. Here’s how you can get in.

Rescuing the Dread Pirate Roberts from a creative shipwreck

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“There will be no survivors… my men are here, and I am here… but soon, you will not be here…”

Here’s a little riddle for you:

How do three men, one of whom has been mostly dead all day long, storm a castle gate guarded by 60 soldiers?

Inconceivable, right?

​​Even if one of the three men happens to be a giant, and another a master swordsman… the enemies are too many. Success is inconceivable.

But what if you also throw in a wheelbarrow among your assets? And what if you even have a magical, fire-protective, “holocaust cloak”?

Suddenly, the inconceivable becomes easy. Because here’s what you do:

Just load one of the three men — preferably, the giant — into the wheelbarrow. Wrap the holocaust cloak around him.

Then start rolling the wheelbarrow towards the gate… and have the giant yell death threats at the soldiers as you approach.

Finally, just as fear and doubt start to creep into the hearts of the castle defenders… set the holocaust cloak on fire. Have your burning giant yell:

“The Dread Pirate Roberts takes no survivors… all your worst nightmares are about to come true… the Dread Pirate Roberts is here for your souls…”

Presto. The soldiers scatter in a panic, and you have taken the castle.

Perhaps you recognize this as a scene from the 1987 movie The Princess Bride, written by William Goldman.

But perhaps you also recognize it as something else, written by me in 2021.

Because about a month ago, I wrote an email about pirates. In that email, I was re-telling another scene from another William Goldman script, titled Sea Kings. That other scene had many of the same elements as the scene above:

First, a giant all-black figure who appears on the horizon at dusk, and who keeps floating nearer and nearer…

Then, the deep voice rumbling out from the figure… “Death or surrender… surrender or die… the Devil bids you choose…”

And finally, smoke and flames that erupt from around that black giant… to truly identify the legendary pirate you’re meeting face to face:

“Run up the white flag… It’s Blackbeard…”

It turns out Goldman reused a bunch of elements from Sea Kings (written some time in the 70s, never produced) to The Princess Bride (written some time later in the 70s, produced into a movie in 1987, became a giant hit and a big cultural icon).

The bigger point is that if you write a lot, you will eventually come up with a good idea, phrase, joke, motif, trick, transition, or image… which is part of a big creative shipwreck.

​​​Maybe that’s a book you never got published… or a video you made that nobody ever watched… or a daily email that ran too long and failed to make a clear point.

So why not reuse that good element a second, or a third, or a fifth time? In the right context, that rescued element might become highly influential, even though it was part of a disaster initially.

Take my email today, for example.

I hope you liked it. But maybe you didn’t.

If so, would you like me to try again?

As you wish. I’ll try again tomorrow, by rescuing an element of the copy I used today… and fitting it to a new purpose and a different format.

Good night, dear reader. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely write you an email in the morning.

A-list Copywriting Commandment no. 8, in D-minor

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“She was shocked because she was expecting us to play another concerto. So when I started the first bar of the D-minor concerto, she kind of jumped and panicked like an electric shock. And she couldn’t even consider moving ahead with playing.”

If you would like to see what real despair looks like, go on YouTube and search for “Maria Joao Pires wrong concerto.”

Pires is a concert pianist. She went on stage once, in front of a large live audience.

As soon as the orchestra started playing, Pires realized she had prepared the wrong piece. The orchestra was playing something other than what she had been rehearsing.

Result?

Panic. Sickness. Despair. I mean, imagine the situation.

You’re in front of a live audience.

The orchestra is mercilessly pushing on.

A few moments more, and it will be your turn to start playing as the star of the evening. Except you are completely unprepared and unable to perform.

And the time before everybody realizes it is three… two… one…

I’m not 100% sure why I decided to tell you this particular story. But in my mind, it tied into a question I got a few days ago from a reader named Randy:

How long did it take you to start writing daily emails like Ben Settle suggests and to always have something interesting to say?

(I’m asking you this since I’ve been trying my hand at writing daily emails. But even when I always come up with stories to tell, I find it difficult is to always have a lesson to add at the end)

My advice to Randy, and to you in case you want it, is to keep two lists.

One is where good ideas go.

Another is where fun/sickening stories go.

And rather than having a good story (“concert pianist realizes she prepared the wrong piece”), and then trying to pull out of your head a moral to that story…

… or rather than having a good idea to share (such as “keep two lists”) and then trying to pull out of your head a fun way to illustrate that idea…

… use your lists.

Because not everybody has a memory like Maria Joao Pires. In those 30 seconds from the icy and disgusting realization that she had prepared the entirely wrong piece… Pires managed to summon the right concerto from the depths of her mind. She played the whole thing flawlessly.

I am not that talented. And perhaps you aren’t either. No matter.

You can use paper — or a computer file — to outsource your memory. And your creativity too. Go down your lists, and come up with connections that you couldn’t make if’n you just relied on your raw brainpower.

“But two lists!” I hear you saying. “That’s twice the work of one list!”

True. And it goes back to something A-list copywriter Jim Rutz said:

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

This simple idea has been super valuable to me. It’s one of the main standards I keep for these emails I send you each day. And also for copy that I write for clients.

In fact, I would like to say this one idea is the most important thing to what I do… but there’s no “one thing.” So I put this Jim Rutz idea as no. 8 in my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

If by chance you haven’t seen this book yet… and you want to know what the other 9 commandments are… here’s where you can get the whole desperate and surprising lot:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Interesting ideas, delivered unexpectedly

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“My job is essentially to come up with 365 ideas a year. If you ever want to find out just how uninteresting you really are, get a job where the quality and frequency of your thoughts determine your livelihood. I’ve found that the only way I can keep writing every day, year after year, is to let my mind wander into new territories. To do that, I’ve had to cultivate a kind of mental playfulness.”

That’s from a speech that Bill Watterson gave in 1990 at Kenyon College. Waterson, as you might know, is the author of Calvin & Hobbes, one of the most successful comic strips of all time.

Waterson’s speech is funny. And interesting. And valuable if you do creative work, or even if you have an online brand or business.

It’s worth digging up online. But today I want to share something else with you.

Because I know that frigtening realization that Waterson talks about. Sometimes I sit down to write these emails and really… all the ideas that come to me are uninteresting. I get tense. “This is the best you’ve got? Would you read this crap? You wouldn’t, would you?”

And like Watterson, the only way I know to not to get bogged down in that space is to let my mind water into new territories.

I have a few routines that allow me to do that.

For example, I’m subscribed to a wonderful email newsletter. It arrives every few days, unexpectedly.

And with each email comes a thought-provoking article that I would never have read otherwise. It’s where I came across the Bill Watterson speech I referenced above.

So if you’d like to sign up to this newsleter… and let your mind wander into new territories on occasion… here’s the usefully ugly signup form for Thinking About Things:

https://www.thinking-about-things.com/subscribe

The parable of the idea sower

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Today I’d like to tell you about one of the two main engines behind my ability to produce. This engine is very simple, but it’s very powerful. And I believe you can get great use out of it if you also choose to use it.

But hold on.

Will you really hear me if I tell you straight up?

Perhaps. But I want better odds than that. So let me first tell you the ancient parable of the sower.

The sower went a-sowing. He threw down some seeds. A few fell by the wayside. A few fell on shallow ground. A few fell among thorns.

All of these seeds were wasted.

But a few seeds fell on good soil. And the upshot was a good harvest. The sower had an ROI of 3,000%-6,000%. And he said, “You know what? I might do this again tomorrow.”

Maybe you recognize this parable. And maybe you even know one interpretation of it.

But today I want to give you another interpretation. It might be new to you.

Because ideas you come up with — possible solutions to a problem — are like these seeds. A few ideas fall by the wayside because they are just nonsense and irrelevant. A few ideas take root in shallow ground — they are too predictable and unimaginative. A few ideas end up choked with thorns, because they are impractical.

But a few ideas land right where they should. And the ROI is tremendous.

Yesterday, a member of my Copy Riddles program wrote in. He said he could only come up with two bullets where I had suggested writing three. I told him that the solution to his problem might be to write 6 bullets or 9, instead of aiming for 3.

Because if you can’t get an idea to land right where it should, it’s not because your aim is not good enough. It’s because you’re not throwing enough seeds out. Throw more seeds out, regularly, and you won’t have to worry about your aim.

That’s what I’ve been doing for a few years already. 10 ideas. Every day. About something — personal, business, or fanciful. And I do it while working too. 10 subject lines. 10 hooks. 10 ways to illustrate a point that you should generate more ideas, including wasted ones.

By the way, this is something else you might recognize. I originally got this “10 ideas” idea from James Altucher. He’s also the one who had the smart insight that if you can’t come up with 10 ideas, you should come up with 20. Because you’re obviously limiting yourself too much in your thinking.

James has a little challenge for you. He promises to turn you into an idea machine. He’s also got a lot of how-to advice that might help you in this quest. You can find all of that on the following page, which has been worth tens of thousands of dollars to me, and might be worth more to you — if you only do what it says, starting today.

But before you go — do you want more ideas like this? Then sign up to my email newsletter. And then off you go, to become an idea machine:

https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-for-becoming-an-idea-machine/

Proven: Change in perspective creates 900% improvement in thinking

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A few months ago, Edward de Bono died. He was somebody meaningful in my life because I read his Lateral Thinking book 15 years ago.

Lateral Thinking got into my head. It influenced how I do stuff like writing these emails. It made me generate more ideas before I commit to one… made me less critical of ideas as they pop up… made me integrate randomness and restrictions into my idea generation.

Anyways, I read an obit for de Bono in The Guardian today. And the following quote from de Bono came up:

“Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception.”

I was very excited when I read this. “Can this be true?” I thought. “If it is, then just imagine how valuable that would make a change of perspective!”

Now I’m no math wiz, but by my calculations it would mean that the right change of perspective would create something like a 900% increase in right thinking.

So for a split second, I thought about tracking down the studies that de Bono referred to. But those are probably as interesting as watching a slug try to cross a six-lane highway.

So instead, let me point you to another kind of proof… which de Bono approved of… which is much more convincing… and which might help you when you try to convince people of your own ideas:

https://bejakovic.com/chickensoup

Boredom is a necessary nutrient

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Yesterday, I came across an article which compared media consumption to eating. The real problem, the article claimed, is that we are consuming the media equivalent of junk food. But I’m not buying it.

Because here’s another food-related claim I once heard:

Hunger is a necessary nutrient.

That was somebody’s clever way of summarizing what’s now a pretty accepted medical idea. When you don’t eat, your body does some housekeeping which ends up being good for you, and which you cannot get done otherwise.

In other words, hunger, occasional but regular hunger, is just as needed as salt or vitamin C.

And now let me extend that idea to media consumption:

Boredom is a necessary nutrient. Or rather, a necessary ingredient, for any kind of creative work or actual thinking.

For example, today I spent three hours in the car, driving from one town to another.

As soon as I got in the car, my hand reached out to turn on the radio.

“Get thee behind me, Satan” I said to my hand, and I stopped myself from turning on the radio. Because I had a feeling what would happen if I kept the radio off.

For a while after that, my mind roiled inside my skull. “This is so boring!” it said. “I’m getting nervous! Let’s put on some music, it doesn’t even have to have words!”

But eventually, the mind gave up. And some time later, without me doing anything, it happened:

An idea for a new book jumped out at me. The title, the concept, everything. I’m not sure I will ever write this book, but right now I think it’s pretty cool.

Then a few minutes after that, an outline formed in my head for a project I’m working on.

“That outline seems too linear,” I said. “Not integrated enough.”

So a few minutes later, while I braked and navigated some tricky curves high above the sea, a better outline formed in my head.

Eventually, I pulled over at a gas station. I took out my phone, and I wrote down the results of all this hard work I had done.

Maybe the same stuff would have happened in my head had the radio been playing. Or had I been listening to an audiobook. Or had I had somebody in the car to entertain me.

But I doubt it. And that’s why I’d like to suggest:

If you’re looking to get healthy, lean, and fit, creatively speaking, it might be worth turning off your TV. Hiding your phone under the couch. Even putting away that valuable book you are reading.

And then, just sitting there, hungry for stimulation and bored out of your mind…. until something cool happens.

Oh, and stop subscribing to so many email newsletters. Even the entertaining and valuable ones. Like mine.

How the Grinch stole V-day

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Every marketer in Whoville likes Valentine’s a lot.
But this marketer from Whoville for some reason does not.
So instead of an email that ties into V-day, too,
Here’s how Chuck Jones sold the Grinch, and why it matters to you.

Let’s set the stage:

The year is 1962. Our main character is Charles Martin Jones, better known as Chuck Jones.

If you’ve ever watched Saturday morning cartoons before Cartoon Network came out, you probably know this name. Because Chuck Jones directed a bunch of the most famous Warner Brothers cartoons of all time, the ones with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner.

In fact, when 1000 professional animators were asked to rank the 50 greatest cartoons of all time, Chuck Jones’s cartoons came in 10 times among the top 50… 4 times out of the top 5… and one, What’s Opera Doc?, took the number one spot.

But in 1962, that was all in the past. Because Jones was no longer at Warners, but was now at MGM. He was pushing to get a Christmas feature made, based on a book by his friend Ted Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss.

There are lots of interesting details about How the Grinch Stole Christmas went from a book to a cartoon. But there’s only one bit that’s relevant for us today:

Once Jones created the storyboard for the cartoon, he had to go and sell it. Because in those days, you didn’t pitch a show to a network. Instead you had to find sponsors first. So Jones went around town, giving presentation after presentation of his storyboard for How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

But nobody wanted it. The cereal people… the chocolate people… the sea monkey people. They all said no.

All in all, Chuck Jones had to pitch the Grinch 25 times before an unlikely group — The Foundation for Commercial Banks — finally agreed to finance it.

And then, as you probably know, the Grinch cartoon became a huge success. It’s been playing every Christmas season ever since it came out. And Dr. Seuss’s book, which sold 5,000 copies before the cartoon — not bad for a kid’s book — started selling 50,000 copies a year once the cartoon came out, and never let up.

By now this might sound like a typical story of a sleeper hit, and of the Elmer Fudds who were too dumb to recognize it. And you know what? That’s exactly what it is, and why I’m telling it to you.

Because there are too many stories like this. Star Wars… Harry Potter… The Beatles. Giant hits to which the industry experts said no, no, no.

Did you ever ask yourself why?

You might think it’s the sclerosis of industry insiders… but something else is going on. And if you’re in the business of creating offers and you want them to become big hits, then this is relevant to you too. I’ll tell you the explanation I’ve found for this mysterious phenomenon in my email tomorrow.