Personal Change

“WILL YOU BE LEFT BEHIND?”

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In a moment of idleness today I clicked on an email from Stansberry Research. It took me to a VSL with a big headline that reads:

“WILL YOU BE LEFT BEHIND?”

Behind the video, there is a shadowy photo of what looks like people being corralled into a concentration camp. And then Porter Stansberry starts to speak in a monotone voice:

“In regular places all across America, the lights are going out. And no, I don’t mean streetlights.”

I didn’t watch past the first few minutes. I am not in the Stansberry target audience, and it didn’t much move me. But something similar did move me a while back.

A while back, copywriter Dan Ferrari sent out an email with the subject line “If you want to be a poor, no-name copywriter, don’t read this.” It was about the consolidation Dan saw in the direct response industry. Here’s a part of that email:

“If you’re a copywriter that can produce actual results in that cold traffic, consolidated arena, you’ll have it made. If not, you’re going to be one of the writers fighting for the scraps.”

Really, this is very similar to the Stansberry promotion. It’s a prediction about the future, with the overarching message:

“Some will get left behind, while others will thrive — and it’s your choice which group you end up in.”

I don’t bring this up to talk about the future — of copywriters or of pensioners. Instead, I bring it up to talk about inspiration.

I used to think I cannot write inspirational copy.

After all, I’m such a cold, unenthusiastic fish. How can I possibly motivate others when I can’t even motivate myself?

But then I realized inspirational copy has its own predictable templates. Some are familiar — Frodo goes to Mordor and keeps pushing when the ring gets real heavy.

But there are other inspirational templates as well.

The way to find them is simply to watch your own cold heart. If it starts to twitch with a bit of life, you might have just read something inspirational. So take note of it, and see how you were influenced.

That’s how I singled out that Dan Ferrari email, which reincarnated into the Stansberry promo. And which, if you’re a student of copywriting who’s always looking to improve, you can find here:

https://orders.stansberryresearch.com/?cid=MKT421756&eid=MKT460923

A return to Mad Men-era Ulcer Gulch?

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There’s a scene from Mad Men that’s stuck with me for years:

Grey-haired Roger Sterling, the senior partner of the Sterling Cooper advertising agency, is on the phone with his wife.

“I am drinking my milk,” he reassures her. And sure enough, he’s got a half-full glass of milk in front of him. He then tops it up with vodka and drinks it down.

The vodka was there because it feels good. The milk, on the other hand, was supposed to treat ulcers. Turns out, ulcers were considered a badge of success on Madison Avenue, because all the high-ranking executives like Roger had them.

In fact, around the middle of the 20th century, Madison Avenue was popularly known as “Ulcer Gulch.” Which made me think of something I heard in an interview with marketer Rich Schefren. Says Rich:

“Most entrepreneurs make the mistake of putting their self-growth goals ahead of their business success.”

This made my long, furry ears perk up. It sounded like Rich was advocating a return to Ulcer Gulch. But no.

What Rich was really saying (as he explained a bit later in the interview) is that you need a business that you can do now, as you are. In other words, you shouldn’t wait to become a different person before you can start a successful business.

This sounds right to me. What business success I’ve had – my copywriting career, those Amazon bestsellers I mentioned a few days ago, a few recent partnerships — used the skills, experiences, and mindset I already had. And that was good enough.

On the other hand, whenever I’ve tried to start some kind of venture that sounded great on paper, but was more than a step removed from where I was currently, I always failed. That’s happened more times than I can count.

So what does this mean for you? Probably nothing. But perhaps, you can get out a pen and a piece of paper, pour yourself a glass of cold vodka-milk, and start listing ideas for services or products you can offer to the world right now — without mastering a new field, becoming a better public speaker, or getting more motivated.

​​Putting these kinds of restrictions on your idea generation can stir up creativity. And who knows, you might hit upon something that leads to real business success, without the ulcers.

The criminal secret to getting any job done quickly and easily

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A few days ago, I watched an inspiring movie called “At Close Range.”

It stars Sean Penn as Brad Whitewood Jr, a criminally inclined yute. Christopher Walken plays Brad Whitewood Sr, the yute’s criminally proficient deadbeat dad.

Brad Jr wants in on the action that Brad Sr has going — stealing tractors from dealership lots.

Eventually, Brad Sr relents and decides to bring his son into the gang. So they take a walk through the woods, smoking a joint, while Brad Sr explains how the whole operation works.

“And this group of guys,” Jr asks him, “it’s all over the country? It’s organized?”

“Organized?” Brad Sr says in his halting, nasal way. “It’s just guys. I know guys… My brothers know some… Everybody knows some people. Before you know it, you know everybody you need to get the job done.”

This reminded me of a bit of wisdom I heard from real estate guru Joe McCall.

Joe does 50+ real estate deals each year, while comfortably pulling in $50k-$100k each month.

And to hear him tell it, he doesn’t work very hard at it. That’s because one of his success principles is “Don’t ask ‘how’, ask ‘who.'”

​​Joe explains in more detail:

“While it may seem smart to ask ‘how’ questions — like ‘How do I set up a website,’ ‘How should I create my bandit signs,’ or ‘How do I do the direct mail?’ — it’s much better to ask ‘Who,’ as in ‘Who can do this for me?'”

That might be something to consider, whether you’re engaged in tractor stealing or real estate or direct response marketing. If you’re not achieving the success you want, maybe the trouble is you’re trying to go it alone.

Fortunately, the fix is simple. Everybody knows some people. And they know people… Pretty soon, you know everybody you need to get the job done.

The smart way to discover secret new opportunities

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I have a friend visiting from out of town, so last night I took him to a unique restaurant.

The entrance is hidden. You have to walk in off the street, through a dark and smokey hallway that doubles as a cafe, at the end of which, a door opens up into a series of large rooms.

The restaurant itself is bright and full of people, all eating large platters of veal and lamb… and then stuffing forkfuls of chocolate mousse down their throats and washing it down with red wine.

It’s one of the better places to eat in town. And yet it’s so easy to miss when you’re walking down the street. The only reason I know it is because my dad took me here many years ago.

Lots of things in life can be like this.

For example, I first read the 4-Hour Workweek some time in 2011. It got me intrigued about the idea of online businesses.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” I thought, “if there were more info like this?”

It took me years to discover that, yes, there is a ton of info out there about copywriting and marketing and making money online. I found it eventually by poking around the Internet and following clues and reading and exploring. But I wasted a lot of time.

That’s one way to discover restaurants, too.

You can go online, look over dozens or hundreds of restaurant listings on Yelp or Trip Advisor…

Read a bunch of reviews for the ones that look interesting…

Then try out the best candidates one by one.

It’s one way. But the more I go through life, the more I realize it’s a slow and wasteful way.

A much better way is to have somebody knowledgeable take you by the hand and say, “Here, there’s this incredible opportunity right behind this dark and smokey hallway.”

​​And just in case you’re wondering… it’s easier to have this happen than you might think. All you really have to do is to talk to people… be interested… and be open to new suggestions.

Your inner GPS for success

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Ever wondered how you intuitively find where you parked your car in a mall garage?

Or for that matter, how you automatically drive that car home once you find it?

It turns out there are physical structures in your brain that help you solve these complex problems. I don’t understand the details, but I’ve heard it described as your “inner GPS.” These brain structures tell you where you are now relative to where you were… and which way you’re going.

This is a fairly new discovery, by the way. The biological details weren’t settled until 15 or so years ago. And since this question puzzled philosophers for centuries, it’s no wonder that the trio of scientists who finally unlocked the mystery of your “inner GPS” got the 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their work.

But here’s a much trickier riddle.

How do you know where you are in life, not physically, but in other ways?

How do you know where you are relative to where you were, say 5 years ago?

And how do you know if you’re moving in the direction you want to go, or away from it?

These Nobel laureates figured out we have an inbuilt system to help us navigate the physical world. It’s not certain we have such a system to help us navigate life more broadly.

And that’s why achieving success can be so mystifying.

So what’s the solution?

Well, my best guess is that you have to consciously build up your systems and maps and checklists for navigating life, and becoming more successful, in a way that doesn’t make you miserable.

It’s kind of how a road trip worked before MapQuest and then Google Maps came on the scene.​

​​​Traveling won’t be as quick or easy as with a real GPS…

You might occasionally go down an abandoned road into the woods…

And maybe your entire map might need to get tossed out or updated.

It’s not very efficient… ​​But what else is there?

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 a couple of days ago, 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.’ […] I’m a big believer in intellectual humility, which means saying 1) I could be wrong, 2) he could be right.”

I don’t know, Howard. Is this really winning? Of course, I’m all for intellectual humility. But I don’t think it requires saying I could be wrong. And now let me show you some reasons why.

My current love affair with a giant

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Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been listening to a set of ancient inspirational tapes (well, a digitized version).

​​I got them because I watched the original infomercial for the tapes, which came out in 1988, and was sold less by the promises (health, wealth, happiness, and success) than by the testimonials (a lesson for you there). ​​So many of the people in the infomercial said, “I’d tried everything, I was still a failure, until I found this.”

If you’ve been following my emails over the past few weeks, you might know the program in question is Personal Power by Tony Robbins. For years, I’d hallucinated Tony Robbins to be some kind of motivational fluff guru. I imagined he went up on stage, hyped people up, and sent them home. “That’s not how success works,” I told myself.

Turns out I didn’t really know much about Tony Robbins. For example, the man is a giant, or close to one. He had a brain tumor while he was a teenager, which caused his pituitary gland to keep leaking growth hormone. He grew 10 inches in high school and now stands at an impressive 6’7. (The tumor imploded in on itself eventually.)

But more importantly, it turns out Tony Robbins knows what he’s talking about. He’s got some real “success technologies” that others aren’t teaching. Well, I’m sure somebody out there is teaching the same stuff as Tony Robbins, especially after the big man has been in the limelight for 40+ years. But I’ve read a bunch of self-help, how-to-succeed books, and while some of the stuff that TR teaches was familiar to me, some of the key details were new as well.

Most importantly, his “success technologies” work. I can’t say I’ve achieved dramatic increases in health, wealth, or success in the 10 or so days I’ve been listening to the tapes. But by using a couple of the ideas TR teaches, I have been able to motivate myself to do things that I normally struggle to do. I’ve done them consistently, and pretty cheerfully and automatically, instead of grudgingly and haltingly.

So what’s the point of all this? Well, if you too have tried everything, but you still find yourself a failure (no shame there, join the club), then maybe give the digitized version of Personal Power a listen. And even if you don’t care for Tony Robbins and have no interest in his “success technologies,” maybe you will find it heartening to know that there are some good and useful products sold through direct response advertising, and yes, even through infomercials.

Money don’t love Spruce Goose

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On a beautiful day exactly 72 years ago, Howard Hughes put down the telephone and took hold of the controls.

He was piloting the largest flying boat ever built.

I’m talking about the Hughes H-4 Hercules, aka the Spruce Goose.

In spite of the nickname, The Goose was mostly birch. That didn’t stop it from being enormously expensive for the time, and with good reason. As Hughes put it:

“It is over five stories tall with a wingspan longer than a football field. That’s more than a city block. Now, I put the sweat of my life into this thing. I have my reputation all rolled up in it and I have stated several times that if it’s a failure, I’ll probably leave this country and never come back. And I mean it.”

Well, I guess Hughes didn’t mean it all that seriously. Because he didn’t leave the country, even though, by all practical measures, the Goose turned out to be a failure.

After all, once Hughes lifted The Goose above the sparkling waters off Long Beach, CA, it flew for less than a minute, for less than a mile.

That was its one and only flight.

And even this one lousy flight came well after the end of World War II, even though The Goose was designed to be a war transport plane, and even though the whole point of building The Goose out of spruce (or birch) was the wartime restriction on materials such as aluminum.

So yeah, the Spruce Goose remains a great illustration of a massive, optimistic, and very impractical and useless project.

The point being, don’t be like Howard Hughes.

Because money don’t love Spruce Goose.

Money loves speed.

(I’ve tried to track down who coined that saying, but I don’t have a definitive answer. The farthest back I’ve been able to go is to direct marketer Joe Vitale, who is mentioned in Mark Ford’s Ready Fire Aim as promoting the idea that fast is more profitable than perfect.)

Of course, I’m not saying to cut corners and be sloppy in your work.

​​But if you put the sweat of your life into one project, and roll up your whole reputation into one thing, odds are you’ll wind up with a multi-million dollar goose on your hands. And the bitch won’t even fly.

An inconvenient truth and goals

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In a slap to avocado-munching environmentalists worldwide, a new study published in Nature reports an inconvenient truth:

Organic farming is worse for the environment.

Yes, organic practices reduce climate pollution caused directly by farming.

But they also reduce crop yields.

Which means more land has to be used to feed all the hungry mouths out there… which means more forests have to be cleared… which releases more carbon into the atmosphere… which is bad, bad news for those cliff-climbing walruses in the Arctic.

So will Greta Thunberg and her ilk finally start lobbying for heavier pesticide use?

Will they up their ingestion of GMOs to fight climate change?

Just my guess… but I think it’s unlikely.

I’m sure Greta will find a way to save the world, and all the people in it…

While still being strict and saintly about the food she puts into her own body.

In other words, she will continue to move toward her goal, while still staying true to her basic principles.

If that’s what she does, then good on ‘er.

I mean, I’m personally very callous about climate change. And I prefer my food as inorganic as can be. So it’s not like I’m personally invested in the outcome of resolving climate change while keeping our veggies and fruits “crunchy.”

I just feel that the basic recipe — keep moving forward, adjust when you realize you’re slightly off course — is the core of success in any field.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. Maxwell Maltz, who wrote the super influential self-help tome Psycho-Cybernetics, preached something similar:

“Your brain and nervous system constitute a goal-striving mechanism that operates automatically to achieve a certain goal, very much as a self-aiming torpedo or missile seeks out its target and steers its way to it. […] The torpedo accomplishes its goal by going forward, making errors, and continually correcting them. By a series of zigzags, it literally ‘gropes’ its way to the goal.”

Conclusion?

1. Have a clearly defined goal
2. Grope towards it
3. Allow your brain to correct course as needed

Simple? ​​Yes.
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​But also your best bet for eventually getting to where you want to go — even if that goal is uncertain, complex, and has never been achieved before.

The libertine’s guide to motivation

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“Man is a free agent; but he is not free if he does not believe it, for the more power he attributes to Destiny, the more he deprives himself of the power which God granted him when he gave him reason.”
― Giacomo Casanova

At some point in my life, I became obsessed with an unpleasant idea.

“Maybe the future is all predetermined?” I thought.

Even if we had no say in how the future would turn out, it could still feel like we do. Maybe the universe has been rolling along for eons just so it could force me to write this exact blog post today, and even make me feel like I did it all by myself.

I don’t wanna get bogged down into the philosophical nutty grutty here.

People have been wrestling with this question for thousands of years, without coming up with any conclusive answer.

My own solution to the conundrum was simple.

“I could be wrong in two ways,” I told myself.

Either I believe there is free will, but there actually is no such thing. In that case, no problem! I had no choice in the matter to begin with.

But what about the other way to be wrong?

Maybe I convince myself there is no such thing as free will, but free will actually exists. This seems pretty tragic.

So my conclusion was to believe in free will, because whether I’m right or I’m wrong, I’m okay.

I thought I was pretty clever with this solution.

Until a few days ago, when I found out that this argument has been around, in one form or another, for at least 400 years.

French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal used it as an argument for believing in God (it’s even known as “Pascal’s wager”).

And I guess people (like Casanova above) have been using the same basic idea to motivate themselves to action in the intervening centuries as well.

The point being, I don’t know whether it’s your destiny to be successful or not.

I just feel you could be wrong in two ways.

Maybe you’re not destined for success, but you go through life acting as though you are. In that case, no big loss if you fail, and no fault of your own.

But maybe you are destined for success, but you do your damnedest to thwart destiny and to wind up as a big failure instead. Maybe you even succeed in failing. And that would be pretty tragic.

I hope the conclusion is clear.

Maybe even motivational.

And so ends my libertine sermon for this Sunday.