Addiction

Value is not how-to

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Yesterday’s email, about a strange scientific experiment on kittens, provoked some response.

​​One reader said I should have included a trigger warning. (“Deeply disturbing content. Cruel. CRUEL.”)

Another reader said we “look at Nazi scientists and cringe as we click our tongues” but we allow our own scientists all sorts of license.

A third reader wrote to say he loved the line, “The scientists are wearing white lab coats. The kitten is not.” He thought the line was priceless.

I highlight these responses because they focus on exactly the two things that got me about the strange kitten experiment.

​​The research was bizarre and cruel. At the same time, the image of two laboratory scientists in white lab coats, working hard to startle a kitten into blinking, was ridiculous and made me smile.

There was a point to my email yesterday. If you read the email, do you remember the point?

If you don’t remember, no problem. The point was not the value of the email.

In general, value in an email is not the how-to. Value in an email is the emotional spike it creates.

I could tell you how to create emotional spikes in your emails, but really, what would be the value in that?

Instead, I’ll just tell you that you can create emotional spikes even without talking about cruelty to kittens, without creating outrage, and without trying to be funny. In fact I’ve created a course all about the how-to of “intellectual” emotional spikes. You can find it here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Ben Settle’s strange interest in selling to distracted and damaged addicts

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Marketer Ben Settle wrote a strange email on Friday to promote his mobile-first, app-based, course-delivery platform Learnistic. One of the arguments Ben gave for why mobile apps like Learnistic are the future is this:

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Everyone’s basically Gollum now.

Stroking their Precious phone in the dark.

Looking at it, checking in on it, making sure it’s safe and pulling it out just to make sure… not able to rest or bear to be too far away from it — all while scrolling, consuming content, and wrapping their very existence around it.

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By that same logic, I’m surprised Ben is still writing and sending emails.

I mean, if he’s interested in selling to distracted and damaged addicts, which is what he seems to be saying above, then it would make more sense to get himself on TikTok, or at least back on Facebook, rather than to keep writing and sending emails, a relatively low-addiction technology.

My experience, like I wrote a few days ago, is different. I’ve found that if you treat people how you’d like them to behave, then more often than not, they actually meet your expectations. Treat your customers like capable human beings, instead of like Gollum, and you will often find them to be that way.

But really, all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes. That applies to Ben, and it applies to me also.

The fact is, I dislike my phone, and I hate apps. So maybe everything I wrote above is just justification for that.

I held out for years before I got a cell phone, even as everybody else around me got one. I held out much longer before I got a smart phone — basically until girls I was talking to started getting suspicious, and thinking my old-school Nokia must be a burner, and that I must really be married and hiding it.

Even now, with a smart phone in my pocket, I still refuse to use or download all but the most essential apps. And as much as I’ve learned from Ben himself, and as curious as I’ve gotten several times when he teased free content through his Learnistic app only, I’ve never once been tempted by him to download Learnistic.

That’s also why I host my courses inside the members-only area of my website, using technology from caveman days. It’s also why for my own personal work — journals, notes, research — I mainly use text files on my hard drive, a pre-caveman technology.

Anyways, tonight was the end of the launch for my Insight Exposed program. I only made that program available to people who are signed up to my email list. If you’d like to get on my email list, you can sign up for free by clicking here.

The Eleven Steps of Shiny Objectaholics Anonymous

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I got an email from a reader yesterday with an excessively long subject line:

“The most valuable info is rarely sexy, and it’s probably been staring you in the face for a long while.”

Hm. Sounded familiar. It turned out to be a quote from the last chapter of my 10 Commandments book. The body of the email went on to explain:

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Hi John,

In a sea of great quotes from your book, this one spoke to me differently.

Why?

Cause I’ve been chasing shiny objects and secrets the past one year after quitting my banking job to write online.

Only to realize it’s BS 😅

The plan this year is to do the boring shit, on repeat. Till I get good at it. Means reading the fundamental books on copy and doing copywork a lot.

I’m already on your list and enjoy reading your emails. But it’s premature for me to buy yet – in due course though haha.

Anyways, this was an open invitation so I went for it.

Have good Sunday!

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I have this theory that people who wind up in copywriting and direct marketing are all shiny object addicts by nature.

It’s just that the ones who make it realize their addiction at some point, and begin a gradual process of detox and recovery.

If you want a ten-step program to begin your own detox and recovery, then consider my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

A few of these commandments might be new to you. But odds are, most will be either familiar, or obvious. That doesn’t change the fact it’s where the real value is.

If you have already admitted to yourself you are powerless over shiny objects — and that your life has become unmanageable as a result — then have taken the first step. For the next 10 steps:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments