Instability

Wickedful

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I like to go see movies without knowing anything about them other than they’re playing at my local movie theater. I don’t want to know the genre, the actors in it, the plot summary, the reviews.

“Let them surprise me,” I say with a magnanimate sweep of my hand, as I hand over my 7 euro at the box office.

And so this Wednesday, I went to see Wicked. I only knew it had something to do with the Wizard of Oz. But I was surprised to find it’s three hours long, and a musical of the kind I don’t like, and a heavy-handed morality play to boot.

I emerged from the theater several years older, no wiser, and looking desesperately for something, anything, a little shred from this ordeal that I could reclaim for my daily email.

And there was something.

In between all the unendful singing, Wicked also has bits of dialogue. And the dialogue regularly makes use of a little word-trick. Each time it happened, it put a smile on my face and lightened the heavy burden of watching this movie.

I won’t spell out exactly what this word-trick is. But perhaps you can guess? I’ve tried to use it myself numerious times in this email.

My point for today is that it makes sense to make up and use your own words, terms, slang, even if it’s nonsense, or silly. It lightens the burden of reading (or watching) otherwise valuable but dry material.

You might shrug at that. Perhaps it’s because you’ve heard this advice before. Perhaps it’s because you think it doesn’t apply to you, and the serious business you are engagified in.

So there’s a bigger and to me much more interesting point I want to share with you. But I will save it for my email tomorrow. It’s not that humor is important, though it is. It’s not that it can be done in every field, even if your field is accounting for mortuary offices.

Rather, the point I want to share with you is a surprising idea I heard recently in the crypto space, which applies much more broadly, to business and perhaps to life.

Maybe you think that’s a grand claim. I can only promise to pay it off tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you would like to learn a different trick, one that can lighten the burden of reading AND writing daily emails, you might like the enfollowing:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Coldblooded psychopath persuasion

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The detective sat at the corner of the table, looking the suspect in the face.

The suspect sighed. “What are my options?” he asked.

“Well,” the detective said, “I don’t think you want the coldblooded psychopath option. I might be wrong. Because I’ve met guys who enjoyed the notoriety. Who got off on having that label. I don’t see that in you. If I saw that in you I wouldn’t be back here, talking to you.”

The suspect sighed again. He gave a sad little smile and nodded.

“But maybe I’m wrong,” the detective continued. “Maybe you got me fooled. I don’t know.”

At this, the suspect locked up. He stared at the floor. He didn’t say anything for a while.

“Russell,” the detective said, “what are we gonna do?”

The suspect took a breath. He looked at the detective directly and said, “Call me Russ, please.”

That’s the climax from the 10-hour interrogation of Russell Williams.

Williams was a colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces, and an army pilot who had flown Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh, and the Prime Minister of Canada.

But away from his picture-perfect military career, Williams had a very, very dark side.

Between 2007 and 2010, he started breaking into homes — 82 in all.

During the early breakins, he would photograph himself wearing women’s underwear and then sneak out. In time, this escalated to sexual assault. And then, it escalated further, to rapes and two murders.

The police had some evidence to tie Williams to one of the crime scenes. They had him come in for questioning.

Over the course of the interrogation, Williams started to realize he was in serious trouble. But really, all the police had on him was circumstantial evidence. He could have called for a lawyer, and who knows how the case would have gone.

And then came that exchange up top. It was the climax of the investigation.

Very soon after that exchange, Williams agreed to tell the police where he had hidden the body of Jessica Lloyd, his final victim. This effectively sealed the case, and led to Williams’s full confession.

It might seem gruesome to look for persuasion tactics in murder investigations. But such is life. Because the same stuff that works to influence a coldblooded psychopath works in general too.

Let me point out what happened in that climactic exchange above:

The detective first paid Williams a compliment (“I don’t see that in you”). Williams smiled and nodded at the compliment.

But then the detective snatched the compliment away (“But maybe I’m wrong”). Williams felt that loss.

If, like me, you know anything about the world of pick up artists, you might recognize this technique. Pick up artists call it the push-pull.

Copywriters use it too. Here’s an example from the start of a Dan Kennedy sales letter:

“Truth is, most people give lip-service to ambition, but secretly are not all that eager or determined. This is only for those very, very serious and determined to create excellent income and steady flow of good clients, for a real freelance business. If you’re content making just a few hundred dollars a month on the side, an occasional assignment now and then, really just having a nice money hobby, there’s nothing wrong with that – but you can stop reading this now.”

Again, it might seem gruesome to compare sales copy to a rape and murder investigation. And maybe I’m just trying to justify my morbid and scattershot interests.

But the truth is, there are powerful persuasion lessons all around.

If you made it to the end of this post, then I imagine you’re probably curious enough and clear-sighted enough to see that.

But maybe I’m wrong. In that case, you can stop reading now. And definitely don’t sign up for my daily email newsletter.

Otherwise, go here to get your spot.