Means Of Control

Better the devil they don’t know

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Bzzzzzzz bzzzzzz bzzzzzzzz – the front door buzzer kept ringing aggressively.

Pavel, barefoot and still in his underwear, patted over to check the security camera feed.

Six large men were standing outside his door.

“They had guns and they looked very serious,” Pavel said later. “They seemed to want to break the door.”

Pavel looked despairingly at his phone. If only he could call his brother and share just a few critical instructions.

But what could he say?

What kind of message could he send?

After all, the guys outside the door were from the secret service. And the secret service could read and hear anything.

“I realized I don’t have a safe means of communication with him,” Pavel said in an interview with the New York Times. “That’s how Telegram started.”

I just read a new Wired article about Pavel Durov.

In 2006, Durov founded VKontakte, a Russian Facebook clone.

VK eventually became a multi-billion-dollar company. Durov got rich.

Then in 2011, Durov drew the worst kind of heat upon himself.

He refused to cave to the Kremlin’s request to block opposition groups on VK. And he tweeted his “official” response to the government – a photo of a dog with its tongue hanging out.

That led to the visit at his home.

Durov survived that encounter. And he wasn’t cowed.

A short while later, he launched Telegram, the messaging app.

He positioned Telegram as a secure, decentralized, no-censorship alternative to corporate offers like WhatsApp.

That positioning went back to the origin story from 2011, with secret services thugs beating on Durov’s door.

The positioning has been reinforced by Durov’s actions since. As things got hotter for him in Russia, he picked up his small team and started moving around the world.

“I’m out of Russia and have no plans to go back,” he told TechCrunch in 2014. “Unfortunately, the country is incompatible with Internet business at the moment.”

Well, if you believe the Wired article, all that’s PR and marketing hype.

According to Wired, Durov wouldn’t be the CEO of Telegram today without powerful Kremlin connections yesterday.

And even after he supposedly left Russia with no plans to go back… he still kept his posh offices in St. Petersburg. He continued to visit there, and regularly spent entire days working in the office.

So what’s the truth?

I personally don’t care about Telegram or about Pavel Durov. But I do care about persuasion and influence.

And so the only truth I want to share with you is the following idea from the book True Believer:

“The ideal devil is a foreigner.”

Durov knew this instinctively. As one of his former business associate said,

“Pavel is a king of PR and marketing. Probably one of the best people in the world. I think he wanted to play the good guy with the West.”

It definitely worked.

Telegram grew steadily, and it became the world’s most downloaded app in 2021. It’s phenomenally popular in Asia, Latin America, and increasingly in Europe. To date, it’s been downloaded over 1 billion times.

In large part, that’s because Telegram is seen just as Durov wants it to be seen. As a decentralized, anti-establishment, freedom-fighters app.

How else could it be? The founder himself had to run away from the secret service of that foreign devil Putin… and the repressive state Putin represents.

So there you go:

If you want strong positioning for your product, create a good-vs-evil struggle between you and Vladimir Putin. Or at least some other foreign devil, relative to your target audience.

But what if you can’t get a good foreign devil?

In that case, keep an eye on Pavel Durov and the future of Telegram. Because as the Wired article says:

“As Durov’s run-ins with the Kremlin recede into the past, authoritarian surveillance has, in some ways, ceased to be the symbolic foil that it once was for Telegram. Instead, Durov has increasingly cast his platform in heroic opposition to Facebook, Apple, and Google.”

Will Apple and Google serve as well as Putin did?

Maybe they will. Maybe they won’t. Or maybe Durov has also read True Believer. And so maybe he’ll get some use from the full quote above:

“The ideal devil is a foreigner. To quality as a devil, a domestic enemy must be given a foreign ancestry.”

But maybe you’re wondering why I don’t take my own advice and talk about some foreign or domestic devils.

Don’t worry. I will. I just don’t want to draw attention to it by doing it today. If you’d like to keep an eye on me as I create some foreign devils, sign up for my email newsletter here.

Why do scammers say they are from Nigeria?

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According a site that tracks online fraud, 51% of all scam emails mention Nigeria.

It seems self-defeating. Everybody knows it’s a scam. The “Nigerian prince” has become a stock joke.

So what gives? Are scammers so dumb? Don’t they know that everyone is on to them?

Well, we now have the answer, thanks to Cormac Herley, a researcher at Microsoft.

Herley came up with a mathematical model of the scammer’s dilemma.

And after a lot pencil sharpening… crumpled-up papers… and banging his fist on the desk… Herley finally solved his mathematical equations.

The answer to “Nigerian scammer” riddle is this:

1. Sending out spam emails is pretty close to free.

2. But “selling” the prospects who reply to those emails takes time and effort.

3. And so scammers want their front-end marketing to repel everybody but the most gullible. Because…

Those are the only people who the scammer can hope to profit from. That’s why scammers say they are from Nigeria… exactly because it sets off warning sirens to almost everyone except real prospects.

Ok, maybe this isn’t the kind of mind-blowing conclusion that required a bunch of fancy math.

But still, it sounds like a solid second argument for what Ben Settle calls repulsion marketing.

The first argument is psychological:

By saying things that repel the people you don’t want… you create a tighter bond with the people you do want. Because if you’re not saying anything to piss off a few people, you’re not saying anything to make anybody bond with you, either.

But the Microsoft research gives us a more practical reason to repel.

Because these days, there are a bunch of ways to get a bunch of free prospects. For example:

You can implement Daniel Throssell’s “Referral Magnet” strategy to create a kind of flywheel for new email subscribers…

Or you can post your stuff on your blog and let Google serve it up to the world forever…

Or you can go into popular Facebook groups, and spread your peacock tail for all to admire.

Free. All of it. But then comes the second step:

Fielding questions/requests/offers from prospects… dealing with customer service… handling refunds if you offer them.

All of these things have a real cost, whether in terms of time, actual work, or simply your psychological well-being.

So my takeaway for you is:

Start repelling people. Or get off my list.

Because as freelance forensic consultant Sherlock Holmes once said:

“When you have eliminated all who would be impossible or improfitable to sell, then whoever remains, however improbable, must be your prospect.”

Are you still reading?

Damn. I tried so hard to repel you. In that case, the only thing left for me to do, even though it hurts me to do it, is to offer you a spot on my email newsletter. Click here and fill out the form.

Don’t read this if you can’t stand harsh glaring lights

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“It is important that you get clear for yourself that your only access to impacting life is action. The world does not care what you intend, how committed you are, how you feel, or what you think, and certainly, it has no interest in what you want and don’t want.”
— Werner Erhard, founder of est

Last week, after I sent out my Copy Koala Millions™ email, a reader named Lester wrote in with this interesting point:

“The one other thing I remember from Carlton is how in almost all business segments, the customers want easy/painless/low effort results. BUT the body building/fitness guys want the opposite. You have to sell how fucking painful and hard it will be with what you are selling.”

It’s true — 99% of sales copy promises quick/easy/foolproof results, preferably accomplished by an external mechanism, which you activate by pressing a large red button that reads “INSTANT RESULTS HERE.”

But like Lester says, not every market is like that. Bodybuilders for one… maybe also small business owners and entrepreneurs.

For example, yesterday I wrote about Dan Kennedy’s “#1 most powerful personal discipline in all the world.”

Dan promises that this one discipline can make you successful beyond your wildest dreams.

But honestly, I didn’t need that promise to buy what Dan was selling. I became hypnotized as soon as I read the words “powerful personal discipline.” At that point, I was 86% sold already.

That’s why I said yesterday that I don’t need to sell this idea to you either. Because if you feel the twitching of this same drive for overcoming inside you… you probably perked up just because I kept stuffing the terms “self discipline” and “personal discipline” a dozen times in what I wrote yesterday.

The fact is, there’s a very real need inside most people for occasional struggle, suffering, and proving their own worth.

Suffering and struggle might not sell in front-end copy going out to a cold list of people who are already suffering and struggling with a problem.

But it definitely does sell, including in sister markets to direct response. Such as the seminar business, for example.

Werner Erhard, the guy I quoted up top, ran est, the biggest personal development product of the 1970s. est consisted of two weekend-long seminars where people would literally piss themselves because they weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom — in a giant hall filled with hundreds of strangers.

On day two, attendees would go through the “danger process.” From the book Odd Gods:

“A row of the audience at a time would go on stage and be confronted by est staff. One person would ‘bullbait’ all of them, saying and doing things in order to get them to react. Other volunteers would be body catchers for those who fell, a common occurrence.”

Like I said, this went on for two weekends in a row. In other words, people would show up one weekend, get humiliated and brutalized, and come back the next weekend for more. When it was all said and done, people found it transformative, and enthusiastically recommended est to their friends and family.

My point is simply a reminder. We are no longer living in the world of one-off sales letters pitching a book of Chinese medicine secrets. Today, there’s plenty of money to be made by being strict, demanding, and harsh. Yes, even in your sales copy.

… well with one caveat. I’ll get to that in my email tomorrow. Read it or fail.

Getting hosed by trolls and haters for the win

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A quick but slippery story today about dealing with trolls and haters:

Back in 1978, the TV show Taxi went on the air. It had an ensemble cast of past and future stars: Tony Danza (who became one of the biggest TV leading men of the 80s)… Christopher Lloyd (who became Doc in the Back to the Future movies)… Danny DeVito (who became the Penguin, among other things).

Oh, and then there was also Andy Kaufman.

Kaufman was famous already. And he would become more famous still, thanks to his kooky and anti-humor characters on Saturday Night Live and David Letterman.

Anyways, it was a few months in, and the cast of Taxi was gelling. They liked working with each other. They felt they were on to something big — the ratings were good.

But there was a problem:

Tony Danza really didn’t like Andy Kaufman.

“I was a team player,” Danza said. “And this guy is meditating in his car. He’s eating seaweed. He doesn’t come to rehearsal. But when we have a gag reel, he doesn’t make any mistakes. That galls you too.”

Danza decided to do something drastic to provoke Kaufman. He wanted to make it clear to Kaufman that his better-than-you attitude wouldn’t fly.

“I’m not proud of this,” Danza said. “But I took a fire extinguisher. It was a water fire extinguisher, not chemical. And I shot him with it, figuring he would get mad.”

But no.

Andy Kaufman just stood there.

Danza emptied the fire extinguisher.

But Andy Kaufman just kept standing there, blinking and looking harmless as usual, focusing his baby-sphinx gaze on Tony Danza.

“I was so frustrated,” Danza said. “Because he didn’t do anything.”

Frustrated? Sounds like a win for Andy Kaufman. And get this:

Fire extinguisher now spent, Danza apologized. And over the coming hours and days, he decided to take a second look at Kaufman.

At the time, Kaufman was doing a show on Sunset Boulevard. Danza decided to go.

“The show was the craziest show I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I started to think, holy mackerel, this is something really different.”

The two performers went for milk and cookies after the show (no joke). And over time, Danza ended up considering Kaufman a pretty close friend, and an amazing performer.

And in case you’re wondering:

I am not saying that you should allow yourself to get hosed down to win over trolls.

But I am saying that remaining emotionally detached in the face of various haters can be transformative. To you and to them both.

In the short term, once your troll or hater empties out his provocation hose and still finds you unfazed… well, it’s a win for you.

And who knows? In rare cases, maybe the troll will even become converted, and decide to give you a second, less hateful look.

But easier said than done, right? Because, like me, perhaps you find it hard to stay emotionally detached.

In that case, you might want to take a page from the book of Andy Kaufman:

Invent a character and play him in real life.

It doesn’t have to be a completely different character, either. It can be somebody who looks like you… lives your life… shares your experiences… but is still different enough where it counts.

Maybe ​you can’t picture what I mean. So I’ll let Andy Kaufman illustrate.

Below, you can find his most bizarre, moving, and provocative appearance on television. Try to decide where reality ends and the character begins.

But before you go watch that, I want to say something serious. I have an email newsletter. I put so much work into it. But almost nobody is signing up. It breaks my heart. I know this sounds cliche… but would you sign up to it, please?

I’m banging my shoe on the desk right now to convince you to opt in to my bullets mini-course

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On October 12 1960, Nikita Khrushchev took the podium at the UN General Assembly. Khrushchev was a short, round, combative guy. He was also the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and one of the two most powerful men on the planet.

“Mister President of the Assembly,” Khrushchev shouted in Russian, “you must bring these proceedings to order! What the previous speaker just said is completely false! He is a stooge! A lackey! A toady of American imperialism!”

Khrushchev then took off his left shoe. He started to bang it full force on the podium. “I refuse to have the great name of the Soviet Union blackened in this way!”

Well, I’ve just taken off my own left shoe. And though you can’t see me, I am ready to start banging it on my desk.

For the past two days, I’ve had a hidden offer at the end of my posts. The offer is for you to sign up to get my free “How to write bullets” email mini course. Here’s a bit of what’s inside that course:

* Halbert’s crucial bullet secret (almost unknown among copywriters) (email 4)

* How A-list copywriters stab you in the heart, and then twist the knife (email 3)
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* What never to omit in a bullet. Never. (email 1)​
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* The #1 technique for bizarre bullet mechanisms. Take a piece of paper and write these 5 words across the top. (email 9)

* How women can write more exciting bullets (even if the source material is boring) (email 7)
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* Genuine weird payoff bullets (email 11)

* A simple 3-hour “trick” which 100% makes your bullets better (email 13)

I put out this free mini course only once before, last January. Eventually, I expanded it significantly, made it interactive, and turned it into my Copy Riddles training.

So here I am now, shoe in hand, giving you a chance to bring your own proceedings in order, and get the original free course. Today. The last day it is available.

You’ll have to sign up to my email newsletter first. And then, you will have to write me an email to ask to be put on the free bullets email course. If you’re willing to jump through all those hoops, here’s where to get started.

The power of accusation

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Yesterday was the first time I ever got excited to watch a sales message. But I wound up bitterly disappointed. Aye, even offended.

Quick background:

I talked to a friend the day before. He’s a doctor. “We’re headed for a new round of corona lockdowns,” he said. He gave me reasons why, based on Israel and the rise in infections there. All this was news to me.

Then yesterday, I got an email with the subject line, “COVID’s return.” My ears pricked up because of my friend’s warning. I opened the email.

“Corona is all about control,” the email said. This tapped into my recent interest in mechanisms of control. So I clicked the link and found—

Ron Paul! Telling me the truth about corona!

Now in my eyes, Ron Paul is a genuine celebrity. He’s a former U.S. Congressman… a well-known libertarian figure… and three-time presidential candidate.

So that’s the quick background. New corona lockdowns… mechanisms of control… Ron Paul. That’s why I was excited to watch this sales message. For the first time ever.

Sure, the message came from Stansberry Research. So I knew what the conclusion would be — buy our newsletter and protect your money, or even prosper while the rest of the country goes to hell.

Still, I thought I might hear something new and interesting along the way. Something that would give me context for puzzling things I’ve been seeing. Something that might make me say, “A-ha, it makes sense now!”

But I didn’t get any of that. Even though the email promised to tell me “what’s actually going on in America”… and even though the sales page warned “Something BIG Is Coming”…

All I got was a bit about Ron Paul (it turns out he’s a doctor by training)… and then a bunch of stuff about out-of-control government debt… and how we are giving too much money to stupid things like the National Endowment for the Arts.

“But there’s nothing new here, Ron!” I finally yelled at the screen. “Why are you wasting my time with this? But don’t answer, I know. Because they are paying you. Still, Stansberry’s been saying this same thing for what, 20 years? Why should I buy it now? Couldn’t they come up with something a little fresh? A little stimulating?”

Hm.

Maybe you agree with me that Ron Paul and Stansberry should both go to the Devil, where they came from. Maybe you’re glad I finally voiced that.

Or maybe you’re puzzled by my negativity, and you’re wondering why I’d yell at my own computer screen.

Or maybe you’re put off. “All right, Bejako,” I hear you saying, “since you’re so holy, what fresh and stimulating thing did you say with this nasty email?”

To which I could pretend I’m not selling anything here. But you and I both know that’s not true.

So let me leave you with a quote from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible:

“Is the accuser always holy now? Were they born this morning as clean as God’s fingers? I’ll tell you what’s walking Salem – vengeance is walking Salem. We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”

The Crucible is a morality play about judging and accusing others. But it’s a morality play because it’s not just about a bad episode in Massachusetts in 1692… but about something fundamental in human nature.

So here’s the new and maybe stimulating bit I offer you:

I’m not suggesting you blacklist people. But if you set yourself up as an accuser in your market, at least some of the time… there is power in that.

Power?

Yes, power. The chance to write the law.  The keys to the kingdom. Particularly if you accuse somebody new… and if you are genuine in your outrage and your vengeance.

By the way, I know of several other direct response companies that are guilty of deadly marketing sins. I’ve seen them at night, walking with the Devil. And I will name them. But if you want to read more about that, sign up to my newsletter here.

Virtue selling

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Because you are an independent thinker, I believe you will appreciate the following:

​​A few nights ago, I was walking along the riverside when a series of loud explosions went off all around me.

I didn’t flinch. Not because I’m so brave. But because I knew what was going on.

The explosions were firecrackers, fireworks, or possibly cannon fire, set off in celebration. They were followed by mass cheering that broke out from balconies, bars, and cafes all over the city.

Because it’s the Euro Cup now. And the national soccer team had just scored a goal.

I say national team, but that’s not what they are called. Not officially.

Instead, government officials, TV pundits, and newspaper editors now use the terms “we,” or more commonly, “Croatia.”

“Croatia was magnificent”

“Croatia needs to try harder”

“Croatia rises from the ashes”

My point is that soccer here is a kind of new state religion.

I’m not kidding about that.

Once upon a time in this part of the world, belonging to the official church and being a good citizen were two sides of the same personal identity coin.

Today, the church has lost much of its pull.

But soccer has gained where the church has lost.

So today, billboards, TV, and newspapers all repeat a hundred versions of the same two-sided message:

“Croatia is soccer! And soccer is Croatia!”

But let me step off my 1984 pulpit. And let me get to the money-making shot at the open goal.

This official push for soccer fandom brought to mind something I’ve heard from two successful marketers.

The marketers in question are Chris Haddad and Ben Settle. And independent of each other, they both said the same thing:

You want to make buying from you a virtue.

Sure, people want to get rich, get laid, and get swole.

But maybe not as much as you think. Maybe not enough to pull out their wallets, to overcome their fears, and to set aside the bad memories of previous purchases that went nowhere. Maybe not enough to buy.

So you link buying from you to a virtue:

Your prospect is a rebel. Or a patriot. Or a visionary.

And by virtue of buying from you… he is making the world a better place… and reaffirming that he is in fact a deserving person.

And when your prospect starts wondering if that’s really something he wants, you remind him:

He still gets rich/laid/swole as part of the bargain. A good deal, no? 1-0 for your business.

And now the pitch:

Since you are an independent-thinking person, you might want to sign up to my email newsletter. By signing up to my email newsletter, you will be exposed to novel ideas, making you an even more independent-thinking person. Plus you might make some money in the process.

Humans are not savages, but they can be made so on demand

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Yesterday, I read a fantastic yet true story, a kind of real-life Lord of the Flies. Except the outcome was very different from the book:

As you might know, Lord of the Flies is a story about a bunch of boys who get shipwrecked on an island.

Pretty soon, they become mean, thuggish, and destructive. Some of the boys are killed by the others. Half the island is burned down.

What can you do? People are savages, and kids even more so. Except maybe not:

The real-life version of this story involves six boys from the island kingdom of Tonga.

They were bored stiff at their English boarding school.

So they decided to steal a local fisherman’s boat and sail away to adventure, and maybe even make it to New Zealand.

They didn’t make it.

After months of search, the boys were declared dead back home. Funerals were held for them.

And then, 15 months later, they were discovered by an Australian adventurer fishing in the waters around an uninhabited island named ‘Ata. The boys had shiprecked there and survived, alone all that time.

And here’s the real-life twist:

All six boys were happy, healthy, and harmonious.

They had survived by eating fish and coconuts and drinking rainwater collected in hollowed-out tree trunks.

They had broken up their chores, such as gardening, cooking, and guard duty, and they took turns doing them.

They built a gym and a badminton court, and they played a makeshift guitar made out of the wreckage of the boat.

When one of the boys fell down a ravine and broke his leg, the others climbed down after him, brought him back up, then set his leg using sticks and leaves. He recovered while the other boys took turns doing his chores.

So is this really the true nature of human beings?

​​And if so, why does your typical junior high school look nothing like it?

​​Why does Lord of the Flies resonate with us instead?

The answer comes from another real-life variant of the Lord of the Flies theme. A bunch of people stranded on an uninhabited island… with a TV crew and a prize to be won.

I’m talking about the TV show Survivor. I’ve never watched it, but I know the basic setup:

Direct competition for something scarce.

It’s all you need to turn people into savages. A finding that’s been repeated in different settings, not just on reality TV.

So let me leave off today by saying I can see two options:

One is to disconnect as much as possible from the doctrine of healthy competition. This might require moving to a deserted island, or at least turning off the TV.

The other option is not to disconnect from anything, but to profit from it. Because creating scarcity, even when there is none, and encouraging competition, or at least reminding people of it, is a great means of control.

Marinate on that for a bit. And if you want more real-life stories on the topic of profit and control, you might like my email newsletter. But better be quick, because spots are limited and others are taking them as you read this. Click here to sign up.

Stop daydreaming for once and read this

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Listen up you dreamer:

One day back in 1999, after Gordon Ramsay opened his first restaurant, he got a tableful of famous visitors.

There was Joan Collins of Dynasty fame. Then model Nicola Formby. And finally A.A. Gill, the food critic for The Sunday Times.

But Gill had earlier written a nasty review of Ramsay’s restaurant.

So Ramsay left his kitchen, walked over to the table, and kicked the whole group out.

Speaking later, an emotional A.A. Gill said:

“He seems to be a classic bully. Somebody who will overreact to people beneath him. And then feel terribly aggrieved when somebody he doesn’t have innate power over criticizes him.”

Sounds about right, yeah?

Ramsay is famous for his outbursts. (“Will he be able to control it?” asks the breathless TV teaser.)

He yells. He insults. He curses.

“Yes, Gordon,” his humbled staff reply, eyes on the floor.

​​And that’s my takeaway for you today.

A while ago, I made a brain dump of ideas on the topic of “natural authority.” What do people who have inborn charisma seem to share?

One of the things on my list was that they target the weak. You know. The poor, the friendless, the tax collectors and sinners.

Because as powerful as natural authority is, it won’t work reliably on a healthy, stable person without any gaping emotional wounds.

But the insight I learned recently, through Mike Mandel and Chris Thompson, is that people with natural authority can create emotional wounds. On demand.

One way is just what Gordon Ramsay does. Insults, humiliation, browbeating. Not all the time. But enough that there’s always a risk of it.

And here’s my addition to this theory:

I believe that a “temper,” as TV calls it, is not only a means to natural authority. It’s also a signal of it.

In other words, you don’t have to get personally insulted by a would-be leader in order for his authority to rise in your eyes. It’s enough to see it happen to somebody else. For example, to an emotional food critic, getting kicked out, while a restaurant full of people watches.

That’s why as a society, we love people like Ramsay. Sure, it’s both horrifying and entertaining to watch others getting cowed and humiliated. But it also feeds our need to look to a charismatic leader.

And by the way:
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You can see the same in various corners of the online guru and influencer world.

​​Now that you know this, you can choose to use it yourself — or at least be aware of what’s happening in your own head, when you witness others using it.

One last thing:

Sign up to my email list.

What are you standing there and looking for? You dreamer. Click the link already and sign up.