Persuasion

The “I’m from Los Angeles” persuasion technique

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A few years ago, I met up with a friend named Sam in Tel Aviv.

​​At the time, Sam was working for an Israeli tech startup as their high-confidence, this-is-how-it’s-gonna-be sales guy for the US. He came to Tel Aviv for work for a few days. I flew out from Croatia, where I was living back then, to meet up with him.

One day, Sam and I went to the beach.

The Tel Aviv beach is a miles-long strip of sand, filled with good-looking people sunning themselves or hiding under parasols, and the sparkling blue Mediterranean sea rolling up with mid-sized waves.

At the corner of the beach, we saw could rent little two-person sailboats.

I’d never been in a sailboat before. Sam had been once or twice. Even so, we had the idea to go try it.

“Have you ever sailed before?” the sailboat rental guy asked.

“Oh, I live in Los Angeles,” Sam said with 100% conviction.

I frowned when I heard this.

The rental guy frowned as well. “So you have sailed before or not?”

“It’s no problem, Sam said. “I’m from Los Angeles” He put a lot of emphasis on the word “from”.

Sam and the rental guy stared at each other for a few moments. Then the rental guy shrugged his shoulders. And he rented us the sailboat.

There’s a lesson in that story.

Perhaps it’s obvious. And if not, I will tie it up for you tomorrow, and tell you how it connects to an unexpected area of persuasion and influence.

For today, I just want to finish up the cautionary tale above.

Sam and I went out on the sailboat. We sailed around for an hour.

It was a fairly unpleasant experience, slow and hot and slightly nauseating, since I knew nothing about what we were doing, and Sam knew very little.

Eventually, it was time to bring the boat back in.

We headed straight for the sandy beach without a specific plan of what exactly we would do.

But then, the wind caught the sails.

The waves grabbed the hull.

The beast picked up speed.

People on the beach first grew curious, then alarmed, then started running.

Mothers were screaming and pulling their children out of the water.

Old people stood at a distance, pointing and shaking their heads.

Boys cheered and waited for the inevitable crash.

And sure enough, as Sam and I sped up to the beach, out of the sea, and into the separating crowd, the keel of the boat, which we didn’t think to pull in, caught in the sand.

The entire boat toppled over with a crash.

The mast dug in among beach towels and picnic baskets. Sam and I wound up face first in shallow water, eating sand.

The boat rental guy came running over, holding his head in his hands, yelling. I’m not 100% sure, but I think he might have been yelling something like, “But you said you’re from Los Angeles!”

Or maybe not. Maybe he was just yelling how we should have pulled in the keel and lowered the sail, and how we could have killed somebody or at least ourselves.

So that’s my story. The message, again, if not clear, I will make clear tomorrow. In case you want to read that, sign up for my email newsletter. It’s okay. I’m from Los Angeles.

The top 3 factors to your success in life, ranked

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This morning, following a walk down to the beach, I rushed back to my apartment, jumped onto the couch, and started clapping my hands in excitement.

It was a close call, but I made it in time!

The next episode of my favorite new show was about to start. I wouldn’t want to miss it for the world.

The show is soooo good. You should definitely check it out. It’s called “How to Speak” and it stars a very funny and charming guy named Patrick Winston.

“How to Speak” was recorded in 2018. And really, it consists of only one episode, or maybe episode is the wrong term.

“How to Speak” is really the recording of a talk, given by Winston, at MIT, the university where he was a professor for over 40 years. For most of those 40+ years, Winston gave his “How to Speak” talk, each year to bigger and more enthusiastic crowds.

So fine. You got me. The only “true” bit of my story above is that I keep watching “How to Speak” over and over, like a favorite new TV show.

I watched it once already… now I’m on episode 2, I mean, the second rewatch… and I will probably keep bingeing on it until nausea sets it.

Why watch some MIT professor like he’s Seinfeld?

Well, Winston gives you a good reason right at the start of his talk. Your success in life, he says, will be determined by:

1. How well you speak…
2. How well you write…
3. The quality of your ideas…

… in that order. This “in that order” part is super important.

Yesterday, I talked about Stefan Georgi and a recent email he sent out about a $500k project he just finished.

The point that stuck out to me was that, here was Stefan, one of the best copywriters in the world, full of relevant samples and industry status… repeatedly writing unanswered emails to a business owner he had never met, trying to follow up and close a copywriting project.

Crickets. No response.

And then there was Stefan again, some time later, running into the same business owner at a conference, and instantly, deal gets closed, and for much more money than before.

In my mind, this is part of what Winston is saying above with that “Speaking, writing, ideas — in that order” stuff.

Of course, Stefan wasn’t at that conference to give a job talk, or to present his new research paper on “The Unreasonable Effectiveness Of The Unique Problem Mechanism.”

But the story still shows the power of personal, high-definition, warm interactions over even the most effective “cold” marketing and networking techniques.

That’s something to keep in mind, whether you are looking for success in your own product business… or as a copywriter working with clients.

All right, I gotta get back to bingeing on my cool new show. So my offer for you today is simple.

A few days ago, I sent out the first Most Valuable Postcard to my first 20 subscribers.

The premise of MVP that it’s an un-newsletter. Rather than telling you sexy secrets that sell for a lot but aren’t really worth much… MVP is all about fundamental factors to your success, which need to be regularly practiced, but which are guaranteed to produce big results.

The Most Valuable Postcard is not open to new subscribers right now. And given the amount of work it took me to produce the first one, I’m not sure it ever will be reopened.

But in case I do reopen it, and you would like to be notified, you can sign up to my email newsletter. The next episode of that particular show airs tonight.

The fallout of my “rape” subject line

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3 days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “Don’t rape your audience.”

That hook came from a quote from screenwriter William Goldman (Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid), who compared gradually seducing your audience (movie screenplays) to raping them (TV writing).

Like I said at the start of that email, rape is a shocking metaphor. In today’s society, it’s borderline impermissible.

So sure enough, when I checked my unsubscribe count for this email, it showed I disappointed, offended, or perhaps triggered a lot of people. ​​My unsubscribes proved it. I had 7 unsubscribes total, which might not sound like a lot, but is 5.8x my norm for the past 90 days.

I did the hard work of checking who all those unsubscribes were.

Some were new — they signed up only a few weeks ago for my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

Others had been on my list for a while.

Either way, none of them had ever bought anything from me… replied to any of my emails… played along with any of the engagement bait I regularly put out… or even opened and read my emails very often.

So there’s that, the hard and toxic fallout.

On the other hand, I also had a dozen thoughtful replies to my email, both about the subject line and the idea in the body. Almost all these replies came from successful marketers and copywriters. For example, copywriter Robert Smith, who runs his own CRO agency, wrote in to say:

Yo.

Yesterday I was on a zoom call with the team.

It was about our marketing emails.

I shared my screen and opened my email app to talk about a thing.

Instead of talking about our email stuff, we spent the next 10 minutes admiring your subject line.

It’s tier-1.

At first, I had a thought like:
“In a non-DR market this would get super-high Opens, but just as many Spam complaints.”

Addendum to original thought after opening:
“…Only if the body doesn’t deliver.”

3rd addendum after reading body:
“And… It delivered.”

Kick ass! And super inspiring to see. Really got me thinking: “my subject lines suck!”

Robert pretty much spelled out everything I wanted to say about this crisis.

Shocking subject lines, and shocking topics in general, will polarize your audience.

But if you can somehow back up your shocking stuff in a congruent way, you will only scrub away the barnacles clinging to the gleaming white hull of your magnificent ship.

At the same time, you will engage and bond more deeply with successful, thoughtful people, the kinds of people you want to associate yourself with, whether as customers, clients, or just readers.

You might say I am not telling you anything new here.

And you’re right. Ben Settle and Dan Kennedy before him have both been preaching this kind of repulsion marketing for years.

But fundamentals like this work. And so they are worth repeating from time to time. Until maybe the right time, when it all clicks for you and you decide to try it out for yourself.

Anyways, if you have a business, and you’re worried your subject lines suck, then you might want to hire me to help with that.

Because as of now, I’m offering consulting. And one of the things I’m highly qualified to consult on is email marketing and copywriting. And not just the shocking and repelling kind. And not just to my own email list.

If case you are interested, fill out the form below, and I’ll be in touch:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

A $2,000 idea

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Yesterday, I met the owners of an apartment I am trying to rent in Barcelona. They are a married couple, very elegant and stylish, a few years older than me. We met at a cafe.

I sat down across from them and I leaned back in my chair. “So what do you have for me,” I said.

The husband smiled at me. “Would you like to drink a coffee first?”

I smirked, stared him in the eye, and said nothing.

“Oh okay,” he said, clearly browbeaten. “So you’ve had a chance to look at the apartment? You liked it?”

“The apartment is fine,” I said. “But let’s talk turkey. How much do you want for it?”

The man paused for a moment. He and his wife looked at each other in confusion.

“What do you mean?” the wife said. “The rent is right there on the listing.” And she repeated the number. It was a round figure, divisible by one hundred, ending in two zeros.

I laughed with contempt.

“A round figure?” I said, barely controlling myself. “You haven’t done one minute of work on this, have you? You just pulled that number out of your ear, without checking comparables and without putting in any effort to calculate a fair price. No! I don’t trust your round figure. And I don’t like being disrespected like this. I’m not interested in renting your apartment any more. Goodbye!”

I got up and left the cafe. The husband ran after me, begging me to reconsider, offering to make the price more specific and jagged. But it was too late.

In case this sounds like a slightly fantastical scenario… well, that’s because it is.

What actually happened yesterday was that I did meet the owners.

I smiled at them and I put on my best and most responsible face.

Using subtle sub-communication, I made it clear that if they let me rent their apartment, I would not adopt a pitbull… I would not host any drug-driven orgies… and I would not take up drumming as a new hobby.

After a few minutes of this renter mating dance, the owners were satisfied. They agreed to let me have their beautiful apartment, and I agreed to take it, at a perfectly round monthly rent, neatly ending in two zeros.

If you’re wondering why I’m telling you this, then, like my fantasy owners above, you clearly didn’t read my email yesterday.

That email was all about the power of specificity. Specifically, the power of specific numbers. Recently proven by some fancy scientific research, but suspected by smart marketers for decades and probably centuries.

Except…

There are times where your numbers don’t have to be specific.

My rent situation above was clearly one.

I accepted the nice and round price. Doing anything else would have been foolish, bordering on very foolish. The rental market in Barcelona is insane. There are only a few available apartments and thousands of hungry renters swooping down on each one.

But you might say, “Sure, you can get away with a round price sometimes. That doesn’t mean that a specific, jagged price wouldn’t work just as well or better.”

Maybe. Or maybe not.

There are situations where a round price is not only acceptable, but actually better. Where a round price sub-communicates high status, a lack of neediness, and a position of power.

Take for example the curious case of one Joe Sugarman. Joe was a multimillionaire marketer who created the BluBlocker sunglasses empire.

Joe sold each of his BluBlockers for $69.95.

But when Joe ran an ad to advertise his legendary copywriting and marketing seminar, he didn’t promise to reveal “7-figure funnel secrets,” or offer a *9.99 price.

​​Instead, Joe said, “Come study with me,” right in the headline. And then in the subhead, he told you how much it would cost, — $2,000, with three round zeroes at the end.

So take time and ponder on that. I’ll leave you today with a bit from Joe’s ad:

There are two types of successful people. Those that are successful and those that are super successful.

To be successful you must learn the rules, know them cold, and follow them. To be super successful, you must learn the rules, know them cold, and break them.

For more marketing ideas, some worth $9.99 and others worth $15,000, come and read my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

Spanish A-list copywriter makes me an indecent proposal

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Last year in September, I kicked off the third run of Copy Riddles, my program for learning copywriting by practicing bullets.

As part of that September run, I had a little each week for the best bullet. Anybody who wanted to could send me their bullets. The winner got a prize, usually a book on marketing and copywriting.

(The contest has since been shuttered, since I spun off a complete coaching program to go with Copy Riddles.)

Anyways, the very first week and the very first contest, out of something like fifty submissions, the winner was Rafa Casas, a Spanish-speaking and Spanish-writing copywriter.

Rafa’s first bullet won because it was so simple and promised such a clear and desirable benefit.

But Rafa kept submitting bullets for later bullet contests (no dice, you can only win once). Still, he had such clever and persuasive ideas that I was sure he will be a big success soon.

And it seems to be happening.

Rafa is now writing copy for a number of clients in Spain.

He’s also offering his own email copywriting coaching to a few clients, based on his experiences writing two daily email newsletters.

And from what I understand, he recently won some kind of fancy award in Spain, recognizing his wizard-like copywriting skills.

Put all this together, and I think it qualifies Rafa as an A-lister in the Spanish copywriting world.

And if you wonder whether Rafa really has the hard results to back up being called an A-lister… then I’ll tell you that copywriting stardom is more about endorsements, legend, and mental shortcuts than it is about results.

That’s something to ponder if you yourself have aspirations to become an A-list copywriter.

But back to the indecent proposal I promised you in my subject line. A few days ago, Rafa sent me the following email:

It turns out that this afternoon while I was waiting for my daughter to do her yoga class, I read, as I always do every Thursday afternoon with a coffee, the book I always read while I´m waiting for her: The 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters, and I have come up with a business with which we will not become millionaires (not for now) but it will not cost us money either.

What do you think if I translate your book into Spanish and we try to sell it to the Spanish-speaking world as well?

Of course I wouldn’t charge you anything for doing it, well not in money at least. The idea is that while I translate it and we try to sell it, I can learn from you the strategy that we implement to sell it, for example.

Immediately upon reading Rafa’s message, I drifted off into a pleasant fantasy. I saw myself being interviewed on CNN, with all the different translations of my book on a shelf behind me.

“So Bejako,” the CNN anchorwoman asked me, “what can you tell us, as an internationally read copywriting expert whose books have been translated into multiple languages, about the recent news of monkey pox? Is this something to worry about? Is washing our hands with soap enough? And are there influence and persuasion principles we can learn from this?”

My dream balloon popped. I fell back to reality.

I realized was that Rafa’s proposal was indecent. But only in the original sense of that word, meaning not suitable or fitting.

Because while I would love to have a Spanish-language version of my book, it’s probably not worth Rafa’s time to translate it. Either for the money we could make together, or for the learning experience of how I might promote that book.

My feeling on these Kindle books is that they are valuable for credibility and as lead magnets.

They siphon people from Amazon into your world. They sit there, more or less passively, and do their work. In my experience, most of their value comes without any added promotion, outside of some very basic Amazon ads and occasional mentions in this newsletter.

Maybe you think that’s a cavalier attitude about promotion for somebody who calls himself a marketer.

Perhaps. But perhaps it’s about the best use of your time.

So in case I haven’t piled on the value in this email sufficiently, I will give you one last practical tidbit. It comes from James Altucher.

James is an interesting and quirky Internet personality. He has written and published 20 books, both fiction and non-fiction. And he’s doing something right, because he has amassed a huge audience… sold truckloads of books… and even had a WSJ bestseller with a book he self-published.

Here’s the book-marketing tidbit. James asks:

What’s the best way to promote your first book?

Simple.

Write your second book.

That’s what I’m planning to do to promote my 10 Commandments book. Along with, of course, occasional mentions in this email newsletter.

So if you don’t have a copy of the 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters… and you want to find out why a star in the Spanish copywriting sky like Rafa might want to read this book every Thursday afternoon… then take a look below:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments​​

Yet another paranormal Bejako email

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“And the copy writer does not create the desire of millions of women all over America to lose weight; but he can channel that desire onto a particular product, and make its owner a millionaire.”
— Gene Schwartz, Breakthrough Advertising

This past January, I sent out an email in which I told the story of how I magically “manifested” a lost license plate from my car.

The point of that email was that, in spite of being a very skeptical and critical person at times, I am also incredibly attracted to the possibility of real magic.

That’s why I often engage in wishful-magical thinking.

​​And that’s why I’ve repeatedly had “magical” things happen in my life.

Today, I want to give you an update on that — some theory of what real magic is. You might find this theory personally inspiring, or you might even find it useful in your own marketing.

The theory comes from an article I read today, titled When Magic Was Real. The article was written by the very interesting Alexander Macris on his Contemplations on the Tree of Woe Substack channel.

In the article, Macris cites the results of a parapsychology experiment:

60 people were split into four groups. Each group was either given chocolate blessed by a priest or ordinary, zero-blessing chocolate.

In addition, each group was told (truly or falsely) that their chocolate was either blessed or unblessed.

In other words, each of the four groups had a different combination of (belief in blessedness) x (actual blessedness) of the chocolate they were eating.

The experiment ran for a week. Participants were tested for effects on their mood.

So what do you think happened?

Did actual blessing create real benefits?

Or did belief in the blessing — aka the placebo effect — create real benefits?

Or was there no effect at all?

It turns out there was an effect. But the result might surprise you:

The only group that had a significant improvement in mood was the group that 1) got the truly blessed chocolate and that 2) was told that the chocolate was blessed.

Yes, this experiment might be bogus. But if like me, you are attracted to the possibility of miracles and magic, then just run with it for a moment.

Based on this experiment, Macris puts forward his theory:

“Magic is the product of belief x belief. It’s the product of my belief that I’ve blessed chocolate and your belief that you’ve eaten chocolate I blessed. And these beliefs must both be positive. If I don’t believe, it won’t work, even if you are a true believer. If you don’t believe, it won’t work, even if I’m a true believer. Belief x zero is zero.”

True? Who knows. But if it is true, I figure it has a couple consequences:

First, you gotta believe, and you gotta surround yourself with other gullible, uncritical people who are willing to believe without bothering to look closely at the evidence.

Your combined success, including the number of real miracles you experience, depends on it.

Second, rather than trying to persuade the people in your audience that your 28-day flat-belly challenge is really transformative, it might be better to make them believe in magic, in possibility, in miracles.

In other words, the ancient marketing dogma that it’s impossible or impractical to create desire is short-sighted, at least if you are trying to create real results for your customers — and to create customers who love to buy from you over and over.

So instead of just channeling existing desire onto your product, like Gene Schwartz says above, it might be better to focus on making your audience more inspired and motivated and hopeful in general.

Maybe you have your doubts. That’s fine. Don’t make up your mind now. Let the idea marinate there for a while.

​​Maybe you too will come to believe in believing. Our joint success hinges on it.

Anyways, on a mainly unrelated point:

Yesterday, I had the launch of my Most Valuable Postcard.

I magically got what I wanted, my first 20 subscribers, spread out across 11 countries.

I then closed down the order page, because 20 subscribers is all I wanted to start.

But I had people try to sign up afterwards (no-go) and even ask whether I have a waiting list.

Well I do now.

I’m not sure when or if will reopen the Most Valuable Postcard to new subscribers. But if I do, it will be a limited number of spots again.

So if you want to get a chance to be the first to sign up, then get on my regular mailing list here. And when you get my welcome email, hit reply and let me know you’d like to be added to the MVP waiting list as well.

My big takeaway from yesterday’s Daniel Throssell presentation

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I’m at the airport as I write this, sitting in a dangerously comfortable armchair, staring out the big windows onto the tarmac, and waiting to fly from Sofia, Bulgaria to Barcelona, Spain.

This is the latest leg of a crisscrossing world journey I started almost two years ago. During that time, I have moved some two dozen times, staying mainly in Airbnbs though occasionally also with friends and family.

If you’re wondering why I’m gushing all this atypical and overly personal information at you, it’s because yesterday I held my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

In the aftermath of this presentation, I noticed I got as much positive feedback about the actual content I shared as about random personal things people spotted about me. The Firefox extensions I use… the labels in my Gmail account… my own charming face (apparently I look like actor Mike Connors).

The presentation seems to have been a success. Exactly 430 people registered for it, and by my very precise estimate, somewhere between 0 to 430 people attended live (I was too focused on what I had to say to actually check how many people were on the Zoom call).

The three techniques I was so focused on sharing during this presentation, the three techniques I identified in Daniel’s copy, are what you might consider “secrets.”

In other words, they are stuff you probably hadn’t heard or thought about before. They are meant to make you say, “Ohh, that’s clever” when you hear them.

These three techniques made certain of Daniel’s emails stand out to me. In that way, they are undoubtedly valuable.

But marketing “secrets” like this are rarely as valuable as the fundamental stuff you probably hear all the time, and have probably been hearing for years, but for one reason or another you refuse to accept, or refuse to do.

Such as the idea that personal reveals create trust, build a sense of liking, and set the foundations for a long-running relationship.

That’s probably plenty obvious to you if you are a regular reader of Daniel’s emails.

Perhaps you have incorporated revealing personal stuff in your own marketing, and you’ve reaped the benefits thereof.

Or perhaps like me, you dislike the idea of talking about yourself in any way.

In which case, all I can say is, it’s worth pushing yourself, and experimenting with how to make personal reveals in your marketing while still keeping your sense of integrity.

Because personal reveals definitely have benefits. Like I said above, they seem to be as impactful, and probably more so, as the info you actually share and the benefits you provide your audience.

That’s my big takeaway from yesterday’s presentation.

Does it resonate with you in any way?

No? You want more secrets?

In that case, you definitely won’t like the offer I will make in my email tomorrow.

To be honest with you, I actually hoped to put this offer it into today’s email. But I’m very sleep deprived, and it took me shamefully long to write the preceding 507 words. And in just a few minutes, boarding is starting.

So the only offer I have for you today is my workhorse, The 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. It might have slipped by you if you joined my list only recently.

It doesn’t really have any secrets, but it does have a lot of really fundamental advice, some of which might be trasnformative for you. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

“… and I am also of the opinion that Epstein didn’t kill himself”

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Let warn you straight out, if you are a conspiracy lover, that this email is not about Jeffrey Epstein.

​​Instead it is about that meme, from a year or two thousand years ago, of tagging “… and Epstein didn’t kill himself” onto any conversation.

For the past six months, every single day, I’ve been reading Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, a collection of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. It’s part of my attempt to force a change of perspective on myself.

And it’s been working. It’s fun and fascinating to see how some quirks and problems we think are unique to our own time existed a couple thousand years ago in other complex societies.

So in ancient Greece, there was a powerful and influential man named Alkibiades, who seems to have been the ancient version of Trump.

​​Alkibiades cut off his own dog’s tail to get people horrified and outraged. “Good,” he said, “at least they aren’t talking about the really bad stuff.”

And in ancient Rome, there was Marcus Cato, a politician and general. Cato was a war monger, and late in his life, he constantly tried to get the Romans to attack the city of Carthage in North Africa.

Whenever Cato got up to speak in the Senate, on any topic, internal or external, before sitting back down, he would always sneak in, “… and I am also of the opinion that Carthage must be destroyed.” Mic drop.

Cato did get his way in the end. The Romans became convinced that Carthage was a threat, and they launched the third and final war on the Carthaginians.

​​They leveled the city of Carthage, enslaved its population, and destroyed Carthaginian culture and empire forever.

Was it all Cato’s doing?

No, of course not. But Cato’s insistent nagging probably did contribute.

​​I imagine it started ringing in the heads of other influential Romans, who began to feel that “Carthage must be destroyed” was their own thought and not just something they’ve been hearing over and over from a persistent and cranky old man.

So here’s my point:

In this newsletter, I talk a lot about proof, persuasion, infotainment, building vision, concrete facts, and specificity. It’s all good advice, and it has the added benefit of sounding sexy.

But that sexy and beautiful bamboo pavilion is built on plain but powerful concrete foundations that are rarely talked about.

The fact is, a plain old claim, repeated over and over, a propos of nothing, will in time wear people down, get them curious, and even make them believe. Even if you do nothing else. And if on top of that you add in some proof or a story or some surprising and stimulating facts, all the better.

So there you go. My advice for you for today. Just append, “… and I am also of the opinion that my offer is amazing” to the end of each of your marketing messages.

Speaking of which:

As this email goes out, I will be starting my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

And I am also of the opinion you should have already signed up to attend this amazing presentation live.

But in case you didn’t, you still have a bit of time. You can either join live, or you can at least get the recording when it’s over.

I’ll be disassembling the optin once the presentation ends later tonight. For now it’s still active, and all you gotta do is click on the link below and fill out the form on the next page:

https://bejakovic.com/daniel-throssell-presentation

A shocking demonstration of influence or just a bit of misdirection?

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Last night, I watched The Heist, a Derren Brown special that ran on the BBC in 2006.

I wrote about Brown a few days ago. He’s a stage mentalist and magician, and TV debunker of psychics, faith healers etc.

The premise of The Heist is simple:

Can Brown take a group of middle managers who show up for a self-improvement seminar… and within a few weeks, turn them into criminals willing to steal £100,000 at gunpoint?

The short answer is, yes he can.

How exactly does Brown do it? Well, if you watch The Heist, it seems to be a matter of:

1) Carefully choosing the right marks
2) Classical conditioning
3) NLP and hypnosis
4) Making use of deference to authority
5) Commitment and consistency

The show starts out in a countryside castle. Brown delivers a training there to a group of 13 people who responded to a newspaper ad.

Brown was already a TV celeb at this point, and the ad promised that, in the training, chosen participants would learn some of his cool techniques.

During the training, Brown teaches the attendees some useful stuff, such as his memory tricks. But he also programs them using his hypnosis and NLP skills. And he encourages them to commit a petty crime — to steal some candy from the corner store.

Most of the attendees end up complying. They walk into the store, and more or less awkwardly, they walk out with a Snickers or a Kit Kat tucked in their pants or jacket sleeve.

Over the coming weeks, Brown focuses on the most promising prospects. He gives them more tasks and training, which are really more compliance tests and criminal suggestion in disguise.

In the end, Brown picks four of the original 13 — three men and one woman. He massages them more with suggestion and mind tricks, amping up their aggression, planting the seeds of a daring and serious crime.

The climax of the show is covert footage of each of four final would-be criminals. One by one, they walk down the same London street, toward a bank security guard (actually an actor).

Three of the four end up pulling out a fake gun and robbing (or thinking they are robbing) the security guard.

Only the fourth guy nervously walks on, twitching his head and gritting his teeth, but leaving his toy gun unused.

So that’s the story you get if you watch The Heist.

But what’s the reality? Well, who the hell knows.

Because I’m not telling you about Brown’s Heist as an example of the power of influence techniques, or NLP, or good list selection, all of which I’ve written about plenty in this newsletter.

Instead, I’m telling you about The Heist as an example of sleight-of-hand and misdirection.

Brown says there was no trickery and no fooling the viewer involved in The Heist. And I believe the participants in The Heist were real, and not actors. I also have no doubt they believed they were doing something real when they pulled the toy gun on the bank security guard.

Even so, I think The Heist contains some clever editing to make you come away with the story above… as opposed to a significantly different story.

Maybe if you watch The Heist yourself, you will spot the crucial bits that I think are missing, and you can learn something about misdirection.

Or who knows, maybe I’m totally wrong.

Maybe The Heist really is demonstration what it takes to convert a few ordinary law-abiding citizens into serious criminals. If so, it’s worth watching for inspiration and self-programming value alone.

(Not to be a criminal, you goose. But just to realize the true power of these influence techniques we use all the time in copywriting and marketing.)

In any case, if you are curious, or suggestible, then take a look at the entire Heist special below. And before you click to watch it, if you want to get more influence and persuasion ideas like this, sign up to my newsletter.

An “awful” way to guilt-trip customers into staying subscribed

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A few days ago, I sent out an email trying to sell you the idea that much of the sale happens after the transaction is over. And I asked, how can you keep a customer selling himself on your offer, even after he’s bought it?

I got lots of interesting responses. One business owner, who asked to remain unnamed, wrote in with the following:

We plant a tree for each subscriber every month.

Each week we remind the subscriber of how many trees they’ve planted via their subscription.

The idea being that their subscription is making an ongoing difference by employing locals in areas affected by deforestation.

If they unsubscribe now there will be consequences for others.

This actually sounds kinda awful…

I don’t know about awful… I just thought it was wonderfully guilt-trippy. It also happens to be the exact flip-side of one way I’ve used to inspire people to buy, which is to say that their self-interested drive for success will have beneficial wider consequences.

That idea, about beneficial wider consequences, is one of 7 ways to inspire that I wrote up in an email long ago.

This was in the early days of my newsletter, when I stupidly and shamelessly whole-hogged how-to advice in my emails. The only thing I can say in my defense is that with this particular inspiration email, I at least camouflaged the how-to in with some infotainment (I matched up each how-to-motivate strategy with a pop song).

Anyways, I bring all this up for two reasons:

1. I realized that each of my 7 ways to motivate people to buy can be flipped to motivate people to stay sold. I just gave you one example above of how that works. But with the smallest bit of thought, all the other 6 ways can be flipped in such a way as well.

2. If I were a little smarter, like Ben Settle for example, I would take my “7 ways to inspire” email off my site, flesh it out a bit, and sell it for $97 as part of a paid newsletter.

It turns out I’m not very smart. But maybe I will get smarter one day, maybe one day soon.

As it is, you can still read that inspiration email for free, on my site, at the link below. And who knows. Maybe you can even take one of those ideas, use it to inspire some customers to take action today, and benefit them while also making money for yourself. Or flip that idea, and keep those wayward sheep from making a big mistake and straying from your flock.

In any case, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/99-problems-and-folsom-prison-blues-how-to-write-copy-that-inspires/