Persuasion

Unmasking the real Ellen (and everybody else in your life)

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“Thanks very much. This is exciting, isn’t it? This is really great. I’m happy. You seem like a great crowd. Of course, you never know. Never can tell.”
— Ellen DeGeneres, One Night Stand

A few days ago, I watched a bunch of episodes of One Night Stand. That was the half-hour standup show that ran on HBO in the early 90s.

One of the One Night Stand specials from 1992 was Ellen DeGeneres. I’d never seen her standup before. In fact, I’d never seen her talkshow. I only knew her as the TV “Queen of Nice” who was unmasked as being a bitch in real life.

Whatever. I was surprised I liked Ellen’s 90s standup. Here’s a bit about her going for a mud bath:

“You submerge in mud. You’re naked. They always want you to be naked to be rid of stress. Ever notice that? To me that’s more stressful actually. You’re naked around people you don’t know who are naked… and you have no pockets. You don’t know what to do with your hands. [She does a little pantomime of covering her crotch, crossing her legs, crossing her arms.]”

After watching Ellen’s One Night Stand, I found it very credible that she is not a nice person in real life.

In her comedy special, Ellen is very smiley, blonde, and cute. But she doesn’t hide her snarky, judgmental nature. Or who knows, maybe I’m just reading into it, since I know the stuff that’s been said of her recently. But I don’t think so. Because there’s this general truth:

People are often talking about themselves, regardless of the apparent topic of conversation.

And all you have to do is to be aware of this fact. You can then get a lot of useful information without asking any prying questions. Maybe, if you’re curious, you can even go look over this post and find out things about me. Stuff I didn’t mean to reveal. You never can tell.

Anyways, if you want more advice on figuring out the true nature of your friends, family, and sales prospects, it’s stuff I occasionally talk about in my email newsletter. If you’d like to try that out, and see if you find it entertaining and educational, click here.

The strange story of three girls who became one

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“We can’t go anywhere without each other!” said the first girl.

“It drives us crazy! But we can’t split up no matter what we do!” said the second.

“Can you help us, doctor?” asked the third. “We still want to be friends, but this is too much!”

In 1972, three college girls showed up to a therapist’s office. They were suffering from what psychologists call fused identity. It’s the personality equivalent of leaving a bag of gummy bears in the sun until they all melt together.

The girls were aware of what had happened. They wanted to change. But they couldn’t. So they were seeking help.

“I understand,” said the therapist. “There’s an important first step I want you to take. After that, I can recommend a course of action.”

“Tell us!” said girl one.

“We’ll do anything!” said girls two and three in unison.

“First, I want you to make a list of your planned activities for tomorrow,” the therapist said. “The ones you expect you will do together.”

The girls nodded and did as he asked.

“And then tomorrow,” the therapist said, “it’s extremely important that you do each of these things together, as you just told me you would. Don’t deviate from this plan one bit. You have to be at all of these activities, together. All three of you. Then the day after, come see me again.”

This case was reported in a paper titled, “Dissolution of fused identity in one therapeutic session.” Because one session was all it took. The girls lost interest in spending all their time together… after they were told they HAD to do it.

This is a core part of human existence. Your prospects have it inside them also. They have a problem… they might even want help… but they are repulsed by being told what to do.

So here’s an important first step:

Forget what you just read. And it’s extremely important that the next time you craft a persuasive message, you do NOT think of clever ways to deal with your prospects’ stubborn resistance to outside influence. Particularly if you sell in a really skeptical, jaded market. Then the day after you do that, come and see me again.

Do you think you’re smarter than average?

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I think I’m pretty smart, and I’d bet you think the same about yourself. I mean that literally. I would bet money on the fact that you think you are smarter than most other people.

I’ll tell you why in a second. But first, let me tell you how I broke a nonsensical law a few days ago.

There’s an intersection near the apartment where I’ve been staying for the past week. It has a stop light. There’s never any traffic in the cross direction, or even the chance of traffic in the cross direction.

To top it off, the red light stays red very long… and the green light only appears for a flicker.

So a few days ago, following a few other cars, I drove through that intersection. Even though the light had turned red right before me.

A trivial thing, right?

Well, it turns out I got lucky. Not because of any cross traffic. Like I said, no traffic there, then or ever.

But every time I’ve walked by that intersection since, I’ve seen a lurking cop car on the side, watching the intersection like a cat in the grass watching a mouse burrows.

Gulp. I must not be the only one to think that traffic light is stupid.

And that’s my point for you for today. People act and think in predictable ways. And this can be useful to you when persuading. Or giving out traffic tickets.

And now, let me tell you why I’d bet on you and your smarts.

It’s the same reason I’d bet you think you’re more curious than most other people… that you change your bedsheets less than other people… and that you have sex less often than other people.

Here, check it out. You might learn something about yourself, and about how to persuade others too:

https://thanaverage.xyz/

(Oh, and since you think you’re so smart, you might like my email newsletter. It’s the thinking man’s source of ideas about persuasion, designed for smart people like yourself. You can sign up here.)

The vulnerability myth

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Ron was waiting in his wheelchair, looking up the stairs.

The necklace he had just bought was wrapped up on the table in front of him.

Finally, he saw her.

She was coming down the stairs, laughing and talking to another man.

At the bottom of the stairs, she kissed the man on the lips and grabbed him by the crotch. She then noticed Ron from the corner of her eye.

Ron quietly pulled the wrapped present off the table.

The woman came over. “We get married today?” she chuckled.

“Oh yeah, yeah,” Ron said. “That would be great.” He slumped down in his wheelchair. And he wheeled himself away.

That’s a scene scene from Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July. It’s a fictional look at the real-world horrors that paralyzed Vietnam vet Ron Kovic went through, both during the war and after.

I thought of this scene today when I heard yet another recruiting pitch for the cult of vulnerability. “Wear all your hidden handicaps on your sleeve,” the cult leaders say, “and people will love you for it.”

I want to offer you another point of view. It’s a simple formula:

Charisma = Power + Liking

I read that a long time ago in a book called The Charisma Myth. It’s stuck with me ever since.

It’s why a brutal, undefeated knight makes hearts beat faster with small acts of chivalry…

But why a vulnerable “nice guy” with flowers and gifts gets a pat on the head, at best.

Good news is, there’s a way out.

For example, at the end of the Oliver Stone movie, Ron speaks to a crowd of millions. People hang on to his every word. They absorb his anti-war message. And they applaud and cheer him.

But here’s the crucial point:

This only happens after Ron and a bunch of other vets make a scandal at the Republican National Convention… after they storm the convention hall… and after they get on TV.

So my pitch to you is to work on your power and your authority first.

​​Once you’ve got em in buckets, then bare your stories of self-doubt and failure.

​​People will listen then… they will feel good about following such an effective and yet human leader… and they might even love you for it.

In other news:

I’ve got an email newsletter. Full of effective marketing and copywriting ideas, and occasional personal stories. In case you’d like to sign up, here’s where to go.

They tried to bury this information… but I believe it

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Here’s a sneaky story about the things they don’t want you to know:

Back in 2013, the European Union wanted proof that online piracy hurts sales of movies, books, and computer games. So they had a big study done.

The 300-page study was complete in 2015. It was then used for a second academic paper by two European Commission members, which came out in 2016.

The conclusion of that second paper was that piracy hurts movie sales by about 4.4%. “Our findings have important implications for copyright policy,” said that second paper.

The thing is, nobody ever saw the original 2013 study. It was never published. Not nowhere. Not until 2017.

​​That’s when Julia Reda, the Pirate Party member of the EU Parliament, got her hands on the missing study. And she published the results on her blog.

“With the exception of recently released blockbusters,” the 2013 study said, “there is no evidence to support the idea that online copyright infringement displaces sales.”

Hold on a second…

So was the EU hiding this study… so they could cherry pick results that fit their desired “important implications for copyright policy?”

It sure sounds like it. Sneaky governmentses, right?

But here’s the bigger truth in all this:

I found out about this yesterday. An article about it was published in an online tech news site. It then went viral on a news aggregator.

But this story has been public since 2017… and yet we’re talking about it now, in the middle of 2021. There’s something there.

As you probably know, if a bit of information is scarce, we tend to value it more. “Long-lost study from 2013” piques our curiosity. But maybe not all that much, and not for all that long.

However, if that bit of information was suppressed, we tend to value it much more. “Long-lost study from 2013 that the government worked hard to bury.” That’s something worth discussing even years later.

“Fine,” you might say. “But I kind of knew that already. It sounds like the lead of every health VSL ever.”

All right. But let’s see if you knew this:

Bob Cialdini’s Influence lists a bunch of evidence that censorship doesn’t just increase desire for censored info…

But censorship also increases belief in that information. Even if you don’t actually see the information.

For example, I haven’t read the original EU study about piracy. Come on, it’s 300 pages. Who’s got time?

But I believe the conclusions. Why else would the EU try to censor it? I bet a bunch of people on that news aggregator thought the same, and that’s why this story went viral.

My takeaway for you is this:

Desire and belief are really two sides of the same coin.

Whether you’re using specificity… or a new mechanism… or even secrets… if you juice up one side of the coin, the other side gets bigger too.

And I’ve got evidence to prove it. Evidence nobody has seen before. I hope to publish it one day soon… if they don’t get to me first. If you want to read that secret report when it comes out, here’s our underground communication channel.

The future of break-em-down selling?

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Imagine tomorrow you see an ad for a magical job opportunity:

“$6k a month, only requiring 3-4 hours of work every week.”

The job is with a new video game company. The work is easy. You can do it successfully as long as you have the digital skills of somebody born after 1980.

Plus you can work whenever you like, wherever you like, as much or as little as you like. All you need is your phone. And if you want to work more and make as much as $10k or $15k a month, that’s fine too.

There will be a presentation, the ad tells you, at the local Cheesecake Factory this Friday. Anybody interested can get all the info there.

So on Friday, you show up to the Cheesecake Factory, both hopeful and cautious.

“What’s the worst that can happen,” you tell yourself. “If it’s some sort of scam, I’ll just up and leave. But if it’s for real, it could be life-changing.”

A dozen other people are there with you. Soon enough the presenter arrives. He chats to everyone for a few minutes. Funny enough, it turns out his sister went to the same college you went to.

“But it’s too noisy here,” the guy announces. “We’ll actually go to go to a different location where the presentation will be held.”

So you all load onto a bus. And that’s when the ride really gets going.

If you’re wondering why I’m painting this picture, it’s because situations like this happen for real. Bob Cialdini once told his own personal experience of it.

He got on the bus. And he and the others interested in the opportunity got taken from one town… to another… and back. It took many hours, and they never got a chance to up and leave until it was over.

To help them make the right decision, the bus was covered with inspirational posters. Eye of the Tiger kept playing over and over. Meanwhile, the presenter pitched the amazingness of his pyramid scheme, while the bus bounced and rumbled along the highway at 55 mph.

Result:

Except for Cialdini, who had a little bit of self-defense thanks to his knowledge of persuasion techniques, everybody else signed on for the pyramid scheme.

My point is that a controlled, live selling environment, particularly one that lasts for hours or days, and one where you can’t leave… well… it can sell anything.

So if you are looking to get rich in the pyramid scheme business, it’s time to invest in a bus.

But what if you’re not selling pyramid schemes? And what if you do your business online?

It might seem hopeless. How can you control people’s environment… how can you keep them from leaving… how can you break them down… unless you can physically isolate them?

It might seem hopeless. But social factors are working in your favor. And I’m not even talking about the corona lockdowns, though those certainly help.

The real thing is we all carry our own Eye-Of-The-Tiger bus in our pockets these days. We allow it to create a completely controlled and engrossing environment for us. We take it with us wherever we go, even to small, isolated spaces like the toilet.

And in case you think I’m trying to make a joke, I’m not.

For the past year or so, I’ve been watching Ben Settle promote his build-your-own-mobile-marketing-app business.

I thought it’s stupid. Because I myself refuse to install anything on my phone except Google Maps and this thing that helps you identify trees. And even those have all the notifications turned off.

But I will eventually break down. That’s how the world is moving.

So if you are looking to get rich in any business, it might be time to invest in a mobile app. One with lots of notifications and an inspirational poster background. If I’m right, this is the future of break-em-down selling… and it can help you sell anything.

Meanwhile, the best you can do is get people onto your email newsletter. I’ve got one here. It’s not the same as a bus… so I have to compensate by being entertaining and informative.

Required viewing if you’re interested in persuasion

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In 2011, an Indian spiritual teacher named Sri Kumare set up a new practice in Phoenix, Arizona.

Kumare had a couple of women in tow — one Indian, who acted as his personal assistant, and the other white, who guided Kumare’s meditation and yoga sessions.

These women helped Kumare build up a following in Phoenix quickly. But it’s not clear he really needed their help.

After all, Kumare looked like the perfect embodiment of an Indian guru.

He was tall, gaunt, and had long black hair and a long black beard. He wore flowing robes, held onto a wooden walking stick, and walked with a strange stumbling gait.

And of course, then you heard him speak.

Kumare had a thick Indian accent when he dropped his mystical wisdom such as, “All this… the world… is an illusion,” and, “The guru is inside YOU.”

Plus he stared really intensely at people when he spoke.

One time, a five-year-old boy who had just met Kumare confessed, “I like to play! All the time!”

Kumare stared at the boy. And then he smiled and said shyly in his thick accent, “I like to play… also!”

One of the women who became Kumare’s disciple was a death penalty attorney named Toby.

She fought for the rights of people who had been sentenced to the death penalty and who had lost all their appeals. It was a very stressful and emotionally draining job.

Kumare stared intensely at Toby. “Why… do you want to help those people?” he asked, with no judgment in his voice.

Toby explained how these death row inmates have lost the support of everybody, including their families. They needed somebody to fight for them.

Kumare nodded while continuing to stare at Toby. Later, Toby explained why she started looking to Kumare as her guru:

“When somebody shows interest in what you’re interested in, it makes you want to get to know them better. It makes you want to learn as much as you can.”

This made me think of something I found in my notes from the past month. “The biggest thing you can do for others,” I wrote, “is to like and accept them.”

Now I don’t know if that’s really true. I think we are all a bundle of different needs. At different times, those different needs take turns being uppermost.

But the need to be liked and accepted is definitely up there, and it’s up there a lot of the time.

Anyways, if you know the story of Kumare, then you know how it ends.

But if you do not know the story of Kumare, then I highly recommend watching a documentary made about the man. And I recommend you do it without reading any reviews first.

Because there’s a lot in this movie, and it’s best if you come to it with an open mind.

In fact, there’s so much in this movie that it should be required viewing for anybody interested in persuasion of any kind.

One day, if I ever create the curriculum for my mythical AIDA School, this movie will be part of the first semester, along with Guthy-Renker’s Personal Power infomercial and Chip and Dan Heath’s Made To Stick.

I bet you can find Kumare the documentary on your favorite streaming service. But if you don’t want to search around for it, or if you just want to watch a couple minutes to see if it’s really worth your time, then here’s a grainy copy that somebody posted to YouTube:

A simple way to deal with reactance on the sales page

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A few weeks ago, I was walking through a little park at exactly 11:21am.

I know it was exactly 11:21am because I saw an unusual scene, so I checked the time and wrote it down.

Three local drunks were sitting at a table in the shade. Two empty beer bottles and two empty brandy bottles were in front of each of them.

And now came the time to get the next round.

One of the drunks got up, started collecting the empty bottles, and grumbled, “I’m the oldest one here! And I have to go?” And he did. But he kept mumbling to himself about the injustice of it all.

So at 11:21am, these guys were already four drinks in, and getting a fifth and eighth.

That was the unusual part.

But the elder drunk’s reaction was very usual. “I don’t want to! Why should I?” That’s something we all say every day in some form.

Psychologists call this reactance. It’s as fundamental a human instinct as breathing or wanting to sit when we see a chair.

Reactance says that when we have barriers erected against us, when we lose a freedom, when we’re commanded or manipulated into doing something, we rebel. Fire rises up from our bellies.

If we have no other option, like when the stupid boss tells us to do something, we do what we’re told grudgingly.

But when we have a choice, like on the sales page, we cross our arms, dig our heels in, and say defiantly, “No! I don’t want to! What are you gonna do about it?”

The good news is that there are lots of things you can do to get around reactance in sales talk and sales copy.

I recently wrote about a pretty standard one, which is the reason why. Because people don’t really want control… they want the feeling of control. And sometimes, a reason why is all that’s needed to give them that feeling.

“You gotta get the next round today… because Jerry got it yesterday… and I will get it tomorrow.”

That can work.

But there are other, and much more powerful ways to deal with reactance. In fact, I’m writing a book about one of them now. And if you want to hear more about it, well, you will find it in future issues of my email newsletter.

Ready to win? Then gamble on reading this post

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If you ever wonder why you do strange and possibly self-destructive things to yourself, or if you have doubts that you’ve made the right decision in an important moment, then I’ve got a riddle that might help.

It goes like this:

“SNACK ROUTE. Newest and most profitable snack machines are opening up hundreds of new locations. Seeing is believing. Earnings can exceed $1,000 weekly. Part time. All cash business can be yours for as little as $5,600. Call 1-800-“

This is a successful classified ad that sold a business opportunity back in the 1980s.

Do you notice anything strange about it?

To me, the strange thing is that this is a classified ad… totaling 7 sentences and 37 words… and yet, the $5,600 price is revealed right there.

This goes against much copywriting and marketing wisdom. 37 words? Not a lot of space to build up desire, overcome objections, and justify such a high price.

So my riddle for you is, why is the price revealed in this classified ad, and why was the ad successful nonetheless?

Maybe you say the high price kept away the masses of low-quality prospects who might respond otherwise. I’m sure there is some of that.

Maybe the price actually acted as proof that this is a real opportunity, and not some kind of bait-and-switch. I’m sure there is some of that, too.

But I think something else is going on also. It occurred to me last night as I read an old advertising book, in which the following headline popped up:

“I gambled a postage stamp and
won $35,840 in 2 years”

This was the headline for a direct mail sales letter that mailed profitably for years. And to me, it’s got the same structure as the bizopp classified above.

Fact is, in certain environments, spending money is a thrill, not a burden.

Some people, specifically of some genders, tend to shop for a thrill.

But others prefer to gamble.

And that’s ultimately what I think is going on with classified ad above.

For the right prospect, it kicks off the part of the brain that likes gambling. It gets the greed glands going. The prospect starts to think about big money, and the thrill of action.

Of course, some people like penny slots (“I gambled a postage stamp”).

Others like the high-stakes poker table (“… for as little as $5,600”).

But all of us have the instinct to gamble, in some form and to some extent. And a few words can be all that it takes to kick that instinct into action. Even when we’ve been burned by it before.

So do you think you won by reading this post? If not, don’t worry. More opportunities to win will appear tomorrow and the day after. If you want to take advantage of them, here’s where to go.

A deadline to make a deliberate and far-sighted decision

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“We might describe the predicament of these [frontal lobe] patients as a ‘myopia for the future,’ a concept that has been proposed under the influence of alcohol and other drugs. Inebriation does narrow the panorama of our future, so much so that almost nothing but the present is processed with clarity.”
— Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error

Antonio Damasio is a celebrated neuroscientist at USC and the Salk Institute. He claims all our decisions are made emotionally.

One of his arguments is that people who suffer brain damage that interferes with their emotions… also stop being able to make decisions effectively.

​​Instead, they start to act in impulsive, short-sighted ways, much like somebody drunk.

That’s some high-science proof for an idea that direct response marketers and copywriters have been preaching for decades.

Here’s another thing direct response marketers figured out long ago:

A deadline, coming up in just a few hours, is a proven way to bring a person’s focus to the present.

Specifically, if you’d like to join Copy Riddles, my program for learning how to write bullets and improve your copywriting in general, then you can do so until the end of day today, Sunday, July 4, at 12 midnight PST.

After that, I’ll close the shopping cart down and keep it closed for a few months.

Of course, you’re not drunk… you’re not under the influence of drugs… and you’re not suffering from frontal lobe brain damage.

In other words, you have all your wits about you, and you can make decisions for yourself and your future effectively right now.

So if you’d like to make a deliberate and far-sighted decision for the benefit of your copywriting career, then the time is here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr