Persuasion

Secrets of the dead magus

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I read today that Ricky Jay is dead.

It was strange to read, because I’ve spent a lot of time this year reading about the man and watching videos of him performing. (I’ve even mentioned him on this blog before.)

While alive, Ricky Jay was (so the experts say) one of the best sleight-of-hand artists in the world. He could also turn playing cards into weapons, and throw them in such a way as to pierce the thick pachydermous outer layer of a watermelon. He was a historian of magic, an author of a dozen books, and a chronicler of bizarre or transgressive occupations, such as confidence men, bearded ladies, and mind readers.

I’m still waiting for my copy

And if you are interested in copywriting and persuasion, Ricky Jay was definitely somebody you could learn from.

Why?

My feeling is that magic, as practiced by top performers like Ricky Jay, is about controlling the audience’s attention, about painting mental pictures, about entertaining, about building curiosity, all the while guiding people to a tightly controlled desired outcome — the magician’s desired outcome. With some small tweaks, that also sounds like the job of a copywriter, or more broadly, any persuader.

So no pitching about email marketing from me today. Instead, I will leave off with an immoral anecdote about a time that Ricky Jay asked for advice from one of his idols and mentors, Dai Vernon:

“Professor,” I protested, “I really want to know how I can improve my technique and performance. I want to take lessons from you. I really want advice.”

Vernon smiled his patented half smile, and with a delicate movement of his eyes beckoned me closer. I leaned forward with anticipation, almost unable to contain my excitement, about to receive my benediction from the master. “You want advice, Ricky,” he said. “I’ll give you advice. Fuck as many different women as you can. Not the same one. Not the same one. Fuck many different women. Many different women.”

If you want to learn more about Ricky Jay, I can recommend the wonderful article that introduced me to the man, a New Yorker profile from 1993 titled “Secrets of the Magus.” Here’s the link:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1993/04/05/secrets-of-the-magus

Roger Federer offers a bit of negotiation wisdom

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Last night, Roger Federer lost in the semifinals of the ATP year-closing tournament.

This means that Federer, possibly the greatest player who has ever played tennis, still has just 99 titles under his belt.

Asked by a journalist whether he needs that elusive 100th title, Federer responded:

“I don’t NEED it. I will breathe air if not.”

It might sound as if Federer is simply debating semantics, or that he’s even a little testy after his loss.

That’s not what’s going on.

Here’s a bit from an interview earlier in the week when he was asked a similar question:

“Personally I’m still not thinking of the number 100. I won’t let that get in my head, make me go crazy because it should be something I’m excited about and not something I should feel extra pressure about.”

This exactly mirrors what negotiation coach Jim Camp says.

One of Camp’s main rules is not to get needy. In other words, don’t trick yourself into thinking you need something when you actually don’t, and when you have all the things (like air) that you actually do need.

There was a time when I didn’t fully get the importance of this.

“There’s no difference,” I used to think, “between really wanting something and needing it.”

If that’s how you feel now, I won’t be able to convince you otherwise.

All I can do is tell you that I noticed, personally, that needing something actually seems to take place in an entirely different part of the brain than wanting that same thing. It seems to be an entirely different chemical process, and an entirely different emotion.

In short, even though it might seem needing and wanting are closely related, in truth they couldn’t be further apart.

As Jim Camp himself wrote in his book Start with No:

“As a negotiator aspiring to excellence, you must, at all costs, avoid showing need. In order to avoid showing need, you must never feel it. You do not need this deal. But what happens if we simply substitute the word and the emotion ‘want’ for ‘need’? The dynamics change. […] ‘Need’ is death, ‘want’ is life.”

I doubt Federer read Camp’s Start with No, but he seems to have learned the same lesson on his own.

And even though he only has 99 titles to his name, it’s hard to say his focus on wanting instead of needing has left him with a lack of motivation or success.

Something to think about, whatever your chosen field is.

A special note if you happen to be in the health field and you want (not need) more effective marketing:

You might like my upcoming book on email marketing in  the health space.

Along with advice on actually writing emails and structuring email marketing sequences to sell supplements and health info courses, this book will also have a section on the mindset you should adopt to be successful in today’s marketing-saturated world — such as the Roger Federer/Jim Camp lesson above.

Anyways, if you’d like a free copy of this book when it comes out (I’m planning to sell it for $17 when it is out), put your red RF headband on, and sign up at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The good, the bad, and the ugly of product names

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What’s in a name?

Quite a bit, my young Shakespeare.

I should know, having been blessed with an almost unpronounceable, unreadable name for all but a small part of this planet’s population (“John” is just my “professional” name).

As for people, so for products: names matter.

Yes, sometimes a great product can sell even in spite of an awful name (hello Psycho-Cybernetics).

But why not give yourself the best advantage by having both a good product and a good name?

Let’s look at some products I’ve bought in the last year to see what makes a good name:

“Quit in 6”

Buck Flogging’s course on making it with your own business. Buck says a good name will say what a product is, while a great name will say what a product will do for you. I guess he took his own advice.

“Email Client Machine”

Ben Settle’s product explaining how to get booked with clients using his email tactics. A good name in my opinion: it also says what it will do for you, and the word “machine” draws attention because it’s unusual in this context.

“Energy Blueprint”

Ari Whitten’s course on increasing your (physical) energy. There was a spate of these “blueprint” courses over the past decade. Today I think “blueprint” products have become cliche, putting this name into the good-but-not-great category.

“Dartboard Pricing”

Sean D’Souza’s product on how to set and raise your prices. It’s named after the methodology — how to set your prices — rather than the outcome. However, it definitely gets bonus points for the unusual, attention-grabbing term “dartboard.”

“Email Players”

This is Ben Settle’s monthly newsletter on email marketing. I think the “Players” bit is a reference to Gary Halbert and the way he used that word. If that’s true, then I don’t think this name is really about what the product will do for you… rather, it’s about the identity of the kind of people that Ben wants to assemble as his customers. Knowing Ben’s emphasis on building relationships, this would make sense.

So what makes a good name? I’d say you have two options:

Appeal to self-interest.

Or appeal to identity.

The decision will depend on what kind of clients you want to get, but that’s a topic for another day.

Either way, you get bonus points if you can make the name fresh (of course, without making it confusing).

Here’s why I bring all this up.

I’ve been playing around with the name of my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space (the ugly “Health Email Splash” has gone out the window).

Whatever the final name will be, the offer remains the same. If you sign up now, you can get a copy for free when it comes out. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails

How to sell UFOs to skeptical, jaded audiences

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Last Friday, a British Airways pilot spotted something strange through her cockpit window.

She was flying from Montreal to London, and as her plane neared the coast of Ireland, she saw a bright light approach her plane — before seeing it veer off at great speed to the north.

“Astronomical, it was like Mach 2,” said a second pilot about how fast this mysterious light was.

To this day, nobody knows what this strange thing was.

Maybe, just maybe, it was a UFO. After all,

“UFOs spotted off Irish coast under investigation”

was the headline this story ran with, and it’s the headline that caught my attention this morning, so I can report on it to you now.

But here’s the thing.

I’ve written before how I like to haunt tabloid websites and sex forums and conspiracy theory Facebook groups.

That’s not how I found this particular story, however.

I actually came across it on Hacker News.

This is a news website where serious and professional nerds go to do intellectual battle with each other, submitting serious and professional stories (mainly about programming and business), and showing off their intelligence by writing comments that illustrate how nobody can make a fool of them.

And yet, the above story, flimsy UFOs and all, made the front page of Hacker News, alongside articles about new programming languages and $8 billion company exits.

What explains the success of this clickbaity story?

Well, I believe it was a combination of two things.

The first clearly being the curiosity-evoking power of UFOs.

But you have to remember that this story bubbled up among an audience of very left-brained, logical, skeptical engineers and computer programmers.

So there’s a second, more subtle, but equally crucial element that allowed this story to go viral.

And it’s something that can be used to sell as well as to simply draw clicks.

In fact, if you’re in a crowded, jaded marketplace such as weight-loss supplements, this second element is absolutely crucial.

I’ll discuss this second element in full detail in my upcoming book on email marketing for health products.

This book is not out yet, but if you want to get a free copy when I do finish it, you can sing up here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails

Jim Camp and the desert kite

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Somewhere in the Middle East, there’s an area called the Black Desert.

Apparently, it’s a horrible place, dry and barren and inhospitable to life.

The Bedouins who knew this area best even called it Bilad esh-Shaytan — the Land of Satan. (It rather sounds like Mordor.)

Anyways, deep inside the Black Desert, there are these strange formations:

Low walls, made up of loose stones, which stretch out for miles at a time.

They were first discovered about a hundred years ago, by aviators flying overhead, who named them “desert kites.”

An ancient sales funnel in the Black Desert

For a long time, nobody knew who made these desert kites, or when, or why.

Scientists now believe they were used for hunting large herds of gazelles and antelopes.

The gazelle herds would come upon these walls.

And unsuspectingly, they’d keep walking along.

And walking.

And walking.

And eventually, they would fall into a man-made enclosure, where the locals would have their grisly way with them.

So what’s the point of all this?

Well, let me explain it with an anecdote from negotiation expert Jim Camp:

“According to family tradition, my great-grandfather used to say about one of the mules on his farm, ‘To get his attention you have to hit him between the eyes with a two-by-four. When you have his attention, he can see what he ought to do.'”

Jim Camp taught people how to win negotiations.

And one of the pillars of his approach was the idea that you have to create a vision of pain in your adversary’s mind in order to get a real decision or action out of them.

The trouble, however — according to Camp — is that people are not mules.

Meaning you can’t just blind them with the pain, the way his grandfather would do to the mule with the two-by-four.

Instead, you have to guide them along gently, allowing them a little bit of emotional respite, while still using pain to move them along to your intended destination.

So to sum up:

Yes, people aren’t mules.

But they might just be gazelles.

And in that case, your sales copy becomes a desert kite built out of your target audience’s pain, gradually leading them where you want them to go.

If you want to see how this can be done in practice with email, specifically for the grisly goal of selling health products, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails

The one-word fix for rock-solid negotiation mindsets

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Continuing from yesterday’s discussion of negotiating lessons from Bridget Jones’ Diary:

I promised that a single word can transform a self-serving (and therefore ineffective) mission-and-purpose statement (ie. negotiation goal) into one that is rock-solid.

Let’s quickly revisit the 3 options from the scene in Bridget Jones’ Diary that illustrates this situation.

The scene: Hugh Grant’s character tries to win Bridget back.

Original version:

“I want to get Bridget back because if I can’t make it with her, I can’t make it with anyone.”

Not good, because completely self-serving and without regard to what Bridget wants. Sure enough, Bridget rejects this offer in the actual movie.

Second, a Jim Camp-style version:

“I want to help Bridget see and decide that she will be happy in a new relationship with me, because I am a changed man.”

Better, but in my opinion, still focused too tightly on the goal of winning the negotiation (ie. winning Bridget back).

Like I wrote yesterday, it’s too easy to transfer the first kind of mission-and-purpose statement into this second version, by pretending to care about what the other side wants.

So what’s the fix for this?

Simple.

Use the word “whether”:

“I want to help Bridget see and decide whether she will be happy in a new relationship with me, now that I am a changed man.”

It seems like a small change, but the effects in mindset — and how you negotiate — can be dramatic. (At least, they were whenever I took this attitude in various negotiations.)

Suddenly, you are not focused on trying to get to your pre-determined goal.

Instead, you are calmly and patiently working with the adversary to reach a solution that will last.

Does this work in real life to actually achieve your desired outcome?

Sometimes.

Sometimes not.

It depends on what Bridget (or your adversary) really wants, and how vividly you create the vision of her being happy and of yourself as a changed man.

And yes, there is a real chance that even if you do everything right, the negotiation will still fall through. Bridget might decide that she doesn’t believe you, that she’s been hurt too many times, that she in fact loves someone else now.

Nonetheless, by genuinely allowing yourself the chance to be rejected, you increase your chances of success as well, by negotiating with less neediness and more focus on what the other side wants.

Now of course, this whole discussion ignores the cruel realities of male-female relations, and the fact that many women find selfish and pushy men attractive.

But still, taking this attitude in negotiations — whether romantic or business — is likely to attract the best partners into your life, and to create negotiated solutions that last for the long term.

A failed coup for Hugh

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I was just on the English seaside, and, along with a few friends, I decided to revisit an English classic:

Bridget Jones’ Diary.

One scene sticks out.

Daniel Cleaver (played by Hugh Grant) is talking to his ex-girlfriend, Bridget Jones (played by Renée Zellweger).

Daniel is a bit of a cad — he cheated on Bridget and left her for another woman.

Now he’s back.

And after getting into a fight with Bridget’s new beau, he tries to win Bridget over with the infinitely romantic line:

“If I can’t make it with you, I can’t make it with anyone.”

To which Bridget bites her lip and says,

“Mm… that’s not a good enough offer for me.”

“Let me tell you what I want from this negotiation…”

I’m just re-reading Jim Camp’s Start with No.

Camp makes a big deal about negotiators having a “mission and purpose” statement, defined and written out for every negotiation, regardless of how small or informal.

So for example, in the case above, Daniel Cleaver apparently wrote out the following mission and purpose before heading over to Bridget’s:

“I want to get Bridget back because if I can’t make it with her, I can’t make it with anyone.”

“Wrong!” says Camp.

Daniel has made a classic negotiating mistake: he set his mission and purpose in his own world.

That won’t work. You can’t focus on what you want because your ultimate goal is to get the other person to make a decision. And you can only influence her indirectly.

That’s why you have to make your mission and purpose set in her world — not yours.

Daniel wants Bridget to take him back. So Camp would advise Daniel to change his mission and purpose to something like:

“I want to help Bridget see and decide that she will be happy in a new relationship with me, because I am a changed man.”

Better, right? He now has a fighting chance.

But here’s the trouble.

I feel that this second type of mission and purpose statement still doesn’t go far enough.

I feel like it’s too easy to change the first type of M&P into the second type:

I want something -> I want to help my adversary see and decide that what I want is also the best for them

This kind of lame mission and purpose can create all sorts of problems.

For example, not trying to understand your adversary as well as you should.

Or not building enough vision in her mind.

Or even getting needy.

All three of these are cardinal sins in the Jim Camp system of negotiation. So I’m surprised he didn’t think of them when talking about the mission and purpose statement.

The good news is it’s easy to fix this mission & purpose problem. In fact, the fix requires just one word.

Even though this fix is simple, the effects on how you negotiate — and how you’re perceived by the adversary — can be enormous.

But I’m still tired from my trip. So I’ll cover all this, including the magic M&P word, in full detail tomorrow.

You should always judge a book by its cover

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Former Smiths frontman Morrissey has a very polarizing public persona.

Unsurprisingly, he also has immensely devoted fans who have followed him for 30 years plus.

I read a Billboard Magazine interview with Morrissey today. It struck me how this interview is full to the gills of things anyone can copy to have a more dramatic public persona — and therefore a more devoted following.

Here are a few Morrissey lessons:

1. Agree and amplify

What’s the best way to respond when somebody accuses of you of something ugly? Agree and amplify the nasty fact, with humor and without bitterness or trying too hard.

BILLBOARD: “Feb. 20 marked the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Smiths album. How did you mark the occasion?”

MORRISSEY: “Is it only 30 years? It feels like 60.”

2. Use visual, colorful language

People’s brains work in pictures. So use visual language to make a point, and mix in surprising expressions and metaphors. (The good news is that this doesn’t have to be spontaneous. You can collect striking phrases, plan them ahead of time, and pull them out as needed.)

BILLBOARD: “It’s been reported that you’re now working on a novel. Is that true? If so, what are you writing about?”

MORRISSEY: “I can’t christen the baby until I at least see its head. It’s bad form, somehow.”

3. Surprise by inverting

Surprise shocks people into paying attention, and into remembering you. One way to surprise is simply to defy expectations. For example, when people expect you to be serious, be lighthearted. Focus on the trivial and irrelevant instead of the heavy and serious.

BILLBOARD: “In 2013, you endured a series of unfortunate maladies that forced you to cancel many tour dates. Are you still ill?”

MORRISSEY: “Well, I’m expected to see Easter. It was a bad year. I was in hospitals so frequently that the doctors were sick to death of me, and there’s nothing more ageing than lying in a hospital bed, trying to recover from hospital food. If your illness doesn’t kill you then the hospital food sees you off. That’s what it’s there for. Anyway, it was my time to go to pieces. Much overdue.”

4. Surprise by genuineness and sincerity

If you make a career of being tricky and irreverent, that becomes your norm. You can then surprise people further by taking a serious, no-nonsense stance on an issue — particularly one you find meaningful.

BILLBOARD: “You likened eating animals to pedophilia, a comparison some may find … extreme. Care to defend your point of view?”

MORRISSEY: “I don’t need to defend my own point of view. When you eat an animal you subject it to spiritual and physical rape, you eats its breasts … its rump … you cut off its genitals … whichever way you care to look at it, eating animals is violence at its most extreme.”

5. Have high standards

If something doesn’t meet your standards, you can simply ignore it. Another option is to dismiss it or mock it.

BILLBOARD: “Prince recently revealed that he’s an exceptional ping-pong player. What surprising, secret talent do you have?”

MORRISSEY: “I’m an exceptional ping-pong player.”

6. … And go back to surprising by inverting

Inverting the expected into the unexpected is a deep well you can go back to over and over.

BILLBOARD: “Lastly, what’s one piece of advice you wish someone had given you in 1984?”

MORRISSEY: “You should always judge a book by its cover.”

Mother Theresa’s emotional manipulation advice

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“If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”
— Mother Theresa

One of the most valuable lessons I learned in the early years of my copywriting education came from Andre Chaperon’s Autoresponder Madness.

It didn’t have to do with autoresponders. It didn’t have to do with email. In fact, it was (and is) completely applicable to any kind of sales copywriting, and more broadly, to any kind of mass persuasion.

So what was the lesson?

It was how to understand your prospects on a deep level, and how develop empathy for the people you’re writing to.

I won’t give away Andre’s exact tactics for doing this, but his general approach is simply a ton of research. All of which culminates in a customer avatar.

This is not a demographic description. Instead, it’s a detailed story about a specific person who is facing the problems that you’re looking to solve.

I’ve found that creating such an avatar isn’t just a matter of getting better insight into the audience. There seems to be some kind of chemical switch in the brain that gets flipped when I’m writing to a specific person with a name and a face — versus to a vague, shapeless, and nameless mass.

It’s something I’ve also heard A-list copywriter David Deutsch describe as the “Hey Mitch” method. In other words, when David is writing copy, he (either literally or in his mind) says “Hey Mitch, here’s how to…” and then he goes into his sales pitch.

This process of calling out a specific name has the effect of exposing fine sounding but unconvincing phrases, which seemed fine just a minute ago. And it replaces them with natural words and ideas which are relevant to your audience.

Anyways, this name/face/avatar concreteness isn’t just for hypnotizing yourself into writing better copy.

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath tell a story of hospital staff who were subtly manipulated into caring about improving workflow. This is normally not a topic that staff would be enthusiastic about, but in this case they were shown a video from the perspective of a patient — coming into the hospital, being laid down on a gurney, waiting around, etc.

This concrete illustration got the hospital staff much more responsive and committed to helping improve the situation than if they had been barraged by statistics or facts about nameless patients.

This idea is summed up nicely in the quote by Mother Theresa up top (which I also first read in Made to Stick).

To wrap up: Concreteness, and looking at the individual, is powerful persuasion stuff on multiple levels. It helps you empathize with your audience, and therefore makes you more persuasive. At the same time, the same principle of being specific and concrete makes your audience more receptive to your ideas — again making you more persuasive.

The right way to respond when you hear “no”

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“The easy part of playing negotiation is knowing when not to flinch”

Once upon a time, I threw a party and met a girl who came with some of my friends.

Throughout the evening, I circled around, talking to my various guests.

And each time I came across the girl, I could sense a growing interest from her side.  Which was great, because I was interested in her as well.

At some point, the party moved to a nearby club, where I found myself dancing with the girl. We started kissing, and eventually, I said, “Let’s get out of here.”

“Ok.”

So we got our coats and were about to walk out of the club. Just as we were at the door, she took a step back, furrowed up her eyebrows, and said: “Don’t think for a minute you’re taking me back to your place tonight.”

Thanks to being tired and a bit buzzed, I didn’t flinch at this. Instead, I looked her in the eye and said, “No problem. We’ll go to your place instead.”

She thought about this for a moment, and concluded that it was perfectly satisfactory. So we went to her place, and spent the first of many nights together.

I’ve just started re-reading Jim Camp’s “No: The Only Negotiating System You Need for Work and Home.” And here’s a relevant passage I just came across:

“If you’re a parent, you know that every child hears ‘no’ as the start of a negotiation, not the end of it. As adults, however, we’ve been conditioned and trained to fear the word.” 

I think that learning not to over-react to hearing “no” is not just good negotiation, but also one of the fundamentals of persuasion.

And just so we’re clear: I’m not talking about being pushy, insensitive, or “not taking ‘no’ for an answer”.

Instead, I’m talking about managing your own internal, emotional state, and keeping your sights on your goal in spite of the decoys being launched in front of you.