Persuasion

Guru to a bunch of bossy bottoms

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Today’s post is long and heavy. My intention in saying this is to deter you from reading on, but I am aware it might have the opposite effect. Still I feel I’ve done my duty by making this warning. So here goes:

In high school, I was friends with a girl I will call Caroline. Caroline and I liked the same music… liked the same movies… had the same sense of humor. It was like kismet.

Then one day, along with some friends including Caroline, I drank a bottle of gin.

I was not an expert drinker in those days, so I lost control. I started running around like a jackass… I made out with Caroline in a burrito shop bathroom… and then I blacked out for the rest of the evening. Eventually, I puked all over a friend’s car, was taken home, and passed out in my own bed, to wake up the next morning without even a hangover.

And here’s where the plot curdles:

I wasn’t pleased about the drunken burrito-shop makeout with Caroline, but I wasn’t ashamed either.

What I did find unsettling was hearing from several friends how Caroline was going around in the following days, elated that something had finally happened between me and her. She had been hoping for this for months, she said, and now it was finally here. It seems she had had a crush on me for a while.

And the weirdest thing happened. I began to really hate Caroline.

I guess there were two parts to it. One part I understood right then and there, back in 11th grade… the other I realized tonight. Let me tell you about both parts, and how they are strangely relevant to the world of copywriting and online marketing.

Back then, what I realized in a moment of insight was that Caroline had gradually adopted my personality.

I’m not sure how I didn’t notice this before. Maybe I was naive, or maybe I was egotistical.

But what became as clear as gin was that Caroline had picked up on the music I liked and then started listening to the same… she did the same with the movies I said I enjoyed… and she had mimicked whatever humor and mannerisms I had at that time. That was the explanation for the seeming kismet.

My 17-year-old self found this repulsive. The idea that somebody would abandon their own personality and adopt mine… it was the sign of a person who is weird and weak. Not somebody I wanted to be associated with. So in my typical fashion, I cut off all contact with Caroline, and didn’t talk to her for years.

That’s the part I realized back in 11th grade about why Caroline repelled me.

But I never took it one step further, until tonight. I never asked myself, what’s so bad about having somebody idolize you? Why not let them have their fun, and get what you can out of the relationship, which should in theory be a lot?

I’ll tell you what I discovered. The term of art for it is a “bossy bottom.” Or at least that’s what Michael Taft called it in an interview I heard with him today.

Taft teaches meditation, and he’s worked with lots of individuals as well as big corporations like Google and for all I know Halliburton. He has a best-selling book on meditation… he has a successful podcast on the same… and in this particular field, he’s apparently a bit of a celeb.

So Taft talked about how he won’t teach people who treat him as a guru and look up at him with glossy eyes. “I don’t want to teach people who are in a trance,” Taft said. “And plus, that’s not even the biggest issue.”

Because according to Taft, these entranced and enguru-ed people aren’t the passive followers they might seem. Taft believes they control the guru as much as the guru controls them.

These “bossy bottoms” can manipulate the guru by modulating what they allow to apparently affect them. “Oh when he does this thing, I won’t react… but when he does this other thing, I will react.”

So that’s part 2 of my repulsion for Caroline. It’s not that I found her weak and weird… but that I realized how she had actually manipulated me, controlled me, and influenced me, in a way that I was blind to. She had made me feel weak and weird.

Perhaps it’s now clear how this might apply to marketing. Because the high form of marketing is achieving guruship. It’s where you have the biggest and easiest influence. As Ken McCarthy said in a recent interview:

I don’t know where I first got the notion that being a celebrity was a great thing. And then somebody put it in my ear that really anybody can be a celebrity. It’s a manufactured thing.

And I’m like, wow, that’s interesting.

And then the next piece was, celebrity is relative. So you don’t have to be world famous to make a ton of money, you just have to be famous within a finite group of money-spending people, and you can have all the money you can handle.

And when those three items congealed in my brain, I was like: “Whoa, I’m going to be a celebrity.”

And it really can be easy. The steps to become a guru are by now well-known. There’s not much more to it than going outdoors, finding a soapbox no shorter than 6 inches in height, and standing up on it day after day.

Of course, there are other things you can do to speed up the process. But even with just your 6-inch soapbox, people out there will find you, listen to you, and start to follow you. And eventually, if you’re halfway decent and at least a quarterway successful, some of them will begin to idolize you.

As Ken says, it’s easy and it’s profitable. That’s the argument for it. And if you’re doing the Lord’s work or you really love your flock of followers, it can be the best thing in the world.

But if you are just looking to become a guru as a shortcut to freedom… or if you’re after power and control… then maybe today’s post will be an argument against becoming a guru. Because you can’t become a guru, not unless you agree to be completely and secretly manipulated in turn.

But if that don’t dissuade you… and you want to know in more detail what I mean by a 6-inch soapbox, you can see one here.

Powerful old males argument that doesn’t get used enough

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Back in 2018, a local newspaper in New York state published a racy article about actress Julia Roberts. The headline read:

“Julia Roberts Finds Life And Her Holes Get Better With Age”

The newspaper later ran a correction. Apparently they meant Julia’s roles, with an R, were getting better.

This story sounds almost fake, doesn’t it?

​​But apparently it’s true. Or at least it was fact-checked by the people at the BBC. They smugly called it a “spectacular reminder of why we need sub-editors – whose job it is to check spelling, grammar and facts in every article.”

There’s no great reason that I’m telling you this. Except one habit I have is to keep a document with unique sales arguments I come across.

Here’s one I read in a sales letter by copywriting legend Robert Collier. Collier was selling a news service for businessmen, and he wrote:

“You are paying for my services whether you use them or not, but you are paying in lost time, in needless mistakes and worries.”

This argument might be something you too can profit from. Because I don’t see this in sales copy today, but it seems very versatile.

You could use this argument to convince a prospect to buy your information product… or to engage your copywriting services… or, if you happen to be a sub-editor who can keep roles from turning into holes, to hire your eagle eyes.

In fact, that last service is something I myself could use, to keep from making needless mistakes in my email newsletter. But if occasional mistakes don’t bother you, and you’d like to get regular emails with ideas on persuasion, sales, and copywriting, then you can join my newsletter here.

Experts are baffled: The magic ingredient that makes a hit

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Back when Jim Morrison and The Doors released their first album, they were a bunch of movie school bums whose biggest ambition was to become as big as the cult LA band Love.

Who remembers Love today? Not many. But hundreds of millions know Jim Morrison and Doors hits like “Light My Fire” and “Hello, I Love You.”

This global success might never have happened. But The Doors, bums that they were, spent weeks calling up the local LA radio station, requesting that cool new song, Light My Fire.

​​The song eventually became a local hit… then a national hit… then the album became a hit… and then The Doors became the next big thing.

Maybe you can do the same. At least that’s one conclusion I drew from a mind-opening article by Duncan Watts.

The article is titled “Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?” You can find it on The New York Times Magazine site, and it’s worth reading from beginning to end. But if you’re pressed for time or attention, let me summarize it for you:

Conventional wisdom says the success of a book or a song or a movie is based on two things. One is the product itself. The other is what the market wants at that time.

And the conclusion, based on this conventional wisdom, is simple. If anybody fails to predict what will become successful, he is either too dumb or too lazy to read the writing on the wall.

Well, Watts had his doubts about this. So he set up a clever experiment to test it out. I won’t rehash the full details of how the experiment ran. The gist was it involved looking at which songs became popular among nine different segments of 14,000 people.

People in one segment had no information about how popular each song already was. People in the other eight segments knew how popular each song was, but only within their own segment.

This setup allowed Watts to test two ideas:

1. The most popular songs will be roughly as popular in the different segments.

2. The same songs will float to the top in the different segments.

Both of these hypotheses turned out to be very false.

First, in the eight “social influence” segments, the most popular songs became way more popular than in the “no social influence” segment. And the losers were more thorough losers.

​​Maybe that’s not so amazing. But get this:

In the different “social influence” segments, different songs became the most popular. And this wasn’t a minor reordering. A song could be no. 1 in one segment and no. 40 in another.

Watts explains this in a blindingly obvious way:

People do not make decisions independently of other people. The world is too complex… we usually don’t know what we want… and we often get more value out of a shared experience than out of the “best” experience.

All this means that small, random differences in initial popularity can have a massive impact in what becomes a hit and what doesn’t. That’s what Watts calls cumulative advantage. The rich get richer. And who gets rich initially? Well, that’s a coin toss.

This explains my Grinch story from yesterday. Chuck Jones had to pitch the Grinch 25 times, not because industry experts are too dumb or closed-minded to see the potential that was there… but because it’s genuinely impossible to predict what will succeed.

Randomness is the magic ingredient that determines a hit.

But what about The Doors? And what about direct response marketing, where decisions are more likely to be independent? And is there anything positive we can conclude from all this?

I believe so. But this post is running long already… so if you’re interested in more on this, I’ll finish it up tomorrow.

You’re funny and smart, and I’ll tell you why

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Here’s a personal story I think you will appreciate (I’ll explain why in a second):

Today I walked up the hill to the local tourist attraction. A couple was dragging behind me.

When I got to the entrance, a guard popped out, blocking my way.

“Where are you from?” he asked with a scowl.

I told him — a neighboring country.

“And where are they from?” He nodded towards the couple.

“Russians, I guess.”

“All right,” he said, “hold on a moment.”

The upshot is, the Russians got in first, paying 5 euro each for the privilege. I had to wait a minute while the guard talked to me about the political and economic crisis in his country. And then he let me in for free.

I was chuffed by this experience. I kept replaying it as I climbed up to the fortress at top of the hill… and then all the way back down.

“I got in for free,” I chuckled to myself, “while the Russians had to pay!”

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

It’s not just that I managed to save 5 euro. That part is nice, but the fact is, I can afford 5 euro. Instead, I was pleased because I was somehow chosen, selected, and approved.

Jay Abraham and Tony Robbins do this in their programs.

“You are very special,” they effectively say. “How do I know? Because you bought this course… which tells me you care more about success than most of your peers. Because you listened this far… which shows you’ve got the determination to improve and succeed.”

You can use this same approach in your sales copy as well. And I’m not just talking about the lazy argument you’ll often hear at the end of a VSL. (“You’ve watched this far, so you must want this product… so click the Buy Now button.”)

No, I’m talking about everything you can conclude about your prospect. Bring these things up, and use them to explicitly compliment or flatter. Make your prospect feel special, as though these reasons are what make him or her perfect for your offer.

For example, what do I know about you?

I know you’re not satisfied with surface-level ideas, and you want something deeper. Otherwise you wouldn’t have done the research needed to dig up my blog.

I also know you’re a reader. This gives you a big advantage in today’s world, where most everyone needs information served up in fluffy, less dense formats.

Finally, I imagine you resonate with the stories and examples I use to illustrate these marketing lessons. This tells me you’ve got a great sense of humor and a refined taste.

And for all of these reasons, I think maybe you will like to subscribe to my email newsletter. It’s where I talk about marketing and persuasion, and sometimes even give demonstrations of the techniques I talk about. In case you are interested, here’s where to go.

Do copywriters have to be funny?

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“That’s the face of every married guy ever.”

Sam Kinison was a former Pentecostal preacher turned standup comic. He was a stout man, with girlish shoulder-length hair, and in the video I watched of him today, he wore a black trench coat on stage. He started off his set in a sweet and quiet tone:

“I’ve been going around the country trying to get as many people as I can not to get married. I’ve been married and I’m just trying to help. Anyone here never been married?”

A guy in the front row raised his head.

“You never been married?” Sam said, his eyebrows rising up innocently. He walked over to the unmarried guy. “Ok, just promise me this.”

“If you ever think about getting married,” Sam said, “remember this face.”

And he started screaming — AAAAAAARRRH AAAAAAARRRH AAAAAAARRRH — the patended Sam Kinison “I’m in hell” scream, right into the poor unmarried guy’s face.

“That’s the face of every married guy ever,” Sam concluded, back in his normal sweet voice.

In my email self-critique yesterday, I criticized myself for missing an opportunity to be funny.

But do you have to be funny if you write copy?

As Dan Kennedy likes to say, you only have to be funny if you want to get paid. Dan even wrote a book all about it, “Make ’em laugh and take their money.”

From what I’ve seen, a few rare individuals can be funny just by being who they are. By being unfiltered or obnoxious or polarizing. Sam Kinison was apparently one of these. According to his brother:

“With Sam, what you saw was what was there. He didn’t exaggerate for the stage.”

But what if you don’t have such an unfiltered personality?

Well, here’s what humor writer SJ Perelman once said. Perelman was asked what it takes to be a comic writer. He responded:

“It takes audacity and exuberance and gaiety, and the most important one is audacity. The reader has to feel that the writer is feeling good. Even if he isn’t.”

In other words, you can fake it. Fake it till you make it… or at least fake it until you’ve finished writing that email or VSL lead or seminar stump speech that’s been sitting and looking at you for days.

And if faking it isn’t working, then go on YouTube and watch some Sam Kinison screaming… or Bill Burr ranting… or Eddie Murphy grinning.

​​These guys will make you feel good for a few minutes. They might even give you some audacity. Just remember this face — AAAAAAARRRH AAAAAAARRRH AAAAAAARRRH

Learning from my hurt sense of importance

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I had a run in with the police two weeks ago.

They stopped me on a dark and abandoned road. They frisked me. They rifled through my wallet. They opened my box of takeout food and sniffed at the dumplings inside.

In the end, they gave me a fine. “Would you like to pay now?” they asked.

I said no.

They seemed surprised. “Then you have five days to pay at the police station. Otherwise you won’t be able to travel or leave the country.”

I’m telling you this story because it illustrates Dale Carnegie’s first rule of dealing with people. Carnegie says, never criticize, condemn, or complain.

When the policemen stopped me, I was pretty sure I wasn’t doing anything wrong. But when they gave me the fine, I became 100% sure I wasn’t doing anything wrong. The policemen were being arbitrary and stupid, and I could prove it. Or as Carnegie says,

“Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself.”

But that’s not all.

Because I never did pay the fine. “What can they do to me?” I reasoned.

I pictured the two cops checking their police computer, day after day… seeing my fine not being paid. In my fantasy, they shook their heads in frustration. “All that work we put in… for nothing!” A smile spread across my face.

But I also imagined getting stopped at the airport when it was time to fly out. I imagined being taken to a small windowless room, with those two same policemen waiting for me.

It made me nervous for days. But no matter. I would spite myself and not pay the fine — just to spite the stupid and unjust police.

And that’s part two of Carnegie’s argument against criticism:

“Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.”

This applies if you’re talking to people one-on-one. And it applies to your copy also.

Some copywriters — particularly when starting out — try to be edgy and insult or mock the prospect. Like this weight loss ad that started:

“ATTENTION ALL FAT PEOPLE! DOES YOUR GARBAGE MAN DELIVER INSTEAD OF COLLECT, AND THEN YELL ‘CHOW TIME!?'”

Don’t scoff. That radio ad was written by a young and cocky Gary Halbert. It pulled in a grand total of 3 sales after thousands of dollars of ad spend.

Of course, your prospect might really be in the wrong. He might be the one to blame. But if that’s what you want to make him see, don’t say so.

Only do it indirectly. For example, by telling him a cautionary tale of somebody else making a similar mistake. Otherwise, your prospect might spite himself — even if he might want your product otherwise — just to spite you.

Hopefully your sense of importance is still in tact. And if you’d like to subscribe to my email newsletter, here’s where to go.

How to win boring friends and influence guarded people

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I was in a cafe today and I saw a masterclass in human relations.

A bare-shouldered girl was sitting and working near the entrance to the cafe.

A guy came out of the bowels of the cafe, and confidently walked over to the hand sanitizer that was stationed next to the girl. He pumped out a disgusting quantity of sanitizer onto himself. “Good morning,” he said to the girl, sanitizer dripping off his hands.

Apparently, they knew each other. But the girl didn’t seem excited by the encounter. She didn’t turn to face the guy, and she kept staring at her laptop.

No matter. The guy started to enthusiastically speak about the work he was currently doing. He kept his gaze on the girl, spoke loudly, and didn’t move.

The girl still refused to turn towards him. She kept scrolling through Facebook on her laptop, occasionally picking up her phone to continue scrolling there.

And yet the guy kept talking at her, more about the project he was working on.

Gradually, the girl put down her phone. Bit by bit, she turned more and more towards the guy. She started to add a sentence here or there to his stream of words.

Finally she started laughing. And then she started to show the guy stuff on her own laptop that she was working on. He leaned in to see better, putting his hand on the back of her chair.

Chapter four of Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People tells you how to get people to like you. Carnegie explains:

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.”

And it’s true. It’s amazing how impressed people will be with your humor and wit if you just shut up and listen to them.

But the thing is, it doesn’t ALWAYS work. Because there are many situations in which people are either guarded or boring or both.

Showing “genuine interest” in these people right off the bat can backfire. It puts additional pressure on them, making them more clammed up and more guarded… and it makes you smell suspicious and needy.

So what can you do?

Well, one option is exactly what the guy in the cafe did today.

Be enthusiastically interested, not in the other person, but in your own hobby horse. At least at the start, until the other person thaws.

Because most of us, the non-psychopaths, have a strong instinct to mirror others. And if you are enthusiastically interested in a topic, it will rub off on other people. As comedian Andrew Schulz once said about his standup material:

“Who cares if they relate to it. Make them relate to it.”

By the way, this can apply to your marketing as well as to person-to-person interactions. Particularly in this day of free marketing channels, like YouTube and Facebook and email.

Write or talk about things that interest you, with enthusiasm. And some people will respond.

That’s what I do. In case you’re curious, my email newsletter is here.

Bump your order form bump 15% without changing the offer

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Two days ago, I watched an interview with a successful marketer who currently has several million-dollar funnels. He broke down his most recent success and shared some tricks and tips. Here’s one that got me, about an order form bump.

You probably know what an order form bump is. It’s an impulse buy you can tack onto your order form that doesn’t need a lot of explaining. If you haven’t seen one of these before, you can think of it as asking, “Do you want fries with that?” This can often substantially increase your average order value.

So this marketer discovered (by accident) how to increase his order form bump take rate by 15%, even for order form bumps that cost as much as the front-end offer. The breakdown:

1. The customer goes on the order page

2. He sees an initial two-sentence description of the oder form bump, along with a checkbox that says “Yes, add this to my order!”

3. If the customer clicks the checkbox, the 2-sentence description expands into a slightly more detailed description, which also includes the price.

This marketer’s accidental discovery was leaving out the price out of the initial two-sentence description. All his offers used to show the price there… but he forgot to put it in one time. The take on that no-price order form bump was 15% higher. And once he took out the price out of the initial description in other funnels, he saw similar increases.

Just in case you’re wondering about the legality or ethics of this:

The price is perfectly revealed once you click the checkbox. And for anybody who decides he doesn’t want the order form bump, another click on the same checkbox will remove the order form bump from your offer.

In other words, this is just of one of those human quirks. You might attribute it to the endowment effect or consistency or whatever you like. The fact is some portion of those extra 15% of people find it easier to convince themselves they actually want something they don’t really want… than to click on the checkbox a second time.

And that’s my point for you for today.

Because I don’t normally share these kinds of funnel hacks (though this one is worthwhile). Rather, I’m more interested in fundamental human traits and how we can use them for influence and persuasion.

Well, the trait here is how even tiny obstacles, particularly phyiscal obstacles, can have big effects on human behavior. Like in the example above, you can use tiny obstacles to reinforce the behavior you want. And vice versa.

Because right now, there are sure to be tiny obstacles that are hindering the behavior you want from people. It makes sense to hunt down those obstacles and terminate them with extreme prejudice. As Jonah Berger wrote in his book The Catalyst:

“Instead of asking what would encourage change, ask why things haven’t changed already.”

For example, I have an email newsletter. I could probably help get my optins up by offering some small gift for signing up, besides the pleasure of hearing from me each day.

I should work out what would make a good gift… but in the meantime, I can offer you the following, a special report called Copywriters Hero. It’s my collection of the best free and paid resources for discovering the world of copywriting and direct marketing. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/copywriters-hero/

Why piling on the benefits can weaken your bullets

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File this one away under “psychology behind advertising.” Let’s start with an example bullet:

“Why adding improvements to your home can lower its value!”

This is a bullet written by Gary Halbert for a book on selling your home in a buyer’s market. The following is the relevant passage in the actual book:

“If your interior designer has used your home to make a personal artistic statement, that’s great while you’re living there but don’t expect it to translate well when you’re trying to sell. Rather than overdecorating or overrenovating, try to create a neutral canvas onto which a potential buyer can project his tastes.”

So what’s the psychology here? Well, I covered it all in today’s lesson in the bullet. The point is that Gary could have gone lots of different ways twisting the above source material… but he chose the one above.

There’s a fundamental rule of human nature hidden behind that decision. And it’s something you don’t want to ignore if you’re writing sales copy, and you’re judged on results.

Anyways, today’s lesson of the bullet course is out and done. To get future lessons before they also disappear, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/bullets-signup/

3 reasons to 3+ your prospect

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Negotiation expert Jim Camp promoted a technique he called 3+. Camp said to cover each point of your negotiation at least 3 times in slightly different language.

“So you’re saying you want to subscribe to my email newsletter today. Is that right?”

“Are there any reasons you’d rather wait to subscribe?”

“And if you do get to the end of this post where the optin is, would you still be interested in subscribing? Are you sure?”

Camp did 3+ because he wanted to get to a decision that sticks, rather than just a flaky agreement.

But you can do something similar to get a click or a purchase from a prospect, even a flaky one. All you have to do is repeat your basic promise at least three times.

Don’t worry about annoying your reader. You won’t annoy him, as long as you surround your promise with new info. Phrase your promise in a new and surprising way. But keep hammering away at it.

Really? Yes. Because there are at least three reasons why this 3+ stuff works in sales copy.

One is that repetition creates belief. It shouldn’t, but it does. Just look at the stump speeches of politicians, or the headlines of the major news outlets. Repeat an outlandish idea one, two, three or more times, and people will adopt it as their own.

But that’s not all. Because repetition also creates desire. You’re greasing the groove.

Promise me something once, and I only hear your words. Promise me something twice, and I’m starting to imagine your promise being a reality. Make the same promise three or more times, and I’m getting impatient for the outcome.

But there’s a third and possibly most important reason to repeat your message over and over and over. And that’s the fact we’re living in a noisy world. Your reader doesn’t hear your whole message. He is distracted. He skims. He checks his phone. His mind is elsewhere.

You think you have his whole attention. You don’t. But you can still get your message across, if you keep repeating it. How many times? At least three. More is better.

None of this is new. Almost 300 years ago, Samuel Johnson said:

“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.”

You might already know that quote. What few people know is that Johnson kept talking after the dictaphone stopped recording.

“Yes,” Johnson said, “promise is the soul of an advertisement. But repetition, constant repetition, is the body of an advertisement. So keep repeating your promise to make it more real. Even if you get tired of it. Over and over. Because eventually, your prospect will hear you. And then he will buy.”

By the way, remember that 3+ from the start of this post? About subscribing to my email newsletter? You do?

Well, I’m not sure if you’re still up for subscribing. In case you are, here’s where to go.