Natural Authority

How to turn failure into prestige

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In the year 52 BC, the Roman army, led by Julius Caesar, secretly advanced their massive siege towers towards the Gallic walled city of Avaricum.

The sentries on the walls were hiding from heavy rain.

Caesar took advantage of the situation, and he took the walls without much fight.

The remaining Gallic soldiers grouped themselves in the middle of town. They were set on a desperate fight to the end.

But the Romans just stayed on the walls, watching the Gauls from above.

Gradually, panic took the defenders. They started running out the city for dear life.

They didn’t get far.

The Romans massacred them along with everyone else in the city, women and children included.

Out of 40,000 Gauls inside Avaricum, only 800 survived.

The leader of the Gauls, Vercingetorix, was stationed outside the city with his army. He had been tasked with fighting Caesar in the open and keeping the city of Avaricum safe.

Vercingetorix had failed spectacularly. The fact that he had vocally opposed the idea of making a stand at Avaricum didn’t help, either.

As the few remaining survivors from the city dragged themselves into Vercingetorix’s camp… there was a real chance that the soldiers’ sympathy with the survivors and general anger at Vercingetorix would cause a riot.

But let’s pause for a second with the massacring and rioting.

Take a moment. And ask yourself, what might you do if you were in Vercingetorix’s sandals?

It’s not just an idle hypothetical.

Say you have an online presence today and you hope to position yourself as a leader in your field. There’s a good chance that sooner or later… you will be involved in some kind of scandal, failure, or controversy, whether deserved or not.

When that happens, discontent might bubble up among those who normally follow and support you. It might even break into a riot that lands your metaphorical head on a metaphorical plate.

So what can you do? Let me tell you what Vercingetorix did:

He called a council of war. He spoke to his troops and asked his army to not be disheartened by the loss.

The Romans didn’t beat them through superior courage in a fair fight. Instead, the Romans did it through trickery and their knowledge of siege warfare.

But Vercingetorix would soon repair this setback. He would lead his people to greater successes.

He was well on the way to uniting all the Gaul tribes against the Romans. And when Gaul was united, the whole world could not stand against her. In the meantime, it was time to get to work fortifying the camps.

Maybe it’s not clear from this what Vercingetorix’s real message was. So here’s an explanation, in Caesar’s own words:

“This speech made a good impression on the Gauls. What pleased them most was that, despite a signal disaster, Vercingetorix had not lost heart or concealed himself or shrunk from facing the multitude. And so while a reverse weakens the authority of commanders in general, his prestige, on the contrary, in consequence of the disaster, waxed daily greater.”

So here’s my takeaway for you, if you are a leader or you hope to be one some day:

The crowd mind hasn’t changed any in the past two millennia.

Today as then, when you face a crisis or setback, the crowd will tear you apart — as soon as you back down, apologize, or show weakness or fear.

The good news is, it’s easy to show no weakness or fear when you have a computer screen to protect you. And when your angry army is armed not with sharp swords… but with dull Twitter accounts.

Keep this in mind, and when disaster hits, you will see it’s really an opportunity. Not just to survive. But to get the crowd to love you even more.

Ok, so much for the history and leadership lesson. If you want more like this, you might like my daily email newsletter. You can give it a try here.

A quick and cheap boost in status and authority

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Today, I read about a guy who writes a Substack newsletter about parenting, and it’s made him a celebrity throughout his neighborhood.

Well, it wasn’t really the newsletter.

Rather, it was a specific fact about his own parenting success, which he revealed inside the newsletter. This one fact spread like wildfire among his neighbors, and soon everyone knew him, or at least wanted to. For example, when the guy got his hair cut last week, the following conversation went down:

“Hey, I know you, don’t I?”

“What? How’s that?”

“You’re the guy who has two sons at Harvard.”

“Yeah, that’s me.”​​

Status. All of us are aware of it. And the most pure of us all quest after it like Galahad after the Holy Grail.

I’m not saying anything new here. But here’s an unrelated idea, which might be new to you, and which can help you if you quest after status:

Don’t give too much proof. Argumentation and proof are sure ways to put a ceiling on how authoritative you seem and how much status you have.

“This guy sounds like a leader… but why does he have to buttress his claims with evidence and explain everything in so much detail? Something’s off.”

So cut down on the proof and avoid ruining or hampering your status.

And as with all things authority, things go in both directions. In other words, you can also get a quick and cheap boost in status simply by refusing to make an adequate argument for the claims you’re making.

You might think I’ll just leave that claim hanging as a way of demonstrating my point.

Not so.

For one thing, I’m actively avoiding pursuing status. I have other ideas of how I want to get into people’s heads.

For another thing, none of what I told you is really my idea. ​​I don’t mind telling you I heard it all from Rich Schefren.

​​So if you want proof for what I just told you, you should haunt Rich, and see if maybe he slips up into explaining why he believes all the stuff I just told you. If you don’t know Rich, you can get to know him here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKSG9Ug9FKrFCYxSlTRwGiA

Tending the penguins

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On September 27, 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton set off on a daring, last-of-its-kind conquering of Antarctica.

But his ship got stuck in ice. The popular explorer and his intrepid men faced the prospect of a cold, slow, lonely death. They cabled a desperate plea back to England, asking for help.

Their message made it up to the First Lord of the Admiralty, a guy by the name of Winston Churchill. Churchill was in the middle of dealing with what would later be called World War I. And he wrote in response:

“When all the sick and wounded have been tended, when all their impoverished & broken hearted homes have been restored, when every hospital is gorged with money, & every charitable subscription is closed, then & not till then wd. I concern myself with these penguins.”

Yesterday I promised to share with you one final great lesson I learned from Ben Settle. So let me get right to it:

Have standards for your business, and stick to ’em.

Like Churchill above, do the things you say matter to you. And leave the tending of the penguins for only after, if ever.

“That’s your great lesson?” you say.

Yeah. Hear me out.

I don’t know why having standards and sticking to them works so well. Maybe there’s some magic in it, and if you do it, the universe gives you more of what you focus on.

Or maybe it’s less magical. Maybe it’s just that we all secretly like strongmen. Maybe we are still kids in adult bodies. And whenever somebody assumes the right to start setting rules and boundaries… we start looking to them as an authority to be obeyed and respected.

Whatever the case, I believe that having your own standards and sticking to ’em – whether for yourself… your offers… your marketing… your business partners… your business practices… and yes, even for your customers — is the way to not only become successful… but to become successful on your own terms.

It’s how Ben was able to defy industry norms and not only survive but thrive. It’s how he could send multiple ugly-looking emails a day… offer no refunds… charge hundreds of dollars for a paperback book… while living his “10 minute workday” and making something close to $1 million a year, working by himself.

And a similar opportunity is there for you, too. You can also create a successful business that suits exactly you, if you take it upon yourself to turn the penguins away. Even if they are cold, hungry, desperate, intrepid, and popular. And even if the decision to do so might not win you any friends or make you any money in the short term.

But before you start rubbing your hands together, let me make clear that standards are not the only thing you need to succeed.

You can sit in your darkened room, having standards and sticking to them until you’re blue in the face.

Nobody will care.

You still need the fundamentals. Like attractive offers. And good copy. And a responsive list. Mix those fundamentals with some strict standards, and then you get the success you want, how you want it.

What’s that? You want some more? Well here’s one final point:

You probably know plenty of good resources to teach you the first two fundamentals above. And you might even know a good resource to teach you the last.

But I’d like to tell you about a resource which shows you how to create a responsive list beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I became aware of this resource only recently, and completely unexpectedly. And I’ll share it in an email to my newsletter next week. If you’d like to read that when it comes out, you can sign up here.

The parable of the unfree client

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Legend says the mighty Persian king Bahram Gur once went a-hunting. But he failed to catch even a single wild donkey.

Angry and tired, Bahram Gur, along with his vizier and priest, then happened upon a lovely village.

But nobody came out of the village to greet the great king or offer him food or drink. So in his bad mood, Bahram cursed the village and said,

“May this green prosperous village be a den
of beasts — a wild and uncultivated fen”

The priest at the king’s side lived to make his lord’s wishes come true. And he knew just what to do. So he rode into the village, assembled the people there, and decided to ruin their lives.

“King Bahram is pleased with your village,” he said. “So he has decided to reward you. From now on, all of you are free and equal. Children are equal to adults. Women are equal to men. Workers are equal to headmen.”

The people rejoiced.

A year later, Bahram Gur went a-hunting again in the same country. And he happened upon the once-beautiful village.

But this time, all he saw was a scrawny cat wandering the empty, trash-littered main street. A torn bra dangled from one window. A dirty baby sat on the corner, drinking wine and smoking a cigar.

“What awful thing happened here?” asked Bahram Gur, close to tears. “Priest, make sure these people get whatever they need to repair this once-beautiful village.”

“It shall be done, my lord” said the priest.

And he rode into town, assembled the drunken, dirty, diseased locals, and gave them the gift of order and hierarchy once again.

​​Within a year, the cat fattened up, the streets turned clean, and that dirty baby became an honor student who listened to his parents.

This thousand-year-old story is in part social propaganda. After all, it’s not clear that humans really need to be ruled for peace and harmony to abide. So it makes sense to tell them stories like this to make them believe that’s the case.

But in part, this story is also an allegory about human nature.

Because there’s no denying our brain loves to minimize thinking. And while we might not need order, authority, and hierarchy… we certainly crave those things on some level.

I’ve noticed this with my clients. The more I take charge of the client relationship, the more I tell my clients how it is… the more they respect the work I do, and the more they pay me, without any questions.

But this same idea goes just beyond copywriting client work. So let me leave you with a Bahram-like couplet to sum it up:

“Strip away his freedoms, and make things black and white —
Your prospect will love you, and feel you must be right!”

For more commandments, delivered to your brain each day, just as you’re getting antsy about the lack of order in your life, click here and follow the instructions.

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.

Prophet positioning

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“Let me explain something to you right now,” the goofy looking guy said to the camera. “Here’s a $10 bill.”

And he started to tear the bill up into small pieces in front of the interviewer’s face.

“This is garbage. This is going to zero. Euros are going to zero. The yen’s going to zero. All going to zero… against bitcoin!”

The Bitcoin prophet got louder and his voice started to crack.

“If you don’t understand this, you’re going to be impoverished! You’re going to be out on the street! You’re gonna be begging! You’re gonna be out of business!”

That’s from a little clip I saw today. It went viral so even somebody like me, who doesn’t follow crypto news, got to see it.

The question is why.

It might be because the Bitcoin prophet looked like a kook. He was dressed like Elton John. Even the interviewer was giggling at him. Maybe people who shared the video just wanted to make fun.

But I’ve got my own theory.

Which is that making strong predictions, saying X is dead, Y is the future, is a great way to grab attention and carve out a position for yourself in the mass mind.

Now the clip I saw had a tongue-in-cheek element to it. It seemed even the Bitcoin prophet was about to crack a smile as his performance built up.

But if you don’t hedge your bets like that…

If instead you have the conviction (or connivance) to paint the future black and white… and you do it in a way where people can believe you really mean it…

Then that’s the road to being seen as an authority. A leader. A prophet.

And that’s something all of us crave.

Because few things are scarier and more motivating than the uncertainty and lack of control that come from looking at the frosted glass window that is the future.

Which is why it doesn’t matter if your predictions are right or wrong. People will follow you, or at least some will. Even if you’re wrong. And even if the rest of the world thinks you look like a goof or a kook.

But perhaps pretending to be a prophet doesn’t suit you. Maye you think that’s garbage.

What’s not garbage is your need for positioning in the market. If you don’t understand this, you’re gonna be out of business, begging, out on the streets.

I write about positioning on occasion. I have many ideas about it. If you want to read about them as I write about them, sign up to my email newsletter.

Stop daydreaming for once and read this

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Listen up you dreamer:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sounds about right, yeah?

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

He yells. He insults. He curses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here’s my addition to this theory:

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

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

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

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

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

One last thing:

Sign up to my email list.

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

Your first step to achieving natural authority

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I’ve got three quotes about celebrities for you, and then I will tell you about a hack. A hack to make you be seen as a natural-born leader — or at least a necessary ingredient for it.

But first, the quotes.

Quote 1:

“Patton believed that it was critical for a general to stand out and to be seen by his troops, a philosophy that conveniently coincided with his ego. He dressed impeccably in a colourful uniform and knee-high boots, sporting ivory-handled pistols.”

Quote 2:

“Long before ‘mumblecore’ became a film genre, critics complained about Brando’s speech patterns until it finally became clear they were an integral part of his performances.”

Quote 3:

“Prince’s handwriting was beautiful, with a fluidity that suggested it poured out of him almost involuntarily. It also verged on illegible. Even in longhand, he wrote in his signature style, an idiosyncratic precursor of textspeak that he’d perfected back in the eighties: ‘Eye’ for ‘I,” ‘U’ for ‘you,” ‘R’ for ‘are.'”

A few days ago, I started thinking about natural authority.

What makes it so that some people just seem imbued with the royal farr? So that they command obedience or respect or awe, even if they aren’t wearing a uniform… or standing on stage in front of an adoring crowd… or climbing alone, without ropes, up a 3,000-foot cliff of sheer rock?

Well, I wrote down a bunch of ideas. If you like, I’ll share them all with you in time.

Today I’ll just tell you about one. You can see it illustrated in the quotes above.

Got it? It’s just this:

Patton, Brando, and Prince all had a unique style. In some ways, a style completely beyond the pale of what was normal or acceptable.

In one case (Brando), it was probably inborn, or at least unconscious.

In another (Patton), it was clearly cultivated.

In the last (Prince), it was a bit of both.

So that’s your first step to natural authority, should you want that position in other people’s minds.

Maybe you already have your own inborn style. In that case, emphasize it.

Maybe you don’t. Then you can consciously build it.

And style can be anything. How you talk, how you write, how you dress, how you walk, how you spell. Some of them, or all. Whatever your audience can see. And maybe even stuff they can’t, because it’s somehow still likely to shine through.

It might not instantly make you a star or a king or queen. But like I said, I think it’s a necessary ingredient, at least in some form. So you might as well thinking about it now, while I write up the emails about the other bits you’ll need.

Emails? Yes, emails. I write a daily email newsletter. If you’d like to sign up for it, here’s where to go.