Authority

The status pirate game

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Imagine a large and hairy sailor, wearing a striped blue-and-white shirt and a bandana wrapped around his head, looking nervous.

​​The year is 1717, and he is the navigator of an English trading vessel that’s sailing through the Carribean.

A few times, the big navigator makes like he’s going to say something. But he stops himself.

His eyes keep darting forward — out toward the horizon – and then at the captain next to him, who is looking through the telescope.

It’s dusk and there is a ship up ahead. It’s very strange — there is nobody on board.

“It might have been the plague, sir,” the large navigator says. “Sudden plague could have taken them all.”

The captain shakes his head. He’s not at all worried. “Pirates,” he says. “Dusk is their favorite time. Have you readied the cannons?”

The navigator starts shifting his weight from one foot to another. “It would be a very simple matter for us to alter course, sir,” he says.

The captain squints his eyes and looks back through the telescope. “I — never — alter — course,” he says.

That’s the opening scene of a movie that never got made, called Sea Kings.

As you probably guessed, it’s about pirates.

And it’s also about how the human brain determines value.

In this case, start with a large sailor. From his physical size and job title, you would assume him to be a brave man. And he might be, in most situations. But out here, faced with pirates on the open sea, he’s nervous.

Then contrast that to the captain. He’s at another level of coolness and bravery. Unlike the navigator, he’s not afraid of pirates. He’s seen it all before and he won’t flinch.

And because the screenwriter — William Goldman in this case — set it up this way, it makes the next moment all the more dramatic and impressive.

Because in the next moment, a figure appears on the ghost pirate ship. It’s human shaped. But it’s entirely black and it’s enormous. It also appears to be on fire. And then the figure starts to speak. Its deep voice carries across the sea.

“Death or surrender… surrender or die… the Devil bids you choose…”

The big navigator starts screaming and running around. “What is that? WHAT — IS — IT?”

And the captain, who until a moment ago was so determined and tough, suddenly isn’t any more. He’s turned pale. He drops the telescope.

“Run up the white flag,” he whispers to the navigator. “It’s Blackbeard…”

That’s how you make an entrance for your main character.

Not by showing a closeup of him, scowling and looking scary and ugly.

Not by his credentials — the many cruel and daring things he’s done in his career.

Not by an action sequence in which your main character — a hulk of a man — fights a dozen frightened and incompetent soldiers.

No, if you want to make your main character frightening and awe-inspiring, you just put him at the top of a pyramid:

Blackbeard
Normally tough captain
Big and strong sailor who shouldn’t be afraid
The audience, representing the rest of soft and weak humanity

The fact is, the game of status is only ever relative.

You can think of it as a Ponzi scheme, or an MLM. The more people you recruit beneath you… and the more people they recruit beneath them… the better and more valuable your position.

And perhaps you’re wondering how you can specifically use this in marketing and sales copy.

The fact is, there are many ways. I could tell you what they are, but instead I’ll make you an deal:

Get a few people who are interested in direct marketing and form a little study group. With you as the leader. And then get them all to sign up for my newsletter. I’ll share my insights then.

Don’t read this if you can’t stand harsh glaring lights

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“It is important that you get clear for yourself that your only access to impacting life is action. The world does not care what you intend, how committed you are, how you feel, or what you think, and certainly, it has no interest in what you want and don’t want.”
— Werner Erhard, founder of est

Last week, after I sent out my Copy Koala Millions™ email, a reader named Lester wrote in with this interesting point:

“The one other thing I remember from Carlton is how in almost all business segments, the customers want easy/painless/low effort results. BUT the body building/fitness guys want the opposite. You have to sell how fucking painful and hard it will be with what you are selling.”

It’s true — 99% of sales copy promises quick/easy/foolproof results, preferably accomplished by an external mechanism, which you activate by pressing a large red button that reads “INSTANT RESULTS HERE.”

But like Lester says, not every market is like that. Bodybuilders for one… maybe also small business owners and entrepreneurs.

For example, yesterday I wrote about Dan Kennedy’s “#1 most powerful personal discipline in all the world.”

Dan promises that this one discipline can make you successful beyond your wildest dreams.

But honestly, I didn’t need that promise to buy what Dan was selling. I became hypnotized as soon as I read the words “powerful personal discipline.” At that point, I was 86% sold already.

That’s why I said yesterday that I don’t need to sell this idea to you either. Because if you feel the twitching of this same drive for overcoming inside you… you probably perked up just because I kept stuffing the terms “self discipline” and “personal discipline” a dozen times in what I wrote yesterday.

The fact is, there’s a very real need inside most people for occasional struggle, suffering, and proving their own worth.

Suffering and struggle might not sell in front-end copy going out to a cold list of people who are already suffering and struggling with a problem.

But it definitely does sell, including in sister markets to direct response. Such as the seminar business, for example.

Werner Erhard, the guy I quoted up top, ran est, the biggest personal development product of the 1970s. est consisted of two weekend-long seminars where people would literally piss themselves because they weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom — in a giant hall filled with hundreds of strangers.

On day two, attendees would go through the “danger process.” From the book Odd Gods:

“A row of the audience at a time would go on stage and be confronted by est staff. One person would ‘bullbait’ all of them, saying and doing things in order to get them to react. Other volunteers would be body catchers for those who fell, a common occurrence.”

Like I said, this went on for two weekends in a row. In other words, people would show up one weekend, get humiliated and brutalized, and come back the next weekend for more. When it was all said and done, people found it transformative, and enthusiastically recommended est to their friends and family.

My point is simply a reminder. We are no longer living in the world of one-off sales letters pitching a book of Chinese medicine secrets. Today, there’s plenty of money to be made by being strict, demanding, and harsh. Yes, even in your sales copy.

… well with one caveat. I’ll get to that in my email tomorrow. Read it or fail.

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

My special time with Barack Obama

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On January 20, 2009, a friend and I drove down from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. At the time, I personally had nothing to do with the government.

But my friend had been involved with the Obama campaign from its unlikely beginnings. Thanks to him, we were now going to D.C. to watch Obama’s inauguration from a very special place.

D.C. was a madhouse that day. The streets were filled with hundreds of thousands of people.

My friend and I managed to park. We started making our way towards the National Mall. Barricades had been erected to corral and direct the masses so they could pile up in front of the Capitol building. Fortunately, this did not apply to my friend and me.

I’ll wrap up my experience from that day in a second. But first let me tell you why I bring this up.

I got an email today from a reader named Jon. Jon is a copywriter. One of his clients is an organization filled with high-status, high-authority persons.

But for reasons I cannot divulge (because I don’t know them), these powerful and authoritative persons must remain anonymous. Even their direct contacts must remain anonymous.

So Jon wrote in, and using his best Ali G voice, he asked me how to “big up an authority figure if that figure needs to stay anonymous?”

So here’s one thing I told Jon — maybe it will be relevant to you too:

If you want authority, but you got nothing else to work with, you can name tangential contacts.

Trump. Putin. Gary Bencivenga. Whoever the biggest person is that you can get.

It doesn’t have to be particularly meaningful connection — the name is more important than a really close tie. If you ever met once, even for a few seconds… if you ever attended the same event… or hell, even if you were ever in the same town at one point.

So I guess you see where I’m going with this.

Back on that 2009 Inauguration Day, my friend and I got carried around in the sea of people. We soon realized we wouldn’t see a damn thing if we pushed our way into the crowds in front of the Capitol. So we turned around, and by a circuitous route, we made it to the Washington Monument.

There were a bunch of people there also. They were looking at large-screen TVs showing the inauguration. I jumped up in place, and for a moment I could see the Capitol building above the crowd. I must have seen Obama, somewhere up there, for a split second. I guess.

And I guess you might have had enough of me and of this email by now. But hang on.

Because there are a few caveats about this authority by association stuff. Here’s how to actually make it useful:

1. Don’t make it absurd. The association doesn’t have to be super tight or flattering. But it has to be a little tighter and a little more flattering than my connection to Obama.

2. Don’t telegraph what you’re doing. For example, don’t make your loose association in an email where you explain that very technique.

3. Don’t bring up people your market doesn’t care about. Like Obama. He’s pretty irrelevant today to the space of direct response marketers and copywriters.

So is that the best I got? Obama, maybe, 12 years ago? Don’t I have even a tangential association to anybody more interesting in the direct response space?

Maybe I don’t. Or maybe I just choose to big up my authority in a different way. In the poorly chosen words of my friend, Barack Obama, while he was trying to make the case for government-run healthcare:

“UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”

If that makes little sense to you, perhaps you’d like to join my email list. I don’t promise it will answer this particular riddle… but there are many secrets and mysteries inside you might like. Click here if you want in.

Prancing Pony wizard characteristic

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In the opening six hours of the Lord of the Rings, the wizard Gandalf finally realizes what those hobbits have in their house.

It’s the One Ring… the focus of all evil in the world. And right now, nine grim and bloody ghost riders are galloping to collect it.

So Gandalf rushes to Frodo the hobbit’s house. He tells Frodo to get himself and the ring out of there now.

Frodo is bewildered. “But where shall I go?”

“Go to the village of Bree,” Gandalf tells him. “I will meet you… at the Inn of the Prancing Pony.”

I recently wrote about Dan Kennedy’s main practical idea for wealth attraction. “Be the wizard, and beware other wizards.”

I’m a literal type so I started watching the LOTR to see what exactly it means to be a wizard in the popular mind. The above scene caught my eye.

Because Gandalf doesn’t say, “Where shall you go? Gee, I don’t know, Frodo… what do you think is best?”

Gandalf also doesn’t say, “Head to Bree. There must be some inns there. Book a room in one of them. I think they use the same money as here. I will try to find you sooner or later.”

Gandalf doesn’t even say, “Go to the Inn of the Prancing Pony in Bree. Because it’s not too far from here… and it’s on the way to where the ring needs to go anyhow… plus they make this really wonderful mutton sandwich, I think you will love it.”

Nope. Instead Gandalf gives clear, certain, and yet cryptic guidance.

Clear. Because if people are paying the wizard big bucks, they want to be told exactly what to do.

Certain. Because there’s nothing worse than doubt. Doubt is not a burden many people are willing to carry — and that’s why they seek out the wizard.

And cryptic. Why the Inn of the Prancing Pony… and not next door, at the Inn of the Gamboling Goat? We’ll never know. Gandalf gives us no fumbling explanation. Which allows us to think there must be a good reason… even if we are not privy to it. He’s the wizard, after all.

Of course, LOTR is a movie.

Plus I don’t think Dan Kennedy is as literal-minded as I am. I don’t think he was really talking about putting on a grey pointed hat… or trying to impress clients by growing out your beard and eyebrows.

Still, there is something in the unconscious mind that responds to wizard cues like in the scene above. And often, these cues pop up most clearly in pop culture like LOTR.

So if you work with clients, here’s where to go:

Give your clients clear guidance. Take away their doubts before they even have them. Resist your urge to explain yourself. And when you finish… I will meet you… at the Inn of the Wealthy Wombat.

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.

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:

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.