Psychology Behind Advertising

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.

Hidden desires of would-be copywriters

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Last night, a friend sent me an interesting article that Kevin Rogers of Copy Chief had written. The article is about MMA fighter Conor McGregor and features 14 points — a lot. The one that stood out to me was this:

#2 – Know what your audience REALLY wants.

Do you really know what your audience wants? Most people think they do, but there are often subtle differences in what they want… and what they REALLY want.

In the UFC winning is not enough. Sure, Conor is a professional fighter, and fans like to see wins.

But what the audience and organization REALLY want is a “finish”. They want to see one competitor knocked out cold on the canvas.

Hidden desires. Hidden from the world. Hidden from ourselves.

Maybe you think that the desire to see somebody knocked out isn’t so hidden. Fine.

So here are a few more tricky and subtle examples of what some markets REALLY want. They come from copywriter Chris Haddad:

1. Numerology. Not really about divining the future or understanding the universe. People in this market really just want to feel special.

2. Bizopp. Not really about the millions or even the lambo. People who go for these offers really just want to feel competent… and wipe the smug, dismissive look off their brother-in-law’s face.

Which begs the question… what do people in the “become a copywriter” niche really want?

For many of them, it’s not about making money… or writing as a new career… or the independence that comes with this job.

I know this for a fact. Because there are proven and well-trodden paths to success as a copywriter. But in spite of knowing the path, these people never take the first step. And if they take the first step, they never take the second.

I’ll be honest with you:

I don’t know what these people are really craving. Not on a primal level. Maybe you have some ideas and you can tell me.

Or better yet, maybe you don’t know either… because you yourself really are after the money, the new career, or the flexibility and freedom.

If that’s the case, I can point you down a well-trodden path to success. The path that I’ve personally taken. I’ve written up all the directions inside a little guidebook I’ve titled:

“How To Become A $150/hr, Top-Rated Sales Copywriter On Upwork: A Personal Success Story That Almost Anyone Can Replicate”

This book has my best advice for the early years of being a copywriter, whether you’re on Upwork or not. The how-to info inside is underpriced by a couple of factors of magnitude.

And as I wrote last night, I will be retiring this book permanently in a couple of hours. Depending on when you’re reading this email, the book might already be gone.

One final point about this $5 investment:

The information in this book won’t transform you into a copywriting success. You gotta take those steps yourself.

But if you are willing and able to put one foot in front of the other… then this book will point the way. Plus it will give you valuable tips and shortcuts it took me several years to discover.

​​So if you’ve got $5, and you want this before it disappears, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork ​​

What do you think? Is this story worth keeping?

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Would you do me a favor?

I’m writing a book. I’m thinking of including the following story.

Since you may have read some of my blog already, would you read this condensed version of the story?

Tell me whether it’s up to par with my better writing. Or below it?

Of course, you’re free to not share your opinion. But if you do choose to do me this favor, I’ll be grateful to you.

So this story happened some time in the 1970s, before the PC was invented, and it has to do with a computer repair tech named Keith. (Yes, I know that’s a riveting beginning. But bear with me for a second. It gets better.)

One of Keith’s customers was a financial brokerage. They used a number of expensive computer terminals.

Each day at 1:30pm, one of these terminals would lock up. The trader who was using this specific terminal was furious. He would need to wait a bit, then reach around the machine, and restart it for it to work again.

Each day, the trader would call up Keith’s company and yell. The company would send out a tech to investigate. But the tech could never reproduce the problem that the trader was having.

What was happening was this:

Before lunch, the trader would read his newspaper. A phone call would come.

The trader would toss his newspaper on top of the computer terminal, covering the heat vent.

The beast would overheat and lock up. The trader would start cursing… restart the machine… and call Keith’s company and threaten to cancel the support contract because the stupid thing crashed yet again, at the worst possible moment.

And then one day, Keith was at the brokerage dealing with another issue.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the trader tossing the newspaper on the heat vent… the terminal overheating and locking up… the trader getting furious, restarting the computer, and beating it with the newspaper.

Keith could have gone over and said, “Problem solved! It’s because of your newspaper! Don’t ever put it onto the heat vent like that! The machine can’t work when you make it overheat!”

No, Keith was more subtle. He walked over to the trader’s desk and said it was great he could see finally the problem for himself.

As the machine was restarting, Keith surreptitiously put the newspaper over the vent again.

Sure enough, in a couple of moments, the terminal locked up again.

“You see!” the trader said triumphantly. “There it goes again, the piece of…”

Keith shook his head and scratched his chin. He looked at the terminal screen. “It makes no sense,” he said. “You see how it flickered just then? That usually means it’s overheating. But your office is so cool… what could it be?”

Keith started fumbling with the back of the terminal. And he waited.

“Oh no,” the trader said. “Could it maybe be the newspaper?” He picked it up off the vent and a volcanic heat rose from underneath it.

In a few moments, the computer cooled off and started working again.

The trader started apologizing. But Keith would have none of it. He just thanked the trader for finding the root cause of the bug. And the support contract, instead of being canceled, ended up being extended.

So what do you think? Is this an interesting story? I’m thinking to use it to illustrate this golden insight by Robert Collier:

“As to the motives to appeal to when you have won the reader’s attention, by far the strongest, in our experience, is Vanity. Not the vanity that buys a cosmetic or whatnot to look a little better, but that unconscious vanity which makes a man want to feel important in his own eyes and makes him strut mentally. This appeal needs to be subtly used, but when properly used, it is the strongest we know.”

Do you think this illustration is worthwhile? Should I toss it out? Keep it in? Write in and let me know. I appreciate your opinion and advice. And if you ever want to comment directly on anything I write, sign up for my daily email newsletter.

How to make an Inner Ring morra alive

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This morning I drove about 20 miles to a little coast town where I used to spend my childhood summers. Excepting one quick driveby six years ago, it was my first time back since I was 11.

The place was unrecognizable. Built up, and polished, and deforested. It almost made me physically sick to walk around, the modern reality at such odds with what I remember.

But one thing was still comfortingly the same.

At a sunny seaside bar, on a Saturday morning at around 11am, there was a group of old men.

They were throwing down hand signals on the table and yelling at each other. Numbers, corrupted from Italian:

Šije!

Šete!

Šije!

Šije!

It’s an old game. In Italian, it’s called morra. In Croatian, šije-šete (bastardized Italian for six-seven).

The game is basically like rock-paper-scissors, but with numbers instead of rocks, and five options instead of just three.

I read a bit about the history of morra. It was apparently played even in Roman times. For the past century, it has been banned in much of Italy because it’s considered gambling and, more important, because it seems to lead to drunken knife fights.

And yet, the game lives on. A short while ago, a video went viral on YouTube, showing 9-year-old kids playing morra with full fury. It’s just what men in these parts do. And these boys, at 9 years old, know it, and they are getting ready.

I’ve written before about the Inner Ring.

It’s a powerful motivator. A big part of what it means to be human.

We want to belong to a community, or to a dozen overlapping communities.

In the ancient, precorona world, these things happened spontaneously — work cliques, friend groups, drinking buddies.

Today, the need for the Inner Ring is serviced online in the form of masterminds, lairs, and various kinds of membership programs.

But here’s the thing:

A lot of these online communities suck. One reason is that they are missing rituals.

Rituals are enjoyable for their own sake.

But rituals also keep the structure of the Inner Ring.

Everybody performs the ritual because everybody else performs it, and nobody wants to fall out of the Inner Ring by being a drag.

Men around here play šije-šete because it’s fun and it’s competitive and because they can get a free drink out of it. But also, because a giant and frightening void starts to open up if they don’t play when their buddies do.

So that’s what I’m suggesting to you too.

Maybe you have an online community you run already. Or maybe, like me, you’re just thinking about creating one.

​​In either case, think about rituals you can introduce to give your community some structure and coherence. Even if they lead to drunken knife fights on occasion. It’s a small price to pay for unity and the wonder of the Inner Ring.

Want inside my own Inner Ring? Oh no, it’s not so easy. But the first step is to join my email newsletter. You can do that 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

Do you ignore emails with the word “secret” in the subject line?

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Dear probationer,

It happened to a direct response entrepreneur whose name has become synonymous with success, power, and wealth.

Early in his career, he had to write an important sales letter. But he was completely blocked for a good hook.

In a last minute act of desperation, he drove down to the Library of Congress.

There he managed to track down a copy of an ancient, highly successful sales letter he had heard about years earlier. And he adapted the hook for his own letter.

Result? His letter tripled response over the control, and stayed unbeatable for over five years…

And the point of my story is this. There is a lot of value in old sales letters if you start to dig around in them.

I like to dig around in old sales letters. And today, I want to share a complimentary copy of one such letter with you.

But before I do that, I’d like to ask permission to see if you’ll get anything out of the letter that I share. To find out what kind of marketer or copywriter you are. To get some idea whether clicking on the link below will be something you enjoy or not.

And so right in this email, you’ll find a short psychological quiz. Answer the questions truthfully, and then I’ll give you an interpretation based on your results. Ready? Here goes:

1. Have you read John Caples’s Tested Advertising Methods (any edition)?

2. Have you watched two or more comedy specials in the last year?

3. Do you check your spam folder often and even read emails that clearly are spam?

4. Do you have a place in your home or office where you save classic ads you’ve hand copied?

5. Do you harbor private doubts about the marketing mantra, “If they pay, they pay attention?”

6. Do you ever prefer reading transcripts of podcasts or videos to actually watching or listening?

Interpretation: generally, the more questions you answered with “yes,” the more value you will get from seeing the sales letter at the link below.

What I’ve learned is that you’re somewhat curious (you check your spam folder). You’re also systematic about getting better at copywriting (hand copying ads and even saving the result).

You value surprise (watching multiple comedy specials). You’re also a reader (preferring transcripts on occasion). You value deep, proven information, even if it’s not trendy (the Caples book).

In short, you are a person who values insight and who is highly dedicated to getting better at your craft. Moreover, the fact that you’ve allowed yourself to be tested shows a coachable, adaptable personality.

My test also shows you value information for its own sake (the “if they pay…” mantra). And that’s why you are likely to value what you will find at the link below.

It’s a short sales letter — only 4 pages. But it illustrates very powerful techniques of influence. Techniques which will only become more relevant in the coming years.

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt,” said Shakespeare’s Lucio circa 1604. Oh Lucio, that thou wert alive now and could attempt to click the link below. What insights! What involvement devices! What deep psychology!

https://bejakovic.com/psychology

The case against deadlines in your marketing

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Now, the ant may have a fault or two
But lending is not something she will do.
She asked what the cricket did in summer.
“By night and day, to any comer
I sang whenever I had the chance.”
“You sang, did you? That’s nice. Now dance.

Imagine a squat little ant and a tall, lanky cricket, waving to each other across an empty field.

That’s how the sales graph looked for the Influential Emails offer I ran last week.

On the first day, I had a squat but reasonable number of sales. That’s the ant on one side of the empty field. That ant — or rather, the proactive ants who took me up on my offer early — made up 15% of the total sales I got in terms of revenue.

For the next 6 days, I made some sales each day, But really, it was nothing to sing or dance about.

And then, on the very last day, just as I was ready to wrap it up and hunker down for a long and hungry winter, I got a bunch of orders. A tall and crickety spike in the sales graph. Totaling 47% percent of the whole.

So what’s the conclusion?

You might think this is a classic example of why nothing in the world ever gets done without a deadline. And that it’s foolish to allow people to buy your stuff whenever they want, because your garden variety of wanting is not enough to get crickets to act.

That’s one way to look at it.

Another way is that perhaps some of those come-lately crickets would have bought earlier had I not made this into a time-limited offer. Maybe they know they tend to put things off, and they would have acted to prevent this from happening.

Perhaps others would have bought over the coming weeks and months, had I kept reminding them and teasing them with regular, interesting emails.

And perhaps still others would have bought in time who will NOT buy now, because the offer is no longer available.

All those are reasonable arguments against putting a deadline on your offer, at least if you’ve got a good way to stay in touch with your prospects.

The fact is, we will never know.

I run time-limited offers with deadlines because I like it that way. Because it motivates me, and because it’s in line with my own cricket-like nature. And because I’m happy enough with the results, even if those results perhaps could have been higher through some other way of doing business.

Marketer Sean D’Souza was once asked if he has any data to show his contrarian business model works. He replied:

Do we have any data? No, we don’t.

The customers are using this every single day. I’m not actually here to prove anything to you.

What I’m asking you, when you go to a restaurant, does it work for you? When you go on a dating thing, does it work for you? When you go on the Apple site, does it work for you?

If you don’t think it works for you, don’t put it into place. I don’t have data. I started out as a cartoonist, I moved to marketing, and this has allowed us to take three vacations, buy houses, travel, do all the things we really wanted to do. We earn more money than we need.

The point is, if you think it works for you, put it in place. If you don’t think it works for you, that’s not a problem.

I heard this early in my marketing education. It’s stuck with me ever since. Both Sean’s attitude of, “Do we have any data? No, but it works for us.” But also the contrarian view of marketing that Sean was talking about.

Perhaps you don’t know what that contrarian view is. That’s a shame.

Because like Sean says, his way of marketing… well, it allowed him to achieve everything he wanted, on his own terms.

It might give you some good ideas as well. So if you’re curious, little cricket, check out my email tomorrow. That’s where I’ll tell you about the “it” that allowed Sean those vacations and those houses and that money. And you can then see if it might work for you, too.

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.

I’m good enough… I’m smart enough… and doggone it—

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I used to watch a lot of Saturday Night Live back in the 1990s. There was an ongoing skit with Phil Hartman playing Stuart Smalley, ​a sappy man with a lisp and a non-Duchenne smile.

Stuart is working on improving his self-image. So in each skit, he looks at himself in the mirror, smiles his fake smile, and repeats:

“I’m good enough… I’m smart enough… and doggone it, people like me.”

This was funny in the 90s. I guess this affirmation stuff was in the water back then.

It might be less funny today because today’s water contains a lower ppm of affirmations. In part, that’s due to party-pooping scientists like Joanne Wood from the University of Waterloo.

​​Back in 2009, Prof. Wood took a bunch of undergrads and had them repeat affirmations.

“I’m good enough… I’m smart enough… and doggone it, people like me.”

This had a positive effect — on people who were already pretty happy with themselves.

​​But with people who had low self-esteem to start with, it had negative effect. It made them conclude the opposite and feel worse.

“I’m defective somehow… I’m too stupid… and doggone it, nobody likes me.”

My point for you is to be careful if you are a naturally gung-ho marketer, making empowering claims at your prospects.

“You’re amazing! You can do it! It’s not your fault you failed until now!”

If you resort to claims like this, you might have the intended effect on the people in your market who were born yesterday… and who haven’t yet learned to doubt themselves.

For the rest of ’em, the ones who have become disillusioned with both the offers in your market and with themselves, you’ll need another approach. You’ll need to raise your prospects’ self-esteem so they believe they are unique… smart enough… and competent enough to succeed.

How can you do this?

​​Well, I’ll write more about that down the line (you can get it in my newsletter if you like). For now, let me reveal the obvious secret that self-esteem rises not because you say so… but indirectly, because you make people feel it inside them, without any affirmations.