People like you better when you taste something awful

Opening scene:

Private investigator Lew Harper lies awake in bed. He stares at the ceiling.

His alarm goes off. He knocks it with his fist to turn it off.

Harper gets out of bed, pushes the still-on TV out of the way, and pulls up the blinds on the windows.

It becomes clear that Harper’s bedroom is actually Harper’s office. He isn’t sleeping there because he was working late, but because he doesn’t have a proper apartment.

Harper goes to the fridge, gets an ice pack. He walks over to the sink, dumps the ice in, and fills it up with water. He puts his head in the ice-filled sink and holds it there.

Finally, Harper goes to make coffee.

He folds a coffee filter. He folds it again. He gets ready to put coffee into the filter but — the coffee can is empty.

Harper hangs his head in defeat.

Then he thinks for a minute. He doesn’t like what he’s thinking. But what to do?

He goes over to the trash can and opens it.

There’s yesterday’s coffee filter with yesterday’s coffee, looking up at him.

Should he? Shouldn’t he?

He does.

Harper takes yesterday’s coffee out the trash. He makes a new coffee with it. He takes a sip.

And, in a moment that launched a giant Hollywood career, Harper shudders from how bad the coffee tastes.

So now, let me ask you, how do you feel?

Let me change how you feel for a moment, by sharing with you a really repulsive negotiation lesson. It comes from negotiation coach Jim Camp, who said:

“The wise negotiator knows that only one person in a negotiation can feel okay, and that person is the adversary.”

I’ve read this lesson 100 times. I accept it on an intellectual level. But I still find it impossible to accept emotionally, and that’s why I say it’s so repulsive.

Camp advised his coaching clients to make their negotiation adversaries feel okay. To make them feel smart, important, respected.

“Fine,” you might say, “that’s pretty obvious.”

That’s what I said too.

But the part that’s not obvious is that Camp says that okayness is a positional good. If you have it, then I can’t have it. And vice versa.

That’s the part I still can’t accept.

Whether or not Camp’s 100% right, the truth remains, if I make myself a little unokay, you will feel more okay.

And as proof of that, let me finish up the Harper story.

Harper was the first screenplay ever written by my favorite screenwriter, William Goldman.

The movie went on to be a big success. It launched Goldman’s career in Hollywood. It led Goldman to dozens more movies, a couple Academy Awards, and even a few million dollars.

None of it would have happened had Harper been a flop. But Harper was a success from that opening scene. Goldman wrote about the reaction of people who saw Harper when it launched:

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Whenever anyone talked about Harper to me in the weeks that followed, that was the moment they they remembered — drinking that horrible stuff. And the laugh that went along with it, that was a laugh of affection.

What that coffee moment really turned out to be was an invitation that the audience gladly accepted: They liked Lew Harper.

From that moment forward, the script was on rails.

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In entirely unrelated news:

Yesterday, I asked readers what todo items are waiting for them that they are dreading. I got a number of people responding with dreadful todo items.

In situations like this, whenever I get a number of good responses, I always like to repeat the offer. There’s sure to be people who didn’t see it the first time or who got pulled away before having a chance to respond.

So here goes:

What’s one thing on your todo list for today that you’re dreading?

It can be big or small. Important or trivial. The only thing that counts is that you’re not looking forward to doing it.

Let me know. Maybe I can figure out or find a solution to help you get rid of this troubling todo item. Thanks in advance.

How to get free coffee for six

I’m in Lisbon. For the second time ever in my life. ​​I’m here for a meetup organized by Sean D’Souza. For the second time ever in my life.

In case you don’t know Sean, he is a marketer who’s been online since before Google went public. And he’s still at it.

​​Sean and his wife Renuka run Psychotactics, a genuinely unique and genuinely valuable website, blog, email newsletter, and podcast.

Sean and Renuka decided a long while ago that they wanted to cap their income — the last I heard, they make $500k a year and that’s it.

On the flip side, they take three months of vacation a year — work three months, travel for one month.

They normally live in New Zealand, but last year during one of their vacation months they traveled around Spain (the first meetup I went to was in Seville).

This year, they are traveling for a month around Portugal. And that’s how and why I am Lisbon today.

Yesterday was the the meetup. There were six of us:

#1 Sean…

​​​#​2 Renuka…

​​#​​3 A Portuguese entrepreneur with a miracle household product she is trying to get onto a world market…

​​#4 A German fitness trainer and app creator…

​​#5 An English bass guitar teacher who has been selling courses online almost as long as Sean has (and who had actually heard of me, via Kieran Drew, and via my love of the Princess Bride)…

​​#6 Me.

Not in attendance, but somebody who was supposed to come until the very last minute, was Internet marketer André Chaperon. That would have been a kind of thrill for me, because André was how I got into copywriting, and his AutoResponder Madness was the first email copywriting course I ever went through.

Anyways, let me jump from the intro to the outro:

​​After three hours of sitting in the cafe of Sean and Runuka’s boutique hotel, and talking about all kinds of things business, marketing, and persuasion, we got up from the cafe and left without paying.

I didn’t know anything about it. I assumed Sean had paid for our coffees, but he didn’t. Instead, we just smiled at the two waitresses who had been serving us, thanked them, and walked out.

The coffees we had consumed didn’t go on any kind of tab. The waitresses knew we didn’t pay. And yet they didn’t complain, and in fact were happy with the situation.

The question then is, how do you get free coffee for six?

I would tell you the answer, but I’m afraid you would groan and say, “Oh come on.” Because the answer is very simple, very obvious, and you’ve probably heard it as advice a million times before.

But maybe you’re still curious, and you really would like to know how to get free coffee for six, even if the answer is simple, obvious, and familiar.

If so, I’ll make you a deal:

Write in and tell me a frustration you’re currently having. It can be big or small. It can have to do with business, marketing, persuasion — or it can have nothing to do with any of those things.

I’m not offering any kind of solution to your frustration. But I am curious, and I am willing to listen. And in exchange, I’ll write you back and I’ll tell you how to get free coffee for six.