Ben Settle

Ben Settle emergency emails in support of Copy Riddles?

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Last night, I sent out an email vaguely threatening you with a bunch of upcoming emails to promote my Copy Riddles program, which is now open for enrollment until this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

After I sent that email out, I slumped in my chair and hung my head.

“Great, now what?” I said. “Where am I gonna get all those emails? Who’s gonna write all that stuff I threatened them with?”

Beyond the one half-finished Copy Riddles email I had written during my Most Valuable Email presentation, I had nothing.

But then a desperate idea hit me. “I have that useless diploma from the Oregon School of Manifestation… why don’t I apply what they taught me?”

So I closed my eyes, put my fingers to my temples, and started to massage slowly, while sending out vibrations of easily-written emails into the universe.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL, my AOL account suddenly said.

Well, not really. I don’t use AOL. But I did get an email, just a few minutes after I wished for some easy help.

The email came from Ben Settle, and the subject line read:

“Advice to a new Agora copywriter”

This email of Ben’s is full of uncharacteristically detailed and forthcoming advice. If you’re on Ben’s list, it might be interesting to read. I will highlight just one bit, because it serves my purposes here.

A new Agora copywriter wrote in to ask Ben’s opinion on a bunch of stuff, including that bullets aren’t at all important any more.

To which Ben responded:

“Bullets still work, never stopped working, and will always work — When written correct everything ‘comes’ from the bullets, including non-bullet copy or ads where there are no bullets.”

Now I’d like to think Ben wrote this specifically at this moment, just to help me out with promoting Copy Riddles.

After all, the first basic premise behind Copy Riddles is that once you own the skill of writing bullets, you own the essence of intriguing, irresistible copywriting, no matter what format you write in.

The fundamental ideas inside Copy Riddles apply whether you are writing bullets… headlines… subject lines… body copy of sales letters and VSLs… ads… or emails.

In fact, I think Copy Riddles ideas transfer directly if you are writing sales emails, and not just in subject lines. I’ve even made the claim before that sales emails are basically the modern version of “expanded” bullets.

So that’s the first premise behind Copy Riddles.

The second premise is that you go further and faster by doing and experiencing… than by reading/listening/watching and then forgetting.

That’s why Copy Riddles is built around a unique, effective, and, I modestly think, clever mechanism. The mechanism gets those bullets lodged into your head, not just as a bunch of how-to information, but as a skill that you own.

But don’t take it from me. Since we are speaking of new Agora copywriters, a junior Agora copywriter named Harry Thomas went through Copy Riddles during the last run. And he had this to say:

“Honestly, John’s course is brilliant. While the content is bullets-centred, everything inside can be applied to other aspects of copy. Whenever I’m choosing endo subject lines or writing Taboola ads, I’ll write them out in bullet form first, then pick the best ones to use. And this might sound weird, but I can almost feel myself improving in real-time with John’s exercises.”

To get more details on my Copy Riddles exercises or to join while the joining’s good:

https://copyriddles.com/

The Psycho rules you MUST have for a stronger business and more successful customers

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Last night, as lights dimmed around the city and the streets got quiet and a lonely owl started hooting somewhere in the distance, I settled into bed and started watching…

Psycho!

(​​The trailer.)

This was a 6-minute promo movie, made by Alfred Hitchcock, to drum up anticipation for the real Psycho movie.

The Psycho trailer features Hitchcock himself, showing off the Psycho set as if it were a real crime scene.

​​With cheery music playing, Hitchcock walks around the set, hints at the murders that happened in different rooms, and occasionally pouts and frowns at camera as if to say, “You there, in the second row, what odd thing are you doing?”

At the end of it all, Hitchcock walks into the motel, to the bathroom.

“Well they cleaned all this up now,” he says. “Big difference. You should have seen the blood. The whole place was… well, it’s too horrible to describe.”

In spite of this, Hitchcock continues his cheery tour. He points out the toilet — an important clue — and then the shower. The camera zooms in as he reaches for the shower curtain, pulls it back swiftly, and—

A screaming woman’s face flashes and the famous Psycho slasher music cuts into your ears.

The closing credits appear, and then a notice:

“PSYCHO: The picture you MUST see from the beginning… or not at all! For no one will be seated after the start.”

“What?” I asked my laptop. No one allowed in late? Is this for real?”

It turns out yes.

Hitchcock made a rule for the release of Psycho. Nobody would be allowed into the theater, any theater, anywhere around country, after the movie had started.

Studio honchos were worried that this arbitrary rule would hurt ticket sales.

But you, my dear marketing psycho, probably know better.

What do you think happened?

Did people hear they won’t be allowed in late, and decide to stay away?

Did a few people who did come late, and who got turned away, and who fumed about it… did these people sour everybody else from seeing the movie?

Of course not.

Lines formed around the block, in cities around the US, made up of people waiting to see Psycho, at the appointed time.

Of course, these people were not there only because of this “No late admission” rule.

But I’m 100% sure this rule contributed to the fact that Pyscho broke box-office records in its opening weekend, and has become such a keystone of pop culture since.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

People loooove draconian rules and restrictions, particularly in a take-it-or-leave it setting.

Sure, some people get turned away. Either because they know in advance they can’t make it to the theater in time, or more likely, because they dawdle.

But some people will be intrigued who wouldn’t care otherwise. And more important, many people will treat the person setting the rules with a new level of respect and deference.

Ben Settle recently wrote an email about his Psycho rule not to allow people who unsubscribe from his Email Players newsletter to re-subscribe down the line. Ben wrote:

“I’ve tested, tweaked, experimented with, and practiced this policy for nearly 10 years. And I have found, without exception, the harsher I am with this policy, the stronger my business gets with far more successful customers. On the other hand, the more lenient I am with this policy, the weaker my business gets with far more weak-minded customers. It’s such an integral part of what makes my business model work, that it’s ‘part’ of my marketing now, just like clean parks are ‘part’ of Disneyland’s customer service.”

So there you go. If you want a stronger business and more successful customers, stop allowing anyone into your theater after the lights dim.

Or stop allowing them back in, if they ever leave for a pee break.

Or come up with yer own Psycho rules. Ones that match your personality, your preferences, and your business objectives.

“Here it comes,” some oddball in the second row is saying, while rubbing his hands together. “Here come Bejako’s rules. He always likes to write about an interesting marketing and business idea, and then implement it in the same email.”

True. I do like to implement good ideas as soon as I write about them.

But another thing I like to do is to take a really important idea, and sit on it for a while, and then implement it in future emails, and throughout my business.

This particular idea, about Psycho rules, is big enough and important enough to warrant more time and space than I want to take for a single email.

But keep an eye out, if you have an eye to spare, and maybe will see me pulling back the shower curtain some time soon, and with scary slasher music suddenly playing, startling my list with one of my new Pyscho rules.

Meanwhile, if you want my advice, insights, and guidance (no copywriting) when it comes to your existing email marketing funnels, you can contact me using the form below.

No arbitrary rules or hoops to jump through — yet.

​​Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

How to get all of Ben Settle’s best stuff for free

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A lot of value in today’s email. Let me set it up with a response I got to my email yesterday:

Not gonna lie, ever since you did that presentation about Daniel Throssel’s emails I’ve noticed you’ve been writing in a similar style.
But more subtle which is your approach.

This email had no value at all. But who cares? I was still reading all the way to the end. and I actually really liked it.

Hope the furnishing all goes well in Barcelona!

Let me tell you a personal, and very valuable story:

Many, many years ago, I subscribed to Ben Settle’s daily emails for the first time.

And right off, I was annoyed. Ben would send out emails claiming to be filled with “value,” which were just pitches for his Email Players newsletter, or testimonials which he slapped in and claimed were valuable in themselves.

What a crook.

Eventually though, all that shameless self-promotion wore me down. I got curious.

So I subscribed to Email Players see what Ben’s real secrets were.

I got his Email Players Skhema, the how-to workbook that comes with the subscription. I read through that.

I also finally remembered I had a free copy of the first issue of Email Players, which Ben gives away on his site. I read through that also.

And then I read the first month’s issue, which revealed the “secret” Ben had been teasing for weeks.

And you know what?

The damnedest thing happened.

It turned out Ben wasn’t lying all along.

His emails were packed with value. More often than not, the most valuable stuff in the paid newsletter was right there, in his emails, sometimes explicitly stated.

I didn’t see that before just because Ben’s emails are structured as infotainment. The value wasn’t bolded, highlighted, and explained as it would be in a textbook. It took what Ben likes to say “reading between the lines” or at least a slightly more careful reading than I was giving his daily emails, or to any emails for that matter.

Was there stuff in the paid Email Players print newsletter that wasn’t in Ben’s daily emails?

Sure. And by not paying for Ben’s newsletter, you will miss out on that.

At the same time, by a close reading of his emails, you will get the best stuff. You will also find stuff Ben doesn’t reveal in his newsletter, or probably even in his books, stuff that he wants to keep for himself.

So that’s my response to the claim above that my email yesterday had no value at all. And if you don’t see how that’s a response, well…

In any case, here’s another thing I learned from Ben Settle. It’s to end your emails with “Okay, on to business.”

If you want to get my best stuff for free, both stuff I’ve learned from Ben Settle, and from my own experience, working with 8-figure direct response businesses, and managing large and very profitable email lists myself, then you can sign up to my very valuable daily emails here.

The fallout of my “rape” subject line

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3 days ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “Don’t rape your audience.”

That hook came from a quote from screenwriter William Goldman (Princess Bride, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid), who compared gradually seducing your audience (movie screenplays) to raping them (TV writing).

Like I said at the start of that email, rape is a shocking metaphor. In today’s society, it’s borderline impermissible.

So sure enough, when I checked my unsubscribe count for this email, it showed I disappointed, offended, or perhaps triggered a lot of people. ​​My unsubscribes proved it. I had 7 unsubscribes total, which might not sound like a lot, but is 5.8x my norm for the past 90 days.

I did the hard work of checking who all those unsubscribes were.

Some were new — they signed up only a few weeks ago for my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

Others had been on my list for a while.

Either way, none of them had ever bought anything from me… replied to any of my emails… played along with any of the engagement bait I regularly put out… or even opened and read my emails very often.

So there’s that, the hard and toxic fallout.

On the other hand, I also had a dozen thoughtful replies to my email, both about the subject line and the idea in the body. Almost all these replies came from successful marketers and copywriters. For example, copywriter Robert Smith, who runs his own CRO agency, wrote in to say:

Yo.

Yesterday I was on a zoom call with the team.

It was about our marketing emails.

I shared my screen and opened my email app to talk about a thing.

Instead of talking about our email stuff, we spent the next 10 minutes admiring your subject line.

It’s tier-1.

At first, I had a thought like:
“In a non-DR market this would get super-high Opens, but just as many Spam complaints.”

Addendum to original thought after opening:
“…Only if the body doesn’t deliver.”

3rd addendum after reading body:
“And… It delivered.”

Kick ass! And super inspiring to see. Really got me thinking: “my subject lines suck!”

Robert pretty much spelled out everything I wanted to say about this crisis.

Shocking subject lines, and shocking topics in general, will polarize your audience.

But if you can somehow back up your shocking stuff in a congruent way, you will only scrub away the barnacles clinging to the gleaming white hull of your magnificent ship.

At the same time, you will engage and bond more deeply with successful, thoughtful people, the kinds of people you want to associate yourself with, whether as customers, clients, or just readers.

You might say I am not telling you anything new here.

And you’re right. Ben Settle and Dan Kennedy before him have both been preaching this kind of repulsion marketing for years.

But fundamentals like this work. And so they are worth repeating from time to time. Until maybe the right time, when it all clicks for you and you decide to try it out for yourself.

Anyways, if you have a business, and you’re worried your subject lines suck, then you might want to hire me to help with that.

Because as of now, I’m offering consulting. And one of the things I’m highly qualified to consult on is email marketing and copywriting. And not just the shocking and repelling kind. And not just to my own email list.

If case you are interested, fill out the form below, and I’ll be in touch:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

“Awful Awful Waste of Money”

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Some time ago, I got tempted into buying Dan Kennedy’s book, “The Phenomenon: Achieve More In the Next 12 Months than the previous 12 Years.”

Does that make me possibly the stupidest person on the planet?

Probably. After all, check out one review on Amazon, which I read before I decided to get the book:

Awful Awful Waste of Money

I seriously think this is the biggest waste of money and quite possibly the biggest waste of time I have ever spent. This is nothing but a pitch for Dan Kennedy and everyone of his student’s products. There isn’t a single how to trigger the Phenomenon. This is an even worse type of push that Tony Robbins does where he at least gives a little info before trying to sell you on spending 10K for a seminar. Do not pay for this.

And yet… I did pay and I got myself a used copy. For one thing, because I love DK’s stuff. For another, because the promise just sounded so appealing I couldn’t resist.

Result:

There is nothing new in The Phenomenon. In fact, the book is mostly not written by Dan, but by a bunch of his coaching students hyping themselves up. And like the review above says, there’s no how to.

Well, there is a checklist of “rules” right at the start. I jumped on it yesterday, my greedy opportunity seeker eyes shining in the dark. Rule #1 said:

“There will always be an offer or offer(s).”

My head sank to my chest. “That’s the one thing I didn’t want to hear,” I said to Dan, who couldn’t hear me.

This rule is certainly something I have known for years. It’s one of the pillars of Ben Settle’s email system, which Ben inherited from Matt Furey and ultimately Dan himself.

Whenever I’ve worked with clients on their email marketing, I’ve always insisted we put an offer at the end of each email.

For one thing, you’re never going to make money without an offer.

For another, engaged readers actually like buying, or at least having the choice to buy.

And yet, I don’t consistently have an offer in my own emails.

Sure, I promote trainings like my Copy Riddles on occasion, and I will do so again in the future. (The next run of Copy Riddles will be in June.)

But I have no default offer I can always go to, even when I’m not in the middle of doing a launch of relaunch of a product.

So it turns out Dan’s Phenomenon book is hardly a waste of money or of time, even though it’s mostly slapped-together self-promotion.

And yet,​​​ I remain possibly the stupidest person on the planet.

After all, if I had a client like myself, I would have either forced him to include some kind of offer each day in his emails, or I would have fired him long ago.

So take it from Dan to me to you:

If you are doing email marketing, or really any kind of marketing, make people an offer. With each of your messages. It might turn you into a phenomenon.

But what about me?

Still no offer.

I have to have something. So I decided to offer…

C​onsulting.

Now, I fully expect absolutely nobody to take me up on this offer, at least today.

That’s because I’ve gotten pretty good at coming up with offers over the past couple of years, working both with clients and on my own projects.

And “consulting” is an awful offer. It’s vague — what exactly does it mean? There’s no sexy name. And who would possibly want it?

Like Agora founder Bill Bonner said, nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, wet pajamas stuck to his back, face to face with the awful truth — “We’re out of newsletters.”

Well, likewise, nobody wakes up at 3am thinking, “I gotta have some more consulting.”

I’ll fix some of those problems in the coming days and emails.

I’ll sharpen up the offer. I’ll tell you what exactly I can consult you about, and why it would make good sense for you to pay me to do so.

I’ll tell you some case studies of clients who have hired me for consulting, and what they got out of it (and what they didn’t).

Maybe will even come up with a sexier name than “consulting.”

But all that in future emails.

For now, if you do want my guidance or advice on marketing and copywriting problems, and you want it before others get to me, then fill out the form at the link below, and you will hear from me soon:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

A fun and easy email about “appointment marketing”

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I’m in this bantering WhatsApp group with a few friends that I studied with. In the group, we exchange stupid jokes and tabloid headlines, and we reminisce about times spent drinking together.

I’m very happy to join in all that.

But sooner or later, the conversation turns to Netflix and the shows people are watching. Whenever this happens, I sit there, a frozen smile on my face, with nothing to contribute, quietly desperate inside, waiting for the storm to pass.

I stopped watching TV a long time ago, and I completely missed out on the streaming revolution. I never got into any of the millions of streaming shows.

I wish my friends never got into them either, so I wouldn’t have to sit on the sidelines during the latest rounds of, “It was soooooo good, you should check it out!”

So it was with some malicious glee today that I read an article on Vulture, about Netflix’s recent troubles.

The article came out late last month, on the heels of news that Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in 10 years. Netflix’s stock price dropped 35% as a result, erasing over $50 billion worth of value in one day.

“Good,” I cackled to myself, rubbing my hands together. ​​

But you know what? I might not watch Netflix, but I do care what they do as a company.

Because like Ben Settle has been pointing out for years, we have entered the age of entertainment. Today, not only your education or selling, but even your entertainment, needs to be presold through entertainment and still more entertainment.

And who better to learn from than the hottest entertainment provider today? That’s why I figure Netflix’s hits and misses are both worth studying.

The Vulture article gives an interesting analysis of what has been going wrong at Netflix. The article deserves digging up and reading in full. Here I will share just one fun and easy thing with you.

Netflix innovated binge watching. All episodes of a show were dumped to the public at the same time.

That means you can spend a weekend in bed, eating Nutella out of the jar, and watching episode after episode of Bridgerton until nausea sets in, either from the show or from Nutella.

But while binge watching got Netflix a cult of rabid fans to start, it has its drawbacks, which are now surfacing.

One drawback is obvious. The lifetime of a binged show tends to be short.

The second drawback is less obvious. Many people like the opposite of binge watching, something the Vulture article calls “appointment TV.”

For example, knowing (once upon a time) that Seinfeld is coming on at 9pm every Thursday isn’t just about having a ritual for a Thursday evening for an entire year.

It also creates expectation and excitement.

It allows viewers to bond with their friends who are also watching the same show.

And maybe most important, it allows people the pleasure of sharing and converting others, getting you free publicity, and money money money.

So what exactly am I telling you to do?

Absolutely nothing.

​​In fact, if you remember anything from this email, remember my disappointed face whenever I hear the conversation turn to Netflix recommendations… and remember my fiendish cackling whenever I read about Neflix’s troubles.

Because I figure that for anything like “appointment marketing” to work, it takes more than just a regular schedule.

The content itself must be fun and easy. Even a hint of work or seriousness is probably deadly.

So in the interest of having you go on Twitter to share the latest Bejako email… or tell your friends that my newsletter is soooooo good and they havetocheckitout… I will stop myself here. And I will go peek in my WhatsApp group, maybe for some political memes to make me chuckle.

And on the next episode of Bejako…

Well, that episode will air tomorrow, at around 8pm CET, in your inbox, in case you sign up for my fun and easy email newsletter.

An “awful” way to guilt-trip customers into staying subscribed

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A few days ago, I sent out an email trying to sell you the idea that much of the sale happens after the transaction is over. And I asked, how can you keep a customer selling himself on your offer, even after he’s bought it?

I got lots of interesting responses. One business owner, who asked to remain unnamed, wrote in with the following:

We plant a tree for each subscriber every month.

Each week we remind the subscriber of how many trees they’ve planted via their subscription.

The idea being that their subscription is making an ongoing difference by employing locals in areas affected by deforestation.

If they unsubscribe now there will be consequences for others.

This actually sounds kinda awful…

I don’t know about awful… I just thought it was wonderfully guilt-trippy. It also happens to be the exact flip-side of one way I’ve used to inspire people to buy, which is to say that their self-interested drive for success will have beneficial wider consequences.

That idea, about beneficial wider consequences, is one of 7 ways to inspire that I wrote up in an email long ago.

This was in the early days of my newsletter, when I stupidly and shamelessly whole-hogged how-to advice in my emails. The only thing I can say in my defense is that with this particular inspiration email, I at least camouflaged the how-to in with some infotainment (I matched up each how-to-motivate strategy with a pop song).

Anyways, I bring all this up for two reasons:

1. I realized that each of my 7 ways to motivate people to buy can be flipped to motivate people to stay sold. I just gave you one example above of how that works. But with the smallest bit of thought, all the other 6 ways can be flipped in such a way as well.

2. If I were a little smarter, like Ben Settle for example, I would take my “7 ways to inspire” email off my site, flesh it out a bit, and sell it for $97 as part of a paid newsletter.

It turns out I’m not very smart. But maybe I will get smarter one day, maybe one day soon.

As it is, you can still read that inspiration email for free, on my site, at the link below. And who knows. Maybe you can even take one of those ideas, use it to inspire some customers to take action today, and benefit them while also making money for yourself. Or flip that idea, and keep those wayward sheep from making a big mistake and straying from your flock.

In any case, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/99-problems-and-folsom-prison-blues-how-to-write-copy-that-inspires/

I broke the email chain yesterday

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This morning, reader Jesús Silva Marcano wrote to say:

Hey John!

Today when I saw that I didn’t have an email from you….

And after waiting a few hours…

I must admit a part of me was a little saddened.

Besides Ben Settle’s emails, yours are the ones I usually look forward to.

They never disappoint.

I hope all is well.

It’s true. I didn’t send out email last night.

I broke a chain going back to July 2020, when I skipped a few days because I was on vacation at the seaside, drinking quite actively, and generally celebrating and feeling high from having made a ton of money the previous few months, my first really big copywriting months.

But nothing exciting like that happened yesterday.

I had an email scheduled. I checked my inbox before I went to bed. But the email still hadn’t arrived.

I checked ActiveCampaign. It said my email was “Pending Review.”

I tried to stop the campaign so I could recreate it and send it again. It wouldn’t allow me. I tried again. No soap.

I contacted ActiveCampaign to ask what’s up.

No response.

I went to bed, figuring it would solve itself.

It didn’t.

This morning, my email from yesterday is still “Pending Review.” I can’t imagine why, because I wasn’t writing about any controversial or flaggable topics. (I do have an email about a certain kind of “gross body enhancement” coming up, but last night’s email waddn’t it.)

Oh well. The world doesn’t end if I don’t send out an email.

​​But it does spin a little faster. So it’s a shame I don’t have something to sell you right now.

In my experience, people today are starved for something — anything — real.

And when your readers witness you making a mistake, in real time, or getting involved in conflict, in real time, or failing to deliver on a public promise like a daily email, that’s more powerful and engaging than even the most personal stories you share.

And if I had, say, a training on writing faster, that would be perfect. I could end this email right here by saying something like:

“But you know what? Let’s talk copywriting. According to my extremely neat timekeeping, 72% of so-called “writing” really goes to editing. And things often don’t get delivered on time, or ever, because they are “Pending Review” by that finnicky, editing part of your brain. So if you don’t want to be at the whim and mercy of your own inner editing demon, if you want to meet all deadlines, if you wanna get projects done more quickly and make more money, then join me for the Faster Writing (and Editing) Workshop here blah blah…”

Well, maybe a little less ham-handed than that, but you get the idea.

If only I had the faster writing offer for sale right now, then the fact that ActiveCampaign is behaving like a lazy consular office processing my visa application… rather than as a for-profit business that has been taking my money for the better part of a decade… well, that would’ve all worked in my favor.

So keep this in mind if you have your own email list. Anything really real in your life, particularly that readers can experience and verify for themselves, makes for the pinnacle of engagement.

As for me, I got nothing. No gain from this ​event. ​Except to tell you that indeed I am ok, in case you were worried. And now that I’ve told you the background of all this, to maybe make a slightly stronger bond with you, so you get excited about getting my next email tomorrow, and decide to sign up for my email newsletter.

Turning into the people you hate the most

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Last month, Al Jazeera reported the following curious fact:

“Right-wing Israeli Jews dress as Muslims to enter the Al-Aqsa compound in efforts to change the status quo at Islam’s third holiest site.”

The Al-Aqsa compound, known by Jews as the Temple Mount, has been restricted since the year 2000 in the interest of public safety. Only Muslims are allowed to pray there.

Trouble is, while this 37-acre area is the third holiest site in Islam… it is also the number-one holiest site in Judaism.

Many Jews want the Temple Mount back. They want it back bad.

How bad? From the Al Jazeera article:

“The 26-year-old swaps his orthodox Jewish clothes with a thobe – a traditional garment also called a dishdasha or jalabiya, worn by many Palestinian men, and his black kippa for a white prayer skullcap. Peering into a mirror, he slicks his long, dark sidelocks back with hair gel to hide them under the cap, mumbling a few Arabic words to refresh his memory.”

It’s not just comsetic changes, either. The article says that the Jews sneaking into the Temple mount will take Arabic classes and study the Quran to be able to get past the security guards screening any non-Muslims from the Al-Aqsa compound.

So what?

So maybe you’ll say I’m taking an unwarranted leap here, but this brings to mind a quote from Eric Hoffer’s True Believer:

“Though hatred is a convenient instrument for mobilizing a community for defense, it does not, in the long run, come cheap. We pay for it by losing all or many of the values we have set out to defend.”

Hoffer’s argument is that in fighting the enemy, you often become the enemy.

I don’t know how universally true this is. Maybe it just sounds good because it’s shocking and counterintuitive. But I feel there’s definitely a kernel of truth there.

In any case, it brought something else to mind also. It’s the most valuable thing I got from Ben Settle’s Villains book (actually from Ben’s promo emails for that book):

Villains are proactive, and heroes are reactive.

In other words, Villains make the heroes and authorities react to them, while heroes wait for something to happen, always chasing after the fires set by the Villain to distract them as they carry out their machinations. (And notice when a hero does try to be proactive, you end up with Ultron…) If you look around at the most successful people in business and life, they may not be evil, but they are Villains, and do the same thing.

You might not like the idea of being evil… of being anybody’s enemy… of being a villain.

Fine.

Just remember Eric Hoffer and Ben Settle above. And at the very least, make sure you’re not cast as a hero.

​​Instead, set your own agenda, and then follow it.

Otherwise, you’ll end up playing catchup to other, more proactive people around you… and the shame of it is, in time, you will end up dressing, acting, and even thinking in ways that you hate the most.

On an unrelated note:

I have an email newsletter where I often write about persuasion, marketing, and psychology ideas. If that kind of thing fills you with religious fervor or at least some curiosity, you can sign up to my newsletter here.

Marketing to frustrated newlyweds and disgusted divorcees

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Last autumn, Reuters published an article about an Iraqi man named Aram Mehdi. Mehdi belongs to the persecuted Kurdish minority in Iraq. And though he grew up Muslim, Mehdi converted from Islam to Zoroastrianism.

He says it’s been a real struggle:

“We cannot even write a comment on a Facebook post as a Zoroastrian. Some people say it’s a taboo to dine with you, ugly animals are better than you. Others say, ‘Just let us know where you are if you dare.'”

Maybe your reaction to this is, “Wow that’s terrible. Poor born-again Iraqi Zoroastrians.”

Or maybe you’re heartless like me. And maybe your reaction was more like, “Seriously guy, you were kind of asking for it. After all, if you are a member of a persecuted minority in a war-torn country… why would you willingly make yourself a member of an even smaller, even more persecuted minority?”

Well, maybe because it’s fundamental human psychology.

Over the past few months, I’ve shared a lot of quotes from Eric Hoffer’s book True Believer. That’s because it’s so full of interesting ideas.

I’m gonna do it again in just a moment. But before you turn me off, I will tell you this idea has real, concrete, maybe even profitable direct marketing implications.

Ok, on to Hoffer and his quote:

“Since all mass movements draw their adherents from the same types of humanity and appeal to the same types of mind, it follows: (a) all mass movements are competitive, and the gain of one in adherents is the loss of all the others; (b) all mass movements are interchangeable. One mass movement readily transforms itself into another. A religious movement may develop into a social revolution or a nationalist movement; a social revolution, into militant nationalism or a religious movement; a nationalist movement into a social revolution or a religious movement.”

The starting point of Hoffer’s book is that people who join holy causes are fundamentally frustrated. And they look to the holy cause as a way of escaping their current, flawed selves, and being reborn in some new, cleansing identity.

For that, the actual holy cause doesn’t matter too much. Many potential ones will do.

For example, if for any reason you cannot be reborn as a freedom fighter (Kurdish minority in Iraq)… well, then there’s always some fringe religious movement that’s open to you (Zoroastrian minority in a dominantly Muslim country). And if that doesn’t work, then maybe you can become an anarchist or a communist or a pacifist.

So that’s the interesting psychology idea — or interesting to me at least. Now here’s the related direct marketing advice.

It’s based on the fact that direct response customers are also fundamentally frustrated. They share many traits with Hoffer’s true believers.

And that’s why if you run a DR business, your best prospects are either the newlyweds or the divorced. Either people who recently bought something from your competition for the first time… or people who recently walked away from your competition in disgust, and who claim they will never buy anything like that ever again.

Because those people are still frustrated. And because their holy cause — the product they are buying and identifying with — doesn’t matter all that much.

What does this mean practically?

Well, in the good old days of direct mail, you could actually buy lists of unsubscribers or new buyers.

But even today, with a bit of thought, I believe can apply this to your business.

For example, you might have your own list of fallen subscribers or customers. This might be your most valuable resource – if you sell it to your competition.

And vice versa. Your best leads might come from a joint venture with your competition. Just have them send you their disgusted ex-customers.

More broadly:

If you’re trying to position yourself in the market, you don’t have to be so unique, likeable, or even much of an expert. Just make it clear you are not that other guy — while still promising the same opportunity for blessed escape that the other guy was selling.

By the way, if you really hate Ben Settle, and his email marketing tips, you might like my daily email newsletter about marketing and copywriting. you can sign up for it here.