Bernarr MacFadden

Glossary of 1-1 follow up

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The past few days, I’ve been telling you about Nick Bandy’s system for reactivating leads and deals that have gone silent, called Ghostbuster Sequence.

If you open up Ghostbuster Sequence, you might find yourself confused by the unfamiliar follow-up jargon. I don’t want you to be confused. I really don’t. So let me give you a glossary that defines some of the terms you’ll see inside:

Stage 1: Conversations that have been dead for 2 weeks or more. For conversations like this, send Nick’s “Stage 1” message and proceed to Stage 2.

Stage 2: Conversations that have been dead for less than 2 weeks. In Princess Bride terms, these are “mostly dead” conversations. There’s a big difference between “mostly dead” and “all dead.”

Meme Warfare: A strategic graphical assault on your dead (or mostly dead) prospect, designed to get them to crack a smile and make it easy for them to reply.

The “Jim Camp Nuclear Option”: A 7-word message to send prospects after multiple previous followups have failed to produce a response. (Nick attributes this message to marketer Travis Sago. I happen to know it goes back to negotiation coach Jim Camp.) Says Nick, “It works TOO well.”

The “Negative Reply Pivot”: A message to send high-value prospects who explicitly tell you “NO.”

Educated assumptions: Statements to send your dead (or mostly dead) prospects that break the pattern of constant follow-up questions.

“Mr. America” technique: Nick doesn’t call it this inside his Ghostbuster Sequence. Instead, he calls it “Stage 7.”

I think my name is distinctly better. It comes from the following story from the book Mr. America, about health publisher Bernarr MacFadden:

“With his marriage to Mary officially over, Macfadden had captured headlines by taking a new bride. Johnnie Lee McKinney was a forty-four-year-old health lecturer and former interior designer when she met the seventy-nine-year-old publisher — a sturdy, vivacious blond Texas beauty molded in Macfadden’s preferred silhouette. Theirs was a whirlwind courtship. He attended one of her talks in Manhattan, then hounded her into a lunch date at the New York Athletic Club. After a wholesome meal, the two proceeded to Johnnie Lee’s apartment, where the vigorously amorous Macfadden demonstrated his usual distaste for small talk by unzipping his trousers to reveal what Johnnie Lee called ‘the most exquisite sex organ I had ever seen on a man.’ Johnnie Lee declined her date’s unspoken offer — as well as his shouted proposal to marry her immediately—” though she did end up marrying MacFadden and his exquisite sex organ within the month.

Maybe you find that story crude. Don’t worry. Nick’s take on this technique is anything but crude. In fact, Nick’s use of this technique is professional and yet effective, and can work not just at the start of a courtship, but after everything else has failed to produce a response.

Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence goes up in price from $54 to $97 at 8pm EST tonight. If you’d like to get it before then:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster

P.S. If you do get it before the deadline, forward me your receipt. I will personally send you a bonus of equal real-world value, My Secret of the Magi. It sells for $54 on my site right now, and tells you the biggest secret I’ve learned about opening up (not following up on) conversations that lead to business partnerships.

Free new newsletter idea

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Today I want to give you an idea for a new newsletter, free for you if you want to run with it. But first, a bit o’ background:

A couple days ago I was at the gym, stretching and listening to one of only two podcasts I ever listen to, Mike Mandel’s Brain Software Podcast.

In this episode Mike had a guest, Scott Adams of Dilbert and Trump fame/infamy. Adams has written a new book, and he’s going around to promote it.

I finished listening to that podcast but I was still not done with the gym. The podcast app jumped to the new episode of the second of only two podcasts I ever listen to, the James Altucher Show.

In this episode, James had a guest, also Scott Adams, still promoting his new book.

That’s the background. It’s relevant because Adams’s new book is called Reframe your Brain. It’s all about reframes — different ways to look at situations, changes in perspectives that make you happier, wiser, or simply more effective.

My point in telling you this is to show you that now is a good moment to launch a newsletter, one I have been thinking about for along time, exactly on this topic.

I was planning on launching this newsletter myself.

​​But I simply have no time to do it along with this marketing newsletter you’re reading now and the other health one I’ve got running.

​​So I’m giving you the idea if you want it, for free.

The name I thought of for this newsletter was Great Reframes. It would be in the vein of Letters of Note, in case you know that.

Each issue would simply give readers an interesting and valuable reframe, along with a bit of a story or historical anecdote to make it stick. For example, your first issue could cover one of the classic and most powerful reframes of all time:

“Pain is just weakness leaving the body”

… which is how Arnold Schwarzenegger hypnotized himself into pushing harder at the gym, and how he ultimately won seven Mr. Olympia titles.

I’ve been collecting such reframes for a while. I got a few dozen of ’em so far. They’re everywhere once you get yer antennae up.

Scott Adams collected a bunch of his own reframes into his book. Scott’s book is both a resource for you if you choose to launch this newsletter, and it’s also free publicity, a horse to ride, an occasion to justify your new newsletter. The time to get going is now.

“Yea sure,” you say, “but what about the money? Weakness leaving the body is nice and all, but how about some money entering my wallet?”

If you want to monetize this newsletter, then you got a few options, depending on what you like to do:

You can position this Great Reframes newsletter as a resource for investors, along the lines of Morgan Housel’s Psychology of Money.

​​You could make the reasonable claim that a change in perspective is an invaluable investing tool. At the end of each issue, you could simply pitch stuff that would be interesting to investors — exclusive access, high-priced analysis.

Or if you want to promote yourself and your writing services, you could position this as being an inspiring resource for entrepreneurs and hustlers.

​​You could get entrepreneurs all motivated and inspired with your reframe, and then simply suggest they hire you to write whatever it is you write, since you’ve just demonstrated you can do it well.

Or you could go full-consumer, and simply aim this at self-help junkies. Give them a new reframe in each issue, and then sell them courses, retreats, coaching, whatever.

So there you go. In the slightly modified words of info publisher Bernarr MacFadden:

“Not having your own newsletter is a crime — don’t be a criminal”

… which is another good reframe for you to use in an issue of your new newsletter.

And as I said yesterday, if you do decide to create this newsletter, and you need a platform to actually send your newsletter and a website to get people to opt in to it, then I recommend Beehiiv.

Beehiiv is what I use for my own health newsletter, and it’s great, a rare piece of online software that works well and is a pleasure to use.

​​In case you’d like to get this newsletter started now, for free, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/beehiiv

“What will cause your death — and when?”

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Serious students of direct response advertising will know the following famous and shocking headline:

“READ THIS OR DIE”

This headline appeared on a Phillips Publishing bookalog back in the early 2000s. It supposedly got Phillips more than 100k new subscribers at $39 a year.

The payoff for the shocking headline starts right in the subhead:

“Today you have a 95 percent chance of dying from a disease or condition for which there is already a known cure somewhere on the planet.”

The rest of the copy continues in this vein, using a bunch of statistics and facts to prove to you that most deadly diseases are now curable or preventable.

“Read this or die” was written by Jim Rutz. Rutz himself was a serious student of direct response advertising.

So is it possible that Rutz, though he was famous for being off-the-wall, creative, and unique-sounding, actually swiped his famous ad?

I would say it’s certainly possible.

Because I am yet another serious student of direct response advertising. And today I found an old ad, from 1926, which reads exactly like Rutz’s “Read this or die” ad. The headline of that 1926 ad runs:

“What will cause your death — and when?”

The payoff for the shocking headline starts right in the subhead:

“If you value your health and life here are some facts that will shock you into thinking more about your body. it is almost beyond belief, yet true, that eight hundred thousand people die in the United States every year of preventable disease.”

The rest of the copy continues in this vein, using a bunch of statistics and facts to prove to you that most deadly diseases are now curable or preventable.

The offer at the end of this ad was the Encyclopedia of Physical Culture, a massive book in six volumes, which sold for $600 in today’s money.

The Encyclopedia was sold with many different ads, but I only found one instance of “What will cause your death — and when?” online.

Maybe the ad ran in many places, but only one of these is archived online.

It’s also possible that the ad only ran once in this exact form.

In any case, a few things are sure:

1. The Encyclopedia of Physical Culture sold out at least 8 editions between 1911 and 1928…

2, ​​Bernarr MacFadden, the author of the Encyclopedia, was worth $30 million as a result of his publishing activities (around half a billion in today’s money)…

3. ​The Encyclopedia was read broadly by generations of impressionable young men, and ended up a huge influence on America’s ongoing obsession with diet, health, and fitness.

All of which is to say:

That “What will cause your death” ad might be worth reading. Assuming, that is, that you’ve got an ongoing obsession with seeing what makes people tick… what they want to become… and what they are willing to pay for, at least when it comes to their health.

In case you are interested, you can see the entire ad at the link below. Before you click away, you might want to sign up to my newsletter here. Now here’s the ad:

https://bejakovic.com/what-will-cause-your-death