Dude… you gotta read this email

This morning I was idling on the Internet when I saw a clip of an MMA fight between all-time great Fedor Emelianenko and all-time loudmouth Chael Sonnen.

In the clip, Sonnen managed to get Emelianenko on the ground. Sonnen then did some fancy/silly move to get himself in trouble, with Emelianenko on top, raining punches down on Sonnen’s head.

But what really had me transfixed was looking at the ad on Sonnen’s shorts. It read:

DUDE WIPES

Dude wipes? It turns out to be a real thing. Disposable wet wipes for men, in masculine black packaging.

My first impression was that calling your intimate hygiene product “wipes” is already emasculating, and defeats all the manly branding.

But apparently I’m wrong. DUDE Wipes is a successful business. As proof:

They have many offers on their site beyond just wipes (DUDE bidet)…

They have endorsement deals with pro sports figures (pro golfer: “On the golf course and off it, I’m taking it to the hole with DUDE Wipes”)…

And on Amazon, various bundles of DUDE wipes have tens of thousands of reviews, almost all five-star, though with some caveats (“The wife is always reluctant to have them in the guest bath when we have company because of the, as she puts it, sophomoric name and black package”).

This brought to mind my long-simmering idea to create a business by taking a consumable product and applying it to an affinity or identity group.

The usual order in much of direct response is to take a niche and then figure out, what could we sell to them? What could we create and sell at a high-enough markup and with repeating revenue for long enough to make it worthwhile?

This system clearly works.

But the other way works also, and maybe even better. As Claude Hopkins put it, “It is a well-known fact that the greatest profits are made on great volume and small profit.”

So the idea is to take a consumable product which is a known seller to a mass audience, and brand it for a specific affinity or identity group.

I’ve already seen this done with coffee for Reformed Christians. That brand was called Reformed Roasters, and within two months of being launched, it was making $40k/month.

So why not a line of fine cheeses for militant atheists?

Or air fresheners for QAnon nuts?

Or dog food for dogs of heavy metal heads?

Maybe you say any of these ideas is arbitrary, and much more likely to fail than to work.

I’m sure you’re right. To make this work, you will need good marketing to get your Sunni Soda off the ground.

But if you have capital to invest, I happen to know a good marketer. And if you’re looking for a partner to help you create the next Pepsodent or Palmolive soap — for dudes — then sign up for my email list and then we can talk.

“He could never defeat the second-guessing”

Imagine for just a moment you are an MMA fighter, stepping into the octagon. The door locks behind you. Across from you is a guy who has been trained to kick your head clean off your shoulders.

Suddenly, the ref waves you both on. Your opponent starts to charge towards you, ready to kill.

And then, instead of feeling your own killer instinct taking over, you hear a voice in your head that says, “Oh God. I can’t do this. I shouldn’t be here. Everybody’s gonna see I shouldn’t be here.”

I’ve read various copywriters say they feel like a fraud or an impostor. You might think this fear is unique to this sensitive, snowflakey profession. But no. Even much tougher people get struck by the same panic.

For example, I watched a short clip today in which Chael Sonnen and Uriah Hall, two of the world’s best mixed martial artists, talk about self-doubt and lack of confidence.

Sonnen, the more experienced of the two, has this to say:

“One of the huge things I realized is that everybody’s going through it. I used to think there’s something wrong with me. I used to be really embarrassed about it. And I talked to Randy Couture [a legendary MMA fighter] about it. And Randy said that the one thing he learned is, he could never defeat it. He could never defeat the second-guessing or the negative voice in his head. And he just learned, I just gotta compete with it.”​

Here’s my point:​​

It’s worthwhile looking at your inner demons now and then, and putting in some work to cast them out. Maybe you will be successful in your exorcism one day. But don’t count on it.

The good news is, it’s possible to be plenty successful even with a lot of self-doubt. Others have done it before you. You can too.

You just have to accept that the “I can’t do this” demon will probably continue to sit on your shoulder, whispering panic-inducing thoughts to you, while you act regardless.

“Yes, you’re right,” you can tell him. “I can’t do this. Just give me a second. I need to punch this guy in the face.”

Here’s another demon you might hear whispering to you:

At first you think he’s saying, “Email newsletter.” So you lean in closer.

The demon says, “A new email each day, about persuasion and marketing.”

You lean in still closer. Suddenly, the demon grabs you by the ear. “Sign up here,” he whispers.