Dwight Schrute

How to be courteous to trolls

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There’s a scene in The Office where Dwight Schrute does battle with a sentient computer.

Dwight and the sentient computer (actually a couple of his coworkers in disguise) are competing to see who can sell more paper by the end of the day.

At one point, Dwight loses his cool. He tells the computer to “011 1111 011 011” (which apparently spells the letters “F” and “O” in ASCII).

The sentient computer doesn’t flinch, however.

Instead, it replies to Dwight:

“While you were typing that, I’ve searched every database in existence and learned every fact about everything. And mastered the violin. And sold more paper!”

I got a chance to apply a similar kind of response today for an ad I’m running on Facebook.

This ad is promoting a free ebook titled The Little Black Book of Essential Oil Scams. One of the sections in this ebook covers the two big MLM essential oil companies, doTerra and Young Living, which have a lot of ardent supporters.

One such supporter commented on my ad:

“You are showing your own ignorance! You promote oils and don’t know the difference between what’s pure and what’s not, and yet try to bash other companies. You couldn’t pay me to waste my time on your book!”

Until recently, I’ve ignored trolls like this.

But then I thought to myself, why be so lazy?

I should take the advice of expert troll-tamer Ben Settle, and try to profit from this.

So I decided to ignore what the troll said, misconstrue it as something positive, and then self-promote. I wrote in response:

“No need to pay for this book, it’s free. And I agree that essential oil quality is important. That’s why I write about several best-selling companies that have been shown to sell adulterated oils.”

Well, the troll didn’t like being misunderstood.

She wrote more angry comments. But I had no intention of engaging with her further. I think one serving of “misconstrue then self-promote” is all each troll is entitled to.

So what’s the point?

I believe it’s possible to deal with trolls with courtesy, as long as you misconstrue or ignore what they have to say.

And then, you can turn it to your advantage and self-promote.

It’s much like the scene from The Office above.

Don’t engage with trolls directly. And take the attitude that you’re winning no matter what.

If you do this, you will find opportunities for subtle self-promotion everywhere.

Speaking of self-promotion: If you read all the way to the end of this post, you might like my upcoming book on email marketing. You can sign up to get a free copy when it’s out by going to the following page:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The questionable hazing of “The Temp”

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“Michael always says K.I.S.S. — keep it simple, stupid. Great advice. Hurts my feelings every time.”
— Dwight Schrute, Dunder Mifflin Inc.

There’s an episode of The Office where Dwight, the top salesman for the Scranton branch of the failing paper company Dunder Mifflin, takes out Ryan “The Temp” for his first sales call.

Except, they don’t go to straight to the sales call. Instead, Dwight takes Ryan to a beet farm for a kind of bizarre hazing ritual, involving a beet seed, a wheelchair, and a wrestling match with Dwight’s cousin Mose.

Not very useful.

And neither is the sales advice that Dwight gives to Ryan when the hazing is over:

“Ask a lot of questions that all have positive answers.”

Sure enough, Ryan takes this advice and bombs during the sales call. The clients even personally tell him they don’t like him. The only thing that’s left for the two Dunder Mifflin salesmen to do is to throw eggs at the client’s corporate headquarters and go get drunk. ​

So what’s a better alternative to asking yes-seeking questions such as “Couldn’t your company use a stronger, lighter, cheaper stock of paper?”

I can personally think of four different strategies, each of which would probably work better than the questionable yes-seeking sales advice that Ryan got.

I’ll go over each of these four approaches in separate posts over the next few days.

For now, just a quick public service announcement:

I’m almost finished with my “How to become a $150/hr, top-rated sales copywriter on Upwork” book. Once it’s done, it will go up on Amazon, and will even be available for free during a short promo period. If you want to get notified when this happens, head over to the page below and plant your beet seed over there:

https://bejakovic.com/upwork-book-notification-list/

The Dwight Schrute school of email marketing

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“I like the people I work with, generally, with four exceptions. But someone committed a crime, and I did not become a Lackawanna County volunteer sheriff’s deputy to make friends. And by the way, I haven’t.”
— Dwight Schrute, The Office

This morning I concluded the launch weekend of my new aromatherapy book.

Spoiler alert: everything went according to plan.

I sent out a lot of emails.

I sold quite a few books — in fact, more than I had anticipated.

And I also got some unsubscribes.

It’s this last bit that I want to talk about.

Before I started this promotional launch (which spanned 4 days and involved 9 promo emails), I sent out an “email avalanche warning” to my subscribers.

I told them what the email forecast was for the weekend, and I also told them that, in case they don’t want to hear me pitching my book, they have two options:

1. They can ignore my emails until next week

2. They can unsubscribe

And sure enough, a few people (though not very many) did unsubscribe at that point.

However, once the email launch actually kicked off last Thursday, more people unsubscribed, including a few who had been faithful readers of my blog and email newsletter for several years.

And my reaction, without any bitterness or sarcasm, was Schrute-like. (In case you don’t know, Dwight Schrute is the jackhammering, hard-working, merciless alpha male assistant to the regional manager from the TV show The Office.)

You see, with a few exceptions, I generally like the people who are subscribed to my email newsletter.

But I’m selling a book and trying to make a solid business out of my Unusual Health website.

And I did not become a low-level aromatherapy expert to make friends.

In other words, when people who would never buy anything from me unsubscribe from my emails, I actually feel glad to see them go.

Anyways, if you want more details about my ebook launch strategy, including the reasoning behind the emails I sent and the schedule I used, you’ll want to get a copy of my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space.

Fact: It’s not out yet, but you can get a free copy when I do finish it.

Here’s where you can find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/