For the past couple weeks, I’ve been running a new email series I call Psych Psundays. The first week, the response was good. The second week, it was also good:
#1. “Wow. Thank you, John.”
#2. “Lovely email John – many thanks for writing it – I loved reading it. Great storytelling.”
#3. “These Psych Sundays are helpful.”
#4. “Honestly this came at the right time for me. Just started a new creative strategist role – my first time writing ad scripts – with a new supplement brand. Since this is my first time doing this, I’ve been fighting similar thoughts like “This isn’t right for me, I only know email”… big imposter syndrome stuff. Been taking the next step and fighting those thoughts, leading up to submitting my first ads, was wondering if they’d be ripped to shreds, but the only real feedback I got was “good ads 🔥”… So it’s been a trip.”
This third week, Psych Psundays continues, and threatens to bleed into Pself-Help Psundays instead.
Will this be the end of this series as readers unsubscribe in disgust?
Or will I tell you something interesting and possibly valuable?
Let’s see.
I will start by admitting that last week I rewatched the 2002 Hong Kong movie Infernal Affairs. You might know it better in the 2006 remake version by Martin Scorcese, called The Departed.
The movie tells the story of a drug kingpin and a police captain, each of whom plants a mole in the other’s organization.
The cops and criminals keep clashing, pulling away to try to outwit each other, and clashing again.
This coming together and pulling away is precisely what makes the movie tense and fun to watch, all the way to the final showdown, where everybody loses and order is restored to the universe.
Compare that to an article I read a while back about a man named Daniel Kinahan. The article asked a simple question, “An Irish drug dealer, Daniel Kinahan, commands a billion-dollar cocaine empire from the U.A.E. Why isn’t he in prison?”
The background was that Kinahan’s father, Christy, grew up middle class in Dublin, but got into the drug trade. Christy was smart, polite, and careful. Unlike everybody else in the drug business, he was not an addict himself.
Still, in the first few years of his career, back in 1987, Kinahan Sr. got caught and served a few years in prison.
After he got out, Kinahan Sr. made changes to how he was running his drug trafficking business to make it less likely he would get caught.
When his son Daniel took over, there were even more changes introduced, and the risk was reduced even further.
The result is that the Kinahans have been running one of the world’s biggest cocaine organizations, but continue to live free in Dubai, and apparently the police cannot or will not touch them.
Frankly, not much of a story there, and definitely not worth a movie.
A couple weeks ago, back in the inaugural Psych Psunday email, I mentioned I was reading a book called Games People Play. The book is a catalogue of “games” — repeated personal interactions that are played for ulterior motives and payoffs rather than the obvious reasons.
One game described in Games People Play is called “Cops and Robbers.” It’s about real-life cops and robbers, or at least some of them.
The game of “Cops and Robbers” is played for a combination of excitement and security. The excitement comes from being chased. The security comes from being caught and put back to the same place where the robber is used to being, whether that’s the local slum or prison.
But here’s the bit I found interesting. Not every criminal plays “Cops & Robbers.” From Games People Play:
“There seem to be two distinctive types of habitual criminals: those who are in crime primarily for profit, and those who are in it primarily for the game — with a large group in between who can handle it either way. The ‘compulsive winner,’ the big moneymaker whose Child really does not want to be caught, rarely is, according to reports; he is an untouchable, for whom the fix is always in. The ‘compulsive loser,’ on the other hand, who is playing ‘Cops and Robbers,’ seldom does very well financially.”
I found this distinction between “pros” and “C&R players” interesting. It’s the difference between the “Cops & Robbers” players as dramatized in Infernal Affairs, and the Kinahans, the real-life untouchables and compulsive winners, who don’t really make for a good story, but who do live rich and free.
This distinction between “pros” and “players of Cops & Robbers” goes way beyond the criminal world. If you ask me, this same distinction applies pretty much everywhere in life, including the direct response industry.
Publicly, the DR industry all about dramatic transformations and secret push-button solutions that will make you lose weight or turn you into a millionaire in the next 24 hours.
Privately, behind the scenes, the DR industry is built on the Recency-Frequency-Monetary Value formula.
Basically, it’s about selling the same thing, over and over, to people who have been buying for years, people who actually have ulterior motives than making money or losing weight quickly, even though that’s what they they are paying for.
And this is where we veer from Psych Psunday.
Psychology is good at classifying and diagnosing. For how to change, you gotta go to a different section of the bookstore, the self-help section.
For example, I once read a book called Straight-Line Leadership. At its core, it’s about the distinction between “straight-line people” and “circle people.”
It’s the exact same distinction as Games People Play makes, between “pros” and “people who play Cops & Robbers.”
The difference between Straight-Line Leadership and Games People Play is that Straight-Line Leadership tells you that you can become a straight-line person today.
You don’t have to keep quitting or “being caught” once things are going well. You can simply keep going in a straight line, onwards and upwards, like a compulsive winner.
And if you do encounter a setback (eg. you get thrown into jail, like Kinahan Sr.) you can simply come out of jail, make some changes, and get back on the straight line.
A master of direct marketing once wrote:
“One of the greatest lessons I learned about direct marketing over the years is that if it ain’t boring, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re juggling too many balls, running around frantically putting out fires all the time, if every day is a constant uphill battle to succeed… then… something ain’t right. This business, when done correctly, should be dull, boring, slow moving (even at high speed), and mostly automated.”
So there you go. To have a real shot at getting rich and free, get your kicks from somewhere other than your business.
Or don’t. Get your kicks from your business, keep playing Cops and Robbers, experiencing exciting ups and downs.
Many people do it, and there’s no shame in it.
But in that case, you can spare yourself the frustration of wondering why those ups and downs are always there, and realize they’re there because you want them on some level.
And now, a reminder that my Most Valuable Offer launches this coming Wednesday.
With Most Valuable Offer, I’m offering to give you my direct help so you can run a successful launch of a paid live workshop by the end of April, which you can then keep selling, in an automated way, until the stars fall from the sky.
For more info: