James Altucher

The plagiarism trick of James the Baptist

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James Altucher is a kind of modern day John the Baptist. He rails against college, owning a house, or paying your dues in any industry.

I first heard about him from entrepreneur and copywriter Mark Ford. Mark cares about good writing and interesting ideas. I guess that’s why he’s friends with James.

James has a colorful life history. He has a talent for making and then losing millions of dollars… he’s neurotic and nerdy… at one point, he lived for a year straight in Airbnbs, and owned only 15 things.

But people follow him. Online. Huge audiences.

James also has a podcast. The world’s elite comes to him to promote their causes. He’s interviewed Tony Robbins… Richard Branson… Robert Cialdini… and hundreds of others among the rich and influential.

James interrupts his guests while they’re speaking. He asks out-of-left-field questions. He makes his guests pause. And then relax. And then answer honestly with real insights.

A while back, James published a brilliant idea. It allows you to avoid agonizing over your writing, and create content that’s guaranteed to light up your readers’ minds.

James’s post gives an example of how he got crazy spikes of online traffic using this idea. He spells out exactly how you can use it too. You can use it to write your own popular online content, winning sales copy, or even a bestselling book.

In short, James just shared a way to stop trotting along on a lame copywriting mule… and to start galloping on a copywriting thoroughbred.

I even used this technique to write this email. It’s been a revelation. And I want to share it with you now:

https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/i-plagiarized

My menage a trois with a jilted old ex

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In spite of my subject line above, there’s nothing lurid about today’s email. So if you are expecting sex and drama, it might be best to stop reading now.

On the other hand, if you’re in that small minority of people who get all hot and bothered by personal development topics, then it might be worth pressing on.

If you’re still with me, then let me set the scene.

Two years ago to the day, I wrote an email with the subject line:

“Why goals and I broke up and are no longer talking”

In that email, I wrote about how I’m ghosting goals. They never worked for me.

Instead, I decided to move on to a new relationship with what James Altucher calls “having a theme.” It’s a general direction you want your life to move in, without specifics, numbers, or deadlines.

Then exactly a year ago, I wrote an update with the subject line,

“2021 un-goals”

In that email, I gushed that my new relationship with themes was going great and was getting serious. I had moved forward significantly in each of the three themes/directions I had set for 2020.

But was this just the happy honeymoon period? Or would my new love affair last?

As I wrote a year ago, there was only one way to find out. Back then, I decided on three new themes for 2021, and I promised to write an update when the time comes.

Well the time is now.

So if you’re curious, I’ll tell you about my past year, and and how my relationship with themes developed. And maybe more importantly…

I will also tell you the fundamental mental shortcut I use to decide on many of life’s difficult questions. It might give you a new perspective on some important topics.

First the update. Here are the three themes I had for 2021:

1 Partnership. In a nutshell, I decided to stop doing everything myself. Instead, I wanted to partner up with other people and businesses… contribute what skills and resources I have in abundance… and let them do the same.

Without getting bogged down in details, let me say I got all the partnership opportunities I could want. And none of them led anywhere.

But I ended the year with a new partnership agreement — something that has the potential to be big. I’ll write more about that in the coming weeks and months.

2. Ability to produce. This is Dan Kennedy’s idea, which I heard via Ben Settle, that the only security you have in life is your ability to produce. As for my ability to produce in 2021:

I wrote 365+ of these daily emails… ​I created the 8-week Copy Riddles program… ​I held the Influential Emails training…

… ​​and that’s along with various bonuses I recorded and a few podcast appearances I made and a mastermind coaching I did. ​​Plus there was client work for 2 primary clients and a few odd jobs, here and there.

3. Redacted for being too personal and revealing. I seem to be building an online reputation as a hermit who’s afraid of divulging personal details. So I can’t disappoint you by sharing too much about my real life right now. Let me just say this third theme/direction was personal and went absolutely nowhere. In fact, it went backwards. A complete failure.

So to sum up:

Like with every other relationship I’ve ever had, year two of going steady with themes turned out to be a mixed bag. A few great moments… a few bitter fights… and a lot in between.

Which leads me to that mental shortcut I mentioned, or rather, a lens through which I view the world. Before I reveal it, let me warn you:

This is not something that sells very well. You won’t hear me preaching it for the rest of the year. But I believe it to be true, and since today is January 1, I am willing to admit to it. It is this:

Long-standing questions don’t have simple answers.

For me, this applies to many areas of life. But specifically, it applies when trying to decide which path is the right one:

Is it better to be flexible or disciplined?

Does real success come from self-acceptance or self-development?

Is freedom the greatest good or is it comfort and safety?

My brain wants simple, black-and-white answers to these questions. It would save me so much thinking.

But the truth is that deciding between these opposite poles is an ongoing struggle. It requires attention, effort, and care. And ironically, by accepting that fact, I often save myself a lot of grief and wasted time.

And this brings me to 2022, and that menage-a-trois I mentioned in the subject line.

Themes and I continue our relationship. We are trying to make things work.

But I’ve invited that old jilted ex, goals, back into my life. I want to see if somehow the three of us can live happily together.

So I have three new, general themes for my 2022… and I’ve also set two specific, quantifiable, deadline-based goals.

Will this polygamous relationship work out? Or will it end in plates being thrown and my clothes getting tossed out the window? And what exactly are my themes and goals for 2022?

Only one way to find out:

Like I did on January 1 2020… and January 1 2021… and now, today… I will write another email in a year’s time about this personal topic. And if you can wait that long, sign up for my email newsletter, and you will find out the whole story then.

Well, except for any revealing, personal info. That will have to be redacted. I have my hermit persona to protect and develop, after all.

The parable of the idea sower

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Today I’d like to tell you about one of the two main engines behind my ability to produce. This engine is very simple, but it’s very powerful. And I believe you can get great use out of it if you also choose to use it.

But hold on.

Will you really hear me if I tell you straight up?

Perhaps. But I want better odds than that. So let me first tell you the ancient parable of the sower.

The sower went a-sowing. He threw down some seeds. A few fell by the wayside. A few fell on shallow ground. A few fell among thorns.

All of these seeds were wasted.

But a few seeds fell on good soil. And the upshot was a good harvest. The sower had an ROI of 3,000%-6,000%. And he said, “You know what? I might do this again tomorrow.”

Maybe you recognize this parable. And maybe you even know one interpretation of it.

But today I want to give you another interpretation. It might be new to you.

Because ideas you come up with — possible solutions to a problem — are like these seeds. A few ideas fall by the wayside because they are just nonsense and irrelevant. A few ideas take root in shallow ground — they are too predictable and unimaginative. A few ideas end up choked with thorns, because they are impractical.

But a few ideas land right where they should. And the ROI is tremendous.

Yesterday, a member of my Copy Riddles program wrote in. He said he could only come up with two bullets where I had suggested writing three. I told him that the solution to his problem might be to write 6 bullets or 9, instead of aiming for 3.

Because if you can’t get an idea to land right where it should, it’s not because your aim is not good enough. It’s because you’re not throwing enough seeds out. Throw more seeds out, regularly, and you won’t have to worry about your aim.

That’s what I’ve been doing for a few years already. 10 ideas. Every day. About something — personal, business, or fanciful. And I do it while working too. 10 subject lines. 10 hooks. 10 ways to illustrate a point that you should generate more ideas, including wasted ones.

By the way, this is something else you might recognize. I originally got this “10 ideas” idea from James Altucher. He’s also the one who had the smart insight that if you can’t come up with 10 ideas, you should come up with 20. Because you’re obviously limiting yourself too much in your thinking.

James has a little challenge for you. He promises to turn you into an idea machine. He’s also got a lot of how-to advice that might help you in this quest. You can find all of that on the following page, which has been worth tens of thousands of dollars to me, and might be worth more to you — if you only do what it says, starting today.

But before you go — do you want more ideas like this? Then sign up to my email newsletter. And then off you go, to become an idea machine:

https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-for-becoming-an-idea-machine/

My unflattering email critique to my earlier self

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[I gave myself a harsh email critique recently. It’s for an email I wrote exactly two years ago, which gets a “C” at best. If you want to see why, here’s the original email in bold, along with my comments in brackets:]

SUBJECT: The email that broke the camel’s back

[I’ve found that “play on a popular phrase” rarely works as a subject line, at least to my personal newsletter list. So I would say, force yourself to come up with 10 new subject lines, and use the best of those. But if you insist on the subject line above, then make it more specific and intriguing. Something like, “The sticky sweet email that broke this camel’s back.”]

A while back, I subscribed to the Farnam Street email newsletter.

I’d seen a headline in the New York Times about Shane Parrish, the guy who writes Farnam Street. The headline read:

“How a Former Canadian Spy Helps Wall Street Mavens Think Smarter”

Interesting.

So I subscribed, without knowing too much about what the content I would be getting.

[Only people who really love you will read past this opening. Everybody else will leave. As James Altucher says, you have to bleed in the first line. Options:

– “How a Former Canadian Spy Helps Wall Street Mavens Think Smarter.” Lead off with this and then explain what it’s all about.

– “And that’s when I unsubscribed.” Lead off with the end of the story (below) and then work your way back to explain how it all went wrong.

– Make it into a metaphor. “I only dated the Farnam Street newsletter for a few weeks. In that short time, we had several nasty fights…”]

The first email arrived with a ton of links to important, helpful articles on the Farnam Street blog. I scanned through, but I didn’t read anything.

A second email hit me a few days later, with more helpful content.

Then a third.

And a fourth.

There was nothing wrong with any of these emails. And the content was apparently good — after all, Shane Parrish got a feature written about him in the New York Times.

But none of it clicked with me. It was too earnest, too virtuous, too positive.

[Ideally, make this section more concrete. Give examples of specific emails, and make each example funny or stupid. If you can’t do that for any reason… then make this section shorter. Your copy should never be both abstract and long, which is what’s happening here.]

Finally, I got an email with the headline “Introducing your new favorite holiday tradition” (it was around Christmastime).

I opened it up. It was about a “charming Icelandic holiday tradition” to exchange books and then spend the evening reading them together with friends and family.

That’s when I unsubscribed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got no beef with Farnam Street or their email newsletter. I personally didn’t find the content interesting. On the other hand, a lot of other people obviously get a lot out of the same emails that I unsubscribed from.

[This is a missed opportunity to be a bit funny. You can make fun of the Icelanders and their nerdy tradition… of Shane Parrish and his virtue signalling… or of yourself and your cold Grinch heart, two sizes too small.]

I only bring up my experience with Farnam Street emails to illustrate a point:

It wasn’t that last email that made me unsubscribe.

That was just the straw, or the email, that broke the camel’s back.

All the previous emails had already primed me to open up the “charming Icelandic holiday tradition” email and say to myself, “Oh, hell no.”

This is something to remember in case you do a lot of email marketing.

It’s very hard to assign blame (or praise) to an individual email.

Odds are, it’s the entire email sequence that’s driving readers away — or winning them over.

[This point is worthwhile. But it could be developed further. An easy way to do this would be with another, positive example. “I was on Ben Settle’s list in two separate bursts, for 3 years in total, before I subscribed to his paid newsletter. The last email I read before I subscribed had the subject, “The Myth of Security”… but you can be sure it wasn’t that email alone that made me subscribe. It was those 3 years of cumulative reading.”]

Of course, there are things (unvirtuous and unearnest things) you can do to stack things in your favor early on in the relationship, while you still have your reader’s attention and good will.

If you’d like to find out what some of those unvirtuous ways are, you might be interested in my upcoming book on email marketing for the health space. For more info or to sign up to get a free copy (once it’s out), here’s where to go:

[A couple of points to wrap this up for you and for myself both:

1. Even though this email is weak from a copywriting standpoint, that’s ok. Sometimes these daily emails come out a little undercooked, other times they are dry and flavorless. But the more you write, the more of them turn out fine.

But even if not, so what? A weak daily email still has value. It strengthens your relationship with your list… it cements the central idea in your mind… and it can form fodder for your future emails, two years down the line. So keep writing, or if you haven’t started yet, then start.

2. When you tease something at the end of your email, make sure you write down what you had in mind for the payoff. I’d like to know now what info I was teasing back then… but two years later, I have no idea any more. Time to head over to Farnam Street and see what advice Shane has about improving my failing memory.]

Idea sex positioning

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“Star Wars on Earth”

That was the initial four-word summary of Top Gun, in the mind of its producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

I’ve read much of Hollywood works this way.

Take an existing successful idea… combine it with something else… and boom, you got yourself the next Avatar (“Dances with Wolves in space”).

James Altucher calls this idea sex.

It’s not just a way to make the next Hollywood blockbuster. It’s also a great way to come up with new business ideas. For example:

I once found the “S&P 500 of the vacation rental industry.” The company is called AirDNA, and just from that short description, it’s pretty clear what it does. From what I could find, AirDNA revenue was $8 million a year.

Instacart was “Uber for groceries.” So much so that last year, when Uber launched its grocery delivery service Cornershop, Instacart sued. No wonder Instacart is feeling territorial. The 2020 valuation for Instacart was over $13 billion.

But what if you’ve already got a business are you’re not looking to launch a new idea?

You might still be able to use idea sex to give your business better positioning.

Just look for an analogy. Ask yourself what your business is similar to, or could be similar to.

“The Best Buy of the adult industry.”

“The Louis Vuitton of festivals.”

“The Nike of e-sports.”

You might have to change what you do a bit… or drop some things you thought were core to your business.

But do it right, and you will have powerful positioning. And that means you will make more money, with less work.

Ok, so much for positioning. Now on to the pitch:

I write a daily email newsletter. It is like the Far Side, but about marketing and copywriting. If you’d like to try it out, click here to sign up.

Slow readers of the world, unite and take over

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It’s one of the most upsetting ideas I’ve read recently:

James Altucher wrote a few weeks ago that we each have maybe 1000 books left in us to read, for the rest of our lives.

The math checks out: 20-30 books per year, for about 40-50 years more of living and reading.

That’s a depressing thought to me. Books are one of the main ways I get any ideas and insights. But it gets worse:

Because when I read, I’m as slow as a tortoise after lunch.

Last year, I read only 10 non-work related books (“Le Morte D’Arthur” took me 5 months to finish) and maybe another 7 work related books (some of which I was reading for the second time). And that’s in spite of taking time out to read every day.

By Altucher’s calculation, at this rate, I will only read 799 more books by the time I croak at my pre-appointed moment of 87 years young.

That’s depressing.

But wait, you might say, surely there are ways to learn to read faster?

I guess there are. But I am resistant to them. For a long time, my only justification was stubbornness.

But then I thought about why I rarely get any value out of “Cliff’s notes” summaries of books, even ones I’ve put together myself.

And that’s why I want to leave you with a throwaway (but valuable) idea that Dan Kennedy shared once during a seminar.

This idea might make you feel better if you too are a slow reader like me.

And if you are not, and you whiz through text, or you have clever hacks to condense and speed up content so you can consume more of it faster, it might make you consider slowing down.

Anyways, here’s the idea. At the start of a seminar DK once gave on being a more successful copywriter, he said not to worry about taking notes.

Kennedy said that if you come away from the seminar with 20 pages of notes, then he has failed. But if you come away with three or four things you are determined to change, then he has succeeded. And he summed it up with the following insight, which I want to leave you with:

“You don’t get value out of what I say, but out of what you think of when I say it.”

Here’s a final warning:

If you are focused on getting the most quality reading done for the rest of your life, it probably makes no sense to read much stuff on the Internet.

But if you don’t heed this warning, then you might like to read the email newsletter I write each day. Think about it carefully… and if you so choose, go here to sign up.

2021 un-goals

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One year ago, I sent out an email to my un-newsletter subscribers with the subject line,

“Why goals and I broke up and are no longer talking”

In that email, I wrote about how I’m ghosting goals such as, “I want to make $xyz in the next year.” The reason was I used set goals like this for years — and I never achieved them, or even came close.

Instead, last year I decided to move on to something James Altucher calls “having a theme.” It’s a direction you want your life to move in.

So at the end of 2019, I set three themes for my 2020. They were:

1) more money

2) a project

3) some fun

I feel I’ve been successful in moving in each of those directions. I made more money in 2020 than I had in the previous four years combined… I searched for a side-project until hitting upon the Masks on a Plane newsletter idea about a month ago… and as for fun, well, we can talk about that in private.

Maybe you say, it’s all a coincidence. And maybe you’re right.

So I am running a new experiment for 2021, with a new set of themes, building and tweaking the ones I had in 2020. If you like, I’ll let you know in another 365 days whether themes turn out to be 2/2 in helping me move forward in life. You can subscribe to my un-newsletter here to make sure you get that update.

And if you too have tried setting goals only to realize 1) you haven’t achieved them and 2) you don’t even care, then give themes a try for 2021. They might help you achieve the breakthrough you’ve been waiting for.

Plagiarizing on the shoulders of giants

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Nobody called me out on it.

For the past four days, I’ve been sending out plagiarized emails. I would have kept going too, but I ran out of source material to abuse.

So on Saturday, I sent out the email “What I learned from copywriting.” That was plagiarized from James Altucher’s “What I learned from chess.”

On Sunday, I sent out “Stop caring what people think.” That was plagiarized from Jason Leister’s “Just tell me what to do.”

Monday was “Why I didn’t collect my $10.5 million.” That was plagiarized from Mark Ford’s “Why I wasn’t loyal to my broker.”

And yesterday I sent “How to create a selling style people love to read.” That was actually Ben Settle’s “How to create a writing style people love to buy from.”

If you are compulsively curious, track down the originals and then take a look at my plagiarized copies.

Because it’s not just subject line I plagiarized.

I plagiarized the content too. Especially the structure. Even entire sentences.

(By the way, I picked these four writers to plagiarize because 1) they send out more or less daily emails… and 2) they are the only people whose emails I more or less read each day.)

But here’s my point, and perhaps something that will benefit you:

I’ve spent a hundred hours or more hand-copying successful sales letters. I think this practice had some value. It forced me to slow down and actually read the damn things. But I don’t buy into the whole magic of “neural imprinting,” which is supposed to happen when you copy stuff by hand.

Instead, I’ve found plagiarizing to be much more useful.

Plagiarizing does double duty. It first forces me to look at copy critically, and ask, “What is this guy really doing here?”

For example, for the Jason Leister email, I came up with the following skeleton underlying the flesh of his writing:

* where I was before
* how that benefited others, why that was, all the wrong places I was looking
* realization of what will happen if I continue this same way
* what I do now
* what that does NOT mean
* bring it around to you
* analogy to reinforce
* diagnostic question you can ask yourself
* exposing all the reasons and assumptions that kept me where I was
* bigger consequences, or bigger context of this single issue
* inspirational takeaway if you do, and uninspirational takeaway if you don’t

I find this is much more effective than hand copying ads for learning. It seems to sink into my memory better, and it impacts how I write copy weeks and months later.

But that’s only half the exercise.

Because once you “chunk up,” you then have to “chunk down.” You actually write a new piece of copy with the same skeleton.

And that’s what I mean by double duty. Not only does this exercise help me learn… but it also produces a serviceable piece of copy. Often, it produces something better than what I would have written on my own.

With plagiarizing, I’m earning while I’m learning. Which is why, if you’re looking to get better at copywriting, I recommend shameless plagiarism to you too.

You can plagiarize my stuff if you want. Here’s the optin for my daily email newsletter.

Don’t bring a knife to a proof fight

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Continuing on yesterday’s discussion about proof, there is the following sad fact:

If you are a copywriter trying to prove your case, you might be forced to squeeze juice out of a dry and withered lemon.

Most often, that consists of stacking up a few weak testimonials, and maybe including an unremarkable mechanism.

Don’t get me wrong. This kind of proof, dry and withered though it may be, is still better than nothing.

But in a way, it’s like that scene in The Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indy comes into a crowded marketplace, only to be faced with a black-robed giant who’s wielding a scimitar.

The black-robed giant laughs and does some fancy sword waving.

And then Indy pulls out a gun and shoots him.

Lesson being, don’t bring your testimonial knife to a proof fight. Somebody out there will shoot you.

But if testimonials are the scimitar equivalent of proof, then what is the equivalent of a gun?

Well, just take a look at all the direct response giants.

Guthy-Renker…

Agora…

Golden Hippo.

All these billion-dollar companies don’t use just endorsements or testimonials to prove the worth of their products. Instead, their entire offers are built around gurus with a following, credibility, and authority.

People like Tony Robbins… or James Altucher… or Steven Gundry (okay, maybe not a terrible amount of credibility there).

Point being:

You might not be able to get a famous and successful person to be the face and heart of your new product. But with a bit of thinking, you can find ways to bake the proof into your product, rather than sprinkling it on as a dry and withered afterthought.

On an entirely unrelated topic:

I have an email newsletter. It’s all about persuasion insights and strategies. Want proof that it’s worth reading? Tony Robbins is my editor. If you want to sign up and see what Tony and I have to say, here’s where to go.

Shutting the drawer on the Rule of One

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“One good idea, clearly and convincingly presented, was better than a dozen so-so ideas strung together. That rule made a difference. When we obeyed it, our essays were stronger. When we ignored it, they were not as powerful as they could have been.”
– Michael Masterson

I first read about the Rule of One in Michael Masterson and John Forde’s Great Leads. You get a feel for the rule in the quote above. In a nutshell:

Focus on one idea, one emotion, one problem — not a dozen.

I read Great Leads early in my copywriting education, and the Rule of One sank deep into the fresh soil of my newbie brain. I’ve been following this rule ever since. And here you are, reading what I write.

Only one problem though.

Even though Michael Masterson says his favorite essays and stories all follow the Rule of One, I can’t say the same. In fact, I can think of lots of great content that looks and reads like a grocery list:

– James Altucher’s post “11 or 12 Things I Learned About Life While Daytrading Millions of Dollars”

– Dan Ferrari’s email “35 direct response lessons from 35 years on Earth”

– The Every Frame a Painting video “Akira Kurosawa – Composing Movement” (which covers five ways that Kurosawa used movement in his shots)

But you might say, those are all examples of content, not sales copy. All right then, here’s a relevant quote from Gary Bencivenga about sales copy:

“I know this sounds like heresy, but I’d much rather have in a good direct mail package three or four or 10 good reasons to buy, than to have to sacrifice nine of them in favor of the one USP. The USP really can be misapplied to direct marketing where you have the luxury of closing the sale on the spot and can give one dominant reason to buy but also seven or eight other reasons. You don’t have to abide so religiously to a single Unique Selling Proposition.”

Maybe I’m simply misapplying the Rule of One, or maybe I don’t understand what it really says. And I do think there is value in focused writing.

But for me personally, I am moving the Rule of One from the “rule” drawer and into the “tool” drawer. Focusing on just one idea can be useful in a given situation… but it’s not something to obey blindly. Perhaps you’ll consider whether this makes sense for you too.

Anyways, if you’re interested in reading James Altucher’s post above or watching that Every Frame a Painting episode, both are easy to track down on the Internet.

Not so with the Dan Ferrari email. Dan doesn’t archive his emails anywhere. So if you want to get them when he sends them out, you’ll have to be on his list.

And even then, you might have to wait a while, because Dan emails very rarely. (I guess he’s too busy counting all the zeroes on his royalty checks.) But when he does send something out, it tends to be great, like the “35 lessons” email above. So if you want to sign up to Dan’s list so you don’t miss his next (sporadic) email, here’s where to go:

http://www.ferrarimedia.com/