Jim Rutz

It’s not throat clearing, it’s persuasion magic

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Back in 2017, I signed up to Ben Settle’s $97/month Email Players newsletter. ​Only years later did I think to ask myself the $6,953 question:

​What did it?

​​What put me into that hypnotic trance and got me to finally pull out my credit card and pay Ben, after I’d read hundreds of previous Ben Settle emails, without taking action?

After spending an hour digging through my email archives, I found it.

​​It turned out to be an email in which Ben talked about a Dan Kennedy idea, using a bunch of Dan Kennedy examples and Dan Kennedy arguments.

Because that email ended up sucking me into Ben’s world and getting me to hand over an estimated $6,953 to Ben, I’ve studied it in detail. I’ve found many interesting things inside. Let me tell you about just one of them.

​​In spite of being a rehash of Dan Kennedy content, Ben’s email starts out like this:

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Recently, I made a special trip to my office to retrieve all my Dan Kennedy NO BS Marketing newsletters.

The first issue I ever got was the September 2002 issue (front page has a picture of a dwarf stuck in a airplane toilet…) I’d just started learning copywriting a handful of months earlier. And, I remember the “back page” of that particular issue having a profound effect on my mindset at the time — and has through all these years, as it’s kept me healthily paranoid and uncomfortable no matter how good things get.

I just re-read it, and everything he said was true then, and is even more true now.

What was that back page about, exactly?

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To the uninformed (as I was for many years), this opening might look like a classic example of throat clearing — of the rambling first two reels of “Lost Horizon” that should simply be burned.​​”Get to the action already!”

Of course, Ben isn’t simply rambling on or clearing his throat. He is performing a bit of persuasion magic. Specifically, he is setting the frame.

I won’t spell out what frame Ben is setting. I think it’s obvious enough.

I will just point out this setting the frame stuff applies equally to daily email as to any other communication you might be performing.

For example, here’s a frame, albeit a different frame from the one Ben was setting, in a sales bullet by A-list copywriter Jim Rutz:

* Incredible but legal: How you can easily pay Mom’s medical bills with her money and deduct them from your taxes. (page 77)

Once again, I believe the frame is obvious. But if you want a spelled-out explanation of that particular frame, you can find it in point 6 of round 20A of my Copy Riddles.

As I said yesterday, Copy Riddles might look to the uninitiated like it’s only about writing sales bullets.

But with a bit of thinking — or without it, and simply with a bit of practice — Copy Riddles is really an education in effective communication. ​​
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In case effective communicating is what yer after, you can find out more about Copy Riddles at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

A man, a woman, a gun, and some crickets

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Picture the scene:

It’s dark.

Crickets are chirping.

A beautiful school teacher is moving quickly around her empty and isolated prairie house.

She’s undressing after a long day.

She gets down to her white chemise. She turns around from her closet to her bed and— SHRIEK!

She sees there’s a man sitting there in the dark, hands crossed on his chest.

“Keep going teacher lady,” he says with a hint of menace in his voice.

The school teacher stands there, breathing heavily, her hand at her chest, with a look on her face that says, NEVER.

The man slowly reaches over, picks up a gun, and points it at the school teacher.

“Don’t mind me,” he says coldly. “Keep on going.”

The woman looks down at her chemise in shame. She starts to untie the top. Now her face seems to be begging the man to let her stop.

But the man is obviously enjoying the show. He looks the woman up and down while still keeping the gun pointed at her.

The woman continues to undress. She’s now down to just her britches. She holds her chemise against her body to keep some dignity.

The man takes a deep breath.

“Let down your hair,” he says.

She does. The chemise drops to the ground and she’s just left in her one-piece underwear.

“Shake your head,” the man says.

She does. Her hair falls across her face.

The man doesn’t say anything more. Instead, he just gestures with the gun. He wants the woman to do away with the remaining underwear also.

She hesitates. There’s a mixture of fury and resolve on her face. Eventually, with decided movements, she starts to untie and unbutton her underwear.

She stands there, almost naked, with the underwear barely on her shoulders, ready to slip off.

The crickets keep chirping.

The man lowers his gun. Slowly, he takes off his gun belt. He stands up and walks to the woman.

He reaches inside her untied underwear.

The woman can barely control her fury.

“You know what I wish?” she says with her teeth clenched.

“What?”

“That once you’d get here on time!” And she puts her arms around the man and they kiss.

As you might know, that’s a scene from the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

It’s the first time we see the character played by Katharine Ross, the school teacher who was Sundance’s lover and who accompanied Butch and Sundance all the way down to Bolivia.

I’m using this scene to express an idea by Mark Ford, which is itself an expression of a much older idea:

“Ideas in and of themselves have little value. The value lies in the way they are expressed. New ideas are never new. Nor are they the product of a single mind. Rather, they are the particular articulation of general ideas that are in the common marketplace of ideas, repeated endlessly until one particular articulation catches fire. Remember this when you have a new idea that you are excited about. If you want to have it accepted, you must be willing to express it in dozens of different ways.”

A man and a woman in love. Not new.

A man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. Not new.

An apparent rape, which turns out to be a man and a woman in love, meeting after a long absence and hungrily reaching for each other. That’s something you win an Oscar for, which is what happened to screenwriter William Goldman after he wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Whatever. Maybe you see where I’m going with this. And maybe you don’t. If you don’t, then I guess I’ve done my job, and that job ain’t easy. As A-list copywriter Jim Rutz said once:

“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy. This takes time and toil.”

Do you see where I’m going now? I want to make sure that you do, so let me spell it out:

I write a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. If you’d like to be surprised on occasion, and maybe get exposed to some valuable ideas as well, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

“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

New startling sensations and illusions eclipsing anything ever attempted in the world of copywriting

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Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and behold the mighty A-list copywriters!

See how they persuade with the written word!

Marvel at their subtle tricks in these three bullets by Daring David Deutsch… Powerful Parris Lampropoulos… and Jesting Jim Rutz! Behold, ladies and gentlemen, behold:

* Cure your back pain. Inside on page 3. [David Deutsch]

* Study finds this herb works for three-quarters of men who take it. Page 16 [Parris Lampropoulos]

* Aging parents? A nursing home might be OK. [Jim Rutz]

Yes, boys and girls, friends and enemies! These A-list copywriters know secrets and mysteries that you do not! And now, for the low, low admission price of…

All right, that’s enough. Let me stop the circus barker act. And let me tell you the story behind the three deformed and monstrous bullets above.

The story is that yesterday I got a question from a feller named Nathan. Nathan signed up for my upcoming Influential Emails training. And he’s confused about how to plan out a welcome sequence.

How many emails to spend on telling the brand story? How many about benefits? When to handle objections? What order should the emails go in?

It’s a question I also used to ponder, many Octobers ago. But it’s not something I ponder any more, or that I’ll talk about inside Influential Emails. Because here’s what I told Nathan, and it might be valuable to you too:

Most people will not read all your emails. And even if they do read them all, they won’t remember them.

Does that sting? Bear with me for a second.

When we as copywriters or marketers put together a sequence of emails, we can trick ourselves into thinking it’s a sales letter. After all, that’s how it looks in a Google Doc, if you put one of your emails after another.

But that’s not how it looks to your prospects.

Your prospects might give one of your emails a thorough reading… skim a second one… skip a third. And all this separated by a day or more… and in between dealing with two dozen other emails in their inbox… plus all the other stuff that’s sucked away their attention in the meantime.

I’ve previously compared emails to sales bullets. The analogy applies here as well.

Because when you assume your prospects have followed your sequence faithfully… or that they will keep following it faithfully… your emails become armless and legless, like those hideous bullets above.

But free yourself of this wicked assumption, and behold the magic and the wonder that emerges. Each of your emails is forced to become fascinating and convincing, like these real, unamputed, A-list bullets:

* How a pickpocket can cure your back pain. Inside on page 3. [David Deutsch]

* What to take for an enlarged prostate if you’re not getting results from saw palmetto or pygeum. Study finds this herb works for three-quarters of men who take it. Page 16 [Parris Lampropoulos]

* Aging parents? A nursing home might be OK, but see four better options on page 89. [Jim Rutz]

But perhaps you’d like to know how to make each of your emails fascinating and convincing — the equivalent of the A-list bullets above. In that case, hold on a second. Let me put on my top hat and cape. And let me clamber back onto my soapbox.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, all my many mysteries and email secrets will be revealed. So step right up, and prepare to be shocked and amazed by my Influential Emails, the marvel of the copywriting world. Low, low admission price — a special offer, good only till this Sunday. Show’s inside, folks, right this way, the door to the tent is here:

https://influentialemails.com​​

A-list Copywriting Commandment no. 8, in D-minor

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“She was shocked because she was expecting us to play another concerto. So when I started the first bar of the D-minor concerto, she kind of jumped and panicked like an electric shock. And she couldn’t even consider moving ahead with playing.”

If you would like to see what real despair looks like, go on YouTube and search for “Maria Joao Pires wrong concerto.”

Pires is a concert pianist. She went on stage once, in front of a large live audience.

As soon as the orchestra started playing, Pires realized she had prepared the wrong piece. The orchestra was playing something other than what she had been rehearsing.

Result?

Panic. Sickness. Despair. I mean, imagine the situation.

You’re in front of a live audience.

The orchestra is mercilessly pushing on.

A few moments more, and it will be your turn to start playing as the star of the evening. Except you are completely unprepared and unable to perform.

And the time before everybody realizes it is three… two… one…

I’m not 100% sure why I decided to tell you this particular story. But in my mind, it tied into a question I got a few days ago from a reader named Randy:

How long did it take you to start writing daily emails like Ben Settle suggests and to always have something interesting to say?

(I’m asking you this since I’ve been trying my hand at writing daily emails. But even when I always come up with stories to tell, I find it difficult is to always have a lesson to add at the end)

My advice to Randy, and to you in case you want it, is to keep two lists.

One is where good ideas go.

Another is where fun/sickening stories go.

And rather than having a good story (“concert pianist realizes she prepared the wrong piece”), and then trying to pull out of your head a moral to that story…

… or rather than having a good idea to share (such as “keep two lists”) and then trying to pull out of your head a fun way to illustrate that idea…

… use your lists.

Because not everybody has a memory like Maria Joao Pires. In those 30 seconds from the icy and disgusting realization that she had prepared the entirely wrong piece… Pires managed to summon the right concerto from the depths of her mind. She played the whole thing flawlessly.

I am not that talented. And perhaps you aren’t either. No matter.

You can use paper — or a computer file — to outsource your memory. And your creativity too. Go down your lists, and come up with connections that you couldn’t make if’n you just relied on your raw brainpower.

“But two lists!” I hear you saying. “That’s twice the work of one list!”

True. And it goes back to something A-list copywriter Jim Rutz said:

“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy. This takes time and toil.”

This simple idea has been super valuable to me. It’s one of the main standards I keep for these emails I send you each day. And also for copy that I write for clients.

In fact, I would like to say this one idea is the most important thing to what I do… but there’s no “one thing.” So I put this Jim Rutz idea as no. 8 in my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

If by chance you haven’t seen this book yet… and you want to know what the other 9 commandments are… here’s where you can get the whole desperate and surprising lot:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Taking your reader on a rewarding flight to nowhere

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This July, two Taiwanese airlines, Eva Air and StarLux, started offering flights to nowhere.

This means you could schlep to the airport, have the discomfort of going through security, waiting to board, cramming yourself onto the plane with a bunch of other junkies… only to have the airplane take off, circle around for a couple hours, and land in the exact same damn spot from whence you took off.

The point is that people are so starved for novelty, excitement, and newness that they are willing to pay to be uncomfortable and to pretend to travel somewhere.

Fact is, novelty and uncertainty are one of a few fundamental human needs. And most of us aren’t getting our fill.

Which is why, sadly enough, your sales copy can outperform others, if only it takes your reader on a tiny journey, all while he doesn’t even move from his La-Z Boy. Or as A-list copywriter Jim Rutz put it:

“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy.”

But perhaps you are wondering about the mechanics of taking your reader on an rewarding flight to nowhere… or exactly what Jim means by surprising the reader at every turn.

If that’s the case, here’s a surprise for you:

I’ve written about this in detail in Commandment VII of my new book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. If you’d like to find out more about this book, or even get a copy for yourself, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Wiley Jews and subverted cliches

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In 1982, Hollywood movie studios apparently froze in fear. None of their old formulas were working and big budget movies turned into flops.

In fact, the only runaway hit for the first half of the year was a small outside production, which managed to reap $136 million on a budget of just $4 million. It was called Porky’s.

I’d never even heard of Porky’s until a few weeks ago. I decided to watch it today.

It turns out to be a teen sex comedy set in Florida in the 1950s. It hasn’t aged brilliantly.

It’s quaint with its boyish pranks (one boy’s “tallywacker” stuck through a hole in wall of the girls’ locker room shower) and its unabashed objectification of the multitasking gender (a hot female PE teacher, played by a young Kim Catrall, is nicknamed “Lassie” because of her coital howling).

But ok. Product of the times, right?

What seems out of place even for 1982 is the subplot involving one Brian Schwartz. Brian is Jewish. In the 1950s Dixie high school, he sticks out like a lobster on a sand beach.

Spoiler alert: Brian rises above and works his way inside the gang. That’s impressive, considering he drives a Richie Rich Jaguar while all the other boys drive pickup trucks.

But Brian wins their approval by 1) speaking calmly and intelligently to get the other boys out of trouble with the police and by 2) coming up with a devious, multi-stage plan to replace the boys’ dumb plan for the climax of the movie.

Way to explode those stereotypes about Jews. You can’t blame Brian, though. He’s just using his God-given intellectual talents. What you can do is blame the screenwriters for resorting to the cliche of the natural-born Jewish schemer.

And that’s where today’s Porky’s email ties into copywriting:

One easy, almost mechanical way to surprise your readers involves cliches. Of course, not salting your copy with even more cliches. But also not avoiding cliches, either.

Instead, what you can do is subvert a cliche. You can do it at the level of your concepts (Gary Bencivenga: “Get Rich Slowly”). You can do it at the level of an individual sentence (Ben Settle: “Take my advice with a grain of chili pepper”).

However you do it, your reader will think he knows where you’re taking him… but Brian Schwartz doesn’t grow up to become a well-paid Hollywood lawyer.

Sure, you can get sometimes away with a cliche. Porky’s proves that, as do many sales letters and emails. But there’s value in unpredictability. As A-list copywriter Jim Rutz wrote:

“The #1 sin in ad mail is being boring, and over half of it richly deserves its quick death by wastebasket. What is ‘always boring?’ The predictable. You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy.”

“I don’t want a mail-order bride… I want it to be easy!”

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How hard do you think it would be to get a mail-order bride?

What if you were rich? Incredibly successful? Clever? Funny? Do you think that would help?

What if you were a master of persuasion to boot? What if you could write an ad selling yourself… using your masterful persuasion skills? Do you think you could get a nice Russian woman to fly over and marry you and your millions, sight unseen?

It might seem like a layup. But it isn’t.

A-list copywriter Jim Rutz, who was one of the most successful copywriters of all time, tried it. Apparently Rutz was a virgin until age 40. So he sought out mail-order love with an ad he wrote himself:

“Damsel Wanted (Distress Optional)”

But it didn’t work out. Rutz never did get married. Which makes me think of those ads for a “copywriting ninja superstar,” which are looking for somebody “who can sell ice to an Eskimo.”

Well, here was Rutz. Rich. Successful. And just about as good at written persuasion as anybody ever.

And yet. Single.

Which brings me to a passage from the Gary Halbert letter. Gary, another master of persuasion, was writing on the topic of “challenges.” It’s what I’ll leave you with today, because it’s stuck with me for years:

American business owners need another “challenge” about as much as Warren Beatty needs help getting dates. What we need are “set-ups,” lay-down hands, deals that can’t hardly miss even if everything goes wrong. (As it always does.)

I wanna sell heroin to junkies. Fudge bars that make you skinny to porkers. Porno videos to Pee Wee Herman. Travel luggage to President Bush. Memory pills to Ronald Reagan. Kitty Kelley dart boards to Nancy Reagan. Condoms to Geraldo Rivera. (Did you read his new book? Whew!) Booze to Ted Kennedy. I.Q. pills to Dan Quayle, etc… etc… etc.

Are you getting the idea? I don’t want (and certainly don’t need) another “challenge.” No… I WANT IT TO BE EASY!”

If you’re still reading, maybe you’re an addict for direct response and copywriting knowledge.

In that, I’ve got an offer that might be a layup:

Sign up for my daily email newsletter where I share more content like this.

Don’t be a dumb bunny — get this copywriting knowledge now

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Getting to the top of any field these days takes an almost obscene amount of dedication.

Take for example A-list copywriter Jim Rutz.

At one point, Rutz was one of the most in-demand copywriters in the world.

In the early days, he was so good he worked on royalties only — he was confident he could beat any control, so higher royalties made more sense than charging fees.

Later, the line of clients who wanted Rutz stretched out the door and down the hill. So Rutz also added up-front fees to his royalties. At one point, these up-front fees reached $100,000 for a single promotion.

But like I said, it took an unholy amount of dedication for Rutz to become this dominant.

Apparently, he didn’t have much of a social life or sex life. His clever attempts at finding a mail-order bride fell through.

His home life was unusual too. When Boardroom VP Brian Kurtz visited Rutz’s home, he found stacks of direct response promotions lying around. Rutz used these promotions as furniture. It seems his whole life was largely about direct response.

I definitely don’t have this level of dedication. Perhaps you don’t either. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can learn from Jim Rutz nonetheless.

For example, I always remember this Jim Rutz commandment:

“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy. This takes time and toil.”

Sure, you wanna surprise the reader at the outset. Have a paradoxical headline. Or a bizarre subject line. Makes sense.

But what about at every turn of the copy?

​​Well, let me give you an example of that. Here’s a quick paragraph from a sidebar in a Jim Rutz magalog. ​​If you want to get better at surprising your readers, read this, once, twice, and maybe even print it out to form the beginning of your new nightstand:

“The ultimate nightmare: Being trapped in extreme pain, day after day. GREAT NEWS: Some doctors have learned in the past ten years how to block almost any degree of pain. But you have to know what kind of treatment to ask for… or how to get a physician who specializes in pain management… or where to find an accredited pain management facility. It’s all on page 127. Don’t be a dumb bunny and wait until you get hit by a cement truck. Get this knowledge now.”

Speaking of knowledge:

I have a daily email newsletter. There isn’t always copywriting knowledge inside. But sometimes there is. You can subscribe here.

The Catch-22 of Jim Rutz

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“Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.”
Joseph Heller, Catch-22

I first read Catch-22 when I was 18.

I thought it was immensely funny. Not because it was filled with jokes (it’s not). But because each time I thought I had a grip on where the book was going, it slipped away from me and swam somewhere else.

And that’s very relevant for copywriting, too. As Jim Rutz, one of the most successful copywriters of all times, once wrote:

“You must surprise the reader at the outset and at every turn of the copy. This takes time and toil.”

I bet you know exactly how to surprise the reader.

And you know where to apply the time and toil that Rutz is talking about.

Because I just gave you a good clue, in  the quote above from Catch-22.

In case you don’t see the answer yet, read over the quote and it should become less and less obvious.

In the meantime, if you need surprisingly effective advertorial copy, the following might help you get a start:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/