Maxwell Maltz

Protests and anxiety relief

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Starting two weeks ago, I’ve been living in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, don’t know anyone, and really have no good reason to be.

And with my typical lack of planning or foresight, I managed to arrive at a time when there are anti-government protests going on day and night. I can hear them outside my window right now — horns, drums, whistles, cowbells, and a large mass of people chanting, “Resign!” in the local language.

I don’t mean to make it sound bad because it’s not. Mostly I’m having a great time here.

​​But, with the uncertainty and the language barrier and the constant cowbells, there are many moments when I get anxious. Out of nowhere, my brain will serve up scenarios of trouble, danger, and pain that could happen to me, all alone and unprotected in this great big world.

When those moments pop up, and they pop up often, I go back to a passage I read in Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-Cybernetics:

“You do not have to answer the telephone. You do not have to obey. You can, if you choose, totally ignore the telephone bell.”

Maltz is using the telephone as a metaphor (metonym?) for anxiety-causing events and thoughts. If you too get anxious thoughts now and soon after, maybe this metaphor will help you. Plus I’d like to add two things to what Maltz wrote.

First, you don’t have to feel guilty because the phone started to ring.

​​In other words, just because bad thoughts popped up in your head, this doesn’t make it more likely you will in fact experience trouble, danger, and pain. You can be plenty successful in life, even with a constantly ringing phone line.

Second, this is not some Deepak Chopra-ish claim that you can always be happy and healthy if you just set your mind to it.

​​If the phone rings while you’re napping, you will wake up. There’s no sense in pretending that you’re still asleep. But you can go to another room where the ringing isn’t as loud… or you can even put on some Brian Eno ambient music, to drown out the ringing until the damn thing shuts up.

Speaking of incessant rattling:

I write a daily email newsletter. Mostly it’s about marketing and copywriting, with occasional detours into self-help, like today. If you’d like to get this thing ringing in your inbox each day, click here to subscribe.

An inconvenient truth and goals

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In a slap to avocado-munching environmentalists worldwide, a new study published in Nature reports an inconvenient truth:

Organic farming is worse for the environment.

Yes, organic practices reduce climate pollution caused directly by farming.

But they also reduce crop yields.

Which means more land has to be used to feed all the hungry mouths out there… which means more forests have to be cleared… which releases more carbon into the atmosphere… which is bad, bad news for those cliff-climbing walruses in the Arctic.

So will Greta Thunberg and her ilk finally start lobbying for heavier pesticide use?

Will they up their ingestion of GMOs to fight climate change?

Just my guess… but I think it’s unlikely.

I’m sure Greta will find a way to save the world, and all the people in it…

While still being strict and saintly about the food she puts into her own body.

In other words, she will continue to move toward her goal, while still staying true to her basic principles.

If that’s what she does, then good on ‘er.

I mean, I’m personally very callous about climate change. And I prefer my food as inorganic as can be. So it’s not like I’m personally invested in the outcome of resolving climate change while keeping our veggies and fruits “crunchy.”

I just feel that the basic recipe — keep moving forward, adjust when you realize you’re slightly off course — is the core of success in any field.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. Maxwell Maltz, who wrote the super influential self-help tome Psycho-Cybernetics, preached something similar:

“Your brain and nervous system constitute a goal-striving mechanism that operates automatically to achieve a certain goal, very much as a self-aiming torpedo or missile seeks out its target and steers its way to it. […] The torpedo accomplishes its goal by going forward, making errors, and continually correcting them. By a series of zigzags, it literally ‘gropes’ its way to the goal.”

Conclusion?

1. Have a clearly defined goal
2. Grope towards it
3. Allow your brain to correct course as needed

Simple? ​​Yes.
​
​But also your best bet for eventually getting to where you want to go — even if that goal is uncertain, complex, and has never been achieved before.

“America’s best copywriter” offers a 2-part formula for sucking readers in

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I’m re-reading Maxwell Maltz’s self-help classic Psycho-Cybernetics, which opens with the following sentence:

“During the past decade a revolution has been quietly going on in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine.”

Now if you ask me, this is a great opening line.

In case you’re interested, I’ll tell you why — and how you can use this to suck your own readers into your copy.

To get started, let’s look at a couple of alternative opening sentences old Max coulda used. For starters, here’s one:

“During the past decade a revolution has been quietly going on.”

This opening line isn’t bad.

It sounds mysterious. And sometimes, that’s enough to suck readers in.

But it might not be enough, because this opening line is also very vague.

Anybody who reads this might rightly say, “So what? There are too many revolutions out there to worry about right now.”

That’s why this opening line gets a B-.

Now let’s look at a second possible opening line:

“During the past decade researchers in psychology, psychiatry, and medicine have come to an important conclusion.”

Boy that’s a dull duck.

While the content is pretty much same as in Maxwell Maltz’s original, there’s no intrigue.

There’s no excitement.

There’s just the cold feeling that reading on will be work and not fun.

That’s why this second opening line gets a C-.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

Because the B- and C- aren’t grades in the traditional sense. I’ll let Gary Bencivenga, who has been called “America’s best copywriter” and “The Michelangelo of direct mail copywriting,” explain it in his own words:

“In pondering this, I realized a great truth about headlines: your level of interest is directly proportional to the presence of two factors: benefit and curiosity. Either one without the other is a devastating weakening. I = B + C. Interest equals Benefit plus Curiosity.“

And there you have it.

The first alternate opening line was missing a benefit (B-).

The second was missing curiosity (C-).

The original Maxwell Maltz opening line wasn’t missing anything. It had both benefit (don’t tell me you have zero health or mental issues) and curiosity (a quiet revolution?). That’s what made it so good.

The good news is, you now know a formula that let’s you do the same: I = B + C. This works whether you’re writing a headline, a subject line, or some other crucial piece of copy, like an opening sentence.

Or a call to action. Speaking of which:

I’m putting together a book on email marketing for the health space where I will share what I’ve learned writing for some big clients. And I’ll also share examples of some of the most successful emails I’ve written — including a 5-part email sequence that tripled sales in a funnel for RealDose Nutrition, an 8-figure supplement company.

If you want to get your paws on this book when it comes out (and get it for free), here’s where to sign up:

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

Why you should personally care about Michael Dell’s net worth

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I’ve been reading a bit about Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computers.

Dell was quite a precocious kid.

For example, in a bid to get into business early, he applied to take the high school equivalency exam at age 8.

In his teens, he invested his earnings from part-time jobs in stocks and precious metals.

He then started a business selling upgrade kits for personal computers. In May 1984, he incorporated this business as “Dell Computer Corporation.”

In July of that same year, the company’s first financial statement showed a profit of $200,000. Dell used this statement to convince his parents it was ok for him to drop out of college. He was 19 at the time.

Over the years, Dell kept growing Dell Computers, getting it to the position of the largest manufacturer of PC’s in the world.

He also started MSD Capital (MSD being his initials), an investment firm to manage his own wealth.

As of today, after taking Dell (the company) private and then public again, Michael Dell’s net worth is estimated at $27 billion, $17 billion of which comes from his stake in Dell Computers and the rest from his other investments.

All of which raises the question, what have you been doing with your life?

After all, Michael Dell was just a kid from Houston, born to a solidly middle-class family. And look at what he’s done.

Seriously though, I hope all this talk of the hyper-competent Michael Dell has managed to depress you a bit.

After all, I wanted to illustrate an important point. It’s something I read in Maxwell Maltz’s self-help tome Psycho-Cybernetics. Says Dr. Maltz:

“An inferiority complex can be made to order. All you need to do is set up a norm or average, then convince your subject he does not measure up.”

And you know, once you’ve got somebody feeling inferior, you can then sell them your product as a cure for that lousy feeling they have.

You might think this is a terribly cynical way of doing marketing.

You might also decide it’s not for you.

And that’s a perfectly legit stance. On the other hand, you could take the attitude of Brian Kurtz, former VP at the direct marketing behemoth Boardroom. It’s something Brian calls “congruent marketing”:

“Think about how valuable the product or service you are selling is to your audience and how much you believe that getting it into as many hands as possible is a game changer for them… and that you have almost a moral responsibility on your part to get it to them.”

In this view, it can be ok to disturb, shock, or hype up people with your marketing, as long as what you’re selling is worth it to them. Speaking of which:

If you need help growing your business through some seemingly interesting, emotionally disturbing copy, you might find some good ideas inside of my upcoming book on email marketing. The book isn’t out yet — but if you sign up, you can get a free copy when I do finish it. Here’s where to do that:

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