Michael Scott

A chance to be afraid of how much you love Copy Riddles

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“Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy. Both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.”
— Michael Scott, Dunder Mifflin Paper Company

Today, I am officially re-opening enrollment for my Copy Riddles program.

This only happens a few times a year. And whenever it happens, I get people coming and asking me a version of the following question:

“Is Copy Riddles about how to write bullets specifically, or copy in general?”

Oh ye who don’t read the sales page. (Though I can’t really blame you. I rarely read the sales page either. And I think there’s a valuable industry prediction to be made about that… something I will talk about tomorrow.)

But to get back to the question whether Copy Riddles is about copy OR bullets. In Michael Scott’s words:

“Simple. Both.”

In a few more words:

Copy Riddles is about implanting copywriting fundamentals into your head. Stuff you can’t do without if you write sales copy… like promises and proof and intrigue… and then some of those dirty and hidden copywriting tricks you may have heard whispered about between insiders.

So that’s the outcome that Copy Riddles focuses on getting you. And the mechanism to get you there… that’s A-list bullets. Because to mangle another Michael Scott quote:

“Copywriting courses are the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about copywriting and sell it. So you know you are getting the best possible information.”

That’s not what I wanted to do with Copy Riddles. That’s why I went with a unique mechanism.

So each day, for 8 weeks, you get a few paragraphs of text… you write a few bullets based on that text… and then you compare your bullets to the bullets of A-list copywriters, selling that same text. Do it regularly… and you’ll soon be afraid of how much you love the learning that’s happening inside your head.

Anyways, that’s my intro for Copy Riddles. I’ll talk more about it over the coming week (except Thursday, something different on Thursday).

If by chance you are already convinced you want in on Copy Riddles… or if you want to (cough) read the sales page, you can do that at the link below.

Otherwise, I’ll sneak in more subtle pitches for Copy Riddles over the coming days, all the way until Sunday. (Enrollment closes Sunday at 12am PST, and the program kicks off on Monday.)

So fear it or love it… here’s the link:

https://copyriddles.com/

Cross-dressing for negotiation success

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“No, I wear men’s suits. I got this out of a bin.”
— Michael Scott, Dunder Mifflin Inc.

Here’s an inadvertent but brilliant negotiation lesson from the TV show The Office:

Michael Scott, the regional manager, is about to have a salary negotiation with one of his employees, Darryl. Michael is dreading the negotiation, and he’s preparing with some awful negotiation tactics he got from Wikipedia. But when the actual negotiation starts, it all falls apart quickly.

Darryl states his demands.

Michael lamely tries to refuse, and then:

Darryl notices that Michael is wearing “lady clothes.”

Could it really be that Michael is dressed in a Hillary-like women’s pant suit?

Let’s see.

The buttons are on the wrong side.

There are no pockets on the pants.

And the label inside the jacket reveals it’s made by the MISSterious label.

The thing is, though unintentional, this is straight out of the book of expert negotiation coach Jim Camp.

One of Camp’s tenets was:

In a negotiation, only one person can feel unokay, and that person is you.

In other words, contrary to conventional wisdom, you don’t want to dominate or lord over the other person when you negotiate. Not if you want a negotiation outcome that sticks. Instead, you want to make the other person feel okay — with themselves, and with the interaction.

One way to do this is to be unokay yourself.

For example, by accidentally dropping your papers all over the floor.

Or forgetting your briefcase at home and asking for a pen and paper.

Or, as Michael did, by inadvertently dressing in a women’s pant suit.

Does it work?

Camp used to swear by it. And by the end of the The Office episode, Michael winds up getting a raise for both himself and Darryl. As he says, “win-win-win.”

Personally, I haven’t tried these unokay gambits myself. But the underlying message — make the other person feel okay — is something I regularly use when talking to potential Upwork clients, and it’s served me well.

If you want to know more about my Upwork strategy, including how I got to be a top-rated sales copywriter on the site and how I get paid $150/hr, then sign up below. I’m currently putting together a book about my Upwork experience,  and if you sign up, I’ll let you know when the book is out. Here’s the link:

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