Neil Strauss

1 mosquito summer lover ~ 3-4 books

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Yesterday, I was at the gym in my home town of Zagreb, Croatia — and for a brief moment, I was amused.

The gym is the daily break in my monk-like life, where I make a bit of contact with the outside world and find out what’s going on.

And so it was yesterday. The radio was blasting. In between the parade of 80s hits — Duran Duran, Guns N’ Roses — a newswoman came on the radio with the following announcement:

“NEWSFLASH: The city of Zagreb will be importing 100,000 mosquitos this summer. From Italy. All males. And all sterile.”

Apparently this is the best idea the local authorities have to control the rampant mosquito population in this crowded, marshy city.

And it’s not such a crazy idea:

The males mate several times throughout the season. The females mate only once. If a female happens to mate with a sterile male, she will still lay her evil mosquito eggs, but those won’t develop into buzzing, bloodsucking, sleep-destroying future monsters. Checkmate, mosquito bitches.

I remember a similar story some twenty years ago, after Neil Strauss published his book The Game.

The Game brought the secret world of pick up artists out of dark and sticky Internet bulletin boards and exposed it to the light of the mainstream.

I remember the outrage that many women expressed upon finding out that there’s a population of men who are gaming the signals of social status and sexual attractiveness.

And who can blame these women?

If you invest in something, and invest big, you want to make sure that investment will be fertile.

That applies to mates, human and mosquito… to business partners… to clients… to employers… to employees… and to teachers your learn from.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

I personally believe books are the best teachers in the world. Unfortunately, as James Altucher once calculated, we each have at most 1,000 books left to us for the rest of our lives.

Some of us, like me, read very slowly, and our number is significantly less than 1,000. That translates to 3-4 books each summer.

So you better make sure that each of those 3-4 interactions counts, and each of those learning opportunities is fertile, rather than sterile.

Which brings me to my Insights & More Book Club. The doors are currently open. They will close tomorrow at 12 midnight PST.

The promise of the Insights & More Book Club is top-quality books, filled with surprising ideas. As for all the other details, well, you will have to sign up to my daily email newsletter to find those out. You can do so here.

How to overcome being nervous, with Neil Strauss AKA Style

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I once listened to an unusual Mixergy interview.

Andrew Warner, the guy who runs Mixergy, typically interviews successful entrepreneurs for his show.

This time however, his guest was Neil Strauss.

AKA Style.

AKA the guy who wrote The Game, the book that exposed the underground pick up community and made it a mainstream phenomenon.

The strange thing was that Andrew, who had probably interviewed hundreds of people up to then, was nervous during this interview with Neil.

Neil, who is a very experienced interviewer himself on top of being a high-performing pick up artist, had this advice for Andrew:

“If you’re ever feeling nervous, call it out.”

Neil was saying that, in business as well as socially, you always want to beat someone to their objection.

If you raise the objection before it occurs to your adversary, then the objection loses its force.

This relates to what I was talking about yesterday. It was about Joe Karbo’s price argument in his famous ad “The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches.” Joe wrote something like:

“I’m going to ask you to send me 10 dollars for something that’ll cost me no more than 50 cents. And I’ll try to make it so irresistible that you’d be a darned fool not to do it. After all, why should you care if I make $9.50 profit if I can show you how to make a lot more?”

That first bit, about the 50 cents, serves multiple purposes.

One of them is to raise a possible objection.

Try to imagine the ad without it:

You tell the prospect how you’ll ask him to send you $10, and that he’ll be a darned fool not to do it, because this information is worth way more than $10.

Maybe the guy will buy it. But maybe he’ll also say,

“Sounds good, but why $10 exactly? And how much are you making off this? It sounds fishy.”

So that first sentence, about the 50 cents, makes a small but significant difference — it diffuses the objection before it arises in the prospect’s mind.

And this isn’t the only reason to use this argument.

It’s not even the main reason, in my opinion.

I’ll talk about why tomorrow.

For now, if you want more copywriting advice, you might like my upcoming book. It deals with email marketing for the health space, including writing the actual copy. You can find out more about it here:

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