The Sting

How to keep your readers from feeling cheap, cheated, or used

by

I got an email yesterday from Parker Worth, whose online profile describes him as “just a guy with a neck tattoo.”

Maybe Parker’s a bit more — he’s got an online audience of over 70,000 people spread across X and LinkedIn and his email list, and he’s built a nice business on the back of it, teaching people how to write online.

Parker is apparently reading my new 10 Commandments book. He wrote in to say:

===

Loving the book so far man.

Super refreshing especially in the age of AI Amazon garbage.

Will give it a solid review once finished

===

On the note of AI garbage, a telling story:

While doing research for this book, I was looking for articles that discuss the use of misdirection in the movie The Sting, which I reference a few times in the book.

Not only did The Sting win the 1973 Oscar for best original screenplay (and Hollywood screenwriters are one of the disciplines I profile in my book) but the movie is a realistic depiction of how con men used to play the “big con” (and con men another group I profile in the book).

So while looking for something on the use of misdirection in The Sting, I found a 2,000-word blog post, published in mid 2024, that discussed exactly this topic in depth.

At first, the blog post seemed highly relevant to what I was looking for and had me nodding along.

Gradually a few small tells started to show — odd discrepancies with character names and plot twists from the actual movie, which I’ve seen a bunch of times and know well.

Finally, as the blog post recapped the climax of the movie as it never happened, I realized this was completely made up AI garbage, which had nothing new or unique or even true to say about what I was interested in. Realization made, I cursed at my laptop for a few minutes and made particular note of this blog to make sure I never come back there and waste my time again.

Point being:

You can fool some of Bejako some of the time, but you can’t fool all of him all the time.

I’m not sure what my point is beyond that except to say, these days, it’s more important than ever to give people something that feels real.

This is not new with AI. It started long before, with the ability to automate your communication (via things like email autoresponders), and even before that, with mass media that allowed one person to speak to thousands at the same time.

None of us wants to feel cheap, cheated, or used.

That’s why I spent so long doing research for my tiny new book, reading dozens of other books, watching hours and hours of obscure videos on YouTube, digging through 100-year-old newspapers, and thinking up how to integrate my own real-world experiences from my past and present careers of writing sales copy, picking up girls on the street, and selling myself to prospective clients on sales calls.

I discarded ten times the material that I finally deemed was actually good enough to include in the published version.

That’s ok. I believe all this research and prep are a major reason why I’ve heard from so many people, like Parker above, who tell me that they love the book. If you would like to see if you might love it as well:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Can you identify this persuasion strategy?

by

Yesterday afternoon, in a breakdown of all discipline and order, I decided to skip the gym, eat whatever sweets I could find around the house, and instead of working, download a movie to watch.

After all, Daniel Throssell was sending out emails to sell my Copy Riddles course. Money was coming in without me doing anything. So why not take a rare day off to loaf about?

The movie I downloaded was one of my favorites — The Sting.

​​I’d seen it 3-4 times already. But yesterday, I saw something new in it, something I want to share with you because it’s very relevant to persuasion and influence.

What I want to tell you requires a spoiler.

​​So if you’ve never seen The Sting before, it might be worth stopping this email right now, and coming back to it only when you’ve watched the movie yourself.

It’s worth it.

Not only does The Sting have Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the lead roles… not only did it win an Oscar for best film and best director… but it also has a sparkling script (which also won an Oscar) by a guy named David Ward, who was well-read in the techniques of conmen, and who also seems to have had an intuitive understanding of human psychology.

Are you still reading? Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Here goes:

The relevant scene is when Johnny Hooker, a lonely conman on the run played by Robert Redford, tries to pick up Loretta, a gruff waitress at the local diner.

Hooker has already talked to Loretta before. He knows she is as alone as he is, and that she’s only passing through town, another tramp like him.

He’s tried asking her out before. She shot him down cold. But Hooker gives it one more try.

He knows where Loretta lives. And one night, at 2am, when Loretta finishes her shift at the diner and goes home and turns on the light in her room, Hooker takes a deep breath, walks up to her building, climbs up the stairs to her door, and knocks.

Loretta cracks open the door. The following dialogue follows:

HOOKER: I was wondering if you might wanna come out for a while, have a drink or something.

LORETTA [indignant]: You move right along, don’t you?

HOOKER: Hey I don’t mean nothin’ by it. I just don’t know many regular girls is all.

LORETTA [still angry]: You expect me to come out, just like that…

HOOKER: If I expected something, I wouldn’t still be standing here in the hall.

LORETTA: I don’t even know you!

HOOKER: You know me. I’m just like you. It’s two in the morning and I don’t know nobody.

Loretta pauses at this. She gives Hooker a sad smile. She opens the door a bit wider, and moves aside to let him in.

So that’s the scene. Now here’s the spoiler:

Loretta is not actually a waitress at a diner. She’s actually a top level hitman, or hitwoman, working for a mob boss that Hooker fleeced by accident. She’s been hired to take Hooker out. She’s playacting her indignation, just trying to reel Hooker in so she can kill him.

In many ways, this is the essence of a confidence game. And sure enough, the pattern above repeats in different situations in the movie, with different characters, as they try to influence and con each other.

Now, since Daniel’s Copy Riddles promo is over, I have to get back to work. And I do have something to sell today. But it’s not something I want to sell to just anyone.

​​F​​or one thing, this thing I have to sell is too valuable to make available to anyone who wants it. For another, it requires more than money to profit from.

This thing I have for sale is probably not for you. But I’ll make you a deal:

Hit reply right now. Tell me the name of the persuasion pattern or strategy that the scene above illustrates. If you don’t know the name for it, then tell me in a sentence what you think is going on, on the level of persuasion.

​​I’ll give you a hint:

This pattern is also used regularly by pick up artists, salesmen, even by legendary copywriters.

So write in and tell me what you think it is.

If you get it right, it will tell me you might have it. In other words, you might actually profit from this thing I have for sale, so I’ll tell you more about that.

And if you don’t get it right, well, at least I’ll tell you what’s really going on throughout The Sting, and how it works in the real, non-con world as well. And maybe you can profit from that in some way.

How to get going when you don’t know what to write

by

The first part of the Big Con happens on a train. I’m talking about the movie The Sting, where Paul Newman plays Henry Gondorff, an expert con man, who’s looking to fleece a mob boss named Lonnegan. (Lonnegan killed off one of Henry’s old pals.)

So Henry is now on a train, where Lonnegan regularly runs a poker game. Lonnegan cheats. But Henry cheats better.

Of course, there’s a lot of detailed info necessary to out-cheat a cheat. That’s ok. Henry has got a whole team of tricksters and confidence artists on his payroll. One of them, a guy named J.J. Singleton, comes to give Henry the lowdown right before he goes in to join the poker game:

SINGLETON: “He usually plays with a Royal or a Cadenza. [handing him two sealed decks] I got you one of each. He likes to cold deck low, 8’s or 9’s.”

“That’s nice work, J.J.”

Armed with this info, Henry goes into the poker game.  He slaps some gin on his face, acts the fool, and cleans up the table. Lonnegan is furious — and hooked for the rest of the Big Con.

Several times, I’ve written sales emails that started out just like this post. In other words, they referenced a movie, and then tied it into what I was promoting.

Once, this was the X-Men — I talked about Professor X’s ability to read minds, and said how this would help guys who want to please their women better (this was for a “rekindle your romance” course). Another time, I started off talking about the Shawshank Redemption, and then tied this into an ebook on treatments for chronic kidney disease.

The thing is, in both those emails, I was stuck at first. I knew the movie tied into what I wanted to say, but I didn’t know how to make the link. I made several false starts that were weak or rambled on for too long. The answer in both cases was to pick a specific scene, and lead off with that. And that’s the marketing lesson I want to crystalize in this post:

When it’s hard to figure out what to write, the answer is almost always to look for more info. Sometimes, that means going out and doing more research. Other times, it simply means focusing more on the details that are already at my disposal — like picking a specific scene from a movie.