Tom Cruise

“If you got an area of excellence… then rich can be arranged”

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The Color of Money is green and it’s also the title of an 1986 Martin Scorsese film about pool hustlers. The movie contains a valuable truth about business, so let me quickly spell it out.

The Color of Money has two main characters:

An old pool shark, named Fast Eddie Felson, played by Paul Newman, and…

A young pool shark, named Vincent Lauria, played by a 24-year-old Tom Cruise.

In the beginning of the movie, Fast Eddie tries to recruit Vincent and so he says:

“If you got an area of excellence… if you’re the best at something, anything… then rich can be arranged.”

Vincent knows he’s the best at pool. He likes the idea of being rich. So he agrees to team up with Eddie.

It’s only later, once the two are already on the road, driving around in Eddie’s big white Cadillac and cleaning out dirty poolhalls around the Midwest, that Eddie tells Vincent the whole truth and nothing but the truth:

“Pool excellence is not about excellent pool. It’s about becoming something.”

Becoming what exactly?

Well, a businessman. In pool, it means being a flake… tanking on occasion… hustling the other guy and sometimes even the audience.

Maybe your business is not pool. And maybe you really dislike the idea of tanking on purpose or hustling anybody.

Fine.

So just take this as a reminder that excellence in whatever you do is about working on your business as well as in it.

And also:

If your business happens to be freelance copywriting, then take this as a reminder that my copy Zone Offer is now in the oven and is baking at 475°F.

I want to make sure the final result — all about the business of copywriting, as opposed to the craft — is fully baked before I put it on the table. More info on that soon — sign up here if you want to get notified.

How to handle an outrageous offer by shouting obscenities

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Imagine you’re a big-shot Hollywood producer.

You’ve got a film being made in the jungles of Myanmar, starring one of your biggest assets — action star Tugg Speedman. Then suddenly, you get a call:

Tugg has been kidnapped. His kidnappers, the heroin-producing Flaming Dragon gang — are demanding $50,000,000 in ransom.

So how do you respond?

Now you might recognize this plot from the movie Tropic Thunder. The big-shot Hollywood producer is called Les Grossman, and he’s played by Tom Cruise — in one of his best roles.

I bring this scene up to get you to imagine how you would personally handle an outrageous offer that starts off with a gargantuan sum like $50 million.

While you think about that, here’s what you should NOT do — at least according to Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman:

You shouldn’t respond with an equally outrageous low offer.

The reason for this is the concept of anchoring.

That first ridiculous number ($50 million in the Tropic Thunder case) has already influenced your psychology on a subconscious level.

Even if you counter with a ridiculously low offer — “We will give you $1,000 and not a penny more!” — chances are you will wind up paying way more than you would otherwise. That’s because the pull of the anchor is so strong, whether you’re consciously aware of it or not.

So what you can you do to rid yourself of the effect of the outrageous anchor?

Well, Kahneman thinks you should make a scene — scream and shout to make it clear to both yourself and the other person that any negotiation with this starting point is unacceptable.

And that’s exactly what master negotiator Les Grossman does in Tropic Thunder. After listening to the demands of Flaming Dragon, he takes a breath and calmly responds:

“Okay Flaming Dragon, fuckface. First, take a big step back… and literally fuck your own face! I don’t know what kind of pan-Pacific bullshit power play you’re trying to pull here, but Asia, Jack, is my territory. So whatever you’re thinking, you’d better think again! Otherwise I’m gonna have to head down there and I will rain down an ungodly fucking firestorm upon you! You’re gonna have to call the fucking United Nations and get a fucking binding resolution to keep me from fucking destroying you. I am talking scorched-earth, motherfucker! I will massacre you! I will fuck you up!”

And that’s how to inoculate yourself against ridiculous anchors.

Of course, not everybody knows this.

And if you’re selling in many markets, it makes sense to use anchors in your own marketing to justify your prices or to increase sales.

But enough obscenities for today.

In case you need help with sales emails, you might like my upcoming book. It contains bits of wisdom I’ve gained by writing for some very successful health clients. If you’d like to find out more or sign up for a free copy when it comes out, here’s where to go:

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

The secret online fountain of the truth

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“You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about in parties, you WANT me to be overweight, you NEED me to be overweight.”

Sometimes you gotta probe a little.

For example, I heard Ben Settle mention on his podcast, and maybe in a recent Email Players issue, how you get to the bottom of your market’s worst fears.

You first ask them (for example), “Why would you want to lose weight?”

“Because I don’t like the way I look and it’s unhealthy.”

“I see. Any other reasons?”

And then they think. And think. And if you’re lucky, the real story comes out:

“To tell you the truth, I was in a store yesterday and as soon as I came in, this snotty-looking sales girl intercepted me at the door and she said, ‘We don’t have anything in your size.’ I just got so humiliated and furious I decided something had to change.” (True story, by the way.)

You see, it’s that second, follow-up question which really gets the deep, dark, painful reasons why people do what they do.

It’s like the climax in A Few Good Men.

Tom Cruise’s character keeps probing and probing, asking just one more question…

Until he gets Colonel Jessup, played by Jack Nicholson, to expose himself and yell out the famous line:

“YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!”

Well, as a copywriter and a marketer, the issue is not that I can’t handle the truth.

Rather, the trouble is that I often can’t get at it.

After all, I rarely have my prospects before me.

I don’t have Colonel Jessup sitting in a courtroom either, waiting for my interrogation.

Instead, I have to go online and do some sleuthing to try to uncover THE TRUTH rather than those surface-level answers everybody is programmed to give.

The trouble is, all the typical places that you will hear recommended — Facebook, Instagram, personal blogs — are full of social posturing, and they don’t actually show people’s dark and scaly underbellies.

However, I do have a reliable way of getting that information.

In fact, just as an exercise, I tried to come up with THE TRUTH for a typical person interested in essential oils.

Within a few minutes, I had an avatar.

Yes, I found out what this person looks like, what her hobbies are, what her favorite TV show is…

But I also found out what rare disease she has, her personality type, and her insecurities around her friends .

This is NOT stuff that you will ever find on Facebook.

But it is out there, right on on the Internet savannah — if you know where to look. And though it might seem creepy, it’s a necessary part of the research you have to do if you are going to target an audience effectively.

Anyways, if you want to know what this deep fountain of personal information is, you’re in luck.

I’ll talk about it in more detail in my upcoming book.

Sign up below and I’ll send you a free copy when I’m finished with it:

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