You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar

I’m not OK — you’re not OK

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Here’s a story I’ve been told but don’t remember:

When I was little, maybe around 2 or 3, I was in the dining room with my grandfather, who I loved better than life itself.

I started dragging a large chair around the dining room.

My grandfather told me to stop, I guess because the dragging was making noise and because the chair could topple and flatten 3-year-old Bejako.

But I didn’t stop. I kept dragging the chair around.

My grandfather again told me to stop.

I still didn’t.

So my grandfather gave me a light swat on the hand, not enough to hurt me, but enough to get my attention.

It worked. I let go of the chair. I started wailing instead. And in my childish fear and confusion, I turned to the only natural place of comfort, and that was back to my grandfather. I ran to him and hugged him and wailed away. My grandfather said later he felt so guilty that he wished for his hand, the one he had swatted me with, to dry up and fall off.

I’m reading a book now called, I’m OK — You’re OK. I’m reading it because:

I’ve learned the most about email marketing and copywriting from Ben Settle…

Ben frequently recommends a book called Start With No, by negotiation coach Jim Camp, which I’ve read a half dozen times…

Start With No is largely a rehash of ideas in a book called You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar, by sales trainer Dave Sandler, which I read for the first time earlier this year…

Sandler’s book and sales system are a mix of classic sales techniques, his own personal experimentation, and ideas coming from transactional analysis, specifically as described in the book I’m OK — You’re OK, by psychiatrist Thomas Harris.

(There’s value in working backwards like that.)

Here’s a passage in I’m OK — You’re OK that stuck out to me:

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The predominant by-product of the frustrating, civilizing process is negative feelings. On the basis of these feelings the little person early concludes, “I’m not OK.” We call this comprehensive self-estimate the NOT OK, or the NOT OK Child. This permanent recording is the residue of having been a child. Any child. Even the child of kind, loving, well-meaning parents. It is the situation of childhood and not the intention of the parents which produces the problem.

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Like I said, this stuck out to me. Because some people had happy, stable childhoods. But even those people have a reservoir of childhood memories that make them feel not OK today. And maybe those people wonder what the hell is wrong with them. Says Harris, nothing. That’s life.

On the other hand, other people had genuinely troubled or traumatizing childhoods. They might suspect their childhood left them somehow uniquely warped and deformed, and the fact they feel not OK today proves it. But that logic is wrong, says Harris, because again, we are all not OK.

“I’m not OK — You’re not OK” is not a very inspiring message. Fortunately, the above passage is not how the book ends. In fact it only comes in chapter two. After all, the book is titled I’m OK — You’re OK.

If you’d like to know how to get out of the impulsive, frustrating, and maybe painful web of childhood memories and patterns, at least according to Thomas Harris, you can check out I’m OK — You’re OK below, and maybe learn a thing or two about sales and negotiation and copywriting in the process:

​https://bejakovic.com/ok​

Jim Camp, A-list copywriter

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Right now I’m reading a book titled You Can’t Teach a Kid To Ride a Bike at a Seminar.

The book was written by David Sandler, a 20th-century sales trainer.

I wrote an email about Sandler last year because of his connection to famed negotiation coach Jim Camp. That email ran with the subject line, “Jim Camp, plagiarist.”

Camp must have studied under Sandler, because the ideas inside “You Can’t Teach a Kid” and Camp’s book “Start With No” are as close to identical as two brown, “L”-sized, farm-fresh eggs. (For reference, Sandler died in 1995, Camp published Start With No in 2002.)

If you ask me, Camp did three things right.

First, he took Sandler’s system out of the world of sales — water filters, life insurance, and whirring hard drives — and he applied it, word-for-word, to the world of billion-dollar negotiation in corporate boardrooms.

In other words, Camp took Sandler’s valuable but provincial knowledge and brought it to a bigger, more prestigious arena, not encumbered by the slumdog baggage that’s attached to the word “sales.”

Second, Camp co-opted what Sandler taught and made it his own. He turned the Sandler Sales System into the Camp Negotiation System, without ever mentioning or crediting Sandler except once, in the middle of a list of 20 other mentors, in an appendix to his “Start With No” book.

You might think this is despicable, and in a way it is, but it’s also a necessary part of the positioning of the guru at the top of the mountain.

And then there’s a third thing that Camp did right.

It’s completely in the presentation, the messaging of his book and of his Camp Negotiation System.

You can see this messaging change in the title Start With No. It’s also present on almost every page of the book.

This messaging change is what built up the mystery of Jim Camp, and it’s why Camp’s book has sold so well and spread so far, and why so many sales folks and marketers and copywriters know Camp today, and why so few know Sandler.

Now ask yourself:

If you knew what change Camp made, and if you could apply it to turn your message from unknown to bestselling, from slumdog salesman to mysterious and yet celebrated negotiation guru…

… what could that be worth to you?

I don’t know. But you do know, and maybe the truth is it would be worth a lot — thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more.

I’m asking you this question because you can find this messaging change, the technique that Camp used to make himself and his system fascinating, in my Copy Riddles program.

It’s there in round 15.

If you own Copy Riddles and it’s not 100% clear to you how Camp applied the technique in that round to his messaging, write me and I will clarify it.

And if you don’t own Copy Riddles, you can find out more about it at the link below.

I can tell you upfront, at $997, Copy Riddles is an expensive program.

But maybe in your case will be worth much more than I’m asking for it. Here’s that link:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/