True story:
I once knew a girl who was in the last year of law school. She had just broken up with her boyfriend, who owned some kind of online business.
The guy wasn’t willing to accept the breakup. So he called the girl and texted her, asking that they meet again so he could plead his case.
The girl said no.
The guy kept texting and asking for them to meet.
The girl politely but firmly still said no.
Finally, the guy, clever and successful businessman that he was, wrote her a message saying how he understood she is a poor law student, and that since we are all self-interested creatures, he would be willing to pay her a nice and fair hourly rate, fit for a full-fledged lawyer, if she would only meet with him for a coffee and a chat.
At this point, the girl stopped responding to the guy.
But she did tell me this story. And she laughed as she told it, as if to say “What was I doing with him?” She rolled her eyes at how warped his brain had become, and how he thought he could buy her.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Travis Sago lately. And Travis likes to say that money is tertiary.
As in, yes, money is important to most of us. But in the grand scheme of what we all want, two categories of needs are even more important.
And in fact, there are situations where money is even at odds with those two other categories. In those situations, offering money completely spoils the appeal.
Perhaps you heard how last week, after the CrowdStrike IT snafu interrupted life-saving surgeries… disrupted millions of people’s trips… and caused panic and days of extra work for businesses around the world, CrowdStrike went into damage-control mode.
They sent an email to key partners to apologize. And in addition, to show how truly bad they feel about the whole thing, they also included a $10 Uber Eats voucher.
“Your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!” CrowdStrike wrote.
Unsurprisingly, backlash and mockery followed all over Internet.
There’s no doubt in my mind that no backlash or mockery would have happened had CrowdStrike simply sent an apologetic email and left it at that.
So keep that in mind.
Money is tertiary.
As for what’s secondary and primary, if you think a bit about your own motivations in life, with respect to work in particular, I’m sure you will be able to figure that out.
But if you want to see how top copywriters make appeals to those primary and secondary needs, you can find that round 19 of my Copy Riddles program, which is titled:
“A sexy technique for writing bullets that leave other copywriters green with envy”
For more information on Copy Riddles: