Ben Settle

An author of books about taxes bites at my ankle:

“Makes me feel better for stopping your newsletter.  You wrote a really nasty letter saying I couldn’t ever come back.  This email shows what you are really made of.”

He was replying to an email from a few months ago about my “After School Special” offer.

And, specifically, the email was about how to turn a cranky feminist into a ride-or-die wife.

Anyway, I had to look his records up to see what he was even referring to.

And the “nasty” email that upset him so?

It was an automated message he got a full year earlier (guy literally hung out on my list seething for year – a trooper) that people who unsubscribe used to get back when I used 1shoppingcart.

This email said:

You will not be billed again and you will not be allowed to re-subscribe again later, at any time, for any reason.

If you do not understand why your subscription was canceled it is most likely because you had subscribed in the past and returning to Email Players after leaving not allowed. In that case, your subscription has been voided already, and nothing will be sent.

Ooh.

So nasty!

Imagine taking tax advice from a guy who got so rankled by that.

His fragility made for a strong advertising lesson, at least.

Because it reminded me of a clip of Bill O’Reilly talking to comedian David Spade:

O’REILLY: “Every day, Donald Trump wakes up from his two hours of sleep, okay? And his first thought is, ‘How can I torture my enemies?’ So he says stuff just to get The View ladies upset-just to get Whoopi Goldberg agitated.”

DAVID SPADE: “It works! Hahahahaha.”

O’REILLY: “He didn’t like Trudeau. Trudeau is a little nebbish to him.” “So he goes, ‘How can I annoy Trudeau? I’m taking it over!’ And boom.”

Something to ponder for your own business.

This is the psychology, in large part, behind what I teach in my paid Email Players newsletter when the subject comes up.

More about that here:

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Ben Settle

A reply guy struggles with 8th grade level reading:

Bro, how’d you become so popular? 

Your writing is as confusing as my grandma’s speech. She’s 93 by the way. 

I don’t know if it’s self-amazement or what you’ve got going, but you really need to read your writings a few hundred times before your press the send button.

Thanks. And looking forward to seeing writings I actually subscribed you for.

I don’t know what reply guy was “actually” subscribed for.

But the email he replied to was about how to make writing easy. And according to the Flesch-Kincaid readability calculator, the email he replied to is:

“Reading Level: 8th & 9th grade ( Plain English )”

These reply guys ain’t exactly getting any brighter.

And it’s like I wrote about last month:

I’ve been teaching email writing, copywriting, and other kinds of writing, content creation, and persuasive communication for nearly 25-years. This month is, in fact, the 15-year anniversary of my prestigious Email Players print newsletter, where I write a lot about ways to sell, persuade, and influence with writing.

And during that time I’ve amassed well over 1,000 testimonials.

But admittedly, even I cannot help illiterate reply guys.

All right, enough about these scholars in residence on my list.

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Ben Settle

One of my Email Players subscribers asked a timely email writing question:

Many years ago, a famous fitness pro said, “You should be embarrassed by the workout programs you wrote six months ago.” The reason: it means you are constantly improving your craft. I’ve tried to take a similar mentality with writing emails and it seems like yours are constantly evolving as well. 

I bring this up because not too long ago you shared you are “more interested in quality than volume” with your emails. How have your standards for your emails risen? And do you have a process for improving/reflecting on your past emails?

My answer is you just got to

(1) genuinely love your work, and…

(2) be obsessed with wanting to Serve your customers.

If either is missing, email is a slog and a chore, just hard, frustrating, and full of uncertainty.

But if you got both going for you then email is mostly easy, fun, and something you want to do – where improvement happens almost automatically.

In my case, the older I get, the more I just enjoy the process.

I just take my time and focus on reader’s Experience.

Everything else you see about this is just distraction.

That is my humble, but accurate, opinion.

That probably disappoints those who think complicated = smart.

But more times than not, life works the exact opposite.

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Ben Settle

Below is my latest Oregon Eagle newspaper article.

The Oregon Eagle is a local paper I have ownership in, that was founded by Email Players subscriber Richard Emmons. The ridiculously profitable email marketing “advice” in this article may or may not be read by its intended recipient.

But that doesn’t mean your business can’t benefit from it:

“Benevolently Abusive” Trick Lets Drazan Get All The New Voters She Wants

This “trick” lets businesses get all the new customers/clients they want, too.

Here’s how:

I once consulted a customer (who sells high-priced Method Acting “bootcamps”) about email marketing. And at the time he usually got zero sales in December, no matter how aggressively he marketed or how good his ads were.

That is until I taught him a “benevolently abusive” (I don’t know how else to put it) marketing trick I invented.

The first time I spoke with him (beginning of that December) … and in about 20 seconds… I gave him this secret “formula” for using simple, plain text emails I’d been using to see big sales spikes.

The result?

$100,000 in sales that December when he usually made $0 and the next month he made $230,000 – including $19,000 in one day.

What was this secret I taught him to get all the new students he wanted? That I also believe Christine Drazan can also use to get all the new voters she wants? And that I further believe business owners can use to get all the new customers & clients they want?

The answer:

1. Send two emails per day to your email list.

2. Send the first email in the morning.

3. Send the second email 12-hours later at bedtime.

4. That first email is inspirational and makes readers feel good and optimistic. In Drazan’s case, a real-life story about legislation she championed that dramatically changed someone’s life. Something that shows what’s possible if she’s elected.

5. The second email is a real life (ideally in the news) story about some horrifying violent crime, illegal immigrant rape, or drug/homeless-related attack on children that plants a “Vision” inside peoples’ heads that makes them anxious, scared, and unable to sleep.

“Rinse & repeat” every day until the election.

Again, this can be “adapted” to businesses. Find what inspires and horrifies your customers and send two emails per day: the morning email feels good, and the evening email feels awful.

Why does this work?

Because it creates a “benevolently abusive” relationship with your list with intense highs in the morning, and intense lows in the evening. The evening email keeps people up, acid bubbling up in their esophagus’s, shaking them out of their apathy looking for a solution, and anxious to vote for it.

And when they read your “inspirational” morning email?

It’s like Ghostbusters in as much as, “Who they gonna call?”

Do it right, and the answer is YOU.

But there are two “caveats”:

First: most businesses don’t have an email list. Even if they do, they spank out boring, blatant “here’s what’s for sale!” offers that either go straight to spam or are deleted on sight.

Second: in Drazan’s case, she has an email list, but she doesn’t seem interested in mailing it. She only seems to want to spam us with texts which everyone loathes.

Not so with email.

In fact, according to a StudyFinds survey a few years back, the average person has two email addresses and is on 500 mailing lists!

Email is not only NOT dead, but people read them, and it works better than ever.

But only if you use it, and do so wisely, with techniques like the one in this article.

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Ben Settle

Came a question about writing:

Hi Ben, I’ve been an avid reader of your emails since I was 16, probably. That was years ago, and time has flown by; I’m already 19 now.

So, if you’d be willing to give me a chance to hear back from you, I’d truly appreciate it, even though it may not help you or give you anything in return. I just want to try my luck and ask for one piece of advice: how can I become a great writer like you?

I asked you specifically because, among all the email copywriters, you’re the most authentic.

Have a good day, Ben. Whether you respond or not, thank you so much.

I don’t know about “great writer” which is, really, a bit much.

Delusional, though…

Whatever the case, here’s the answer to his question:

Hike up the skirt, strap on the balls, and then shut up and write.

That’s the big “secret.”

The secret to writing is there are no secrets.

In fact, I remember many years ago when Gary Halbert admitted in an interview, towards the end of his life, that it had taken him a good 15-years to get his writing to the level everyone considered great.

And that was primarily a function of just writing.

Not meditating about writing, thinking about writing, or talking about writing.

But actually writing.

Good, bad, fugly, doesn’t matter.

You just write, and keep writing, and then write some more.

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Ben Settle

A few months ago, a daily email reader asked if I’d ever studied the Muslim scripture.

And if not, why?

And I quoted & replied to it in an email flippantly saying:

“no, I don’t have much time for fiction these days.”

That got me a bit of grumpy mail, it turns out. But it also amused quite a few people, too. One of the guys who was probably not amused by me, but was definitely amusing to me, fapGPT-prompted this reply below.

He said:

I read your response about not having time to look into Islamic scripture, and I think you’re missing something important.

You’re someone who clearly understands the power of language, persuasion, and emotional impact. But the Qur’an — regardless of belief — is one of the most linguistically influential texts in history. It didn’t just tell stories. It challenged an entire culture that prided itself on mastery of language, and it did so in a way that left even its strongest opponents struggling to respond.

This isn’t about religion. It’s about language, structure, rhythm, and impact.

Dismissing it without engaging with it — especially as someone who builds a career on understanding how words move people — feels like a blind spot.

You don’t have to agree with it.

But from a pure copywriting and persuasion standpoint, it’s hard to argue it’s not worth at least examining.

At the very least, the question isn’t whether you believe it.

The question is: Can you afford to ignore a text that moved — and still moves — hundreds of millions of people, at scale, across centuries?

Why, yes, I can afford to ignore it.

But the irony of the above reply about learning how to write that was so obviously sharted out written by generative so-called AI is glorious unto itself.

There are many lessons packed between the lines in this.

Some obvious and some maybe not-so-obvious.

But the one I want to leave you with is specifically for if you are finding yourself discouraged by, or even succumbing to, the gaslighting from generative so-called AI companies and their tech bro moonies in the geek chorus shilling it all over hell and gone.

And that lesson is this:

If you write using your own brain, your own personality, your own flaws, and your own experiences… you really have no “competition.”

Least of all from these guys running around saying you’re going to be left behind.

And that, as they say, is all she wrote.

Okay, enough fun for the soul.

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Ben Settle

Many years ago, I watched some interviews with the writers of the smash hit TV show from the 70’s:

“All In The Family”

Specifically, they were talking about the main character Archie Bunker.

None of them agreed with Archie’s politics, nor did the actor who played him, Carroll O’Connor. Normal Lear, the producer, certainly didn’t agree with him. And we all know the late Rob Reiner didn’t. Archie was, from what I can tell, created to be someone you did NOT like, agree with, or root for.

Not unlike Alan Moore’s character in “Watchmen” Rorschach.

Alan, to this day, has contempt for his own fans for liking that character.

He created that character to be hated only for his fans to love and identify with him.

But back to Archie:

The writers and the actor made Archie so relatable, so lovable, and so watched by the entire country… he took on a real life persona of his own. And the audience all grew a very real relationship with Archie and his family each week, making it one of the “most watched” TV shows of all time.

What’s ironic though is how they were always trying to “foil” Archie.

They tried making him the bad guy, and a buffoon, and a jerk.

But all they really did was make millions of viewers – right or left – root for him more. In fact, from what I understand, the show ultimately created more Republicans than Democrats and the rise of Ronald Reagan.

As for writing the character?

The writers all admitted Archie wrote himself.

They rarely struggled with or wondered what Archie was going to say or how he was going to react after the first season or two.

On a side note:

I used to sneak out of my room and watch that show late at night, when I was in middle school. It was on back-to-back from 10:30 to 11:30 pm and I never missed an episode. Decades later after Willis was a newborn, I hummed the show’s theme song to him to sooth him. He also “heard” it in the womb when Stefania and I watched the show while she was pregnant.

Today Willis still makes me hum the show’s theme song before bed.

Anyway, it’s a fascinating lesson about the power of storytelling unto itself.

But clicking back over to the show:

If you ever saw it, Archie is so fleshed out it’s like you “know” him.

You may not know what he’s going to say.

But you’re probably not surprised by whatever it is he does say, because he was just so well-crafted & written. I doubt the writers exaggerated at all about how his lines wrote themselves. Because he was so in embedded in their own minds, in their own subconscious, and, I’d argue, also in America’s subconscious.

I don’t know what this phenomenon is called officially.

So I just call it:

“The Archie Bunker Effect”

And that’s when you’re so “in tune” with the character you’re writing that those characters take a life of their own. They do and say things on their own. They also make decisions – often bad and even ridiculously stupid decision, like most humans – on their own.

It’s almost like you’re just there witnessing it, and you just happen to be writing it down.

I’ve experienced this phenomenon several times in my own writing.

And it’s quite surreal, to say the least.

In fiction, it took me 8 novels to finally get to that point where my characters wrote themselves, with me as spectator, just as interested to see what they’d say or do as any other reader.

And in copywriting, it was even more intense.

I still have old clients “living” in my psyche to this day.

Not so much because I got into their heads, but they got into mine.

Some of them even became characters in my novels later on.

My Fezziwig character, in my Enoch Wars series, is absolutely heavily influenced by a crotchety, salty, old grizzled guy whose product I sold, and I still can’t get him out of my head.

And I can tell you, it made all the difference in my sales.

Just like Archie (the show was “about” him not the family) did in its ratings.

There is a lot of money to be found in using the Archie Bunker Effect.

I’ve used it to sell in all kinds of markets – from business related offers, to consumer niches like female weight loss (where I became like a “cross dressing copywriter” so to speak, writing AS a woman), self defense, golf, etc.

And I know of very few writers who understand it, much less can teach it.

Especially in the realms of copywriting and direct response marketing.

All right that’s that for now.

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Ben Settle

A reply guy chimes in:

I know you’re prolly not gonna answer this

But why is it so hard and confusing to read your emails?

This one admittedly got me curious.

And so I ran the email he replied that day to the free Flesch Kinkaid reading grade calculator online. This lets you get an idea of how hard or easy, confusing or clear, difficult to read or straightforward what you write is.

I thought maybe he had a point?

And here’s what it said:

“Reading Level: 7th grade ( Fairly easy to read )

I’ve been teaching email writing, copywriting, and other kinds of writing, content creation, and persuasive communication for nearly 25-years.

In fact, next month is the 15-year anniversary of my prestigious Email Players newsletter which I launched in August 2011.

During that time I’ve amassed well over 1,000 testimonials.

But admittedly, even I cannot help someone who’s illiterate.

They got to go back.

And so it goes ’round here.

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www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

One of my customers asked recently about how to “balance” getting lots of work done, and achieve goals, in a short period of time when it seems like everyone in his life is trying to hold him back and sabotage him like wolves at the door constantly.

Specifically, he wanted to know if I had any “tricks” for dealing with it.

My answer to him is to read Nehemiah chapter 4.

Sinner or saint, the lesson is valuable, practical, and applicable to this:

Nehemiah and his boys were trying to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls after the Babylonian captivity, and were getting a lot of a hostility from the yokels. Both bureaucratic hostility and outright violent hostility. And so to get work done while fending off waves of wolves surrounding them, they’d basically work with one hand and hold a sword or spear with another.

In other words, they were constantly working on the main goal.

(i.e. building)

But, they were ready to repel all invaders, at any time, if necessary.

(i.e., fighting)

So holding a hammer with one hand, and a sword with the other.

That’s how you got to grow anything, including a business.

The SECOND you make a goal you will start getting resistance.

It’s as reliable and immutable a “law” as the sun coming up each day.

That resistance can be bureaucratic, like receiving a bull shyte regulatory letter demanding money you don’t have and time to dig up records you long ago lost. It can be emotional, like a spouse who isn’t psychologically comfortable with success trying to sabotage you (which Gary Halbert talked about in his infamous Personal Ad, and is well worth reading). It could just be friends, families, and/or old habits peeking at you from around the corner, tempting you to do non-productive and/or even self-destructive things. The whole “put crabs in a bucket, and if one tries climbing out the others pull him back in” is just as prevalent amongst humans..

The more you want to make things happen the more resistance you’ll get.

It’s just how it goes so you might as well get used to it.

And, I would argue, get comfortable with it.

If any of this was as easy as the lambo goo-roo prancing around social media like an idiot says it is, then everyone’d be doing it.

So that’s that for today.

If you want more “inner game” stuff like this see my free mobile app.

There’s some 30-40 hours of content inside.

And you can access it here:

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Ben Settle