Ben Settle

Since it’s Christmas time… here’s the gift of an option for thinking differently about email:

Last month while on a long walk, I got an idea for a sale for one of our courses we sell at Low Stress Trading. It’s a course I have obscenely profited from as have many of its customers. i.e. I have a passion for it, and believe in it, use it myself, and sincerely want more of our students to have and use it.

And on this walk, in my head, I mapped out 5 emails.

This was not planned, and there was no plan to even sell it any time soon.

i.e., completely impromptu.

When I got home, I plopped myself on the couch with my laptop, thought up an irresistible deal for this course based on what our audience wants, and then knocked those 5 text emails (no images, pictures, graphics) out right in front of Stefania and Low Stress Trading COO Nicole English (who was visiting us) – no doubt with a big goofy smile on my face, since I enjoyed writing them so much.

I probably spent only 20 minutes or so on those emails, if that.

But let’s just round it up to 30 minutes to make it all more “realistic.”

Then, I sent those emails to my business partner at Low Stress Trading (who created the course I was selling) Troy Broussard, to make sure the info in the emails was accurate, and that he’d even want to sell it at all. Again, there was no plan to sell this course, just a brain fart I had on a walk.

Then we pre-loaded them and for 5 days (Black Friday week) we released the Kraken.

Before I tell you the results:

It’s important to note that during those 5 days Troy “fed” off my enthusiasm, and started thinking up & rapidly recording MORE content to add to that particular course, including an interview with me on how I use the info in the course. And he then even added a couple more emails he wrote to the sequence.

So we sent 7 emails total before all was said and done over those 5 days.

These emails were sent to a list of 2800 people (buyers) give or take.

A few hundred already had the offer, though, so it was probably more like 2500 leads.

Now for the results:

Just a hair under $100k in sales of a digital (pure profit) offer.

Not super-inflated goo-roo numbers by any means.

But that’s with ZERO upsells, which would have probably added many more thousands of dollars to our coffers. But we haven’t bothered with upsells yet. I explained why in the October Email Players issue this year – where I talked about how we had 600%+ growth this year alone, and are well on track for the company going to 8-figures by this time next year, in its 3rd year of existence.

But that $100k came from 7 emails – 5 of which, again, took me a whopping 30 minutes to write.

And that were sent to about 2500 leads over 5 short days.

Now, quiz time:

Were those sales a function of using an ESP with lots of “features”?

Or, was that a function of me writing “world-class” email copy?

No.

It was primarily a function of “plain vanilla” marketing 101 basics:

* Message-to-market match to a super engaged and even grateful customer base

* Having genuine enthusiasm & passion for a course that does way MORE than promised

* An irresistible offer (combo of pricing & bonuses) with a hard deadline

* Word-of-mouth in the community from prior buyers (unscripted/unsolicited – they couldn’t help talking about it)

* Some well-timed, shamelessly obnoxious TEASING by me in the Low Stress Trading community

* And, perhaps most important of all:

Us having spent 2+ years overdelivering consistent, prioritized (more prioritized than the “marketing”) customer Experience, Support, and Service – not to mention forming insanely strong relationships with our affiliates, our students, our referrals, etc… and all primarily done through…

1. Simple, TEXT-only emails – with no images, pretty design, or nonsensical “engagement devices”

2. That got delivered into the inboxes – and not in the spam, junk, or promotions tabs

3. That formed/strengthened/expanded our relationship with the people who read the emails – including those who did NOT buy, many of who will no doubt be more likely to buy in the future, since we weren’t being pushy, we respected their time, and we gave them an exciting and unforgettable buying Experience

A wise boy or ghoul will be able to extract all the many lessons embedded in the above story.

But for those who need everything in a checklist or in some AI summary?

Pfffft!

Right over their pointy lil’ heads.

But ultimately, there are two main things to realize:

First, it proves it’s not the email “copy” that matters most. Copy is force and merely a sales multiplier. The real work is done via the “leverage” of using the fundamentals above, that have been working since the first Sears Catalog was mailed out in the 1800s.

And secondly:

It also proves “features” from whatever ESP you use as a necessity for sales and/or growing a business into the 6, 7, or 8+ figures and beyond simply ain’t so. I daresay $100k in sales, born from a brain fart on a random walk, to a mere 2,500 people, with nary a single split test, not a single image used, and no pretty designs or email goo-roo tricks & chokes applied, should prove that.

All of which are a few reasons why I suspect in the coming years you’ll see a shift back to the basics I wrote about in this email.

But if not?

Good.

Just means more sales for those of us who know what we’re doing..

To learn more about this kind of approach to email see the paid Email Players newsletter:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

Over the years, I’ve learned two extremely valuable “truisms” about writing.

These truisms apply directly to fiction.

But, I would argue, any kind of content creation.

To describe the first truism, I have no choice but to tell you about the 1990 movie “Ment At Work” starring Charlie Sheen. If you’ve never seen it, here is a quote about the movie that sums it up best:

“…it was dumb enough to relax into, and just smart enough to quote to your friends. This wasn’t high art, but some of us treasured it. It was time well wasted.”

Which brings me to the truism:

Even though Men At Work has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the genre, themes, or plot (a bunch of Easter eggs aside…), that movie was one of the biggest inspirations for my Enoch Wars novels. In fact, when my novels’ publisher Greg Perry was editing Zombie Cop in 2014, I remember asking him if I should keep the “Men At Work” Easter eggs in.

“Will anyone notice or care?” I asked.

He said keep them.

The reason?

Because the handful of people who get them will treasure the stories even more.

It wasn’t until 5 years later when I learned from Vance Morris that Disney literally takes the exact same approach in their parks & restaurants – with constant stories told in art, Easter eggs hidden, symbols 90%+ of visitors will never care about but that excites the 10% who do all the more as a result.

I do this in emails and business books all the time due to this.

It makes writing more fun for me.

But it also makes the reading Experience more fun for the few who pick up on it.

As for the second – and I argue more important – truism?

It was a bit of fiction writing wisdom Greg also said to me while he was editing book 6 (Hell’s Frankenstein) in my Enoch Wars series. For context, let’s just say that particular book crosses some “lines” that, now that I have a son (I wrote it 4 years before Willis was born), I’m not sure I’d have so-flippantly written.

But even then, I asked Greg:

“That thing that _____ does to those kids…maybe I should take it out or at least tone it down…?”

He said:

“NO! Let monsters be monsters.”

And so it was..

There are many marketing/copywriting applications to this.

In fact, it’s one of the most powerful selling “techniques” I’ve ever used.

And in future emails, I’ll discuss this more.

To check out the paid Email Players newsletter in the meantime go here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

Recently I got to thinking about what I believe are 2 of the most important “health” books of our time.

One can help keep you OUT of the medical system.

And the other can help keep the medical system from killing you.

The first of these books is called “The Circadian Code.”

I wrote about this one earlier this year, in Email Players Annual #4: After School Special – which may not be the “best” writing I’ve ever done, but has certainly been the most important. It was, after all, written “as” a letter to my son Willis with readers mere voyeurs. And it laid out everything I want him to know should I up & croak before he comes of age about health, trading, money, marketing, business, fitness, how to find a “ride-or-die” wife, and a few Biblical topics, one of which probably sounds like the ravings of a religious lunatic even to actual religious lunatics.

At least, I hope it does.

Otherwise, I done failed Willis on that (the most important) part.

Anyway, it’s not for sale, but it will be some time next year.

In the meantime, as for the second book?

It is called:

“The Tyranny Of Metrics”

And it’s just what it sounds like – i.e. the dangers (temporal, moral, AND mortal) of being enslaved to “metrics!” Direct marketers online are especially susceptible to this phenomenon. Many are hopelessly & naively enslaved to metrics at the expense of giving powerful Service & Experiences – which, ironically, would result in better metrics if they did.

Something few businesses online ever catch on to.

And it shows in all the panicking going on amongst various online marketing goo-roos right now.

But the Tyranny of Metrics goes far, far beyond having a metrics-first attitude just killing businesses.

Today’s obsession with metrics-at-all-costs also kills people – literally – too.

For example:

It’d probably shock a lot of people to see the raw, indisputable data proving, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that there are times when the medical system meant to save you is instead literally paid to kill you, wants to kill you, and in some ways needs to kill you. That’s why probably the biggest irony about “The Tyranny of Metrics” is it was written pre covid, with a kind of “trust the experts” (over metrics) bent to it.

If it had been written post covid?

It’d no doubt read more like a horror movie than mere cautionary tale.

Whatever the case:

I believe if the info in the two books above had been on more peoples’ nightstands, all the lies about jabs & masks & lockdowns… not to mention all your idiot Facebook friends pounding their chests citing corporate/media/government propaganda while publicly wishing death on those of us who knew it was all bull shit… would never have happened.

The fact nobody’s been brought out in handcuffs proves how corrupt it all is.

Personally, I don’t trust any big government, big media, big education, big pharma, big tech, big publishing, big religion, big any institution. They are all gate-kept entities run by a lot of blatantly corrupt AND stupid people who took the ticket.

Corrupt and stupid is very dangerous combination, to say the least.

In a way, The Circadian Code proves this when it comes to health.

After all, nobody can “patent” the sun and what the book teaches about it that can radically improve your hormones, energy levels, weight, fitness, sleep, etc. And The Tyranny of Metrics book demonstrates it when it comes to the data, fall out, misery & deaths created by various institutions chasing metrics and funding over all.

So again, that’s why those are the two most important “health” books I recommend in 2026:

1. Circadian Code, to help keep you out of the medical system

2. Tyranny of Metrics, to help keep the medical system from killing you

On a somewhat related note…

If you want your business to make enough to help you opt-out of the medical system all the normies have to use, either way, the paid Email Players newsletter might just help you be able to do that.

More on that here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

A few months ago a customer left saying:

“I’m just heading in a different direction now…focusing more on content creation and design than copywriting.”

Which, really, made little sense.

And the reason it made little sense is, I don’t just teach copywriting.

Far from it, in fact.

Frankly, if all I did was teach copywriting I would be bored out of MY own mind.

But… in a way he was not necessarily wrong, either:

Because everything I teach is still technically copywriting.

For example, I recently sent an autographed copy of one of my novels to the great Dan Kennedy along with a framed piece of original artwork from the first Email Players Comicbook I published a few years ago. And in the note I partly blamed his copywriting training I have learned so much from over the years for how even that novel is written in “copywriting” style.

In other words:

Fast-paced, no fluffy prose, written from a paranoia to not bore anyone… as each page is intended to “sell” the reader on reading the next page, each book is intended to “sell” the reader on reading the next book, which then is intended to “sell” the reader on wanting to read any future fiction, or non-fiction maybe, I write, too, etc.

i.e. it’s all copywriting, baby.

Everything in life is when you learn this stuff.

For example:

* That traffic ticket you try to talk your way out of is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That piece of “value” content you shot on your phone and put up on social media is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That text you write to get your girlfriend to agree to do something is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That social media post telling all your followers about your latest political take you think is hot but that everyone already agrees with is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That response to a stupid health take on Twitter is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That pure “content” eBook/course/video/podcast you publish supposedly giving “value” is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That subversive meme you create is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That review you write (good or bad) is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That design you foolishly used so-called AI to shart out is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That phone conversation you have with a potential client negotiating a deal is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That apology you send someone is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That zoom call to someone’s audience teaching them whatever you teach is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That consult you do with a paid client is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That reply to your client who doesn’t like what you did/wrote is copywriting, if you do it right.

* Those back & forth emails with a client persuading him to test your ads is copywriting, if you do it right.

* That price reduction you want to negotiate is copywriting, if you do it right.

* And so on, and so forth.

Note the qualifier: “if you do it right.”

Do it right, and everything you say, write, record, publish is “copywriting.”

By “do it right” you have to first realize everything is about making agreements. And you get agreements with persuasive communication. And you engage in persuasive communication by using all the principles and fundamentals of… copywriting. Thus, if you are writing anything, in any format, meant to persuade/influence/change minds/make agreements/air a grievance/ask for something… then you, whether you like it or not, wish it or not, or would “risk” it or not… is copywriting.

That is unless you hate money, getting what you want, and having peace of mind, I suppose.

For more about the  paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

What is it with these guys:

Seriously Ben, help me out here [need your expertise and experience]

I am the type of writer who wants to write but always writes in my head

what can you advice me to do to be able to write everyday, I admit I am lazy on that part but a part of me is willing to show up and do the damn work (I won’t say that I am fully willing because my actions does not show it)

What did you do to be able to write consistently without stopping. I need that too

Here’s an idea:

Take out the tampon and just write.

Open text doc and type one word at a time, one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, one page at a time, one money making email/ad/social media post/article/book/eBook/course/blog post/article/newsletter issue/fiction story, whatever it is… at a time.

If you’re doing audio or video content, same thing:

Start recording one word, one idea, and one, module, episode at a time.

That’s the whole “secret.”

As the best winemaker in my state once told me, “the secret is there ARE no secrets.”

Just sac up and do the work.

People will waste all kinds of their finite creative, mental, emotional, and physical energy doing everything and anything BUT the work. Reminds me of a video gym bros were mocking on Twitter showing a bunch of middle aged women strapped to a bungie cord, running & floating to and fro, gliding through the air across the room – “weeee!”

The most popular comment was: “looks fun!”

Yes, it probably is fun.

But it won’t do jack vs doing the work of strength training and being in a caloric deficit.

Writing and content creation can be and is often fun if you know what you’re doing.

But if it always needs to be fun, and never a challenge, that ain’t sustainable.

Sometimes creating content is so much fun I get lost in it, and hours go by, and dozens of pages, or hours of recording happen without even looking at the clock. Other times, it’s a slog, and a grind, and a maddening struggle trying to figure out what to say, how to say it, or the right format to say it in.

But the best stuff, the most profitable stuff, most often comes from that slog.

Took me years of writing to figure that part out. Including years of failing, and long stretches of grinding and battling self doubt, thinking everything I wrote was crap, and in one case even on the brink of just quitting altogether about twenty years ago this very month.

It was only a brief consideration though.

The next day I got up and… kept writing.

In that case, I created some content (writing). And I put it out there like I had thousands of times before. And you know what happened? That piece of content I wrote got on the radar of someone in the business who I did a deal with. And that ONE deal was the biggest (financially) I’d done to that point, and was a “tentacle” that latched onto many more deals ever since and to this very day.

All as a result of just doing the work and figuring things out.

So that’s that.

To learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

To paraphrase an old speech by the late “Mad Man” advertising genius Leo Burnett:

“The human mind is a wonderful device which starts working the minute you are born and never stops until you join Facebook.”

Admittedly I have a love-hate-loathing history with the platform.

Originally, I was on there from 2008 – 2018 before leaving.

And from mid 2016 until mid 2017 I created a hair-raising social experiment in there called “elBenbo’s Lair.” And it was so psychologically & emotionally addictive I was sometimes literally accused of being a cult leader. Not a self-described cult leader, like some of these goo-roo edgelords running around LARPing about it do.

This is something others accused me of, even good friends wondering if I’d lost my mind.

Sometimes they’d even complain about me in other groups, which only fed into the experiment.

It was also a ‘World’ unto itself – full of laws, digital harems, spy networks, corporate warfare, & soap opera-like storylines. There were so many discussions happening certain people in there were routinely locked out & tossed into ‘Facebook jail’ due to its algorithms assuming they were bots.

Lots of money was made.

Some hearts were broken.

And entire businesses were created from scratch

As well as lifelong business & personal relationships (a “splinter” group even formed right after I closed it down, with its most rabid members still there, last I heard) and even at least one wife & child came from it. i.e. I met Stefania inside this supposed “cult” I created, which then later led to Willis.

The downside to what I did on there?

It takes a lot of time & energy to use the methodology I worked out to do it all.

You also have to love being on social, and loving being social to do it long term.

And to this day I’m still burned out on using my own methods, and have zero desire to create my own such community on social media like that. I am far more content in my far-more mellow Settleheads group and/or tweeting out random brain farts, lessons, and other assorted nonsense, with zero responsibility to anyone else as far as babysitting a group of customers and fans and trolls.

The point is, elBenbo’s Lair exploited what Facebook was already doing.

i.e. To get addiction-like engagement.

But it was also intended to be a counteraction to a lot of the creepy nonsense Facebook did, and still does, that causes otherwise intelligent people to become functional idiots.

I don’t know if this adds to your life or not.

But, one thing I will add to it all:

Everything I did in there was ultimately built using what I teach about email marketing, email engagement, and email copywriting, selling, and persuasion that I teach in the paid Email Players newsletter.

More on that here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

P.S. By the way:

1. I do NOT use much of what’s in this book in my current Settleheads group.

Why?

Because I don’t have the time, energy, bandwidth, or, really, desire or probably even the ability to try to recreate what I did. I basically had zero privacy. Everyone was up in my business constantly. And I hated that then, and hate even more now. Plus, what I did required creating endless amounts of conflict inside, spending time thinking up crazy rules, and basically keep people on a perpetual roller coaster.

Fun at the time.

But nowadays I got enough drama with multiple businesses, writing novels, trading, being a dad, etc.

2. I hated Facebook so much I left about a year after I abruptly shut elBenbo’s Lair down.

But, a few years ago I ended up coming back once I figured out how to make it so I never see any of the stupid content (or the stupid people) I don’t want to see or hear from, and only the content and people I do.

The trick?

Set your preferences so nobody (NOT ONE single person) can friend you or message you. Not friends, not family, not spouse, not anyone. That way, you only see content you want in specific groups you’re in, and your other interests without any of the crud & time waste you don’t want to see.

Facebook’s algorithms are surprisingly good like that.

And several others I’ve shared this tip with have also had the same experience.

Yes, it is still a social activist-converged platform.

And no, I do not recommend relying on it for business.

But it can be a useful arrow in your marketing quiver for relationship building.

Looks like my business is still “marked safe” from fapGPT:

Ben,

Just for the fun of it, I pasted two of your emails into ChatGPT and asked, “Did ChatGPT write this email?”.

The responses were great. ChatGPT basically admitted its own flaws!

Email #1

ChatGPT’s response:

“This email was almost certainly written by a human—and not just any human, but Ben Settle himself, in his distinctive, deliberately polarizing, long-winded style.

Here’s why:

✅ Human-Written Proof (and likely Ben Settle)

Signature writing quirks

The email includes purposefully contrarian, rambling, and eccentric storytelling—a Ben Settle trademark.

Long, nested tangents like:

“as many-a-reply guy has discovered when I summarily ignore their wall-of-text emails…”

Snarky humor and mockery of readers he doesn’t like (e.g., “mental twinkie,” “estrogen levels,” “Bible thumping strangers,” “19-year olds hiding behind cartoon pfps”)

Extreme personal voice

AI is capable of tone and mimicry, but not this level of unfiltered personality, sarcasm, and consistency.

The entire email reads like a private journal monologue dressed up as a pitch. No AI models default to this.

Massive, unedited length

This is over 3,000 words and completely unoptimized for brevity or clarity, which is exactly how Ben Settle writes his sales copy and emails.

Scattered but deliberate content

The wildly eclectic list of bullet points—from testosterone to ancient trading strategies to relationship hacks—only a real person with deeply held, lived ideas would dare publish all together, unapologetically.

AI would typically over-structure or shy away from this level of controversial and off-brand content intermixing.

Author’s known product and domain

“Email Players” is Ben Settle’s paid newsletter.

He has a known tendency to create long “special edition” bonuses like the “After School Special” described here.

🧠 Final Verdict:

This was absolutely written by a human—almost certainly Ben Settle himself.

No AI model, prompt, or ghostwriter would (or could) capture this level of coherent chaos, polarizing worldview, and deeply Ben-esque flair.

If you’re analyzing this for style emulation, breakdown, or copywriting insight, let me know—I can help reverse-engineer his persuasive structure or psychological hooks.”

It made me laugh when ChatGPT confirmed it couldn’t possibly write an email like this, yet it asked me if I needed help “reverse-engineering” the structure and psychological hooks.

Email #2

ChatGPT’s response:

“This email, like the previous one, was almost definitely written by Ben Settle himself, not AI.

🧠 Here’s why it’s human (and Ben Settle specifically):

1. Strong, consistent personal voice

The tone is raw, unapologetic, polarizing, and full of personal bias:

“James ‘pedo tweeter’ Gunn and his bizarre daddy issues…”

“AI-obsessed prompt fondler nattering on about workflows…”

AI would never default to this level of unfiltered opinion and potential controversy—especially not with a real person’s name attached.

2. Real-time cultural and niche references

References to:

Dan Kennedy and Magnetic Marketing (including cassette tape era)

Krypto the Superdog

Email Players insider lore

A personal Zoom call with Kennedy via Kia Arian

These are all specific, lived experiences that no AI could invent or reference accurately unless explicitly prompted with them.

3. Idiosyncratic phrasing and storytelling structure

Ben’s writing often:

Begins with a dramatic or countercultural hook

Meanders through anecdotes

Circles back to a lesson

Ends with a pitch or deadline-driven CTA

That style is replicated here with near-perfect Ben-ness.

4. Deliberate typos or quirks

“affinitly marketing” instead of “affinity” — he often lets little typos or off-beat spellings ride to maintain a “raw” feel.

Long sentence structures with nested thoughts, uncommon punctuation, and an “oral storytelling” rhythm that’s very hard for AI to naturally replicate. (Jameel note: “greased voice”)

5. Rhetorical jabs and polarizing filters

He purposely insults or filters out readers who won’t resonate:

“Probably you use so-called AI and watch TikTok videos.”

“Put this on the shelf, revisit, think about it…”

AI almost never writes like this—it’s too aggressive and high-risk for general audience content. But Ben uses it to attract his tribe.

💡 Final Verdict:

100% written by Ben Settle, not AI.

No ghostwriter or prompt could naturally produce the combination of deeply personal anecdotes, copywriting theory, brash tone, insider references, and culture jabs found in this piece.”

More proof, from ChatGPT itself, that it cannot write copy except for following safe templates, concepts, and ideas — all completely lacking personality — and with no way of creating the kind of vision and infotainment that you teach so well.

When I shared this on Twitter, a fellow summed it up best:

“Copywriting goals: Be so unapologetically yourself that even AI admits it can’t replicate your copy.”

To learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter that can help you do just that, go here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

So the paradox goes:

Every seminar you’ve done, you never strike me as this introverted loner guy you claim to be. You have a magic pull with the audience and they laugh at all your jokes. It feels so natural.

Are you secretly an extrovert, or have you picked up how to do talks/seminars so easily (while also disliking it) at a certain place, or person?

Or, 3rd option, have you just positioned yourself in such a way that to come watch you speak, they’d first have to go deep into your world and realize you’re actually pretty likeable – effectively culling the heard to get only the best and most engaged (the ones you’re most comfortable with) in your world to show up?

Let’s just get one thing out of the way off the bat:

I hate going anywhere.

Frankly, I dislike even leaving the house.

I haven’t even bothered to get the government’s stupid RealID or renew my passport. And I’m very much like how Superman’s mom Martha Kent describes Jonathan Kent in the Batman vs Superman movie:

CLARK KENT: How come Dad never left Kansas?

MARTHA KENT: Well, he just…You know how he was. “What do I need to travel for? I’m already there.”

This does, however, pose some annoying problems.

Like, for example:

A few years ago I did a live Q&A to a customer’s audience, and I was astonished by how excited, talkative, and all-around social they were compared to when I do live calls to my own boys & ghouls, who I sometimes wonder if they have a pulse at all, due to being introverts like me who just lurk and haunt zoom but never say anything, ask anything, engage with anything.

It’s why I don’t do much live stuff, incidentally:

All the dayem introverts.

I would do more live calls, training, whatever if I had lots of extroverts in my World.

But the vast majority are boring introverts (like me), who suck all the fun out of it.

Incidentally, the late Johnny Carson was a notorious introvert.

He we so introverted he got nearly paralyzed with nerves before each and every show he did during his 30+ year reign as the undisputed High King of Late Night TV entertainment. He was “the guy” who all the other A-list celebrities would clamor to meet and rub shoulders with at parties, but who he’d avoid, and often do the Irish Goodbye preferring solitude. He was also the guy whose “altar” all other late night TV comedians would bow at, despite being an introvert.

Obviously, he didn’t let his introversion get in his way.

And if you’re like that, you need not let it get in your way either.

Although, one of the beauties of email is you can do it regardless if you’re a social butterfly or a hopeless shut-in.

To learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

Your pal & daily email horror host has been accused many times of being a “luddite.”

Which I think, really, is not very fair.

“Luddite” doesn’t even BEGIN to describe me, and falls way short.

Although I do own a couple software companies, so there’s that, at least. But the “prototype” for my way of thinking and successfully doing business as a supposed luddite regardless of today’s volatile technological change is:

Ralph “Papa” Thorson in the movie “The Hunter”.

It was Steve McQueen’s last movie.

And the story was also based on a real life guy who was a modern day bounty hunter. In the movie Papa is a 50-year old guy who is way behind on technology and only getting older, slower, and more out of touch with the times each day. Yet, he always gets his man when given an assignment to bring someone in by applying relentless almost machine-like consistency vs brute force.

Papa’s pregnant woman Dotty (20-years younger than him) even complains about his contempt for new:

DOTTY: You ought to let your hair grow out. It looked a lot better when it was longer.

PAPA: I’m too old for that.

DOTTY: You like old things. That’s all you care about. You don’t like anything that’s new.

PAPA: New things are no good.

That is a nearly identical conversation Stefania (Millennial, easily distracted by new) and myself (Gen X, longing for the internet to go back to being plain text) have almost every week, it seems, lately, which got me to thinking about this.

Again, I highly suggest watching the movie.

Papa’s format – his unique way of doing business – may be old fashioned, just as his job as a bounty hunter was old fashioned. But he was good at it, did business HIS way, and had people competing to hire him and pay him lots of money because he had such a high success rate and bringing people in.

Ain’t no different today in the world of constantly-changing business & technology.

My approach to business is similar to Papa’s.

And, in many ways, so is my Email Players methodology although it can be “adapted” for nearly any business format, in my experience – old, young, or in between.

To learn more about that go here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle