Ben Settle

There’s a Bible verse that says to agree with your enemy quickly.

I always got the gist of it.

But, didn’t really understand how to use it in email copywriting until reading Jim Camp’s magnificent book “NO” — where he talks about a movie about a lawyer tasked to defend a woman accused of murder.

Here’s the story:

At a glance it’s an open and shut case.

The prosecution has the murder weapon, the motive, and the eye-witness who puts the defendant at the scene. The jury and the media and everyone paying attention simply *knows* she is guilty as sin and it’s just a matter of going through the motions to put the girl away.

So, what does the defendant’s attorney do?

At first, the usual:

He starts off by saying his client is innocent, all the charges are based on hearsay and conjecture, and that she’ll be vindicated.

Then, he notices everyone is basically rolling their eyes at him.

(Again, everyone, judge, jury, media, *knows* she’s guilty.)

So he changes gears and AGREES with everything they are thinking. He says not only does he get why they think she’s guilty, but that even he, as her lawyer, believes she murdered the bloke she was being accused of murdering in cold blood! That they should save the tax payers money and the jury time and just find her guilty now. And so on, and so forth.

The result?

Someone in the jury pipes up and insists she deserves a fair trial.

And, well, I’m sure you can guess what happens from there.

Anyway, this is an extremely powerful principle of persuasion hardly anyone online does.

Yet, I have done it many times.

And, I can tell you it works like crazy. (I most recently used it to make a lot of sales for my 10-Minute Workday product — the single biggest launch AWAI ever did, I was told.)

And you know what?

The March “Email Players” issue goes deep into how you can do the same.

(With an example to model — not “swipe” — so you can see how it’s done.)

It’s so simple it’s almost stoopid.

And, it literally gets your competitors (anyone “against” you or what you teach/espouse) to help you sell your products for you without them knowing or realizing it.

This baby goes to the printer in a few days.

Get your lovin’ here while there’s still time:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Sunday I decided to read my main flakebook timeline for the first time in weeks, for sheer shyts & giggles and to see what the proles are up to.

Anyway, so I start scrolling.

And scrolling.

And scrolling.

Through a couple weeks’ worth of posts.

And you know what stood out most?

People are mush cookie-ing out harder than ever lately.

The “oh-woe is me!” is so strong I’m wondering if it’s being done as a tactic/technique — like the asking stoopid questions thing to get “engagement.” Frankly, it’s so blatant I would not be shocked if some social media goo-roo coach is telling people to act like complete poosies to get more engagement, and this is the new trend.

(Since then, a few people told me this IS what’s going on.)

Yeesh.

Reminds me a few years ago, when I was hanging with my ex-copywriting apprentice (way before I had made her my apprentice) and one of our friends was complaining about something.

I don’t remember about what, exactly.

But I do remember her reaching into her purse and handing him a tampon.

Heh.

Anyway, fun times in Flakebook land.

The mush cookies apocalypse has erupted.

And you know what that means?

Simply *not* being a mush cookie will get you noticed.

Get you listened to.

And, get you bought from.

It couldn’t be easier.

On to the pitch:

The March “Email Players” issue goes to the printer in 5 days.

One of the things it teaches is an infamous theory created by a psychologist (who has since joined the choir invisible) that lets you pound out emails people can’t resist buying from.

Including people who think they don’t want to be sold anything.

Subscribe here in time while you still can:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

“Email Players” subscriber Christina Gillick experiences the the firepower of Darth elBenbo’s fully armed and operational misogyny:

In early 2016, I was a scattered mess. While I had achieved my goal of working for myself, I couldn’t seem to get to the next level. I was trying to run two businesses and do everything the “experts” said I HAD to do to be successful. My ever-growing task list made me feel like a failure and I was quickly approaching burnout…

So, meeting Ben in person couldn’t have come at a better time. He made me realize I could cut out 99% of the advice being thrown at me and still grow a successful business. On top of that, I could create my business my way and make my own rules.

Using Ben’s principles to simplify and focus, I’ve been more consistent and so has “Business #1.” We doubled our email subscribers and finished the year with sales up 44%. (While spending much less on PPC and FB ad costs!)

I’m also a freelancer (that’s Business #2). Ben’s principles have taught me to stand up for myself and put my goals first. Now I have more options and feel more in control. (I’m also braver when negotiating for higher project fees.) As a result, I just deposited my biggest royalty check yet — worth more than my full-time job used to pay for an entire month! (And, that’s on top of the original projects fees I already received.)

I really can’t say enough good things about Ben’s no-nonsense approach. No matter what format — his daily emails, Email Players, or more recently his AWAI program: The 10-Minute Workday — I know I’m getting the most actionable advice without the time-wasting fluff.
 
Thank you, Ben, for reducing my stress, giving me more confidence, and completely turning my business around!

In other news:

The March “Email Players” issue mails in less than a week.

For people who get excited by the psychological side of email copywriting you’ll be like a plump kid in the candy store. A bit part of it is how to use a psychological study done years ago to bang out all the emails your greedy little heart desires.

Here’s where to subscribe:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Last week I saw the biggest pile of horse pucky this side of Texas.

Someone had posted on flakebook an image of a guy bragging about his big planned out sales & “onboarding” (one of those nifty phrases goo-roo fanboys get chubbies over) funnel (with automation!), and saying how it’s even more complex than it looks.

Yay!

It was amusing, to say the least.

It was like this giant maze that made no sense.

If I had to finish his thought I’d add:

“Now all I need is a list and an offer!”

Think I jest?

Almost everyone I’ve talked to who brags about these things has zero list or offer to sell in their souped-up funnels — or even how to use email in a way anyone wants to read. There is a time and place for these giant funnels. But for the majority of people (that I know at least, your milage may vary) who do these things, they haven’t even figured out the basics of direct response. And, thus, have no idea how impractical these things are for most businesses without a big team and infrastructure in place.

Probably looks cool in the fb groups full of drooling goo-roo fanboys.

But, in the real world?

It’s pure, unadulterated flowery hands marketing.

Flowery hands being a term in kung fu mocking people who do a bunch of giant arm movements and complex kicks and balancing acts that look great to the uninitiated, but will get their arses handed to them by even an amateur in a real fight since they have zero balance, coordination, or ways to practically and efficiently strike or kick.

So it is in marketing and sales.

These overly complex onboarding funnels are the epitome of flowery hands marketing.

Amusing, yes.

But, for all but the truly experienced marketers, ultimately foolish.

Kinda like a court jester…

Hey, if you want that, have a party.

Me?

I focus on the fundamentals.

Then, I dig DEEP into them.

Like in kung fu, each fundamental principle of marketing (that many reading this roll their eyes at) goes so deep you could never truly master them in a lifetime.

And, they work way better than the flowery hands nonsense.

Want to onboard yourself to broke?

Be my guest.

Otherwise, to go deep into my boring, non-sexy (but off-the-wall effective) ways, go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A while back, my friend, computer scientist (a for-real scientist, doesn’t just play one on the Internet) Jim Yaghi and I were talking about open rates.

And, how they are almost pointless to track these days.

Why pointless?

Many reasons.

One, Android phones.

They have HTML turned off by default.

Your little snowflake emails aren’t being tracked.

Another reason?

Jon McCulloch was telling me how Gmail now does something to grab images once and isolate them from the server hosting them – meaning open rate measuring is totally out of whack.

(This one was new to me, but explains a LOT.)

Another?

I’ll let Jim Yaghi take this one:

“Ben one more reason to ignore open and click rates is that when you email daily they naturally trend down and give you a true reflection of your actual readership. This may be depressing. But is actually good news. When you do intermittent emails you get high opens after absence because people are like who the ___ is this clown!? They open to see then are reminded and stop opening the rest of your emails. But the people reading all your daily emails are your true blue loyalists and their numbers are usually a fraction of your entire list. They are also your buyers. I find my steady open numbers (not rate) on regular emails is also the total number of customers in every product I launch”

I have found the same.

I don’t write for “opens.”

I write for sales.

Reminds me of the Email Players subscriber who made his client (using my methods) tons of sales last December in a month where they hardly get any, but was worried about only getting a 9% open rate…

Anyway, do what you want with this info.

I fully realize there are many email gurus who disagree with this.

Maybe, even would call me irresponsible.

(As some prominent guru apparently did once about this.)

But, they’re wrong.

And that’s okay.

After all, it’s not against the law for them to be wrong…

Anyway, to learn how to write emails that make sales without wasting your life tracking metrics that aren’t accurate due to the technology of our times, check out my “Email Players” newsletter.

It ain’t cheap.

And it ain’t for people looking for “sexy.”

I am all about fundamentals.

And, going *deep* into those fundamentals.

Here’s where to subscribe:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Let’s take a little trip back through time.

Waaaaaay back when I got started in this bid’niz, I remember hearing a talk the great Dan Kennedy gave at a System Seminar about Internet marketing for luddites like himself (last I heard, he doesn’t have an email address or carry a cell phone, if that tells you anything).

One of the things he talked about was his “herd.”

That was how he described a list.

In other words, your list is like a herd of cattle that you have in a pen, and come when called whenever you have something to sell.

That makes a lot of folks uneasy.

(I have zero problem with it, personally.)

And so, people started using the word “tribe” instead.

I don’t think tribe is very accurate at all.

At least, not with my list and audience.

Because of the unique way I email my list day after day, and have bonded with them, and gotten to know them, and they’ve gotten to know me, I have exceptional customer loyalty and what I can only refer to as not a herd or a tribe… but a HORDE.

It’s why people are constantly pestering me to mail for them.

And, when I do, I almost always get off the charts response.

How is this the case?

Especially since I don’t have a “big name” or do the affiliate circle jerk-you-mail-for-me-and-I’ll-mail-for-you game?

It’s because of the system I use.

(It sure as hellz ain’t my sparkling personality…)

My email methods increase sales like nothing else.

And, they build businesses like nothing else.

And, they bond people to you like nothing else — so that you are pretty much the only person they read and buy from, ignoring everyone else’s boring emails that put them to sleep.

That is why my methods don’t create a mere herd.

Or, some lame little tribe.

It creates a HORDE.

And I don’t mean that in some mindless zombie way.

I mean it as a horde of passionate, insatiably hungry-to-learn people eager to read and buy from your emails, and cheerfully promote you (unsolicited) to people whenever they get a chance (on webinars, podcasts, public speaking, or just back room telephone chit-chat) — not out of some kind of weak fanboy call for your attention, but because they genuinely want to spread the good news of you and your ways.

You think I exaggerate?

Think what ye will.

But, there’s a reason why my customers so passionately rave.

Why they are so ardently loyal.

And, why they buy, often sight unseen in a lot of cases.

If you want to learn how to do this (using simple daily emails) go ye here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Recently I got into a discussion with a girl about my crotchety ways.

i.e. Crotchety Ben

Crotchety Ben is grouchy in the morning, moody at night, and “get off my lawn” cranky whenever anyone talks to him while lost in his thoughts. Think of a muppet that looks like Burt (from Burt & Ernie) but without the cone head. Imagine him constantly yelling so you can see his muppet tonsils. He shakes with anger whenever anyone even so much as asks him a question. He has the perpetual angry eyebrows going, and he snaps off about *everything* — even good things (i.e. sun comes out after a week of rain, he complains about the sunlight blinding him while driving down the road — “Bah! Dayem sun is burning my friggin’ eye balls out!)

And so it goes.

Crotchety Ben is a miserable egg.

He also tends to attract highly emotional chicks who find his ways intriguing.

(Which tends to annoy him.)

Anyway, the point of all this drivel?

There is education Value here.

It takes a lot to cut through Crotchety Ben’s skepticism, low attention span, and obsession with being miserable. But, if you cut through that, if you know how to tame the Dragon… he becomes the most loyal, high spending customer there is, who sings your praises and takes his anger out on your competition instead of you.

And in this case I don’t mean “me” Crotchety Ben.

I mean the Crotchety people in your market.

Most people simply make Crotchety Ben more crotchety.

With each word of their dorky little emails, they simply enrage him.

And, guarantee he never buys.

Not so those who study my “Email Players” newsletter.

It shows you how to sell to the crotchety as well as the pleasant mannered.

The very nature of my wicked ways slips past skepticism, turns your list either hot or cold (with only a handful of the indifferent and luke warmed) — making sales higher, tighter bonds with your audience, and World Peace as far as your business World goes.

At least, that’s been my experience.

And, that of many others.

To find out if it will do the same for you, go ye here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Lindsay Sacks partakes of elBenbo’s mysterious ways, and reports:

Well let me tell you…my writing is so much more relevant, interesting, and engaging since knowing you. I’m excited to get up and write every day. I have a keener interest in knowing about a greater variety of topics and people. I’m more passionate than I’ve ever been and giving my first hours of the day to my own business has created more momentum than I thought possible.

As grouchy and crotchety as you are, you change lives directly and through me to the people I mentor and email and teach.

I’m a huge fan girl. Obviously.

Been getting lots of testimonials like this.

My email sack is ever hungry for more, if you have been using my ways and want to report your results, too.

Meantime:

The February issue goes to the printer in a couple days.

Hop on here before it leaves the station:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

More tales from elBenbo’s dating files:

Late last Summer, I was dating a girl who was getting very aggressive about me giving her my commitment. We had dated for a couple months, and, like most girls, she wanted some kind of security.

But, elBenbo does not allow himself to become a “kept” man easily.

I make chicks fight for it.

(As they should.)

And, she just wasn’t at the level for me to want to girlfriend her up.

At the same time, I was actively dating and pursuing other girls I met. I told her (actually, insisted) she go see other people, too. But she didn’t want to see these other people, she only wanted to see me.

“Why do you have to keep talking to these other girls?” she asked.

My response?

Every company has a human resources department that is always taking applications. Even if I have a good employee as my assistant, for example, I’m still always taking applications from other would-be assistants.

Why?

Many reasons.

For example:

If my assistant starts getting complacent and repeatedly disrespects me or her position… or if I catch her embezzling funds… or she’s caught also working for a *competitor*… or if she just ups and leaves without even giving her two week notice, I have to have someone I can pull out of the drink at a moment’s notice.

To her credit, she understood where I was coming from well enough.

She understood her position was my *intern*.

She was not yet a paid employee.

She also realized she could be one if she worked hard, kept her nose clean, and I was ready to fill that position. But at that time, all I wanted was interns. Eventually, one hangs around long enough, proves themselves exceptional, doesn’t get seduced away by another company, and demonstrates a fiery determination to only work for me.

I can hear the snowflakes weeping and gnashing their teeth already.

“elBenbo! You jerk!”

No, it’s not jerky, it’s smart.

Every good company takes applications at all times.

It keeps everyone on their toes and from becoming complacent.

And you know what?

This has pretty obvious business applications too, of course. Not just for hiring actual employees. But also, when it comes to managing clients and customers.

I talk about this more in February “Email Players” issue.

It goes to the printer in a few days.

Subscribe here while there’s still time to get it:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle