Ben Settle

One of my Email Players subscribers — who does not wish to be named for obvious reasons — told me about a new client doing a lot of dumb things, with lots of ways he wants to help them and get paid more by them… but is not sure how to go about approaching them and offering to help.

My advice:

“it’s temping to meddle but in my experience let them hang themselves with their own rope on mistakes, when things are dire then, and only then, offer to fix”

I say this as someone who wants nothing to do with client work.

So I bring a blatantly biased contempt to the table with these things.

i.e., take with big, fat grain of chili pepper.

But, clients or customers or anyone else… I am a big fan of selling “medicine” to the “sick” (not literally – this is all figurative, I say this for the alphabet agencies who may be snooping in on this…) and those looking for a cure for something that ails them. I learned this the hard way when I graduated college and hopped into an MLM and tried selling my family and friends on things they didn’t think they needed but that I figured they would want and needed.

Total waste of time and counterproductive in every way.

Trying to (figuratively) convince someone without a headache to buy aspirin is pointless.

But a guy with a four-alarm hangover?

That one is ripe for selling to, will probably welcome it, even eagerly buy. To try to convince people they are sick when they have no symptoms, are in danger when they don’t realize it, are self-sabotaging when they think they are crushing it or whatever is a big, fat exercise in futility in my experience.

This is the problem with a lot of marketers.

They have great ideas, great products, and maybe even excellent offers.

But far too many merely have a solution looking for a problem. And it shows in their frustration, and having to constantly haunt masterminds and buy coaching for answers… when if they simply started with looking for a problem to solve first, and then built or found a product around solving the problem… there would be no need for much else other than get that offer in front of a moving parade of people with that problem.

Something related:

One good thing I’ve noticed in my Twitter replies over the past year since getting back on there is the growing number of people wanting to learn more about the fundamentals of direct marketing, copywriting, and email. Every time I post about the subject several will ask where they can learn more about the fundamentals, what books, etc.

I always take that as a good thing.

So here is a crash course in the fundamentals.

It all starts with:

1. Find a problem

2. Solve it

Ooh.

So advanced!

Maybe it’s not sexy. But just taking that to heart will solve probably 95% of your marketing and copywriting questions, frustrations, insecurities, and uncertainty. Even if you bungle on a multitude of levels, just getting the above right can keep you on track, can work if you write horrible copy, and can see you to the end even if you don’t really know what you’re doing.

My opinion:

Just applying the above would eliminate probably 99% of cold DM pitches and emails from these blue flame special more worried about how to warm up 100+ domains to send cold pitches through than just building and growing a legal opt-in list. And just living the above, as a way of doing business & living life in general, would probably create such an overwhelming rush of success for a lot of boys & ghouls up in this business they’d wonder how it could possibly be that simple and easy, and be tempted to think it was luck or there must be more to it.

But it’s not luck and it’s no more complicated than that.

Find problem – solve it.

If you want to stand out from probably every single business you compete against just do that one thing, and do it well, and work hard at it every day. While everyone else is running around shooting their solution at everyone like a shotgun, missing 99% of the time and maybe hitting the target by complete accident if they even do… you are more like a sniper with a rifle with an infrared scope, perfect wind conditions, and hitting targets looking to be shot.

That analogy always breaks apart eventually.

But you get the picture…

All right on to the business.

If you want to check out the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

I am now officially part of the vile media class I hate so much.

i.e., as of last week I own 10% of a paper n’ ink “dinosaur media” newspaper.

Why would I become a part of that which I so despise (the mass media)?

Well, because of this:

Many years ago — way back in 2007 — I got hired by a guy who was doing business with Dan Kennedy’s printer friend (Pete the Printer) to go through a whole bunch of Dan’s old ‘NO BS Marketing Letters’ and write ezine articles out of them. It was one helluva edu-ma-cation, too. And while the gig didn’t pay all that much, the knowledge I learned, started using, and am still using to this day was priceless.

Example:

One of the themes he kept hammering home was “own your own media.”

The more the merrier.

Got an email list?

Good.

That’s your own media.

Direct mail list? Website? Membership site? Mobile app? Podcast? Print newsletter? YouTube? Social media account? All various forms of media. Some medias are better than others, of course. Most you won’t own, and can be taken from you (social media accounts, YouTube account, iTunes, etc). And a few you do own as an asset (direct mail and email list — if you are wise enough to export it, at least.)

Anyway, I remember thinking hard about that.

It’s one reason I wanted to do a print newsletter, for example, and later invested in a mobile app company we sell at Learnistic. Those who possess my elBenbo Press book can see how I use all my various media platforms — including my print books, which are each their own “media” the way I use them — so I am not going to belabor that here. But I do remember around 2019 when gearing up to start writing my elBenbo Press book realizing that one day I would like to own a whole other kind of media:

A newspaper.

Why?

Because I love the print business.

And it’s why I continue doing it even though year-by-year with inflation, paper shortages, flakey delivery services, etc it’s getting less and less practical… not to mention the growing number of adults who are functionally illiterate and can only follow short attention span-friendly medias.

This is no joke, either.

Just yesterday I heard from a guy who had his first Email Players rebill and asked what he could expect now, and am I sending him a new book each month like the Email Players Skhema Book? I almost thought he was joking. Especially considering the sales letter is written in a way where even a 4th grader can follow it, with a big yellow page after that reminding you again of what you’re buying… not to mention two boxes that require being ticked before one can even advance to the order form at all that also tell you what you’re getting… and then the offer summarized in more 4th grade level language in bullets right on the form one more time just in case.

Yeesh.

Doesn’t bode well for anyone selling anything that requires more than 5-seconds of reading to consume if that’s where it’s headed. But I don’t care and do print anyway. And my long time customers are lightyears ahead of the typical crowd fapping to all-things digital.

Anyway, back to newspapers:

Stefania used to say back when I first told her 5 years ago I wanted a newspaper:

“Well Ben, you said you want a newspaper, that means you’ll have one.”

And for the next few years after that I looked around at the possibility of buying one of the local papers here (which has like 2,000 circulation, if that, and no idea if they’d have sold it to me anyway). Or, maybe, just started my own. But the problem with that is time. I only have so much of that precious commodity. And as much as I enjoyed the idea of having a little print rag, the time investment of running it, my hatred of dealing with employees, having to diddle around with yet another company’s books and taxes and day-to-day, etc would have taken me away from other activities I would rather spend that time on.

So I put it all on the shelf and just kept my eyes open.

Then, a few years ago, Email Players subscriber Richard Emmons went and did what I didn’t:

He founded a newspaper!

A pro-freedom newspaper that is what the media is supposed to be:

A government watchdog and not a government lapdog.

He lives about 2.5 hours from where I am in the same state, but in a different county, yet close enough where his news has an effect on where I am at. I really digged on what he was doing, too, and supported it. By that I mean, yes, I of course subscribed… but I also made a couple decent-sized donations to it to help his Mission with it, and do my little part to help him turn the tide of corruption and all-around misery, drugs, & death that plagues this state. Calling Oregon a “shyt show” is more literal than not in many areas. And with the influx of Californians bringing their idiotic voting patterns with them that created the problems they are fleeing, it is only getting worse.

Fast forward to a few months ago:

On a lark I told him if he was interested in taking on investors I’d be game.

I don’t know if that was his plan all along or if I planted the seed.

But as of a week ago I am now officially 10% owner of The Oregon Eagle.

And the timing couldn’t be better.

Especially with the election coming up.

(Will likely write a lot about this)

Stefania is also a reporter for it – covering our county – and she has already helped start the process of exposing some potentially corrupt shenanigans going on with a ridiculously high property tax levy so big it will, quite literally, send a lot of retirees here to join the homeless population (it’s bad) if it passes, with suspiciously little transparency and a whole lot of double talk that she documented.

She’s from New York where this kind of corruption is practically a trope.

So she has a special interest in helping stop it.

Anyway, back to the point:

Owning this particular kind of media goes far beyond just an email list, direct mail list, social media, mobile app, print newsletter etc. And it opens up all kinds of new possibilities for not only my business, but potentially for some of my other businesses, not to mention an opportunity to help have real impact on politics and the culture instead of just arguing and complaining about it on the internet and social media all day like everyone else does.

No, I have no real responsibilities or any editorial control.

Nor do I do any copywriting or emails or anything like that for it.

I am mostly just a resource of knowledge and marketing ideas if/when needed.

But, it’s my toe-hold into the print newspaper world.

And now that I am in?

I daresay it’s time to outdo Hearst and get to work starting WW3..

Whatever the case, there’s probably no reason to subscribe if you’re not in this state.

But if you are, and want to check it out, go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com/oregoneagle 

Ben Settle

A while back on Twitter reader asked:

“Ben, how much time do you spend writing fiction? Or is it quite sporadic? When did you start? Seems like challenging work on top of everything else you do”

Fiction is like eating dessert for me.

i.e., can’t have my pudding unless I eat my meat first.

So I schedule time for it usually months in advance.

Example:

When I wrote my last novel (Enoch Wars: Serpent Seed) I spent about 5 months getting ahead on emails, offers, sales pages, and other projects to carve out 6 weeks or so to write the first draft. Then I did other work for the next 4 or 5 months to get ahead after that so could carve out two months to edit that novel.

Another example:

When I had the urge to turn my first novel (Enoch Wars: Zombie Cop) into a screenplay I spent probably 7 or 8 months doing a ho’ bunch of other work, offers, emails, sales pages, ticky tack projects, etc before having a good month and a half to do that. Then, I took a couple weeks “off” from it to write the 64-page January 2024 Email Players issue (150th milestone — wanted to go big with it) just to come back and finish it up after that.

Yet another example:

When I decided to totally rewrite that first novel based on that screenplay (which was not intended, huge pain in the ass, and not just for me..) I spent a month getting ahead on Email Players and other stuff, before banging out the new novel and other work that entailed the last week of December, and the following January this year.

Anyway, fiction, non-fiction, whatever it is… I live and die by a schedule.

And that means an ever-growing & ever-changing daily list of tasks.

I am not sure how people do business any other way.

Nor, really, do I care.

But when it comes to putting out a lot of content that is what works for me.

To see my full approach to email marketing see the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

The short answer:

Take a market-first and not a marketing-first

I’ll use all the scamps spanking out cold and canned messages to randos as an example of what market first vs marketing first looks like. A market first approach would not include haunting DMs on social media like you’re sending dikc pix on grindr to strangers hoping to score.

Instead it looks more like this:

+ Pick 10 businesses you like, follow, respect, believe in what they are doing/selling – and, even more important, have bought something from and used it and benefited from it

+ Research them on their sites, their social media, Google, etc

+ Try to get an intro from a mutual friend

+ Or stop being like a timid little woodland creature hiding behind the internet and write them a snail mail letter, sent via FedEx, signature required – guaranteed to be received, noticed, opened, at least read

+ In that letter don’t pitch them or try to be cute… just tell them you’re a fan, how much their business has helped or inspired you, whatever it is you truly think…

+ Do not give them unsolicited advice, they don’t care

+ Instead tell them you would love to work with them in some capacity, any capacity, you just want to be a part of what they’re doing – all this has to be true, of course

+ Don’t give any deadlines or CTA’s – this isn’t a pitch, it’s a warm, personal, fan letter telling them how much you respect them and want to be a part of what they’re doing, even if it means doing some menial tasks for free for them that are way below you, that they could hire someone at minimum wage to do

+ What that would be would obviously depend on what intel you get from researching them

+The key is to offer to be useful – chances are you will see stuff about their businesses where you could be useful, make their lives easier, take stress off their plate

+ Will you get 100% response/replies? Absolutely not – but if you do it right, do your homework, aren’t a money twitter schmuck about it… I can almost guarantee you will hear from at least one or two, and even if they can’t use your help for something, you can always ask if they might know someone who does

+ Don’t pester those who ignore you or aren’t interested, you’re not that persuasive

+ In the meantime, if you are low on cash then get a real job so you don’t “need” a response – and come from a place of financial security instead of neediness, which people can smell like shyt on a shoe and want nothing to do with

+ I defy anyone to do the above and not come away smarter, better connected, be more respected, with more referrals/leads – and, also, with  “tentacles” out in the marketplace you would never get by blindly spanking out cold DMs to strangers on social media

Is that it?

No.

You should be growing an opt-in list you mail each day to demonstrate your knowledge, that you have a work ethic, that you are someone worth hiring. Do that right and you may just find clients coming to you, instead of you going to them.

But ideally do both ways.

That’s how you grow a solid customer base who never leave you nor forsake you.

To learn the email-side see the Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Came a question:

“Ben, What’s been your general experience with female customers/leads? Are they annoying/different to deal with in any particularly noteworthy way? I don’t mean customers annoy me or I find women annoying. I guess what I mean is if they’re more likely to be (unreasonably) demanding, or (overly) fussy, or likely to be a pain/cause drama, just due to their more emotional nature/communication style. Or maybe you’ve found the opposite and they actually tend to be more pleasant to deal with. Just curious because I’ve only ever sold to men, which was fun”

In this guy’s case I gave him an example:

I told him I used to co-own an info publishing biz in weight loss selling to women.

But I never really enjoyed writing the emails or sales copy to that market compared to selling to guys. In fact, at that time I was simultaneously off-and-on writing ads and/or emails for three male-dominated markets – golf, self defense, and guys with prostate problems. And I was having a lot more fun writing that copy, especially the self defense stuff where it started becoming almost more like screenwriting than copywriting.

I was good at selling to women, but it wasn’t much fun writing about feelings, validation, & jealousy.

But writing about violence, solving horrifying male health problems, and winning?

That was a blast…

The flip side of that is:

My female customers — a very small segment of my customer base, probably less than 10% of my buyers — tend to be some of the most loyal and successful customers I have. It’s literally how I met Stefania, (I, uhm, “recruited” her from the fanbase…), where we found BerserkerMail’s COO & now co-owner Nicole English, and how I ended up hiring Email Players subscriber Kia Arian for all my design-related projects for the past 7 years.

To flip back yet again to the other side…

While back Email Players subscriber & BerserkerMail co-owner John Wood posted on Twitter:

“Which chromosomes are watching the BerserkerMail YouTube channel? Not an egg carrier to be found, probably thanks to elBenb0 ‘s wicked ways”

Followed by a graphic of which of the two genders is consuming all the free content (much of it originally part of a $500/month coaching program, if that tells you something) BerserkerMail YouTube channel’s content.

According to the stats:

===

GENDER

Last 28 days – views

Male 100%

Female 0%

User-specified 0%

===

The point of all this Ben-splaining?

Probably there are several.

And while the following might seem like a totally different topic, I think it is related.

And that is:

The question above got me to thinking about one of the single most important consistent truisms in marketing that applies to both genders in any market, niche, industry, product category — man or woman, zoomer or boomer, GenXer or Millennial, and anyone else in any other demographic or psychographic.

And that truism is:

Don’t listen to what someone says they want.

Pay attention to what they’re buying.

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

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Following is what I foresee for the US and what it could look like for online-driven businesses.

Here goes:

* Texas secedes

* Feds can’t stop them from blocking the importing of 3rd world invaders which the regime wants to recruit for US military as soldiers who’d have no problem firing on Americans

* Feds start funneling invaders in through California, Arizona, New Mexico even more aggressively than they are now

* Nothing really changes

* US breaks up as a country by 2033 as per Vox Day’s prediction he publicly made on his blog in 2004 that everyone laughed at then, that now even mainstream talking heads are chattering about today

* Invaders either forced back whence they came or to Cartel-controlled Southwest, as various new regional nationalist governments emerge from the broken pieces of the empire

* The normies who listened to neocon boomers on TV about putting on masks while putting up foreign flags and pronouns in their bios realize those they thought were our allies never were, while the “bad guys” reach out to new political factions to establish commerce

* Big cities are fooked where people hire mercenaries to help them escape the various mini warlords blocking exits, keeping most people inside

* Small, homogeneous communities where all the various peoples naturally gravitate to for mutual survival thrive over next 50 years

* After that a new empire begins anew and the cycle repeats again in 250-300 years

Or not.

When I originally wrote this a few months ago as a gag on Twitter, I had just watched Van Damme’s “Cyborg” and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “The Running Man” and admittedly have no clue what’s going to happen.. But I will say this: Considering how many so-called “conspiracy theories” have turned out to be spoiler alerts, I could be far more right than I am wrong about all this.

Anyway, that’s that.

I do think it will all break up eventually.

One or two more burgled elections ought to turn the trick.

And when that happens commerce will still happen. In fact, those ready for it well in advance with their own lists, audiences, and buyers will very likely make out like the proverbial bandits depending on what you sell, what market you’re in, and how much your list and buyers trust and like you.

The details of that are for another day.

In the meantime?

To start growing that foundation now, email your list every day.

Grow your list every day.

And think about ways to serve your audience every day.

To learn how the paid Email Players newsletter can help go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A couple months ago I got sudden rush of questions about writing stories.

I figured someone must have been talking about it.

(And it turned out someone had… on Twitter)

And so, I decided to chime in with my too many sense on the topic:

* If you are having trouble telling stories you are probably overthinking it – almost everyone does – break it down into 1-2 sentences like a TV guide description. Start with that. i.e., entire story of the American Revolutionary War “we fought the British, they lost.” (hat tip to the great Paul Hartunian for that ditty).

* Study all of Gary Halbert ads with stories you can find – he was the master. Copy them out by hand no matter how tedious it feels. Do the same with John Carlton ads and if you can find them Scott Haines ads. Those 3 are/were the masters.

* What you leave out is far more important than what you leave in.

* Write an email each and every day telling a story designed to sell your offers until it becomes second nature

* You already know what you need to know, everyone does, you did it naturally as a child, so try not to over think it and just tell the story as if talking to a child

* Nothing will teach you storytelling better than telling stories, everywhere, with every piece of content you write until it becomes second nature.

* There really is no substitute for just doing the work, no book or coach (certainly not me) will teach you how to do it better than just doing it over and over and over and over.

* Stay the hell away from fapGPT, or anything like AI when telling stories – use your own God-given brain, write with your own hands, engage your thinking, utilize your nervous system, your imagination, your problem-solving, your emotions, your unique experiences/observations/opinions/thoughts/personality/peculiarities.

* No, I don’t have a course or book teaching storytelling, you can’t buy experience, you have to sweat, bleed, fight for it.

* Unless you count this email as a teaching, I suppose

* But even then I probably just said more than I know…

Take this skill, combine it with what I teach in my paid Email Players Newsletter each month and I reckon your business can prosper beyond the dreams of avarice..

More info here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

I think the most screwed people in online marketing are boys & ghouls who declare:

“I’m done buying, time to implement! I am not buying anything else and I am just going to focus on implementing what I have!”

I’m not saying that’s a good or bad idea.

But if they are in that position at all, then in my experience with dealing with these kinds of people over the past 22+ years up in this business… they still never do anything and will continue not to do anything.

Their problem is not too much great info that can make them money.

A problem that I still, to this day, do not understand.

How can you have too much info that makes you money?

It boggles my mind but I have seen enough people take that attitude to know it’s not a fluke either. And that is why I personally don’t think they have an implementation problem like they think they do as they pound their desk rebuking themselves. Instead, I suspect what they have is a self respect problem. Something many people far wiser than I will ever be have been teaching as a danger for those in selling, business, etc for decades.

In this case, due to bad wiring or whatever it is:

They won’t allow themselves to be successful.

So then they never do anything more than the bare minimum to make the exact amount of money they are psychologically comfortable with, and lack the self awareness to recognize this is going on and do something about it. That then creates their knee-jerk reaction to attack the symptom and not the disease, and think they are somehow going to change anything long term.

Just a theory though.

It could just be they are simply flakey (certainly how they always sound) for all I know.

But either way:

This is on my mind because I just heard from such a person recently. And it got me to thinking about how many other people I’ve known, been friends with, hung out with, sold to, and even bought from who suffer from the same problem. This is one reason I don’t like selling to people who are not first on my email list, who do not already have a business and an offer, and who are total newbies. I just don’t relate to the ones who flit from one thing to the next then complain about info overload.

I admittedly don’t understand their plight nor do I care to.

I’ve never had “too much” great info that I benefit from.

So it makes no sense to me at all.

If anything it always just sounds like rationalization hamster spinning.

My opinion.

For more info on my paid Email Players Newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

No.

Although, many years ago (2017-ish) I did toy with creating my own agency. Specifically, I was going to have it specialize in email. And sometimes I still think about it. Not as anything I will ever do. But because how fun I suspect it’d probably be to have my own agency… for about 5 minutes.

The problems?

1. I have no desire whatsoever to copy chief, babysit, or deal with other copywriters.

I see copywriters the way Charles Bukowski saw writers as a whole:

Like flies on the same turd.

It’s one reason one of my quests in life is to help liberate as many freelance copywriters as I can from client work and so they can be their own clients. (More on this soon – daddy has something cooking up about this in his righteous kitchen.) If anything, I see more and more copywriters as the “used car salesmen” of the direct marketing world. Far too many have zero clue of the history of their industry, know nothing of the old school guys they should be studying, and would make my job harder as a result. Especially since I have to build trust from people whose faith they’ve butchered with their idiotic bull shyt claims, goo-roo fanboy’ing, and, most recently, their fapping themselves hairy-palmed and blind to AI which is quite a moldy turd they gather on indeed.

2. I’d end up turning away 9.9 out of 10 clients.

One false move, making one too many stupid suggestions about something they know nothing about, or I get even a whiff they are not on the level about something and they’d be gone. And don’t think they’d be the first. My opinion of most clients is even lower than that of most copywriters.

3. I’d have to spend too much time doing things I hate doing.

I’m not a team player at all.

That’s why I far prefer investing in companies with teams someone else runs.

My goal is to one day cash checks for a living as I write pulp novels & screenplays.

I don’t know if there is a moral to this or not.

Except maybe this:

Just because you can do something does not mean you should do it.

If you want to learn my ways of selling with email see the paid Email Players Newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle