Ben Settle

A while back, I wrote a bit in my free Settleheads Facebook group, about a documentary I have watched many times, and have extracted much marketing & selling wisdom from.

The documentary was about the late Rich Piana, a fitness “influencer” who died young from steroid abuse.

He literally looked like a human He-Man action figure.

And the guy had some savvy and clever ways to market himself that are well worth studying.

Anyway, most people in the group who piped up found it interesting, and a few even checked it out. But, not everyone was happy with your humble daily email horror host. One of my AI-cheerleader, and now former, customers got righteously indignant.

He said:

“Love you ben but sorry, but there is not a goddam thing worth positive about this sad story. bodybuilding is joke today. . .this is beyond steroids, this is like multiple drugs and then oil injections on top of that. this guy should rest in hell. should not be glorified. you are the best in the world at what you do – stay in your lane – you dont know about PEDs”

Ooh.

It’s hard to imagine even one single person on the planet who will watch, or has watched, that documentary walking away thinking they now need to start abusing PEDs or anything else. It’d be the equivalent of watching a scene with the meth chick Wendy in Breaking Bad and her nasty teeth, and thinking it’d be cool to do drugs.

Such is the state of mind of the typical reply guy though.

Typing just to hear themselves write.

And so, to turn others like him away, I followed up with this post:

After yesterday’s Rich Piana documentary post that turned into an unexpectedly useful customer Curation device (i.e., I will be doing more such posts going forward).. below are more people you can study, and extract many legitimate & ethical principles they used for success, without endorsing them or going “darkside” yourself:

* Serial killer Ted Bundy

* Hugh Hefner

* John Brinkley (the doctor who conned men to let him sew goat testicles on them to beef up their libidos – Dan Kennedy has a whole course and also a book about this guy)

* Saul Alinsky

* Lenin

* Stalin

* Hitler

* Andrew Tate

* Any of the cultural marxists who seized control of the West for the past 50 years, right under everyone’s noses, including not only liberals who love that shyt and vote for it in droves, but also “conservatives” who prop up their ideas to this day

* FDR and Abraham Lincoln – neither of who I like, respect, or think as anything but tyrants & fiends

Dan Kennedy once said something about this that applies:

“What works to sell the incredible, works even better to sell the credible.” 

i.e., why one should study old National Enquirer ads, etc. Not to mimic the bogus offers, but to extract the legitimate principles & tactics of persuasion to sell legitimate offers that genuinely serve your customers or clients.

Same with the Rich Piana documentary and list of fiends above.

And so it goes.

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Ben Settle

The late copywriter Jim Rutz once told a story about how something he wrote accidentally went viral.

Jim was, no exaggeration, one of the top 3 copywriters on the planet in his day.

And he said he’d write a financial promo and put one of his own opinions in almost as a throw-away thought… and suddenly it sails through the process of approval from the client, the legal department, and the editors and is being quoted as fact in the financial news – even though it was an opinion, from a copywriter, who is admittedly not an expert at all on the subject.

Christopher Nolan said the same happened when Batman Begins came out.

There is a scene where Bruce Wayne falls through some ice.

Next, he’s in front of a fire freezing & shivering, being told:

“Rub your chest, your arms will take care of themselves”

Sounds legit?

Maybe it is, maybe not. But Nolan said it was a bit hair-raising when he noticed suddenly it was being taught to boy scouts as some kind of survival tip, even though he basically pulled that throw-away line right out of his arse!

Another example:

Many years ago I decided to probe around in the prostate problem niche.

I wrote an eBook with a backend offer in place, started generating traffic via a particularly aggressive kind of SEO (that briefly worked in the early 2010’s, does not work anymore) that was getting me sales and things were looking pretty good.

So good, something I said as a throwaway opinion was suddenly popping up in a bunch of forums, etc.

It was not something that would hurt anyone (it was not a “health” tip – just a tip about an obscure kind of doctor people might want to get an opinion from that had nothing to do with urology). But it was being quoted as some kind of breakthrough for a few weeks around various forums, etc before petering out.

Another example:

Last year, I wrote an email about actor Viggo Morgensen.

And, specifically, how when making the Lord of The Rings movies (he played Aragorn), he got so “in” character he was sleeping outside, carrying his sword everywhere, wandering off in the wilderness alone, basically becoming “one” with Aragorn, where the other actors didn’t know where Viggo ended and Aragorn began.

To which I got a reply guy chiming in with this myth:

“Dustin Hoffman did the same in the movie Marathon man with Lawrence Olivier. In order to look tired, Dustin did not sleep. He told so to Sir Lawrence Olivier who told Dustin: “Young man , how about acting? This answer stung young Dustin. I think Sir Lawrence Olivier was right.”

Nope.

Reply guy was suckered by a similar urban legend that went viral on its own.

According to customer Brian Timoney – one of the greatest Method Acting teachers on the planet, with the track record and students to prove it – it went down like this:

Dustin was filming one of the scenes in LA. Went to an industry party, was a bit worse for wear, and then took a night flight to New York for the next scene that was being shot there. He didn’t sleep much.

He turns up on set looking like hell, and Laurence asks why he looks like he does, and he explains he went to a party and had a night flight but it didn’t matter much, in fact, it was somewhat helpful as the scenes they were doing were the torturing scenes and he should look disheveled and discombobulated.

Laurence, as a joke, says to him, “Why don’t you try acting, dear boy?”

That’s how Dustin tells the story and hates it when it’s mistold.

The truth is, they got on like a house on fire. They really liked working with each other and became lifelong friends. Dustin also tells how Olivier often asked him if he was “too big” in a scene.

Olivier knew he was a stage actor, and Dustin was a film actor mainly, and he took advice from Dustin on how to pitch the level in a scene.

But of course, every misinformed anti-method person loves to mis-tell that story as some sort of evidence that method is mad, bad and crazy. Even though the world’s best actors use it, go figure. Having said that, if they can put Jesus on the cross, anyone is fair game.

One more example of fabrications going viral:

There is a classic Bugs Bunny cartoon episode where he’s mocks & insults Elmer Fudd who was hunting him by calling him “Nimrod.” Nimrod, of course, being a character in the book of Genesis who was a mighty hunter and tyrant.

i.e., he was mocking Elmer Fudd for being a terrible hunter.

After that?

Calling people “Nimrod” became slang for being an idiot, foolish, inept, etc.

But that had nothing to do with the context.

The “crowd” has been wrong about that, too, as it almost always is.

I don’t know where else I’m going with this.

So I will wrap up with, you can learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter here:

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Ben Settle

I don’t know if this’ll add anything to your life or not.

But behold some New Year resolutions I make every year, but never get around to doing:

1. Regular Twitter Spaces calls

2. Live Zoom calls to my list

3. Granting paying Email Players subscribers Marco Polo app access to me in addition to email access they have always gotten

4. Writing a 4th Villains book

5. Writing the graphic novel/comicbook adaption script for my first Enoch Wars novel Zombie Cop

Very unlikely I’ll do any of these in 2026 either.

i.e. Anti-resolutions.

What I will be focusing on instead:

* Getting a coherent 1st draft for the 7 (possibly 8 or 9) part series of novels I started writing in September

* Growing my options trading account as quickly & ruthlessly as possible to keep making cashflow faster than the government inflation can destroy it (what our Low Stress Trading framework does)

* Helping take our Low Stress Trading company itself to $10 million – as we did just a hair less than half that in 2025, 600%+ growth (people are hungry for what it does, to say the least)

* Putting out more “bait” for high quality Low Stress Trading affiliates, while turning off the low class/low quality/low info affiliates

* Making the 15-year anniversary Email Players issue (the August 2026 issue) the best, most valuable, most intense of them all so far

* Writing another Email Players “annual” issue

* Going to the first mastermind I’ve attended since late 2018, especially since it’s hosted by my pal Trevor Mauch and will be in the Burgle, which is less than 3 hours’ drive and I drive up there once a month anyway

* Possibly co-hosting our first “Vortex” event for our Low Stress Trading students in Bandon, OR, an hour from where I live – and in the very same wine bar/restaurant where my business partner in BerserkerMail and Low Stress Trading Troy Broussard & I plotted our first event (a one-off even we called “Wine Villains”), that ultimately led to our various biz ventures like software and trading

* Revamping my home page to optimize it for better and higher quality opt-ins

* Assembling & launching the sequel to my Copy Salesliloquies: Vol 1 book later this year

Again, I don’t know if this adds anything to anyone’s life.

But I have found writing all that out clarifying. And this sort of exercise is a way to get more done, even if for no other reason than it helps eliminate thinking about all the stuff you thought you’d do, but never really had any intention of doing it.

If you have not done the same for your 2026, I highly suggest it.

You can learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter here:

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Ben Settle

Below is my latest Oregon Eagle newspaper article.

The Oregon Eagle was founded by Email Players subscriber Richard Emmons that I bought some ownership in a couple years ago. And the advice below is to our state’s Republican politicians who are arguably the most incompetent & toothless, weak-minded & cowardly, and LEAST persuasive & influential people in the entire nation.

Much of this can be directly applied to your business & marketing:

How Oregon Republicans Can Stop Being Laughingstocks

Let me tell you a story.

A few years ago, the homeless coalition in Curry County wanted a grant to purchase hotels across the street from the Gold Beach high school to house homeless people. Gold Beach is a small, two stoplights town dependent on tourism. And at the time we already had some homeless leaving dirty drug needles & feces on the slide at the park where children play.

The proposal was controversial, to say the least.

But even more controversial was how they wouldn’t show the public their grant proposal.

Its supporters (including the Mayor) dismissively said to just trust them, and people in the local Facebook groups started debating it – including Oregon Eagle staff writer Stefania Settle. She grew up in Manhattan and experienced what happens – first hand – when politicians create such places.

Especially near children.

So, Stefania wrote a response to a post about it.

But it was all facts, statistics, and appeals to logic.

And I told her to set fire to that post and totally rewrite it in a way that gives readers a Vision instead. The example I gave her was Dr. Antony Levatino’s House Judiciary Committee hearing testimony about Planned Parenthood’s medical procedures after he performed over 1200 abortions.

He argued nothing and debated nothing.

He simply gave a Vision of the gruesome procedure by recounting an abortion performed on a 17-year-old girl who’d felt her baby kick for weeks. He showed the clamp used to pull out the baby’s legs, arms, spine, intestines, heart, and lungs. He also described the white liquid that was the baby’s brain draining onto a tray, and said:

“And if you have a day like I had a lot of times, sometimes a little face comes back and stares at you.”

It was pure Vision that was far more persuasive than citing 50+ years of dry data, statistics, or appeals to morality.

Thus, Stefania’s revised “Vision” post:

I grew up in Upper East Side of Manhattan, in one of the country’s wealthiest zip codes. . .and a townhouse was converted into halfway housing for the homeless by a similar coalition with similar reasoning (almost word-for-word), the street I grew up on quickly became hazardous and downright dangerous. 

A few examples: 

-A shelter “tenant” regularly masturbated right out on the street across from my building which I witnessed many times, starting when I was in middle school. 

– Dodging human feces and drug paraphernalia became such a knee-jerk habit I still look at the ground to watch where I’m walking to this day. 

– Going to the local pizza place with my friends after school always involved at least one of us walking in on someone shooting up in the bathroom. 

– At just 12, I was regularly followed and sexually harassed on my way home from school (three blocks away) to the point I had to carry personal protection for my own safety. (Which has given me a level of hypervigilance that only until moving here did I learn is not normal.) 

-Among other stories, many worse, I won’t share as they’re too graphic and personal. 

This happened in a neighborhood with a median income of $150,000-200,000 – not an inner-city or “bad area”-with a police precinct only a few blocks away. And, while this was in the late 90s, it’s only gotten worse – for instance, someone was stabbed in front of that shelter last month, in broad daylight, on a Saturday morning. 

I’m going to assume none of you want your kids to go through what I did, especially with the high school being so close to these motels that may potentially become a shelter like the one across the street from my old house.  

I grew up far too quickly at too young an age due to this and would never wish this on any child in the community, and certainly not on my own son. 

This initiative may be well-meaning, but they don’t know what they’re getting us into. I understand bringing up my childhood in NYC may seem extreme and even hyperbolic, but this was my lived experience.  

I cannot fathom how this project will do anything but create these same if not more dangerous conditions: like Oregon, the homeless in NYC are protected as a vulnerable population with the police unable to do much of anything.  

And considering this county doesn’t have nearly the tax revenue, police force, or political clout Manhattan does, I can’t even imagine how disastrous this could be. 

If you think that didn’t move the needle, think again.

People started asking if the coalition was being paid per homeless person, with a financial interest to have as many homeless people haunting Gold Beach as possible.

Stefania’s post changed hearts and minds not with boring data, statistics, or posturing… but with Vision.

Which brings me to Oregon Republicans:

Whatever their consultants are telling them to do obviously isn’t working.

They’re laughingstocks who’ve been losing for 40+ years both at the ballot box and in the House and Senate chambers. I argue a big part of that is their milquetoast ads and toothless “strongly worded” press releases Tina & her media cronies laugh at.

But Oregon Republicans can start winning again if they use Vision – especially in their ads, interviews, speeches, emails, social media, and local outreach.

It’s never been about money, arguments, walkouts, or voting harder.

It’s always been about Vision.

Democrats have used Vision for decades to sell everything from socialism and gun control to pronouns, porn in children’s schoolbooks, men in girls bathrooms, drug decriminalization, magic dirt immigration fairy tale theories, crooked mail-in ballots, masks, fake vaccines, and so on.

And if Republicans want to win elections, they’ll start using Vision, too.

And so it is ’round these here parts.

More on the paid Email Players newsletter here:

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Ben Settle

A self-described Zoomer copywriter says:

…navigating this online business world full of different business models, ideas, and opportunity. Learning as much as I can, observing what other successful people such as yourself are doing, and trying to find my mission and purpose because I know I was also meant to do something.

I read your emails every day and love studying the way you tell stories, and your intent behind every email.

I kind of see you as this wise old guy who has a lot experience in writing & online business which I admire a lot. I remember watching your interview with Rebecca Matter for your Client-less Copywriter program and thinking, “this guy has life behind his eyes. This guy has done some stuff.”

Anyway to get to the point:

I think you should write a book giving writing & business advice to zoomers such as myself. I think you would play that persona very well and I think you’d do it very well. 

Just an idea though, and you clearly don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.

It was mighty write of him to grant me permission to not create such a book.

I will just say this:

Zoomers generally don’t want to hear what I have to say.

Those particular boys & ghouls mostly have to hit bottom before being receptive to my stuff. So they don’t need me to write a book. They need to go broke buying and following the info in everyone else’s books, courses, horse crap first.

I’m like the old timey day preacher with these guys:

I gotta get ‘em lost before I can get ’em found.

On the other hand:

Earlier this year I did some consults for several customers.

And most of them were Zoomers, it turned out. And each and every one of these particular Zoomers was not only extremely savvy and successful in their respective businesses (and not all were even “online” businesses, believe it or not), but in at least one case the guy was selling to Boomers TWICE his age in a very snobby and snooty professional niche.

In other words, as far as MY Zoomers go:

The kids are gonna be all right.

In fact, these guys I talked to will be ruling the roost in 20 years.

I take great pride in that, incidentally, as they were very generous in giving me credit.

Zoomers get a lot of bad PR.

Much of it well-deserved.

But all generations have their trauma bragging and problems. And it’s all fractal, and what’s most important is just doing the right things, long enough, consistently. Do that and Zoomer or Boomer you’re gonna eventually win.

As for specific Zoomer advice for copywriting and selling online?

I’d say read the daily emails, and if you think you’re ready, and aren’t afraid to work and are not looking for “shortcuts” or whatever… then check out the paid Email Players newsletter.

More here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

In my humble-but-accurate opinion, today every online marketer should watch:

“A Miracle on 34th Street”

(The 1947 version)

It’s about a Macy’s department store Santa named Kris Kringle who claims to be the real Santa. And as Macy’s Santa, he starts doing something that would horrify your typical online marketing goo-roo fapping to his metrics all day, and that almost gets him fired by Macy’s, until they realize what he did was making them more sales, creating more loyal customers, and resulting in a more new business for them.

What did Kris do?

He started sending customers to the Macy’s arch nemesis competitor Gimbels!

Why did he do this?

Because Kris didn’t give a crap about Macy’s “metrics.”

He only cared about Serving Macy’s customers.

And there were many cases where Macy’s customers could find something the store did not sell, or that the customer could get a better deal on even if Macy’s did have it, and so Kris told them about it – putting the customer first.

The result?

Customers ended up spending more money at Macys.

So much so, the owner made it a policy for all the employees to do as Kris did.

Obviously, that’s a movie.

But what about in the real world?

Does this paradox of sales persuasion “work?”

Let’s just say, while the online marketing goo-roo mind cannot comprehend it, yes this is a real phenomenon that does indeed work. But not as “tactic” – only as an ethic. I have experienced this exact same thing both as marketer/business and as customer. If you legitimately want the best for your friends, your peers, your customers, students, etc why would you not want them to know about those who can help – even if that business/person ain’t you?

I’m not saying to be a charity.

But if, for example, you were a doctor, and a patient with a potentially fatal condition came to you, and you KNEW he would be better served (and his life saved) by a doctor with more experience & a better track record for helping with the particular condition he suffers from than yourself, would you greedily not refer them to the guy who can better save his life?

There’s a lot of psychological resistance to this.

People will knee-jerk wonder if their customers will leave & forsake them.

First off, that’s probably not going to happen, and if anything’ll be the opposite.

And secondly, if they leave you forever, so what? There are millions of potential customers even in super obscure niches. If someone you showed actual concern for hits the bricks, who cares?

Let ‘em go haunt someone else, and make sure the door doesn’t hit them in arse.

Something else to keep in mind:

If your marketing game is tight, they’ll almost certainly be replaced with someone better soon enough. But, the reality is, if you fear these things, then that means your game is weak and you got bigger problems than some customers fleeing. Plus, that way of thinking shows a naiveté about how buyer psychology works that’s holding you back in ways you probably can’t even fathom.

It’s also pure, unadulterated Neediness.

Really, there is no other explanation.

And nothing will destroy your influence like Neediness.

Neediness is the business crusher, the brand destroyer, and the sales annihilator.

People smell Neediness like crap on a shoe.

And if you have this dreadful disease of the psyche it’ll seep out in subtle ways in not only your content but even in the way you move, look, sound, speak, write, behave, react, and make decisions.

All right have ye a Merry Christmas.

And if you want to “gift” yourself to an Email Players newsletter subscription go here:

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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:

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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:

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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