Ben Settle

Came a question:

Hello Ben

I know you don’t like to answer questions unless it’s a customer. I have bought all your books on Amazon if that counts. I have recently found you and listened to all of your podcasts both of them. My question is how do I build a list while making my product? What is the incentive for people to get on the list and how does it work? Thank you for your time.

Translation:

“I bought all your books on Amazon & listened to all your 230+ podcast episodes except for the ones about list-building”

Yeesh.

My opinion:

I could literally hand this mope every Email Players issue I’ve written over the past 10+ years that talked about ways to grow or even add entire new income streams onto a business, and sometimes without even requiring an offer… walk him through it word for word, and even open whatever program he uses to write emails with… and it wouldn’t do him a lick of good.

How do I know?

Because he’s still wandering the goo-roo casino.

The goo-roo casino is a term I invented many years ago to describe this phenomenon.

Personally, I despise casinos.

Even more than I despise airports.

But I can’t help but admire how they get away with psychologically manipulating schmucks even when they’re losing into thinking they are winning — by the way the machines react with pretty flashing lights and music, and the way the numbers are presented.

It’s quite brilliant in its deviousness.

Now relate that to the so-called internet marketing niche.

It works nearly the exact same way — and unfortunately a lot of otherwise-smart people die (figuratively) penniless in the goo-roo casino, even as they think they are “winning” via buying yet another bright shiny cool sounding eBook all their other goo-roo casino pals on Facebook just bought, or by joining yet another coaching program everyone they know is talking about, when they haven’t even consumed, much less learned, the prior books/programs/coaching they invested in.

Which brings me back to the guy above:

Assuming he really did consume all my content he obviously didn’t really listen to it.

If he had, he wouldn’t have asked that particular question.

I can’t do much to help guys like that.

And this is especially the case with my Email Players newsletter.

Can’t help those types.

And they are better off shopping elsewhere.

The grownups who have a business, a list, and an offer I can help.

To see how go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Sometimes I think my emails are like the Scarecrow’s mask in the movie Batman Begins, when Crane says about it:

“these crazies, they can’t stand it”

Take this blue flame special, for example:

“Have your attorney instruct you to provide a functional unsubscribe button to this spam. Should I send you a link to the attorney general’s page?”

The email he was whining about?

Was sent to him October 5, 2017.

Over 4 years ago.

The unsubscribe button didn’t “work” because he had long since opted-out.

Or take this dork:

(responding to my recent email about why I avoid masterminds)

“So, you’ve spoken at, attended, and paid for masterminds but you avoid them like liberals avoid omicron. That’s some serious double talk which is what [link edited out] listees did until they could no longer talk.”

Imagine thinking this is some kind of “gotcha!”

Especially when I literally wrote in the same email he responded to:

“the last one I attended (some two and a half years ago) where I first conspired with Troy Broussard to partner on some software platforms.”

Sharp as a tack that one.

As Stefania laughed:

(she gets to see all my nuthouse emails):

“I wonder how long he’d been sitting on that link waiting to spring it in you—‘Hah, that’ll show him!’”

No doubt.

As for the link I edited out from his reply above?

Sounded like (did not bother to click it) it goes to a site that lists people who died because they didn’t get the fake vaks-seen. Because, as everyone knows, people don’t croak from the covid 98% of the time because they are obese, elderly, or have multiple comorbidities.

No, they die from a fake vaks deficiency.

All right, I’ve had enough fun here.

More info on my Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

One of my all-time favorite business books is:

“Steve Jobs”

By Walter Isaacson.

It is especially valuable since blasting my way into the software business arena — now selling 3 SaaS offers with another one (a shopping cart) on deck, and yet another (integrated multimedia mobile messaging system) in the hole.

Back to the book:

One of the more amusing parts of the book was back in the 80’s when the socialist wife of France’s Prime Minister at the time took a tour of the factory where Apple computers were built. Right on cue, she starts whining about how Steve treated his workers. All of which pissed Steve off so much, he hopped in his Rolls-Royce and started speeding down the highway going 100+ mph. Of course, a cop pulled him over and started to write him a ticket. And while the cop was writing the ticket, Steve obnoxiously honks the horn, sticks his head out the window, and tells the cop:

“I’m in a hurry!”

Anyway, the book talks a lot about Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field.”

And this was an example of that, and how he just didn’t think the rules ever applied to him.

It also got me to thinking about something else:

How hardcore entrepreneurs are always in a hurry.

Nothing can happen too fast, too quickly, or in too little time for those of us who exist each day not just with a sense of urgency… but a sense of EMERGENCY. In Steve Jobs’ case, he prophesied he’d die young, and thus had a strong urge to get as much done in the little time he had.

A lot of boys & ghouls I know up in this business are like this.

They tend to be the only kind I talk to or associate with.

And it’s the only way I can teach or do email marketing at all.

To me it’s all about SPEED, Spanky Loo.

Last month I was asked by an Email Players subscriber if I recommend reading an email out loud like I talk about doing with long form sales pages… or just run it?

My answer:

“I don’t bother reading emails out loud, I am more concerned with speed”

In my experience, it’s the secret of monetizing email to the max:

To make more sales than you do now, simply write & send more emails than you do now, faster than you do now.

Word to the wise and all that.

In the meantime, you can read more about my Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

True story #1:

While I was on his podcast last year, “Email Players” subscriber Vance Morris — who spent 10 years working for Walt Disney World and now teaches others how to “Disnify” their businesses — told me:

“Everything at Disney has an origin story.”

And I do mean everything.

Every employee (cast member), every statue, every picture on a ceiling, and even the tiniest details 90% of customers will never see has a story behind it.

The effect:

Depth.

Lots of Depth — and certainly far more Depth than Six Flags and other parks.

Which brings me to…

True story #2:

Before writing his scripts, Quentin Tarantino writes long, detailed origin stories for his characters — even when he doesn’t include those stories in his movies. Take, for example, his last movie “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” — where he wrote 5 full length TV episode scripts about the TV character played by the main character in the movie (a movie star in westerns), even down to who the directors, writers, casting directors, etc of those episodes were.

None of that made it into the movie.

But it added to the movie’s Depth.

And that Depth no doubt added many more dollars to the movie’s box office gross.

Which brings me to the lesson:

Depth in emails & copywriting.

Depth helps create engagement with your reader.

Depth helps forge a strong intellectual & emotional bond with your reader.

And, best of all, Depth helps build a deeper & more fanatical (if you do it right) relationship with your reader — where your reader may very well buy even if they didn’t know who you were or that your offer existed at all just 10 minutes earlier.

A good asset to have in your corner.

One that can be especially valuable when combined with what I teach in Email Players especially.

To check out the newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Several years ago, I had one of my sales letters reviewed for legal compliance by “Email Players” subscriber Mike Young.

It was quite the education, too.

In fact, while I am certainly no expert on the subject, and I very well may be wrong… going by what he told me, it’s rather astounding how many sales letters — even by so-called world class copywriters with legal departments reviewing their copy — look like gigantic “fed bait” targets to me now.

Anyway, I quickly went to work fixing the compliance “holes” in that ad.

And, soon after that, I ran it.

Then something interesting happened.

Even though I thought for sure the changes I made to my sales letter to make it more compliant with claims, etc would have made its response significantly weaker… just the opposite happened.

Response, engagement, and sales were way higher than expected.

The quality of customer was way higher than expected.

And my knowledge of copywriting soared higher than expected.

The reason?

The more compliant my sales copy, the more believable it is.

The more believable it is, the more likely it’ll sell the skeptics.

And the more it sells the skeptics, the more sales I get — probably because skeptics are often a 2-5 x’s bigger market segment than the hyper buyers attracted to the screaming claim & exclamation mark-ridden copy are. In fact, it was such a valuable experience I invested a pretty penny in having a bunch of my other various companies’ sales letter analyzed a few months ago.

A thought:

It could be the greatest copywriting “hack” is having it legally compliant…

To check out my Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

An opinion:

The most valuable gold in the late Gene Schwartz’s magnificent “Breakthrough Advertising” book ain’t the main content where it drills deep into the gold mines of headlines, market/product awareness & sophistication, image-building, verbally creating credibility for your offers, and all the other ingenious information inside.

I’d argue it’s in the preface & introduction.

Specifically, the 3 gleaming gems below.

On vision:

“This book is not about building better mousetraps. It is…about building larger mice, and then building terrifying fear of them into your customers.”

On swiping:

“That’s why memorizing theories won’t make you a market wizard, or rewriting somebody else’s headlines won’t make you a copy writer.”

And on… thinking:

“The correct solution, the right headline, the perfect ad lies buried in the problem itself. It has never been written before. It cannot be produced by rote, carbon copying or mutations. But it can be sprung to the surface — automatically — by asking the right question.”

Each one of those gems is worthy of hours of examination.

And of thinking deeply about how to apply them to your business.

Here’s another thought:

Thinking is practically discouraged in copywriting these days.

Something about creativity being bad, the pioneers go home full of arrows, and other one-liners almost always being pushed on people who oh-so-ironically use creativity to the max and are often pioneers.

Thus, the rise in copywriting sex robots.

(i.e., software that supposedly writes copy for you)

Goo-roo fanboys blatantly swiping everything in sight.

And direct response copywriters so ignorant of their own industry they think split testing was invented on Facebook.

Whatever the case, here’s the point:

The one thing that separates the men from the boys when it comes to copywriting ain’t swipe file content, NLP wizardry, 90-year old headline formulas, or hacks.

It’s thinking.

He or she who thinks & solves problems hardest wins.

All right, ‘nuff said.

To check out the Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

I’ve mentioned this magnificent Robert Greene book before:

“The 33 Strategies of War”

Most people I know in business talk up Greene’s 48 Laws of Power.

But in my opinion 33 Strategies of War is far more useful.

It’s simply chock-full of great business advice.

Including advice about copywriting, marketing, selling, influence, persuasion, customer service, negotiation, dealing with (and profiting from) trolls, building out email campaigns, hiring employees or team members, building a company, outselling your competition, seizing market share, list curation, acquiring new clients, making more sales, and the list goes on.

None of these lessons are checklist “do this, this, and this…” style.

And you have to be looking for the lessons.

But they are all throughout the book.

Take this part about content creation:

(Context: Publisher Samuel Adams’ campaign to turn the colonists against the English)

“The colonists had had a high opinion of the English, but not after Adams’s relentless campaign. To succeed, Adams had to resort to exaggeration, picking out and emphasizing the cases in which the English were heavy-handed. His was not a balanced picture; he ignored the ways in which the English had treated the colonies rather well. His goal was not to be fair but to spark a war, and he knew that the colonists would not fight unless they saw the war as just and the British as evil. In working to spoil your enemy’s moral reputation, do not be subtle. Make your language and distinctions of good and evil as strong as possible; speak in terms of black and white. It is hard to get people to fight for a gray area.”

There is literally centuries of wisdom in that for the content creator.

Literally nobody cares about much less remembers “fair & balanced.”

Yes, they may emotionally respond to the term.

(i.e., Fox News, which like all news is neither fair or balanced.)

But fair & balanced content = boring content.

Boring content = little or no engagement with your content.

Little or no engagement with your content = little Tommy can’t get that Playstation for Christmas.

Something else to think about:

There’s no passion in fair & balanced.

And, I would argue such content is inherently dishonest anyway.

At the very best you’ll be ignored.

At the worst your enemies will simply use it against you.

Whatever the case:

A lot of content creation comes down to something one of my favorite marketing teachers Sean D’Souza has been teaching for years about consumption. Everyone teaches attraction & conversion. Hardly anyone teaches — much less practices — the importance of consumption of content. Without that consumption you get a sale which I suppose is nice. But without consumption — and eager consumption at that — you’re not really building a relationship. You’re not making the next sale in advance. And you’re not really adding anything to anyone’s life, including your own, as that one-time sales will be pissed away before you know it.

All of this is especially true when it comes to high ticket content.

i.e., the kind of content people pay you hundreds or even thousands for.

And so it goes…

To check out the Email Players newsletter, go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

A bloke in France once asked why I don’t use a printer in Europe.

Specifically, for European subscribers to cut costs and (I quote) –

“protect planet earth a bit in terms of carbon footprint.”

My answer at the time:

If anything my righteous carbon footprint is way too small. Especially since I haven’t flown anywhere since Fall of 2018 when I spoke at a couple events on the East coast, and my contempt for travel reached its boiling point.

Thus my carbon footprint is truly rookie numbers.

Daddy’s gotta pump that carbon footprint size back up.

I shall NOT rest until the world is turned into Mordor…

That said, I am a big fan of recycling.

At least, when it comes to emails.

Enter another question at around the same tie about the idea of “recycling” emails that I do all the time, oftentimes making more sales the second, third, or fourth time I use an email than the first time I use it.

Yes, AOC, it’s true.

When it comes to making your bank account greener, recycling those evil emails is just fine.

In fact, here’s another amusing thought:

The cold, hard numbers over the past close to 20 years since I started doing this have proven that if I only reused the ones that “wOrKeD!” the first time I’d be killing my own sales. Especially since, so many of my most profitable emails did bupkis the first time I used them, but pulled all kinds of new business when recycling them later.

Which is why I told him:

Yes, by all means recycle good emails.

It can do wonders for your bank account’s environment.

Of course, to write recyclable emails, you gotta learn how to write them in the first place.

And that is a job for “Email Players.”

More info on the newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Reader MV once asked:

Hey Ben,

Im a “short” time reader and hap-hazzard follower.

Just a quick observation from your emailings…Ive noticed you regularly refer to Copywriting/Marketing experts as “the late great” so ‘n so…

My question is why?

Youve been around long enough, done the work and obviously have a solid reputation so…

Why do you feel the need to refer to them in every email?

Just a question. No agenda. No hate. Just Curious….

My first thought is:

Why wouldn’t you want to give reverence to those who paved the way for your own successes and triumphs? In fact, the more successful I get at this game, the more appreciative I am of the great men of business & marketing I’ve learned from over the years – the Matt Fureys, the Gary Bencivengas, the Dan Kennedys, the Ken McCarthys, and Gary Halberts, Gene Schwartzs, Jim Camps, Sean D’Souzas, Stan Billues, Paul Hartunians, Barry Mahers, Joe Girards, John Carltons, Leo Burnetts, and the list goes on.

And everyone else I mention in my works.

Look ’em up, buy everything they sell.

I couldn’t NOT give them their well-deserved props.

It would be too… strange.

Another thought on this:

Back in my Flakebook days, this not sourcing and giving credit was so rampant it was borderline criminal. Especially, for example, the gaggle of secret gurus who would pass around a checklist the great Dan Kennedy wrote for his “Ultimate Sales Letter” book, that he originally only gave to attendees of high ticket seminars, about researching a market, without giving any credit to Dan. In some cases, these blue flame specials doing it would even imply they created the list, and not the man who’s been at this game since before they were tugging on the teet.

More still:

If you truly want the best for your audience why keep your influences a secret?

You think those customers will defect and leave you, Spanky?

First off, that’s probably not going to happen.

And secondly, if they do, so what?

There are millions of potential customers even in super obscure niches.

If someone leaves, who cares?

Let ‘em go.

If your business & marketing game are both tight, they’ll be replaced with someone better soon enough. But, the reality is, if you fear these things, then that means your marketing 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 can’t even fathom.

If this sounds cryptic, let me put it to you this way:

Summer of 2018 I did a series of shows on my old podcast, each featuring someone on my “Mount Rushmore” (hat tip to the great Brian Kurtz for that analogy…) of favorite marketing teachers. I not only talked about all the cool things I learned from them, but I shamelessly promoted them, their sites, their products, etc. And during that time I didn’t see a single customer “defect” and got as much, if not more, new business during that time as usual. The best buyers — the serious students, not the contemptible new product junkies and small-thinking types who chase loose change on the sticky floor of the goo-roo casino — appreciate being told about some tip, some secret, some teacher who will give them an edge. It only makes the best customers bond with you more, trust you more, and want to do business with you more.

Finally:

Not giving credit when one should is pure, unadulterated Neediness.

There is no other explanation.

And nothing will destroy your influence like Neediness. People smell it a mile away. And if you have this dreadful disease of the psyche it’ll seep out in subtle ways in your writing, in your videos, in the way you move, behave, and react to questions/objections/trolling, etc.

Neediness is the deal-destroyer.

It destroys brands, reputations, and entire businesses.

On the other hand, being secure enough in yourself to admit you learned something from someone else, and letting everyone know it when relevant, opens the mind to doing more business with you.

Anyway, bottom line:

I’m not saying to be paranoid about this.

Sometimes you have knowledge that is bubbling up in your mind and you really don’t remember where it all came from, or it’s a combo of multiple sources + experience + your own unique application of whatever it is, and so on.

I ain’t talking about that.

I’m simply saying don’t be shy about giving props when the opportunity arises.

Because that’s what it is:

An opportunity —

To share a resource you benefited from.

To display your respect for those who you learned from.

And, yes, to demonstrate your non-Neediness.

All of which’ll do more for your business than keeping people a secret.

Okay, enough of this clacking.

I often talk about my influences in “Email Players.”

More info here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle