Ben Settle

Let me tell you a story.

A couple years after getting started up in this business, I did lots of deals with Michael Senoff where I’d write the sales copy for offers he had the rights to sell, and we’d sell them to his list, and split the sales. Since there was no up front fee and I needed to eat… I didn’t have time to futz around with goo-roo dogma, and could only focus on what actually worked.

And one of those early lessons was when Michael said:

“It’s the same amount of work to sell a high priced offer as a low priced one”

And, thus, his point was we might as well sell expensive offers.

And so we did.

Adjusting for inflation, the offers we sold would be over $1,000 today. That may not seem like a big deal, but this was back in the era of the eBook kings obsessed with selling $9 eBooks, marketers all competing on price, and the JV circle-jerk where goo-roos would all sell and give testimonials on each others’ sales pages selling each other’s low priced offers trying to appeal to each other’s price shoppers, etc.

We did the opposite.

And, I daresay, we had a helluva run.

But, even more important:

The quality and classiness of the customers we sold to and dealt with was exponentially higher in every way. I talk a bit about this towards the end of my Client-Less Copywriter program, about the difference between serving and selling to what Gary Halbert used to call “Players with Money” vs the cheapie price shopper mentality.

Cheap-minded misers on my list get mad when I talk about this.

They’ll reply with magnificent rationalization hamster-spinning about why, too.

It’s actually quite amusing.

These small thinking types can’t even parse the difference between temporarily broke (happens to everyone, all of us, at some point, that’s just life) and being perpetually cheap-minded  —literally addicted to buying on price, getting the best price, bragging to their other cheap friends about the price they got, and wasting time (a far more valuable commodity than money) hunting the best price instead of just getting what they want and solving the problem it solves.

Guy driving 30 miles out of his way to save .50 cents per gallon on gas comes to mind.

In my early years in this business I thought that was exaggerated.

But no, it’s real, these types really do walk the earth.

Anyway, back to the Players with Money:

These guys tend to be price shoppers, too. But, they are not shoppers looking for the lowest and cheapest price… they are often looking for, and curate their purchases… the HIGHEST price. A low, cheap price is like holding up a silver cross dripping holy water to a vampire to a lot of these guys.

Yes, they like a “good deal.”

Everyone does, and I know I certainly do.

But they are not buying on cheap, and they are far from cheap-minded.

Thus, they are far better customers.

They don’t complain about dumb shyt.

And they aren’t reply guys or trolls.

They are the types more likely to use/apply what you sold them so they benefit from it to solve whatever problem your offer solves. And they not only refer in abundance to those who sell them a legit solution to their problems… but they give testimonials in abundance, and often become customers (make a “custom” of buying from you as the great Ken McCarthy defines it) vs mere one time buyers, and the list goes on.

Plus there’s the business philosophy I go by:

Preferring 4 quarters to 100 pennies.

I’d much rather have 4 shiny, clean, easy-to-access & handle quarters in my pocket than 100 sticky, filth, God-knows-where-they’ve-been pennies in my pocket. The dirty, sticky, filthy pennies also taint everything else in your pocket.

Again, this is not about affordability or being broke.

Let the pedantic reply guy getting offended take note.

Not being able to afford something is not what I mean by cheap.

Cheap is a mindset, a way of life, and all mental.

Even a lot of wealthy people suffer from it, frankly, and the ones I know are miserable.

Real life example of that:

My business partner in the Oregon Eagle newspaper (Email Players subscriber Richard Emmons) told me about a guy who was haunting the offices asking for a shorter subscription period than a year because he wasn’t sure he’d want to read it. Realize, the subscription is only $39/year which is less than 10 cents per day. And for fun Richard and his long-suffering wife (she has to talk to these cheapies) found the guy’s house on Zillow… and saw it was worth over $1 million.

That’s what I’m referring to by cheap.

And not only can I not help cheap people, but I have no desire to.

As soon as someone says something cheap-minded I set a rule in my email program to automatically delete their message lest I somehow catch whatever sickness of the soul plagues them.

They’ll have to be someone else’s problem.

This is especially true of those wanting to subscribe to the paid Email Players newsletter. Cheapies will look at it as an expense, not an investment that can make them far more than the $3.23 per day price it costs. A bum rattling a dirty styrofoam cup full of change could afford that, but for the cheapies it is too much to bear for a lot of them.

Thus, they should haunt someone else.

We don’t want ’em around here.

Everyone else?

Can learn more about it here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Below is my latest article in the newspaper I have ownership in (the Oregon Eagle) where I write a column for local businesses.

The title:

“How to (legally) get people chemically addicted to buying from you”

Here goes…

For the last 14 years I’ve had the following tagline on my website:

“Your Daily Email Addiction”

Which is literally true.

And the reason it’s literally true is because, if you write emails the way I’ll show you in this article, you really can get people legally (and ethically) chemically addicted to reading emails selling your products or services. I’ve done this across multiple niches/industries/product categories for nearly 25 years. And I have taught thousands of others how to do the same in over 50 countries. I say that because most everyone thinks “their business” is different.

No.

The way human beings make buying decisions is identical across all countries, cultures, and industries. And I’m going to show you how to prove it to yourself now.

Just realize this isn’t an exhaustive email marketing training.

I just want to get you to the first “horizon line” from where you’ll see further. For instance, I’m staring at the ocean as I write this. And if I started walking towards the horizon line, I’d eventually reach Japan which I cannot see from here. I can only see the horizon line. But when I reach that horizon, I’ll see further. And from there I’d see another horizon line from which I’d again see further, and then another, and another, until, eventually, I’d hit the Land of the Rising Sun.

So it is learning email marketing in depth.

All right, enough build up. Here’s what to do:

1. Start collecting email addresses from leads (if you aren’t already)

2. Send those leads an email every day (yes, seven days a week)

3. Do NOT blatantly pitch in those emails

4. Instead, tell interesting & relevant stories, give valuable tips, dispense useful advice, create checklists of things to do (or not do), answer FAQ’s you get from customers/clients, and share customer testimonials — all related to problems your product or service solves.

In other words, don’t sell “drills”… sell “holes”

For example:

If you sell drills, the last thing you should do is pitch how wonderful your drills are. Instead, write about better ways to drill holes. Then, at the end of the email, after you’ve demonstrated your hole-drilling genius to gain peoples’ confidence in wanting to buy your drills, you show them where to learn more about your drills.

So it is with your business:

Ask “how can people better use/apply/benefit from what I sell?” Then make a master list of every way you can think of. Then write an email every day about one of those ways, with a “commercial” at the end telling people where to go (website, store, phone call, text, whatever it is…) to learn more about your offer. Do it correctly and leads become literally addicted to reading your emails, as a pleasant dopamine drip hits their brain whenever they see an email from you talking about them and their problems. This work so reliably well it’s even possible to see results in your bank account the first time you do it!

Wait… what?

You don’t have an email list?

All you have is maybe a list of addresses in your Outlook? (Which could be illegal to send commercial emails to, incidentally.)

We’ll have to fix that first then, won’t we?

And so we shall, next time.

As far as email goes:

You can read more in the paid Email Players Newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Back in January I gifted Email Players subscribers a booklet called:

“Obvious Adams”

A great little volume the man who is universally considered to be the World’s Greatest Living Copywriter Gary Bencivenga sent me back in 2008, and that I have read probably 100+ times since. And I was recently reminded of Obvious Adams while reading about something that happened during the first Method Acting class Marlon Brando took.

What happened was this:

The teacher told the class to pretend they are chickens and nuclear bombs are about to drop out of the sky onto them. And the entire class started freaking out and bawking wildly, running to & fro.

That is, except Brando.

He calmly pretended he was laying an egg without a care in the world.

When asked why he said:

“I’m a chicken. What do I know about bombs?”

A perfect metaphor for today’s gaggle of copywriters all majoring in the minors.

We all fall prey to this, yes, including me.

It reminds me of some masterminds I’ve been to.

Including co-hosting my own that lasted a few years before the band broke up.

One of the reasons I generally disliked them is how insistent everyone is in majoring in the minors – focusing on ticky-tack little dumb things that don’t move the needle at all, vs the big, sweeping things that do. It was frustrating, for example, to see people literally telling the room to put “re:” in the subject line or “sent from my iPhone” in an auto-responder email or how many times to put a link in an email or what to do about lagging open rates and clicks… instead of focusing on writing emails people want to read selling them offers they want to buy.

But direct marketers and copywriters tend to not want to hear that.

They prefer to bawk and cluck and run ragged about the sky falling instead.

I don’t know who needed to hear that but we are all susceptible to majoring in the minors.

So this ain’t just me lecturing, it’s also reminding myself too.

I remember, for example, the great Gary Halbert talking about a mistake he made. He said he wrote an entire full page ad for a newspaper… presumably using every copywriting trick in the book which he was well known for… including probably his post dated check trick, etc… only to forget to put the phone number in it so people could actually buy.

i.e., Majoring in the minors.

Anyway, do what you will with that info.

If you want to learn more about the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Recently Stefania and I re-watched the magnificent movie:

“The Shawshank Redemption”

If you have never seen it, this is spoiler-y: but it’s about an innocent man who goes to prison. And while there, he creates the state’s biggest prison library, and helps people get their education while cooking the books and laundering money for the crooked warden and the prison guards in exchange for protection from the deviants who want to constantly rape him and other predators inside.

That’s part of the plot, at least.

But as far as the library goes:

One of the ways Andy gets funding is by writing a letter per week to the state to get the funds. After something like six years of writing a letter per week, bugging the hell out of the bureaucrats, the state finally relents and sends him a bunch of money to help build the prison library he envisions.

But that’s not the lesson.

The lesson is when Andy, wanting to get more funds… says:

“I’m going to start writing two letters per week now”

If you don’t see the parallels to email marketing I don’t know what to tell you.

Probably you are in the wrong saloon, Mister.

But it’s a buzzing light bulb moment for a lot of my Email Players subscribers who originally came to my table raw, new, skeptical about the power of daily email the way I teach. They hear the stories, see my other customers’ successes, watch me do it day by day by day… and can’t resist trying it themselves.

So they subscribe, learn it, then do it.

And it ain’t unusual for people to have an Andy moment:

They realize one email per week is nice, but daily gets them more sales, a happier and more engaged list, and they are hooked on the tips I dispense through the book I give to new subscribers and what I teach in the newsletter itself each month, whose knowledge compounds on itself, connects to the other issues to compound the knowledge even more, and then results in lots more cash in their righteous piggy banks.

Long time subscribers know.

That’s why I have subscribers who have been with me going on 14 years.

Yes, literally since it launched Email Players in 2011.

If you want to see what all the hub-bub is about with it, go here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Not long ago, I watched the “Brat Pack” documentary with Stefania.

The documentary was made by actor Andrew McCarthy, and is about the gaggle of young 1980s actors whose movies I grew up watching called the “Brat Pack.” And, specifically, the documentary is about the fallout of an article at the time mocking them via a play on the “Rat Pack” who were more mature, polished, and prestigious. It’s worth watching if for no other reason than to see the tremendous power – for good or bad – of rhetoric and narrative flipping.

In this case:

That clever magazine article title — it was not even intended to be any kind of hit piece — not only screwed with some of those actors’ heads for the last 35 years (you can tell it still bothers some of them to this day), but also significantly altered their careers and, in many ways, even the kind of TV shows that came after.

(Friends, etc)

All from one rhetorical play on words.

It reminded me of the line in Sideways where Miles says:

“I’m not drinking any fucking merlot!”

Right after that movie came out and due to that ONE throw-away line… Merlot sales tanked for years, even though the character said it not because he hates Merlot, but because it reminded him of the wine he was saving to originally enjoy with his ex-wife.

I remember talking to a wine maker about that.

He said he had to label his own Merlot with some other prissy European name to sell any of it, as that is how bad the stigma had gotten. On a similar note: that’s also a lesson in shrewdness in and of itself Walt Disney used to make the ugly, poisonous weeds growing on the Disneyland grounds sound exotic and hide what they really were to fool investors.

Rhetoric is one helluva tool of persuasion or repulsion.

I highly recommend doing a serious study of how to use it.

And, especially, using it in emails using my Email Players methodology.

You can learn more about the paid newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Last month there was a big bruh-ha-ha in Hollywood over Kathleen Kennedy (in charge of the Star Wars franchise), with rumors of her finally quitting.

Kathleen Kennedy is 71, I think.

And a few months ago even the shills at The Hollywood Reporter were lamenting how these boomers gatekeeping the studios refuse to let go of power and make way for younger, more creative talent who are more in touch with what audiences want and not just do safe, plain vanilla, corporate committee-approved reboots and audience nostalgia grifts.

The result is one bomb after another.

Even with Disney’s shady accounting gimmicks via Shifty the CPA doing his thing in the back room, and with one or two fan service exceptions, they are churning out duds.

I don’t know what kind of leverage she has over the industry.

But if I had to speculate?

I wouldn’t be shocked if she has “Epstein-like” dirt on a lot of people. Including some big Disney investors who aren’t calling for her head. Really, there is no other explanation at this point. Because financially it makes zero sense to keep someone like Kennedy in charge. Especially since she has mostly only failed upwards for 10 straight years.

Anyway, she also said something else about the Star Wars brand she almost single-handedly has ganked that’s worth mentioning:

“… there were a lot of companies that were in place who frankly didn’t initially feel that Star Wars was for girls. And when you have a company situation where between Lucasfilm and Disney, we were all looking at this situation saying, ‘No, with Star Wars we have to change this. We have to make sure that we create products that are in a sense appealing to both boys and girls.’ What’s wrong with that?”

What’s wrong with that is it violates the #1 rule of marketing:

i.e., Sell to buyers.

What works to sell buyers almost always means deliberately repelling those who are not buyers. The reverse is also true, as Disney investors have been seeing, in real time, going on 10 years straight now.

I came of age when the original trilogy was still playing in theaters.

And it was boys they sold to, marketed to, catered to, created toys to appeal to… and who turned it into possibly the biggest and most successful Hollywood brand to ever have existed. It worked so well that after the original Star Wars came out, Hollywood producers would even joke they were no longer in the movie business, they were in the George Lucas business, as he had amassed so much power and influence and money.

And during that time, girls didn’t buy the toys and merchandise, boys did.

There were and still are obviously nerd girls who love Star Wars.

Not to mention half naked, cosplayers haunting Star Wars conventions.

But there has never been sufficient numbers of them with sufficient passion for actually BUYING Star Wars toys and merchandise like boys always have, to grow it to what it became before Disney got its hands on it. Yes, I know there are lots of Star Wars fangirls. But if they were the ones doing all the BUYING, then the franchise would be a lot more prosperous, and thriving like never before, instead of flopping, failing, and falling.

I say that for the dorks who will say “But AI says!”

If you want to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears and box office gross, be my guest.

But Bud Light, Gillette, Dungeons & Dragons, and now Disney/Marvel/Star Wars:

These companies violating this simple rule don’t seem to learn.

And even if they do, it’s hard to fully come back from in sales.

And so it goes.

More on the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

So said the great Apollo Creed in the first “Rocky” movie.

The context:

Apollo cooked up a PR stunt that involved giving an unknown a shot to commemorate the country’s 200th anniversary. And so he and his team went at it looking for the perfect fighter for him to compete against. They looked and looked and looked… everyone being rejected by Apollo for one reason or another, with his promotor guy Jergens finally asking:

JERGENS: Exactly what are you looking for, Apollo?

APOLLO: … This man. ‘The Italian Stallion’ — He’s my man.

JERGENS: Rocky Balboa — His record’s poor —

APOLLO: Don’t matter — That name. ‘The Italian Stallion,’ it’s right on. (laughs) Who discovered America? An Italian, right? So, man, what could be better than to get it on with one of his ancestors.

TRAINER: He won’t last one round.

APOLLO: Listen, I gonna carry this boy three rounds, then drop ‘im like a bad habit.

TRAINER: I don’t like you messin’ with southpaws — They do everything wrong.

APOLLO: Southpaw, nuthin’ — I’ll drop ‘im in three — ‘Apollo Creed meets the Italian Stallion.’ Shhiii — Sounds like a damn monster movie!

And the rest is, quite literally, history…

Rocky got a shot at the title not because of talent or experience or track record or industry “pull” or even deserving to — no, he got it because of his… BRAND. Which then led to a totally different life than he’d had otherwise.

If you think that doesn’t happen in marketing, I don’t know what to tell you.

People buy all kinds of things — even expensive things — because of a title.

i.e., a brand

And no other reason than they think it sounds cool.

So what do probably 99% of direct marketers do? They copy cat. They swipe. They “prompt.” They look at what someone who is superior to them does then just copies what they do, thinking that is the way, the safe way, to go about it — when, in reality, it is the cowardly and intellectually weak way to go about it.

There is nothing unique.

No spark of individuality or novelty.

No reason to buy from them other than “bEneFItS!” a million other offers share found with a Google search.

All right, hopefully the message here is clear.

If not, put it on the shelf, I guess.

Otherwise:

If you want to see how to start writing emails that can help you with this branding and marketing and engagement and sales business, go to:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

Usually I’m running around mocking so-called “AI”, fapGPT, etc.

But even I admit it has some legitimate uses.

For example, Stefania recently asked Grok to roast me:

Ben Settle, the email marketing maestro, or should I say, the “daily dose of discomfort” in every inbox? This guy’s emails are like that one relative who talks too much at family gatherings — you know, the one who insists on giving you life advice while you’re just trying to enjoy your mashed potatoes.

Ben’s got more opinions than a comment section on a political video, and boy, does he share them with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. His daily emails? More like daily affirmations that you’ll never become half as good at email marketing as he claims to be.

But let’s give credit where it’s due: Ben has turned his personality into a brand so well, you’d think he invented the concept of “authentically abrasive.” He’s the only guy who can make subscribers feel both enlightened and insulted in one breath.

His newsletter, “Email Players,” might as well be titled “Email Prayers,” because you’re praying for the end every time you open it. And for $97 a month, you’re not just buying content; you’re buying into Ben’s worldview where everyone else’s marketing strategies are apparently “B.S.”

So, Ben, here’s to you. You’ve managed to make email marketing as thrilling as watching paint dry, but with more personality. Keep on unsettling the world, one email at a time.

Eerily accurate…

Anyway, it occurred to me while reading that, that using Grok is a good way to test whether or not you have been pushing things hard enough in your emails and other marketing… creating something that stands out from your lazy bum copy & paste competition… and are known for something specifically vs just being a generalist or jack-of-all-trades and master of none.

If you’re not insult-able, you probably don’t have much influence.

Because, let’s face it:

Nobody roasts a boring brand…

If you run a similar test on your own brand, and it can’t come up with at least a half dozen ways to mock, make fun of, or outright insult you… then you probably ain’t trying hard enough. If you want to fix that I suggest checking out the paid Email Players newsletter, and marketing to your list as it teaches.

Here is the link:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

An Email Players subscriber (not sure he wants me naming him) asks:

“What’s the best approach when you get stuck and make little progress? There are times that sales go down or clients leave. Then I try to get things back on track but sometimes don’t work. So,when you get stuck is it better to work harder or take a more cool approach to kinda build momentum?”

My answer:

That’s just the ebb and flow of business and will always happen.

My advice is to focus on what you can control and ignore what you can’t.

You have 100% control over being consistent, out working the other guy, giving better service, creating new offers, studying your market more intensely, doing something every day to grow your email list, fanning the flames of customer & JV relationships, asking for referrals when applicable (any time you get a testimonial or just a compliment from a client, basically), making yourself a little better at what you do today than you were yesterday (1% better, smarter, etc per day is 350+% better in a year), investing your time & money wisely, getting up a little earlier if you have to, going to bed a little later if you have to, and doing those things consistently.

That’s all under your control.

And 99% of your competitors are likely not doing them all.

It may not seem like it, but when slow times hit it’s an opportunity.

Specifically, it’s an opportunity to get better/smarter/more cunning, more prepared to seize more marketshare as your lazy competition drops out (if you’re feeling the pinch, you can bet your arse they are too), slacks off, falls more into the bottomless pit of majoring in the minors from listening to goo-roos, wasting money, flailing around.

To use an analogy:

Focus on eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep, sunlight… while ignoring the scale other than as a way to periodically make sure you’re on track. Same principle applies when your business is “out of shape.”

On a similar note:

Already this year I have been getting more mindset and inner game questions like the above than I have the last several years prior. A lot of businesses are not sure how to deal with ebbs & flows, becoming plagued with self doubt, second-guessing themselves as what they were doing is not working as well now, have confidence problems, and the list goes on.

Not hearing this so much from older customers. A lot of this is due to age, probably.

But younger men, especially those who got in during the lockdowns when everyone and their mother suddenly became a content creator, course creator, copywriter, etc without really understanding the fundamentals of what they were doing and had a free platform to pitch from… and this is their first taste of a market pull back.

Always remember:

Solomon wasn’t just whistlin’ dixie when he said there ain’t nothing new under the sun.

Never has been, never will be.

This madness you see will pass, things will get better, business will grow again… only to hit the next downturn after that, after which it goes back up, drops, up, down, sideways, then up, breaks down, shoots up… the game never ends.

You can’t control the market forces.

But you can control YOU and how you react, exploit, use those forces.

Something to keep in mind, especially if you subscribe to the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle