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.

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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

There is a trope that goes back many decades and well before the internet.

And it is the “But ‘MY business’ is different” crowd.

Just about anyone who’s been in the game has heard it, and many of us dismiss it for the assumptive-based reasoning it is that is 99% of the time completely untrue and only holding back those who buy into it hook, line, and sinker – which many online do, unfortunately.

Whatever your business is, it is probably not different.

And prancing around telling everyone it is basically makes you the business equivalent of the chick dressed as Harley Quinn at the Halloween party, surrounded by 100+ other chicks also in the exact same costume, telling the guys she talks to, “I’m not like those other girls.”

And so it goes with the “my business is different” crowd.

Take images in emails, for instance.

I got this question not long ago:

“What if you absolutely need to add images as a form of social proof? Since I write financial and sports betting-related copy, adding member wins and proof of profits is necessary.”

Admittedly I am not familiar with his exact niche.

So maybe I am missing something.

But I daresay 100 years of direct response says otherwise.

The way I see it, if you “needed” pictures in a niche/market/industry like that — or any adjacent industries — then all those broadcast radio ads and shows on flat sounding a.m. bandwidths selling financial advice, or narrating live sporting events, etc would never have made any money, never had lasted for decades in some cases, never had 10s of millions of listeners happily getting their info driving to and from work, totally engaged, and ready to buy from the other audio-only financial direct response ads during the commercials.

I am the last to prescribe any kind of one-size-fits all solution to any business.

But here is what I suggest this person try out just to see:

Write 30 days of daily emails ranting about the sport, exposing dirt and/or gossip about the players, critiquing what’s wrong about the industry that pisses you and your audience off, hot breaking news that affects everyone in the niche, your most radical opinions and predictions that you know half your list will disagree with, etc.

Then, if you must show visual aids?

If they HAVE to see a visual for so-called “social proof”?

Send ‘em to a website which you can control the end-to-end user experience (as opposed to emails especially if you use images — as different devices/user settings/ISPs, browsers, clients, screen sizes, etc show emails different, and, worse, if they have images turned off they are looking at blank squares) that also sells your offer, right there, while they are in “heat” to buy.

I can’t make you any promises.

But I highly suspect inbox deliverability will be a lot higher.

And, also, sales too.

Only one way to find out though, and that is to try it out.

Far too many “But Ben my business is different, I have to use images!” boys & ghouls don’t even bother learning and trying even really basic copywriting 101-level skills to use words to create far more engaging Vision than some graphics/images (which, by their nature, create scrolling not reading), or how to think beyond the typical binary-thinking online goo-roos and “agency” crowd who can’t write themselves out of a paper bag.

Anyway, that’s my opinion on it.

Do what you want with it.

For those who can think beyond amateur online goo-roo dogma, you might enjoy the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle

I want to talk about something that’s been on my mind lately.

And, in fact, I back-and-forthed with my pal Doberman Dan over the Marco Polo app for some 3 hours about it yesterday, as it’s such a fascinating topic. Anyway, this month’s Dan Kennedy newsletter (the one he does with Pete the Printer… do not bother asking me where to find it, they make it hard to find, seek ye Google) was extremely good.

Specfically:

A bit he did on how business is different and way less fun today than years past due to changes in character and mindset of customers/consumers. And he explained in half a page what I’ve spent the last year unsuccessfully trying to describe verbally to Stefania over many long hours of conversation.

The gist of it?

His observation in the lack of excitement about being successful compared to times past when the country was awash in opportunity & success and business magazines, hotel meetings always booked by businesses, seminars all over the place, and a US President even declaring US is in the business of being in business.

Anyone in the game back in early 2000s, 90s, 80s knows.

What changed?

Many things but I will just focus on something I noticed after leaving ALL social media at the end of 2018. I left everything in one swoop and focused all my energies on reading actual books (mostly biographies) and hunkering down to write lots of books and grow my business outside of the noise and stupidity I was seeing all around me on social.

Then, in early 2023 (after Elon bought Twitter) I returned there.

And it was a totally different planet than late 2018.

It was nothing like the Twitter from 4 years prior.

I suspect most people who had been there during those 4 years didn’t even notice the change. Clicks & algorithms were obviously already a thing before that. But upon returning everything was almost entirely click & algorithm-driven to the point where it was dominated by absolute talentless hacks and blatant grifters without a single ounce of marketing skill or having spent any time grinding to build and grow or produce anything have platforms of millions of followers (a lot of them bots, most likely, though) due to the phenomenon.

They get paid not on producing or selling anything, but shock and rage bait.

Or, in some cases, being one of Elon’s baby mamas.

It’s almost become like a giant Jerry Springer episode in some ways.

Nothing is produced.

Success is not so much earned as granted, and then measured as metrics/numbers.

No sales of anything required or even mentioned.

It’s even affected the entertainment industry where now casting decisions are being based not on talent but social media following numbers. A producer lamenting this last year I quoted at the time put it perfectly when he said what everyone is thinking:

“Everyone’s a celebrity but nobody’s got talent”

So that is one of many reasons behind today’s change, imo.

It’s all fleeting, though, as all illusions are.

And the ending is predictable.

Stefania sees me talk about this and says I sound giddy and am banking on it all crashing.

And, admittedly, she’s right.

Then we can get back to the business of selling instead of clicks.

More info on the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.EmailPlayers.com

Ben Settle