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
