The heavyweight champion of the world of success hacks

Exactly 13 years ago in 2010 during the week between Christmas and New Years, I decided I’d had enough of client work. I was doing a lot of copywriting for others at the time. But I grew tired of it and wanted to be my own client. So I sat down during that week and hammered out a detailed business plan to build out a business selling info products and supplements to a male health-related niche. The plan heavily involved following what a guy at the time showed me for how he built a $70k per year weight loss business doing literally nothing all day except answering a few customer service questions and playing with his kids. A $70k business may not sound like much. But his entire operation was: 1. Almost 2,000 articles on various article directories (SEO-driven, no longer viable) 2. Which drove traffic to his opt-in page 3. Then email to sell a $19 eBook via PayPal And that was it. That was his entire business — no affiliates, no funnel, no back end sales, no joint ventures, no nothing else but that. And I remember thinking if a guy like that could do $70k per year doing almost nothing, imagine what someone who does know copywriting, who does know how to create a back end, and who does understand how to build out a funnel could do? And so I got to work. And I spent the next month and a half following his protocols: * Writing nearly 1,000 key word optimized unique articles for article directories * Writing nearly 500 key word optimized unique blog posts * Writing the eBook, the sales page, and a 101-email sequence (overkill in hindsight..) Plus, I was on retainer with a client at the time writing all their emails, sales pages, webinar scripts, squeeze pages, and other advertising — not to mention writing all my own stuff selling a print newsletter (no longer published called The Crypto Marketing Newsletter), daily emails, etc. That was a lot of writing. Probably around 3 novels' worth of writing by sheer volume. And I distinctly remember getting so little sleep during that month and a half that I was just sort of existing in a haze, like a waking dream state, where I couldn’t tell you anything about my life during that time other than I was just always writing, Writing, WRITING… often only sleeping for an hour or two, and probably putting my health at risk in ways I shudder to think about now. But I got the work done. And I then took a much-needed road trip to see my dad. During that road trip I watched as my little fledgling operation started paying off. I wasn’t making a fortune. But I was starting to get 2 or 3 sales of my own little $19 offer coming in, and then increasing to 4 and 5 sales per day, all automated (me doing nothing at that point) and it was looking like it’d keep going up with very little upkeep on my part. Daddy was pretty proud himself that day. Then, out of the blue: Half way through the vacation… Google decided to ‘slap’ article directories. All my page one content got zapped to page whatever. The sales all dried up immediately. And all that work was in vain. Or was it? Because a strange thing happened after that. After all those words and sentences and pages… after all that writing and not sleeping… after all that work and effort… I found sitting down to write just ONE email per day so easy, it was almost laughable. Banging out sales pages took probably half the time, and I was already really fast at it following what later became my Copy Slacker methodology. And what used to take an hour or two would be done in 5, 10, maybe 15 minutes — max. To this day, writing “a” email is so simple and routine to me, I genuinely get irritated at people who whine to me about how hard and inconvenient and frustrating writing just one email per day is for them. I simply can’t relate to those kinds of boys & ghouls. And it’s one reason I actively try to dissuade lazy people from buying anything from me. I don’t want to hear their stupid lazy “oh woe is me!” nonsense. Now, fast forward about 5 years later after that. I’m sitting at one of the Oceans 4 Masterminds I co-hosted with Andre Chaperon, Ryan Levesque, and Jack Born. And one of the clients at one of the Vegas ones was Mike Lovitch. And during one of the sessions he said his supplement business imposed MORE strict standards and more strict rules on their copywriters than the actual FTC laws required. He said that helped keep them off the radars and less likely to get messed with by the alphabet agencies. Fast forward a couple more years after that. I had written a sales letter for a nearly $1,000 book. And I decided to hire internet marketing attorney and Email Players subscriber Mike Young to review it. And after getting his review, I implemented everything which, like with Lovitch, meant holding my copy to a higher standard than the government’s rules, only to find that it made all my copy more believable and credible and better. Anyway, I am not sure where I’m going with this. Other than I was reminded of these above three situations recently. Specifically, when I read how Mike Tyson used to train so hard as a professional boxer that he considered the fight days themselves to be just “light” workouts. A non-athlete would say that’s because he knocked people out so fast. But it goes beyond that. Any real athlete knows exactly what I speak of. And it’s the heavyweight champion of the world of success hacks. It’s also something I talk a lot about inside the upcoming January Email Players issue — which also just happens to be the 150th, triple+ sized (64-page) issue starting on page 20. Right around there is when I talk about this success hack, and how to apply it specifically to becoming a very dangerous writer, copywriter, or marketer — and in a lot less time than you might think it can happen in. I put everything I got into this particular issue. I figured it couldn’t just be “valuable.” It had to be much more than that. And I believe those who read it, apply as much of the info (there’s a lot) inside as aggressively as possible in the next 30-90 days will have a business, a brand, and a level of influence that becomes quite frankly unrecognizable compared to what it is today. That’s what happened after I did it at least. And so it goes. The deadline to subscribe in time for the January issue is almost upon you. If you want in, go here immediately: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com]( Ben Settle P.S. I’m also including two other bonuses with the January issue to help ring in it’s 150th issue anniversary month. One of them is the Email Players Comicbook #2. (I gifted the #1 to my EPOTH last month) The second gift? Why, that is none other than: “Email Players Annual #2: Mad Men Copywriting Secrets” This oversized (literally — in both size and page count) Annual issue I am including with January’s issue exists outside the normal continuity of the newsletter. And I wrote it to both commemorate the newsletter’s 150th issue, and also to teach some cool stuff I’ve learned studying the old masters that have practically be all but forgotten about today. (NOTE: it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the TV show “Mad Men”, which I found extremely boring and overrated — it’s about advertising methods used by the actual Mad Men of the 60’s.) Some of the secrets found inside include: * The sneaky headline trick old school copywriters used to pre-test ads without spending a single dime. * Cunning advice (straight from a private, internal memo at the Leo Burnett agency back in the day) about how to trick egotistical clients (for their own good, of course) into running your sales copy “as-is.” (Old school screenwriters basically did the same thing to get scripts approved, today it’s practically a forgotten trick of the writing trade.) * A powerful Mad Men secret to making your business mysteriously attractive that can be like “catnip” to high-paying clients and others you wish to sell to or influence. * The World-Building technique all the Mad Men agency owners (the ones whose names are still on their companies today long after their deaths) used to position themselves as “the” agency to hire — with certain clients practically magnetically attracted to them, and probably even only them, and likely wanting nothing to do with anyone else. * How to exploit a dangling piece of psychological “wiring” in every human being’s brain to help make your emails and other marketing extremely hard to ignore and a whole lot more engaging. * A sneaky way to adapt Ogilvy’s enormously successful “Man In The Hathaway Shirt” ad from the 1950s into a high converting opt-in pages for your business today. * How the late Mad Man Leo Burnett would address a room of stuck up and snobby vice presidents of giant corporations to keep their egos in check and “prep” them for what he expected of them as clients. * How an old school phone salesman and high school dropout was able to ethically & legally out-negotiate & out-maneuver a room full of high-falutin’, and super educated and wealthy lawyers hired by a bank to get what he wanted. (Nothing directly to do with Mad Men — but what this phone salesman did is something that was quite common for people in the know to do back in the day to get what they wanted in contracts and deals.) * A clever way that certain bashful Mad Men copywriters used their shyness to help create far more powerful advertising. * A (admittedly bizarre sounding to most marketers today) advertising sales trick that David Ogilvy learned from a furniture salesman for turning a product’s flaws into reasons to buy. (Including tips for exactly how to turn high fees, bad reviews, and even slow service into reasons to buy.) * How David Ogilvy used good, old fashioned trolling (he was a world-class troll) to help get compliance and engagement from everyone from heads of corporations during high-pressure negotiations to his own wife in the kitchen. * A ridiculously effective door-to-door salesman technique (that, believe it or not, works even better on Facebook today, I have found) that can help you create headlines, offers, emails, and other marketing that can just seep right into the psychology and souls of your leads and customers, giving them almost no choice but to want to buy what you’re selling! (Does that sound almost like hype? Maybe so. But realize this: it was not uncommon for this technique to works so well it’d sometimes set record for product recalls for weak products.) * Just how brutal and soul-crushing old school Man Men were in their advertising campaign critiques. (One of the most respected copywriters of the day and creator of the famous Pillsbury Doughboy — Rudy Perz — said they’d make him feel like a “martyr”, and the creative director and original Marlboro Man model — Andy Armstrong — once literally suffered a nervous breakdown over one of these brutal critiques, if that tells you something.) * The little-known way the Leo Burnett Agency created such memorable and influential cartoon characters that helped sell truckloads of the products they promoted * The 7-word advertising principle that helped build one of the biggest and most respected ad agencies in human history. (And that is still around today almost 100 years later, while most have long-since floundered.) * Why fire-breathing atheist David Ogilvy was such a big fan of the Catholic Church. (Nothing really to do with copywriting or marketing, but his reasoning could be useful to anyone who runs teams or has lots of employees.) * The Mad Men attitude (almost non-existent today) that can help freelancers, coaches, consultants, and other businesses go from begging to business to having so many new leads practically begging to hire you you might even need a waiting list. (Best part: you don’t even have to be that great at what you do or, for that matter, “do” anything different — this is just a make a simple mindset shift in the way you approach your business.) * David Ogilvy’s bizarre email list-building secret (created back in the 1950’s — long before the invention of commercial email) that can also make your business stand out in an overcrowded marketplace and increase your sales. * A shrewd insurance selling method (that smart radio and magazine advertisers forced their customers to do since it worked so well) that can help drive your email response through the roof. * How an “honorary” Mad Man copywriter (who was a NYC public employee and not an ad man at all) used ANTI-direct response slogans to help create some of the most profitable and memorable advertising every penned by the hand of mortal man. (And yes, what he did can be used to write all kinds of profitable headlines, subject lines, bullets, and any other kind of direct response sales copy.) * A one-on-one interview with a “for real” Mad Man! In fact, the TV show producers even consulted this guy due to him being in the thick of the agency business back then, and who was involved with campaigns like The Marlboro Man, Fly the Friendly Skies, & industry-famous campaigns for Gallo Winery, Proctor & Gamble, Colgate, Vicks, Chanel, Max Factor, Philip Morris, and the list goes on. This interview is a rare look into the psychology behind how these guys worked. How they thought. And, yes, how they made lots of money for their clients and themselves. The link to subscribe in time for all this before the deadline is here: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com]( This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2023 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. 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