Ben Settle

In which a customer asks:

Hello Ben,

You talk about status and all the ways to raise it in your copy troll book. I was wondering if there was another book or email player newsletter where you go into more detail about all the different ways a business can raise status?

I saw you recommend Dan Kennedy’s 7 Figure Academy but is there any other resource?

Or do i just keep following your methodology and that will naturally raise my status? i.e. service, infotainment, 6th generation marketing warfare, etc….

Thanks for all your help and info! My business had made at least 100x profit from what I bought and learned from you!

My (probably disappointing – nothing sexy about it) answer:

A reliable way to do it in business is to excel at what you do.

The late, great master of negotiation Jim Camp was 100% right when he taught that the more effective you are, the more respected you are in business. You can try to chase algorithms, pump out obscene amounts of “MOAR CONTENT!”, and try to play the popularity/goo-roo game.

But it’s an exhausting way to go about getting Status.

And any you get from doing that probably won’t last, anyway.

Status is not easily engineered or defined or pinned down.

If it was, everyone would have it.

Especially nowadays, where everyone thinks they’re a star of a reality TV show, with multiple social media accounts, and endless videos circulating around. But if you excel at what you do, and lean into your strengths, and become known as the go-to resource for whatever that is, it can happen automatically.

What you excel at is up to you of course.

But if you want help on the marketing/copywriting side see my free mobile app.

I got some 40 hours of content in there last I checked.

And the “Acoustic Settle” part is especially valuable for this.

More here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

Since last week I shared a list of my favorite documentaries for marketing & copywriting.

And related to that are some of my favorite movies for business & marketing:

* Corpse Bride – I mention this movie a lot in my Markauteur book, as it’s a power lesson in craftsmanship, infotainment, filling your work with nuance, and how to tell a tight, pithy story which still amazes me to this day

* The Founder – about Ray Kroc, all kinds of inspiration for how to think bigger, and solve problems, and especially how to approach figuring out what business you’re really in, which can radically change everything you ever do (has for me)

* Batman Begins – for sales copy/email/merchandising pacing, much like Gene Schwartz taught watching Lethal Weapon

* Sideways – watching movies about personal relationships & humanity is good, because at the end of the day that’s what marketing/sales/merchandising is… also shows how a single line in an indie movie script can ruin an entire niche for years (merlot wine sales tanked after it came out)

* Rocky Balboa – chock-full of underdog success wisdom, inspiration, going after what you want, and the impact that has on those watching you

* The Social Network – I always get at least an insight or two for our software companies whenever I watch it

* The Matrix – back in 2009 I listened to Glenn Livingston interview David Bullock, and David talked about watching it repeatedly to keep his mind nimble & open to ideas and possibilities for his marketing tests, and he had a point, people in marketing are always letting some idiotic goo-roo’s rules hold them back

* Trading Places – surprisingly useful for business & trading considering its essentially a screwball comedy

* Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – the Al Pacino scene is one of the best examples of persuasion via using Vision I’ve ever seen

There are more.

Like Rear Window (more persuasion via Vision), Top Gun: Maverick (how to properly use fan service, something most marketers don’t think about at all), Paranormal Activity (perfect sales letter “template” – sets up horrifying problem begging for a solution), etc.

But the above should fill up a movie night or two..

While I’m at it, I might as well mention this too:

The paid Email Players newsletter.

Not a movie, but a print newsletter.

More on that here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

Last month I mentioned in an email about how I like to read the Bible 3-4 times per year, including reading it in 41-days earlier this year.

Since writing that email, I finished it again last week – this time in exactly 14-days.

It’s not a race, and I don’t always read it that quickly.

But I enjoy the sense of continuity when I do read it that way.

Anyway, that email spurred this question that can apply to any thick books you want to read:

About today’s mail, it inspired and challenged me so much, I’ve been wanting to read the whole Bible in 6 months but I’ve only read 4 books so far ( 2 books from Old Testament and 2 from new Testament) and my excuse has been I don’t have time.

But looking at your activities, I don’t have any excuse.

I just work as Ghostwriter with a client, manage my church’s social media page, and then study my books/attend classes in Uni…that’s just it.

I just need to be more intentional, cut off distractions and do what I need to do.

I approach it like reading any fat book in a thin amount of time:

* Take the number of pages in the book you want to read

* Divide that number by the number of days you budget to read it

* And then… do it

So for example:

If you want to read it in 6 months like he does, and if it is, say, 1200 pages… you simply divide 1200 by 180 days (6 months), and you get 6.66 (ooh) pages per day to do it, which you can round up to 7 pages to get it done even sooner.

Anyone can read 7 pages per day.

You could read 4 pages upon rising and 3 pages before bed.

Or 3 pages in the morning, 2 pages in the afternoon, and 2 pages at night.

You could do that almost without even trying.

That’s how you plow through thick books, or even entire book series.

It’s one reason I laugh at people who complain they don’t “have time!” to read. They have lots of time to read. Too much time, probably, on their hands. They just choose to squander it on stupidity like social media, TikTok, and arguing with people online.

So it is.

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Ben Settle

Admittedly I like and am inspired by the Otherworldly stuff.

But most of the ones below are easily found on YouTube or Amazon.

Here goes:

* Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema – I can’t even begin to count how many insights I’ve learned from this. #1 on the list for a reason.

* Phil Tippett: Mad Dreams and Monsters – especially useful if you’re worried about so-called AI or any other technology replacing you.

* The Image Revolution – inspiration for breaking out of the box all those goo-roos you follow have you boxed in to.

* Chris Claremont’s X-Men – great power education about World-Building, just ignore the silly girl boss propaganda in first 30 minutes, I assure you it gets better after that.

* Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons and Dragons – more World-Building wisdom, plus brilliant lessons on design & graphics… just ignore the idiotic pronoun propaganda at the end, in fact you can safely turn it off when you see it.

* Necessary Evil: Super-Villains of DC Comics – all about villains… if you like my “Villains” books, you’ll probably get a lot out of it.

* UFOs hidden truth (the one from “New Liberty Videos” – no idea how or where to find it, I have the VHS!) – the very first documentary (from the 90s) about the clear & documented historical connection between so-called “aliens” and evil spirits in the Bible… and is a template for how to do a “disguised” sales pitch

* American Scary about TV horror hosts – if you do daily emails this should be your model in many ways.

* Stan Lee’s Mutants, Monsters & Marvels – all kinds of World-Building, storytelling, & branding tips in this, I could spend hours discussing it (and have…)

That’s a lot of hours of viewing.

But I daresay it’ll be far more profitable than watching TikTok and Facebook shorts.

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Ben Settle

A Twitter anon once declared:

“Gen X hate is finally happening and I’m here for it. Everything you hate about Millennials and Zoomers? It all came from Gen X — Millennials grew up with media made by Xers, and Zoomers were raised by Gen X. This reckoning is long overdue.”

Not to burst the rubbery lil’ Zoomer’s bubble, but Gen X is not likely to care.

In fact, most of us find the hate amusing, and even strangely comfortable.

Our natural state has been to be hated literally from the womb.

The boomers genocided nearly 30% of us at the peak of their abortion blood lust worship. And the government actually had to remind the rest of the boomers we even existed at all, by running a PSA on TV every single night of the week that said:

“It’s 10:00. Do you know where your children are?”

If you want an amusing example of this read about King Hezekiah.

A full 2,700 years ago he was the “prototype” boomer politician of today, squandering his descendants’ future for his own comfort and pride, when he foolishly bragged to the Babylonians about all his kingdom’s vast wealth, showed where the weapons were, the treasures were, etc. Almost like the equivalent of a US President showing a Chinese ambassador classified military & economic data.

The result?

God says the Babylonians will steal all that treasure.

And, worse, they will also literally castrate his descendants, which is exactly what happened.

King Hezekiah’s reaction to that news?

“The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?”

Even worse:

After ‘ol Hezzy died, his own son became the most vile, evil, and deranged king in the nation’s history – viciously sacrificing his own children to foreign gods like it was a sport, and creating so much violence the streets literally ran red with blood.

They say history doesn’t repeat but it ‘rhymes.’

If that’s true, then best batten down them hatches.

But, one may ask, what can you do?

I’m probably not the right guy to ask. I’m just trying to make my way in this crazy world myself still. And let’s face it: the Gen X tropes and accusations from the boomers are not exactly wrong. My generation’s apathy has not exactly helped any of this, and has only made it much worse.

But you can structure your life to “opt-out” of (most of) the consequences of others’ voting patterns.

It’s one of the many things I teach Willis in my Email Players Annual 4: After School Special (a 60-page letter to him 10-years in the future, should I croak on him before he comes of age… that I gifted to Email Players subscribers free last year, but will be on sale next month to the normies) about having as many streams of income as possible – big, small, or otherwise.

Specifically, “stacking” income streams the better.

That’s still no guarantees of anything though.

We came pretty close to having a President who wanted to tax unrealized gains, and who ran on basically every plank of the Communist Manifesto from what I could tell, with her cranky wine aunt voters clapping like seals about it.

Not sure where else I am going with this.

Except, maybe, to say:

Do whatever you have to do to protect the powers-that-be from chopping off your own balls, by making a serious study of the raw, basic, fundamentals of direct marketing, copywriting, list-building, selling, influence, and persuasion.

I have 30+ hours of such free content covering a lot of this in my mobile app.

I could easily charge a bundle for access to the “Acoustic Settle” section alone.

But it’s all free for those interested.

If you don’t have access to it, you can here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

A while back, the great Karl Denninger wrote on his blog about the damage done from the media always trying to “blur out” and sanitize footage of violent crimes:

…by hiding the gory details from the common person (who is not a criminal) we encourage the view that it is not really as bad as it actually is; that is, we deliberately prevent criminal acts from “shocking the conscience” of civilized people as a whole.

That in turn drives people’s demand to be “nice” or have “compassion” when someone does an evil thing!

Vision of violence saves lives.

In fact, one of the top concealed carry instructors in the country, who I write about in my Infotainment Jackpot book insists his students subscribe to ALARMA TV. The show features live footage from security cameras, etc of ordinary people being violently attacked in every day situations.

Like at ATMs, on the street, etc.

Very sobering stuff if you walk through life oblivious to what’s out there.

And he knows it will do more to “sell” and “persuade” his students to train & carry than any amount of cold statistics or nagging and badgering them with reason & logic. One or two episodes and you stop giving a shyte about being called names because you cross the street when someone is coming towards you.

Instead, you start noticing how people move & behave before a crime.

And you start to realize it only takes one “be nice” moment to lose everything.

Yes, including your life.

Vision is supreme at creating changes in thinking and behavior.

I suspect if that Ukrainian girl (the only Ukrainian on the planet the mass media didn’t seem to want to save from evil suddenly) who got violently stabbed on the train had watched enough ALARMA TV, she’d have been a much harder target, been much more aware, and been much better positioned to defend herself – including carrying a weapon of her own, and not having her back to anyone.

i.e., be the proverbial porcupine in the forest.

Societies used to use Vision as a matter of self-preservation:

Judges hanging criminals right on the court house lawn for all to see. Preachers pointing to the graveyard reminding everyone they’re going there, too. Public flogging. Public stoning of murderers. Public humiliation via Colonial stocks in the town square etc.

Nowadays?

We’re ruled by foreign elites, sob sisters, & political eunuchs preaching “nice.”

Using Vision will get you called an assortment of “ists” and “phobics” by these idiots.

And that’s because using Vision WORKS.

If it didn’t work they wouldn’t resort to the label game in the first place.

But whatever the case:

Learning how to use Vision in your persuasive communication (business or otherwise) can help keep you alive. It can keep your kids from being molested. It can keep your teens from being enslaved to drugs. And, yes, it can even keep your loved ones from being murdered on public transit.

Now just imagine what it can do for your advertising..

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Ben Settle

A (presumably Muslim) anon asks:

just wondering… 

being a ln A-list copywriter should assume some mastery of “language nuances”, influence, emotion evoking and the likes..

has Ben heard or opened the Muslim scripture? if not why?

if yes, what’s his take on how its contented is presented, in terms of language nuance ?

i understand all that might be swallowed up by translation… since it’s originally in Arabic.

maybe it’s origin histor…

and the reaction of it’s fisrt audience who at the time were masters of language and yet a man who grew amongst them who couldnt read or write came with a speech that made them look like amateurs…

might be of interest and spur you to look at its language.

These days I don’t have time to read fiction.

The closest I’ll probably ever come to reading anything even somewhat remotely related to that is when I read the George Lamsa Holy Bible translation next year – which is not in Arabic, but translated from the Aramaic.

That’s the closest I’ll get.

On that note, another reader recently asked:

“May you please suggest some books to help my upcoming biblical studies? (I ordered a bible recently) that would help by improving understanding and focusing on some the most crucial points. I want it to learn something about people, marketing and copywriting. I have in mind companions and history related material.”

I don’t recommend reading books “about” the Bible without first reading the Bible.

Otherwise you come at it with way too much baggage.

Just pick that bad-boy up and read it, cover to cover.

Then read it a few more times like that.

Then maybe read commentary from others.

Otherwise you’re nearly guaranteed to be influenced by traditions of man and dogma and denominational doctrines that make no sense, buying into fairy tales about raptures and the Easter Bunny instead of what God actually has to say.

And so it is.

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Ben Settle

From a 2009 Daily Mail interview:

“Some people said that in telling the [Braveheart] story we messed up history. It doesn’t bother me because what I’m giving you is a cinematic experience, and I think films are there first to entertain, then teach, then inspire.”

It’s always amusing watching people get heartburn over movies:

“They didn’t follow the books/comics/history!”

* The Tolkien purists really think a movie where every other scene is showing characters eating and singing would have been better than the action movies Peter Jackson did.

* Grown men said Batman v Superman “ruined their childhoods” because, for example, Batman killed (he did in the Burton movies too) and they made Lex Luthor more twitchy Mark Zuckerberg than canned business man villain.

* If the Prince of Egypt animated movie was accurate, Moses would’ve been 80 years old, and instead of it ending with him smiling holding the 10 Commandments, he’d have dropped & broken the tablets in rage watching as his brother Aaron let the Israelites have a pagan idolatry-inspired orgy around a golden calf during his brief absence.

* To Mel’s point, Braveheart would probably been more Bone Tomahawk-level brutality (that one scene, will not even bother describing here) than what we saw in Mel’s version, with people probably vomiting in the theater.

* Some of the fairy tales Disney adapted were far more disturbing than a lot of slasher movies today.

I’ll just end with this:

Gibson’s line about the primary purpose being to entertain, teach, inspire is one of the most profitable lessons I ever applied to my email & marketing – across multiple businesses – since I first heard him say it in a documentary many years ago.

Same with focusing on giving a great Experience.

Focusing on that’ll be far more profitable than fapping to metrics and so-called AI prompts.

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Ben Settle

An Email Players subscriber asks how to get more of the stuff:

I feel like I don’t really have that feeling about who I serve and have pivoted from a few markets over the years — all of them dying out due to my lack of obsession.

I guess my question to you is:

What would you do in such a situation?

I’m a copywriter by trade and not a bad one at that, and I genuinely love marketing, business and helping people. But I’ve not had that real passion to serve any one person in particular that you talk about.

His is the first and most important question.

And I liken it to a sack of flour or feed:

Rip the cord mindlessly down the middle and everything spills out. It’s total chaos, impossible to clean up, and you’ll always be finding residue all over the place for years and years. But if you rip it correctly across the top, neatly, as intended… everything is good, clean, in order.

So what do you do?

The answer is:

Look around at the world for things that viscerally bother you.

As in, it genuinely bothers you and ideally ANGERS you, to see a certain market suffering or confused or not getting something they want. A market suffering from something and it just gets you in the gut and to the point where you think about it constantly.

Now see what they are buying.

Are they spending money to solve that problem?

No?

Then they ain’t it.

But, if they are spending money to solve the problem, and if you can find and/or create a solution, or multiple solutions, that are better than what they are spending money on… you will never really “work” another day in your life. Because it ain’t work, it’s something you want to do, enjoy doing, would do it even if you weren’t getting paid because it just friggin’ bothers you that the people in that market are suffering in some way.

All kinds of forces work for you in this situation.

Examples?

Okay, below are a few off the top off my head I’ve seen:

* Frustrated parents of autistic children needing guidance and answers

* People helpless to stop violence being imported into their communities by their politicians from God-knows-where and wanting home security options

* Overweight people you see are good, salt of the earth types, slowly killing themselves

* Husbands who can’t “get it up” for their wives, maybe terrified they’ll lose their marriages

* Wives trying to get pregnant but for some reason it ain’t happening even though medically all is fine and good

* People who suffer from crippling low energy levels

* Business people watching their products or services become obsolete or no longer in demand, wondering what to do now

* SaaS providers plagued with insomnia over so-called AI

* Retired boomers watching their life savings evaporate, realizing they’re probably just a year away, tops, from having to collect shopping carts at Walmart to stay afloat

* Middle-aged men who have to get up several times per night to pee, feel pinprick pain while having the secks, and want to avoid gruesome prostate surgeries (never, EVER Google “TURP surgery.”. . . You just did, didn’t you? I told you not to do that…)

And the list goes on and on and on.

The above are just spit-balling.

But I can say there always have been, are now, and always will be markets to sell to.

The key is to start with the PROBLEM, then find a solution. This is the exact, polar opposite of what most do. The vast majority have or build out a solution looking for a problem. But what you want are problems you viscerally want to solve for people, and start there, then build or find a solution to sell them.

That’s how you get that passion.

Do it right, and life gets a whole lot more interesting.

A whole lot more fun.

And, yes, a whole lot more prosperous.

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Ben Settle