Ben Settle

The first time I saw Paul Hartunian work his magic was in 2002.

I don’t even remember where I got the ratty old VHS tape from, where I saw him teaching a room full of business people how they could get literally millions of dollars in media publicity for the bargain basement price of 15 cents.

i.e., what it cost back then send a FAX.

But he was going through the audience, one-by-one, briefly listening to what they do, then just brain storming out one incredible idea after another they could use for a press release to get all kinds of free publicity – including radio interviews, TV interviews, and full page newspaper ads that’d normally cost tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars if that space was purchased as advertising.

I don’t think I ever saw so many people in an audience taking notes so fast.

By the end I was sitting there trying to figure out how to afford his dayem course.

But alas.. it was $800.

Which was about $795 more than I had at the time.

So instead:

I just kept watching that video where he gave the “what” to do, but not the “how” (you needed his course for that). And it was, in many ways, the first and most valuable direct marketing/copywriting/email lesson I ever learned, and the “fingerprint” of it is still in all my emails, ads, books, newsletters, videos, articles, podcasts, and other content to this day.

I, of course, hopped on his email list right away.

And while I didn’t realize it at the time, he was also teaching me advanced email game.

Every single email was about tips for getting free publicity.

He gave away all his best ideas, experiences, and thoughts – free, in the email.

But, what he did not give you was the structured “how to” of it.

So all it did, week by week (he sent weekly emails, if I remember correctly), was make me hungrier for his course, more obsessed with being able to afford it, and even day dreaming about all the ways I’d use it.

When I finally could afford it, I was “all in” on it.

I went through it at least dozens of times – both the manuals and 6+ hours of audios.

For months I ate, breathed, and crapped publicity.

His training for writing tight, irresistible press releases reporters had almost no choice but to respond to had some of the best tips I still use today for my bullets/fascinations, headlines, stories, and closes.

I even wrote about this last May and June in the Email Players newsletter.

Specifically:

The direct mail test panel we used for Low Stress Trading that got 5x the industry average for response (that nobody thought would win) was written not like an “ad” but…

A press release.

And it was 100% inspired by what I learned from Paul Hartunian.

Not long after I practically memorized his entire course chapter by chapter, verse by verse, and precept upon precept, I took advantage of the two free press release critiques he gave away with it. The first press release I sent was for a client in the self defense niche at the time. And Paul spent a lot more than I was expecting on it, giving me all kinds of invaluable tips for the headline and the close (he liked all the bullets…)

I still have that critique.

And it still takes me to school about my ads, emails, and other ad copy, not just press releases.

The second press release was for a book I wrote about dogs.

I spent weeks writing, re-writing, tweaking, tightening, and reading that press release out loud. When I sent it to Paul to be critiqued, he got back to me with a much shorter critique. It was barely a few sentences. And it said there was nothing to improve.

Next step:

Send that sucker out to the media.

So I followed the instructions in his kit for building and/or buying a media list, and started FAXing it to radio stations all around the United States. I think I FAXed about 1,000 of them. Paul was mostly against using email to send press releases because in his experience and his students’ experience… emails simply didn’t have as much chance of getting read by reporters wanting to call you back, talk to you, grill you for information to share with their audiences.

i.e., give your business lots of free “advertising.”

Reporters were getting inundated even back then with often 1000s of emails per day.

And fewer and fewer people were FAXing, saying it was outdated, arcane, whatever.

Thus:

That meant that FAX machine was way less crowded.

Which meant press releases sent to it were more likely to be seen.

Which meant they were more likely to be responded to.

Around that time he even told a story about one of his coaching students who had FAXed a release that resulted in a bunch of free publicity and sales for the business.

But, the reporter said:

“we actually prefer email, hardly anyone FAXes us press releases.”

It was a perfect example of “don’t ask the deer how to hunt it, ask the hunter.”

But back to my first press release campaign:

One of the things Paul recommended to newbies at publicity was to only send your press releases to SMALL radio and TV stations and newspapers. He said the reason for this was to get your confidence up and to do lots of interviews. Get all the nerves out, and get comfortable with the process, before going for the bigger media outlets.

When I got my first “bite” on the radio stations I could barely sleep.

I don’t think I did sleep, now that I think about it, that first night.

But right after that 8 minute interview I took a look at the site’s ad rates:

$25 for a one minute spot.

I could hear Paul’s voice (exactly as he said it in the course):

“Nobody’s listening”

So I kept sending out press releases, kept honing my craft, kept writing different angles and bullets and headlines, and kept doing more interviews. Over and over and over again for the entire Summer. And it was like that mobster in the movie “True Romance” explaining how the first time he killed someone he threw up. The second one was no Mardi Gras either, but it was more “diluted.” Now he does it just to watch the expression change.

So it has been for me ever since with doing interviews, speaking, talking to thousands of people live.

Teen Settle was so shy he could barely even get up in front of a class to recite a report.

These days?

I try to have fun with hosts just to get them to throw me curve balls for the hell of it.

And it was another life lesson I learned from Paul:

Just get in your iterations when learning and doing things you want to get great at. I’ve applied that to everything important ever since. And it’s why I go through courses, books, trainings, whatever it is, a minimum of 10 times. And often 20, 30, 40 times if it’s something I really want to get good at.

Whatever the case, I was hooked after that.

And later, when podcasting became more popular, I also used what Paul taught to get booked on shows.

I’d send press releases using his system to get on almost any show I wanted.

And not just shows for business, but for that book about dogs, too.

In fact, the biggest for that I got on was an Animal Planet affiliated show. I remember that one being frustrating. Not because it was a bad experience, but because the host went through my ad and just started asking me about all the bullets, asking me to reveal the secrets while apologizing for asking, but she just had to know.

I didn’t have the skill to handle that sort of situation in an interview then.

But it was a good problem to have…

I also learned a lot from Paul about running a print newsletter.

I subscribed to his print newsletter for years before he retired it about ten years ago. And there were a lot of little things he did I took notes on. When it came time to do my own print newsletters those little things I took notes on made it all go a lot easier, smoother, and more profitable.

Speaking of ten years ago:

Around that time, word must have gotten around to him about what a fan I was of his, because he sent me, totally out of the blue, a big box one day with his Public Speaking course tapes as a way to say “thank you.”

But probably the #1 most important lesson I learned from Paul:

“The world is changed with a checkbook”

Not good thoughts, or good vibes, or likes, retweets, or any other airy fairy woo-woo hootenanny people do on social media to virtue signal that have zero impact on anything or anyone.

No, it’s that nasty checkbook.

To illustrate his point he told a story in his course about how they had just rescued a puppy who had been thrown out a two story window. The puppy’s leg was broken. And when he went to the vet, the vet didn’t fix it up by being paid in Facebook prayers or “sending good thoughts!” or whatever.

Paul had to pull a checkbook out and write a check.

I’ve never forgotten that lesson either.

In fact, here’s something else to think about:

Next week I am being interviewed by a magazine about using World-Building in the business of fashion. It ought to be interesting, to say the least. Me, of all people, talking to the media about fashion..

But what I learned from Paul about interviews will be applied.

There are certain things he taught and did that make doing interviews not only a lot more fun (for you and the reporter/host), but a lot more profitable, too. And if you do it right, they tend to want you to come back again later. That’s key. Because, again, this ain’t about fame and glory. It’s about the checkbook. And at the end of the day, media publicity – big outlet or small podcast – is about growing your business.

So that, too, is yet another lesson from Paul Hartunian.

All right, I’ll end with something related.

And that is, he refused to give interviews on PBS or NPR.

i.e., the government, tax payer funded platforms.

Reason why was, he said they were jerks about letting you give out your contact info. And about six years ago, I was graciously invited by Russell Brunson to speak at his Funnel Hacking Live event.

And I was all ready to do it… until I read the fine print:

No promoting yourself.

Not even just a website to a free opt-in with nothing for sale.

They told me it was “tacky.”

Well, I don’t know what kind of pitch fest goo-roo bums they’d trotted out on stage prior to think that.

And I figured they had their reasons for the policy, and respected his decision, he has to do what he has to do, especially an event that big.

But, to me, what’s more tacky is getting people all dressed up with nowhere to go. If I give an audience great info, and they want more, it’s only doing them a disservice by not showing them where to go to get more… before they get distracted by something or someone else, and in a way that lets me CURATE them my way.

Something I can’t do with letting them Google me on their own or whatever.

I want to bring people in who come correct or not at all.

Which is one reason why my list not only gets high inbox deliverability, but I also don’t deal with a lot of idiots my peers do. And Paul, indirectly, taught how to curate like this with this attitude about those not allowing you to give out your contact info and media rejection (refusing to do an interview) if they don’t play the game.

Anyway, I haven’t even gotten into all the other publicity “miracles” Paul performed.

Like, for example:

How he (a Jersey man) literally sold the Brooklyn Bridge for $14.95.

Not to mention how he got on all the big national talk shows at the time, including the biggest like Johnny Carson, and how he got so much free publicity and non-stop coverage and reporters begging for him to be on their shows (as he taught, publicity begets more publicity) he once had to literally leave the country just to keep his privacy and sanity.

It’s all well worth Google’ing.

Here, I just wanted to give my own personal experiences with Paul’s teachings, and try to give you a look at some ways I’ve used to help grow my business that you might have picked up from reading about it.

I have literally used what he taught nearly every day for the past 20+ years.

And I will continue to do so for the next 20 years.

So RIP to the old publicity master.

I highly suggest you do a serious study on him.

And, if possible, find his courses and other products.

It’ll almost certainly be money well spent.

Ben Settle

P.S. Pretty much everything in my free mobile app in the “Acoustic Settle” channel is interviews. And, in many ways, they are all a result of what I learned from Paul about handling, profiting from, and working interviews.

If you don’t already have my mobile app, you can get it free here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

I saw a news report not long ago with the headline:

“#MeToo backlash: More male managers avoid mentoring women or meeting alone with them”

Under the photo accompanying the headline it said:

“After more men say HR personnel have advised them to avoid being alone with women at work, “I really think we are facing a very serious crisis for women in getting promoted,” Sheryl Sandberg says.”

My response to people like Sheryl Sandberg is simply:

No shyt, Sherlock.

What did she and her ilk think was going to happen?

A lot of people used to ridicule, mock, even get angry with the late preacher Billy Graham for never meeting with a woman alone without his wife present. Same with former Vice President Mike Pence.

I don’t even like Pence and find him to be a total putz.

But he was wise to have that exact same rule even as the media shrieked at him over it.

More:

The last 25 years have been one endless string of having to ride out the time between bouts of propaganda & the masses of normies who need to be told how to think catching on. Everything from the 9/11 war grift… to banking & mortgage schemes… to #Metoo slanders… to masks/jabs… to crypto/NFTs… to a four year run of war & big pharma propaganda never seen before in the history of the US… and, most recently, the so-called AI corporate Narrative that has created a ponzi scheme so ingrained in the economy now it’s almost single handedly propping the stock market up on its wobbling, pipe cleaner thick legs.

The cycle of these events seems to get shorter with each, at least.

And so in a year or two it’ll almost certainly be something else.

I’m rooting for it to be UFOs..

Whatever the case:

It helps to train your brain to reject anything you see your social media friends buy into by “default.”

I won’t say they are always wrong, or that the crowd is always wrong. That whole “even a broken clock is right twice per day” trope is true. But it is wrong a helluva lot more than it is right. And the media is always, without a doubt, either lying or misleading/misdirecting something.

I don’t think anyone in the media is even capable of reporting without bias at this point.

If they were, they’d die in ratings because the proletariat now demands to be entertained and distracted via a constant, 24/7 state of being in an endlessly alternating adrenaline/dopamine loop.

I can’t even make fun of it or mock it whole cloth.

One of my most valuable email teachings essentially trains businesses how to do that with email each day. I just don’t teach doing it via lies and deceit like the media does. They way I teach it creates sales, happier customers, and helps close such loops.

Will not explain.

As far as detecting and rejecting bull shyt narratives goes:

I like to think my paid Email Players newsletter helps with that.

More on that here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

After some 9 years of Stefania reading, editing, & discussing my horror novels & twisted screenplays & comicbook scripts… as well as being subjected over and over and over to the same B-monster movies I love & have been way too influenced by for my own good… she is at a point where she literally frightens the normies.

For example:

Since having Willis five years ago she’s been taking belly dancing lessons.

And a while back her dance teacher was showing her how to sit up on the ground with her back straight and her arms out as part of one of the lessons.

And Stefania, God bless her creepy lil’ heart, asks:

“Oh! You mean like a vampire rising up out of a coffin?”

Her belly dancing teacher paused, looked at Stefania like she’s insane, then replied:

“Uhm. Well. Yeah… I guess so…?”

I truly created a monster with Stefania.

And it’s for the good of the normie population she remain locked inside the deepest, dankest dungeon, half starved and sedated to protect them from her…

Anyway, this goofy story obviously has nothing to do with anything.

But, it was amusing to write it.

Yes, pookie, it’s okay to remove that stake stuck up your arse in this business.

Who knows?

You might even catch yourself having a little fun and making a little money.

Also, speaking of vampires & Stefania’s creepiness:

When I first met her up in my old elBenbo’s Lair Facebook group back in 2016, she immediately bought my first Enoch Wars novel Zombie Cop. Whether she did so because she legitimately liked twisted monster stories or just wanted to out-fangirl some of her competition in there (or both)… she bought it, read it, then binged the rest of the books – and even ended up writing the introduction for and editing the 5th book in the series (“Werewolf Bastard”) later on.

She also gave me one of its best testimonials.

Not a testimonial about the book or about me, though.

But about the book’s cover.

Here’s what she said:

For the second time this week, I’ve taken Zombie Cop with me on the subway. And, the first round’s result was not a fluke: as 

soon as I whip out my hard copy, I’m only strange stares and double-takes, instead of the usual leer and catcall. Seeing large, brutish guys back away from me on an already-packed train makes for a refreshing commute.

Didn’t expect Chief Rawger to have my back but, alas, here we are.

I remember thinking I didn’t see that one coming:

My Zombie Cop novel used as weapon to help ward off New York City subway rapists.

With the communist they’re about to elect as mayor, I reckon the women’ll need it..

Whatever the case, if the books interest you:

I give away that first novel Stefania referenced in the series free in eBook, audio book, and even screenplay format up inside the Enoch Wars mobile app should you desire to partake of it.

There is nothing to buy or opt-in to.

You simply need a smart phone or iPad to get in via the free Learnistic app.

I also have a bunch of other free content in the Enoch Wars app, too.

Including content about the business & writing sides of fiction.

Here is the link to download the free app and access the content:

www.EmailPlayers.com/enochwars 

Ben Settle

A few months ago, I saw somewhere a bit about how both Shakespeare and Gary Halbert would use so-called AI to help them write with if they were still alive today.

And with Shakespeare yes, I agree.

There’s strong evidence, apparently, he plagiarized and/or did not even write works he’s credited with.

If that’s the case, then so-called AI probably would have been right up his alley.

Gary Halbert, though?

I seriously doubt it, and not even for research or “brainstorming.”

This guy by his own admission said he did literal door-to-door research.

He even made fun of copywriters who avoided dealing people directly for research.

He also said – unless he was lying in his newsletter – he wrote his coat-of-arms ad by literally knocking on doors, asking people for feedback on his report that he’d been struggling to sell, then went back and re-wrote it based on what he learned, which then became the most-mailed sales letter ever written.

No “brainstorming” with so-called AI could have given him that research.

If anything, he said he would brainstorm with the market:

Directly, not hiding behind a computer like a timid lil’ rabbit, thinking it can be automated, shortcut, or reduced to asking a computer to what to write or give him ideas. He wrote about how he would even take his ads to a bar and buy a round of beers for the blue collar crowd there (who were his market) in attendance in exchange for them listening to him read his copy out loud to them.

I also suspect he’d have not trusted so-called AI’s penchant for hallucinating information.

And to further horrify the AI geek chorus of copywriters:

Gary said he didn’t even use a computer to write with!

He said he wrote his copy long-hand. And in his April 1995 newsletter he outright mocked & condemned the very idea of caring more about efficiency than effectiveness when writing sales copy. And he also said tools (like a computer) don’t make you a better writer, even if they make you a more efficient writer, and that efficiency means absolutely nothing with sales copy, and that effectiveness was everything.

I can already hear some goo-roo objecting:

“Ben you’re wrong! I KNEW Gary! And he would have used AI to write with!”

You mean the guy telling you to HAND write 1000s of bullets and long form sales letters to get a “neurological imprint” of what it’s like to write world class copy… and who would repeatedly bang the drum that “motion beats meditation”?

That guy?

I don’t know, Chief.

Going by his own writing, seminar training, and other teachings I possess, the idea of using any generative so-called AI sounds like the exact, polar opposite of what he wrote about efficiency and meditation vs motion and effectiveness. Not to mention his many newsletters (a lot of them still freely available on the internet last I checked) where he talked constantly about his tedious, manual, even “analog” processes for writing ads, bullets, stories, openers, and everything else.

And realize this:

Gary also claimed to have hated writing copy.

He outright said writing sucks, and he’d rather do anything BUT write.

He also has an entire newsletter just about that, too.

But even though he hated writing, he said he had to do all the above to write the winners. The only “short cutting” he talked about was with offer gimmicks like his post dated checks, etc. But I never once saw him talk about shortcutting the actual writing or market research phase or trying to make it go faster or more efficiently.

Plus, there is one other thing about this.

Gary was a stock trader, and even sold his own stock trading offer.

So I can only assume he was keeping up with the stock market, financial news, etc.

And that means he’d see what those of us who are not spittle-on-the-carpet FOMO addicts about so-called AI all know who look at the markets: the so-called AI industry is almost entirely one big ponzi scheme of money shifting & shuffling to keep the party (and dumb money speculators feeding it), and that the generative so-called AI companies especially are not making any money at all, despite $100s of billions spent.

I don’t really care if anyone “believes” that or not.

The cognitive dissonance about this from the AI geek chorus is unbreakable at this point, I’ve noticed.

But it’s easy to look up online if you want.

None of this is a big secret.

Even Google’s own search so-called AI will tell you this if you ask it. And everyone from Sam Altman to Mark Zuckerburg admit it’s all a big bubble. Frankly, at this point the only people who don’t know generative so-called AI is in a bubble that will pop are online goo-roos and their marketing moonies.

And so something tells me Gary would not be relying on it even if it did “work.”

Still, I admittedly did not know the guy.

Never met him, never talked to him, never so much as exchanged an email with him.

But the way I see it:

Unless the Prince of Print was a total hypocrite or else had some late life change-of-heart about what he wrote on the topics of efficiency vs effectiveness & meditation vs motion… and writing ads out by hand to get that  “neurological imprint” he insisted was so important… and also his hysteria about the dangers of technology like when he was banging the Y2K drum… one need only read his own writings and hear his own words on those subjects to see what he’d likely think of so-called AI today.

All right that’s it for today.

More on the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

A reader asks the single most IMPORTANT question ever devised by the mind of mortal man:

Ben,

I need to (feel obligated to) buy something from you. I’ll let YOU tell me what I should buy.🫣 

My story. I started as an introverted Radio Disc Jockey back in the early 70’s. I was awful. I knew it so I asked to try selling Radio Ads to businesses. I loved it, but as you know media sales people are not trained on how to make any media work, just how to sell it.

I decided in the 80’s I would travel and spend money to see anyone who was considered a Marketing Guru. I traveled all over the U.S. and even traveled to Canada to see Ted Nicholas, and to London to see Jay Abraham.

You get the picture. I spent years and thousands of $’s for a real marketing degree. 

I started using what I learned to create marketing campaigns for locally owned businesses. Today I still consult 7 businesses on all of their marketing. My first client that I started working with 31 years ago … still a client.

I read every email you send. EVERY one.  I feel guilty because of the FREE IDEAS I get from reading them.

My guilt has caught up with me.  

Tell me which of your products I should buy.

Thank you,

I get the “which of your products should I buy?” question at time.

Certainly not every day, probably more like a few times per year.

And it’s a helluva good question to ask in my totally egotistical and biased opinion. But alas… I have no idea how to answer it for most people because they never give me any details I require to advise. A better question is to ask yourself first

“What is the skill I most want to learn, the problem I most want to solve?

Tell me that answer, then I can better advise.

Otherwise I am not much help with this.

Anyway, there are two kinds of people on my list:

1. Those who are a bit dull in the brain who think (and sometimes even complain about it) I give zero “value” because I don’t sit here and type out listicles and long form articles, and try to make people think instead, to become a little better, a little sharper, a little more effective at what you do each and every day

2. Those who see the value, like the guy above

If you’re in the first group, I suspect you’re not long for my World.

If you’re in #2, and are not sure what to buy, ask yourself the question above.

Then, and only then, ask me which book to buy.

The irony is, you won’t have to ask.

All right, end of purely self-serving email.

As far as “Ben don’t you give free stuff away???”

Listen, everyone who joins this free email list gets access to my free mobile app which has over 30 HOURS of training inside. I ain’t exactly hiding it, but it might as well be hidden people are so lazy about getting it. Much of the content has helped grow million dollar (literally) businesses.

And yet it’s all free.

Yours for the consuming.

The info inside the mobile app covers more topics, ideas, themes than I can even remember at this point.

And it’s all in there just waiting to be consumed, free, conveniently on your phone.

Don’t have a smart phone?

Not even an iPad?

Get ye back to your cave and rub your arms together to stay warm, I guess.

And coming from me that’s saying something!

Otherwise, it’s all here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

A while back I saw this tweet from Codie Sanchez

“You know what keeps me up at night as a CEO? That some government or world leader will do something stupid enough to make all our work not matter. Then you remember you can’t change that, so you just go back to building.”

There’s a hair-raising amount of truth to that.

And it’s one reason why I have long suggested to those closest to me in both family & business to prepare for the bureaucrat-created apocalypse to help save their own, personaly society (family & business, loved ones…) by:

* Selling stuff online as well as stuff OFFLINE (not being 100% reliant on the internet)

* Selling stuff locally, regionally, and globally

* Stacking medias & subscription offers and not relying on one of anything

* Building & mailing your list every day

* Using profits to stuff some saving away in T-bills (to protect yourself from bank collapses), bitcoin, precious metals (not just silver, gold, etc, but also lead – i.e., ammo), at least a little spot of land to grow stuff on, & even livestock. Some of this I talked about in my After School Special Email Players annual recently which was a letter to my own son about this and many other things. That is how important I consider it.

Whatever the case:

Volatile times are only gonna ramp up harder.

And voting harder for your favorite foreign-controlled muppet ain’t gonna change a blessed thing.

If you want to see what I am doing each month in my own business to keep things hopping and running, see the paid Email Players newsletter.

More here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

1. They’re usually much harder to sell than one-off offers

2. So if you don’t have super airtight email and/or lead gen game and a strong relationship with your list you are better off selling subscriptions on the back end vs the front end

3. They tend to attract the best, the smartest, and the most ambitious customers on your list – the ones you can take absolute pleasure in working your arse off to serve and support

4. And you’ll need those particular customers for your sanity if you’re sales copy/bullets and/or premiums are good, because your subscription offer will also attract a lot of the flakiest and sometimes semi-illiterate people on your list with zero self control over their dopamine addictions

5. I suggest trying hard to REPEL the above in your marketing from subscribing and blocking at first slight so they become some other business’ problem instead of yours

6. Unless, of course, you just want to take their money knowing you cannot help them, I guess

7. Subscription offers work more smoothly if you put what I call an “intermediate” sales page between the sales page and the order form that re-lists the most important things you want people to know to further curate

8. I not only have such a page for Email Players, but we have one for Low Stress Trading, too, and they work exactly as intended

9. Yes, they might “cost” you some sales

10. No, that’s not a bad thing, as it can save you a lot of time & frustration

11. If anything, it creates a smaller, but more engaged and eager-to-refer customer/client base in my experience

12. It’s not about squeezing every last nickel out of your market – if it is, you won’t last long or will find yourself hating your own business as many subscription-based marketers I know and/or know of do

13. You’ll still get customers that ignore the intermediate page, then turn around and ask questions that were answered on the sales page, the intermediate page, and the order form (again, see #4 above)

14. This is because a lot of people are functionally illiterate these days due to so-called AI, TikTok, and the social media dopamine-adrenaline engagement machine

15. But you will still get far fewer of the customers you don’t want if you use the intermediate page in my experience

16. The subscription bubble (everyone thinks they have a “Netflix model” these days) that started forming in 2021’ish has been hissing air, but it’s still got a ways to go, probably

17. Until then you might be better off focusing on selling bulk vs subscriptions

18. Will not explain what that means, you either know or you don’t

19. Subscription offers are not first about “content” but about Experience

20. That means fapGPT & other so-called AI tools that churn out content (if a content-based subscription offer, of course) will not be nearly as useful as the terminally online Sam Altman fan club thinks

21. Hardly anyone really cancels subscriptions (unless super expensive) because of money

22. They are lying to themselves and you when they say that, which is a good reason to ban them forever (why do business with liars?)

23. If it really is because of money (it’s not) they’d cancel ALL their entertainment (they don’t) subscriptions and daily sugar coffees (they don’t), and apply for public assistance (they don’t)

24. The real reason likely (not always) has more to do with lack of stimulation (i.e., you bored them, or didn’t enrage them, entertain them, excite them, adequately educate them, etc)…

25. The above is not “bad”, btw, it’s simply life, not everyone is going to be your ideal customer and you are not going to be everyone’s ideal business/person/service – which is why you must always build your list and mail it

26. “Buyers are liars” ain’t just a trope, so just keep building and mailing and serving whether times are good, bad, or stagnant

27. Dan Kennedy’s “Loyalty fatigue” phenomenon is another reason people don’t stick around

28. You may think it makes zero sense if you are solving someone’s problems, and they just sent you a ten page testimonial… but it goes back to Hitchcock’s commentary about logic vs effect

29. It’s ultimately YOUR fault for losing their interest or not curating them out earlier in the first place

30. If you focus first on service & Experience, you will inevitably replace those who leave your subscription with someone better, smarter, more eager to use your product

31. Take Gary Halbert’s advice about selling the foxes and ignoring the dogs – it’s one of the single most important things you can do if you sell subscription offers

32. Yes, there are still plenty of foxes left in most niches, as not everyone is a drooling-on-the-carpet TikTok brain’d, fapGPT-prompting zombie

33. However, the dogs are gaining in population, though, and probably 10 years from now any non-entertainment or necessity-related subscription offer will probably not be worth your time unless there’s a radical shift in the culture and/or social media is outright banned

34. One reason business is changing fast is because people are changing (not for the better) fast – which MIGHT reverse itself – out of self preservation – during a major economic collapse though, which I believe is not only inevitable but imminent

35. Either way, I suggest learning how to trade options using Low Stress Trading today, so you won’t give a shyt tomorrow no matter what happens – and maybe even profit from it all

36. That is what not only me, but many Email Players using Low Stress Trading are doing, who see the same writing on the wall I do

37. This is why I am in the trading business, not the subscription business (i.e.., not a book & newsletter publisher who trades, but a trader who publishes books & newsletters)

38. This includes our own software and Low Stress Trading companies that each have trading accounts of their own – and the profits from that trading will, if things continue on pace, dwarf the sales of the actual product sales in the not-too-distant future

39. There is no going back to 1999, 2009, or even 2019 in info marketing – that game is long over, and the people who will suffer most are probably the younger people (under 30)

40. None of this means you shouldn’t sell a subscription offer – you should if it’s the best way to serve your customers & clients, but if it’s not then why bother? Selling subscriptions just because your favorite goo-roo told you to is stupid on a stick anyway

41. Take all this as an “option” for thinking differently, and not as marketing gospel as there are always exceptions, and there is always nuance to these things

Finally, just to be clear about something:

Ain’t none of the above 41 parts are theory.

It’s straight from 16+ years of publishing various subscription offers (since 2009) – including my first one (the Crackerjack Selling Club, lasted one month before I realized I hated it), my old Crypto Marketing Secrets newsletter which lasted 30 issues before I switched to my Email Players print newsletter (going strong for over 14 years now), plus owning multiple subscription-based SaaS offers – including BerserkerMail, Learnistic, and most recently our Low Stress Trading subscription coaching/software hybrid business that itself has multiple subscription offers stacked on top of it.

So yes, I have a wee bit of real world experience with this.

The times they are a’changing.

Thus, my paid Email Players newsletter.

It can help you keep sales, and customers, and engagement no matter what kind of offer you sell assuming you have (1) an  email list and (2) an offer people want.

More here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

I speak of Dragon Warrior IV (from 1991).

And this early RPG (role playing game) is in my humble, but accurate, opinion a power education in business, marketing, selling, copywriting, and even World-Building skills. Willis will be introduced to it when he’s a little older. And I still play it myself when I want to learn a new skill or get a deeper understanding of a skill I already possess.

Reason why is, it teaches, almost by “osmosis” via playing it, skills like:

1. Thinking strategically v just tactically

2. Patience

3. Storytelling

4. Playing blackjack (a game many wealthy people play, not a coincidence)

5. World-Building

6. The dangers of not vetting strangers you let in to your own business community

7. The plight of customers/clients who are abducted by other businesses

8. The inherent flaws in farming off decision-making to so-called AI (see below)

9. Buying & reselling to make money when starting out with nothing (one of the characters you play is a family man & merchant named Taloon, who literally starts with $0, and you have to buy and sell, and use patience, to get good deals to build up his experience)

10. Disarming enemies/trolls with humor

11. The silliness & dangers of girl bossing

12. Dealing with the frustrations of being randomly attacked when going after a goal

13. The importance of building up the ‘scar tissue’ of experience to get things done correctly

14. Why people irrationally obsessed with the theory of evolution can’t be trusted

15. How to work within a team so everyone’s strengths are accentuated, and their weaknesses put aside

16. The importance of comedy in life

17. The utter time suck of going after elusive bright shiny objects vs focusing on your Mission

There are more.

But I can say without any exaggeration that playing this game has amped up my business, marketing, copywriting, and even Options trading skills. And yes, it also gave me a very early-in-life distrust of so-called AI.

How?

Because the game forces its AI on you to play the characters at a certain point.

In other words:

Your party gets attacked, and it’s idiotic AI plays all the characters except the main one, and takes the decisions (and all the fun) away from you. But, what I have been doing for years is, I used the old Game Genie to hack the game to make my own decisions with those characters, to make it all go a lot better, more smoothy, more successfully.

So-called AI is a great super calculator-like tool which it is by its own admission.

But you got people literally letting it write their ads and tell them what to do.

Or, even more amusingly, even try to start relationships with it.

I just saw a social media post about this, where the guy was literally bragging about using AI to talk to his customers to grow relationships.

I have also recently heard goo-roos are letting it write their customer testimonials too.

All of which has me thinking on something James Cameron said recently.

He has been running around saying he tried to “warn” us about so-called AI in 1984 with Terminator.

But I don’t think he has much to worry about with that.

The world is far more likely to look like Idiocracy than Terminator.

To avoid that fate for your own business and read more about the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

A couple months ago, Twitter user @gypsy_lovell dropped this zinger:

“The purge has begun. Every email I receive from ‘experts’ that recommends more GPT’s is getting dumped into a spam folder. Every marketing guru except @BenSettle_ is force feeding my inbox their one-of-a-kind custom GPT.”

The timing was almost perfect.

Because literally the day before she tweeted that, I was telling Stefania how I’m becoming torn between having fun warning about the foolishness of blindly going all in on generative so-called AI emails/copywriting due to FOMO and zero questioning the blatantly obvious bull shyt narrative pushed about it, and deliberately not talking about it, per Sun Tzu’s implied advice to not interrupt my opponents when in the middle of destroying themselves.

So I don’t know.

Probably at this point most of the guys parroting corporate CEO talking points have left my list, or have realized I have such a low opinion of their blind devotion to it and refusal to question anything, that there’s nothing left for me to do but Copy Troll their snarky drive-by comments.

It’s obvious they don’t even have any real opinions on it.

Their opinions have them.

Worse, it’s not even their opinions.

It’s always them citing some AI goo-roo’s opinion who haunts social media all day.

That won’t get me ignoring it for a while though.

Thus, why I talk a little about it in the paid Email Players newsletter at times. If you want to read more about it go here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle