Ben Settle

Hey Ben, got a question for you (feel free to use it as content)

Context: I’m ready to ship a print newsletter to a list of companies I believe are my Dream 100. Most don’t know who I am. But I’ll give them a heads up via email, using all the principles I’ve learned from you over the years. The goal of the newsletter is to position myself as an authority and, ideally, partner up with them in the future.

Question: Out of the top of your head, what are 3 pieces of advice for me?

I’m being intentionally broad here despite doing (I believe) a lot of things right. So even if you tell me something I already know, it will still help because it will reinforce that I’m on the right track.

Probably it’d be:

1. Don’t look at these clients merely as clients but potential JV partners

2. Be more useful and of service to these clients than anyone else possibly can or is willing to

3. Any clients you talk to, if they say no, ask if they know of any colleagues who might be interested in your services, with an intro if they’re willing. And the ones who do talk to you, and you work for them, the second they compliment your services, ask if they have any peers or colleagues they think might be interested in your services, with an intro if they’re willing.

That was my advice.

And I agree with him that it could be useful for a ho’ bunch of others on my list.

And so here we are.

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Ben Settle

Below is my latest Oregon Eagle newspaper article.

The Oregon Eagle being a newspaper founded by one of my long time customers Richard Emmons I bought ownership in to have at least some kind of “say” in the future of this state. I also figured it is something that can be passed down to Willis some day, so he has at least some kind of say, too.

Here it is:

If you want to drive free leads to your business’ website that are both free and are often all but “in heat” to buy your products or services when they arrive, then this article will show you how.

Here’s how it works:

Best-selling author of the “NO BS” book series Dan Kennedy teaches about what he calls “upstream leads.” These leads don’t find you from Facebook/Google ads, banner ads, magazine ads, newspaper ads, TV ads, radio ads, direct mail ads, or any other paid ads. Instead, they work their way “upstream” to you – swimming against the tides of mass advertising and distractions to find your business online. They often show up with a credit card in their hot little hands, can’t wait to get on your website’s mailing list (see my last Oregon Eagle article for how to build an email list), and don’t waste your time haggling over price or with ticky-tack complaints.

In other words, you don’t chase upstream leads, they chase you.

And when they come to you, they come correct.

This flips the script on the usual business/customer dynamic. And in my nearly 25 years selling online, I’ve yet to see a more rabid (to buy) lead than the upstream variety.

The good news is, there are many ways to acquire upstream leads, including:

* Lead swaps – where you make a deal with a business adjacent to yours (i.e., not direct competitors but serve the same “gene pool” of customers and clients, like an accountant/ insurance agent, or a plumber/electrician, or mechanic/car detailing service) to tell your mailing list, social media followers, and customers/clients about their website, and they do the same for your business. These leads show up pre-qualified, pre-sold, and likely pre-ready to buy.

* Joint venture with businesses – similar to list swaps, except you directly sell their offers to your list, social media followers, and customers & clients, and they do the same for your business.

* Barter your service to adjacent businesses in exchange for access to their customers – you provide your service to them and they then tell their mailing list, social media following, and customers/clients about your business website.

* Send press releases with valuable tips to the media to entice them to want to interview you – including to local radio stations (and podcasts), TV programs, and newspapers. This makes you a mini celebrity and lets you tap into the “halo effect.” This is when merely being interviewed by the media automatically makes you the “go to” business for people who trust that media.

* Post about problems your business solves to local social media groups – do this enough and people start assuming you’re the best option for fixing those problems, go to your profile, and look for a link to your website. The trick is to be like a doctor. Many of the most renown doctors aren’t the best at treatment, they’re the best at diagnosis. Thus, “diagnose” via regularly writing about problems your product or service solves.

There are many more ways to generate upstream leads.

But just picking the one or two above you like most can get you a steady flow of eager-to-buy leads coming to your website day after day, week after week, month after month, and even year after year.

===

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Ben Settle

This year especially I’ve seen multiple people recommend using so-called AI to analyze transcripts of calls with clients and pull the marketing & copywriting material – including bullets, amusingly enough – out for their ads to “save time.”

And I do not dispute it will save time.

Probably it saves these guys lots and lots and lots of time.

But you will not get all the best stuff out of a transcript that way vs reading, re-reading, taking notes, and poring over the entire thing – including the “human” elements like the small talk, as many times as you can.

Even better:

In addition to all that reading & note taking, go on long walks and/or car/bike rides – where you are physically moving, not just “thinking” – and also listen to the calls.

Over and over and over.

5, 10, 20 times, if you can swing it, put it on 2 or 3x speed if they talk slow.

The goal is to imbibe not just the client’s words, but his speech & thought patterns, verbal “ticks” (everyone has), communication style, emotions, pauses, rise & fall of his voice (and WHAT exactly he’s saying during), and other cues – verbal and social and even pauses, stutters, and bumbling through words – to get deep into how he thinks, solves problems, & lives life.

It won’t necessarily change the content you write.

But it’s like any great Method Actor who creates his own back story to turn an otherwise boring, bland, and even insignificant character into someone who literally steals the show.

Think Val Kilmer’s Ice Man character in Top Gun.

Very boring in the script.

But he gave him a backstory, and lots of details nobody ever knew or saw.

And the result was an unforgettable character who became a fan favorite.

This is business as usual for the best performers.

And make no mistake:

Copywriting IS a “performance.”

And to treat it as such vs just being a “wordsmith” or, even more effeminate-sounding, “prompt engineer”… will change what’s between the lines, and give your ads far more depth, your benefits far more context to the reader, and make the Experience of buying from your ads and emails far more personal and human and real – because it is personal, human, and real and not just data for data’s sake.

No, you won’t save time doing it this way.

It will take you way more time, if anything.

But you will write far more responsive & profitable sales copy, emails, etc.

One more thought on that:

In the April 30 1995 Gary Halbert Letter, Sir Gary of Halbert talked about the foolishness of prioritizing efficiency over effectiveness when writing sales copy. He was completely antagonistic towards it, as have been other radically successful writers even beyond copywriters – from Dr. Seuss, to Tolkien, to even guys who hated writing, but did it as mercenary like old school screenwriters and even Bukowski.

And so it is, and so you know.

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Ben Settle

Something to think about if you are a service of any kind.

But, especially if you’re do freelance copywriting.

Many years ago, my pal Michael Senoff interviewed the great, and esteemed and insanely prolific copywriter Bob Bly. And in that interview he quoted someone (name escapes me) who said something about clients that was so profound at the time, I all but tattooed it on the back of my hands so I could see it whenever I typed anything.

Something that explained a lot of dumb client decisions.

But also explained a lot of brilliant client decisions, too.

And, overall, made me a much better copywriter, a more discerning copywriter as far as who I took on as clients, and a much more patient copywriter when it came to dealing with clients altogether.

Anyway, here is what he quoted:

(paraphrased – but this was the gist of it)

“I can deal with a client that is arrogant. I can deal with a client who is ignorant. What I can’t deal with is a client who is both.”

What does this mean?

It means ignorant clients who don’t know anything, and know they don’t know anything, and stay in their lane and let you stay in your lane to do what you need to do to make them more sales are great.

Arrogant clients, on the other hand, are also great.

You may not “like” them, but they can teach you a lot.

In fact, I liked very few of the arrogant clients. But I am the first to admit what I did like was the results that happened after humbling myself, shutting up, and just taking their advice. They are arrogant because they are successful, not the other way around.

These two kinds of clients above are like “unicorn” clients.

If you have them, you’re a fortunate soul indeed.

But then… there’s the clients who are both ignorant and arrogant. They’ve never written a single ad probably in their lives. And even if they did, the rest of their marketing did the real work, and their copy just happened to work. They most likely got their training from a goo-roo spouting theory while prancing around a mastermind room or seminar stage. Or they read a single book at some point, and suddenly they’re the Second Coming of Gary Halbert.

But in reality, they don’t know anything.

Have no real experience at all.

Just know how to parrot what someone else said, did, thinks.

It’s like Johnny Utah’s boss in Point Break tells him on his first day at the FBI:

“You may have been in the top 2% of your class at Quantico,… but out here you have exactly zero hours of experience in the field. You know nothing, in fact, less than nothing. lf you knew you knew nothing, that’d be something, but you don’t.”

That, in my experience, was the ignorant & arrogant clients.

Anyway, here’s why I bring it up:

You won’t learn a single thing from them. Nor, probably, will you learn anything from ignorant clients (that’s why they hired you.) But the arrogant clients? The ones who absolutely know what they’re doing, have the track record to prove it, and aren’t going to let you or any other copywriter screw up what works for them?

Gold.

Again, you may or may not “like” the arrogant ones.

I had some huge blowout fights with a couple of mine.

But ultimately they made me much better.

And for that, I am grateful, even I think they’re SOBs.

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Ben Settle

Reader Ashley Tucker ‘splains:

Everywhere I turn in the coaching / copywriting space … people are talking about world building.

WITHOUT crediting you!

They speak like they read the books or watched interviews / documentaries on Stan Lee or any other influence YOU had.

They speak like THEY invented it and like they remotely know how it works. They don’t!

How do you do it Ben? I get so angry that I would burn them all at the stake if I could!

It’s fine to be inspired… but to pass it off like it’s your own?

Or maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt and say maybe they just prompted as you would say “fapGPT” and  now they somehow think it’s their idea!

I don’t know which is worse…

Either way I’ve lost what little respect I had left for these grifters!

I’m not all that surprised, it’s just the animal direct marketers are and what they do.

So all I’ll say about that is this:

I’ve been publicly teaching World-Building for marketing & business since 2014.

But, I’d been doing it since way before that.

No idea if I was “first” to teach or talk about it. And I certainly don’t claim to be the only one worthy of listening to about the topic. Frankly, it didn’t even occur to me to talk about it, much less teach it, at all until after I published my first novel (Zombie Cop), and an editor at a NY firm said she didn’t like my emails but loved my pacing & World-Building in the novel.

At that time I was just doing it without really thinking about it.

But after that I started consciously doing it, applying it, and experimenting it.

Like, for example:

In my old elBenbo’s Lair Facebook group for a year or so, which was easily one of the most engaged groups in my niche at the time, according to many of the people in there. That was where I worked a lot of it out as far as ways to go about it, in “real time” (and on real people – subjects of said experiment), getting real results for my own business.

Since then I’ve written multiple books that teach/talk about it in various ways.

Like, for example:

* elBenbo Press book – how I apply it to the book & newsletter publishing side of my business

* Social Lair – how I applied it to that crazy elBenbo’s Lair experiment on Facebook

* Brand Barbarian – how I apply it to branding

* Markauteur – how I apply it to the visual & design-side of my business

* BizWorld – an introduction to the subject on Amazon

* And ParaSELL Universe – which is a collection of Email Players issues talking about it and some related topics, and how I apply it to Email Players and my other offers, bringing it all together

So I think it’s safe to say it ain’t theory for me.

I do it, practice it, and live it every day in my business.

Again, I don’t know if I’m first or only guy you should listen to about it.

But what I do know is this:

Those “suddenly” talking out their arses about it like Ashley points out probably have no clue what they’re doing, because the very concept behind it is to literally not just ape what others do, teach, talk about.

To swipe, copy, or reduce to a checklist is to miss the point.

That’s just how it goes in this market though.

The entire marketing goo-roo shtick going back to the 1990s has always been mostly a matter of people trend chasing, algorithm riding, and clout reaching… with a fair amount of arse smooching to boot.

It’s just watch, copy, ride trend, move to next thing.

Basically the same mentality of your typical Twitter anon.

Do what you want with that.

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Ben Settle

A “timely” question is put forward:

Hey Ben,

How many hours do you work per day?

I’m asking this because I was wondering if you were more the “work creatively for a couple hours” type or the “work 16 hour days” type. 

And in your opinion, which one is best?

I would assume the first since you used to sell a 10-minute work day program, but I was just curious.

Depends what he means by “work.”

If purely sit down, open laptop, & write, it’s usually about 3-4 hours.

But that’s just a piece of the day – the writing part.

There’s also a continuous day of:

* Back-and-forthing with my business partners Troy Broussard and John Wood about our Learnistic and Low Stress Trading companies – which often means a full day of Marco Polo conversations and emails shared… lots of off-and-on work, ideas shared/broken, brainstorming, problems solved, random off-the-cuff writing at times for something, etc.

* Checking/rolling my trades – minimal work, often 90-seconds or less, but still daily.

* Fielding customer questions, relaying info to my printer, taking care of my Email Players boys & ghouls with questions/credit card & shipping address changes, writing them back if they ask questions I can help with (a perk of being a subscriber).

* Writing down and organizing stray ideas for emails, offers, fiction whatever… I get a lot of that happening most days, constantly, often at the most inconvenient times, too.

* Filling my brain with interesting content online & offline and writing about stuff that comes to mind in the free Settleheads Facebook group.

* Walking 7-10 miles per day, with many more ideas generated & captured, polos sent, problems solved.

All this is “work.”

I have a 24/7 business and stopped fighting the urge for a structured, blue collar existence years ago – including when on vacation, when playing with Willis, and even when Stefania was in horrifying nightmarish agony from being induced & refusing pain meds while giving birth to Willis (rubbing her back in a tub at the hospital with one hand, while fielding customer questions during a sale I was having that weekend with my other on my phone)…

It’s obvious God created us to work, not sit around pursuing leisure.

Too much leisure is self-destructive, anyway.

Something I realized during my so-called 10-minute workday years.

(Will not explain.)

So I don’t fight work, I embrace it and roll with it.

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Ben Settle

Came a question:

Do you intentionally make your writing difficult to read?

As you know – people say “write at a 3rd grade level”. 

I was recently reading a book recommended by Gary Halbert, back in the day, called “The 24-Month Millionaire” about direct response, where he says never use sentences more than 7 words.

So, I kind of have a feeling you intentionally do the opposite, and use massive run on sentences and paragraphs, that kind of actually make it harder to read.

So if I want to read it, I have to kind of invest more, pay closer attention, and stuff like that.

Am I right about this?

Possibly the same as the “ugly sales page” idea.

Not sure, but just thought I’d ask.

My response:

* 12 Month Millionaire guy was selling weenie growing pills.

* Halbert sold primarily to blue collar workers who watched TV all night.

* Gene Schwartz mostly sold to the masses, too.

* Dan Kennedy’s “all dogma is bad” applies far as I am concerned.

To my own list I want readers, not TikTok brain’d customers or people addicted to podcasts or TV shows, YouTube shorts, etc. Readers generally have the mental fortitude to handle more than 7-word sentences or words more than 3 syllables without malfunctioning… including even the occasional run-on sentence.

If they couldn’t I’d never have anyone reading my stuff.

When selling Low Stress Trading to my list, for example:

I take the late, great A-list copywriter Jim Rutz’s attitude when he wrote his monster controls to the finance niche. Especially since we want curated, intelligent customers, not spittle-on-the-carpet biz opp seekers. Rutz said he assumed if they had money to trade with they were probably at least as intelligent than he was and probably even more so, and wrote to them accordingly.

Here’s a tip that is fun to implement:

I think one of the best things anyone who writes sales copy in any form should do is take a couple minutes to read just the first few pages of Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

You don’t even have to read the whole book.

He packs his writing with adverbs, passive voice, run-on sentences, and words that copywriters say to avoid yet it’s one of the highest selling and most-read books ever published.

I don’t try to make my writing hard or easy to read.

I only want it to be clear, interesting, and engaging. Even purposely using smaller font – a no-no to designers – can be good. I have read some studies many years ago that doing so can help force people to lean in and pay more attention.

I’ve had that argument with people many times.

Ugly stands out more, and I can tell you this:

When I sent my business partner Broussard my big fat heavy elBenbo Press book back when I first published it, it was physically painful for him to read due to neck injuries. He had to tote that monster-sized book out to his SUV which has a special table set up to read on.

He literally (no exaggeration, he was pissed at me) cursed me out for not making it a PDF.

Yet, of all its customers, he was easily one of the most successful with it, ran with it, and I would argue it was because it was harder to read, not skimmable and digital bytes that blow away like a fart in the wind once closed and lost on a device… that made that possible.

Look at a lot of highly engaged websites:

Reddit, Drudge Report… they look like the arse end of a dead baboon.

Hard to read, not even logically laid out, weird collapsed threads, etc.

I have a sales letter in my swipe file from William F. Buckley for his magazine that is packed with words most people probably have no idea what they mean, each with lots and lots of syllables, but it was 100% “him” and it resonated with his target market.

So I don’t worry about any of this.

I just write.

And I write according not only to how I talk, but also how I think:

i.e., my thought patterns.

The more I do that, the more engaging my stuff tends to be.

Yes, even if/when it breaks lots of rules.

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Ben Settle

One of my favorite writer bios is:

“Becoming Dr. Seuss”

About… Dr. Seuss.

There are all kinds of lessons for the writer and/or content creator inside. So many I lost count half way through when first reading it, and am about to go in for a second reading soon. One of many such lessons is how much he sweated, battled with the blank page, and I would argue suffered for his work.

Here are a few of my notes from the book:

* He dismissed people calling him a genius by saying, “If I were a genius, why do I have to sweat so hard at my work?”

* He once said, “I know my stuff always looks like it was rattled off in twenty-three seconds, but every word is a struggle and every sentence is like the pangs of birth.”

* He wasn’t chasing leisure or fleeing from hard work – he embraced it, leaned into it, learned to love it. He told a journalist: “…retirement’s not for me! For me, success means doing work that you love, regardless of how much you make. I go into my office almost every day and give it eight hours – though every day isn’t productive, of course.”

* If he wasn’t having a productive day and nothing was happening he would start going through his giant pile of history or “classy junk” reading to get ideas flowing.

* He had a very blue collar workday where he’d work for 8 hours, no matter what, even if it was just sitting there staring at the wall… after which he’d go have cocktails with his wife, swim, do some gardening, have a beer, etc.

* He limited himself to using a narrow list of 350 words for his stories which both infuriated him as well as helped him write his most memorable stories… i.e., his creativity was enhance by barriers & a framework he forced himself to work within, even if it felt like it stifled it.

* His stories did not come from thinking alone, but lots and lots and lots of writing, playing with words, getting frustrated, developing the “scar tissue” of patience, making discoveries, doing experiments, seeing what worked, starting over, taking what did work, mixing with some new ideas, and so on, and so forth, constantly moving

And so it is.

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Ben Settle

Good news for single guys looking for a good ride-or-die woman.

Especially RIGHT-wing guys.

And, I’d argue, particularly ULTRA right-wing guys.

Here goes:

Earlier this year I saw a graph floating around the internet that showed how liberal women were far more likely to feel lonely compared to moderate or conservative women. And while I am sure there will be people objecting to the survey it was taken from (which is fair – surveys are not to be trusted), simply looking around and observing suffices to verify its accuracy.

How is this possibly good news for a right-wing guy?

Because it means all you have to do is simply find yourself one of these lonely left-wing women who isn’t too far off the deep end, and then (figuratively… of course) throw a saddle on her, and break her in like any other hell bitch on the ranch.

Yes!

Keep running her around the pen, as she bucks and kicks and snorts – burning off all that negative feminist anger & jealousy she has for not being able to pee standing up… “roto-root” out all those silly Marxist ideologies she clings to & virtue signals about between glasses of cheap red wine on social media for likes & attention… then bring her on home.

It can absolutely be a bit hair-raising, and it won’t be easy.

But it does the hands good to break one in like this.

After that?

Radicalize her by converting her to Christianity, dictating who she votes for, and putting a baby in her. It won’t be long before she sees the unadulterated evil her idiot friends are out there shilling for and engaging in so it will no longer be some vague abstraction… but cold, hard, gruesome reality to protect her own children from.

Ain’t none of this theory, either.

Stefania was that proverbial left-wing, Hillary-voting, club-hopping, NY feminist girl boss.

Not the kind that would celebrate evil, like one who would celebrate the two fat deviant men who recently went viral smooching on a terrified little baby they purchased (i.e., that they trafficked) – one of who is literally a documented child sex offender – flaunting their intentions to the world as if it’s some kind of virtue.

i.e., Stefania wasn’t nearly THAT far off the deep end, and so was salvageable.

But now?

If anything, I have to pull the reins to restrain her!

“Eeeasy there, Stefania! Whoa!”

She even calls herself “Genghis Mom” now.

In my opinion:

If more right-wing men took my attitude, and stopped fighting left wing girl bosses and instead radicalized them… aiming all that passion they have for voting for communist wine aunts towards building a family instead of a Tinder account profile… there’d be a whole lot more happier, fulfilled, and content women out there… with no need for SSRI’s, therapists, or trawling for attention on social media.

I reckon there’d also be a lot less children in danger, too.

Stefania doesn’t even put her pics on social anymore.

And her Twitter account is basically just an Email Players recruiting tool.

She’s literally the definition of a ride-or-die.

Far more Wendy Byrde than Skyler White as far as that goes.

(Word to the wise and all that..)

No idea where else I am going with this, so I will just end with if you want more info on the paid Email Players newsletter go here:

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Ben Settle