Ben Settle

Following is my latest article for the Oregon Eagle.

The Eagle is a local newspaper I have ownership in and contribute business/marketing content to.

All the advice I give below to the state of Oregon’s political leaders, business leaders, church leaders, civil leaders, city leaders, and other leadership the paper is primarily published for/sent to/read by, applies to just about any business.

Enjoy…

Back in January there was a “Tax Strike Rally” in Salem. And a day before the event, Twitter account “HALEY GROUND ZERO” posted:

“Some candidates will not be attending due to leftist intimidation tactics. They were warned they would be doxxed, and because their campaigns and families matter, they made the decision to step back. That choice is respected.”

“Respected” isn’t exactly the word I’d use.

If you’re a “pro-freedom” candidate running for public office in Oregon, and you’re not being harassed, doxxed, slandered, and threatened by rubbery Antifa youths out past their bedtimes then you’re not doing your job. Psychotic, gender-confused leftists coming at your family shouldn’t be cowered to… they should be target practice.

Pro-freedom conservative candidates need to embrace conflict, not avoid it.

Conflict always equals engagement in marketing. And engagement is the coin of the realm when it comes to all influence and persuasion – including influencing and persuading voting patterns.

Even if these candidates don’t have the stomach to fight for your freedom unless it’s safe and comfortable, they should do it for the free publicity, and to give like-minded voters something to rail against.

Not to mention these “intimidating” leftists are daily, breathing excuses to talk to would-be voters in email, on social media, and in op-eds in pro freedom newspapers (like the Oregon Eagle…) to stay in the news cycle and be the water cooler conversation topic at work.

Maybe 2026 will be the year conservative candidates finally take the tampon out and embrace the conflict, instead of avoiding it.

But until then the “conservative” label is phony.

After all, they haven’t even been able to “conserve” the ladies restroom from sexual deviants, or the ballot box from mail-in voting fraud, or the children’s playground from homeless drug addicts dropping dirty hepatitis and HIV covered needles in the last 40-years, with their strongly worded press releases and “I’m above toxic rhetoric!” social media virtue signaling.

If anything, we could use MORE toxic rhetoric from conservative candidates, not less.

Since I don’t like ending articles on a sour note, following are a couple bits of advice for the freedom-loving man or woman that have given me much peace of mind no matter what political party’s in power. They’re not necessarily “easy” to do. But the sooner you do them, the better off you and your family will be.

These two bits of advice are:

One, live in a corner of the state where you’re more likely to see a Bigfoot than a drag queen. And two, make enough money to be able to avoid the consequences of our politicians’ voting patterns.

Especially the conservative politicians selling you out by not fighting.

And so it is.

If you’re interested in learning specific ideas and ways for using this “Conflict = Engagement” approach to your own marketing, see the paid Email Players newsletter and also my free mobile app.

More on both here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

An Email Players subscriber (don’t know he wants me naming him) asks:

“In the November’s Email Players issue you mentioned that a good way to do market research is to talk to the market. When talking to them, are you looking for anything more than the 50 questions in the Copy Slacker book? One more if you don’t mind: how can you tell if they’re lying or not?”

My answer:

When talking to them make it conversational, just asking about how they are, whats going on, like you would anyone.

Ask questions when/if it makes sense.

It is not supposed to be an interview, and there are no canned questions. It is supposed to be a conversation. Ideally get them telling you stories. “Really? Tell me what happened…” “That’s interesting, tell me more” “I didn’t know that, tell me more” “It’s all good, what happened next…”

A lot of answers will come out naturally when lost in their own stories.

Just be a regular guy having a regular conversation let it go where it goes.

You’re just listening, paying attention, being present, and you never know what will happen. Lying only happens if they think you want to hear something specific. That’s why it’s not an interview or series of canned questions. You don’t want to overthink this stuff, just have genuine curiosity and let them talk.

In short:

Be interested.

Thus the 2 greatest market research “hacks” ever invented:

Your ears and your mouth,.

More ears, than mouth, of course.

On a related note:

There’s no shortage of people who ask me questions, and I always appreciate it.

But, while I do appreciate them, what I can’t do is answer them all. I reserve answers primarily for my paying Email Players subscribers, which the above is an example of how I help them. That access is, in my biased opinion and many who take advantage of it, worth many times the subscription price.

Sometimes I also answer them in these daily emails, too.

But even then, it’s as a demonstration like this email is.

You can learn more about it here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

Since I spent so much time ripping on the IM space yesterday..

Here’s a related & timely question I got from an Email Players subscriber:

(not sure he wants me to name him or not)

“Do you think online marketing space is not worth pursuing anymore and should focus on something else online/offline?”

My answer:

Yes it is, but you just have to curate harder than ever before, and focus more on smaller, but higher quality, versus bigger, but lower quality. Some of this may all change again in the coming years though.

But the current flakey business environment is simply not sustainable.

Too many fat and happy years with easy access to credit have made people complacent.

The mindless hook-line-and-sinker buying into generative so-called AI is proof of this.

In my opinion, we’re in the equivalent of 1998 or 1999 or very early 2000 right now. The same sort of thing happened then, with a collapse, with the online marketing space shrinking as a result, goo-roos who capitalized on it who thought they were geniuses suddenly going back to living at home and parking cars for a living, etc.

Then it all came roaring back a few years later.

It’s not the exact same this time, but it’s eerily similar.

The whole “History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes” is often true.

I came into the industry a couple years after the 2000 internet bubble chaos, and about 5 months after 9/11, and it was an advantage in two ways:

(1) I was broke and there wasn’t a glut of goo-roos to have to discern who’s full of it or not, most were solid resources

(2) I got to ride the bounce back up, since it’d already hit bottom

And I can tell you this:

The guys who survived, thrived, are still around today didn’t do it by bouncing from one trend to the next. They did the basics: build list, mail it offers they want to buy, give good Service & Experiences, leverage relationships, strategic JVs, etc etc etc.

Nothing “new” about any of it.

People chasing new and trendy are fooked and don’t even realize it.

Will not explain.

For more on my approaches to marketing, copywriting, business see the paid Email Players newsletter.

You can learn more about it here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

Came a frosty cold email from someone I don’t ever recall meeting:

Hey Ben,

It’s been many many years since we spoke last, but I recently joined Troy and John’s trading system and saw your name come up!

Funnily enough, I’m in a mastermind group with people like [Proverbial GURU NAME DROP – names left out deliberately, to protect the guilty-by-association], and your name often comes up when we talk about copywriting.

Anyway, I’m not sure if you promote any other investment systems, and I totally understand if you don’t, but I teach something that is genuinely in the category of ‘extraordinary’ like the Low Stress system, but in the crypto space.

100% of students get results, and Ive collected the most jaw-dropping compilation of video testimonials as proof.

If you’re curious, please let me know and I’ll happily share the details. If not, I hope we can keep in touch anyway, I love your copy style, and much respect for what you do and how you do it!

When I told him crypto does not really excite me, you’d think that’d be the end of it.

But alas… no… we get phase 2 of the goo-roo playbook:

“Funnily enough, I felt exactly the same way as you. Then during the pandemic I had some time and I did a deep dive. If you’re curious, I’ve shared a login to my training if you want to try it or give it to a family member to try out. Once it’s setup it runs automatically, and I’ve had rave reviews ;-)”

Followed by an email with login details, etc, I summarily deleted on sight.

I couldn’t care less about his idiotic crypto offer or anything he sells.

And when I shared this exchange with my business partner Troy Broussard (since the guy mentioned him), he was even more cynical than me about this goo-roo approach:

“I hate IMers… I really do…It’s why I really want to just leave this incestual IM shit in the dust…”

Stefania, who loathes IMers even more than us, even looked up the crypto wanker’s site. And to absolutely nobody’s surprise, she saw phase 3 of the newly updated and “revised” goo-roo playbook:

Fake reviews with AI headshots, of course.

You can’t make this sort or thing up, only see it in real life, amongst name-dropping goo-roos.

I have less than zero respect for probably 90% of the online marketing space at this point.

And so I post this for two reasons and two reasons only:

1. So these dumb asses hopefully stop coming at me with their nonsensical, 2015-level Facebook life coach approach to selling

2. To explain my contempt for pretty much any goo-roo in the online marketing space

And I can assure you, it ain’t just me.

Almost everyone I do business with mocks the rank-and-file goo-roos like the wanker above, who do nothing but haunt masterminds and seminars and drop names and take selfies, thinking their stupid offers are God’s gift to mankind, when we all know they and their offers and promises are complete and utter shyte.

They’re breathing parodies of themselves and don’t even realize it.

More:

This is one of many reasons why the list of would-be affiliates for Low Stress Trading we reject – sometimes on sight – is extremely long compared to the much shorter list of those we do allow to sell it. Including “name” marketers (like the one I talked about in this month’s April Email Players issue) we are rejecting, with their idiotic goo-roo tactics.

Last month I wrote how I wouldn’t give a bucket of piss for many of their futures.

And that wasn’t just rhetoric.

Anyway, on to the important stuff:

The paid Email Players newsletter.

You can learn more about it here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

Not long ago, I saw a long, detailed tweet from a guy named Aakash Gupta that was almost like getting the play-by-play of a fiery, horrifying car wreck of a once-great business empire:

Red Robin restaurants.

And the tweet detailed Red Robin’s fall into irrelevance by succumbing to what I call “psychological marketing” (letting statistics, metrics, and spreadsheets reign supreme) over what I describe as “Sociological marketing” (letting Service, Experience, and genuine love of the customer/fanbase/the game reign supreme).

Here are a few of the gruesome highlights:

* They hit their peak in 2017 doing almost $1.5 billion in sales with nearly 600 locations, by creating a World families loved entering and hated to leave (i.e., they did tremendous World-Building)

* Then the bean counters started seizing power over decisions

* To “save money” due to rising minimum wages they canned all the bussers

* The savings looked great ‘on paper’ and management started doubling down

* BUT… the customer Experience got worse and worse as tables stopped being cleared, wait times got longer, and people stopped coming in as a result

* Including not coming during the peak hours, when they made most of their revenue

* Customers had to wait near an hour between their orders being taken and their food finally showing up on no doubt filthy & “crusty” tables

* In the spirit of even more spreadsheet tyranny… they started raising prices to try to make up for the loss of revenue created by sacrificing Service & Experience on the alter of metrics & numbers

* Now they not only had intolerably long wait times and filthy tables not fit for rats to eat off… but more expensive food

* They went through 5 CEOs in 10 years trying to fix it all, with new menus, loyalty programs, etc… but nothing about fixing the Service & Experience, just more appealing to numbers, metrics, and the idiocy of bean counters

* The stock went from a fat $92 to a straggly $3.61.

Yeesh.

And it’s all just one of many reasons why online marketers will make more of the green stuff by studying the book “The Tyranny of Metrics” than they will doomscrolling social media posts written by broke goo-roo grifters ratchet-jawing about so-called AI and how it will usher in a new age of utopian fantasy like Elon Marx has been stimming about on Twitter recently..

Anyway, hopefully the point is crystal clear:

Sacrificing effectiveness for efficiency is a loser’s game.

And if you look around that’s what you see most online businesses doing.

This is why I write so much about Sociological marketing vs psychological marketing.

The vast majority of direct marketing is psychological marketing.

i.e., an endless series of tips, tricks, A/B split tests, algorithm chasing, goo-roos playing the same tired “scratch my back selling my shyte offer and I’ll scratch yours by selling your shyte offer” – while they see a little success at it teaching it and preaching it as business “gospel”… with nary a mention of customer Service & Experience, or creating a World they want to enter and don’t want to leave.

I’m convinced 99% of direct marketers simply cannot comprehend this way of thinking.

Many of them are great salesman, but utterly suck at the Service side.

So they get people in, only to lose them, and have to constantly replace them.

And as cold advertising gets more and more gate-kept and less and less effective and affordable, they have no clue what to do with themselves except grift over to whatever is trendy like so-called AI, hoping enough newbie are naive enough to believe them, buy from them, not turn on them.

Then there are people who do what I have long called Sociological marketing:

Focusing on and starting with the customer, not the metric.

If all this seems esoteric it’s because it’s not taught.

I had to literally invent these labels “Sociological marketing” vs “psychological marketing” in my elBenbo Press book 6 years ago, to even start teaching it at all, as nobody was thinking that way.

I talk about these concepts sometimes in my free mobile app here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

Last month I saw a Tweet that showed a brief clip of Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”.

Easily one of my favorite horror movies.

And when the most recent version of the story (Robert Eggers’ so-called “Nosferatu”) came out, I watched it with Stefania, hoping it’d be just as good, but both sat there the whole time thinking:

“holy crap this sucks”

We put on Bram Stoker’s Dracula afterwars to wash Eggers’ boring movie out of our minds.

“Fast forward” a few months later to the Tweet above.

A lot of the comments were asking “Grok what is this movie?” when they saw the Bram Stoker’s Dracula clip, which many thought was incredible. It was legitimately “new” to them, even though it came out in 1992. And it dawned on me why so many of these guys slobbered all over Eggers’ boring Nosferatu movie:

They never even saw Coppola’s movie, or knew it existed.

When they saw the clips, some of them behaved like Coppola’s “old” movie invented fire.

This same phenomenon happens in the marketing world, too.

Take what this Email Players subscriber recently sent me:

“you’ve put me onto basically everybody I learn from today. I used to be one of the new kids who thought I knew things. Things sure have changed over the last couple of years. Every time you mention someone, I write down the name and get as much as a can from that person. Thank you for everything!”

I can’t even remember all the names I’ve dropped over the years.

So instead of trying to compile a list of them, I suggest seeing my free mobile app. There’s something like 40 hours of content in there in all kinds of formats, going back years, in some cases, as well as stuff I’ve done in the past few months.

All yours to access, totally free, even though I could charge for a lot of it.

And specifically, there is a section in there called:

“Acoustic Settle”

I’ve probably dropped 100s of such names/resources/influences throughout.

And the info inside is like a sharp stake you can drive right through the hearts of the “Nosfergoo-roos” trying to sell you their silly tools, unproven ideas, and overpriced “courses” that are just recycling what they heard someone else teach, with no real world experience of their own to talk about.

To access this free info whip out your mobile device or iPad and go here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

The question is asked:

“What newsletter would you recommend for a brand new coaching business? I have no lists, barely a website, no socials. I am good at what I do and want to get myself out there. Thank you for your recommendation.”

I’m on very, very few lists these days.

So I have no suggestions as far as newsletters go outside my paid Email Players newsletter. But, I will say the best way to market a brand new coaching business is the same way you would grow a brand new any business if you’re going to use direct marketing:

Opt-in page -> daily email to an offer -> sell those buyers something else

There are other things you can do, of course.

But do that first.

I liken this to where I live, where I can see the Pacific Ocean out the window, as I type this. And I can see a horizon line. And I have looked at the maps, and if I was to start walking on the water in that direction I’d eventually reach Japan.

But, I cannot “see” Japan from here.

I can only see the horizon line.

To see Japan I’d simply walk to the horizon line, and when I got there I’d see further. Then I’d see another horizon line, and when I got there I’d see further, etc etc etc.

That’s how the above “funnel” works:

Get to that first horizon line, then you’ll see further. That’s when you can start doing the more advanced stuff like stacking medias, putting in multiple subscription offers, building out events, or whatever it is you want to do.

Okay so enough of that.

I teach a lot of the “horizon line” stuff in my free mobile app.

I got something like 40 hours of content in there.

All free to learn, whether you buy anything from me or not.

You can access it on your smart phone or iPad here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

Ben Settle

I am not a fan “generative” so-called AI for creating content and have not exactly hidden that.

But there are obviously uses for some of the technology – especially the non-generative kind.

For example:

One way I’ll likely be using it in the future is to turn my novels into animated films should the tech get advanced enough for what I want to do. It’s not yet, despite what the AI geek chorus who thinks insists.

But I will likely do something like this with my own fiction:

1. Take the screenplay I wrote for my first novel (Zombie Cop), based on my own IP, that came out of my own brain

2. Adapt it to a graphic novel, which will also basically serve as a storyboard

3. Pay a specific artist I hired for a few comicbook-style ads in the past, who I want to do this, and who uses his actual brain, too, and has legitimate skill, and does not prompt out/parasite off of images created by other, superior artists

4. Use some emerging so-called AI tools to help turn that graphic novel into an animated movie, using my own script from my own brain, the artwork I paid for that came from the artist’s brain, and not burgling content from others’ brains

5. Hire some people I know in the industry to help me with the logistics, as well as hire Method acting performers to perform the voices, and give my characters more depth and nuance

6. Produce it, show it, sell it if there’s a market… or else leave it for Willis to do if the above can’t be done by me due to technological or other reasons, as I ain’t getting any younger, and that evil to-do list I have ain’t getting any shorter

And so it shalt be.

Maybe..

On a totally different note, more on the paid Email Players newsletter here:

www.BenSettle.com/alt

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