“The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.” – Ben Okri, Born Mar. 15, 1959. Clients fuck this up when they write about themselves. And sometimes they get mad when they work with a writer who knows better. I’ve… Read More →
Don’t Lie to Yourself – Deception is What Fuels All Persuasion
“THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them.” – Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, Born Mar. 13, 1911. Get out the Preparation H because every time his topic comes… Read More →
The Profitable Cliffhanger – How to Serialize Your Selling
“Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it’s a letdown, they won’t buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.” – Mickey Spillane, Born Mar. 9, 1918. Spillane never wrote “literature” like the kind professors value. Unless… Read More →
Ads That Seem Like Ads Are Not Good Ads. Learn To Sell With Persuasive “Content” That Prospects Love
“The public doesn’t particularly care for advertisements.” – John C. Malone, Born Mar. 7, 1941. They don’t. It’s true. Unless it’s the Super Bowl, normal people don’t really want to be subjected to ads. For some marketers, they try to solve this problem by having a certain ratio of content to ads. 22 minutes of… Read More →
How To Make Buyers Happy to Purchase Things They May Never Ever Use
“The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.” – Anthony Burgess, Born Feb. 25, 1917. I know a lot of smart people that sell training, or information, and they get very upset about people not taking that information or training and using it as intended. If that’s you, you would do well… Read More →
You Have to Feel Bad Before I Can Help You Feel Good. You Have to Be Bored Before I Can Catch Your Eye.
“The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.” – Arthur Schopenhauer, Born Feb. 22, 1788. It may seem like a shitty thing, to sit around plotting ways to make people unhappy with their current existence. But that is what we do for a living. We don’t describe products and services. That’s bitch work…. Read More →
Only Two Things Have Potentially Infinite Value: Art, and Information… (And Art IS a Kind of Information)
“The price of a work of art has nothing to do with what the work of art is, can do, or is worth on an existential, alchemical level.” – Jerry Saltz, Born Feb. 19, 1951. Information is like art in this way, at least when it’s for sale. For example, imagine a piece of information… Read More →
Good Advertising Consists of Desirable Lies People Prefer to Hear (Because the Truth Sucks the Glaze Off a Donut Sometimes)
“Sometimes you have to lie. One often has to distort a thing to catch its true spirit.” – Robert J. Flaherty, Born Feb. 16, 1884. Consider a poem, which often describes reality with a refined and elegant metaphor – one that reveals a deep but unobservable truth about a given thing. But despite the bard’s… Read More →
How to “Advertise” in the “Future” (Because Advertising is Dead, Ain’t You Heard?)
“Trying to do business without advertising is like winking at a pretty girl through a pair of green goggles. You may know what you are doing, but no one else does.” – Cyrus McCormick, Born Feb. 15, 1809. Here is the revolutionary change in the nature of advertising as we begin to really get into… Read More →
Words that Wound, Words that Heal – We Alternate Them to Persuade People to Buy
“All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words.” – Amy Lowell, Born Feb. 9, 1874. If you’re just using words to describe shit or explain shit, you’re wasting them. Words can stab. Use yours hit the reader’s tenders organs. Make them bleed. Reopen old wounds. Carve new… Read More →