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THE

EMAIL PLAYERS

RULES V O L U M E

O N E

©Ben Settle. All Rights Reserved

DISCLAIMER:

The rules contained within may offend, insult, or injure your deeply held beliefs.

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The Email Players Rules Volume One

HOLD UP! Before reading, please take a second and go to: www.BenSettle.com ... to access the hundreds of FREE email, copywriting, and marketing secrets waiting there for you. Not to mention over 100 hours of free podcasts and other goodies that can put more coinage in your righteous piggy bank. There's nothing you have to buy. No sponsored links. And, no opting in required. But if you do opt-in with your email address, I will give you a free copy of my prestigious $97.00/month Email Players” newsletter (as a pdf — my gift to you) that's sure to help you create more profitable ads and emails, especially with the info inside this product.

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Disclaimer & Copyright Information This ebook is Copyright © 2018-2020 Ben Settle (the “Author”). All Rights Reserved. Published in the United States of America. The legal notices, disclosures, and disclaimers in the front and back of this ebook are Copyright © 2009-2011 Law Office of Michael E. Young PLLC, and licensed for use by the Author. All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system -- except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or website -- without permission in writing from the Author. For information, please contact the Author by the e-mail or postal mail address listed at www.BenSettle.com. For more information, please read the “Disclosures and Disclaimers” section at the end of this ebook. First Edition, April 2018 Published by Settle, LLC (the “Publisher”).

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The Email Players Rules Volume One

Chapter One

Email Players Rules 1-7 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. We’re on Episode 21, the magic number 21. I’m going to say this every show until it gets obnoxious. I’m just going to say, “Yeah, we’re at #22!” like it’s some big deal, when there’s people with like 50 shows. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Throw a party? We need some sound effects. BEN SETTLE: But it is significant. We were just talking about how, at least as of two weeks ago from this recording, not two weeks ago from when this is being played, but when this was being recorded we were #8 in our category in iTunes. Did I hear that right? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah, we were #8 in Management and Marketing, which is a sub-category of Business, because Business has thousands of podcasts. Then we’re in a sub-category which probably has easily 300-500 other shows. You were actually beating Copy Blogger, which made me happy, so that was good stuff. And you were hanging in there with Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner. They have a huge listenership, and to see your show up there makes me proud to be a part of it, and it makes me think you’re really striking a nerve with some people. BEN SETTLE: As I hope to be doing. I just wonder if the nerve I’m striking is a nerve of anger or nerve of pleasure. I don’t know. I’ve got to think after our show two weeks ago with Doc Carney, when we talked about how to manage a mistress, I have no idea where the numbers will lead us. One of the podcasts that I like to listen to is called the Beige Phillip Show. It’s this comedian, Dante Nero, who does it. It’s about dealing with chicks and gender relations and all that stuff, dating and whatever. He had this one show that was really cool, and he’s developed his own rules of living. He calls it the Beige Phillip Rules, so I’m going to shamelessly start doing what they do with that. Again, I’m giving credit where credit’s due. I just want people to know there’s a difference between paying homage to something and

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just ripping something off. I’m paying homage to them because I love the way they do that. I’m going to start doing some shows every now and then – not every time, but starting today – with Email Players Rules. These are rules that I live by in business. It could be email marketing, it could be copywriting, it could just be business in general like entrepreneurism or anti-preneurism, however we want to call it. These are like maxims that I go by, things that I try to instill in everything I do, in all the products that I create and all the communications that I put out there, no matter what the medium is. I don’t care if it’s an email or if it’s a podcast or whatever. These are just things that I live by. This goes for anyone in business. In fact, some of this stuff applies if you’re not in business, quite frankly, or could be applied to that, but definitely people in business. It doesn’t matter if you’re a freelancer doing something, a service provider, if you sell physical products or information products like I do and Jonathan does, or if you’re in real estate like Jonathan is. It really doesn’t matter. It could be anything, but if you’re in business most of this stuff is going to apply to you. If you use email, almost all of it will apply to you. So let’s get started. I thought hard about which one I wanted to start with. We’re going to go through seven of them today. If that works in the time period, I’ll start doing seven every time I do a special Email Players Rules edition of the Ben Settle Antipreneur Show. Email Players Rules #1: •

Email is talk radio.

This is something that I learned originally from studying the great Matt Furey’s email trainings. I don’t know if he does it anymore because I’m not even on his list anymore. I mean I’m on his list, but he really doesn’t mail like he used to. But it just changed everything about the way that I like to look at how I communicate emails. It took away the silly notion that you’ve got to be teaching all the time, that you’ve got to be giving all this hard value from your products and “move the free line.” You know about the “move the free line” thing. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Give your best shit away. BEN SETTLE: Give your best shit away, because if you do that, people are so dumb they’ll look at that and say, “Hey, if that’s what’s in his free stuff, what’s 5 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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in the paid stuff?” To me it’s always shown a complete lack of faith in the intelligence of the people they’re selling to. They’re not dumb people. It does work to a degree, because if there’s somebody on the fence about buying from you, that demonstration of your knowledge could very well bring them over. I totally admit that and I think there is a time and place to do it. I think you should do it once in a while strategically, but most of the time I think it’s a big mistake to move the free line, I really do. I think it works on hyper buyers, of course, because they’re going to buy anything anyway. Let me go on a little side trip here. I’ve got to do this because this is important. I probably have talked about this on the show, but damn it, Jonathan, we’re 21 episodes in and I don’t remember if I did or not, so I’m just refreshing everybody’s memory. The great, great – and I say great because in my opinion this guy is very great in the marketing world – Ken McCarthy, who I’ve definitely mentioned many times on this show – by the way, I got an email from him today and this was totally out of the blue. I mean we keep in touch every now and then. I’ve been out of touch with him for a while, but he sent me this short email saying, “Ben, I looked at the sales letter that you wrote for me…” – in fact, hold on, I’m going to read it real quick. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Okay, we’ve got a little testimonial. You’re going to get some props. BEN SETTLE: I don’t know where this came from. I mean I wrote this thing in like 2006. He goes, “This is such an amazing sales letter. It makes me want to buy my own product.” Now, this was completely unsolicited. I have not talked with this guy for over a year. I don’t even know if I’ve had email contact with him in a year. In fact, the last time I think I email contacted him was about a year ago because I wanted to buy his System Club Letters book in bulk so that I could send it out with one of the issues, which was back in 2013 sometime. I wanted everyone to have that. Anyway, going back to his stuff, the product that I wrote the sales letter for actually is where I learned what I’m about to talk about here. That is, 50% of your market, no matter what market you’re in, will never buy from direct response, for whatever reason. They’re scared, they don’t buy from direct response, it doesn’t matter, but they’re never going to buy. So there’s 50% of your potential customers you’ll never sell to. We talked about the power of negative thinking last time. Well, use that however you want. 6 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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5% of your market – assuming you’re in a market that has a problem that you can solve and all that, of course, and you have a product that people want and all that – will buy everything. This is why people start emailing using my system and suddenly they’ve got all these buyers out of nowhere. It’s because they’re finally tapping into that 5% of hyper buyers that really just want to buy, but nobody’s offered them anything. So that’s the hyper buyers. Now, those are also the biggest refunders and all this, and I don’t want to go into all that. By all means sell to them, but they’re not your best customers necessarily. Some of them are, but not all of them. Then you have 10-20% - and I don’t know where the numbers break down between that and 50%, but just run with this – but 10-20% of your market will buy if persuaded and over time. Think about that. You can get that 5% up front relatively easily, but if you understand how to follow up with people relentlessly over time, you can double, triple, or quadruple that number. It’s just one of those things I learned about from the great Ken McCarthy. Going back to why email is talk radio, it is. It’s your own show. You sit down, just like I’m sitting down and talking on this show, except you’re writing. You’re going to put a little show on for people. I talk about this in my product and I’m not going to go over it all now, but just realize that email is talk radio. That is Email Players Rule #1. Email Players Rule #2: •

Be your own best client.

I think even if you like doing client work, you should still be your own best client by selling your own products. By the way, sometimes I come off as anticlient. I’m really not. It’s just me, that I just don’t want to do client work. I understand there are people out there in all kinds of trades and services that like doing client work, and God bless you, do client work because these clients need your help, quite frankly, so I’m glad you’re out there doing it. But always be your own best client, because at the end of the day you’re the only client that’s never going to leave you or forsake you, so to speak. You’re the one client that’s never going to jerk yourself around. You’re never going to not pay yourself what you deserve. You’re not going to try to play games with yourself, like power games or negotiation games. You’re not going to threaten to fire yourself or any of that kind of stuff.

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You be your own best client. Find a problem that needs to be solved, create a product or find a product to solve it, and sell it on the side while you’re doing your own thing, because one day those clients may dry up. Somebody might spread an evil rumor about you, and you may lose all your clients. You just never know. It’s a very very fragile world out there and it’s just something to think about. In fact, from what I understand – and I’m quoting thin air on this, so just take it for what it is – I can’t prove this but I have heard through the grapevine that there are many really formerly great direct mail copywriters who are now struggling on the internet. They’re having trouble making a fraction of what they used to doing client work now. If I named some of these names and the copywriting fan boys were aware of them, they’d know who I’m talking about and they’d say, “Really? That person? That dude is struggling right now? That guy can’t even get more than $10K for what he probably used to get $20-30K for, plus royalties?” These guys should have been – and they should be now, in my humble but accurate opinion – being their own best client right now and taking what they’ve learned and applying it to their own stuff. I just don’t understand this mindset that people rely on clients for everything. I don’t think it’s a very healthy position to be in. I’ll just leave it at that. PRODUCER JONATHAN: It reminds me when we had Doc Carney on the show, where he talked about spending 8 hours with your mistress and 12 hours with your wife. That rules applies here, doesn’t it? You should spend 12 hours on your business and maybe the other 8 on those clients. BEN SETTLE: Yes, treat it like a mistress. See, people think we’re being crude and bad. I’m not telling people to have a mistress. I’m teaching you how to learn the lesson from the people who have a mistress, because there’s many business lessons that apply from that situation. I can’t wait to have him back on, now that you bring him up. We will. I think in July I’m going to have him back on after we come back. I want to make sure he’s real prepared with some stories and stuff. Moving on to Email Players Rule #3, which ties in very well with #2: •

The first hour of the day belongs to you, or as I like to say, pay yourself first.

The whole idea of “pay yourself first” is very old. You could even say it’s ancient, Jonathan. It’s a financial concept that’s been around for a long time. I 8 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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know it was around back in the ancient Babylonian days. Isn’t there a book about money called something Babylon? I can’t remember what it’s called. PRODUCER JONATHAN: The Richest Man in Babylon. BEN SETTLE: Yes, that’s the one, and that’s a very good book actually. It’s ancient. This is an ancient thing. In that case I don’t remember if it’s 10% you donate, 10% you invest, and 10% you pay yourself – I don’t know what it was, but the point is don’t go paying everyone else first before yourself financially. I’m going to take this to the professional level. This is for people who are doing client work, or maybe this applies to people who aren’t doing client work. I don’t know, but I’m just thinking back to when I was doing client work and there was a time when I was inundated with lots and lots of projects, which is a good problem to have so I’m not complaining. But at the same time it was holding me back from building my own thing, and I always wanted to be my own best client, going back to Email Players Rule #2. I was applying that concept to my life, that I really needed to have my own thing going so that if this client stuff – if I just got tired of it or I didn’t want to do it, which I didn’t want to do it, or maybe it just fell through, I wouldn’t be relying on these people for my bread and butter. For my daily bread I don’t want to rely on a client, and I don’t think anyone else should either. My dog’s daily food should not rely on my clients, let’s put it that way, so I applied this to myself. I said, “Okay, I’m already going to be working 14-15 hours today. I know this. I have no illusions otherwise, so I’m going to put just the first hour into my own stuff,” and that’s what I did. I put the first hour of every day into whatever I was working on, whatever my thing was that I wanted to be my own best client with, my own project so to speak. I paid myself first in terms of time and energy when I was at my best. In the morning I was at my best. I was the most creative and I had the more energy. Had I waited to do that until the end of the day I’d be too tired. Since there was nobody paying me to do it yet, I’d be like, “Ah, I’ll just put that off for tomorrow.” No, that first hour of the day belongs to you and I demand that everyone listening to this be selfish about this. You be selfish about that first hour. It belongs to you. It does not belong to your boss, does not belong to your clients, does not belong to your customer. Here’s how you apply it if you don’t sell to clients. You know how people get up and are like, “Oh crap, I’ve got to process these refunds and answer this guy’s 9 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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question,” and there’s all this customer service stuff. No, that comes second. First is you sit down and do what you have to do that first hour, whether it be writing an email to sell more of your product or whatever it is. That first hour belongs to you and you alone. I better never hear anybody doing otherwise or I’m hanging up my microphone forever. I’m sure you do the same thing, right? I mean you don’t probably just get up and…. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Ben, I never liked clients to begin with, because that to me was like having a job and I didn’t really like working for the man, so I’ve done this for years. Actually now what I’m working on – and I’ll tell you how it goes because it’s a big experiment coming on our month off – but I’m trying to do the first three hours of every day as mine – personal development, reading, whatever I want to do – before I even look at work, because it is powerful. See, the only way you’re ever going to give your customers great service is if you empower yourself and give yourself some room to grow so that you can mirror back to them. I really believe that. BEN SETTLE: That’s exactly how I think, too. In fact, the Email Players Rule #7 is going to touch exactly what you said, so we’re going to get to that in a little bit, but that’s exactly it. I think all these rules are all these things that I’ve been going by, and I didn’t invent all these things. These are philosophies that I go by. They’re very antipreneurial though in a lot of ways, especially the next couple are really antipreneurial. Email Players Rule #4: •

Never, ever, ever put your customers on a pedestal.

We’re going to bring this back to the dating world. The worst thing a guy can do when he’s trying to date a girl is put her on a pedestal, or if he’s even married to her. To put her on a pedestal is doom. Doc Carney kind of explained this a little bit a couple weeks ago. It’s that whole thing that the girls don’t really want that. They think they do. They don’t really want to be treated like a princess. They kind of do at times. I’ll admit there are times where you should, but your customers and all these other people, what they want is results. Especially if you’re doing something where it’s like copywriting or whatever it is, they want good results. They want the best job done, at least the best customers do. And if you’re spending all your time putting them on a pedestal and kissing their ass and all this crap and you’re just feeding into their ego, 10 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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and suddenly you’re swelling their ego up and they think, “Why am I paying this person so much?” because you’ve basically lowered your value in their eyes by putting them on a pedestal like that… That’s what people don’t realize. The best client relationships I ever had at least were when the client didn’t see me as a hired servant. They saw me more as a partner, like “I need this guy” is what they were thinking, and that’s how you want your relationship with clients and customers to be, that they need you as much as you need them. They’re not better than you. Just because they’re paying you doesn’t mean they’re better than you. If you are good at what you do, if your product is truly good, there is less of you or your product options at least than there are customers and clients that you can find. There’s many more clients and customers out there. It’s endless. Whatever it is you do, it’s endless. But there’s only so many people who are really good and excel at what they do, and that’s where you have to realize your value. So don’t put them on a pedestal. Don’t be a dick to them or anything, I’m not saying that, I’m saying that they’re not better than you. Dan Kennedy even takes it farther. He’s like, “You should have a preferably private sense of superiority.” He really takes it far. You can put that however you want, but the point is the more confidence you have and the more that you exude that, because you can back it up, of course – you can’t just say these things if you’re a newbie; you still have to go through the paces and all that – but never put them on a pedestal. If you’re really good at what you do, if your product is truly good – and I’m going to assume the people listening to this, that’s how they are. I know a lot of people who under-value themselves and their products. You’re putting your customers and clients on a pedestal and they’re looking down on you. If someone is on a pedestal, they have no choice but to look down when they look at you, so don’t put them on a pedestal. Instead, put your business on a pedestal because the business is the thing that can’t leave you. It can’t treat you like crap. It can’t jerk you around. Your business you should put on a pedestal. Your customers and clients you should not. Do you agree with that, Jonathan? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Oh yeah, I definitely do. I don’t know if they call it demonstrating higher value in the dating world, but that’s it, right? You have to let them know. Just because they have money is actually almost meaningless because you have the skills. Everybody’s got money, but only a few people have the skills that you possess. 11 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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BEN SETTLE: That’s absolutely true, and people have to start looking at it that way. They’ve got to get their frickin’ sense of value up there and stop letting these customers and client kick them around, and kissing their asses. I see it all the time. I see it so many times that it’s like, “Oh gosh.” I saw it today on Facebook. I saw this this morning. Some guy had the audacity to tell somebody publicly – you know how you write someone’s name in the box and suddenly all their friends see it – he made some kind of comment like, “Hey, I’m putting in a refund request. Make sure it gets done.” That’s the kind of low-class jackass loser and kind of customer you’re going to attract if you put them on a pedestal. I guarantee that person put that customer on a pedestal and he’s reaping the results now. That’s just the way it goes. Shoot, the antipreneur way for that is to unfriend that guy and ban him and block him, refund him all of his products and tell him he’s blacklisted forever. Tell all your friends in the same industry about what he did. I’ll tell you what, my friends tell me about a bad customer and I don’t even give them a chance. It’s time for businesses to start policing our customers as well as they police us. We have Yelp and all this stuff out there, everybody picking on the businessman who’s out there trying, but nobody’s out there gauging customers who are refund artists and scam artists and copycats and thieves and just lowclass jackass like that. You’ve got to start judging your customers as much as they’re judging you if you want to get through this thing. Email Players Rule #, and this again is an antipreneur rule – •

The customer is always wrong.

I’ll give you an example. Back when I did client copywriting work, this guy emails me out of the blue – a nice guy, nothing against this guy. I don’t even remember his name, quite frankly, but he seemed like a nice guy and his heart was in the right place. I’m not going to lambast him or anything. He’s like, “I want to hire you to write a sales letter because I want to make all this money. I want you to write me a million-dollar sales letter,” or something like that. Now, that’s all he gave me. I said, “Well, let’s see something. I don’t know if I can even help you because here’s the thing,” and I asked him some questions. Turns out the guy didn’t have a list, he didn’t have a product, but somehow a sales letter is magically going to sell a non-existent product to a non-existent list. He had no traffic 12 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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plan, nothing like that. He just was buying into this thing – and unfortunately, copywriters have done a very good job at this of making it sound like a sales letter is going to make someone all this money by itself. A sales letter is only a sales multiplier, it’s not a sales creator. You still have to have everything else in place. That’s why Ed Mayer, a great direct response guy who died many years ago but was one of the best, came up with the 40/40/20 rule. 40% of your success is from your market, 40% is from your offer, and only 20% is from the creative, i.e. the sales letter. I think it’s more like 50/40/20 – 50% is your market – but it doesn’t matter. The point is, that’s only 20%. If you don’t have the other 80% in place – a good list or at least a market that you can reach with a great offer that they want – it doesn’t matter what you write. You could get Gary Halbert, Gary Bencivenga, David Garfinkel, Dan Kennedy, Clayton Makepeace, David Deutsch – I’m just naming all my favorite copywriters – you could get them all of them in the same room and lock them in and put them on a deserted island where food is being sent to them quietly. Someone tiptoes up to the door and leaves their food so as to not disturb them for two months, and they could not come up with a sales letter to sell in that environment. The customer is always wrong. That’s why they need you. That’s why we need car salesmen. I think Saturn tried to do it where you didn’t haggle and all that, but they’re out of business. You need salespeople. There’s bad ones and there’s good ones. The great Doug D’Anna, a direct response great, A+ copywriter, A-lister by far – I remember I talked to him once and he was like, “You know, Ben, I’m going out to get a car today, but I’m not shopping for a car. First I’m shopping for a salesman,” and there’s a lot of wisdom in that. He’s a customer. He doesn’t know the stuff about cars and the best deals and all that, but the salesman will. The customer is always wrong. That’s why they’re hiring you. Like David Ogilvy says, “You don’t buy a dog and bark yourself. Let the dog do the barking.” You don’t know how to bark like a dog, so don’t even bother. Email Players Rule #6: •

Don’t let Facebook steal your balls.

This is a danger I’m seeing people do. How can I put this not so delicately? I have noticed, and I’m sure many people have noticed this, that Facebook is mostly populated by women, in the sense that they’re the most vocal people on there usually. They’re on there emoting because that’s what girls do. It’s 13 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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natural, it’s normal, and that’s just what they do. They emote. That’s their job. It’s our job to not emote. It’s their job to emote. That’s what they do. The problem is I think it’s very true, that adage where you become the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, so if you’re on Facebook all the time it’s like an estrogen factory. It’s like taking an estrogen bath. That’s why I tell people, “Don’t hang out there more than you have to.” Get on there and check your thing or whatever, start some shit with people, whatever you’ve got to do, and then get out and go do some more work. People who just hang out on Facebook – I have seen it, because I’ll go on there and I’ll see somebody that I’m friends with, and then I’ll leave and I’ll come back a day or two later and they’re complaining and crying about something like the weather. They complain about the weather on there. It’s like, “What are you going to do? Stop.” They’re always interacting with girls, these people that I’m thinking of. They’re always interacting with girls. I don’t know if they’re hitting on girls or what, so they’re becoming more like girls. Guys, go ahead and use Facebook. I’m not saying don’t use it. Hell, we all use it. It can be fun. You can have a lot of fun. I even entertain myself like crazy on there, and hopefully others, and you can even sell on there as Jodi Ardito showed us. But at the end of the day if you find yourself kind of whining and complaining about certain things, go, “Wait a minute.” Catch yourself. Check yourself, man, because that’s not going to help your business in any way, being like that. People are just going to feel sorry for you. If you start acting like that and you start complaining about dumb things, suddenly the bad weather has got you down and all this stuff, it’s not good. Don’t let Facebook steal your balls. Finally, Email Players Rule #7. By the way, before we go to #7, Jonathan, have you noticed anything like that too from Facebook? I’m talking about guys here, not girls. Have you ever noticed guys like that? PRODUCER JONATHAN: I’ve seen it, sure. I stay away from it. I go into Facebook, run ads, do some posts, and get the hell out because I’m afraid of it. The fear motivates me. BEN SETTLE: But have you seen guys on there and you’re like, “Dude, you’re acting like kind of a pussy” after they’ve been on there for a while. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah, hit it with your purse. 14 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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BEN SETTLE: I just mentioned Jodi. Remember I told you that story, that she handed someone a tampon once when he was complaining. You kind of want to do that on the internet sometimes. By the way, someone did create a text art tampon so I could start forwarding it to people, but unfortunately it doesn’t really show up on smart phones correctly and stuff, but it was really a cool effort. I really appreciated the guy doing it. Finally, Email Players Rule #7. We talked about this earlier. This kind of dovetails with “The first hour of every day belongs to you. Pay yourself first. Be your own best client.” •

Put your own oxygen mask on first.

This actually applies to a lot of things in life, not just business. It applies to dealing with relationships or whatever. You know how you get on a plane and the flight attendant says, “Here’s the oxygen mask. Secure yours first and then help the person next to you.” Basically, if you’re dead you’re no good to the other person. It’s the same with your clients and your customers. Like I say, put the first hour to you so that you’re at your best, so your mind can focus on your stuff and not worry if you’re going to get to your stuff or if you’re going to have to pay the bills and all this stuff. If you’re paying yourself first, believe me, your financial situation is going to get better, I don’t care where it’s at right now. You do that by putting your own oxygen mask on first at all times. You may be accused of being selfish and all that. To hell with them. You be selfish if you have to. That’s what you’ve got to do.

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Chapter 2

Email Players Rules 8-14 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. Jonathan, I’m a little disappointed in the lack of reviews that we got after I commanded everyone listening to leave me a review. Actually, the truth is I don’t know at the time of this recording what we got, but I like to play around with the space/time continuum of this show. I don’t even know what week this is. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I’m confused, dude, because you say don’t take everything literally, and then we’ve literally got to listen to you when you tell us to give reviews? What are we supposed to do? I don’t understand, man. You’re confusing me. BEN SETTLE: Just use your best judgement, I don’t know. It’s not like I don’t drive other people crazy too with this. This might be a little bit longer of a show. I’m not positive, just to warn people with low attention spans. We’ll try to keep it 20 minutes or under. We’re doing pretty good with that, Jonathan, doing a good job keeping these under. We’re going to go over another seven Email Players Rules. You might remember, I believe it was Episode 21 where I said, “Okay, we’re going to do a series of podcasts where I just go over different Email Players Rules,” Email Players being my newsletter. It’s the way I run my stuff basically, and we did the first seven. It was basically a concept I was inspired to do by this talk show guy and comedian named Dante Nero of the Beige Phillip Show, which is a show about gender relations basically, for guys who want to do better with women. It’s a great freakin’ podcast. I love it, and he does these things called the Beige Phillip Rules. It’s really cool. He has everything systematized and I thought, “I want to do the same thing for mine,” so I’m paying homage here. I think it’s important to pay homage to people that you get ideas from, and give credit where credit is due. I really do think that’s a good idea. It’s not one of the Email Players Rules. It’s not a requirement or anything like that, but I think it’s good practice.

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I don’t have the first seven in front of me, Jonathan. I’m sorry, I probably should have the first seven in front of me but I don’t. Anyone can go back to that episode and listen to it. Email Players Rule #8: •

Write drunk, edit sober.

I don’t know if it was Hemingway or some other famous writer who first coined this, and it’s very true. At least when I’m doing it, I don’t consider literally writing under the influence of alcohol. Actually I think it’s a bad idea to write that way. I think you should always have your wits about you, so I’m not advocating writing and drinking any more than I would advocate drinking and driving. I think you should write ‘drunk’ in the sense that you lose all inhibitions. All inhibitions should be gone when you’re writing. At the time people are listening to this, the first draft of the sequel to Zombie Cop will be written and in the can, and I’ll be waiting a good month or so before I start going through it again, the second draft. The point is I’m writing that novel, and I do this with all my emails too. I do this with sales letters. It doesn’t really matter, any kind of writing. You want to write without any kind of inhibition. You don’t care what anyone thinks. You’re not trying to appease anybody. You don’t care what your teacher thinks. You don’t care what your wife thinks. You don’t care what your priest thinks. None of that matters on the first draft of anything. You’re just writing and getting it all out there. You can be as bizarre as you want, as weird as you want, as idiotic as you want. This goes for any kind of writing. I’m telling you, it goes for all of them. My first draft emails are sometimes nonsense, and then I go back and fix them up, it just depends. But then when it comes time to edit, you want to sober up, mentally speaking. You want to have some inhibitions. You’ve got to think about, “My market might be a little sensitive to this thing,” or “I don’t want to say that.” “This could be worded better or differently.” Edit sober. Now you are consciously thinking about this, but the first draft you write ‘drunk, sloppy drunk.’ And again, for the literalists listening to this, I’m talking figuratively. I don’t advocate drinking and writing any more than I advocate drinking and podcasting, which is something I’ve not done, Jonathan. That was one of the gimmicks I was supposed to do, is have a glass of wine. Honestly, I never did it. It would have been a bad idea and that’s that. 17 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Moving on to Email Players Rule #9: •

Don’t let your customer steer your ship, or you’re going to end up on the rocks.

This is a blatant swipe of a concept that I heard from Dante Nero, who I mentioned earlier. He was talking about girls. Don’t let your girl steer your ship or you’re going to end up on the rocks, and there’s a whole philosophy behind that you can listen to his show for. I apply it to customers. I think you have to run your business the way you know you need to run it. You can’t let somebody tell you how to run your business. First of all, they’re your customers. They’re there to buy from you. You’re not there to get advice from them about something that they don’t even know how to do. I mentioned this a couple episodes ago about this guy on my Email Players list, a paid Email Players subscriber. He was like, “I’m emailing daily. I’m having all this success now, but I still get letters from people kind of irking me. They’re trying to tell me not to mail as often and all that.” Personally, Jonathan, I’ve been told this too by people on my list. “Every two to three days should suffice, Ben. You don’t really need to send it out every day,” and these people don’t know what they’re talking about. If I took their advice I would probably be making half the income I am now, so why the hell would I listen to them? Why would I listen to someone who has not achieved what I’m trying to achieve? Let’s use the ship analogy here, if I’m sailing a ship I’m not taking advice from someone who’s never gone sailing before. I’m taking advice from a captain with years of experience. I’ll listen to him, but I’m sure as hell not going to let some amateur steer my ship. I’m not going to give them the wheel or I’m going to end up on the rocks. It’s the same thing in your business. You cannot let your customers steer your ship. You can’t let them tell you how to run things. Now, you can listen to them. You can hear them out, and you should hear them out. You should listen to what your market is telling you. They may be telling you to sell something that you never thought to sell, and you should sell it because there’s a cry for it. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about them telling you how to run your business. I’ll give you another example. Sean D’Souza, one of the most underrated marketing minds on the planet, in my humble but accurate opinion, has all kinds of products, including a $10,000 product. I forgot what the product is, 18 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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but it’s $10,000. You cannot buy that up-front. You have to go through his exact funnel in the way he wants you to go through it, which is based on you consuming each product as you go along. It’s a very, very smart and brilliant way to do it. I believe we even did a show on this awhile back. We’ve done so many shows, Jonathan. I don’t even remember all the shows we’ve done, but we did a show on this. He was talking about how you have to opt into his list before you can buy his flagship product. You cannot go to his site and say, “I’d like to buy your Brain Audit product.” No, he makes you opt in first. If you don’t want to opt in, you’re not getting the product. If you complain about it, you’re not respecting what he’s doing and he’s probably going to let you go, I’m guessing. I don’t know if he spews people off his list or not like I do. The point is, he’s had people try to buy his $10,000 product. They’ve paid him money. “Hey, send me your $10,000 product.” They sent him money and he will refund the money back. “No, you have to get these other products first,” the much less expensive products. There’s a reason why he does this. I’m not going to go into it right now. It’s his business. I highly recommend going to his site at PsychoTactics.com. I’m sure you can learn more. The point is, he does not let his customers steer his ship. He steers it and he’s very successful at that, and I wholeheartedly agree with him on that. You steer your ship the way you know how. You have the plan. It’s your goal, it’s your life, it’s your business. You do it the way you know you have to do it, and don’t let people who don’t know how to do what you’re trying to do steer your ship, or you will end up on the rocks. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Two quick thoughts on that, Ben. I do like that you made the clarification about listening to your customers, because they can certainly give you some good copy ideas or good product ideas. But if they haven’t been the people that have actually done it, we call it “walk the last 30 feet,” like comedians, the last 30 feet to the mic on stage. If they’ve never been up there in front of the audience and dealt with an audience, then you can’t listen to those people because those people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Only the people that have been where you are going or where you want to be are the people you listen to. But in copywriting, listening to your customers as far as the words they use and the needs and the pains they have is a huge thing. I just wanted to add that. 19 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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BEN SETTLE: That’s good. I’ll even throw another example out there. Hell, it’s going to be a longer show anyway. When I spoke at No Excuses Summit at the end of June – you were wondering where that big spike came from on June 29? I think something must have happened where people found me that day. That might have been the day I spoke actually, I don’t know, but that’s probably what that was from. Not that that matters to anyone listening to this. The point is, before I went up there – and I’m really glad I asked about this – I talked to one of the guys putting on the event, Raymond Fong. I was like, “I have 50 minutes and I have all this training I want to do, so I decided to cut my story out and just get into the training.” He goes, “No, don’t do that, don’t ever do that. Ben, you’ve got to tell your story because that way they connect with you and all this.” He’s been doing speaking a long time and that was my first time, so when he said that I was like, “Okay. I’m not even going to question it.” I did it and he was absolutely right. If I had taken my story out of that talk it would not have had the impact it ended up having. People really seemed to like it. On the other hand, when I got done speaking, my friend Jim Yaghi – I think that was his first time speaking alone on stage – he gave me some tips about some stuff I might have been doing wrong up there, and I listened to it. He wasn’t an authority on it but I wanted to hear him out at least. I would still hear him out as just part of the audience. It wasn’t anything big or anything, but he made a good point. I wouldn’t have gone to him and said, “Okay, how do I give this speech in the best way?” because he’s never really done one before. He was with me when Raymond told me to give my story, so we were both beneficiaries of that. You still listen to people. You hear people out, but you don’t let them ultimately steer your ship. I’ll just throw that out there for some red meat to chew on. Email Players Rule #10: •

Be a leader, not just an expert.

I’ve talked about this a lot on my blog and my emails. There’s a big difference between being a leader and an expert. People will listen to experts. Let’s say you just wrote a book and you have it on Amazon, you can honestly say you’re an expert on that subject because an expert is just someone who knows a little bit more than everyone else on a certain subject. That makes you an expert. People will listen to experts, but they follow leaders. There’s a big difference there, Jonathan, right? Wouldn’t you rather be followed than just listened to? 20 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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You be a leader by doing the stuff we advocate on this show – by mailing daily, by having an opinion, by sticking to your guns, by not letting people steer your ship except you. You’re leading your market. You’re not just being listened to, but people are following you. People will buy from people they perceive as leaders, and people on your list will perceive you as a leader if you do email right, the way we teach. They will sometimes buy from you without even doing much research. They just know you’re the leader – not just the expert, but you’re the leader. You’ve just saved them a mountain of work and time that they don’t have to research because they just trust you’re the leader and they trust your opinion and they’ll buy your product. That happens all the time. I will do it myself. I will buy from the person who I perceive as the leader in the market, without even researching sometimes because I don’t have time. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I’ll tell you what, Ben. When you did that promotion a few weeks back for Ryan Levesque, you guys were promoting a video and I’m like, “Damn, I don’t have time for this video. Where’s the buy button? Ah, there’s the buy button!” I just bought that without having to watch the video because I trust you and because I already know what I want from Levesque. I want to know how to do those funnels, so there’s no thinking about it. You guys are leaders and I’m like, “Click! Ch-ching!” just that simple because I trust you. BEN SETTLE: And that happens all the time. In fact, here’s a little tidbit for anyone who does a lot of testing. Let’s just say I’ve had access to see a lot of stats from some pretty big direct response companies. I’m not going to name any of them, I’m just telling you I’ve seen it. Putting a little Buy button at the top of your video almost always increases your sales. Every time I’ve heard it, for people like you and me who just say, “Screw it, I’m going to buy it. I already know I want it. I don’t need to sit through this thing for 20 or 30 minutes waiting for a frickin’ Buy button to appear and all that. I’m just going to buy it.” Just a little something to think about. Be a leader, not just an expert. Email Players Rule #11: By the way, this is my favorite of all the rules. This applies especially to your personal relationships. I want to see if I can’t get myself into some trouble here. •

Never, ever, ever reward bad behavior.

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Let me give you an example. I once took a girl, who will go unnamed, to the movies, and this person was acting up. She was misbehaving, being real bitchy and just kind of complaining and nagging. She just wouldn’t shut up before the movie starts. She wanted to complain. She wanted my attention. That’s what it all came down to. She complained about the people sitting next to us and behind us. This was the premiere of a comic book movie. It was a cool movie and a lot of people were there. That’s just how it is. I don’t like crowds any more than she does, but there it was, so she was acting up and being bitchy. I said, “Look, if this is going to be a problem, why don’t you go sit out in the car?” so she did. She was misbehaving so I told her to go sit out in the car and she did. She ran out of the theater. Now, here’s the thing. I guarantee you she thought I was going to run out and chase her. “Oh, I’m sorry. Come on back,” and kiss her ass basically, because it was a little embarrassing the way she just ups and leaves like that. The show hadn’t even started yet. The lights were still on. People were listening to her complain and all that. But I did not chase her. I’m not going to reward her with my attention for her misbehaving. What happened was about a minute before the lights went down before the preview started, she comes in, sits down, and was pleasant the rest of the movie. This happens all the time to people all over the place. If I had gone out there and rewarded her bad behavior for that – and believe me, she was misbehaving, she admitted it later; this wasn’t elBenbo, this was just Ben and he just wanted to watch the movie – had I gone out there like, “Oh, I’m sorry. Come on back in. Just please come back in. It’ll be okay,” she would have done more of the same because now she knows every time she wants attention she could just act up in public like that. No, not with me, so I didn’t reward that bad behavior. This goes beyond just your personal relationships. By the way, this goes for if you have kids or anything. It could be girls with guys, like a girl whose man is misbehaving. Don’t reward him for being an idiot. When elBenbo comes out he doesn’t get rewarded. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Dude, you sound like Cesar Milan, the dog whisperer, because that’s the same things with dogs. They’re acting up? You don’t reward them or pet them. That’s just the way it is.

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BEN SETTLE: Exactly, you don’t do it. I could go into something a little bit here, but I’m – well, why not do this? The girl I’m dating these days is different from the other girl from before, a totally new girl, and she brings her dog over sometimes and her dog doesn’t like anybody. Her dog really doesn’t like too many people apparently. It likes me, though. One day she took a picture of me and my dog and her dog, both behaving on my lap, and I said, “Why don’t you come in this picture and sit next to me and we can get someone else to take a picture and we’ll say, ‘Ben Settle, the Bitch Whisperer.’” She got a kick out of that. Just a joke, for people who are going to freak out. “Oh, Ben!” Shut up and listen to the rest of the Email Players Rules. So you don’t reward bad behavior. You just don’t do it if a customer is acting up. This is why I do the anti-professional thing, by the way. This is why if someone is acting like a complete low-class jackass and being a dick or something, and being disrespectful to me or someone I’ve outsourced something to or whatever, I don’t say, “Oh sir, I’m so sorry. We didn’t mean that.” No, I just say, “Get the hell out of here. You’re now cut off. You’re never buying from me again. You’re blacklisted,” because you don’t reward bad behavior. That includes your customers and people on your list. You just don’t do it. Don’t reward that. Don’t feed trolls, so there’s another way to look at it. Email Players Rule #12: •

If you want to know what someone really wants, observe what they buy.

Jonathan, we will bring this right back to the dating world. As I’ve mentioned many times, I sell in this market. I observe this stuff and I see it all the time. I’m in the market in many ways. I’m there in the trenches and I know how this works. You’ll have a lot of girls out there who will say, “I want a nice guy who’s sensitive and will show me his feelings and will pamper me.” They want to be pampered and all that stuff. They all say they want this, and yet you see them going home with the thugs and the guys who treat them like crap, or just guys who don’t put up with their shit and who don’t pamper them and who don’t do all that. You see them go home with guys and go out with guys and marry guys who are the opposite. It’s almost like the mushcookie guys are always single and they’re always miserable and they’re always wondering why. It’s like cognitive dissonance, and it’s because you have to observe what the girls are buying. 23 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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When I was hardcore dating all these different girls – I’m kind of settling in on one right now finally, kind of mending my wicked wandering ways – it would be funny because I would ask them about their last three boyfriends. You’re not supposed to do that. “Oh, don’t ask about their boyfriends. It sounds like you’re needy.” I don’t give a crap what they think, I want to know about their last three boyfriends. I want to know how they were. If they say, “Oh, they were all douchebags,” I say, “You know what, you and I are not going to work out because you’re attracted to douchebags. You have shown it. Your last three boyfriends were all douchebags? I’m not a douchebag” – at least in my mind I’m not a douchebag, not the way that they would describe these guys at least. “You should go out with guys you’re attracted to and keep getting on your little carousel and keep getting hurt until one day when you’re past 35 or 40 and now you’re going to want a nice guy and they’re going to want nothing to do with you.” I say this and it sounds mean, but I actually help people. Some girls have actually thanked me for this. I’ve actually been thanked for giving this advice. I say, “You’ve demonstrated who you’re really attracted to, and it’s not guys like me who have our stuff together. You don’t want a successful guy. You just want some guy who’s going to kind of treat you like crap.” Now, why they’re like that I don’t know. We can bring Doc Carney on for further analysis sometime. He has some thoughts on this, but the point is if you want to know what someone really wants – not what they say they want – you observe what they buy. It’s the exact same in business. You and I know that. People will send surveys out there asking people what they want and all this, but it’s not necessarily what they’re buying. This is why if I’m going to use a survey, what I like to do is ask, “What is the last product or two products you bought on this subject?” or in general. They’ll tell me what they’re actually spending money on, and it’s not what they think they want. In golf people say they want consistency. “I want consistency, consistency, consistency.” But there’s very few products out there about consistency. It’s all about how to drive the ball 300+ yards straight as an arrow. It’s always about something else. That’s Email Players Rule #12: If you want to know what someone really wants, observe what they buy. Email Players Rule #13: 24 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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•

It’s better to be respected than liked.

I fully admit I got this from Jim Camp, the world’s most-feared negotiator, and it changed a lot about the way I go about marketing myself and doing my emails. It goes back to having an attitude. It’s not about being liked by everybody. There’s a lot of people who are liked by a lot of people who are miserable. They have no business to speak of, quite frankly. They’re not making any sales. Everyone likes them, but no one’s buying from them. It’s kind of like the nice guy who’s friends with all the girls, but none of the girls actually date him. They’re just friends with him. Everyone likes him, but they don’t actually date him. There’s a lot of people in business where people like them, but nobody’s actually buying from them. It’s much better to be respected, and the way to be respected, as Jim Camp said, and I think he said it brilliantly, is to be effective. The more effective you are, the more respected you are, so get good at whatever it is you do. If it’s writing emails, you excel at it. You’re not going to become the best at it, because I’m the best at it, but I’m not asking you to beat me, I’m just asking you to keep up. PRODUCER JONATHAN: You could be the best in your niche, as long as you’re not in Ben’s. BEN SETTLE: Really, you just have to keep up with me. Don’t worry about it. The point is you want to excel. Is it copywriting? Are you a freelance copywriter? You excel at that. Is it video marketing? Is it blogging? Is it social media? Is it real estate investing? Whatever it is you’re doing, whatever you’re just good at, become the best you can be at it and you will be respected automatically. I want to quote the Bible again, not word-for-word, but there is a Proverb that says, “You see a man who’s skilled in his work? He will stand before kings.” It’s very true. This is as old as old can be. It works. Excel at what you do, try to be the best at it, and you will be much better off than if everyone just likes you. Moving on to the last one before we wrap this up – Email Players Rule #14: •

Cut people out who complicate your life.

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I’ve talked about this many times on this podcast, real-life experiences. For example, there was a girl I went out with for a very long time and she started complicating my life and she had to go, because you cannot save a damsel who loves her distress. It’s the same in business. Is there a customer who’s just a problem, who constantly needs hand-holding? Is there someone on your list who’s just complicating your life, trying to suck you into arguments and all these other stupid things that people do? Cut them out, man. Just delete them. You don’t have to fight. Do not feed trolls or anyone who complicates your life. They’ve got to go. I’m not saying you can’t love them if they’re a family member, but cut them out of your life. For example, I recently unsubscribed an Email Players subscriber. I do this all the time, actually. People are like, “Oh man, you’re throwing $97/month away.” No, I’m not. I’m buying hundreds of thousands of dollars of my time back by doing this collectively to all these people that complicate my life. I had to let her go, for reasons I won’t go into here. I don’t think she’s a bad person or anything, but it was very clear that she kind of thrived on needing to be entertained in certain aspects. I’m not a trained monkey. I was already getting the newsletter to her faster because they live in another country. They weren’t getting it for some reason. I don’t know why FedEx wasn’t delivering it to them, but the point is I could already sense this was going to be a hassle customer – not a bad person. I don’t think she’s a bad person at all, actually, but she was becoming a hassle. I’d already had to sit there and spend time on something I shouldn’t have had to, so I cut them out. I cut people out who complicate my life, I really do, and I think everyone listening to this should do the same. Unless you need something from someone, fine, get what you need from them and then cut them out. It’s that simple. Those are Email Players Rules 8-14. Jonathan, any commentary on this before we wrap up? PRODUCER JONATHAN: I’ll tell you what, I’d like to recap them as we’re closing out the little bonus episode today a little longer. Email Players Rule #8: Write drunk, edit sober. Email Players Rule #9: Don’t let your customer steer your ship. Email Players Rule #10: Be a leader, not an expert. 26 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Email Players Rule #11: Don’t reward bad behavior. Email Players Rule #12: If you want to know what someone really wants, observe what they buy. Email Players Rule #13: It’s better to be respected than liked. Email Players Rule #14: Cut people out who complicate your life. As always, Ben, I agree with you on this stuff. Maybe I’m a fanboy, but a lot of this stuff is what’s freed up more of my time and made me money because I just go by these rules here, so I do appreciate them and appreciate you. BEN SETTLE: I’m glad that you’re using it. I didn’t make most of this stuff up. I just think about this stuff deeply and I want to save time and energy, and I want all you guys to save time and energy so you can focus on the stuff that makes life fun. That’s all I got for this week. For next week I have no idea so it’ll be a surprise. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I like that. BEN SETTLE: By the way, I do want to make one last call for people to leave a review for us – good, bag, fugly, I don’t care. Just leave a review and tell us what you think. It’s BenSettleShow.com/itunes, right, Jonathan? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah, you guys can go to bensettleshow.com/itunes. If you’re not using that, if you’re on Android, we can use reviews there too at bensettleshow.com/stitcher. Just leave us lots of stars and good words or bad words, as Ben says, and we’ll be happy. That wraps up Ben Settle’s Antipreneur Show #30.

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Chapter 3

Email Players Rules 15-21 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. This is Episode #34 of the Ben Settle Show with producer Jonathan Rivera. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Hey now. BEN SETTLE: This is going to be the third in a series of what will probably be many, many episodes to come where I talk about the Email Players Rules. Email Players Rules are just rules I live by in my business and sometimes in my personal life to have peace of mind and more success and just an easier time of doing things and avoid a lot of unnecessary problems, pain, and that sort of thing. You can never completely avoid that stuff, but this definitely helps you find a few of the pitfalls before you step in them. The last two times we did this was Episode 21 and Episode 30, so if you want to see the first 14 rules you can just listen to those shows. I recommend it. It’s pretty much the cornerstone of how I do things in all sorts of ways and fashions. There’s one more thing I’ve got to say because I’m big on giving credit where credit’s due and I don’t want to forget to do this. I got the idea for Email Players Rules from another podcast called the Beige Phillip Show, which is mostly about how guys can do better with women and get along better with women and all that, by this comedian named Dante Nero. I was heavily influenced by the way he structured that. I thought it was very cool, so I want to give him props. I don’t know the guy, obviously, but if you want to listen to his show that’s kind of cool on those subjects, I recommend it. Also I think one of these I even kind of swiped from him, so I’ll give credit where credit’s due on that when we get there. So we’ve done 14 and we’re on #15. Email Players Rule #15: •

Spew lukewarm people off your list ASAP.

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I’ve done a whole show on this subject, I know that, and it wasn’t all that long ago, but it is one of the rules. This is one of the best things you can do for your business, mark my words, is to not try to have the biggest list necessarily, but the most qualified list, and you do that by getting rid of the lukewarm people. You want them hot or you want them cold. I’m going to do a little Bible reading here. Actually, I don’t have it in front of me so never mind. I haven’t got it all memorized like some people do. There’s a part in the Bible in the book of Revelation, I believe it’s chapter 3 if I’m not mistaken, where Jesus is kind of lecturing these churches because they’re lukewarm. He doesn’t like lukewarm. He says, “I want you either hot or cold. I’m spewing lukewarm churches out.” I think that’s a very, very good way to look at your list. We could go into that whole thing again, but the bottom line is this. You want them hot where they want to be buyers or they’re at least attached to your way of doing things and they will be buyers so they can improve their lives by buying your products, or you want them cold, where they know they don’t want what you’ve got. They know they don’t want to hear you out. You’re just not their cup of tea. Your product just isn’t what they’re looking for, and that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. Cold is better because they will leave your list, and I’m talking about your email list, on their own volition. They will go peacefully and quietly without drama. They’re not going to click spam buttons and complain buttons and all that. You just want them to go. But if they’re lukewarm they’re just sitting on your list, maybe not opening them, maybe not paying much attention, and they’re probably never going to buy from you. So it’s in your best interest to be the kind of email marketer that elicits a response of being either hot or cold, but never lukewarm. You do not want indifference. That’s the worst thing you can have, and that is Email Players Rule #15. Moving on to Email Players Rule #16. This one I’ve got to give props, Jonathan. I’m going to give it to the person I heard this from. This wasn’t that long ago, but I thought, “Man, this is a really great way of wording it,” what I’m about to say. •

Don’t play with guns in the dark.

I heard that from my buddy Shane Hunter, who does a lot of Facebook marketing, pay per click, and SEO. He’s into all that and he’s very good at it, and he told me this. What he means by that is to know your market before you try to go and sell people stuff. Before you start spending a bunch of money on Facebook ads or whatever, know thy market, because otherwise it’s like you’re 29 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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playing with guns in the dark. You’re just shooting things in the dark. You might hurt yourself and you might hurt others if you don’t know your market going on, so it’s very important. Don’t play with guns in the dark, whatever it is you’re selling. This is especially important for people like my apprentice, my fledgling, as I sometimes call her. It sometimes bothers people when I say that, like I’m disrespecting her, but I’m not. It’s meant nicely, and that’s what I’m telling her. You’ve got to know that market first. That is the most important thing you can do before you sit down to write an ad or email to anybody. I want you to know that market better than you know your own family members, better than you know anybody, better than you know your favorite TV or movie character, because the better you know that market, the better you can sell them. In fact, you could probably screw a lot of things up in your advertising, in your marketing, in your emails, in your sales letters, but if you know the market you’ll still probably get a lot of sales, even if you screw a bunch of other stuff up. That’s just the way it is. Jonathan, don’t ever play with guns in the dark, okay? PRODUCER JONATHAN: I won’t. Email Players Rule #17, and this one I got from Dante Nero, who I just mentioned before, the Beige Phillip Show. •

You can’t save a damsel if she loves her distress. But as a rule I word it like this: Don’t try to save a damsel if she loves her distress.

On the surface this sounds like a guy trying to fix a girl who’s got problems. She’s got problems, emotional or otherwise, and is probably not a healthy person for him to try to pursue or be with, but it goes well beyond that. I’m taking this to the business level. There are a lot of damsel customers who don’t really want to solve the problem that they have that your product can help them with, and they tend to be problem customers. What they want is the next bright shiny object, and they will drive you nuts, not only asking you questions that are in the product that they just bought – because they don’t think they really want to go through it yet. They might not have even cracked it open yet, because they like their distress. They like their pain.

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I will never understand this, Jonathan, but there are people who really like and cling to their pain. Customers in every market are the same way. There are people who I know for a fact have the talent, the chops, whatever you want to call it, to do very, very well at email marketing or copywriting or anything like that, but they hold themselves back. They just keep thinking that they need another product, or have another excuse for why they haven’t gotten started. It goes back to the odd fellows thing we talked about last week. The reason we’re odd is because we don’t sit around and wait for problems to solve themselves, we go out and solve them. That’s kind of like the damsel people. They have these problems, they don’t really want to solve it, but they think they do, and they become very, very big pain in the ass customers over time, they really do. They’re not bad people. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying they’re bad people, but they make terrible customers or people to spend your valuable time on. If you’ve got people who aren’t even going through your products, but they’re buying them and asking you questions even though they have the product, or they’re insulting you by not even going through the product at all after they buy it, and then just refunding it right away without even going through it, those are damsel customers. Get rid of them. They love their distress. Why save a damsel who likes her distress? It makes no sense. If the damsel likes the dragon so much, she can have the dragon. You go find yourself a new princess in another tower and go after that one. That’s what it comes down to, and that’s how I look at the way I run my business, my list, and all that. I want to spew the cold lukewarm people out. I only want the hot people, and a damsel who loves her distress, or in this sense a customer who loves their distress, they’re essentially lukewarm people so they’ve got to go. Email Players Rule #18. This is my favorite one, by the way. I don’t know who I first heard this from, but I love it. •

If someone is going to cast you as the villain, then you might as well play the role well.

Does this not happen? The more successful you get, the more of a following you gain, the more influence you start having in whatever it is you do, the more the haters, naysayers, and all the skeptics and critics are going to come out. It’s just part of the thing. It’s no big deal. It means you’re doing something right.

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For example, last week we talked about how you sent out a bunch of emails on that Sunday and the guy’s like, “How can that be working? Does that really work?” because he just hasn’t done it yet. He probably has by now since that episode, I’m sure. I think it was very helpful for you to explain that to him. But let’s say somebody really gets nasty with you, and this has happened to me when I do a sale like that. I’ll have someone get real nasty. “Oh man, you must be desperate, sending all these emails out.” They don’t realize that I’m making way more money sending all these emails out. You can call that desperate if you want, little snowflake, but this is making me more money. Why wouldn’t I do it? So I’m going to embrace it. I’ll send more emails the next time. If I’m going to be cast as the villain, I’m going to play it well. I’m going to send 14 emails next time. That’s the way I look at it, especially if it’s working. Obviously that’s the caveat. In business, in life, in anything, if you know you’re doing the right thing and you’re doing things correctly and you’re doing things ethically and you’re helping people, there’s going to be people who try to take shots at you. When they do that, you ramp it up even more. You’re doing something right. Play that part well. If they’re going to call you a villain, you better be Darth Vader. Get up there and do more of whatever it is you’re doing. Play the part well. PRODUCER JONATHAN: You know what it reminds me of, Ben, those haters are those crabs that we talk about, right? They’re just trying to knock you back down and put you in your place where you belong. The further you push, the further away you’ll get from them and you won’t have to deal with that anymore. BEN SETTLE: Yeah, and I would say this. If you’re crawling out of the bucket, make sure you kick a few of them in the teeth on the way out. That’s the way I look at it. Speaking of which, Email Players Rule #19. This is kind of just rolling right with it. •

If it ain’t controversial, it’s probably not worth writing about, talking about, or doing anything in your marketing whatsoever.

Don’t be afraid of controversy. I’m not saying you’ve got to go out there and shake the beehive every time, but don’t fear it. Understand that if you’re doing it for the right reasons, you’re doing it because you want to help people, you want to get attention to make a point or something, you might as well go with 32 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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it, because if it’s not controversial in some way it’s probably not going to get as much attention as otherwise. Controversy gets a lot of attention. I teach writing controversial emails because if you write controversial emails, I can guarantee you’re going to get more of a reading than by writing non-controversial emails. That’s the nature of the beast. People love this stuff. I’m the same way. For example, my friend Ryan Healy, a very good copywriter, he has calmed down a lot on his blog but there was a time when he would be really controversial on his blog, to the point where he couldn’t sleep for like a week because of the fallout of what he’d say. I mean the guy has big clanging balls to write some of that stuff. He would call out certain people by name on his blog, big-name people. I wouldn’t do that because I don’t see the point of that, but he was trying to help people. It wasn’t something he was doing in a mean way. He really wanted to warn people about certain practices and all that. And I’ll tell you what, he would tell you every single time he did something like that the traffic would just surge into his blog because it was controversial. If it ain’t controversial, it ain’t worth writing about. If you just keep that kind of in mind when you’re doing your emails and your ads, videos, whatever it is you’re doing, I’m telling you you’re going to get a lot more attention. And if you get a lot more attention, you’ll probably get a lot more sales. And if you get a lot more sales, you’re going to get a lot more of all the other stuff you want, whatever it is. It all comes together. Don’t be afraid of controversy or being controversial. In fact, embrace it. It may be just a tad hair-raising at first, I’m the first to admit this, but after a while you not only get used to it and immune to the fallout and all that, but you may even start to enjoy it a little bit too much like I do. At that point it’s like you’ve got to kind of curb it back a little bit, but so it is. Email Players Rule #20: •

If you have fun writing it, they’ll have fun reading it.

Is this a hard and fast rule for every single person in every single circumstance? Probably not, but generally speaking, Jonathan, the emails that I’ve had the most fun writing have been the most profitable and the ones that people seem to have really enjoyed reading and buying from the most, too. There’s something about that. People sense fun. People want to be around fun people. Who wants to be around a depressed person or someone who’s always 33 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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writing about deep, dark, depressing things? It gets old real fast, and you’re not having fun writing that. It may be therapeutic for you to write it, but is it fun for you to write it? This is a question people should ask, and this is what I tell people. If you’re writing an email and you’re just having problems and you’re struggling with this email like, “Gosh, it’s just not in me today,” and then they want to just quit writing for the day, I say, “No, throw that email out and write about something fun,” because it’s not fun to you to write about that. That’s why you’re having all this resistance. If it was fun, it may not necessarily be any easier to write it, but you’d be more enthusiastic about writing it because it’s fun. Fun doesn’t mean you have to be joking around and all that. It can still be a serious topic that you’re writing about. For example, Jonathan, I always bring up the prostate niche. That is a problem that is not pleasant to have. You don’t really joke about prostate problems. It’s not funny, but I still had a lot of fun writing some of those emails because I was telling stories and using analogies and joining ideas together that no one else that I know of in that niche has, and that’s fun, to me at least. The point is, if you’re having fun writing it, people will have fun reading it, and then they’ll have fun buying from it if you do it right. And now we get down to the last one. This one’s going a lot faster than last time, Jonathan. We cleared like 30 minutes last time. Either I’m getting better at this or I’m getting less wordy. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I think you’re getting better. It’s getting tight, buddy. I think it’s going good with the 20 minutes. BEN SETTLE: Okay, here we are with the last one, then. Email Players Rule #21: •

Don’t sell yourself for free.

Here’s what I mean. Let me give you some examples of this. I’ll give you a dating example because everybody I hear from does like those examples. By the way, whenever someone of the female gender comments to me about something, whether it be my daily email or a product they bought or the show, they always preface everything with, “I don’t agree with everything you say, but…” We’ve got to work harder on them. Everything I say should be agreed with, without question, or I’m not doing this right. Anyway, don’t sell yourself for free. 34 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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For example, let’s take a guy – and this has happened to a lot of guys – and he wants to date a girl. She’ll ask him to come over and help her move some stuff or do some chore or a favor of some kind, and he’ll go and just do it. But then she still won’t date him, because she was basically just like, “Yeah, I’ll take your time and attention, but I’m not giving you anything in return. Sorry.” It’s not her fault, though. That’s the guy’s fault for selling himself for free. You don’t do things for free. That’s just a dating example. Let’s take this to a business thing. One of my favorite people to follow on Facebook – in fact, this is one of the reasons I’m even on Facebook, just to read this guy’s stuff. Most people I just don’t care about. I will actively go to this guy’s page to read whatever he’s saying. His name is A.B. Dada. I think he’s at his friend capacity probably, but he has a page you can follow. He’s a very controversial guy, but everything he says to me makes a lot of sense. He’s an entrepreneur, an odd fellow you could say. He has this rule now. He will not argue and debate with customers. He owns like two retail stores, a t-shirt business and some other stuff. I’m not exactly sure all the businesses he has, but he gets customers arguing with him, some people wanting to debate him about stuff in business, prices or whatever. It could be anything. You know how easy it is to get sucked into a debate like that, Jonathan? Like an endless black hole of someone? And it could just be someone asking you for free advice. For example, not long ago someone who was an Email Players subscriber was on for one month and then quit, which means he’s never coming back, but he thought that he could still ask me questions. Apparently I’m going to answer his questions for free. So here’s what I sent him, and I learned this from A.B. Dada. This is what he tells his customers, more or less. “Listen, my consulting fee is $500/hour. I’m happy to answer your question or debate you on whatever it is you want to debate. You send me a check and I’ll be happy to debate you on these things.” That’s how you keep your time. That’s how you keep the trolls away, too. Never sell yourself for free, whether it be giving advice or whatever else. I’m not saying you’ve got to charge them $500 to answer a question, but make sure they have some skin in the game somewhere. Jonathan, I don’t answer questions of people who are not Email Players subscribers. It’s not because I’m being a dick or anything, it’s just because my time is valuable and they’ve earned it. And I put this in the sales letter. It’s not like some big mystery. Maybe once in a while if it’s somebody I know, a friend or something, that’s different. I’m talking in general. Or maybe I’ll take 35 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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somebody’s question but use it for fodder in a daily email or on this show, for example. That’s different. It’s not free because we’re actually using something they sent us. The point is, don’t sell yourself for free. As that wise psychopath, Joker from The Dark Knight said, “If you’re good at something, you never do it for free.” This is why you’ve got to be selling in every email. Always put a link in that email. Whether they buy or not is irrelevant. They are going to see the fact that you’re pitching them something, if nothing else. That’s it, Jonathan. That’s the latest batch of seven Email Players Rules. Any comments or arguments or resistance to any of these? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Aw, come on. I agree with you too much on this stuff. I think that’s a good one. Now, what were the other two episodes, just so we can remind everyone again where they can get the first set? BEN SETTLE: The first seven was BSA #21 on the iTunes list, and the other one was BSA #30 on iTunes. The reason I say that is because of the way iTunes numbers things. It will say #1 at the top, which I think throws people off. It’s backwards, so I just throw that in. Look for the BSA in front of the number. That’s it, man. That’s all I got. I have no idea what we’re talking about next time, but I’m sure it will be something controversial. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Something good. Thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you Ben for dropping the Email Players Rules on us, and we’ll see you guys on the next one.

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Chapter 4

Email Players Rules 22-28 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com, and this is Episode 55 of the Antipreneur Show. Jonathan and I were just talking before this, that because of the space-time continuum of how this show works, how far ahead we are, I have no idea when you’re listening to this, but he and I have not spoken in over a month and we may be getting some aggression out about each other, some of the under-thesurface anger we have for each other, for him slacking off. Just don’t let that get in the way of your enjoyment of the show. Jonathan, to ease the tension between us, can you read that nice review we got, to help quell my anger. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Awesome, Ben. So good to be back, even though our listeners have never even missed us, so that’s a little strange. We finally got a review. It’s been a million years since we got a review, but we got a good review, 5 stars from Alan Stacie “It’s no wonder. Ben oozes with it.” That’s the title. “You simply must check out Episode 50. Ben lays out the biggest hinge to hang your success on, no matter what area of endeavor, and 9 critical ways to ensure you possess it, in only 22 minutes of transformational gold.” Boy, this guy must be a writer. Thank you. BEN SETTLE: I don’t remember giving 9 things away, but hey, if he caught 9 things in there, yes, what he said. Thank you very much. We do appreciate that, Alan, and of course anybody listening to this. We love reviews. We like good reviews, bad reviews, as long as they’re righteous and honest reviews. Don’t be shy if you’ve got something to unload on me, if you want to tell me I’m full of crap, or if you want to say something nice. It’s all good. Jonathan, it’s been a long time since we did an Email Players Rules show. In fact, I believe it was Episode 34. What was that, 21 episodes ago? 21 weeks ago. The prior Email Players Rules episodes are 21, 30, and 34. Email Players Rules are an idea that was inspired by this other podcaster named Dante Nero with the Beige Phillip Show about gender relations and

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dating and all that kind of stuff, a very cool show. I like it a lot. I’m a big fan of his. He has no idea who I am, of course, but I’m a fanboy. He does this thing where he has the Beige Phillip Rules and it’s these maxims that they go by on that show, and I always thought that was a cool idea. Email Players Rules are like our version of that. These are lessons and maxims that I do business by and live my life by. Some people have found them very helpful, so we’re going to continue to do them as I think of new ones to talk about. We’ll do seven today, and then in the future – hopefully it won’t be 21 more weeks – all that said, Jonathan, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. Email Players Rule #22: •

Play to win, don’t play to not lose.

Jonathan, I don’t know about you, man, but I see this all the time and it bothers me. I see people holding back because they’re afraid they’re going to get yelled at or someone’s going to opt out of their list. In fact, the best example of this is people who are more worried about opt-outs on their email lists than sales. They’ll sit there like, “Oh man, I’m going to get people unsubscribing. I can’t say that.” Yeah, but is it going to increase your sales? Who cares if somebody unsubscribes. That’s playing to not lose, instead of playing to win, which would be more sales. Here’s another one, Jonathan, and we’ll talk about this probably again either today or some other day. I love getting these emails from people when I’m on their list and they’re like, “I don’t mean to bother you, but I just have this real quick thing to say,” like they don’t even believe in whatever they have to say. It’s like they’re apologizing for it. They’re playing to not lose. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah, come back when you’ve got a spine, please. BEN SETTLE: Exactly. That’s the whole thing. Who wants to buy from someone who’s apologizing for what they have to sell, which is a lot of people. This week being early January, I’m sending out an email about these things I keep hearing about called goodwill emails. Have we talked about this yet, Jonathan? PRODUCER JONATHAN: No. 38 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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BEN SETTLE: This is a term I’ve been hearing a lot over the last year specifically at our Ocean’s 4 things. There’s some guys I highly respect, so I’m not mocking or making fun of these guys. They’re awesome and brilliant and they do seven figures a year. They’re great. But I’m always trying to roto-rooter out of their minds this idea of doing a weekly goodwill email. A goodwill email is just pure content. There’s nothing to buy. There’s no URL. There’s no pitch. You’re just doing a good deed, giving away good information without anything. To me, that’s the opposite of goodwill. That’s playing to not lose. That’s not playing to win. Playing to win actually means helping out your customers, too. The analogy I like to use for this, Jonathan, is imagine that you, Jonathan Rivera, have a burning hot urinary tract infection. It feels like you’re pissing razor blades every time you go to the bathroom and you’re in pain, man. You need some relief. So you go down to Walgreens or whatever, and you’ve had this problem before and there’s something there you know that fixes this, or at least gives you relief until you can get to the doctor. You go to Walgreens and you walk in there and the shelves are all empty. All the products are off the shelves. Everything’s locked up in the back in a safe so nobody can get to it. You’re like, “What the hell? Where’s my stuff?” They go, “Look, this is a goodwill day today. We’re not going to sell you anything. We’re not going to allow you to buy anything. We’re not even going to let you know a product exists for your problem. We’re just going to educate you on your urinary tract infection. We’re going to tell you all about it. We’ll give you all the tips in the world, but we’re not going to give you relief.” That’s kind of what that’s like, and that’s another example of playing not to lose instead of playing to win. Playing to win is you go, “Yeah, we’ve got something for that problem. Here it is,” and you sell it to them and their life is benefited from it and they get rid of their problem, whatever it is, whether it be a urinary tract infection or whatever, and now they’re happy. That’s what builds goodwill, right? It’s not not selling to people. To me it makes no sense. So that’s my couple examples for that. Don’t play to not lose, play to win. That’s #22. Email Players Rule #23. I think, from what I heard, the great and esteemed Jay Abraham was the first to verbalize this – •

Test screams, not whispers. 39

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In advertising if you’re testing something, a lot of people will test the color of a headline. They’ll test red vs blue. Or they test the signature, “Sincerely” vs “Love” or whatever. Or they’ll test the salutation, or not even having a salutation. Now, those aren’t necessarily bad things. I’ve heard some freaky weird tests where those things actually made a difference, but they’re not the norm. You want to test screams. You want the biggest spread of ideas to test against – video vs text, or not just a new headline but a whole new look of the ad, whole new intro, whole new call to action. You want to test huge differences. I’ll tell you what, Jonathan, and I’m guessing that you’ve run into this, when you do email the way I’ve been teaching it, you really have to test screams. In the weight loss niche, my friend Jim Yaghi and I were partners in that niche for a couple years and we were testing text vs video. Those are pretty big spreads. Those are pretty different things. We couldn’t even get a clear winner because the emails were doing all the selling. It’s probably more relevant to cold traffic than it is to your list. That’s been my experience. Anyway, test screams, not whisper – a Jay Abraham-ism. Email Players Rule #24 is from Dan Kennedy. I don’t know if he made this up, but this is who I heard it from so I’m going to give him all the credit. You know, Jonathan, on this show we like to give credit where credit is due, even though half the internet marketing world doesn’t do that. They’ll just spout stuff like they invented it. There were some people a few years back – and I’m not going to say who they are, because I’m not going to embarrass these guys – but they were trying to act like they invented the concept of the USP. That thing’s been around since the 60’s when Rosser Reeves in his book talked about it, as far as I know. Even then, I don’t think USP is accurately taught these days by most people. It was really for TV advertising, because you only had that 30 seconds to say what you had to say, so you had to come up with a really cool unique selling proposition. On the internet with videos and sales letters, we have all the time in the world. Why have just one unique selling proposition? Why not have 10? Email Players Rule #24: •

Money is attracted to speed.

That’s the Dan Kennedy-ism I’m referring to. There are people who will spend three hours writing an email, for example, and then there’s guys like me who will spend three minutes writing an email, and the guy who takes three hours 40 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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or three days is probably not going to make that much more money than the person who spends 30 minutes. Money is attracted to getting things out there. Don’t be obsessing over all this stuff. People obsess over stuff, like every jot and tittle. I get it with sales letters. I understand doing that in videos and all that, some kind of evergreen pitch, but with email specifically I’d rather have a fast C-level email written than a slow 3-day A-level one written. Just get it out there. Get your stuff out there. This applies to everything – blogging or whatever. Get it out there. Money is attracted to speed. You got an idea for something? You implement it starting yesterday. Don’t worry about if it’s perfect. Just get it going. What’s that term, Jonathan – fire, ready, aim? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Ready, fire, aim. BEN SETTLE: That’s the way to do it. Just get it out there. Money will chase you if you do things fast and implement things fast. You can always go back and make things better. You can always go back and edit and all that stuff, but just get it out there. Have you found that to be truth in your life, Jonathan? Like when you do things fast, when you get it out there, do you find that money just comes to you faster, too? It’s like attracted to you? And I don’t mean that in a woo-woo “The Secret” way. Let me clarify something. I don’t believe in any of that crap. I know there are people listening to this, especially in the MLM world, and they live and die by the Law of Attraction. I don’t believe in any of that crap. When I say money is attracted to speed, I mean just by nature of you getting stuff out there in circulation, you have more opportunities to attract new customers and sales, in this case. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I like to call it “The Actual Secret,” Ben. It’s two words – Do Work. Just Do Work every day. BEN SETTLE: Yeah, that’s the secret. It’s scary, but that is the secret. Just get off your ass and do something. Just movement. I don’t think people understand that by just doing something it puts them in like the top 90% of people in the world, whatever it is you want to do. Money is attracted to speed. Thank you, Dan Kennedy Email Players Rule #25: 41 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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•

If you give people your time, they will take as much as they can get.

As of this recording – which is early January, and this happened a couple weeks ago, actually – my former copywriting apprentice and I decided I will not apprentice her anymore. I’m not going to go into all the reasons, but it probably is all me. I am such a dictator. I’m an iron-fisted dictator. I’m coaching my friend Dan Meredith right now. I don’t take coaching clients. I took him as a very rare exception and I wouldn’t have done this for anyone else. I know him, and he and I have had many discussions. We hung out at Oceans 4 once, and he’s just like the most persistent guy on the face of the planet. Anyway, I just wanted to help him out. I wanted to help him out by taking his money, Jonathan. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Nice. That’s so kind of you. BEN SETTLE: As Archie Bunker would say, it was mighty white of me to take his money. Anyway, back to the apprentice thing. My style of teaching is incompatible probably with everybody’s style of learning. That’s what we learned with my former apprentice. I will take all the blame for that, if you want to call it that. The point is, I’m also coaching Dan, and he’s a little bit more coachable, but even with him I think he gets a little rattled by my abrasiveness. There’s a point to all this, Jonathan. I’m not just saying this for nothing. When I was apprenticing my former apprentice, one of the things that I would get livid about, like I would yell at her, Jonathan, I would yell at this poor girl – I feel so bad in hindsight. I was like a dictator-in-chief with an iron first. Everything had to be my way. But this is one thing that she came to learn and said, “You know, Ben, you were right about this,” because you know chicks get emotional and they want to help people and all that, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but when it comes to business, if you give people your time, they will suck up every minute they can. I would get mad because she would give free consulting to someone she’d already been paid to help and she already did the job. She’s trying to do right and trying to do a good thing, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but I was like, “No, you can’t do that. You cannot give people your time for free.” If you give somebody something for free, especially your time, they will take it for granted. They won’t value it and they will try to take more, and then you’re just going to get angry and all that.

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There’s nothing new about this lesson, Jonathan. We’ve all gone through it. She had to go through it the hard way, and she no longer gives her time away for free, I’m happy to report, but only after the fact when the apprenticeship went down the tubes. Email Players Rule #26: •

If you’re not being mocked, either directly or passively – and usually this happens passive/aggressively – you ain’t doing it right.

I’m going to give a real-life example of this. There are other guys who have positioned themselves as leaders in the email marketing world. I’ve tried to do this myself as hard as I can. Some guys do it better than others. There’s one person, and it’s almost like he was obsessed with some of the things I said about testing, taking some things I said out of context and challenging me on something that I just know I’m right about, but not to me. He never says this to my face. What he does is he’ll put it in his advertising, like something I said, and I’m positioned as an “expert” – like mocking the experts – and yet he won’t just come out and say it. Or let’s have a discussion about it, right? So it’s kind of passive/aggressive, which is a little disappointing because I know this dude. He’s a good guy and everything. There’s nothing wrong with it, but he’ll say things like, “Why you can scientifically test emails.” Jonathan, I’ll be honest with you, I’ve talked to multiple actual real scientists, people who actually do science, and I’ve talked to engineer-types who actually have to do things scientifically, and they all just laugh whenever an internet marketer uses the word ‘scientifically’ to test email. You just can’t do it. I mean you can test things and you can get pretty good and accurate results, I’m not saying you can’t, but to throw the word ‘scientifically’ around when it’s simply not true – real scientists just laugh at it. They literally laugh. Ask Jim Yaghi. He and I have had great discussions about this. Most people don’t know the rigors that a real test involves. Everything has to be the exact same. All the elements have to be in the exact same place all the time to do a real test, and with email it’s just not possible. You don’t have all the same names on your list. Some ISPs may have been blacklisted. Some people may not be getting your emails, others might. Some people might be checking it on one device and not on another device, but the next time they check it on a different device. All these things have to be in place for it to be a scientifically accurate test. 43 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Anyway, I was saying that you can’t do that, so that was one example. I’m being mocked, basically. Of course, I’m laughing at the mockery, but the point is I was happy about it. If I’m not being mocked, Jonathan, if you’re not being mocked, if we together on this show are not being mocked, we’re doing something wrong. I just like it. I like it all. And once in a while somebody doing that kind of stuff may be onto something and you can learn something from it. The point is, if you’re not being mocked and people aren’t taking shots at you, you need to try harder. That’s #26. Email Players Rule #27: •

Buying from you or joining your list is not a right, it’s a revocable privilege.

That is the attitude to have, at least. Obviously anybody can probably join your list, but the point is in your attitude, in your marketing when you talk about these things. Most people beg people to join their list instead of inviting them to be a part of what you’re doing. Jonathan, you know this, and I’m sure long-term listeners know this, and people on my list know this – I’m quick to delete people. I’m quick to cancel people who are paying me $97/month for my Email Players newsletter. I will cancel people if they screw up, if they get an attitude with me or get pissy for no reason, and I mean no reason. I’m not saying there’s never a reason not to, like for example if something doesn’t show up. I’m the first one to apologize and overnight it to them, even if they live across the world or whatever. The point is, some people come out swinging and that kind of thing. Joining your list or being a part of your life is a privilege. It’s not a right. You should take that attitude that you’re going to surround yourself with the people you want to surround yourself with – customers, clients, whatever – and it’s going to be on your terms. Otherwise they can go find someone else. We’ve talked about this, Jonathan. The math is in our favor. If you have something of value that your market needs, there’s less supply of you and what it is you sell than there is of people in the market with that problem, assuming you’re in a decent market. If you’re selling something and there’s like 5 people in the market, you have problems beyond that. A perfect example. Ray Higdon is a great teacher, mentor, and leader in the MLM world and he invited me to speak at his mastermind last year on 44 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Halloween weekend. At the end of my talk we were doing Q&A and people were asking about opt-in pages, like what should they say on there and stuff. I said, “First of all, all you guys need to understand and have this mindset right now, starting today, that it is not a right to be on your list. You’re inviting them in, but they’re on probation. They better follow the funnel you’ve set out and not complain about it and whine about stuff. If they buy something from you, they damn well better use it and consume the product before they complain about it. Obviously, if it’s a bad product then it’s on you, but they’re expected to try it, and do-nothing’s should be discouraged. You should be trying to turn off people that you don’t want, because it’s a revocable privilege.” It’s just like a driver’s license. If somebody breaks the law, their driver’s license will be taken away. Jonathan, if somebody breaks my law, their Email Players license is revoked. Their Ben Settle license is revoked. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Your player card. BEN SETTLE: That’s right, your player card. So buying from you or joining your list is not a right, it’s a revocable privilege. That is an attitude you must start taking, starting yesterday. And finally, to round out this show, the last Email Players Rule for this time – Email Players Rule #28: •

It’s always better to spend energy finding a new relationship or customer, rather than trying to fix a toxic or damaged one.

This is something I learned by selling in the dating niche for a while now. This is just good advice to anyone in that world, but it’s also good in the business world. If you have a toxic relationship with a client, for example, and they’re just toxic, they’re bad news, even though they’re paying you, you may think, “I can fix this person. I can get them to think differently.” No, you can’t. You might be able to, I suppose, if you had years and years and you were patient, but it’s better to just go find a new one, Jonathan. It’s better to just go out and find a new client. Drop the toxic one and go find a better one. This goes back to, “You can’t save a damsel who loves her distress.” I don’t remember which Email Players Rule that was, but it’s the same thing. You can’t fix the damsel who loves her distress. You go find a new damsel, and it’s the same with this. It’s always better to spend energy finding a new 45 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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relationship or customer – this could be any kind of relationship – rather than trying to fix a toxic or damaged one. PRODUCER JONATHAN: You know what that reminds me of, Ben, is I have the same attitude in my apartments when trying to deal with people. This works on multiple levels. I have a tenant that’s not so hot, and it’s a whole lot easier to get a new tenant than to deal with this person. Just get those people the hell out of there. BEN SETTLE: Absolutely, because there’s less supply of your great opportunity for rental than there is of people who are willing to rent. This goes back to where the numbers are in your favor, so it all interacts. We didn’t even plan that. It’s almost, Jonathan, like we planned that segue, like we masterminded that. We didn’t, it’s just that these all link together. The next episode will be about how to handle Facebook idiots, people who grandstand on there and try to argue with you about stupid stuff, or they take cheap shots. This happened recently with somebody I know. Actually it happened to me from someone I know. I was very disappointed in this person actually, because they’re better than that, but I had to straighten them out by doing one of the three things we’ll talk about. There are three ways to handle these types of people, where you not only come out ahead socially, but you make them look like idiots and feel like the idiots that they deserve to feel like, and you may even increase sales if you do it right. That’s the next episode and that’s all I got today. PRODUCER JONATHAN: So that’s a wrap for Antipreneur Show #55. Thank you Ben, and thank you antipreneurs for tuning in. We’ll see you on the next one.

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Chapter 5

Email Players Rules 29-35 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. Jonathan, we’re going to do another exciting action-packed Email Players Rules episode. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Looking forward to it. BEN SETTLE: It’s going to be Rules 29-35. Let me break this down for you, because we have some new listeners. Email Players Rules are maxims and rules I live by not only in business, but in life in general – things that have made me more money, things that have given me more peace of mind, more success, lessons I’ve learned, and just stuff that anyone could apply to their life and I believe you’ll see a huge improvement in whatever you put it towards. The other 28 Rules you can listen to episodes 21, 30, 34, and 55. Before I get into these, Jonathan, I like to give props where props are due. I got the idea for these rules by listening to another podcast. I don’t listen to many podcasts, but once in a while I’ll listen to this one called the Beige Phillip Show. It’s about relationships, dating, gender relations and all that, how to date better and all that kind of stuff. It’s a guy named Dante Nero, a comedian, and he’s done all kinds of stuff. Anyway, he came up with Beige Phillip Rules for his show and I thought, “Man, that’s a cool idea,” so I shamelessly took the concept and applied it to ours, Jonathan, and it’s been very successful since, I think. All that said, Email Players Rule #29. Ready and set for this, Jonathan? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Ready. Got my pen out. BEN SETTLE: Here we go. This may be one of my favorites just because it’s so arrogant I love it. •

A lion does not lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.

This goes for every aspect of your life. You have lions and you have sheep, and there’s other animals in the kingdom, too. There’s a lion out there in the jungle or the savannah – I don’t even know if lion is the appropriate cat here, maybe there’s a better one, and I don’t know if lion and sheep hang out together – but 47 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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does a lion really care if a sheep doesn’t like him in the wilderness, Jonathan, out in the jungle? Does he really give a crap? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Not at all. BEN SETTLE: Or is he more likely to eat the sheep just for having an opinion at all? In the business world when I say sheep, I’m talking about people who are haters and complainers and whiners and mushcookies, the needy people. These are people who have no power over your life whatsoever, no matter what they say or do, yet they’re always struggling to be significant and all that. But they won’t do what they need to do to become significant, so they just kind of wallow around in the weeds and try to bring people down into the dirt with them. If you’re in business, or this can apply to your relationships too, if there’s people like that – friendships or whatever – who cares what they think. Who the hell are they? If somebody sends you a nasty email because they didn’t like what you wrote or whatever, who gives a crap? Who the hell are they? I just ignore that stuff. I just got an email the other day, Jonathan, from this guy who was complaining or just being passive-aggressive about the fact that I misspelled ‘plain.’ I guess I spelled it ‘plane’ like an airplane, so he writes this email that I guess he thought was clever, but really it just sounded retardedly dorky. I could have written him back and told him to go whatever, but it wasn’t even worth it. It’s like who the hell cares what this loser thinks? I simply unsubscribed him and that was the end of it. My point is don’t lose sleep over someone whose opinion means nothing to you. If you’ve got a customer who’s refunding and they’re a problem customer anyway, who gives a crap? They try to give you feedback and do you really want feedback from someone who bought something and then refunded the next day? I’ve had that happen, Jonathan. There was this guy and he didn’t refund the next day, but this was back when I sold my Street Smart Email course, which was like an $800 course. This guy bought it, and I’m not going to name him but I guess he thinks he’s some product launch expert or something. That’s like his thing. Maybe he is, I don’t know, I don’t really know him that well, but he waits until a day before the refund deadline and then sends me an email saying, “If you’d like feedback I’d be happy to give you feedback.” I’m thinking, “Why would I want feedback from someone who just did a low-class jackass return?”

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It’s like the guy I was telling you about before. I was telling you about this Howard Stern clip before. Some guy tried to give him feedback and he was like, “I don’t really care what you think. No really, I don’t care. It’s irrelevant to me. It doesn’t matter.” The guy was just trying to argue with him and he was like, “No really, it doesn’t matter, your opinion. I didn’t get where I’m at by listening to you,” and that’s the way you’ve got to think in your business. I’m not saying if somebody points something out that’s obviously wrong or something, like maybe there’s a glitch in something or they didn’t get a product delivered, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about just opinions from sheep. For example, if you sell stuff on Clickbank and you’ve got one of these losers who buys and then refunds the next day because they know Clickbank will let them do that, and then they try to give you advice or something, who cares? Or they give you some kind of hate mail. Who the hell cares? You probably are doing something right if you get the sheep riled up. A lion does not lose sleep over the opinion of sheep, Jonathan. Take that to the bank and deposit it. The next Email Players Rule is #30. •

Don’t suffer fools gladly. Make fools suffer instead.

I’ll explain what that means. You’ve heard the term, “I don’t suffer fools gladly.” This is the way I understand it. “I don’t put up with fools happily. I don’t enjoy putting up with idiots and fools.” I don’t think any of us do. I think even the people who are idiots and fools probably don’t like people who are more idiotic and foolish than them. I like to make them suffer instead, Jonathan. Instead of me suffering their foolishness, I’m going to make them suffer, and here’s the only way I know how to do it in the business sense, but this applies to other parts of your life, too. That is, first, by just ignoring them. We’ve talked about this, Jonathan, how when you ignore somebody it affects the part of their brain that physical pain affects, so it’s actually psychologically painful to ignore somebody. But even more than that, I just don’t let them buy. I don’t let them on my list. I don’t let them anywhere near me. I do everything I can so they can never partake of any knowledge that I have to give, to sell or any other way. If I could swing it I’d blacklist them so they couldn’t even look at my site, and I think there are ways of doing that, actually, but that’s a good attitude to have. 49 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Once I started doing that, sales have gone up ever since those days since I stopped putting up with fools and instead I cut them out. I think you all should do the same thing. That was #30. Email Players Rule #31 – and I’m sure this has been around for hundreds or thousands of years, this concept, but I didn’t really think about it until I read John Carlton’s Kick Ass Copywriting Secrets of a Marketing Rebel. He has a whole chapter in there about keeping what he called a “screw you fund.” •

Keep a ‘screw you’ fund.

That’s like 6 months to a year’s worth of money, and we talked about this in the “pay yourself first” podcast we did, but this bears repeating because it’s a very powerful concept. You put 6 months to a year’s worth of cash away somewhere. I prefer cash, not even in a bank. Bury it in your backyard or whatever, or even better if you can keep it off your property for many practical reasons, if you can figure that out. If you do put it in the bank, don’t try to invest with it or anything, just let it sit there. The whole purpose of it is so that you have cash flow in case you’re out of money or something for whatever it is you do. Let’s say you take clients and you just lost a bunch of clients. Normal people would be tempted to take on anything they can at that point, even if it means dealing with a crappy client or someone who doesn’t pay as much. Having ‘screw you’ money means you don’t have to worry about that because you’re good. You’re flush no matter what, and that gives you a posture and a confidence and an air of – I don’t want to say arrogance, but certainly confidence about yourself that not only tells the world that you don’t need them, which goes back to not being needy, but it’s actually very attractive. It’s like catnip to people you want to do business with. Everyone wants to do business with someone who’s confident and isn’t worried about shit and isn’t worried about money basically, so that’s another thing. Keep a ‘screw you’ fund. That’s Email Players Rule #31. #32 we talked about a couple episodes ago. •

It’s always your fault.

Jonathan, whatever bad stuff has happened to you and whatever bad stuff has happened to me, and Mr. or Miss Listener, whatever bad stuff happens to you, it’s your fault. Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your fault.

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That’s the mindset you’ve got to have, because if you don’t have that mindset you’re not going to be as responsible as you could be, and the more responsible you are the more money you’ll make and more successful you’re going to be. That’s just a fact if you always take the attitude that whatever happens is your fault. Now Jonathan, I have to use this word called ‘context’ because there’s always a listener or two who doesn’t understand context. I’m not talking about if you were molested as a baby. We’re not talking about that. Obviously that’s not your fault. I’m talking about as an adult, stuff that happens to you. Did you get mugged on the way home from work? It’s your fault. You shouldn’t have been walking down that side of the city or you should have been more alert or something. There’s always something you could have done to prevent something like that. Do you have a girl that blindsided you? You were married to a girl and you have two or three kids and a house and a dog and she just ups and leaves you for some drug addict or something, and you thought everything was going okay and what’s wrong? She’s getting half your income now and half your income for the next 10 years? It’s your fault, man. If that happens to you, it is your fault. Do not blame her. It is your fault because you should have been more aware. You should have understood how the game works. You should have learned the game, actually. You should have understood how that stuff works. You should have paid attention. It’s your fault. If you don’t take responsibility for that, it’s just going to happen to you again. Jonathan, we’ll go back to the sheep thing. I think it was around 2009 or so. I was actually accepting blog comments at that time. I would let people comment on my blog, and this seething political guy came on and he was going crazy. I said something like how I don’t think taxpayers should be bailing out people who got mortgages that they knew they couldn’t afford. They make $25,000 a year and they’re getting mortgages for a $400,000 house. This guy was like, “We need to bail them out because they were targeted by the banks. They were targeted!” and he’s just seething on and on. This dude was nuts. I mean I think he literally was insane, just if you heard what this guy was saying, not because he believed that but because of how insulting he would get. There was something wrong with that guy. Anyway, the point is he was like, “It’s their fault. They were targeted,” and I said, “No they weren’t.” I mean maybe they were targeted I guess in a sense, but it was still their own fault. They should have known that they only made $23,000 a year and you don’t buy a $400,000 house. You just don’t do it. It’s 51 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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just common sense. If they got screwed over by that, that pain is the best teacher they can have. It’s kind of like let’s say you’re in a neighborhood, Jonathan, and you’re a thief and a robber and you’re looking for a place to steal from. You go into a neighborhood and you see a house that’s completely unlocked and there’s a sign out there that says, “We’re not home for the next two weeks, so deliver the mail to our neighbor.” PRODUCER JONATHAN: “Take me.” BEN SETTLE: Probably you’re going to take advantage of that situation if you’re a thief or whatever, and that’s kind of like what the banks did. They totally took advantage of these people, but why would they leave their door open like that? Pain is a good teacher. That’s just how it works. You don’t expect the rest of the neighborhood to now pay for refurnishing your house after that. It’s not the neighborhood’s fault. That’s like what I was talking about with this guy. It’s their fault. When I got into a bad business deal once – I’m in a golf business now, but the first golf business I got involved in several years ago, there was something off about the whole thing from the beginning but I ignored it and the deal went bad for me personally. It was my fault. I shouldn’t have listened to the bull crap hypey promises and all the crap they were feeding me. It’s my fault. I could have blamed them. “Oh man, they’re bad people!” I don’t really care if they’re bad or good people. It was my fault and I’ve steered clear of deals like that ever since because I’ve always taken the attitude that it’s my fault, and that’s how you learn from it. Again, it’s always your fault. That’s Email Players Rule #32. Email Players Rule #33, Mr. Producer Jonathan, is a rule that my excopywriting apprentice had to learn the hard way – •

Don’t feed homeless cats.

Here’s what I mean by that. Let’s say you opened your door one night, Jonathan, or let’s say Mrs. Jonathan opened the door one night because she heard a cat purring outside. You being like me, you’d probably torture the cat, shoot a BB gun at it or something like that. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Throw a bucket of water or something like that. 52 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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BEN SETTLE: But since she has a conscience and a soul, unlike us, she feels bad for this starving pathetic little cat. It looks like Gollum slinking around out there, all skinny and showing its ribs, and she goes, “We’ve got to feed it, honey. We’ve got to feed this cat. This is killing me. We’ve got to feed it.” So she waits until you leave, because she knows you won’t put up with that, and you’re the master of your castle and you won’t allow no homeless cats to be fed on your watch because you don’t have a heart, like me, but she feeds that cat and she thinks she’s going to send it on its merry way. It doesn’t work that way. That cat will be back every night for the rest of its life. You’re not getting rid of that cat once you feed a homeless cat. How does this translate to business? As my ex-copywriting apprentice found out the hard way, there was this guy in a Facebook group. She likes all these Facebook groups where she networks and all that, trying to find clients and stuff, and there was this guy who offered to not hire her but joint venture with her. This was before she had even finished her first project ever. She had no portfolio. She had no real experience. She was working under my careful dictator-like watch, my iron first. I rule with an iron hand like Richard the Lionhearted, so there was no reason for anyone to want to hire her at that point without knowing her first, but this guy didn’t want to hire her. Without ever meeting her or seeing any of her work, just seeing her face, because she’s a pretty girl and I warn hot chicks about this all the time – Side note, Jonathan. This is for any attractive women or even not-so-attractive women in today’s day and age. If you are brand new and you don’t have anything to show for your work, but suddenly clients want to hire you, just ask yourself this. Are they really hiring you for your talent when they’ve never even seen your talent, and they don’t even know if you’re capable of writing an ad? Would they hire a man sight unseen like that, if it’s a guy client, and the answer is no. But if you happen to be an attractive woman and they happen to want to hire you without seeing any of your portfolio or anything, chances are he wants a piece of ass. Everybody wants to hear, “No, it’s because of my personality and because they see potential in me.” That’s probably not it. There might be some outliers, but anyway, getting back to the story. This guy didn’t want to just hire her, he wanted to joint venture with her and give her 50% of his business basically, without ever seeing a single ad she’s written, without seeing a single email she’d ever written, without really even 53 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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getting to know her other than the fact that she did a little bit of participation in the forums and she’s a pretty outgoing girl. I said, “Don’t you think that’s just a little strange?” She said, “Yeah, you’re right,” but she still felt bad for the guy. For whatever reason she felt bad for him and she gave him some good advice – free unsolicited good advice. Then she thought she could just kind of figuratively swat him on the butt and send him on his merry way. That’s not what happened, though. This guy came back for more, as I’m sure you can guess, more free information like a week later. Then she once again tried to get rid of him, tried to give him a little information and away with him. Then he came back again like a boomerang. He just kept coming back. Finally I think she did the equivalent of taking the cat 30 miles away and dumping it in the forest so you can’t find it anymore. Don’t feed homeless cats – not in a business and not even on your doorstep. You just don’t do it. Email Players Rule #34 – this is one of my favorites one, too: •

Don’t go to bed angry. Stay up and fight.

That’s marital advice you can give someone. Don’t go to bed angry. Stay up and fight each other. Now, here’s what I mean by that. I don’t mean this in that way, actually. I’m talking about from a business point of view, but not just business. This could be any part of your life, actually. This could be friendships or relationships or whatever, but in business definitely. They leave things unresolved. I see this go on with people a lot that I know in business, and it used to happen to me a lot, too. I would leave things unresolved because I wanted to sleep on it and just forget about it and think about it in the morning. There are some cases where you can do that, I guess, but if it’s something that’s really nagging at you, you’re not going to sleep that night. It’s unresolved, and when you have unresolved tension going on in your mind, you’re not doing yourself or anyone else any good. Let’s say you’re trying to debate whether you should keep a client or not, or a customer, or maybe you screwed something up and you’re not sure how to deal with it. The lazy person says, “I’ll just sleep on it till the morning,” and if you can fall asleep, great, all power to you, but a lot of people can’t when they have unresolved things going on in their head. 54 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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So resolve whatever it is, and then go to bed. Don’t go to bed angry. Stay up and fight whatever issue it is and then go to sleep. You’ll feel a lot better, you’ll wake up a lot better, and you won’t have that nagging anxiety on your mind or any of that. So that’s #34. Finally, for this time at least – there’s many more Email Players Rules to come #35 is a quote from my friend Doberman Dan Gallapoo, and I believe you produce his show too, Jonathan? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yes sir, Off the Chain. BEN SETTLE: As he once told me – •

Brilliant copy won’t sell a turd.

Let’s say you’re the best copywriter on the planet. Or you’re the best salesman on the planet. It doesn’t have to be copywriting but you’re just the best there is at this. You’re still not going to be able to sell a turd. It has to be a good product first. Without it being a good product you’re dead in the water. And this goes beyond just being a good product. I once did an ad for someone in the affiliate marketing world, Jonathan. I’m not going to name him because it doesn’t really matter who it is. He’s a good guy, I like the guy, but he hired me to write an ad for a product that was basically just like one of his other products in affiliate marketing. There wasn’t a lot of difference. In fact, his big concern was he wanted my ad to be much different than the other ad because he didn’t want it to cannibalize the other product’s sales. The problem is there was no human cry for this product. He had already fulfilled this with his other product, so I wrote the best ad I could and I thought it was a pretty good ad. I’m not terrible at copywriting, but it just didn’t do that well because nobody wanted it. I kept telling him, “Dude, are you sure anybody wants this? Because after studying the market I don’t see anybody in the market saying, ‘Yeah, I want this.’” It was an affiliate program that was basically every month he’d pick a different winning affiliate or something. It was something he was already doing with his other stuff so it didn’t really have a purpose. The information in the ebook they would get was basically the same as what they got in his other ebook and I said, “Dude, nobody wants this,” and he goes, “No, it’s not that. You just need to put more hype in it.” He actually said that. “Hype sells! Put more hype in there.”

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So I’m like, “Okay, fine.” I’m going to grant him this request because why not. Maybe he’s right. Who knows? So I just slathered it with hype and he just loved it after that. He’s like, “Yeah, much better, much better!” and it still failed because nobody wanted the product. You could have put Gary Bencivenga, Gary Halbert, John Caples, Claude Hopkins, Eugene Schwarz, Ted Nicholas, and all the best copywriters you’ve ever heard of in a room on a deserted island, where to even get their meals delivered to them somebody would tiptoe to the door and not disturb them, just leave it there and tiptoe away, and put them in that room for four months and they still wouldn’t be able to sell a product like that because nobody wants it. All I’m saying here is brilliant copy won’t sell a turd. Your copy, even if it’s super brilliant, is still not going to sell something people don’t want. That’s all I’ve got for this time, Jonathan. Any comments, questions, complaints or anything? PRODUCER JONATHAN: I like the lesson in personal accountability. That was my favorite part. BEN SETTLE: That’s the one that people have the most trouble with. It’s so much easier to play the victim. Let’s say a drone right now flew out of the air into my office window here and broke my legs or something. It’s still my fault. I shouldn’t even be living in this town, quite frankly. My own goal is to move back to the coast. It’s my fault. That’s what I get for being here. It’s my fault. It’s not the drone’s fault. It’s not whoever sent the drone’s fault, it’s my fault. That’s a bit extreme, obviously, but once you take that mindset that it’s your fault, it’s all your responsibility, it frees you up in so many ways and it will make you more successful at whatever you do. So I think that’s a good one, too. Not to give myself props, but I’m going to give myself props. PRODUCER JONATHAN: You’re going to hurt yourself patting yourself on the back like that. Good stuff, man, I enjoyed it. BEN SETTLE: Now I’m going to pat myself on the ass and get out of here. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Sounds good, Ben, so that’s a wrap for Antipreneur Show #66. We’ll see you guys on the next one.

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Chapter 6

Email Players Rules 36-42 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. Jonathan, we’re going to do another Email Players Rules episode. To give it some context, we’ve done 35 of them over the course of the show’s existence. I got the idea from another podcast called the Beige Phillip Show by this guy, Dante Nero. He comes up with these things called the Beige Phillip Rules. He talks to guys who want to do better with getting women. These are guys who lost their balls basically and that’s his mantra. “Get your balls back” is his mantra actually. It’s a very good show. I really enjoy it, he’s very entertaining, and he came up with these maxims for his show. I thought, “I’m going to swipe that idea for my show, but pay homage to it.” I’ve got maxims and ideas and kind of philosophies that I do business by and live life by. They are interchangeable in a lot of cases, and I’ve just been writing them down and cataloging them for a long time, and I thought it would be nice to do another seven of them. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Ben, let me ask you a question because I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I was looking back to see when our other Email Players Rules were. I have BSA 21, BSA 30, and BSA 66, but I’m missing a couple. You wouldn’t happen to know which ones they are, would you? BEN SETTLE: Not off the top of my head, but I’m sure we can find them. There was a big gap, though. I remember that. I think maybe it’s in the 50’s maybe. PRODUCER JONATHAN: How about this, you guys that are listening out there in our Street Smart business group, you guys might know our content better than us so if you know, just shoot me a message inside that group. I need to get this in order and I could use your help. I’m shamelessly asking for help, Ben. BEN SETTLE: Okay. I’m sure somebody will do just that. If not, I’m going to have to research them anyway to write the email to promote this show, or I had to. It’s so messed up, the time. I should have already written the email to sell this show, but whatever. Just strike the whole thing from the record. Just

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imagine you didn’t hear us talk about that. I don’t want to ruin the illusion, Jonathan, that this is a live broadcast show. Here’s Email Players Rule #36. Last time I warned everyone that if you have little tender ears and you’re a little bit of a snowflake, a little mushcookie-ish, you might want to hold off on listening to this show, or plugging your ears during certain parts. •

Better to be the bitch at the top of the mountain than the ho at the bottom.

This is something my ex-copywriting apprentice was asking me, because I still help her out. She’s just not my apprentice anymore and we get along much better as a result, by the way, without her being under Iron Hand Ben. I rule with an iron hand. Nobody should really be my apprentice, I’ve learned. Let me get off-course a little bit here. For the last few months I’ve been taking Wing Chun Kung Fu and I’ve got one of the best teachers on the planet. I don’t just say that because he’s my teacher, but because on a grading scale in the Wing Chun community he’s got like the highest teaching score, being the best teacher, or certainly one of them. His name is written on the Shaolin temple, and he didn’t buy a spot on the temple, he’s there because he deserves it and all that. Some people will buy a spot on the temple, like somebody would pay to have their name on a university, but he actually earned his way on there so he’s really good. How the hell he ended up in the burbs I’ll never know, but I noticed that he’s a very patient teacher. After learning from him I’m like, “Man, I really suck at this 1-on-1 teaching thing, because if I was this guy I’d be beating me with a bamboo pole,” because it takes me a while to get stuff down and he’s so patient with me. I’m the opposite so that’s why I should never teach anyone 1-on-1. I’d rather do it virtually like this. Anyway, it’s better to be the bitch at the top of the mountain than the ho at the bottom. My ex-apprentice was saying she’s a girl so she can’t come off as bitchy to people. Girls just have to walk a tighter line, unfortunately, they really do. I have sympathy for them on this because I get it. Us guys can come off and be jerks and it helps us. They do that and nobody wants to deal with them. I always tell her, “You can’t be that accessible. Don’t make yourself accessible to all these people who always want something for nothing,” and she’s like, “Well, doesn’t that make me come off as kind of a standoffish bitch?” and I 58 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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said, “Look, it’s better to be the bitch at the top of the mountain than the ho at the bottom.” Why be the time ho at the bottom who’s putting out for everybody when you can be the bitch at the top with a shield up, and you’re going to filter out the crud and only deal with the best clients? I think it’s good advice, man or woman, no matter what market you’re in or what you do. Be the person at the top of the mountain. Don’t be the needy little ho at the bottom of the mountain. Enough said on that. Email Players Rule #37 – •

It’s not about the list, it’s about the audience.

We have talked about this in the past, Jonathan, on this show but I want to just reiterate it a little bit because I think it’s important. Once somebody gets into the internet marketing community especially you’re going to hear, “The money’s in the list. The money’s in the list. The money’s in the list,” and that is true to a large extent. I’m not going to say that’s wrong, but really the money’s in the audience. The list is just a part of your overall audience. The bigger your audience, the more money you’re going to make, the more influence you’re going to have, the better off you’re going to be, the more secure your income is going to be. When I say audience, not everyone who listens to this show is on my email list, and not everyone who goes to my Facebook page is on my email list, and not everyone on my email list listens to the show, and not everyone on my email list goes to my Facebook pages, and not everyone on my list goes and listens to me on the few times I’ve spoken publicly. My whole list hasn’t gone there, but a lot of people who aren’t on my list would hear me there and then they’d come into my audience and all that, so your audience is better. You want a big audience. That’s why you want to do something like a podcast. That’s why you want to call Producer Jonathan up and you want to say, “Look, I want to hire the Podcast Factory to do my own podcast,” which I think everybody should be doing. This is why you want an email list. If you’re into social media, good. Build that following. It’s part of your audience. Just don’t make that your only thing. Make sure you have widely diverse ways of getting into your world. Think of Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, or any of the talk radio guys. They all have email lists, they all have direct mail lists, they all have social media pages, they all have their own show, but not everybody who listens to the show is on 59 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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all the other lists, and not everyone on those lists is listening to every show, so you just want a big audience. There are people, Jonathan, who have bought Email Players, for example, who are not even on my email list because they told me, “I heard you through iTunes and I bought.” Just build your audience. The money is in the list, but the fortune is in the audience. Let’s just go with that. The money’s in the list, but the fortune is in the audience. That’s the new rule. Moving on to Email Players Rule #38, and I’m going to have to give props to Dante Nero, who I just mentioned, and I’ll tell you why in a second. •

If you want to know how the deer thinks, ask the hunter.

His show is for guys about how to be better with girls, how to be more confident and charismatic, and just be the kind of man that girls want. You don’t do that by asking girls what they want. You just don’t do it. You don’t ask the deer how to hunt it. You ask the hunter. I’ll give you a real-life example. There are certain marketers, including marketers I have utmost respect for, so this is not me making fun of anyone but I just disagree with what they do. They think you should ask your email list how often they want to be emailed. PRODUCER JONATHAN: What? That’s offensive. BEN SETTLE: Jonathan, you and I would never even think to do that, but there are people who do this. It makes no sense to me, but there are people who I respect – and I’ll say, look, I respect their opinion, but I think it’s wrong. Basically they’re asking the deer how to hunt them. If I asked my list, “How often do you want to be mailed?” – and especially with the opt-in – I would probably get, “Oh, once a week, twice a week,” but I do seven days a week, sometimes two times a day seven times a week, because that’s what makes me the most money. That’s what makes me the most profits. That’s what’s building my business. If I listened to them I would probably have like a quarter of the sales that I get, and I’m sure it would be the same with you too, Jonathan. So don’t ask the deer how they think. We never talk about the dating stuff. Let’s go back to that for a second. If you’re a guy and you want a girlfriend or you want a wife or whatever it is you want, and let’s say you just suck at getting girls, you just turn girls off for whatever reason, you don’t go and ask girls what they want. You know what they’re 60 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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going to tell you, Jonathan? They’re going to say, “I want a nice sweet sensitive guy who shares his feelings with me.” PRODUCER JONATHAN: Someone who braids my hair. BEN SETTLE: I was telling my ex-apprentice this. I was like, “Look, let’s be honest, girls want that after you’ve established some traction. After they already like you or are in love with you or whatever, then you can get away with that stuff. Until then you’re just creeping them the crap out.” When they say they want all that, they’re talking about how they wish the guy they want would treat them that way. Once in a while I’ll give my girl a present like a Snickers bar or a bag of Skittles, just to show her how much I care. I’ll do that, Jonathan, but I would not give the Skittles up front. Never give away the Skittles up front. There are people listening to this show who are getting my Skittles joke right now and I’m just going to leave it at that because to me there’s something to be said for the Skittles, man. We’ll just leave it at that, but you can apply this to your business too in the sense that I’m not going to ask the deer how to hunt them. The deer doesn’t want you to shoot them and kill them. The person on your list doesn’t want you to sell them anything. They want to buy. So you don’t ask them that. They’re just going to tell you what not to do. You want to ask the hunter, the guy like Producer Jonathan or me or anyone who’s good at selling to their own list. Ask them how they do it, and that’s another way you can know if a product is worth buying or not. Is that person good at what they do and have they demonstrated it? We talked about that last week. Email Players Rule #39 – •

Assuming makes an ass out of you, not me.

We’ve all heard the quote, “Assuming makes an ass out of you and me.” No, it only makes an ass out of you – not you, Jonathan, obviously. I’m talking about the person who’s assuming, because I know you were worried about that. For example, there was this guy with a Blue Flame special a few months ago and he emailed me and he was mad because I wouldn’t sell on Email Players a) digitally, and b) I wouldn’t take PayPal. The PayPal thing is not because I don’t want to do it, it’s because my shopping cart doesn’t do it in a way that makes sense for me. I’m not going to go into all that, but until 1ShoppingCart makes it a little bit more merchant-friendly I’m not going to do it. 61 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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There’s something to be said for if someone has to use PayPal, I kind of have to wonder about them. I’m not saying everyone who only uses PayPal is bad or anything. I know people who just use PayPal and it’s fine, but I’d just rather avoid someone who can’t get a real credit card. This guy was assuming. I don’t remember everything exactly, but the gist of it was, “When you’re ready to stop being so old-fashioned and all this, let me know blah blah blah,” and I’m thinking, “Does this guy not know that I sell digital products?” He just assumed. He didn’t ask. He didn’t say, “Do you sell digital products or have you ever sold digital products and given it a try?” and he would have known, yes, I sell many digital products. My whole Amazon sales, everything is on Kindle. Those are all digital. We have the Newbie-Proof List Building that you can get through this show. Jonathan, what is it – BenSettleShow.com/newbie? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yup. BEN SETTLE: Okay, that’s how they can get that. That’s a great product. That’s purely digital. They can get the Email Players Cheat Sheet through this show. Is that an upsell, Jonathan? PRODUCER JONATHAN: It’s on the home page, actually. If you get to the blog I think there’s a link to it. BEN SETTLE: So we do sell digital stuff. I have digital stuff and we’re not against it, but the point is that product is physical and there’s many reasons for it. Had this guy just asked, he wouldn’t have made such an ass out of himself. So if you don’t want to look like an ass, ask. Email Players Rule #40 – •

If you don’t want to stay broke, don’t try to get rich quick.

There are people who have gotten rich very fast, and God bless them. In fact, Dan Kennedy has a whole chapter in one of his books. It’s that book about breaking the rules. I forget the exact title but it’s about breaking the rules. It’s a great book. I’ve read it probably half a dozen times and I love it, and he has a whole chapter in there about why we should get rich quick. I’m not talking about the stuff he’s talking about. I’m talking about these guys and gals who wander the guru casino looking at all the flashy lights and all that stuff, and they’re always trying to get rich quick so they’re always chasing the next bright shiny object one after another, one after another. They’re always 62 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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spinning their wheels and they’re always frustrated and they don’t look at just what works. They don’t want to dig into the basics. They want to learn how to punch a hole through a wall before learning how to actually punch. They don’t understand that, so they’re always trying to get rich, and what happens is they’re just more broke than they’ve ever been. It’s like a law of the jungle. Jonathan, if I chase you, you’re going to run from me. You’d probably think I’m some kind of whacko. “Why is Ben chasing me?” PRODUCER JONATHAN: “What’s wrong with this guy?” BEN SETTLE: It’s true, we flee from things that chase us and we pursue things that flee from us. We can take this back to the dating thing. Guys who are all needy and everything and they’re chasing girls, that’s like that whole thing, “Oh, he’s chasing girls,” like boys are brought up to do that. No, don’t chase them. Let them come to you. It’s the same with money and business and success. You’ve got to position yourself so that you’re in front of it so that it comes to you. Put yourself in front of the parade. Don’t try to chase the parade. Don’t try to wander around looking for the parade. Get in front of the parade. It’s all about positioning yourself, and that’s a whole other show probably in and of itself, too, not to be a complete tease here. Email Players Rule #41, and we talked about this last week, Jonathan. We did a whole show about this but it bears its own rule in the archives. •

Everyone is guilty until proven innocent.

If somebody wants to hear my spiel about that, just go to show #73 on iTunes and you can hear a whole 20 minute lecture on this. There’s no reason to go through the whole thing now. Just assume we’re all full of crap until we’ve demonstrated to you that we’re not. Don’t believe anything else until it’s been demonstrated. PRODUCER JONATHAN: It reminds me of that Bruno Mars song. “Don’t Believe Me, Just Watch.” Ever since that episode I can’t stop thinking about that. “Don’t Believe Me, Just Watch.” BEN SETTLE: Poor Bruno Mars. I think I’ve only heard one of his songs, the one where he’s lamenting because he lost his girl. He’s like, “If only I’d held her 63 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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hand more” and all this. I’m thinking, “Dude, that’s probably what got her to dump you in the first place.” PRODUCER JONATHAN: Was it that whiny singing? BEN SETTLE: Yeah. It was like, “Dude, you’ve got to do the opposite. This new guy who’s holding her hand and buying her flowers, believe me, she’ll be dumping him soon enough, too.” Girls who listen to this probably think I’m like the devil or something. I’m not saying to never get a girl flowers, but just do it sparingly and if there’s a reason and a purpose. Don’t just do it because Bruno Mars told you to. Email Players Rule #42 – and this is another crude one and something that I kind of just spat out of the blue. I just brain-farted this out when I was talking to Doberman Dan once. We were talking about clients. •

Don’t be a whore if you can just marry the rich husband.

I’ll explain what this means. Why be a whore if you can just marry the rich husband? The whore would be the freelancer going from one client to the next to the next to the next. The whore makes a good living, right? A good prostitute can probably make a good living. A good call girl, let’s face it, they make good money and all that until they hit the wall and they lose their looks and all that stuff, and then it’s a whole other thing again, but they can do that. It’s just like the freelancer. They can make good money freelancing, going from one client to the next, pouring out all their skills and talents to other people instead of selling their own stuff and building their own future. I’m talking about the pure freelancers here. Some people like that and I’m not telling them not to do it. I’m just saying to me it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to build an entire business around freelancing. Or you can marry the rich husband. Maybe you started out as a whore/freelancer. You start out that way but then you realize, “I need some security. I can’t be a whore forever. I’m going to lose my looks eventually. I could make more money if I had some security. I would breathe a little easier and I don’t have to be as anxious,” so you go find someone you can joint venture with, or get a piece of a company where you just do the copywriting. Attach yourself to that business that’s already profitable, and now you’ve married the rich husband. Now you have security and you can use your talents that you’ve cultivated while you were a whore to please the profitable business. This analogy could be taken probably much farther than this, but we’ll just leave it at that. Don’t be a whore if you can marry the rich husband. 64 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Those are the latest seven Email Players Rules, 36-42. I hope you enjoyed them, and I know that some of the mushcookies got a little offended, but that’s good. You’ve got to toughen those mushcookies up a little bit. They can use a little bit of that. Jonathan, anything you want to say before we sign off till the next time? PRODUCER JONATHAN: That’s a wrap, man. I enjoyed the Email Players Rules and that’s a wrap for Ben Settle’s Antipreneur show #74. Thank you guys for tuning in, and Ben, thanks for the laugh today.

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Chapter 7

Email Players Rules 43-49 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. Jonathan, I want to do another exciting episode of the Email Players Rules series. We’ve done 42 so far. Email Players Rules, for anyone who hasn’t been around very long in our world, are maxims and philosophies and strategies and tactics and just ways I live my life and do business by that have been very profitable for me and given me peace of mind. It’s just a way of living. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Keeps you balanced. BEN SETTLE: Going back to last week, these are things that keep you in balance, absolutely, business and personal. We talk about it from the dating point of view, from the romantic point of view. Actually, I’m about as unromantic as it gets, but it doesn’t matter because that’s not part of the maxims. We’ll get ways around that too, so if you’re an unromantic guy your girl won’t hate you. In fact, I’m going to talk about that a little bit today.It keeps you in balance, absolutely. They’re just rules and maxims. We’ve done, like I said, 42 of them. I got the idea from another podcast called the Beige Phillip Show, which is a podcast from this guy named Dante Nero. He’s a comedian and has done a whole bunch of other things and his whole mantra is to help guys get their balls back. He’s helping guys not get walked on by women, basically. That’s his whole thing. He’s a lot more crude than what I just explained, but it doesn’t matter. He has these things he calls Beige Phillip Rules, and I always thought that was such a neat concept so I humbly swiped the idea from him. I give him all the credit, and I have the same thing. I have a bunch of maxims and ideas and rules and just guidelines that I live my life by, personal and professional. I don’t expect everyone listening to my show to agree with all of them, but as I always say when that’s the case, it’s okay. It’s not against the law for you to be wrong. It’s all good, and this one too. All of that said, Email Players Rule #43:

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•

Just because everyone believes someone doesn’t mean that person is telling the truth.

You would think, Jonathan, that this is just common knowledge. I shouldn’t even have to say this. I shouldn’t even have to come out and say this. People should just know this is a common sense thing, that you can’t believe someone just because they say something, just because they’re your favorite politician or they’re your favorite guru online especially. I’m not going to name names here, but there are certain gurus online who, if that person says to jump off a bridge naked, there are followers who will do just that because they just blindly believe these guys with the intensity of a cult leader or something. I’m not saying the gurus do that on purpose. They’ve done a great job of selling. It’s not against the gurus themselves, unless they’re telling people crap, but it’s this mentality that, “Well, so-and-so does this so that means I need to do it.” There’s so many instances of this. “Dan Kennedy says this so you’ve got to do that.” I’m a big Dan Kennedy fan so this is no slight against him, but there’s certain things that he’s taught that I just don’t agree with when it comes to email. I just don’t, and if you’ve seen his emails you might agree with me. It’s up to you. I would never debate the guy on any of this stuff because his marketing knowledge is 1,000 times bigger than mine, but I’m just saying that just because someone says something – and I don’t mean to pick on him – it doesn’t mean it’s true. Remember the late great Gary Halbert? He would say you shouldn’t put a URL on your sales letter online. You should just have a phone number. That could work for whatever he was doing. I’m sure it worked fine. In fact, I think I was talking to Scott Haynes, who was one of his protégés, one of the best copywriters out there today, and I was asking him about that and he said, “Well, yeah, his tests really showed that just a phone number killed it.” Maybe in that market and that business that was the case, but the sweeping thing that you should never put one in your sales letter – go ahead and try it and just see what happens, but that’s an example of even my heroes. I don’t just blindly believe everything they say to do and neither should anyone listening to this show, unless I’m saying it. Then you can blindly believe it, of course. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Drink the Kool-Aid. BEN SETTLE: I think it was back in mid-June when we did the episode of “Everyone’s full of crap online, including me.” I don’t remember what episode that was, but look it up and you’ll know I’m just being a sarcastic guy when I 67 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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say everyone but me. I have to do that because there are some people who take everything I say so literally and they can’t read the sarcasm. I’ve been told this by everyone I know in regular life, not just people who listen to the show or read the emails, but I just think you’re all crazy. It’s all them, it’s not me. That violates another Email Players Rule from before, “It’s always your fault.” I just can’t win. Oh, the hell with it. Email Players Rule #44: •

When a guru offers you candy, don’t hop into his windowless van.

This is kind of related to the last one, not believing everyone. Here’s a real-life example of what I’m talking about. I know people – and I’ve seen it before because they’ve complained to me about this – who will hang out in forums online and complain about guru XYZ who screwed them over. “Oh, I bought his expensive $2,000 or $3,000 product and I got crap, or it didn’t get delivered. I tried to get my money back and I couldn’t. It took so long and they wouldn’t even let me do a chargeback” and all this stuff. They’re just the miserable mad angry raving people. Then they’ll go and buy the next thing that a guru pitches – in some cases the same guru. Then once again they’re like, “Oh man, this guy ripped me off,” blah blah blah. These guys and girls who do this portray themselves as innocent victims, but what they really are are willing victims. They know better but they wanted that candy, so they jumped into the back of the windowless van and got screwed over. Don’t do it. Just because a guru is making you this great offer or whatever, if it doesn’t make sense or if you really have that pit in your stomach, or God forbid they’ve screwed you over before, but dang you’re just so susceptible to hype – and a couple shows from now hopefully we’re going to talk to someone to help you get out of that mindset if that’s you – don’t do it. Don’t jump in the back of the van. Be an adult. Learn some discernment. Follow your gut and listen to that show about how we’re all full of crap, even me, and you’ll do well. Email Players Rule #45: •

If given a chance between rat poison and cyanide, abstain from them both.

This isn’t really a business thing. I’m sure you could find a business example of this, so I’m not going to say it’s totally not business-related, but I think of this when I think of voting. We’re in an election season coming up here, and I’m not liking what I’m seeing, but this is me every year. 68 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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PRODUCER JONATHAN: No Donald Trump for you? BEN SETTLE: I like Donald Trump, but he’s pro-choice last I heard, so no. You know me. Don’t make me get back into politics. I will do it, and there’s some other problems I have with that guy, but I like the guy. What I like about him being in the race is that he’s going to force both sides to kind of ante up and stop being so anti-business, trying to appease all the socialists and all this. He’s going to force people to think this way, I believe, because everyone wants to have that life that he has. You’re not going to get it watching Obama, the guy who thought he was so knowledgeable he wrote a book at 25 years old. I mean who does that? How much experience do you have by then to write a book? Whatever. I know there’s some Obama fanboys who will write me. “Aw, Ben, you’re wrong!” and they can just kiss my ass. Anyway, given a choice between candidates – or apply this to anything you want – but your only choices are that guy there or that guy or chick there, and they both suck and you want nothing to do with either one of them, you don’t have to feel this civic duty to vote for either one of them. I’m talking about America. I don’t know about other countries. In America they did not spill blood for you, the founders, the people who fought for independence, so that you would be forced to choose between two tyrants. That wasn’t the point of it. This is something that does apply to relationships and anything. If you have no choices that make any sense to you, then you take your ball and leave. You don’t have to play the game if you don’t want to. You take your ball and leave and go find another game to play or whatever. That will give you more peace of mind when it comes to this stuff, and you don’t have to follow all this political nonsense and all this crap and all the lies and all the bull crap promises and all the stuff we’re going to see. If you know someone is full of crap but the other one is a lesser evil, you’re still choosing evil. As my friend Greg Perry says, who listens to this show, he’ll tell you about it. He can go on a whole hour rant about this probably. It makes no sense for evil either way, if you feel that way about the candidates, and I feel that way about pretty much all politicians. It’s going to take one hell of a politician to get my vote, but whatever. I know there’s people who say I’m not being American and all that, but they’re not using common sense. That’s my opinion, I’m right, and I think upon 69 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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further reflection you’ll agree that I’m right as well, you the listeners. Jonathan, I don’t know about you. I don’t want to speak for you when you’re on the air. So if you’re given a choice between rat poison and cyanide, abstain from both. Take your ball and leave. Just apply that to anything else. Jonathan, you’re a married man. Let’s say your wife turns Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on you. This will never happen obviously, but let’s say she did. I know that she listens to this show sometimes so I have to pick my words very carefully, but let’s say she went crazy on you and gave you two options. “Jonathan, you’re going to quit this business stuff and you’re going to go to work at Wal-Mart, or I’m leaving you.” Now, that’s obviously never going to happen, but let’s say it did. Or for any guy listening to this, let’s say you girl said this. You don’t have to choose. You just take your ball and leave. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Take both your balls and leave. BEN SETTLE: Yeah, take both your balls and leave, and then go listen to the Beige Phillip Show. This does apply to a lot of things and it can happen. “Should I buy Product A or Product B?” Why do you have to buy either one of them if they both suck? But people actually do that. Moving on to Email Players Rule #46: •

Indifference works 10 times better than begging.

I have seen this so many times. I have field tested this, Jonathan. This is not theory. I have purposely field tested this in many situations – business, relationships, friendships, family. I have tested this. I’ll bring it down to the dating thing because I never talk about that, so I’ll bring it down to the dating thing. Let’s say you’re a guy. I’m not going to pick on girls. I’m going to pick on the dudes this time. I’m going to give girls a pass right now because I’m feeling kind, and because I’m going to pick on them probably later in this podcast. But let’s say you’re with a guy, and I probably shouldn’t be shooting myself in the foot with this but I’m going to do it anyway. This shows that I really care about my audience. So you’re a girl and you’re with a guy and you want attention, because you’re a girl and girls want attention. Guys, we really don’t care, but girls want attention. You withhold attention from a girl and they don’t like that very much. This is just a fact, most girls. I’m sure there’s always some tomboy who will write me and say it doesn’t apply to them. It does but they’re 70 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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just trying to act like they’re not girls and all that. Whatever, but let’s say that happens. The best thing she could do is not try to play games to get attention and not be a drama queen, because that’s a lot of times what people do when they want attention. They start being a drama queen or they’ll start playing games and tricks and all that to get what they want, and guys do the same crap when we want something. It’s no big deal, we just do it differently. The best thing she could do is just be indifferent, like she doesn’t want any of his attention, and go find attention from somebody else. That will do more to get that guy’s attention than if you beg for it, and vice versa. Let’s say a guy is with a girl and she’s cold to him. She’s not affectionate. He wants affection from her. He wants to know she finds him attractive and all that, but she’s not giving it to him. Let’s take it to a married couple. She’s not putting out for him. She’s not having sex with you anymore. Here’s what you do. You simply be indifferent to it. You don’t need it. You don’t want it, you don’t ask for it, you become cold toward her in that way, and it will make her be like, “Whoa, whoa, what’s going on here? Something’s not right.” I always knew I was in trouble, Jonathan, whatever girl I’m with or have been with – my ex-copywriting apprentice lately – I always know I’m in trouble because she’ll get cold and indifferent to me. That means I’m not giving her attention. She’s not giving me any attention so I know something’s wrong. There’s just a vibe there and you can feel it, and every guy probably goes through this at some time. Like I said, I’m not the most romantic guy in the world so she starts showing indifference toward it and suddenly I’m like, “Wait a minute. Something’s not right here. I better show some attention.” If you show indifference towards something and you show people that you don’t need what they have, it makes them want to wonder why. They want that. They want people to need them. Take this to business, too. This is one of the reasons why I make it very obvious that I don’t care if somebody doesn’t buy from me. It makes no difference to me. It’s not that it’s a tactic. It’s literally just a principle by which I live and do business, but it makes them want to do business with me more. It’s that whole repulsion marketing thing. Indifference works 10 times better than begging. Nobody likes a beggar, but everybody wants the attention and approval of someone who’s being 71 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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indifferent. That’s what it comes down to, no matter what part of your life it is. Again, I’ve tested this many times and in many different scenarios. I can tell you that next time you’re in a situation, Jonathan, where you want something from someone – I don’t care what it is or who it’s from – be indifferent to that thing you want and you’ll probably get it. Email Players Rule #47: •

It’s not the car, it’s the driver. It’s not the horse, it’s the rider.

A skilled person in horse racing who knows how to handle that beast – and I’ve never raced a horse, but racehorse riders have told me this – will beat the person who’s on the faster horse but they don’t really know how to handle the horse and get the most out of him and all that. It’s the same with everything else. It’s not the car, it’s the driver. It’s not how fancy your website is. It’s how smart of a marketer you are. It’s not how goodlooking you are if you’re a guy. It’s how much confidence you have as a man. You can’t do anything about your appearance, but you can do something about the confidence level and your charisma level. Isn’t that Episode 50, Jonathan, about charisma? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Somewhere back there, yeah. BEN SETTLE: I believe it’s 50. We got a lot of good feedback on that one. It’s not the car, it’s the driver. That’s the thing. There will be races where the faster car loses because the other driver was better, and that applies to everything. It’s all about having the right attitude and just doing your thing the best you can. Simple enough. Email Players Rule #48: •

If you have to tell people that you’re awesome, you’re just not awesome.

Jonathan, how many times have you seen this like on Facebook. “Oh, I’m awesome!” and I’m thinking, “You’re not awesome. You’re like the opposite of awesome or you wouldn’t have to tell people you’re awesome.” You’ve got to be like Fonzi. Remember the show Happy Days? He didn’t have to tell people he was tough. People just feared him, probably because he was in one fight in his life or whatever. In fact, they did an episode of that where he was trying to show Richie Cunningham, the geeky guy played by Ron Howard, who’s supposed to fight this other guy – he’s trying to teach him everything he 72 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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knows, and then at the last minute he goes, “Fonzi, why is this guy not scared?” “Well, I forgot to tell you one thing. If you want to be perceived as tough, you already would have had to do something to show you’re tough.” Most people say, “Oh, I’m awesome!” and this and that – you’re not awesome. In fact, you sound pathetic if you’re saying you’re awesome to everybody. It’s just not true. If you were awesome you wouldn’t have to say it. If you have to tell people you’re something, chances are you’re not. I know there are some times when you’re promoting a product. I’m not talking about that. I’m not talking about advertising stuff, but even then you’ve got to back yourself up, of course. I’m just saying in general in life. If you’ve got to tell your list, “I’m awesome!” they’re all going to think you’re not awesome, so just don’t say it. Just prove it. Actions speak louder than words, very simple. Finally, Email Players Rule #49: •

If you focus on repulsing the people you don’t want in your life, you’ll automatically attract those you do want in your life.

We’ve talked about repulsion marketing before. A lot of people are too stuck on trying to impress people that they want in their lives, but what you should be doing – and this has been my experience at least; everybody is welcome to disagree and it’s not against the law to be wrong – when I have focused on trying to turn away people, I find I get more sales and more good things happen because I’m getting rid of the crud in my life and I’m making room for the things I do want. It’s like you have to get rid of the bad stuff to make room for the good stuff. There’s nothing new about that concept, but I’m just saying from a marketing point of view and from a personal point of view. For example, let’s say you’re a guy and you’re looking for a girl. You want a girl to date. Let’s say that you’re out there talking to all these girls and everything, so don’t hide things from the girls you don’t want. If you’re anti-feminist like me, I go around and talk about it. I don’t try to hide it. I want to repel them. I don’t want them in my life. I don’t want to give them any of my precious attention and time, and vice versa probably, and that’s fine. I think girls naturally do this actually. They naturally do this. Guys, we have to kind of learn it. This applies to business, your personal life, and friendships. You should be putting out there what you don’t like, and you should be trying to repulse things you don’t like. If you do that, there will be peace. 73 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Speaking of peace, Jonathan, the next Antipreneur Show we’re going to talk about – I’m going to leave this as a surprise because there are people who, if I tell them what it’s going to be about, they will pre-judge it and they may not listen to it. I actually want the people that I don’t want to listen to the next one, so I’m being very strategic this time. You’ve seen my notes and I’m sure you can guess why, so we’ll wait until next week to talk about that. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Excellent. So that’s a wrap for Ben Settle’s Antipreneur Show #85, another set of Email Players Rules. Thank you, Ben, for sharing that with us, and thank you guys for tuning in. We’ll see you on the next one. Happiness trickles down from you to your customer and your clients. Don’t let their happiness trickle down to you. Let your happiness trickle down to them. That to me was a very powerful lesson to learn early on in my career. Those are the first seven Email Players Rules, Jonathan. Do you have anything you’d like to add or are you ready to sign off on this bad boy? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Good stuff, man. I’ll have them in the show notes. I wish I could play devil’s advocate on some of this stuff, but I agree with you wholeheartedly. BEN SETTLE: Okay, then we’ll see you all next time.

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Chapter 8

Email Players Rules 50-56 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. We’re on Episode 95 of the Ben Settle Antipreneur Show. Jonathan, it’s been a long time, or seems like a long time at least, since we’ve done an Email Players Rules. Email Players Rules is something inspired by another podcast by this guy, Dante Nero, called the Beige Phillip Show. The whole mantra is how to get your balls back for guys who have been wronged by women. They don’t know how to deal with women. They can’t get a date with a pocket full of 50’s. They’re desperate and don’t know what they’re doing, and Dante, being a comedian and a former pimp – I don’t know if he was really a pimp with hookers and all, but a pimp in the hood; I guess this means you’re good with women and all that – I’m not up on all the lingo. I admit it. We were actually trying to get him as a guest on the show, but we never heard back from him so whatever. It doesn’t matter. The point is he does these things called the Beige Phillip Rules, which is like these maxims that he goes by for what he teaches. I thought, “Man, that is so cool. I’m going to come up with my own maxims and I’m going to call it the Email Players Rules.” PRODUCER JONATHAN: Ben, before you launch into it I want to give the guy credit. I actually have his phone number, and the only reason we didn’t get him was because you went on hiatus for two months, but I’m going to do the work and get him on, man. BEN SETTLE: I don’t know if it would even benefit the audience that much to have him on, the more I think about it. He might be a little too – we’ll see. We’ll talk about it. We can go either way on that. Anyway, he was the inspiration behind these. We’ve done 49 so far over seven episodes that we’ve done with the Email Players Rules. They’ve become sort of fan favorites for certain people. For example, master copywriter Kevin Rogers admitted that these are his favorites, or amongst his favorites, and they’re just rules and maxims and principles and guidelines by which I do business and live life. These are things I’ve learned the hard way. They’re sometimes talking about mistakes I still continue to make. Jonathan, you might find this difficult to believe, but even I am not perfect.

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PRODUCER JONATHAN: Nooo! BEN SETTLE: Close to perfect, but not quite there. It’s like the Irish guy in the movie Braveheart. The only way I can talk to someone smarter than me is to pray. Enough said on that. Email Players Rule #50: •

Nothing bad happens to a writer.

The first time I heard this was from the great Matt Furey, who I mentioned last time. I don’t know if he originated this thing or not, but I think it’s absolutely true when you’re writing emails especially. Bad things that happen to you all become emails. Some troll emailing you and being an idiot? Write an email about it. You get pulled over for a bull crap speeding ticket? Write an email about it, or even if you deserved it, write about it. It’s like what happened to me, Jonathan. In September my house got burglarized, and two days later I wrote an email about it. I’ll talk more about the burglary later, but the point is that nothing bad really happens to you. I caught somebody copying my emails word-for-word, a so-called 7-figure guy. He calls himself 7-Figure Sam or something. The guy completely blatantly ripped my email off and apparently thought that was okay. I wrote an email about it, and I also got an IP lawyer to deal with it. Someone dies, write an email about it. My friend Jim Yaghi, I remember a few years back when his grandpa died he wrote an email about it. It was a really cool email. It’s like, man, that guy was a badass. He had a haram of like 20 wives. Just kidding, but the point is that’s what you’d write about it. If something happens, you write about it. My dog won’t poop in the rain and just sniffs around and I’m getting wet all day out there and I have to wait for it? I wrote an email about it. I was selling a product about selling called Phantom Pooping Prospect. The point is, everything is an email that happens to you – good, bad, ugly – and often the bad stuff that happens can be profited from the most because people get it. People know you’re real. They know that you’re someone just like them. You get punched, you’ll bleed. Now, I don’t bleed if I get punched, but you guys. You get punched, you bleed, and they know that and people like that. We all do. Nothing bad happens to a writer is Email Players Rule #50. Email Players Rule #51: •

Better to have four quarters than 100 pennies. 76

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What do I mean by this? Actually there’s many aspects of this, but for example would you rather have 100 so-so friends that you don’t really know them that well – they call themselves friends but you really don’t know if you can rely on them or not – or four really good friends who have your back? They aren’t gossiping about you, aren’t trying to betray you, and that sort of thing. I think most people would say they’d rather have a few really high-quality friends. In business, this is why I like to sell high-ticket products, because you get fewer customers but they’re higher-quality customers. I would much rather have four high-quality customers who’ve bought a high-ticket product for like $2,000 than 200 customers who’ve bought a low-ticket product for like $10. I don’t know about the math. You get what I’m saying. I don’t do good math and I admit it. That should be an email, by the way, but the point is four quarters are better than 100 pennies. Do you want 100 pennies, some of which are sticky and they’ve been on the floor of cabs and all this, or do you want four shiny beautiful quarters? Of course, those quarters could have been in a stripper’s G-string for all we know, but none of that is the point. The analogy breaks down, I know, but the point is when you have less of something high-quality than a lot of something low-quality, like customers for example – and I don’t mean low-quality like low-quality people, but someone who buys a $10 product is a less qualified customer to have than someone who buys a $2,000 product. Who do you really want to deal with more? I’d rather have fewer customers who pay a lot than a lot of customers who don’t pay much. People can argue with me all they want on this. I’m right as usual, and that’s the end of that one. Email Players Rules #52: •

If you don’t want to look like an ass, then ask.

Jonathan, I don’t know if this happens to you or not, but I can’t even count any more how many times somebody has emailed me with all these dumb assumptions. They’re trying to make some dumb point with dumb assumptions that are not true about me, demonstrably not true about things that I believe and do and have said, when I can just show them the fact that they’re wrong, but they’ll do it anyway because they never bother to ask me. For example, a few months ago some guy sent me this email saying how foolish it was for me to never sell digital products, that I only have physical products and that I need to get in the 21st century and join the computer age and all this stuff. Now, he could have asked and said, “Ben, do you ever sell digital 77 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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products?” or “Ben, have you ever thought of selling digital products?” or “Why don’t you sell digital products?” The answer is I do sell digital products. I have a bunch of Kindle books that are digital. We sell products on this show, Jonathan, that are digital like Newbie Proof Traffic Secrets and the Cracker Jack Selling Secrets, and we’re putting a whole store together and a lot of that will be digital. It just depends on the product and the situation. Email Players is physical, absolutely. Copywriting Grab Bag right now is physical, absolutely. I prefer physical products for a lot of reasons, but sometimes digital is the best way to go. I’ve never said never to sell digital. I have said that I think physical is better, but to say never to sell digital products? I’ve never said that, and had this guy simply asked he wouldn’t have looked like an ass. Of course I had to set him straight and he felt like an ass, so enough of that one. Email Players Rule #53: •

If it’s not in the cards, then stack the deck.

I don’t remember where I heard that, but as soon as I heard that one-liner I said, “This is an Email Players Rule.” The context of how I would apply this to business especially is let’s say you’re selling a product as an affiliate, especially during a launch where you’re competing with all these other affiliates. By the way, I don’t do launches anymore. Sometimes people want me to mail for their launch, and I’m not going to do it. I’ve talked about this on my blog and in my emails. I’m not doing it for several reasons, one of which is I don’t trust the tracking to be correct anymore, if ever it was. My friends Shane Hunter, Eric McMillan, and Jeff Steven – we were doing this thing selling this course earlier this year and we caught several sales that were ours that went to someone else, and those are just the ones we caught. I don’t know how this happened. There were definitely cases where the person told me they didn’t even know who these other affiliates were because I’m not in that world, and there’s no way they would have clicked on anyone else’s link first or anything because they don’t even know who these people are, and they’re not friends with them on Facebook or any of that stuff. It’s a different world, and these people are still saying, “Ben, I got a welcome email from this other person even thought I bought it from your link,” and I’m thinking, “What the hell?” And the guy who’s selling the product I trust, so I know he wasn’t up to any funny business or anything. 78 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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I’ve heard of this stuff happening before and I’m done with it. Why am I going to sell other people’s stuff? I’m not working hard to give other people the sales. Forget that. So again I don’t do that kind of stuff. I don’t do launches anymore. But getting back to it, if it’s not in the cards, then stack the deck. So let’s say you’re selling an affiliate product during a launch or not during a launch, and you want yours to stand out. You’re all selling the same product, and you may even be selling it to the same pool of people, and you’re all probably using the same sales letter and sending them to the same sales page, so how do you stack the deck? That’s when you come up with better bonuses. There’s nothing new about this. There’s absolutely nothing new about coming up with unique bonuses so that they buy from your link and not someone else, and they get this set of bonuses, but you make your bonuses better and worth more value, not phony internet value. “Oh, this is worth $300.” No, it has to actually have a retail price to it. I’ll even go so far, if it’s a big-ticket enough product, that I’ll physically mail somebody a product that is worth a lot. You want to stack the deck so that it really makes no sense to buy from anyone but you. I’m just talking about that from an affiliate point of view. You could apply this to other aspects in your life too. You just stack the deck. When you want an advantage, you give yourself an advantage. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Speaking of bonuses, Ben, I don’t know if you’ve seen Sean D’Souza talking about this stuff, but he actually says make the bonus more valuable than the product itself and it drives people nuts. BEN SETTLE: It really does, especially if you can prove the retail. For example, Titans of Direct Response, Brian Kurtz’s product, a $2,000 product. I had lunch with Brian Kurtz, and I mentioned this on the last show I think, at Ryan Lee’s Freedomfest in mid-September, and he told me I got second place out of all his affiliates, which pissed me off because I wanted first place. I lost to Glaser-Kennedy by a few sales. They got like 5 more sales than me. He goes, “But Ben, they have a list of like 100,000 people.” I said, “Yeah, but still I only lost by like 5 sales. What about the conversion rate? Did I make more conversions?” and he goes, “Oh yeah, you killed it in that,” so I won, dude. The reason I bring this up is because I gave legitimately $6,000 of bonuses, real retail value, and I can track it and all that. In fact, it was worth more than that, I just couldn’t put numbers on some of it. I didn’t want to make it sound unrealistic. For example, the Agora tapes that I gave away, I was paid $5,000 to teach that. That’s the real value, but I had never sold it for that personally so I 79 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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can’t say it. So really it would have been more like $11,000 in value, but it made it a no-brainer. I even had people say, “Damn it, Ben, if I had known you were going to do this I wouldn’t have bought that product from anyone else,” so I agree with Sean completely, big surprise there. If it’s not in the cards, then you stack the deck and you’ll be okay. Email Players Rule #54: •

Don’t chase them, replace them.

I actually read this recently from this guy who’s a dating coach for guys. He was talking about, “You don’t chase girls. If they don’t reciprocate, if they’re not into you, don’t chase them. Don’t go feeding their egos and their drama queenism. Just freakin’ let them go and replace them with someone else. A girl breaks up with you, you find a new one right away. Forget all this stupid advice like you’ve got to wait a year or twice as long as you were with the person. Girls should probably do that, but guys, you need to replace her ASAP.” We’re not like girls. Girls like to give advice like that, like you should wait forever. You’re going to heal faster as a guy if you go find yourself a hotter chick, trust me. Don’t chase them, replace them. It could be applied to clients too. Let’s say you’ve got a really good client and they fire you or whatever. Now, you could sit there and chase them and try to woo them back, like a lot of people do, or you just replace them with a better client or several better clients. I’ve never understood this mindset of chasing them. I shouldn’t say never. There was a time when El Benbo was like El Mushcookie Bo and used to do stuff like that, but I’m saying over the last four or five years I’ve never understood it. I can’t even get my mind around chasing something. The law of the jungle is if you chase something it’s going to retreat, so why would you chase it? You’re better off running the opposite way and let them come to you hopefully. It’s like my dog. My dog is part Basenji, and Basenjis I’ve been told like to run, and it’s true. My dog is a runner. I can’t let her off the lead. She’d see a cat and I’d never see her again, not because she wants to run away but because she gets distracted and needs to hunt something. I’ve been told if Basenjis run away, the best thing you do is run the opposite way and they’ll chase you.

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That’s the mindset there. If you need somebody for whatever reason, they’re going to automatically back away from you emotionally if not physically, so your thing is to never need them – this goes back to not being needy – and just replace that with someone else or something else, whatever it might be. Talking about girls or clients, it’s very similar. Replace them with someone else and show that you don’t need them and you found something better, and you win, man. You’re going to win either way, so don’t chase them, replace them. Email Players Rule #55: •

Wisdom doesn’t come cheap.

I talked about my home being burglarized, and in the last show I joked about how my ego was getting out of the atmosphere and all that, and that it gets brought back very soon, and this is a case of that. I no longer live in The Burgle. As we’re recording this I do, but by the time everyone hears this I will no longer be living in The Burgle, this shitty little tweeker town full of meth addicts and all. I can’t stand it anymore. The two years I’ve lived there I’ve known it, and again I let my Chicago/Midwest paranoia kind of down over the last couple years and I shouldn’t have and it’s my fault. I got burglarized. I had gone to Kung Fu three days a week at the exact same time. They were watching me, and on the Sunday before Labor Day some people broke in through a window when I wasn’t there in the broad daylight. They stole some very valuable stuff, including two firearms. Imagine if I’d walked in on them and they had my own firearms. My point is I lost a lot, but the wisdom I got didn’t come cheap. It was very expensive, but what I learned is actually more valuable. I can replace all the stuff that was taken, but had they, for example, messed with my dog – the first thing I did when I walked in, I opened the garage and I noticed something was wrong because the garage light was on inside and my bike was on its side and it shouldn’t be like that. It should be standing up next to the washer and dryer. I was like, “That’s kind of weird.” My car won’t fit in there if it’s down flat like that, so I had to pull the car out, get out of the car, put the bike back up, and then pull the car back in, and that’s when I noticed the garage door into the house was slightly ajar. I’m like, “Hmm, this is a little bit weird.” It still didn’t occur to me that anybody had broken in or anything. I thought it was my ex-copywriting apprentice maybe. One time she broke in through a window because I wasn’t home and her dog 81 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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was at my house and she had to break in and get the dog. No big deal. She used to work for a window company and knows how to do that. So I walked in and the first thing I see in the living room floor is a box full of my 45 ACP ammo, just like it was dropped. I think they were actually in the process of stealing that when I came home, because it was just dropped in the middle of the living room. I noticed a light on in the closet and I’m like, “Oh shit.” Pardon my French. I go under the stairs, and at the top of the stairs there’s a closet and it’s all wide open with stuff thrown out. I run up the stairs and my office was just completely ransacked like the FBI came looking for drugs or something. It was just crazy. I was in terror because my dog usually comes and greets me and I was like, “Zoe, where are you?” and I was panicking for like three seconds. I’d never felt panic like that in my life. I noticed that the guest bedroom door was slightly ajar. I kick it open literally, I was so freaked out, and that room was all torn up, and she comes walking out, tail wagging, and I was like, “Whew!” Then I noticed they tried to access my computer, because I saw like 4 digits typed in on the password protection screen, and they couldn’t figure it out. My password is uncrackable. Nobody’s going to figure it out. It’s all in my head. I don’t have it written down anywhere. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Why were they trying to get in there? BEN SETTLE: I have no idea, dude, but I do know this, that they didn’t steal my dog or my computer, or kill my dog or hurt my dog. Those were the only two things that mattered to me. To this day I’m just grateful. The wisdom I learned from this is I put my dog in danger and I put myself in danger potentially. It cost me quite a bit of money actually with what they stole, and two really good firearms, but I learned my lesson. I went and got two security systems and I will never let that happen again because I’ll never have a routine like that again where it’s so obvious. God help me, I’ll never live in an area like The Burgle again or a neighborhood like it, which is like a shit neighborhood. I’ve always joked about it. I can see a house down there with boarded-up windows. On the hill these duplexes are nice. We’re kind of like prime targets, now that I think about it. But see, this is stuff I should have known already and I didn’t. That wisdom to learn this stuff did not come cheap at all. It was very expensive. As a side note, they did find one of my guns. They found it in the town over a few days later. Some park workers were cleaning the septic system of a park and they found it in there and it was all in crap and everything, so the cops 82 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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gave it back to me in a box marked “Biohazard.” I would love to know the story behind how it got there. I’ll never know, but anyway wisdom doesn’t come cheap and that’s an example. Usually it’s very, very expensive either in time, money, or lost opportunity. You just have to take the lesson, learn it like I’ve done, and now you can better prepare for the next time. Just be grateful that things weren’t worse. That’s really the way to look at life, I think. Wisdom doesn’t come cheap. That’s Email Players Rule #55. Finally for this episode – it’s not the final Email Players Rule, by the way, there’s many more to come – but Email Players Rule #56: •

Kings make queens. Queens don’t make kings.

I know that some overly-literal person will say, “Well, what about the queen of England?” I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the mindset. A king can pull a queen up. Let’s take the old days, before all the modern ritual coronations, but when kings were actually kings. This is an analogy I got from the late comedian Patrice O’Neal, a brilliant, brilliant guy. He used to make this analogy. A king can go out to the town and all that, pick the most peasant-looking girl he can find, the ugliest girl, it doesn’t really matter, he can take any girl he wants and instantly elevate her to queenship, no questions asked. There’s no voting on it. He picks her and he elevates her up. On the other hand, let’s say the king dies and the queen is now in charge and she has to have a king by law. Any guy she picks is going to look like a schlub and a chump, like he’s not really like that. He doesn’t deserve it. A queen cannot elevate a king. A king can elevate a queen. Take Britney Spears. Remember Britney Spears? She made all that money and she had that loser husband who cheated on her. The guy’s like a nobody now. She actually brought him up, and now that she’s not there nobody even cares who he is anymore, because he was not the king. She was kind of the king. You can apply this obviously in the dating world very easily. I’ve never met a girl who’s in charge in the relationship who was truly happy and who isn’t miserable and who isn’t bitchy and snappy and all that. I’m sure there’s a few out there maybe, but any guy that would allow that to happen probably isn’t the most confident guy in the world, probably isn’t the most dominant guy in the world. He probably lets himself get walked over, and I don’t know a girl out there who admits she likes a guy that she can walk over. It’s because he’s allowing her to be the king and he’s not the king, which she wants. 83 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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How you would apply this to business I have no idea, other than the fact if you’re a service provider or if you sell a product, people want to deal with the best. For example, Gary Bencivenga, the world’s greatest living copywriter, after he became the best, any client that worked with him he kind of elevated them up because he made them more sales and all that. If they’d gone after a lesser copywriter they would be making less money and they wouldn’t be as elevated up in their market, either by reputation or branding or sales. It’s the same thing. Kings make queens. Queens don’t make kings. This could be reversed. You could say a copywriter just starting out, for example, if he lands a good client with a good reputation, that client will elevate him or her for sure, so it’s not an exact science when it comes to business. But overall if you’re the king in your market, whatever service you provide – it doesn’t have to be copywriting, it could be anything – and you’re going to improve somebody’s sales, you’re elevating them. If they had gone with someone who doesn’t have as much experience as you or is lesser than you in some way, they’re not being elevated. That’s just something to keep in mind. We don’t talk about dating enough on this show, Jonathan, but I just had to point that out. That is it for this time. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Good stuff. We knocked out even more Email Players Rules. Thank you, Ben, and thank you, antipreneurs, for tuning in. That’s a wrap for this show. This is #95 and we’ll catch you guys on the next one.

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Chapter 9

Email Players Rules 57-63 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. Jonathan, we’re going to cover another of our fan favorites. I don’t know if you’ve heard much feedback about these, but for example Kevin Rogers, one of my favorite copywriters and stand-up comedians and a prior guest on this show, was talking about how he likes these Email Players Rules episodes. When he’s walking his dog on Sunday mornings or whatever, he’s just like, “Yeah, I just like those episodes, for whatever reason,” and I’ve heard that from some other people too, so I think it’s becoming one of the fan favorites. I don’t know. If it’s not, at least in my mind it is, which is all that matters. For the people who’ve not heard these, we’ve done 56 of them so far since the genesis of this show, and we’re going to do another 7. Basically they’re maxims, they’re philosophies, they’re principles, they could be quotes which I live life by and which I do business by that have made my life a lot easier and more profitable. Some of these things are things that I’ve kind of invented. Some are things that I’ve heard from other people. Some are things I’ve just learned through the School of Hard Knocks, and some of these things I’ve heard from other people’s experiences, so a lot of this is not necessarily original. I got the idea, in fact, from Dante Nero of the Beige Phillip Show, which is a show about relationships, advice to guys basically. His whole thing is “get your balls back.” On Show 96 from a couple weeks ago we kind of talked about neediness and all that. That’s what his show’s about. It’s kind of a crude show, I guess. It’s definitely not for the mushcookie-minded, but he does these things called the Beige Phillip Rules, which are the exact same thing. They’re these rules he goes by when it comes to that sort of stuff. I thought, “That would be a good idea for our show,” so I shamelessly lifted that idea and I’m now using it for this under Email Players Rules. That said, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty here, Jonathan. I don’t want to waste a lot of time on this. Email Players Rule #57:

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•

You catch what you know how to hunt.

Speaking of Dante Nero, this is where I heard this from. He was talking about when you’re dealing with girls and you go for the kind of girls that you’re actually good at getting. Some guys are good at getting girls who are really mean and nasty. Some guys are good at getting the shy girl who hangs out in the library all day. Some guys are good at getting the girl in the club. Whatever, but you catch what you know how to hunt. In business this is actually even more applicable, I think. For example, I think you should be going after markets that you know, more than just where the money’s at. There’s a lot of people who will get into a market because that’s where the money is. “Ooo, I heard that’s where the money is.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if you don’t know that market or like that market or have any empathy for that market or don’t care about that market it’s stupid. I’ll give you an example of three guys – Shane Hunter, Jeff Stephen, and Eric McMillan –people I’ve done some business with. We call ourselves The Legends Table and we did some affiliate stuff as The Legends Table. We combined our traffic and copywriting stuff and technical stuff together and we did some pretty good stuff in the affiliate world. One of the things that we promised to people who bought from our affiliate offer was to give them a hot seat, and here’s the thing. One of the guys who did the hot seat had this site for guys, and they had a girl version. It was just like how to be better with the opposite sex, how to be better with money, how to be better with jobs and this and that. It’s kind of like one of those all-in-one type sites. He was trying to use it to get into the dating market or whatever. He said he noticed something. He was like, “You know, I noticed something on this blog. Most of my traffic comes from the articles about survival,” which I guess was more interesting to him anyway. He was like, “Should I go after the survival people if that’s where the traffic is, or should I just go after this dating market where the money is?” Well, there’s money in the survival market, for one thing, and we all told him, “Go after survival, man. Catch what you know how to hunt, dude. Obviously you know how to catch them, so to speak, in the survival niche, so go after them.” This is a very important thing. A lot of people spend a lot of time and anxiety trying to figure out who to sell to, when the answer is just right there. Who do you know how to catch? That’s who you hunt, so that’s Rule #57. 86 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Email Players Rule #58 comes straight from the late great marketing and copywriting genius, Gary Halbert. This is something he used to say a lot, and I think there’s a lot of truth to it. In fact, the more I think about things the more I realize how true this is. •

Nothing is impossible for a man who refuses to listen to reason.

It’s very true. I don’t know about you, Jonathan, but I’ve had many people tell me, “That won’t work. You can’t do that,” just to prove them wrong every time. A real-life example, The Email Players newsletter. I was told I should have made it an email product, delivered by email because isn’t there a disconnect, and people want digital and all that. I’m not saying that that’s wrong necessarily, but I like print newsletters. It’s just the way I like to do things, so I’m like, “I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to try to make this work anyway,” and it’s become a resounding success for me. It’s not because it’s a print newsletter and it’s about email marketing. I know there’s people listening who are just like, “Ooo, I’m just going to do what Ben does.” Well, good luck with that because unless you have a deep knowledge of this and not just a surface knowledge, I would say 99% of people who teach email marketing do not know it deep enough to teach it. They think they do. They maybe learned from me or they learned from my friend Andre Chaperon or whoever and they think they’re like email ninjas, but they just don’t have the depth of knowledge. They’re not obsessed with it, and even if they are obsessed with it they don’t have a rounded knowledge of it. They don’t understand how to apply it to other things. They have like tunnel vision with it, and I’ve seen it a million times. It’s not about that. It’s about realizing that if you have an idea for something and you just have a gut feeling about it, you should just go for it and don’t worry about what everybody said. The worst that happens is it fails, whatever it is you’re doing. That’s the worst that happens, it doesn’t work, and you go back to something else. In fact, I’ve been talking to my friend Ray Higdon about this lately. He and his wife have this social media product, apparently it’s very popular and it’s helped a lot of people in network marketing. It’s for network marketers so it’s specialized to them, which is a smart thing. They’re constantly having to update it because Facebook is always changing its rules and all this, so they’re always having to do videos that keep people up-to-date. I said, “Why don’t you guys just make that a continuity, so they have to pay you to keep it up-to-date? You’re already doing these videos keeping it up-to87 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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date, but you’re giving it away free when you guys should be getting paid for them.” I don’t know if they’re going to do this or not, and I don’t even know if this is a good idea or not, maybe it will bomb, but I said, “Here’s what you should test. Give away your $300 social media product as the bribe to get them into your ‘Video of the month’ about X,” so they get your evergreen stuff in the bribe, and then you can give them the updated stuff constantly forever for whatever you want to charge - $50/month, $40, whatever they think it’s worth. That’s an idea in my mind that would work. It may fail, but Ray is very interested in trying it and I’m sure he will. He’s definitely one of the most aggressive marketers I’ve ever met as far as when it comes to implementing things especially. That dude implements and it’s awesome. I’m sure there will be people who tell him not to do it, but don’t listen to reason. Listen to elBenbo. Email Players Rule #59: •

Votes trump polls.

When I say trump I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m saying votes take precedence over polls. I’ll give you a non-business example and then I’ll give you a business example. A non-business example – a few years back the City of Seattle, that city of fine upstanding liberals and social justice warriors, decided they wanted to do a tax on coffee. If you understand Seattle, it’s one of the coffee capitals of the world, and public opinion was all for it. It was like 25 cents or something tax on every coffee, something like that. It would have been ‘for the children’ of course, Jonathan. It’s always ‘for the children,’ and they literally said that’s what it would it have been for, like paying for daycare or something, so it was ‘for the children.’ The polls showed something like 70% of people behind it like, “Yeah, we’re going to do this!” Then when it came time to vote it bombed. Nobody voted for it. The votes didn’t show what the polls showed, and you can see that a lot because most people didn’t want to pay a tax. They just wanted to say they did and feel good about themselves, because that’s the hypocrisy of people like that, but the reality is nobody really wanted to pay that tax on that. They just wanted to look good so when they went to parties they’d say, “Yeah, I’m behind that!” but that’s not what happened. That’s one example of when votes actually trump the polls. 88 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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In business I’ll tell you for emails, for example, that sales trump opens. Jonathan, we’ve belabored this point. It’s like the dead horse. We resurrected the dead horse, then we killed it again, and now we’re resurrecting it again. Sales are more important than opens. They are, if your goal is sales. I guess if your goal is opens then that’s fine, get all the opens you want. There are people out there who actually think they’re successful because they’re getting lots of opens, but then you ask them about their sales and they’re not keeping track of that. They don’t know. “Well, I guess they’re doing okay. Man, I got all these opens,” like it’s a frickin’ video game or something and not real life. In my way of thinking, sales trump opens. Not too long ago we talked about how there are advantages and there are reasons to track your opens. I’m not saying not to track them. I’m just saying at the end of the day what’s putting food on the table – more open rates or more sales? Because one does not always equal the other. In fact, in many cases you’ll see your opens go down if you’re getting higher sales. A lot of opens have to do with your traffic. The more traffic you have coming in, probably the more opens you’re going to get. My friend Jim Yaghi and I have both tested that a lot, so that’s just the way it goes. Here’s another example of this. You’ve heard this analogy probably many times. We’re asking people what they want versus observing what they buy. Gary Halbert used to talk about that. If you ask people what their favorite book is they’ll say, “Oh, the Bible. That’s my favorite book,” even though they’ve never read the book and it just sits there or they don’t even know where their Bible is. When you go and look at what they buy it’s like Stephen King or Cosmo magazine. You can’t go by what anybody says. You have to observe what they’re actually buying and what they’re doing. That’s a huge thing. Votes trump polls. Here’s an example from the relationship side of things, Jonathan, because once in a while I like to dispense my worldly wisdom on this subject. This was a few years back. There was this girl I was talking to and she was going on and on. I asked her about this friend of hers. She had this guy friend and I was like, “Why don’t you just go out with him?” because she was asking me about who she should go out with and all this. I said, “What about that one dude you know? Why don’t you go out with him? He’s your friend.” “Well, I don’t want to ruin the friendship,” is what she said. Like if she went out with the guy it would ruin the friendship. Okay, fine, but then in that same conversation, the exact same conversation she goes, “One day I want to marry 89 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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my best friend. That’s who I want to marry.” I’m just like, “Are you kidding me?” The reality is her guy friend probably isn’t very attractive to her, so her hamster was spinning up ways to be nice about it like, “I don’t want to ruin the friendship,” but if you look at the guys this girl actually dates, she’s always complaining, “Oh, he’s mean to me,” and all this stuff. That’s what she’s buying, so again votes trump polls. That’s another example. Email Players Rule #60: •

If marketing is the sport, sales is the scoreboard.

That’s the way I look at it, Jonathan. I know that this doesn’t make me popular with some of these other guys, especially a couple email guys out there. They like to be able to dazzle their clients with empty metrics. “Oh, I got all these opens.” “What about your sales?” “Well, I don’t know about the sales.” Or they’ll work for a big client who has a lot of traffic and already has a rabid list, and they’ll take credit for all the sales from their copy and email. It’s just not the case. If everything’s in place, your emails are good and that’s good and it can help, but they’re not creating a million dollars in sales out of nothing. You’re just making more sales than what had been there normally if your copy is good. But people like that. They like to talk about all the opens they get or all the clicks they get, which are not bad things to track, don’t get me wrong, but they’re not sales. The scoreboard is sales, not blog comments or how many Likes you got on Facebook or how many hits you got. Remember hits? Everybody used to brag about their website hits, and then Gary Halbert said, “HITS stands for How Idiots Track Success.” I thought that was funny. Again, if marketing is the sport then sales is the scoreboard, not these other things. These other things are not bad. There’s nothing wrong with them. It’s good to have lots of comments if that’s what you’re going for. There’s nothing wrong with it, or lots of Likes, but you have to look at is that bringing you sales or not. At the end of the day it’s not a popularity contest. People treat it like that, but it’s not. Email Players Rule #61 invest in cat breeders and products. This is not going to make the social justice warriors happy, Jonathan, as I taunt them, and the feminists will hate me for this but it’s true. When they calm down and they realize I’m right, they’ll be okay.

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I have noticed, and I’m sure many men have noticed this, and many girls have noticed this actually. This is nothing big. With the rise of feminism several years ago, nowadays you have a lot of single women who are in their 40’s and 50’s who will admit that they bought into this and they thought they could have it all and now they’ve got nothing. They’ve got no man. They feel like they’re going to die alone in a cold bed, and in a lot of cases that may be the case. I’m not saying this with glee. I think it’s sad, actually, but with every problem there represents an opportunity for the rest of us. The whole stereotype of the cat lady is actually very true because cats represent a dominant figure. I know there’s a lot of people yelling at the podcast. “Ah Ben, you suck” or whatever, but it’s very true. That’s why they have cats, because they can’t get a man that they like. Most men out there, let’s face it – and this is not their fault, I mean it’s not all their fault, some of it’s their fault – but a lot of guys are just weak. There’s just a lot of weak needy guys out there and these girls don’t want them. They want the alpha stud and all that, but that guy doesn’t want the 50-year-old girl. He’s going to go after the 25-year-old. That’s just the way it goes. Don’t hate the messenger. I’m just delivering the message. Selling in the dating market I can tell you this is a very real phenomenon, and it’s not going to go away by acting like it’s not there. A lot of these chicks will get cats. The whole thing of the cat lady is very true. They’re getting that cat because that cat represents a dominant figure. If you have a cat, that cat owns you. You don’t own the cat. A cat owns you. Anyone who’s owned a cat knows this. Dogs are the opposite. You own the dog. A dog does not really own you. I mean it could emotionally I guess for some people, but cats are very dominant creatures. That’s why I like cats. I wish I wasn’t allergic to cats because I actually like cats. I like their style, Jonathan. I think there’s a lot of business lessons you can learn from a cat, actually. Here’s the opportunity for the rest of us. I know this is a little tongue in cheek, just for people who have no context, but it’s also true. It’s something I’m thinking about. I think that people should start investing in cat breeding and cat products, manufacturers of cat products, because I don’t think this is going to get any lesser. I think you’re going to have more and more people in that situation.

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All that said, Jonathan, let’s get away from the cat thing because I don’t want people to miss the point. There’s actually a good investing lesson there to be had. You want to invest in things that are cheap now but they’re going to be more and more later. For those of us who take a Biblical point of view when it comes to these things – not to get too preachy or anything – I think there will be lots of wars coming. I mean there have been a lot of wars over the last few years especially, and there’s going to be more and more battles and wars coming up. You could profit from that by investing in weapons manufacturers, or if you take that point of view that you think the Bible is true, which I think this is all going to be happening, that earthquakes are going to become more and more common – if you really believe that and you know it, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to consider investing in companies that have earthquake-proof equipment and that sort of thing. The point isn’t to invest from the Bible. That’s not the point. We’re going to talk about this in the next show. People will hear this on this show and they hear it all out of context and they start freaking out. What I’m saying is that you want to have a long-term view on these things. If you see trends starting to happen or could happen, that’s a good time to start investing. This is the stuff I’ve been thinking about a lot lately because I’m looking into investing in stuff, not just the stock market but other things too, especially after I got burglarized, by the way. I realized there’s a lot of wisdom in having investments that aren’t in your house, and you want to think about investing. If you really think the feminist thing is going to get more and more, and there’s going to be more single women in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s who are lonely – I’m serious, cat supplies would probably be a good investment for you to think about. Same with the other stuff, and it could be anything. Think long-term. Don’t just invest in something because it’s hot right now. In fact, if the mainstream is talking about it, it’s probably not a good time to be investing in something. I guess I could have boiled it all down to that for #61 but it wouldn’t have been as fun. Email Players Rule #62: •

It’s better to make your own luck rather than to wait for it to happen on its own.

I don’t know who invented this term, Jonathan. I remember hearing it in high school wrestling. “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity,” 92 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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or you could say mathematically that luck = preparation + opportunity. If you’re prepared for an opportunity, you’re going to be able to jump on it. If you’re not prepared for it, you’re going to miss the boat. We’ve been talking about this, Jonathan. I don’t know where we’re at chronologically for whoever is listening to this at this time, but I was on some podcasts that should have given us a lot of traffic or potentially a lot of traffic, and I was scrambling to get the site ready for that because I knew there was the potential. I didn’t know for a fact what was going to happen with our traffic, but there was a good chance that we were going to get a surge of new traffic to this show’s website at BenSettleShow.com, as I shamelessly plug it, and we were prepared for it. For better or worse, we were prepared for that. I could have just said, “Ah, screw it. I’ll get to it later someday,” but if you’re prepared for those types of opportunities, you’re going to look lucky. People will think you’re lucky. How many years, Jonathan, did you put into investing in yourself so that you were ready when an opportunity came? Everybody said, “Oh, you were an overnight success.” PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah, right. BEN SETTLE: You weren’t an overnight success. You were an over-decade success probably like the rest of us. That’s why you always keep yourself prepared. Keep working on yourself. Look at opportunities that could be coming and be ready for it, just like the investing thing, but this is more for your business-type stuff. Jonathan, we could take this back to the dating analogy if we want. How many girls have you known in your life who aren’t proactive about finding a man? They just think it’s going to magically happen. PRODUCER JONATHAN: The Secret. BEN SETTLE: A soulmate’s going to appear magically like The Secret. The guy’s going to manifest like he’s a puff of smoke that’s going to come out of the ground or something. I’m not saying all girls do, but there are girls who do that. I say shouldn’t you at least be putting yourself in a position so that you can meet the ideal guy that you want? If you want a confident guy, a guy who makes money and all that stuff, shouldn’t you go hang out at the places they are instead of the nightclub, wherever they’re hanging out, like the library. That could be a good spot actually.

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I’m not letting guys off the hook here, by the way, either. I know a lot of guys who do the same thing. I don’t know what they’re thinking. They need to be proactive about this. They have to go out there and find themselves a woman if they want a woman. They can’t just wait around for the girl to approach them. They’re not going to do that. I mean it happens once in a while I guess, but the reality is you need to go and put yourself out there. Then you’re going to meet someone cool eventually and you’re going to be like, “Oh, I got lucky.” You didn’t get lucky. That was skill. A lot of guys think they’ve been lucky when they actually had skill. There are people who it just happens to them and, yeah, they’re lucky in the sense that they didn’t have to do anything, but if you’re prepared and you’ve readied yourself and you’ve bettered yourself, whatever that means for you for the kind of person you want, that’s how you become lucky. If you’re ‘lucky’ then people will say, “You’re so lucky you go that girl, Jonathan. You’re so lucky you got your wife.” PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yes, I am. BEN SETTLE: “I bet you went out of your way to find her, and you put yourself deliberately in positions where you’d get her, and that’s that.” Last one, Email Players Rule #63. This comes from my Wing Chun Kung Fu Sifu, actually. When he said this I thought, “Man, that is so good. I’m going to write that down and make an Email Players Rule,” and so I did. •

It’s not how fast you are, it’s how soon you get there.

In Wing Chun or any kind of combat, speed is important but what’s most important is actually doing things right. I was thinking from a business point of view it’s like shortcuts. You can be the best copywriter in the world, and you can sit there and use all the manipulation tactics and all the fireworks and persuasion chokeholds and all that stuff, and that’s fine, or you can do like Doug D’Anna, the world-class copywriter, told me. He said, “If I came to your house, Ben, I bet I could get your dog to come flying to me from your lap to my lap, even though she’s never met me.” I said, “How?” He said, “I would just hold up her favorite dog cookie.” No manipulation needed. While I’d try to coax her to do whatever I want, he would just hold up the cookie. It’s the same in marketing. Have a good offer to the right list. I’m not saying don’t use good copy, but I’m saying that is going to do far more for you. It would take you less time and less effort, actually. Just have a great offer and a 94 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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great list rather than to sit there and slave over a video sales letter for three months. It’s not that you shouldn’t have good copy. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m just saying it’s not how fast you are, it’s how soon you get there. You’ll get to whatever your goal is sooner by focusing on the big important things first, in order. In marketing it goes list, offer, copy. Depending on who you ask, copy is like 20% of the battle, the list is 40-50% and the offer is 30-40%. It’s not how fast you are. It’s how soon you get there. Jonathan, that wraps up these latest 7 Email Players Rules. Next time is our 99th show, so we’re coming up on the magic #100, which means that we’ve made it this far. I’m going to leave next time as a secret. I have some cool stuff to share, but it will be pre-judged if I tell you what it is, so I’m going to let you wait until we get there next time. That’s all I got for today. PRODUCER JONATHAN: That’s a wrap for Ben Settle’s Antipreneur Show #98. Thank you guys for tuning in, and thank you Ben for sharing more Email Players Rules with us.

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Chapter 10

Email Players Rules 64-70 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. Jonathan, I said we’d go into some Email Players Rules, but I was just looking at this email that you sent me earlier with some questions that came in, and I wanted to address one of these questions. One of the questions we already addressed in the #100 episode. If someone hasn’t listened to that then they’re not going to get the answer to that. It’s how to brand yourself as a celebrity right away or whatever. Forget that question. I want to read this one from Mel. Is that a guy or a girl? PRODUCER JONATHAN: That was a female. BEN SETTLE: It’s female. It’s kind of like Pat from Saturday Night Live. Nothing against Mel here. I’m just saying I can’t tell by the name. It’s like some guy whose name is Ashley. It’s mostly a girl’s name. It throws you off. You just don’t know who you’re talking to, and sometimes it’s nice to know. Was this question from Mel written directly to you or is it something that came in that Misty forwarded you, or what was the context of this question? PRODUCER JONATHAN: This was actually one of the leftovers from the 100th episode. If you remember, we had some tech difficulties and stuff and some people couldn’t get their questions answered, so she went ahead and emailed it to me but we didn’t get to it on the show. BEN SETTLE: Fair enough. Here’s what Mel says. Just imagine a girl asking this, or maybe you think I’m a girl anyway and you’re like, “Oh Ben, here you go.” Mel says, “So much internet ad copy is full of hype that makes the Ginsu knives commercials of old pale by hype comparison. Not only do we get callout boxes, red and blue text, act now prompts, scarcity warnings, and multiple levels of ‘Wait, there’s more!’ add-ons, but now we’re getting the days of followup emails as we’re thrown down the hype funnel. What kind of customer does this hype work on, and are they a customer worth catering to for a hit and quick buck?”

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I’m reading this and thinking, “What’s bad about any of this stuff?” The Ginsu knife ads were brilliant. Those things ran for years. Instead of complaining about being hype, Mel, you should maybe study them and try to figure out why they work. There’s nothing hypey about those knives as long as they did what they were advertised to do. Same with callout boxes and stuff. You have to get attention. That’s just how it goes. You have to do what you can to get attention. When you’re dealing with a lagging attention span like we have today, you kind of have to do that. It’s not hype. I guess it depends if somebody wants to define hype. I don’t necessarily see hype as always a bad thing. It’s just showmanship. It’s drama. It’s getting attention. Would you like to go watch a movie that had no drama in it and say, “What kind of moviegoer falls for this type of mindless entertainment?” It’s the same thing. That’s what we respond to. “Wait, there’s more!” add-ons are great. It’s appealing to greed. Mel, are you the only person out there who’s not greedy? I mean really. I’m a greedy guy. I admit it. Give me more of what I want. And follow-up emails? I’m thinking years of follow-up emails at least. Days is nothing. What’s in the emails? Is it just, “Hey, buy this. Last chance!” Then you’ve got a point, Mel, but if you’re doing email right like the way I teach, and the way Jonathan does, and the way we do on the show, we’re not hyping you. We couldn’t care less if you buy or not. I promise you that when I write an email I’m not saying, “Oh boy, I sure hope I win someone over who’s scared of hype.” I know that when you read one of our Ben Settle Show emails, because I know you’re on our list – when Misty writes you an email that’s cussing like a drunken sailor, I don’t think she’s trying to hype you. It’s just being real. Here’s an interesting thing to think about and then we’ll move on to the Email Players Rules. When it comes to marketing these days, and I really believe this, credibility is obviously very important. You have to have it, but it’s not special anymore. Anybody can make themselves credible even using lies and deceit. The most important thing you can do is focus on the relationship you have. Especially via emails, it’s the relationship. You don’t use hype I think the way she’s describing it to build a relationship. You build a relationship first and all this other stuff is fine. It’s going to work to your advantage. If you don’t have a relationship, all this stuff is going to come off as obnoxious. Obviously Mel here doesn’t like it because she doesn’t have a relationship with the people who are selling her. 97 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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So that’s my answer to that. I understand it, and usually people who ask that question, Jonathan, are people who fall for a lot of hype and they’re sick of doing it. It’s almost like the girl who constantly complains about being with assholes all the time, but only goes out with more assholes. When she gets a nice guy he bores her. I’ve done an email about this. When someone offers you candy from the back of the windowless van, you don’t jump in, and yet that’s what people do. They go after the candy. I don’t know Mel and I’m not trying to pick on her or anything. I’m just saying that usually people who have this kind of attitude have been burned themselves. It’s like a hot air balloon. They have to get it out by taking it out on those of us who don’t do the very things that she’s wondering about here. I would just say focus on building a relationship and that’s more important than all this other stuff. So that’s that. I thought it would be kind of fun to answer that question, Jonathan. A little variety. Add a little flavor to the show, a little spice, a little pinch of elBenbo to the show. We’re going to do 7 more Email Players Rules. I don’t know what all the episodes were, Jonathan, that have the other Email Players Rules. You probably don’t have those handy either. PRODUCER JONATHAN: No. Use the search bar on the site. Email Players Rules should bring them up. BEN SETTLE: That’s why we have it there. It’s for people to do what they can for themselves and not rely on others to do for them. We’re very anti-welfare on the Ben Settle Show and we’re very anti-handouts. We want you to do stuff on your own. We want you to think for yourself and we want you to do for yourself, and we will simply give you the tools. We want you to build a house on your own and we will simply furnish you with the blueprint on how to do it. It’s up to you to get the raw materials and to follow instructions. We can’t do that for you. What else do they want from me, Jonathan? This is what we’re trying to do for people. What else am I supposed to do? I’m not charging $30,000 for a mastermind right now. I’m not going to give you all this stuff. I’m not going to do it for you. You need to do it yourself and then you’ll be fine. One more thing, Jonathan. I have to do this because I don’t like it when people don’t do what I’m about to do. The idea for Email Players Rules is not original. I got the idea from a show called the Beige Philip Show, which is a show for guys who have trouble with 98 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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women. The whole mantra of that show is “get your balls back.” It’s by a guy named Dante Nero, who’s a comedian and ex-pimp and some other stuff. I guess he was a #1 world-famous exotic dancer for five years. I mean he’s been around the block. He’s been around a lot of things and seen a lot of things, and now he’s doing that. He gives relationship advice. I don’t listen to it as much as I used to because a lot of it’s just kind of repetitive to me at this point, but he had this thing called the Beige Philip Rules and it was maxims by which they teach people to do things. I thought, “I want to have Email Players Rules.” It’s maxims and philosophies and principles by which I do business and live life. Some of these things I’ve figured out on my own, some things I’ve learned from others, and some things I had to learn through the School of Hard Knocks, or maybe I just got lucky and stumbled on them. These are things that I find work in my life and in my business, and I think they will for yours too, if you but open your mind and allow elBenbo in, just for a little bit. Don’t let him stay too long, but just a little bit to absorb these principles and you will see what I’m talking about. Email Players Rule #64: •

Look out for #1, but don’t step in #2.

Jonathan, I’ll give you $100 if you tell me where I got that from. I bet you don’t know, do you? PRODUCER JONATHAN: No, I don’t. BEN SETTLE: I betcha not 1 in 10 people who listen to this show could tell me. I’ll tell you what. It’s from the movie Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield. At the very end he’s giving the speech to the graduates, and one of his pieces of parting advice is, “Look out for #1, but don’t step in #2.” By the way, Back to School is like the best movie for anyone in business to watch, because there’s so much truth in that movie, especially the economics class scene. It’s like everyone in business should watch that. I don’t know if you remember seeing that or not, Jonathan, but he just really nails everything that’s wrong with business education today with MBAs and all that, and contrasts that with what happens in the real world. It’s not unlike what we deal with in marketing. I highly recommend it. In fact, I wish I would have keyed that scene up for this episode and we could have played it, but oh well. Maybe some other time, Jonathan, if you ask nicely.

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As far as how to apply that, what does it mean to look out for #1 but don’t step in #2? Is there a point to telling you this? Yes, there is. There’s a point to this. The way I interpret this – and it’s not talked about in the movie necessarily, or maybe it is and I just missed it – you do want to look out for yourself, but you don’t want to do it in such a way where you’re actually hurting other people. For example, you want to build a business and you want to make as much money as you can, and you should, but don’t go screwing people over in the process. Don’t cut corners and sell crap or treat a good customer how they should not be treated, unprovoked. By the way, Jonathan, I’ve been getting more and more emails from people. I keep asking them to leave iTunes reviews but they never do. I don’t know if they were just scared or what, but I’d say once or twice a month somebody will say, “Ben, I really appreciate what you said about….” and it’s some dating advice I gave on the show. “I used it to get rid of a toxic girlfriend.” I get little testimonials like that, and I always reply with, “Can you give us a review on iTunes?” because that would be kind of nice to know. Let’s say that there’s one of these guys that I’ve taught, that I’ve taken under my wing and showed them how to be successful with the opposite sex and not be treated like a schlub, like they’ve been treated their whole life, and let’s say they take that new-found power and they look out for themselves. They’re no longer letting themselves get walked on. They’re not putting up with any crap. They’re not going to fall for some stupid emotional crying and all this stuff that girls do to test guys – girls playing hot and cold games on them, which they do. They all do it. It’s like an American woman 101 thing now. They do the hot/cold thing. They act like they’re interested and then they’re not for two weeks. They’re trying to test the guy. They’re really trying to test him for neediness. I can’t really blame them actually, with all the needy guys out there, so it’s nothing against girls with that. They’re just doing it as a survival mechanism. So let’s say this guy takes his new-found power and he starts using it against them. He starts playing them and really breaking some hearts of people who don’t even deserve it. He’s looking out for himself, yeah, but he’s also stepping in #2. He’s actually hurting himself long-run. He’s hurting other people and it’s not going to be pretty for him eventually. Eventually that’s going to catch up to him. This applies to business, it applies to your personal relationships, it applies to everything. It could be applied to how you treat your family and your friends 100 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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and stuff. Yes, look out for yourself, but don’t be dicks to everybody else. Enough said with that one. Email Players Rule #65: •

Never JV with anyone who doesn't want to make money as badly as you do.

and this one I learned very early on. In fact, Michael Senoff told me this when I first started working with him. I told you a few episodes ago about how the genesis for my new Copy Slacker product came to fruition, and this was part of it. He’s like, “Ben, first of all, we’re going to work together and we’re going to sign an agreement. You know why we’re going to sign an agreement?” and I said, “Why are we going to sign an agreement?” He said, “Ben, I’ll tell you why we’re going to sign an agreement.” I said, “Okay, tell me why we’re going to sign an agreement.” He said, “We’re going to sign an agreement because we don’t know how this is going to sell, but let’s say it’s going to make us a lot of money. People get really weird when big money comes into play, like people change.” Any copywriter who’s ever taken royalties as payment knows exactly what I’m talking about. The client is all over you at first when you’re writing the ads and stuff, but four or five months into paying you the royalty checks and you haven’t had to write a single word they start wondering, “Hmm, why am I paying this person?” because money makes people do stupid things. That’s not really part of this rule, but I just thought I’d throw that in there. The other piece of advice and wisdom he gave to me that day, Jonathan, that I’m now imparting upon you and the Ben Settle Show-hood is never do a joint venture with someone who doesn’t want to make money as badly as you do, or more badly than you. I’m kicking myself because as my business partner and loyal listener to this show, Marty McDonald, will tell you, we made this mistake in our Golfing Fanatics business. It’s taken us almost two years to get what should have been off the ground in like two months because we tried to team up with golf pros so that we could use their credibility and sell their products, but these guys were more interested in their stupid egos and their image and all this inconsequential stuff. It was all this dumb stuff that means nothing to anybody, little tiny things. They’re more worried about that than actually making money. We’re trying to get this thing launched but we’re waiting on them, and it’s taken a long time. 101 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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We finally said, “Screw all these people. We don’t even need these pros anymore. They’ll come to us later. We’re going to focus on doing what we’re supposed to be doing, which is getting our members free golf stuff,” which is basically what Golfing Fanatics is. It’s at GolfingFanaticsClub.com if you want to know what it is. That’s a year that we’ll never get back in our lives because of that. That’s a year of profits that we’ll never make, because we joint ventured with people who did not want to make money as badly as we did, and I have many more stories like that. That’s just one of money, but that gives you the idea. Just trust me on this. Do not enter into a joint venture agreement with anybody who does not want to make money as badly as you. Do not work for a client who’s paying you royalties if they don’t want to make money as badly as you do, because they’ll never run your stuff. It will just sit there and you would have spent all that time. You can sit there and fight me on this or you can take my advice and believe me. If you’re going to work with someone like that, get paid up front something, because I’m telling you if they’re not motivated to make money as much as you, you’re not going to make anything. That may be one of the most important Email Players Rules ever, Jonathan, that one alone. I know that’s happened to you before, right? PRODUCER JONATHAN: I was sitting here racking my brain saying, “That’s what went wrong there.” BEN SETTLE: Really, it’s true. Email Players Rules #66: •

Do as I say, not as I do.

This is something I’ve been told by my dad my entire life, Jonathan, and now I get to finally tell it to somebody else. The context with this does not mean be a hypocrite. That’s not what I’m saying here, but for example you have people who will try to reverse engineer what I do. They try to reverse engineer my email methodology. They never can do it right. They maybe can get it 20% and then they sit there and complain that it doesn’t work. That’s like the old story. For example, I don’t segment my list at BenSettle.com. We’re going to segment the BenSettleShow.com list eventually. I know we will because it would be insane for us not to, but with the vast variety of products we have at the 102 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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BenSettleShow.com/store website – in case you didn’t notice my plug there, we have a lot of cool stuff there, but eventually we’ll segment all that, as we should. But at my BenSettle.com site I sell basically one product, Email Players. That’s pretty much all I sell, or maybe something as an affiliate now and then, so I don’t really need to segment it. What am I going to segment them by? They’re in email, and even if they’re in Email Players I’m still going to send them a daily email because that daily email tells them what they can expect for the next month. It lets them see in action every day the principles that I’m teaching them in the newsletter. It makes no sense to segment them off completely. People go, “Ben, I don’t understand. You don’t segment your list. You’re supposed to segment.” Yeah, you should segment your list but I don’t, not for this. Do as I say, not as I do. Just trust me, at least when it comes to stuff like that. Don’t try to reverse engineer me, is the whole point. Just do as I say. Don’t try to reverse engineer me, and you’ll be much better off. Email Players Rule #67: •

Don’t give up your power.

I never really thought about this until last September. I spoke at Ryan Lee’s Freedom Fest event in Connecticut, and I had lunch with the great Brian Kurtz. I’d been a big fan of his for years, and it turns out he’s a fan of me, I guess, so I said, “Hey, why don’t we have lunch?” when we were at the thing. He said, “Ben, I’d like to have lunch with you.” He’s like the opposite of me. He’s the nicest and classiest guy in the world, so we had lunch and we were talking about his mastermind, which he wants me to be in. For various reasons I couldn’t do it. Hopefully he’ll let me in later this year, but I just couldn’t do it when he wanted me to last time, and I couldn’t get in on this last one in January for other reasons, but hopefully I will later this year. He was talking about his mastermind and he goes, “Everyone brings something different to the table. Everybody brings a unique strength to the table.” He goes, “A lot of people are taught to be meek and hang back and don’t try to brag and all that, but if you’re not talking about the thing that you’re good at, if you’re not speaking up about your thing…” – like if I go to a mastermind and the topic of email comes up and I just sit there and try to wait for other people to talk, and maybe somebody asks me a question, I’m giving up my power and people are going to wonder, “Why is he even here? What does he contribute to this group?” and rightfully so. 103 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Don’t give up your power in business. If you have something to bring to the table, regardless of the situation – it doesn’t have to be a mastermind, but anything – don’t give up your power. That’s why you should be writing a daily email every day demonstrating what you know about whatever it is you teach. Don’t give up your power. By not telling your list about how you can help them, you are giving up your power. You’re not doing yourself any good obviously, and you’re not doing them any good, because they’re not going to benefit from what you have to offer. To me that was a very important lesson. I don’t know if he teaches “don’t give up your power” the exact way I do. That’s just what I got out of his wisdom, Jonathan, at the table as we were eating. I tried to do as little talking as possible, which meant I was giving up my power, because when you get around a guy like Brian Kurtz who’s been doing this almost as long as I’ve been alive, what am I going to say that’s going to bring any benefit to this guy? That’s my thought but he’s the first to say, “No Ben, I don’t know shit about email. I come to you for advice on this stuff.” I went, “Oh, well, when you put it that way…” “Don’t give up your power,” he says. I think what started that conversation was something like, “When I go to a mastermind I want to be the dumbest person in the room.” He goes, “That’s good, but at the same time don’t give up your power. You want to be the smartest at what you do. You’re not going to be the smartest overall, but you should be the best at what you do specifically.” That way everybody plays on each other’s strengths and everybody gets smarter. Enough said on that. Email Players Rule #68 – and by the way, you don’t have this written down because I changed it on you. I’m throwing you for a loop on this one. •

If you show someone that you’ll righteously leave, they’ll righteously stay.

This is from the late great comedian Patrice O’Neal, and he was talking about girl problems. If you have a girlfriend or even a wife like you, Jonathan, even a happily married man like you, as long as she knows that if you’re put in a situation where you have to give up your integrity and you’re going to have to go against what you know is right and all that just to appease her, and if she knows that you’re not going to put up with that and you’ll righteously leave, she’s not going anywhere. She’ll never leave you. Now, that doesn’t mean she won’t leave you for other reasons that you deserve. That’s not what I’m saying. And this goes to business too, like a client. If a client knows that you’re willing to leave because they’re going to give you some bull crap and because they’re going to be impossible and intolerable and 104 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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unbearable for whatever reason, or they’re going to try to screw you over later, they’ll stay and they’ll behave themselves. But if they know they have you by the balls and that you need them more than they need you, then they’ll leave you. They’ll find someone else, and so will a girl. If you’re a guy and you’re relying on your girl and you need her and she’s your everything – the sun and the moon and the stars and all that – and you spend all day dreaming about her and thinking about what you’ll do for her, they like that to a degree but the reality is you’re being a chump. She doesn’t want a door mat. She wants someone that’s not going to put up with her crap, when needed, and to be that rock, and so do clients. Clients want to know that you’re going to fight for what you know is right. If you know that you’re right about something through experience – not because of ego, but experience – and they insist on doing something dumb that you know will never work and has never worked for anyone else, and you say, “Hey, you know what, if that’s how you guys want to play things, fine, but I’m not going to be any part of this. I’m not going to put my name on this. This is not my ad. This is your ad, so if it bombs it’s up to you. I’m leaving right now. You guys just keep the second half and I’m going to move on. You guys go find yourself a chump copywriter if you want, but I want nothing to do with it” – If you were to do that, or at least have that attitude, trust me, they’re not going anywhere, not if they’re smart. That confidence is going to inspire them to not only keep you around, but take your advice. If they know you’ll righteously leave, they’ll righteously stay. Email Players Rule #69: •

You can lead a guru fanboy to knowledge, but you can’t make him think.

This was a title I thought up many years ago, Jonathan. I had written this article that was posted on a forum on this MLM site because I used to sell to that market, so the site liked having me around as a special trainer and all that. I told this story about how I had this ad that I really needed to make money, and I was about to run it and I was scared or whatever, and this copywriter that I knew offered to look at it. At the time I needed all the help I could get. I didn’t know anything and he was a pretty good copywriter. He looked at and he made one little change. He told me about one little change to make, and it turned out it was a market thing. Had I not made that change, that ad would have bombed. In fact, this was the same ad that inspired me to write differently for the Copy Slacker product that I keep shamelessly plugging over the last few weeks. 105 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Had I not made this change it would have bombed. In fact, looking back I know it would have bombed, but it was one little change. It was like two sentences, that’s how weird it is. I made the change and it was great and it made a lot of money. People are like, “What was the change?” It doesn’t really matter because that change has no context for anybody listening to this. If I told you what it was, it wouldn’t matter. You can’t do it to any of your ads and it doesn’t matter because it’s a market-specific thing. So I told that story. I said the magic really wasn’t in what he told me to do, it was in looking for someone else to give me guidance on this ad, finding someone to critique the ad for me. That was a big deal. This guy was like, “Oh man, that was a waste. That’s stupid, I already knew that.” This is a guru fanboy who thinks he knows everything. You can give him knowledge, like I did, but you cannot make him think past that, and so it is. This is kind of related to that whole Biblical term, “Don’t cast your pearls before swine.” Don’t cast your nuggets of gold before swineful guru fanboys. It’s an important lesson to know. You can’t change these people. They don’t want to be changed. They want to think they know everything. They want to just be in that endless loop where they think they know everything. They don’t actually do anything, and they’re going to try to make fun of you when you do something. Just forget them. Don’t let them rattle you. Email Players Rule #70: •

Everyone wants honesty until you tell them the truth.

I have experienced this so many times in my life I can’t even tell you. Most recently, I know someone who’s putting an event on and it will be a good marketing event, no doubt about it. This person asked my advice and I told this person something they didn’t want to hear and I got accused of being negative. Jonathan, me! Can you imagine that, me being accused of being negative? What the hell? It wasn’t negative, it was just a fact that this person doesn’t really know everything they think they know about this. I guess I was playing the role of a coach, giving the truth. They wanted honesty, but they didn’t really want the truth. That is human nature and you can’t change it. This person I’m talking about is no different than anyone else. I’m probably even the same way, Jonathan. Everybody wants you to be honest, but if you’re going to tell them something they don’t want to hear and it’s the truth, they don’t want to hear that. 106 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Suddenly they’ll get defensive and all that. It’s what people do. Keep that in mind when you’re selling to people, whether in person or in an ad or an email or anything else. There you go, Jonathan. That’s another 7 Email Players Rules. Anything you want to elaborate on or add to? Because I know you’re just chomping at the bit to. PRODUCER JONATHAN: No. Good stuff. Me argue? Never. I enjoyed it. Go to our site and just hit the search bar for Email Players Rules. I tested it out and they all came out, so if you want to get the other 63 rules you can do it that way. That’s a wrap for Ben Settle’s Antipreneur Show #106. Thank you guys for tuning in.

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Chapter 11

Email Players Rules 71-77 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. It’s time, Producer Jonathan, for another exciting action-packed episode of another 7 Email Players Rules. I don’t know if you realize this, but by the end of this show we’ll be at 77 Email Players Rules. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Really? Nice! BEN SETTLE: I’ve got at least the next 10 or 14 already mapped out. I like to disperse these episodes around. I don’t want to put them all together. They’re kind of like fan favorites for some people, so I’ve been told at least. Every time I have to say this, because I do believe in giving credit where credit’s due. I shamelessly lifted this idea from the Beige Philip Show from the comedian Dante Nero. That show is basically for guys who need to “get their balls back.” That’s his mantra, “How to get your balls back.” It’s for guys who need help dealing with women and all that stuff. He had this thing called Beige Philip Rules, which is like these maxims that he’s set up and set out, and I thought, “Man, that is a great idea. I’m going to do that for my podcast and called it Email Players Rules.” These are rules that I do business by, that I live life by. They have made my life and my profits much better, so these aren’t theory or anything. This is all stuff I actually do and talk about and practice. This is not just stuff I’m talking about because I want to say stuff. It’s stuff I’ve lived. It’s field research and it works. I’ve not had anyone tell me that any of these Email Players Rules that they’ve applied to their life has not been worth it. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t some unhappy people out there, but as far as I know everybody is using them and profiting from them, and that’s what I hope to continue today. Email Players Rule #71: •

There’s more money in keeping secrets than teaching them.

A lot of people who sell information don’t realize this, but even with email I will never teach everything I know about email, not to my Email Players, not to anybody. There will always be something I’m going to hold back. It’s not 108 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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because I don’t want to help people. Believe me, the stuff I teach is still very, very valuable as far as I’m concerned. It’s made me a lot of money at least. But there’s always going to be some things that I’m going to hold back because, again, they’re things that I apply to other businesses that I don’t want other people doing in case they choose to compete with me, unless I retire someday. Then maybe I’ll come out with some other stuff. One of my favorite examples of this is actually a parable. It’s something the great email king, Matt Furey, taught once. He talked about the tiger and the cat. He was talking about people who were stealing his products, illegally downloading his products, then trying to reteach them and sell them on eBay and all that stuff, and he was talking about this story. He goes, “This is the story of the tiger and the cat. The tiger and the cat were playing in the forest and the tiger was learning from the cat. The cat was basically Yoda and the tiger was like Darth Vader, and he taught the cat a lot of stuff. He taught the cat how to hunt and taught the cat how to feed himself and all this stuff. He basically taught the cat how to survive. “One day the tiger got full of pride and decided he was going to just kill that cat because he wanted to be king of the jungle, so he went and tried to kill the cat, but the cat did not teach the tiger how to climb. So the cat just climbed up a tree and laughed at the tiger. He had taught the tiger everything it knew, but he did not teach the tiger everything he knew.” Again, there’s more money in keeping secrets. I’m not saying don’t teach, if that’s what you want to do. If you’re selling information you’re going to be teaching, there’s no question about it, but you don’t have to give away everything. You should always hold some things back, if for no other reason than later on in life you may want to have some new stuff to teach. That’s one little story that had a profound impact on me, and now I’m passing it on to you. Email Players Rule #72: •

Don’t walk on eggshells, smash them.

This is something I tell a certain person. I don’t want to name names, but let’s just say there’s somebody that I sometimes deal with who gets very angry sometimes for no reason. The effect is if I don’t walk on eggshells I’m going to have to deal with bull crap. I told this person a long time ago after two times when I said, “This is ridiculous. I’m not walking on eggshells for anybody. The next time that you expect me to walk on eggshells, I’m going to smash the shells.” 109 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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It goes back to that one Email Players Rule. If you’re going to be cast as a villain, you might as well play the part well. If somebody in your life wants you to walk on eggshells around them or whatever it is – some people are very sensitive, some people are very testy, some people are very volatile – you can’t live your life walking on eggshells around people. You’re not doing yourself any favors and you’re not doing them any favors. If someone asks you to walk on eggshells, just don’t even bother. Just smash the eggshells and let the chips fall wherever they may. This applies to a lot of things. I don’t know if I have a specific business example for this, Jonathan. I’m sure there is. Maybe you’re dealing with a client who wants you to kiss their butt all the time. Here’s something. Let’s say you’re dealing with a client and they hired you to help improve something. Let’s say you’re a coach and you were hired to improve somebody’s life in some way. You can’t sit there and dance around them and tell them everything is okay when you know their whole life went to hell in a handbasket. Screw that. It’s not about stroking egos or making people feel good. It’s about helping them, and you can’t help them if you’re dancing on eggshells around them. So something to think about. By the way, it may be obvious I did not invent all these Email Players Rules. Some of these things I’ve heard from others in life. Some of these I invented, some I’ve just heard, some I’ve just read somewhere. This is an old one that I obviously did not invent Email Players Rule #73: •

Dig your well before you’re thirsty.

Let’s face it, Jonathan. This is just good solid advice for anyone. I have an uncle who always has these nice cars, like Mercedes and stuff. They’re not brand new, though. He likes to buy them used. He’ll buy a really expensive car that was like $30,000, but he won’t pay that. He’ll wait till it’s like 10 years old and he’ll buy it when it’s only like $5,000, then he’ll just spend $2,000 or $3,000 to have all new parts put in. The reason I bring this up is because I remember many years ago I had gotten in all this debt buying a lemon car, and he goes, “You know, the best time to have bought a car, Ben, wasn’t when you needed a car,” because in my other car the engine exploded or something. It was really bad. I had to get a car like in a day. I didn’t have a lot of chance, so I went and bought a new car like an idiot, completely out of fear and emotion, which is probably a whole other Email Players Rule in itself. 110 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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He was like, “You know, the best time to buy a car is when you don’t need one. That’s the time to start looking for a car, is a couple years before you’re even going to need a new one.” Dig the well before you’re thirsty. Take our podcast store, for example. I was in a big hurry to build that because there were certain opportunities coming up that I wanted to take advantage of. Had I waited until the last minute to do it we’d still be building it. It took us two or three months to build everything. I wanted that well dug well before we were going to be thirsty. This is just a good business and life principle. Dig your well before you’re thirsty. Get your stuff in order. Plan things out. If your car is already giving you problems, just start looking at new ones now. You don’t have to buy anything now, but now’s the time. It’s good to be forward-thinking like that in my humble but always accurate opinion. Email Players Rule #74: •

Fear of loss dwarfs the desire for gain.

This is something that applies to a lot of stuff. One of the stories I heard from Gary Bencivenga was like imagine you get a call in the middle of the night. It’s midnight and you’re dead tired. You don’t want to talk to anybody. It’s midnight and your neighbor calls up and says, “Hey, did you know that there’s a Midnight Madness sale going on down at the tire store, where they’re going to give you half off on your new set of tires?” Again it’s midnight and you’re like, “Who the hell cares?” Yeah, you could gain some new tires real cheap, or maybe they’re 75% off. Maybe they’re giving tires away, but you’re tired and you’re just like, “Ah, screw this. Why are you calling me? What are you doing?” I would be much less nice than that, actually. There would be some profanity going through the phone if that was me. Now imagine that same neighbor calls you up at midnight and says, “You know what? There’s some guy down there taking the tires off your car.” You’re going to jump out of bed and you’re going to go try to deal with that situation. You’re not going to just put it off. Why? Because those are your tires. The fear of loss is more powerful than the desire for gain. That’s just how it is. This is a really important thing in selling, too. A lot of times people try to pitch benefits and all this kind of stuff, but really if you can show people how they’re going to lose something that they have that they don’t want to lose if they don’t buy your product, you’re way ahead of the game right out of the gate, no doubt about it. 111 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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This would go for your health, too. Is it easier to sell someone a product that’s going to save their life before they even think they’re sick? Or if someone is sick and they’re dying and you have something that can save their life, they’re far more likely to care about it because they’re in the pain now. Gary Halbert wrote this ad once. It was for a jewelry place. I think you can read about this Dan Kennedy’s Ultimate Marketing Plan. It’s this real short ad. I can’t remember the exact offer but it was like, “We have your free diamond gift here waiting for you until 5:00. Then your gift goes to somebody else.” They told you that’s your gift so you’re going to go get it. If they just said, “We have this gift waiting here for you. Come pick it up whenever the hell you want,” it’s less urgent. But if you say, “We’re going to give your gift to someone else,” you’re going to go there and go get it. That’s just the way it goes. Fear of loss dwarfs the desire for gain. That’s very important. Email Players Rule #75: •

You get what you don’t pay for.

Here’s what I mean by that, Jonathan. I’m going to use the free vs paid advertising example. If you just want everything free – not just advertising, but if all you do is go after free stuff – you’re probably going to end up wasting a lot of time and money. Free is like the new expensive. If all you do is study stuff you got for free, you might get some benefit out of it, but ultimately you’re going to end up paying more money. If you buy stuff that’s helpful for you, that’s less expensive if you use it. It’s like you’re making money. I don’t know if I’m adequately explaining this, now that I think about it. How can I put this, Jonathan, so it gets through everybody’s thick skulls? How can I put this so it makes sense to me? PRODUCER JONATHAN: So you knuckleheads understand. BEN SETTLE: So you knuckleheads understand my knuckleheadedness. You get what you don’t pay for. Here’s one example. Take The Boron Letters. The Boron Letters is something Gary Halbert wrote when he was in prison. He was in the Boron federal prison. That’s why they call it The Boron Letters. It’s 24 or 25 letters written to his son, Bond Halbert, and it was everything he knew about how to start and run a direct response business – not everything, but certainly the basics, a great book. 112 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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I bought that book when I had no money. I don’t even know how I afforded it, actually. I forget how I afforded that book. I was so broke at the time. It was 2003, and I’ve gone through that book at least 40 or 50 times. I’ve copied it out in my own handwriting. I’ve benefited immensely from that. I can trace all kinds of sales to that book – tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to that book. Had it been free or had it been handed to me free I never would have taken it that seriously. It would have done nothing for me. It would have cost me money because then I would have gone and paid more money to try to learn the stuff I didn’t learn from The Boron Letters if it was handed to me free. That’s just the way it goes. You get what you don’t pay for. If you don’t pay for something, you’re probably not going to get much benefit and you’re going to get what you deserve, so don’t be afraid to pay for stuff. Chances are the free things you have might be helpful. Certainly the stuff I give away for free is helpful, but the reality is you should be paying if you want to take things to the next level, which is related to the next rule. Email Players Rule #76: •

Buy how-to info, don’t pay for it.

Now we’re getting into some freaky semantics here. You could almost say that this is the same as the last Email Players Rule, but I’m going to give a different spin so that’s why it’s different. Like I said, it leads into this one but it’s not the exact same. Let’s take the Gary Bencivenga seminar, a $5,000 seminar. For some weird sick reason, don’t ask me why – and honestly I used to think that this was bragging rights, but really I think it’s just the sign of a sick mind in a way – I’ve actually written down on a note card, and my ex-copywriting apprentice recently saw it and asked, “What’s this?” – I said, “Every time I go through his course I put a check mark on there and count out how many times I’ve gone through it.” I’ve gone through it like 27 times so far in eight years. I can trace a lot of money to that course. Between Gary Bencivenga and Matt Furey – those two people, without them in this world I don’t know where I’d be right now. I’d probably be pumping gas over here in Oregon. I don’t know if you realize it, but you can’t pump your own gas in Oregon. It’s still like back in the old days, so that’s what I’d be doing. I’d be down at the Chevron right now pumping gas. 113 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Those two people’s stuff changed everything because I paid a lot of money for it. If I buy something and I use it, I’m buying it. I’m not paying for it, I’m buying it because it’s made me more money than what I paid. We’re talking a factor of like 100 times easily on both those things in just pure sales. Easily I’ve made 100 times, if not more, probably a lot more than whatever I paid for those things. Let’s say I bought the $5,000 Gary Bencivenga course and the $1,000 Matt Furey thing and I don’t use it. That means I paid for it because I never used it and I never profited from it and I never made any money from it. There’s a difference between buying something and paying for it. You don’t want to pay for stuff. You want to buy stuff. Buying is an investment. Paying is something that opportunity-minded people do. This, Jonathan, is one of the reasons I can’t stand opportunity buyers and why I like investment-minded people. I like people who look at my products as an investment. It’s something that they’re going to buy, they’re going to consume, and they’re going to apply to their lives, and they’re going to make their money back in spades – if not right away, they will eventually, like any good investment. On the other hand, the opportunity-minded people, who Michelle Spiva would say are addicted to dopamine – the dopamine drip in their brain when they buy new stuff – they don’t use anything. I always know who these people are. These are the people who join Email Players and they give it less than a month or two before they quit. “Well, I love this information,” but they’re not using it. They’ve wasted their money. Yeah, I’m happy to get paid on it, but you might as well just send me a check for $97. It would have been probably easier. It would have been nicer for me, I guess, but I’m just saying you can pay me if you want, but it’s a complete waste of their time. Some of these people will come back and they’ll try to buy something else from me from my shopping cart and they’re like, “Why can’t I buy this other product?” because I’ll blacklist them when they do that. I literally blacklist their email address, their IP address, and their credit card number. I’m not trying to be a jerk or it’s not because I don’t want to make more money. I would make a lot more sales if I didn’t do this, but I don’t want them in my life. I don’t want them as customers. They should go somewhere else. They should go buy from Dan Meredith. I hope he’s listening. No, I’m just joking, Dan, just relax. He gets very sensitive sometimes. I don’t want to get him all upset. I’m going to hear about this on his podcast now. 114 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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The point is they should go buy from someone on Clickbank or whatever, where they have the easy refund, or the Warrior Forum or Wizards and Warriors Forum, whatever it is. Go there because you’re going to save a lot more money than buying from me. You’re paying for my stuff, you’re not buying it, and that’s the difference. I hope this makes sense. Am I doing this clearly? Does that make sense – the difference between buying and paying? PRODUCER JONATHAN: I get it now that you explained it. The investor mindset makes a big difference. That’s what you’re looking for, an ROI. If you don’t get an ROI then you’re paying for it and it just means you have an outflow and no income. BEN SETTLE: That’s exactly it. That’s the way I look at it. It’s an Email Players Rule. It’s one reason I don’t like it when people send me their products for free. Let’s say somebody sends me a product, like a friend or something. I always tell them, “Don’t send it free. I’ll buy it from you, because if you send it to me I’m never going to go through it. I just know I won’t.” I ignore it because I’m paying for it and not buying it, in a way. I guess this goes back to our other rule. I’m confusing the hell out of myself here. I know I’m confusing some other people. Email Players Rule #77: •

Common men go nowhere.

You know, Jonathan, I wrote this one off the cuff. I just watched last night one of my favorite movies called Miracle. It’s about the 1980 American Olympic hockey team. They were the underdog of all underdogs. They were a young team, just a bunch of kids basically, and they weren’t expected to do very well at all. The Soviets at the time had won like the last 20 gold medals and they had a team that knew each other and they worked well together. They were like invincible, but somehow this ragtag team, and Kurt Russell plays the coach character – the coach brought them together and this is a real-life story. They won the gold medal that year and it was so crazy that they won that it was dubbed “A miracle on ice.” One of my favorite scenes is these guys are like 20 and 21, and during one of their exhibition hockey matches a bunch of the guys on the bench are looking at the girls and talking about the girls, and the coach doesn’t like that. He makes them all stay after the game and he makes them do these sprints on the 115 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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ice over and over until they’re puking. The building is turning the lights off on them and all this, and he just keeps making them go and go. The doctor for the team is getting worried that he’s going to hurt these kids. Anyway, one of the things he says during that is, “This cannot be a team of common men, because common men go nowhere. You have to be uncommon,” and that is one of the best most inspirational quotes I’ve ever heard because it’s true. If you want to really stick out in business or whatever you’re doing – it doesn’t have to be business, but anything you want to do – you have to be uncommon. You can’t be doing what everyone else is doing. You’ve got to stick out. You can’t just copy me or someone else and say, “Oh, I’m just going to do what they’re doing.” You’ve got to make your own mark on things, your own mark in the world, your own mark in your business, that unique spark of individuality that’s uniquely you. You have to be uncommon. You have to nurture that thing and grow it and run with it. I’m telling you, you do that and you start having that mindset that you’re not going to be common. You’re not going to write an email once a week just because Guru X said that’s what you should do. You’re going to write one every day, or you’re going to do what Michael Cheney frickin’ does and writes four emails a day. He literally writes three or four emails a day. He’s like, “I made so much money writing one email a day, I decided to up it to four emails a day.” That’s uncommon. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s a perfect example. You want to be uncommon. You don’t want to be common. Common men and common women go nowhere. That’s all we’ve got for this one, Jonathan. I’m not sure what the next show will be about, but I’m sure it will be hair-raising for somebody, whether me or someone else, and that’s as it should be. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Awesome, so that’s a wrap for Ben Settle’s Antipreneur show, Episode #110, where we gave you 7 more Email Players Rules. We will see you guys on the next one.

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Chapter 12

Email Players Rules 78-84 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. We’re going to do another seven Email Players Rules episode. I don’t remember what all the episodes were, Jonathan, but we’ve done 77 of them so far. I’m doing seven each time so that means we’ve done 11 shows. Unless my math is incorrect, which is very possible, we’ve done 11 of these so far. We’re almost to 100, actually, and I have more than enough material for 100 so we’re going to blow right past that. Today we’re going to go over seven. Email Players Rules is an idea I shamelessly ripped off – borrowed is, I think, more accurate – from the comedian Dante Nero, who has a podcast called the Beige Phillip Show. His whole mantra is for guys in the dating world and all that, guys dealing with girls, “how to get your balls back.” That’s his thing. “I’m going to show you how to get your balls back.” It’s a very crude show, definitely rated R, definitely not for people under 18. He does these things called the Beige Phillip Rules and I thought, “Man, that’s a good idea.” It’s all these maxims and ideas and philosophies that he uses in his world, and I thought I want to do the same thing with Email Players. These are maxims, rules, and strategies that I do in my personal life and my business life. Some of them are things I’ve made up. Some of them are things I’ve gotten from other people. I’m not going to pretend this is all original. It’s not, but these are things that have made my life easier and more profitable, and the whole goal here is to make your life easier and more profitable, and that is what the Email Players Rules are, for those who are not long-term listeners. Email Players Rule #78: •

Always assume the flake.

I do some work in the dating niche and this is just something that guys who understand the game do. We just assume the flake. Back when I was dating all these different chicks, the flamboyant playboy that you think I was, Jonathan – I really wasn’t, but when I was in the dating world after I got divorced, I got flaked on a few times and I just started to assume the flake. That meant that mentally I started not caring. 117 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Let’s say I made a date with a girl. I’d just assume they’re going to flake. It has nothing to do with me. It’s just that’s what girls in the 21st century do, and if you don’t believe me, I have seen plenty of other girls complain about girls doing this and making them all look bad. In fact, I’ve seen our very own announcer chick, Misty, complain about girls doing stuff like that recently in the Facebook groups and stuff whenever the topic comes up, because she can’t fathom why girls would act that way, but they do, unfortunately, Jonathan. Not Rachel, of course. PRODUCER JONATHAN: No. BEN SETTLE: We know she doesn’t do that stuff, nor does my ex-copywriting apprentice, because if she did she wouldn’t just be the ex-copywriting apprentice, she’d be the ex. Anyway, always assume the flake. To apply this to business, because this is ultimately what we’re talking about here, when she was putting on her Biz N Brews event, which was in March, she unfortunately did not take the advice I tried to give her up front. I remember she got really mad at me. Every time I tried to give her some advice – “Aw, that’s negative! I don’t want to hear that.” Unfortunately, she learned the hard way that I’m always right about these things and that there were some precautions she should have taken and some advice she should have taken. One piece of advice I gave her was to vet her speakers very, very well. Don’t just pick any speakers. She had this idea where she wanted to diversify the speakers. She didn’t want just all guys speaking. She wanted some girls speaking too, which is fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. You bring in girl entrepreneurs and all that, but the problem is – and she learned this really quick; I didn’t have to teach her this, she learned this really quick – she was amazed at how flaky and drama queen a lot of these girls she wanted to speak were. Not all. Obviously there were some good ones that came and spoke, but you’d be surprised. There were people that you and I both know, I can tell you right now, Jonathan, that we’ve dealt with. She contacted certain girl speakers and they would ask questions like, “Can I leave right after I talk?” Understand there’s nothing wrong with that if you’ve got somewhere to go or whatever, but the whole point of her event was the speakers will hang out with you after-hours. That was the whole appeal. That’s the whole point of the event. They’re like, “No, let me think about it,” and all this, being all flaky on her and stuff. 118 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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I said, “Look, ex-copywriting apprentice” – that’s what I call her… PRODUCER JONATHAN: That’s your term of endearment, eh? BEN SETTLE: She didn’t deserve a name at that point. I said, “Ex-copywriting apprentice, you need to vet these people. Whenever someone does that, just cross them off the list. Assume they’re going to flake on you,” and she agreed with it and started vetting people more. You’ve got to do this in business, too, with a client or whatever. Just assume they’re going to flake on you. You talk to a client and you’re all excited they’re going to pay you, and they haven’t paid you yet, assume the flake. Go out there and find more clients, too. Don’t rely on one client, because they’re all flaky. Unfortunately, people are just flaky these days, Jonathan. People like you and I, who are not flaky, we’re like a rarity. Always assume the flake. If you do that, first of all you won’t be disappointed in people, because it’s easy to get disappointed in people when they flake on you, and second of all you’ll always just be doing something else. That’s why in the dating world, for guys who are out there trying to date girls and stuff, just assume she’s going to flake. Don’t ask her out on a date. Ask her to meet you somewhere you’re already going to be, regardless if she shows up or not. She’s there to join your world. You’re not there to beg to be in her world. Assume she’s going to flake on you. I used to do that. I’m going to say, “Look, I’m going to be at XYZ Winery. If you want to meet me there, I’ll be there. If not, then whatever,” and I never got flaked on because they know I didn’t care and I didn’t need them. As soon as they smell something like, “This guy’s needy or whatever,” real or imagined, they will flake on you. It’s the same with business people, too. Nobody wants to deal with a needy person. Hell, I’d probably flake on someone who’s needy with me. “Egh, I don’t want to deal with this person,” so always assume the flake, even if you’re dealing with me and Jonathan. That’s Email Players Rule #78. Email Players Rule #79 – I tried to make this sound catchy, what I’m about to say here, Jonathan. I don’t know if it’s going to work or not because I’ve never read it out loud until now. •

Do everything to make sure things go well, but prepare for everything to go to hell.

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This goes back to when I was wisely lecturing my ex-copywriting apprentice about her Biz N Brewz thing. I’m like, “Just expect everything to not work. Expect speakers to flake out on you. Expect things to happen,” and believe me, that did happen. There were people she was counting on who just couldn’t come through, and it wasn’t even necessarily because they were flaking. For one person, I think her dad was dying or something, and she just couldn’t make it. You’ve got to not only assume the flake, but just expect things to all not work out, and have a back-up and contingency plan. This is for business or anything, I mean anything. Like your product, whatever you use to sell with, prepare for it to be regulated and banned by the government. Jonathan, I am prepared for email to be banned by the government. I will have a back-up plan if I have to. PRODUCER JONATHAN: What is it? BEN SETTLE: Well, if I said that I’d have a bunch of copycats out there trying to steal my idea. I’m going to keep that to myself, but if they ever ban email, which I don’t think they will, just know you can rest easy, Jonathan, knowing I’ll be well taken care of. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I always worried about it, but I think I know what it is. BEN SETTLE: Okay. Hold on, I’ve got to take a drink of water real quick. As you know, I’m still fighting this cold that all these copywriters at AWAI gave me when I spoke in Austin. PRODUCER JONATHAN: The copywriting bug. BEN SETTLE: There was definitely something going on around there. Two of the speakers were so sick they just had to skip the last day. Something was going around. It just hit me later than all them for some reason, but whatever. Not that this has anything to do with the show or like anybody cares, but if you hear me having to get a drink of water, or if you hear me hacking and spitting some hack out, some phlegm, just realize this is just part of the Ben Settle Show. We’re very authentic here. PRODUCER JONATHAN: No kidding, elBenbo. BEN SETTLE: People talk about wanting to be authentic. That’s how you’re authentic, by hacking into the microphone and spitting in the garbage can next to you. That’s authentic. 120 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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PRODUCER JONATHAN: And don’t edit it out, that’s right. BEN SETTLE: Email Players Rule #80: •

You can’t live on dessert.

I never even thought about this until we talked to Brian Kurtz when we had him on the show. He was talking about how the fun part for everybody is the marketing. That’s the sexy part of marketing – the copywriting, the selling, and the marketing – but nobody really wants to spend a lot of time on product creation. I’ll tell you what – I can’t say everyone, and I don’t know about you, Jonathan, but that’s the big bugaboo for why I haven’t done deals with guys like Doberman Dan. Do you know Doberman Dan Gallapoo and I have been talking since like 2008, like 8 years, to do some kind of project together, but we both hate creating content and so we just let it go. In the prostate niche and the dating niche, which I have products in and I have an email sequence in place for all the front-end stuff that we send traffic to, but me and my partner in that, Eric McMillan, neither of us wants to screw around creating a back-end product so all we get is front-end sales. We’re not barely making anything on it. We get a great conversion on the front-end where we have plenty of customers and all that, but because we’re too dumb to create a back-end for it, or too lazy or whatever you want to say, we just haven’t done it because it’s not dessert. Dessert for him is generating traffic, and for me it’s writing emails, but neither of us wants to create the back-end products and stuff, so we’re still working on that. But he was talking about that and I came up with that analogy just on the fly. It’s kind of like eating dessert first, doing the marketing, but you can’t live on dessert. You can’t just have a business where all you do is market and you don’t have a product. You’ve got to spend time on your product. You have to eat your main course. Even if you don’t like your Brussel sprouts you’ve got to eat them. You’ve got to get your nutrients. You’ve got to create good products. You’ve got to create good content. You’ve got to spend time on it because you can’t just live on sending emails. You can send all the emails out in the world you want, but if you’ve got crap content nobody’s going to buy it, or if they do they’re going to resent you. You can’t live on dessert, Jonathan. That’s the important thing. 121 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Email Players Rule #81: •

Don’t be anti-guru; be anti-bull crap.

Over the years I’ve got this weird reputation which I think is unfounded and not fair to me. I’m going to play the victim here for a second. It’s unfair to me that I get labeled as this anti-guru, like I’m always making fun of gurus. I don’t make fun of gurus. What I make fun of is the wanna-be gurus, the g-o-o-r-o-os, not the real legitimate gurus out there who actually do good by people and all that, and they’ve actually put the time in. I don’t have a problem with them. It’s these wanna-be gooroos that just go around, they learn a couple things from someone, and then suddenly they position themselves as a guru and they’re not. That’s who I like to mock and make fun of. Don’t be anti-guru; be anti-bull crap. By that I mean don’t take all your problems out on the gurus. Even if they did sell you something you don’t like and all that, you should be anti-bull crap to the point where you’re not going to buy a crappy product in the first place because your bull crap detector is on, like a Geiger counter looking for some plutonium. This doesn’t just apply to business. This applies to your personal life. Don’t hate women, for example. Let’s talk about this, Jonathan. There are guys out there – and I see it in the dating niche – there are guys who truly are just so bitter against women because they got hurt, so they take it out on all the girls. Don’t be anti-woman. That’s just stupid. Just be anti-bull crap. Live your life in such a way that people won’t flake on you, where you’re not going to deal with low-class jackass people, and you’ll be fine. There’s no reason to take it out on a whole gender. Girls do the same thing. You’ve got these feminists out there who just hate men for whatever reason. Probably they grew up in a single-mother household where the mother hated the father and talked crap about him all the time. There was all this negative feminine energy and all that. “Your father this, your father that,” and they grew up to hate guys. And there are guys who have the same experience. They grew up with a single parent who was always bashing the other parent, whether it’s the mother bashing the father or the father bashing the mother, and they end up hating certain types of people, which is just dumb. Just be anti-bull crap. Don’t be anti anyone specific. Don’t be anti-guru. Don’t be anti-Jonathan. Don’t be anti-Ben. 122 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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PRODUCER JONATHAN: Please love me! BEN SETTLE: Somehow I rope you into these conversations. You know who does that is my dad. My dad is like the expert at this. What he’ll do is he has an opinion on something or he wants to do something, so to get a consensus he’ll say, “Ben and I both agree that yada yada yada.” I have nothing to say about anything. “Ben and I both agree that you’re being unreasonable.” He’ll say that to his wife or something. I didn’t say anything. Why are you bringing me in on this to my stepmom? I love my stepmom. So don’t be anti anyone. I’m going to bring Jonathan in on my point of view, whether he agrees with me or not, and that’s that. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I’m a hostage. Somebody send help! BEN SETTLE: Email Players Rule #82: •

Take your props where you can get them.

This definitely helped us with the Copy Slacker launch that we did for the podcast list especially. I launched it to my main list first and they would say something just like a passing comment on Facebook like, “I really enjoyed Copy Slacker.” It wasn’t literally a testimonial, it was just a nice thing to say. Instead of just leaving it at that, I said, “What did you like about it?” and suddenly I’m getting these long detailed testimonials two or three paragraphs long, which then I would just forward to Misty and she wrote the emails for them, and we had a pretty dang successful launch on the podcast I think. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah, for the size of the list. BEN SETTLE: Oh yeah, especially considering how many people had bought it from my own list first. It went tremendously well and it was because Misty was working those testimonials. I’d just draw it out of people. In fact, here’s some advice I gave her. I’ll give you guys some advice that I gave her. This isn’t really about props – well, it is kind of. A lot of times she’ll get emails and I told her to forward me all feedback because I want to see all feedback, whether it’s good feedback or bad feedback. I want to help her. Maybe I’ll see an opportunity for selling something that she’s not seeing or something. For whatever reason, I just have her send everything to me, all feedback.

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Originally she was doing a lot of harder teaching than I would prefer or that you would prefer, but I just let her do it because she’s doing her thing and I’m not going to interfere with it, but she’d get these props from people about stuff. “This was the best email I’ve read all week,” or “I like these emails better than Ben’s.” I think she liked sending me those. I think she gets a thrill out of sending me those emails, and I couldn’t be happier honestly. I’m glad people on that list like her emails better. That’s the whole point. I go, “Yeah, but here’s what you’ve got to say to these people.” I don’t know if she does this or not, and she might have thought I was joking when I told her to do this. Whenever somebody gives her props for an email she’s written I say, “Oh, so that means you bought the product then? You liked the email so much you must have bought the product.” I would do that. I would say, “So that means you bought the product, right?” It’s like you’ve got to make people ante up. We don’t want praise, we want sales. We don’t write for applause, we write for profits. So get your props where you can get them, and when you get props get details. Just ask them, “What do you mean by that? How did it help you exactly?” Whatever it is someone tells you, you can get more out of them. This is like Sales 101. When you’re talking to a prospect and they talk about a problem they have that your product can solve, you get them talking about it. “What do you mean? How does it feel when you’re pissing and it feels like razor blades coming out because you have that infection in your urinary tract? How does that feel? Tell me about it.” In selling that’s how you get the pain out of people and get them really wanting to buy whatever you have. When you get props you do the same thing. You can get long testimonials like that, and people are happy to do it. Email Players Rule #83 – and here’s another one where I’m trying to be clever, Jonathan, and make it rhyme, kind of like the other one – “If everything goes well, prepare for everything to go to hell.” This is along the same lines. •

If you have to say it, you ain’t it.

There are people, Jonathan – and I’m ashamed to say, people that I associate with – but it physically hurts my eyes when they call themselves, “I’m a rock star” or “I’m a legend” or “I’m a ninja.” PRODUCER JONATHAN: No. They call themselves legend? You can’t call yourself a legend. 124 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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BEN SETTLE: I know people who call themselves not just rock star, but they’ll be like, “I’m an f-ing rock star.” I get why they’re doing it. They’re probably trying to make themselves feel better about something or whatever, but man, it rubs people the wrong way. Don’t do it. If you have to tell people you’re awesome, you’re not awesome. You’re just not. Unless you’re Fonzi. Only Fonzi got away with that. He could tell people he was cool and he was really cool, but none of us are Fonzi. If you have to say it, you ain’t it. Don’t tell people you’re XYZ, great, awesome, whatever adjective you want to go with. Just demonstrate it. It’s much better to demonstrate it than to say it. If you constantly go around saying, “I’m a rock star” and all that, I’m just telling you it’s going to work against you. Nobody’s going to tell you this. I’m telling you this because I’m not talking to anyone personally one-on-one here. I’m just telling the whole audience. Don’t call yourself a ninja. That was my favorite story from when my ex-copywriting apprentice went to Traffic and Conversion Summit back in 2015. She went to this booth and the guy said, “I’m a ninja. We’re all ninjas here.” It was some funnel service. How do these people say this stuff with a straight face? I’ll never know. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Did you ever get down on those Adam Sandler tapes when he was doing comedy tapes. Do you remember that? BEN SETTLE: Adam Sandler? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah. You never heard his comedy tapes? What that reminds me of, you’re out there saying you’re a ninja and everybody else is laughing at you. “They’re all going to laugh at you!” Everybody’s laughing at you. BEN SETTLE: Oh, I remember that. “They’re all laughing at you.” I think that’s what happens. Am I out of line here, Jonathan? You tell me. Am I being out of line? When you hear people say something, “I’m a f—ing rock star” or “I’m a ninja at this” or “I’m a legend” – actually, I don’t know if I’ve ever heard someone call themselves a legend. That would really be funny, but doesn’t that make you think, “This guy’s a complete poser”? PRODUCER JONATHAN: My douche detector goes off.

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BEN SETTLE: Yeah, and they may actually be good at what they do. That’s the sad part. But that’s not what’s happening in people’s minds. The last one and then we’ll wrap it up. Email Players Rule #84: •

Keep your girl close, but keep your Guinness closer.

This is something I made up when I was hanging out with my ex-copywriting apprentice. I have no idea what prompted me to say this. I think I was just goofing off. She was on Facebook or something. In fact, I remember. We were in this Irish bar in town here where I live and I had a Guinness. She said something on Facebook about, “Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer,” and I was looking at her and said, “Keep your girl close, but keep your Guinness closer,” like I’d rather have this Guinness in front of me than her. If you want to translate this to something useful besides just me amusing myself with my ex-copywriting apprentice, in life there are obviously important things in your life you have to keep watering, so to speak. You can’t just neglect them. But the first thing you should do, especially if you’re a guy – this is especially applicable to guys – the closest thing you should have to you is your mission in life, whatever your goal and mission in life is. I know mission sounds almost like melodramatic. “Oh, my mission!” But if you think about it, every guy should have that in their life. It’s something that they’re always striving for. They put that on a pedestal and not people, and certainly not the girl they’re chasing and all that, or any other girls. They put this mission on a pedestal and they keep that closer. They keep their girl close, but they keep that mission closer in their lives. Here’s an example, and I’ll give you an example of what happens if you don’t do this. This is an analogy I’ve read from this guy Rollo Tomassi. He’s very wellknown in the dating niche. He had this analogy about Superman. Superman is Superman. He’s like the badass of all badasses. He’s got a cape. He’s flying around saving people. Lois Lane is absolutely in love with this guy. He’s a powerful man, just what every girl wants, Superman. But then something starts to happen, Jonathan. Suddenly she’s asking Superman to spend more time with her instead of saving people. She’s asking him to help out around the house. She’s taking more of his time. She won’t let him go out and hang out with his super friends and the Justice League. She wants more of his time. She’s nagging at him about stupid things because she thinks she wants more of his attention, but she really doesn’t, but she would take all of his time and attention if she could. 126 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Eventually the nagging gets to him and even Superman starts to say, “Okay, okay. I’ll start hanging out with you more and all that,” so he stops saving guys. He stops going out on missions. He stops trying to save the world as much. Then what happens is Lois starts to kind of nag him more now. She’s not happy with this guy because he’s not the man that she fell for. She doesn’t know this consciously. It’s all unconscious. She just knows that there’s something about Superman that’s kind of repulsing her a little bit. Instead of being out saving the world and everything, he’s at home doing dishes. He’s buying her flowers and putting her on a pedestal, when he’s Superman. He’s supposed to be on the pedestal. One thing leads to another and she starts going on more girls’ nights out and stuff, trying to get away from him now. She still claims to want all of his time, but she’s always trying to get away from him at the same time. It’s because he’s keeping his girl closer than his Guinness now, than his mission. Suddenly she starts kind of losing attraction for Superman. He’s just not Superman anymore. He’s more Clark Kent now than Superman. He’s gained a little weight. He’s just trying to please her all the time and he’s not doing the things that made him Superman. One day Superman suspects that Lois is cheating on him because she’s always out and about, and she’s always got these weird excuses. She comes home and takes a shower right away and all that stuff. So he decides to stalk Lois and go follow her around because he’s Superman. He can move really fast and she can’t detect him. He’s got x-ray vision and can see through the walls. He’s convinced finally that she’s been spending time with another man. Guess who he catches her with? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Who? BEN SETTLE: He catches her with none other than Batman, the man who does have his mission in front of him at all times to get rid of evil because his parents were destroyed and murdered. It’s like he’s obsessed with it now for the rest of his life. He’s got to go after criminals. It drives Lois crazy that he’s always ignoring her and he’s always brooding, but he’s exciting and he’s thrilling and he’s Batman. He’s still a powerful guy. What happened with Superman – it goes back to the Dante Nero quote that I quoted in the February 2016 Email Players issue, which a couple people said really changed the way they thought, which I thought was interesting. 127 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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You hear this on Dante Nero’s Beige Phillip Show all the time, he talks about it, where a girl falls in love with you for what you are, spends the rest of the relationship trying to turn you into something you’re not, and then leaves you for someone who is what you originally were. That’s what happened to Superman in that because he, unfortunately, kept his girl closer than his Guinness. He should have kept his girl close – don’t totally ignore Lois – but keep your mission closer, your Guinness closer. I think there’s many, many lessons that can be extrapolated from that, and I will let you all read between the lines on that because, damn it, Jonathan, we’re almost at 30 minutes here and that’s way past what I wanted to do, so that’s that. PRODUCER JONATHAN: All right, good stuff. So that is a wrap for another seven Email Players Rules. This has been Ben Settle’s Antipreneur Show #120. We will climb back in your earbuds next week.

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Chapter 13

Email Players Rules 85-91 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. Jonathan, we’re going to do another seven Email Players Rules episode today. It’s been awhile since we did one of these, probably because we took a month off from doing any podcasts. For people who don’t know it and haven’t listened to any of them yet, the Email Players Rules are kind of the defining episodes of the podcast, from what I’m being told. That’s the vibe that people get from it. This is the stuff they get the most meat from. I don’t know why that is necessarily, it’s what it is. It’s a collection of maxims, ideas, philosophies, and principles that I live my life by, business and personal. Some of these things I’ve made up or discovered on my own. A lot of them I’ve heard from other people or have learned from observing other people or studying other people. I’m not going to say all this stuff is always original. It’s not, and I try to give credit where credit’s due, unlike most people on the internet. The whole concept behind this is swiped, and I always admit this in every one, Jonathan. Let’s talk about giving credit where credit’s due. I swiped the idea from Dante Nero, who hosts the Beige Phillip Show. The whole mantra of that show is for guys and it’s about how to get your balls back. That’s their thing, how to get your balls back. It’s obviously for guys having trouble with girls and all that, because they lost their balls. They let a girl steal their balls or they never had balls in the first place, but it’s how to get them back. I don’t think they’ve done them in a while. I haven’t actually been paying attention to the show for a while, but they used to do these things called the Beige Phillip Rules. I always thought it was so nice how they put all these concepts in a nice neat little format like that, so I translated it to our show, the Ben Settle Show, so that’s what we’re going to do. We’re almost to 100. We’ve done 84 of them before I start this one. We’ll finish out at 90. I like to go through seven per show. Let’s just get started, Jonathan, without any more of this build-up. No more screwing around. I’m done clearing my throat, basically.

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I could have just jumped into this. This is where a guy like you should be correcting me when you see me doing this. Say, “Ben, get to the frickin’ point.” Maybe I don’t need it, I don’t know. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Slacking. BEN SETTLE: Slacking off. Email podcast slacker. Pod Slacker. PRODUCER JONATHAN: “Coming soon, Pod Slacker.” BEN SETTLE: It’s going to be a whole thing. Watch all these copycats start naming their product Slacker now after Copy Slacker. I’ve seen that kind of thing happen before. Email Players Rule #85 – 85, Jonathan! Holy crap. I remember when we did the first seven. It wasn’t that long ago. •

Low-class jackass is going to jack.

I’m not talking about what that sounds like probably on the surface to some of the dirtier minds that listen to this show. What I’m talking about is low-class jackass people are going to do what they’re going to do. There was a time, Jonathan, when I used to get very upset with people who I consider low-class jackass, and I hope I don’t have to define what low-class jackass is. It’s just what it means, someone who’s kind of low-class and acts like a jackass. It’s one thing to be low-class, it’s one thing to be a jackass, and it’s something quite different to be both low-class and a jackass. That takes a very special talent, and they’re out there. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Exponential. BEN SETTLE: It’s exponential. Man, it takes talent to be like that – not the kind of talent I want, but it’s like you’ve got to try to be this way. It’s not like it’s something that’s beyond someone’s control. The thing is they’re going to do what they’re going to do. You can’t get mad at them necessarily for doing the stupid things they do, like when someone flakes out on you. Let’s say there’s someone who’s a habitual flake. Let’s say you’re working with somebody on a project and they’re always flaking out. They’re never there when they’re supposed to be. They always have some dumb excuse and they’re really just wasting your time and disrespecting you as a result. They know they’re doing it but they’re not necessarily doing it in a mean way. It’s just that’s how they are. That’s the animal they are. 130 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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It’s kind of like getting mad at a snake for biting you. If you’re going to try to pet a rattlesnake, you’re going to get bit. Does that make the rattlesnake evil? No, but it makes it dangerous and something you should want to avoid, and that’s how it should be with low-class jackasses. Treat them like a snake. If you have to do business with a low-class jackass, try to get in and out and get what you need and get out of there as quickly as possible. The best thing is just avoid them altogether, just like you would avoid a rattlesnake. People who try to play with rattlesnakes and get bit, they’ve got no one to blame but themselves. And now that you’ve listened to this, if you find yourself doing business with a low-class jackass, you have no one to blame but yourself. That’s what we like to do on the Ben Settle Show. We like to take people’s excuses away. We like to call people on their bull crap. Email Players Rule #86: •

If you want to look thin, hang out with fat people.

Did you ever see that movie, Back to School, Jonathan? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah, Rodney Dangerfield. BEN SETTLE: That is a quote from him. Remember his business was he made clothes for overweight people, so he was doing that commercial at the beginning. “Hey, if you want to look skinny, hang out with fat people.” I bet a whole show could be done just on this one thing, but here’s what I mean as far as what we’re talking about with the Email Players Rules. The whole concept of contrast is something I talk about a lot in my products. Contrasting ideas in a subject line, for example, get noticed, just like the thin person will get noticed when he’s hanging out with fat people, or the fat person will get noticed if he’s hanging out with nothing but thin people. If you want to get noticed, just use a lot of contrast – contrast in your subject lines, contrast in your headlines. Ideas can contrast like, “How a bald-headed man saved my hair.” I got that one from Eugene Schwartz’s book. That was a headline he had. “How to beat the races by picking losers.” That’s contrast. That’s basically the skinny person hanging out with fat people. This is what you want to do in your marketing. And by the way, it goes beyond just headlines. Contrast in colors makes it very easy. Gary Halbert used to talk about why his website was black on yellow. 131 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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People were like, “Why is there a yellow background?” It’s because black on yellow apparently is more contrast than black and white and it’s easier to read. The great Jim Yaghi – I don’t know if he still teaches this anymore or not, but when he does his Google AdWords, if you make the lines contrast enough in width and size, it actually makes the ad look like it’s a different color. He’s a brilliant guy, a computer scientist, and he’s got a whole methodology for this. That’s why I hire him to do my AdWords. To this day he does my AdWords. I’d have no one else do my AdWords but him. I would have no one else do my Facebook ads but Shane Hunter, and he does a lot of stuff like that too in his ads, and it just works. So if you want to look thin, hang out with fat people. That’s the moral of the story. Email Players Rule #87: •

Eat dessert first.

This is something that kind of popped into my head. Remember when we were talking to Brian Kurtz when we did the 4-part interview with him for the podcast? He was talking about in the marketing world people always do the sexy stuff first, like the advertising, the marketing, the copywriting, the sexy side of things. He goes, “But nobody wants to create the content,” even though the content is more important in a lot of ways than the sexy stuff. You need both. Somehow we got on this discussion and I said, “So are you saying that people like to eat dessert first? That’s the fun part of the meal, dessert, as opposed to eating the Brussel sprouts and all the other stuff?” I’ve been thinking about that since then and I think it’s a good idea to eat dessert first. Here’s what I mean, as far as what I do for a living. I like to write my email first before I work on anything else. To me it’s the funnest part of the day. I don’t want to save it till later when I’m tired and full, so to speak, and bloated. I want to eat that dessert first and enjoy it first. It sets the tone for the rest of my 10-minute work day, because that’s about what I’m at now, 10 minutes. Let’s say I have to work on some other stuff, though. Let’s say I have to write a sales letter for a product or whatever, and let’s say I also had to do some recordings like the podcast and all this. I love doing this stuff. I only cook good food. I only have good food in the house, but I want to eat my dessert first, which is my daily email.

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Whatever your dessert is, whatever it is you like to do the most, I highly suggest you do that first. Eat your dessert first. There’s something psychological about it. For one, it’s like you’ve rewarded yourself at the beginning so that all the other work you’ve got to do is more bearable, because at least you had that yummy dessert first. Some people would say, “Well yeah, but I’d rather save it till last.” A lot of times people save their dessert till last and it goes bad because it’s been sitting out for too long while you’re eating your meal. You don’t want to do that. You want to eat that dessert first, whether it be writing your email or wasting time on Flakebook or whatever it is you like to do. Eat the dessert first before you do anything else, and you’ll have peace the rest of your days at elBenbo.com. Maybe, I don’t know, probably not. Email Players Rule #88: •

You don’t have to outrun Bigfoot. You only have to outrun your friend.

Here’s what I mean by that, Jonathan, because I know that one is probably a little bizarre. That little zinger probably ricocheted off the wall or something and it’s like, 
 “What the hell did Ben just say there?” Imagine you, Jonathan, and I are in the woods. I’m up in the Northwest. We’re on complete opposite sides of the country, but let’s just imagine for a second that you’re over here hanging out with me in the Pacific Northwest, Bigfoot world. Some blood-thirsty Bigfoot comes out of the woods and starts growling at us and he’s hungry and he starts chasing us. I don’t have to outrun the Bigfoot to survive. I only have to outrun you, so you’re the one that gets caught and eaten. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Thanks. BEN SETTLE: I don’t have to be faster than the Bigfoot. I don’t have to be the fastest runner in the world. I just have to be faster than you or, if we bring someone else with us, faster than them. Let’s say Misty is hanging with us. We’ll just outrun her and she can get eaten. We don’t have to outrun the Bigfoot, we just have to outrun Misty. No problem, very easy to do. She doesn’t know anything about fitness or anything, so we’re in better shape than her. We could outrun her very easily.

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How do you apply this to the business world? People ask sometimes, “Ben, I’m in affiliate marketing. Will your system help or should I use these canned emails? I’m not that good at this or that.” I say, “Look, you don’t have to be the best email writer in the world, especially in the affiliate marketing world.” I just use that as an example. This applies to a lot of things. You don’t have to be the best email writer out there to actually win in affiliate marketing. In fact, most affiliates don’t know what they’re doing. You just have to write better emails than them. They’ll look at the emails we do for this show and they’ll look on my site or whatever, or maybe there’s some other email guy that they study and they’re like, “Man, I wish I could write emails like that. Am I ever going to be that good, or how can I possibly get that good? I don’t have that much time to get that good.” Whatever the reason is, you don’t have to be that good. You just have to be better than the people you’re going against. It’s the same in the copywriting world. I don’t know if people do A/B split tests very much anymore where they hire two copywriters to compete. I’m not sure they still do that or not, Jonathan, I have no idea, but you don’t have to be the best writer in the world. You just have to be better than the guy you’re competing against. I like to think, of course, if you buy our products at the elBenbo store that you will be better than the people you’re competing against. You may not be the best, but you don’t have to be the best. You don’t have to be the fastest runner. You just have to outrun Misty and you’ll be fine. Email Players Rule #89: •

People know the difference between right and wrong, but not between good and evil.

I don’t know where this came from, Jonathan. That was some kind of brain fart I had like six months ago and I thought it might make a good Email Players Rule. Honestly, I don’t even know how you would apply this to business in any way. To me it was just more of a mind exercise, something to meditate on a little bit. You could be following the law but still actually be very wicked. Like you could be doing evil things while you’re still following the law. It might legally be okay, but you could be doing really bad things to people, and I think you should avoid doing that.

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Jonathan, I don’t know if you’ve had this experience or not, but whenever big money is involved people get weird. This is a lesson that I was taught many years ago by the great Michael Senoff. He goes, “When there’s big money around, people just get strange. They start acting weird. They do things that they wouldn’t normally do. They screw people over when they normally wouldn’t do it.” It may not be against the law to screw someone over technically, if you don’t have a contract and all that in place, or maybe there were just assumptions made. Maybe legally you’re in the clear, but morally you’re not. I think you should test people. Whenever you’re going to get in business with someone I think you should test them for this sort of thing. Legality doesn’t make something right, and doing the right thing might not always be legal, now that I think about it. I’m going to avoid examples on this because I don’t want anyone doing stuff they shouldn’t be doing. People know the difference between right and wrong, but not good and evil. I would say this applies to way too many people in this day and age. I think there was a time when this was not the case. Just 50+ years ago I think it was a totally different time, from what I understand, or even people who just come from different sections of the world. I can tell you right now I’m a Midwest boy. I don’t like the Midwest. I was glad to get out of the Midwest, but when I moved to the west coast, I’m telling you, there was a big difference in the way people treat other people and just the way people are. It’s lacking a certain decency that was in the Midwest. This does not apply to politicians, by the way. I don’t like any of the politicians, and there’s a reason why most of the governors are actually in prison. There’s like three ex-governors in prison right now making license plates, but I’m saying the people as a whole. I used to say, “Nah, Midwest people, there’s nothing inherently better about them,” and there’s not except for the fact that people tend to be more fair out there. I’ll just leave it at that. I’m not saying there are no fair people where I live now and all that, but I’m just saying there are people who know the difference between right and wrong, but not good and evil. I’m just going to leave it at that, Jonathan, because getting too deep about that could take a whole podcast in and of itself. So moving on to the next and final rule for this week at least – Email Players Rule #90: 135 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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•

The best businesses don’t need your business.

I think people who go around saying the customer is always right do whoever they’re teaching that to a very big disservice. The customer is never right. That’s why they’re hiring you. If they were right they wouldn’t need you, and the best businesses simply don’t need you. The best businesses are not going to be the ones out there kissing your ass. They’re not going to take your rush jobs or any of that stuff. The best ones are often able to turn people away. On the other side of the table there, don’t you want to be one of those businesses, where you’re in control? You don’t have to sit there and take abuse from a customer or client. You don’t have to sit there and do things you wouldn’t normally do, or write ads in a way that you know don’t work and that sort of thing. If you set yourself up and position yourself as one of the best businesses out there – not the best; the best is very subjective, but one of the best businesses – you can actually pick and choose who you do business with. Jonathan, I know you’re in the same position because I’ve seen some of the things you say to clients who try to pull one on you. I was like, “Holy crap, did you just tell someone that?” I’ve seen some of the stuff you do, but that’s because you’ve put yourself in a position where you can do that, and it makes business a hell of a lot more fun. You’re going to be dealing with only the people you want to deal with, and you’re going to be making far more sales at whatever you do, because you’re automatically going to attract the best customers. The best customers want to be with the best businesses, and the best businesses don’t need anyone one person’s business. They have perfect posture. They call it ‘posture’ in selling where, yeah, you need customers but you don’t need any one customer. When your marketing reflects that and your emails reflect that and your copy reflects that, you are going to be in a completely different planet than the people you’re competing against. I think it’s something that people should be striving for from Day 1. It doesn’t happen overnight, but you just hang out with Uncle elBenbo here and we’ll get you set on the right track. Jonathan, that’s all I got, man. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Are you sure? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that was six. BEN SETTLE: You’re right, it was six. 136 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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PRODUCER JONATHAN: I’ve got one more here – Apply enough pressure. BEN SETTLE: Yes, that’s the one I’m missing. Email Players Rule #91: •

Apply enough pressure, and eventually whatever you’re applying pressure to will break.

This is a quote from the Daredevil show on Netflix, where Daredevil is beating up some thug. He’s like, “Apply enough pressure and the arm will break” or something like that. I tell you what, man, that is a very powerful principle in email marketing especially. That’s the whole point of daily emails, to constantly be applying psychological and emotional pressure on people, to create discomfort in them every day that they don’t have what you’re selling, because they need what you’re selling. You know they need what you’re selling, but they just haven’t been motivated enough or prioritized it to the point where they’re buying it. That’s where your daily follow-up constantly comes in. It doesn’t have just be email – whatever you’re doing to market with. If it’s sending out frickin’ Facebook messages every day, fine, or Twitter or whatever it is you do – podcasts and videos and whatever it is you do. Applying that pressure every day constantly, just constantly being there every day, giving them reasons why they should be buying your product is applying pressure. Eventually they’re going to buy. They’re either going to buy and cry uncle basically – you’re going to sit there and you’ve got their arm down and they’re going to tap out, and that’s when they buy – or you’re going to break their arm and they’re going to go away and never want anything to do with you ever again, which is fine too. That’s what people do when they opt out and they never come back because they don’t like you for whatever reason. You basically just broke their arm and they want nothing to do with you, and that’s fine. They’ll feel the pain of not buying from you for a very long time, and they’ll just blame something else other than their own decision on that. You want to apply pressure constantly, and I think the best way of doing that – and Jonathan thinks it’s the best way to do it – is with daily email sent out in a way where people like to read them and they like to buy from them.

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That is the end of this episode, Jonathan, and this time I mean it. Next week I’m going to talk about some very powerful ideas. It’s almost like different Email Players Rules, but it’s not. These are things from the late marketing genius, Jim Straw. I don’t know if everybody knows who he is, but he was a true marketing guy. He used to own banks and all this other stuff, then he ended up being an affiliate marketer basically, where he was very successful. He actually sold like a $1,000 ebook, and he’d sell 11 or 12 a month. Imagine that. No overhead whatsoever. I don’t think he had a refund policy either, but he was brilliant. He died back in 2011 or 2012. And very weirdly and in a very cryptic fashion, the last email he ever sent, that I got at least, had these rules that he would do business by. I wrote a bunch of them down and I think you’ll find it very, very educational. I certainly did, and it’s a list of things I review on a regular basis. It’s almost like the Jim Straw Rules instead of Email Players Rules, but very powerful. We’ll talk about that next time. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Looking forward to it. That is a wrap for the Ben Settle Show. We’ll be back in your earbuds next week.

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Chapter 14

Email Players Rules 92-98 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com. Jonathan, we’re almost to 100 Email Players Rules. We’re going to get through another seven today and we’ll be at 98 by the time we’re done. Email Players Rules, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a series of podcasts I’ve been doing for the last 2-1/2 years and they’ve been fan favorite episodes. I pick maxims and things I do, ideas I live by, and not just business but personal as well. It’s just the way I live, the way I do business, things that helped me out tremendously to have more peace of mind, to make more sales, have a better business, and just have a better life altogether. A few of things maybe I’ve worked out and rationalized on my own, but many of them I’ve heard from other people or have been inspired by something I’ve seen other people do and that sort of thing. I’m not going to say these are 100% original or anything like that. Some are, but probably most aren’t and it doesn’t really matter. Originally the idea came from this other podcast called the Beige Phillip Show, which is a very raunchy R-rated and not child-friendly podcast by comedian Dante Nero, who talks about game and dealing with chicks and getting your balls back and that sort of thing. He has these things called the Beige Phillip Rules, which I thought were really fascinating episodes, and I thought, “I’m going to adapt that to my podcast with Email Players Rules.” All that said, Jonathan, we’re now on #92. Let’s make sure I have this right because last time I missed one or something like that. We’re on #92, right? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Sounds good to me, man. BEN SETTLE: Okay, I think we’re on #92. We may have 100 by now with our combined mathematical skills. We might be at 104 for all I know, but I think we’re at #92. I read this one on some blog once probably a few years ago. I forget where I heard it. Email Players Rule #92: •

Unsuccessful men chase women, and women chase successful men. 139

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That’s obviously from the dating market point of view, which I like to sell in. It makes sense. Chicks don’t tend to chase guys who aren’t successful or who aren’t at least on their way toward some kind of success, although that makes you wonder how some women end up with complete bums and all that, but we won’t go there right now. The idea of this is it doesn’t just apply to that. It also applies to your business world. Clients and customers are automatically going to gravitate toward the successful companies rather than unsuccessful companies. This is why competing on price makes no sense anymore, if it ever did. It’s all about positioning. It’s not about your price. It’s about who is perceived as the one who’s going to do the best job, whatever it is. You want to have the best positioning, and I bring that up because Jonathan did an interview with the great Ken McCarthy about positioning, a very powerful concept, definitely a dull unpolished object, not a bright shiny object, which is why it’s so powerful. It’s positioning. If you are positioned as a successful company or if your product is positioned as something that’s successful and helps people, if you’re positioned as a successful copywriter for example, clients are going to gravitate towards you automatically. They don’t want the unsuccessful guy. This is why I’m not a big fan of false humility, Jonathan. Once in a while I get accused of being arrogant and all this stuff in my daily emails, and I’m thinking if you walk around with false humility who are you helping? I’m not saying you should go around being a arrogant chest-beating idiot if you can’t back it up, but if you can back it up you should definitely be promoting your product. If you want customers and clients to chase you, be successful. I know that sounds like the most obvious basic thing in the world, but most people just don’t think this way. They’re like, “Oh, if I have the best price, I’ll compete on price.” The best deal is the person who sells them something that solves whatever problem they have. Enough said on that, Jonathan. Email Players Rule #93: This is from a blogger who no longer blogs, but I printed a whole bunch of stuff out on his site when it was up. He just called himself Shark. I have no idea what his name is. That’s what he called himself. •

The best time to do shit is when you don’t want to do shit.

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going to write this email today because I didn’t get inspired,” or “I’ll write this ad tomorrow when I’m more inspired,” or whatever the activity is. “I’ll start my podcast when I’m inspired.” No. You have to do things even when you don’t feel like doing it. That’s really what makes up character. I don’t who created this definition of character. It’s like following through on a decision long after the excitement of the moment has passed. Everybody gets excited about an idea right away, then they start losing that excitement and then they don’t stick with it, and that’s a lack of character. You’ve got to sack up and you just do it, whatever it is. Willpower is just like any other muscle. You get up every day and you will yourself to write a daily email like I teach in Email Players. I don’t think it’s that hard to do, I think it’s fun, and most people have fun with it when they get into it, but it is hard at first and you just will yourself to do it and you just make that commitment to doing it. Eventually, like anything, the more you do something the easier it gets. So the best time to do shit is when you don’t want to do it. If you don’t want to do something, you’re probably going to have a breakthrough of some kind if you actually do it. That’s the irony of it all. People don’t usually get breakthroughs when they’re inspired. At least that’s not been my case, Jonathan. My best epiphanies have always come when I didn’t want to do something. Maybe it’s my brain’s way of trying to shorten the task, I don’t know, but something to think about. Jonathan, I know you’re going to get offended by this next one and I’m sorry. I apologize in advance because I know you’re a strong card-carrying feminist and I don’t want to offend you. PRODUCER JONATHAN: You’re going to piss me off. BEN SETTLE: The fact is, anybody who would get offended by what I’m about to say was already horrified when they downloaded my Villains ebook when they joined elBenbo’s Apprentice, because this is very much in line with that. Email Players Rule #94: •

It takes a strong woman to admit when she’s wrong.

The reality is this applies to men and women. I just like to say that because I wanted to rile some cages up. Most people are so afraid of failure or they’re bound up in cognitive dissonance. Jonathan, do you know what cognitive dissonance is? You ever heard this term before? 141 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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PRODUCER JONATHAN: It almost reminds me of what you were saying about doing work even when it’s not fun. It’s loving that guru even though he’s not proven himself, just so that you feel right about your decision. BEN SETTLE: Yeah, it’s very similar to that. It may even be exactly that. One of the few things I remember from college is this. I minored in sociology and I wanted to do a paper on cults because it seemed more interesting to me than all these other stupid topics people were writing about like “Why do we have parades?” and dumb things like that. I wanted to know about cults. Even back then I wanted to know how persuasion worked and all that, so I did some research on this and I ran into this term “cognitive dissonance.” Let’s say someone is in a religious cult of some kind where they predict the end of the world is going to happen tomorrow at 3:48 pm. A big flood is going to flood the entire United States. This is actually what happened in the book I read. There was a cult that was teaching this, and then it didn’t happen the next day at 3:48. It didn’t happen at all, obviously. The people who were buying into this, after that happened they were more convinced it was going to happen the next day when a new prediction came up to replace that one. They were even more invested in the next one, because people can’t handle being wrong. You can’t have two conflicting ideas in your head like that. Your brain has to do something. This may not be the psychologically correct way of explaining this, but that’s basically what it is. This is what happens when people are wrong about something, but they keep doing it and they’re actually more convinced that what they’re doing is right, even though they keep proving themselves wrong. It’s not even subjective. They know that whatever they said is going to work didn’t work. For example, it’s someone who says mailing once a month is going to make you more sales than mailing once a day, and they absolutely believe this even though every time they send an email out they don’t make any money, and every time you send a daily email out you do. Their rationalization hamster will spin like crazy. That thing will be so tired of spinning you’d be amazed it’s even alive. You’d think the little thing is going to have a heart attack eventually, but that’s what the brain does. It rationalizes this stuff. Especially nowadays where everybody’s egos are so invested in things, it takes a lot of mental power to just admit, “This isn’t working and I need to move on to something else,” whatever that something is. It doesn’t even have to be 142 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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business. It could be something in your personal life too. If something is not working, you pull the plug and you move on. You don’t sit there and try to rationalize it, because all you’re doing is holding yourself back. I’ll add one more thing. I was making fun of feminism there. They keep thinking that feminism is a good thing, Jonathan, and I keep saying it’s not, and I’m right and they keep rationalizing it. So what’s the problem there? That’s cognitive dissonance, and I’m here to help everyone with cognitive dissonance. Email Players Rule #95: This actually kind of piggybacks on #94, and that was kind of an accident actually. •

Better to dump your garbage instead of trying to recycle it.

Jonathan, I don’t know about you but just this week when I took the garbage out, the lid was slightly open because I threw so much garbage out. Apparently some critter got in there, so when I got up in the morning there was a Chinese food container on the ground and some paper towels all gross and everything. I’m not going to try to take that gross wet paper towel that I just picked up off the ground – I don’t if it was a porcupine or what the hell got into it – and try to use it again. I’m not going to recycle it. I’m going to throw it out. This is something a lot of people in business are reluctant to do. They get so attached to a bad idea. Again this ties into the cognitive dissonance thing. They get so attached to something that’s not working or it’s not good for them, whatever it is, and they’ll keep trying to make it better. They’ll try to repair something. For example, maybe they have a toxic client. Let’s say, Jonathan, you’re consulting people on podcasting and you get a client that is just an absolute dummy. They’re not listening to you. They argue with you about everything. You like this person, though, and you want to help this person, but they’re making it really hard on you and you know they’re not going to change. The worst thing you can do is sit there and try to recycle that into something better. You might as well just get rid of it. It’s trash. Take it out and be done with it. It goes for personal relationships like girls and guys and all that. If you’re in a toxic environment and toxic situation, you need to get out of it. Don’t try to recycle it and make that person better if they’re not. It rarely ever gets better. That’s the whole thing with this – business, clients, any of that stuff. It’s much better to dump your garbage and bad toxic things than try to recycle them and try to shine them. 143 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Doberman Dan Gallapoo, who I’ve been mentioning a lot over the last couple weeks, I love the way he put it once. He was talking about people who keep testing a crappy sales letter and they’re wondering why it’s not working any better. He goes, “You can’t polish a turd.” You can try to polish a turd all you want and it’s still going to be a turd at the end of the day. You might as well just flush that turd. You’re not going to use alchemy and turn it into anything other than a turd. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Turd-alchemy – a new term coming at you. BEN SETTLE: But it’s true. You’re better off flushing that turd down the toilet. Don’t try to pick the little pieces of corn from last night’s dinner out of it and try to get a meal out of it. Just don’t do it. I think I’ve just grossed everybody out with that one, I hope. Email Players Rule #96: •

Act like a ho, get treated like a ho.

Jonathan, if you act like a ho you’re going to get treated like a ho. What do I mean by ho? I’m not just talking about girls are ho’s or anything like that. I’m talking about from a business point of view. We talked about time vampires before. Remember I talked about time ho’s? This was a long time ago. I did a show on time ho’s. I used to be a time ho at one time. I would just put out for every client. I’d give them all my time and I wouldn’t ask for anything in return. I would keep giving them my time, keep putting out, hoping that they would love me, so to speak, and hire me. It’s not unlike a regular ho. She’s constantly going from one guy to the next to the next, hoping someone loves her. Usually there’s some kind of problem behind that, and it’s the same with time ho’s. They keep thinking that if they just keep giving away free stuff to everybody, keep giving free consults, keep doing rush jobs, and letting clients treat them like a booty call basically – “Oh, can you do this? It needs to be done by tomorrow.” If you act like a ho and you go along with that stuff, they’re going to keep treating you like a ho. The guy who’s got a girl who’s like a ho in his life and he’s not committing to her in any way or anything like that, he’s just going to keep doing that because she’s not demanding anything else. He’s just going to treat her like a ho and take what he can get.

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It’s no different in business, Jonathan. We have talked about this on the show many times before and nothing has changed in the last year with this. If anything, I think people are becoming more time ho-ish, unfortunately. I look at all the free information people give just on Facebook and I go, “What a bunch of time ho’s.” Think of all that time they spend just trying to teach people stuff on Facebook. First of all, no one’s going to do anything with that except give you a Like maybe. They’re not going to use the information you teach them because they didn’t pay for it. They place no value on it. Secondly, they’re just going to keep coming back to you expecting you to be their little ho, and when you finally demand commitment they’re going to get mad at you and leave. I could keep going with this analogy but I think I better stop, since I already made fun of feminists earlier. Email Players Rule #97: •

When in doubt, get the f*** out.

The great copywriter John Carlton has this thing – and I don’t know how you get these anymore; maybe he sells them, maybe he doesn’t – but he did these things called the Scuttlebutt Tapes. They’re not unlike the talks you’re doing, these A-list marketers, Jonathan. Like he had Gary Halbert on a couple of them, where he just turned on the recorder and he and Gary Halbert started talking. One of the ones he did with Gary Halbert was about how to profit during down economies, and somehow they got talking about this guy that Gary Halbert knew. He was in real estate, and that area is actually an area I grew up by, Hoffman Estates, Illinois. I grew up like 10 minutes from there. That’s where the Sears headquarters was. I don’t know if it is anymore, but it was then. A bunch of people got laid off at Sears, and they employ hundreds, if not thousands of people there. I don’t know if they got laid off or if they just shut the whole thing down or something happened, which meant all these homes that were supposed to be sold there, nobody was there to buy them. Gary Halbert had this guy on the hot seat and he’s like, “What can I do, Gary? How can I profit from this?” and Gary said, “The game is over. You need to go find something else. Your idea to sell real estate to those employees is over. They’re not there anymore.” Sometimes you’ve just got to get out. You’ve got to cut your losses and move on. This goes back to people getting attached to their ideas and their ego being invested in their ideas, and the game sometimes is just over. There’s nothing 145 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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you can do about it. You can apply this to all kinds of things in your life. If you have a friend who treats you like crap or something, like you have your best friend who treats you like crap, or your buddy treats you like crap or something, at a certain point that person becomes a lost cause. Why would you keep hanging out with people like that? Or maybe your buddy is always getting in trouble and stuff and you’re trying to help him. Sometimes the game is over. Obviously this applies to relationships and all that kind of stuff. Sometimes you’re just with the wrong person and the game is over. You can keep trying to recycle the garbage, and you can keep ending up having to eat poop, so what’s the point. When in doubt, get out. It’s almost like hire slow, fire fast. It’s the same in business. Finally for this time at least, Email Players Rule #98. I’ve talked about this on the show, but not quite in these words. •

Consistency trumps proficiency.

Let me give you an example here. Let’s say I want to hire an email copywriter. One of them has a lot of talent and the other one doesn’t have a lot of talent necessarily yet, but they’re consistent. They’re going to show up every day. The one with talent, maybe they flake out a lot. Maybe they’re supposed to write a daily email for you and they only write like one a week, but because they’re so good they think you’re never going to fire them. They may be proficient at writing the emails but they’re not going to make as much money for you as the guy who comes in every day and is just applying the principles and getting better day by day, who’s consistent. This is the whole Jerry Seinfeld thing that I like to talk about whenever I’m asked about consistency. I was told that this may not have been a true story, but it was on Entrepreneur.com or something. Some guy interviewed Jerry Seinfeld, who was making almost $400 million a year at the height of his career as a comedian. That’s when Seinfeld was out – easily one of the highest-paid comedians who’s ever lived. Whether you like him or not, he was one of the highest-paid who’s ever lived. They were asking him, “So how did you get started?” or something like that, and he goes, “You know what, when I started out I put this big calendar on my wall where I could X each day out as each day went by, and every day I made it a goal to consistently write one joke a day.” It didn’t have to be a good joke. It could be a terrible joke, actually, or maybe it is a good joke. It doesn’t matter, but he always had to write that one joke a day, then he’d X that day out. Then the next day he’d come back, because he was 146 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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using consistency here. He may not even have been that good of a comedian writer for all we know at that time, but he’d write another joke – good, bad, indifferent, it didn’t matter. Then he’d X that day out. All these X’s formed a chain on the calendar and he goes, “As long as I never broke that chain I knew I was getting better at what I do and I was going towards my goals.” This is me paraphrasing. He didn’t say it exactly like that, but it’s the same effect. If you have that kind of consistency where you get up and write an email every day, for example – like I teach people to do and like Jonathan teaches people to do, like I teach in Email Players to just write an email every day – that consistency will turn you proficient. That consistency will turn into proficiency, but it starts with that consistency. Consistency without proficiency is more valuable than proficiency without consistency. I don’t know if that tongue-tied anyone else, but it did me. At the end of the day, consistency is what rules the roost, and it certainly does over here at the elBenbo Show and it certainly does at the Podcast Factory. I know that for a fact, Jonathan. That’s all I got this time, Jonathan. The next time we do an Email Players Rules we’ll be cracking the 100th one, which is kind of neat to think about. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I can’t wait, man. That’s a wrap for the show today. Thank you guys for tuning in, and thank you Ben for bringing us another seven Email Players Rules.

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Chapter 15

Email Players Rules 99-105 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle and the BenSettle.com podcast. I was telling Jonathan just now that by the time this episode comes out, I’m sure this book will already be in publication, but I’ve decided to take the transcripts of the first volume of Email Players Rules, which is the first 140 Email Players Rules, and put them into a book and that will be Volume 1. Jonathan, we’re not going to stop doing this. I will brain fart all the stuff out I need to do more of these. I don’t care at this point. I will keep doing them. But somewhere along the line, one of the fan favorite episodes – and as much as I’d like to blame Jonathan for this, it’s always my fault; that’s one of the rules, it’s always your fault, and in this case it really was my fault – we were missing Email Players Rule 99-105. The reason why is because I have all these rules written on a sheet, and then when we do them I bold them out on that sheet so I know they’re done. I must have jumped the gun, Jonathan, and got a little too excited. Maybe I had a dream about doing them or something, and I bolded them out, and thus I was driving myself crazy when I was going through all these transcripts, saying, “Where are all these lost Email Players Rules?” Not only did we have the lost Ben Settle Show ones, those 12 episodes, but these are the lost Email Players Rules that would have been within those 12. It would have been 13 lost Ben Settle Show episodes. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Ben, let’s be honest here. I mean these people have been listening to us for a long time for both shows, and we can be honest. These were the 5 rules that got lost when they burned down elBenbo’s apprentice’s house and we lost everything. BEN SETTLE: We can run with that. I don’t mind embellishing. PRODUCER JONATHAN: It’s their fault. They burned it down. Now we’re shifting. BEN SETTLE: Yeah, we’ll just go with that. That’s fine too, but it’s still my fault. You know why it’s my fault, Jonathan?

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PRODUCER JONATHAN: Why? BEN SETTLE: Because Email Players Rule whatever says it’s always your fault. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Fair enough. BEN SETTLE: So even if it’s not my fault, and something is burned down beyond my ability to stop it, it’s still my fault. But that doesn’t mean I won’t still share the blame with others. I mean it’s still my fault, but you did it. That can be like an anti-rule. These are the lost Email Players Rules, so we’re going to fit these in so we’re actually on track. That said, what are the Email Players Rules, for anyone who doesn’t know? They’re inspired by the Beige Phillip Rules with comedian Dante Nero, who does this thing called the Beige Phillip Show. It’s for guys who want to get their balls back and that sort of thing. I believe it is a paid podcast now, Jonathan. I think I told you that last time, and that’s fine, they deserve it. He did this thing called the Beige Phillip Rules, which is like rules and maxims that he lives by and goes by and does his stuff by, and I thought, “I’m going to adapt that. I’m going to swipe that.” This is the kind of swiping that I’m actually for, is going to another industry completely and taking an idea – not the words themselves, but an idea – and adapting it to your own, so that’s what I did. Technically we’ve done 133, but after today we’ll have done 140 now, Jonathan. We should be up to 140 now after this. I don’t even know what day it is right now, to be honest with you. I know it’s Christmas-time, right? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Something like that. BEN SETTLE: This is a Christmas episode, or is it not? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Oh man, you’re putting me on the spot. I have no clue, but we can go with that. It’s Christmas or nearby. It’s Christmas somewhere. BEN SETTLE: So as my Christmas gift to the listeners, I’m going to give them the lost Email Players Rules, starting with #99. This will be #99-105. Email Players Rule #99. By the way, this is guaranteed, Jonathan, to make certain women listening to this gasp in absolute horror, and this is my Christmas present to them especially because this has many applications. 149 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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•

If you want to know how to please a man, ask the mistress, not the wife.

I would absolutely love to take credit for this. I wish I had invented this, I really do. I did not invent this. I was having a discussion with an Email Player subscriber, Stephanie Arroyo, and this is her line, so if you want to bitch, look her up and go ahead and complain. This was her line. She said, “If you want to know how to please a man…” Now, she’s not a mistress. She’s never been a mistress, don’t get me wrong, but it was her line. Think of Don Draper from the show. His wife was kind of mean to him, so he’s spending his time with the mistress all the time. Or the Sopranos. Who did Tony Soprano spend all of his time with? Not Carmella, who was always getting on him and stuff. Now, am I saying you should have a mistress? No, I’m not endorsing that, for anyone listening to this who’s going to freak out. “Oh Ben!” First of all, I couldn’t even do it. Jonathan, I literally could not do it. One girl is hard enough. Dealing with one girl’s emotions and hormones and all that, I don’t know how these guys do it, I really don’t, but there are many lessons you can get from this wisdom. If you want to know how to please a man, ask the mistress, not the wife. Here’s an example from the business world, and I’ve known many, many, many examples of this, so this is just one. There are people who I know for a fact hire certain copywriters to do certain jobs, small jobs. They’re friends of the copywriter so they want to hire them and they want to support their business. Now, these are loyal friends, but they don’t really do that great of work so they give them these small little fluffy jobs, like the easy jobs, not anything that matters, while they go and hire some hardcore copywriter to do the real stuff. That way they keep their loyalty to their friend, but really they’re going to the mistress for getting things done. They’re actually going to the mistress. They don’t even usually know about the other copywriter. It’s astonishing how often this happens, and it doesn’t just happen in copywriting. I guarantee you, Jonathan, there are people on all of our lists who only stick around to be loyal to us, but really they’re buying whatever we sell from someone else. Jonathan, I would bet there are people who love you and they’re on your list, but they’re doing their own podcast or finding someone else to do it, because for whatever reason they just don’t consider you the mistress. You’re the wife. Conversely, I know for a fact there are people on my list, because I know these people, who buy everyone else’s email stuff but never buy mine, but they stay 150 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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on my list out of loyalty. They’re going to the mistress, not the wife. You can’t even blame them. Look, if you can find someone who can do a better job, you should. And if you want to retain that loyalty and you don’t want to lose your loyal following, sometimes you’ve got to go find yourself a mistress. I will leave it at that, Jonathan. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Wrecking a few marriages for Christmas. Go get ‘em. BEN SETTLE: This upcoming Valentine’s Day I’m going to have a lot of single women suddenly mad at me, and I don’t want that. Moving on. Pushing on to the next one. Email Players Rule #100: •

Haters gonna buy.

I’ve talked about this many times, Jonathan. The people who have absolutely hated me, despised me, went and became some of my best buyers. For example – and I’ve talked about this before and he told me this to my face, so I don’t think he would get mad or anything from me saying this, besides the fact that I’ve already said it on the air probably two or three other times at least – the great and esteemed Russell Brunson, who I’m a huge fan of and have been a fan of ever since I heard of the guy back in I believe 2006 – he told me flat out. This was almost four years ago and he was at one of our Oceans 4 masterminds. He was one of our guests and he paid to go there. He was one of the attendees and we were talking at dinner. He goes, “Ben, I used to hate you. I couldn’t stand you.” Now, first of all I’m thinking, “That’s kind of par for the course. It’s no big deal,” but he goes, “But then I had to buy from you. Then I started liking everything you put out and ended up becoming an Email Players subscriber.” I don’t know if he is any more, but he was for a long time. Actually, he was but he said something like his accountant unsubscribed him and I don’t think he ever bothered with it again. That’s fine. The point is this. He was a hater who became one of my best buyers, and he spreads the word about me all the time, just like I tell everyone about him. He gave me a nice testimonial at the Glazer-Kennedy conference one time, because I remember he tweeted about it and I captured that and now I use it on the sidebar of my site as a testimonial. There’s something to be said for someone who’s intellectually honest who doesn’t like you who can be turned to your side of the Force if you apply enough pressure and if you do the right things long enough. So don’t 151 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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necessarily dis on your haters is my point. Sometimes the haters can be your best buyers. Jonathan, we’re way ahead right now, I know this, but recently I did this affiliate campaign with Michael Senoff. We sell these audios that Eugene Schwartz did and we do it every Labor Day. I had a 14-day email sequence. This guy emailed me back saying how my emails suck and all this, and he responded to the last email of the sequence, #14. He goes, “These are the worst emails ever,” basically is what he said. He goes, “The only value I get out of them is they show me how to not write emails.” He goes, “I hate to be the hater here,” and that’s fine, so you’re a hater. I don’t mind it. I didn’t get mad or anything. Of course I turned it into content, talking about how we made 935 sales over those 14 emails and we’ve run them every year for the last six years and we make about 100-150 more sales each year more than the year before, even though my list is a lot of the same people who already have it, and all this other stuff. This guy, who I will not name, I would not be surprised if one day he comes back to the fold and says, “You know what, I ended up buying something from you.” I can’t say he will for sure, because he was an extra-special kind of hater, but we shall see. Email Players Rule #101: •

The more effective you are, the more respected you are.

This is a quote directly from the late great master of negotiation, the world’s most-feared negotiator during his day, Jim Camp. I think there’s a lot of truth to that. If you want to be respected, just become effective at what you do. There’s a lot of people out there swearing like sailors and trying to have an attitude and be edgy and all this stuff they’re trying to do because they see everyone else doing it, and nobody respects them. They get a few high five’s from kind of the marketing proles and all that, but mostly nobody respects them because they’re not actually effective at anything. There are people out there who put themselves out there as coaches in certain things like copywriting and email, who are begging for attention and respect, and you can tell in their attitude, but the reality is nobody respects them because they’re not effective yet. When they become effective they’ll be respected, regardless if anyone likes them or not. Being liked doesn’t matter. It’s being respected that is more important. 152 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Email Players Rule #102: Jonathan, I had to do this to you a few times. You’re a very flakey man. I’m teasing, of course. •

Ignore flakes so hard they doubt their own existence.

Jonathan, how many flakey people have you dealt with in your business career, just a guess? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Hundreds. BEN SETTLE: Hundreds, and how do you handle them? Do you try to contact them? Do you try to get on their good side? Do you beg them for their attention or do you just ignore them? PRODUCER JONATHAN: I call that B.S. (Before Settle). That’s when I used to try to contact them. Now I know better. BEN SETTLE: I’ve wasted many years doing the same time, and flakes are going to flake. You cannot change a flake. A flake is a flake is a flake. You cannot change them. They can maybe change themselves someday, but it’s not our job to change them, nor can we. It’s better just to ignore them and let them pursue you, and when they pay you something that’s fine. If they want to pay you money, great. And this is not just in business, but in your personal life. Not all that long ago I had an ex-girlfriend contact me out of the blue, who I’d cut out of my life for being a flake many years earlier, and she tries to send me a text. I didn’t even have her name in my phone. It’s just a phone number that shows up and I just recognized the area code. She tries to tell me about this winery that closed down that we used to go to. It was a very lame attempt, expecting me to probably get back to them so they can do their flake thing. Honestly, I just had to block it because that kind of flakery does not fly in my book, and it should not fly in your book, dear listener. If somebody flakes on you for any reason whatsoever, you’ve got to be ruthless about cutting them out of your life, I mean cutting them out completely. I don’t care if it’s a business thing, personal thing, family thing. If somebody flakes, you cut them out. You can bring them back one day if they’ve proven and demonstrated they’re no longer like that, but until then, a flake is just 153 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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going to be like dandruff. It’s just going to fall out of your hair and onto your clothes and make you look bad and annoy you and frustrate you. Email Players Rule #103: •

Testing two turds against each other simply gives you a shinier turd.

PRODUCER JONATHAN: Really? I thought you couldn’t polish a turd. BEN SETTLE: Well, that’s the thing. Old-school copywriters understand this. It’s these new ones, the people who think that direct marketing was invented by Facebook. It’s those guys who think before Twitter there was no direct marketing – the millennials, basically. They don’t realize that this has been going on for over 100 years. It’s nothing new. The internet is nothing new. Facebook is nothing new. These are just media. They’ll come and go. Use them while they’re around. Some will stick around and some won’t. Direct mail has been around forever. It’s not going anywhere. Broadcast fax was taken away from people just like that, and 900 numbers. Even infomercials have come and gone. You cannot control the media. Something better than the internet will come along eventually. It’ll probably happen in the next decade or two, would be my guess. Something will completely replace the internet. People will still use the internet. You’ll still be able to sell on it, but it won’t be the big thing anymore. They’re always trying to come up with new things, like Snapchat’s the new thing, and everybody gets excited whenever something new comes out there. But the reality is this. Nothing has changed as far as this goes. You cannot polish a turd. You see this with copywriting. People will test whispers vs screams. They have an ad and it does a shitty crappy job, so they’ll change the headline, thinking that’s going to solve it. It’s still a turd offer. Nobody wants the offer, but they think changing the headline is going to do it. Or conversely they change something insignificant in the ad. It it’s a turd, it’s a turd. If nobody wants the product, nobody wants the offer, you can polish that thing all day long. You might get a 1-2% boost, but you’re not going to get the big things at all from testing two turds against each other. You might as well just get rid of the turd and actually have a real offer. That’s my point. It’s very simple, Jonathan, which is why most people listening to this will go forth and ignore it and still sell whatever. That’s my optimistic thought of the day. 154 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Email Players Rule #104: •

Always be closing.

This is an old-school sales thing. There’s nothing new about this, but I was reminded of it a couple years ago when I had lunch with Ryan Stewman, the Hardcore Closer – a great marketer, great salesman, great sales trainer. He’s really good, by the way, at making himself a celebrity out there. He’s really out there doing that kind of stuff, which I find very fascinating. In fact, he lives in Texas and I guess he was speeding at like 100 miles per hour or something, and the cops who pulled him over recognized him, so he got out of the speeding ticket. If that’s not a reason to actually get out there and make yourself prominent, I don’t know what it is. Here’s the point. He was telling us a story about how some guy asked him a question, a question that the guy should be paying for, like a consulting question, and Ryan said, “Just one second. What’s your PayPal email address?” and he told him, so Ryan sends him a PayPal invoice. I don’t know what he charges, probably $1,000/hour or something. The guy was thinking he’s going to get free advice or something, but Ryan sends him a PayPal invoice. He goes, “Always be closing.” He just said it so nonchalantly, like he does this every day. I always thought that was a very interesting thing. We’ve talked about ‘always be closing.’ We did a whole episode on the old podcast, Jonathan, about ‘always be closing’ and the ways you can do it, and it’s very important. You should always be closing. Just because you should always be closing doesn’t mean you should always be trying to close someone, and that’s a whole different thing. If you’re one of these people always trying to manipulate people into doing things, that’s not going to work. But ‘always be closing’ means you’re always asking for the sale. You’re always asking for the sale. You’re doing it either passively or aggressively, it doesn’t matter, but you’re always going in that direction. We have a whole episode on that somewhere in the archives, Jonathan. I don’t know what number it is. There’s like 135 episodes of the old show. Somebody will have to use the search function and they can find it. Finally to round off this episode, Email Players Rule #105: •

Better to be a warrior in the garden, than a gardener in a war.

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I don’t know who said this, Jonathan. It’s some proverb somewhere. Maybe Sun Tzu. I have no idea who said it. Probably some martial artist. A lot of people who study the hardcore martial arts actually aren’t violent people. They don’t go around trying to pick fights and stuff. In fact, they may never get in a real fight in their real life because they’re actually trying to avoid that. They actually do just want to be gardeners and be left alone, but they’re prepared for when something is going to happen. Here’s an example of this. There’s a lot of writers out there. Jonathan, I know you know a lot of these people too, writers especially who just are averse to selling. The idea of selling horrifies them, but they’re always complaining that they can’t get anyone to buy their stuff because they’re scared to sell, or at least sell in an aggressive manner. They need to learn to be warriors, in the sense they need to learn some direct response marketing. They need to be creating a list and writing an email to it every day to sell what they have. I know this sounds very complicated, Jonathan. I don’t mean to confuse you or anybody else, but that’s the way it is. You don’t have to be a starving artist. Be the artist that’s fat and happy. That’s the way that I see it. So that rounds out these lost 7 Email Players Rules, 99-105. Next week, Jonathan, this next episode in some ways is the most valuable one I probably will have ever done, I’m guessing, for people who understand what I’m about to talk about. For people who get it, if they’re not doing it and they’re not thinking this way – you know how they use the term ‘paradigm shift’ and ‘game changer’ and all these trendy lame words? We’ll call it all that. For a lot of people who have not thought about it, and those who have who aren’t taking advantage of it, need to re-hear it anyway. There’s not very many people who take the mindset we’re going to talk about next week, but I do think it’s the most profitable thing I can impart on everyone. I did not invent it. I learned it from someone else who said it, and it didn’t dawn on me until about 11 years ago when I first heard it, and I’ve been working towards it ever since, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly. This, I think, will be one that people won’t want to miss. You can miss all the other ones, but don’t miss this one. That’s all I got. PRODUCER JONATHAN: That is another BenSettle.com podcast in the can. We’ll be back in your ears next week.

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Chapter 16

Email Players Rules 106-112 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of BenSettle.com and the BenSettle.com friendly neighborhood podcast. Jonathan, I teased everybody a little bit, especially people who listened to the last version of this podcast that one of us called The Ben Settle Show. We periodically used to do these things called Email Players Rules episodes, and I’m saying this for new people who have no idea what this means. People who are long-term in my audience know what it is already, but these Email Players Rules are kind of like my very small meek version of a cult following. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Meek? BEN SETTLE: Exactly, meek and humble. I have a cult-like audience just for these rules, and all they are this. They’re just rules, maxims, ideas, and principles that I follow in my business and personal life that have helped me out tremendously. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Ben, I know you’re going to get into this but I have to jump in here as fanboy and say that today we’re doing 106 and up. The last time we were on the air doing the old show we were under 100 somewhere, so I know there’s some lost episodes. Are those just going to stay lost forever? I know you gave them away with the Villains book, but are people just never going to hear those few Email Players Rules that are kind of out there in the ether? BEN SETTLE: I’ll figure something out with that. I was thinking about that today, actually. It’s funny you brought that up. I think there were two episodes like that – at least one, if not two – because there were 12 lost episodes. I try to do one every five or six episodes, but I’ll figure something out for people who are really stressing out. I’m sure there’s people just stressing out about this. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Short circuiting. “Numbers do not compute.” BEN SETTLE: You know what they need to learn, Jonathan – and I’m going to do them a favor. I’m making them better people, and this is what we do on the BenSettle.com podcast. We make people better by making them more patient and less emotional and more focused. So when it happens it will be a surprise,

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a pleasant surprise hopefully, depending – anyway, you’ve ruined my train of thought, you bastard. PRODUCER JONATHAN: You’re welcome. That’s what I’m here for. BEN SETTLE: And I appreciate that because that helps me with my patience level. You see what I mean? It all works together. There was a time when I would have let a mushroom cloud mofo at that. I would start yelling at you and stuff. I would have yelled at Cupcake, even though she had nothing to do with it. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Threaten our lives. BEN SETTLE: Start threatening you guys, but I’m not going to do that. I’m simply going to pick up where I think I left off in explaining what this is. They’re just rules and maxims and principles that I follow through my life that have helped me out tremendously. Some of these things I’ve learned from other people, and I try to give credit where credit’s due. Some things I’ve just kind of stumbled upon on my own. Some things I kind of had to think through and figure out through a lot of deep thinking, because certain challenges come up in your life, and everybody reacts differently to adversity. Me personally, it makes me become more introspective. Anyway, that’s where all these came from. The idea for Email Players Rules came from another podcast. This is an example of me swiping an idea from a completely different niche. This would be the Beige Phillip Show with host Dante Nero. He’s a comedian and former exotic dancer and former pimp. If you listen to his show he’s a former this and former that, and he has these things called the Beige Phillip Rules. Those are rules for guys who need to get their balls back, basically. That’s the kind of show that is, a relationship show. I said, “That’s a great idea. I’m going to do some Email Players Rules episodes,” and so we are. We’re on #106 now, so we’re over 100, which is pretty cool. Unless you have anything you want to interject here, Jonathan, before I get started, I’ll just roll right through these. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Roll, baby, roll. BEN SETTLE: Email Players Rule #106: •

You attract what you are, not what you want

Jonathan, I’m sure you see this a lot. People get very frustrated in business or in their personal lives because they’re attracting the wrong people into their 158 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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lives. For businesses, to me it makes no sense because if you suit your business to suit your preferences this should never be a problem. For example, I have known many, many, many people – not as many anymore as I used to because I cut most of these people out of my life – but I know a lot of people who are very cheap-minded. They’re cheapskates. They’re price shoppers. These are the people who will drive 30 miles out of the way to save 30 cents/gallon on gas. It makes no sense. It’s like their time means nothing to them. They’re price shoppers, cheapskates, and then they’ll complain that, “Oh man, all I get buying from me are price shoppers and cheapskates.” They never really put it together. The common denominator here is you. You can’t blame them. I’m not a big fan of the opportunity-minded people – being people who are just chasing different things all the time. “I didn’t learn something here. Forget that, I’m going to go get this product. Oh, forget that, I’m going to go with that one. Ooo, that guy’s teaching something real sexy, I’m going to go over there and forget this other thing I’m learning.” They never learn anything. They’re chasing opportunities. They look at products as, for example, expenses and not investments. I’m talking about business-building products that are going to make you better. For example, they’ll look at Email Players and say, “This is an expense I can’t afford,” that whopping $3.23 per day, but they’re pissing out $5 in coffee every day at Starbucks. That’s their mindset, the opportunity mindset. Meanwhile the smarter customers, the ones that I’m trying to attract toward me, the investment-minded people are the exact opposite. They look at it as an investment. They know if they invest $97 this month they’re going to make $900 or $9000 back, depending on what they do with the information. My whole point is you attract what you are, not what you want. If you want to have different people in your life, if you want to get rid of low-class jackass people who are coming into your life, whether your personal life or your business life, you have to change because you’re the common denominator in all your problems. This goes back to another Email Players Rule, Jonathan. I have no idea what number it is because we did so many of them, but “It’s always your fault.” Whatever it is, it’s always your fault. I know there’s going to be some idiot that writes me and says, “What about if there’s a baby getting abused.” We’re not talking about that, so a little bit of context goes a long way, especially if you listen to the show. 159 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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And that’s the thing. What I just did there, Jonathan, is I hope it repelled people away who don’t understand context. I’m trying to repel what I don’t want, and people who do understand context and realize what idiot would actually complain about something like that know what I’m talking about and they’re more likely to want to stick around, so I hope this makes sense. This applies to your emails, it applies to your sales letters, it applies to your podcast, it applies to your social media, and all of it. You attract what you are, not what you want. If you want to attract better people, better customers, better relationships, better everything, you need to make yourself better. Jonathan, I’m not trying to tell you this like I’m lecturing you personally on this. You’re just the one I’m talking to right now. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I’m the whipping boy. BEN SETTLE: You attract great things into your life, I know you do. You attracted me into your life, and Cupcake, and your son and all that. You’re doing it right. That’s what I’m talking about. Anyway, enough said on that one. Email Players Rule #107: •

There are no feminists when the ship hits the iceberg.

PRODUCER JONATHAN: “Women and children first.” BEN SETTLE: It’s kind of like there’s no atheists in foxholes. Suddenly there’s an old-time prayer meeting going on. But here’s what I mean by this. Yes, I am taking a shot at feminists, but not directly. I’ll take any opportunity to take a shot at a feminist because they’re feminists, but here’s what I mean by this. It’s very true. When the Titanic’s going down, guess who got to go on all the boats? Bill Burr did a great spot on this. Bill Burr should be required listening for everyone. When he did his joke about it – I guess he was arguing with his girlfriend, this hardcore feminist – she goes, “Why do you think you get to get paid $1 more per hour and I don’t?” and he goes, “Because when the ship’s going down, I’m the one that has to stay on board and you get to go in the lifeboat. That’s why I get $1 more an hour.” There’s an awful lot of truth to that and it’s true, but it goes beyond that. Jonathan, you may find me saying this not so shocking, but there’s a lot of people in this audience who are not used to my antics and who are probably listening to me for the first time, and they’re going to have a little conniption 160 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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after what I say. They’re going to freak out a little bit. They’re going to angrily draft up an email telling me how wrong I am and all this stuff. Even though I have all the facts on my side it doesn’t matter. This is how it’s going to be, and I welcome that kind of stuff. I recommend someone do some angry push-ups first just to get some of that evil out of their system first, or put that energy toward writing an email that will sell something instead of trying to complain to me when I’m just going to laugh at you. My whole thing is the whole concept of equality is complete and utter bullshit. It’s never existed, it never will exist, and it’s used by a lot of bad people throughout history to do many bad things. One example, a great example actually, would be like the old communist regimes and all that. That’s how they got everybody hooked in. “Everyone’s equal” and all this stuff. There’s no such thing as equality. No two people in this world are ever going to be equal. Equal opportunity, yes. Equal in deserving of dignity, yes. I’m not talking about that. What I’m saying is this. It’s never existed and never will. Not everybody is fair. The book Animal Farm is probably the best example of this. Some animals are more equal than others. We’re all equal, but some animals are more equal than others. He was talking about the old communists, Stalinists and Leninists and all that, because that’s what they would do. That’s just how it is. You think the political class considers you their equal? I know there’s people listening to this who are still butt hurt over Trump winning and all that. By the way, let the record show, Jonathan, I did a whole show on why I’m not voting for Trump, and this was like a year before the election. I said, “I’m not voting for the guy,” and I gave my reasons. First of all, he’s not a conservative or right wing or whatever. He’s not. He’s just an economic nationalist and he’s going to put America first, but he’s very, very left-wing in a lot of areas, and people are probably going to start seeing that very soon. Either way, people have been butt hurt about Trump. If they really think that Hilary and Bernie and all those people don’t think they’re better than them, the political class thinks they’re better than you. That’s why they talk down to you and that’s why they do all this stuff. They don’t consider you their equals, but they’ll use the word ‘equality.’ None of them think you’re their equal. That’s why they get better health care than you and that’s why they get better perks than you and all that stuff. Forget the political part, Jonathan. I have an example from the corporate world, since everybody is so obsessed with social media. There’s a blogger 161 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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named Vox Day and I read his stuff. There’s a lot of people who don’t like Vox Day. A lot of people misquote him and all that. He is who he is. You’re not going to agree with everything he says. I don’t agree with everything he says, but he is what he is. I respect the guy quite a bit as a writer and as a deep thinker. He did this blog post back in November. Are we in February now, Jonathan? I don’t know with this whole time warp thing we’ve got going on with how we pre-record these. It was last October or last November, and he was showing an example of how equality just doesn’t exist and it’s never going to exist. I guess somebody did an experiment with this. They did two tweets using two different accounts. One tweet said, “I fucking hate white people and they’re inconsiderate asses for voting for Trump. Fuck you.” That was one tweet. Then they reported it to Twitter because that’s pretty bad. Twitter said, “Well, it’s okay. That doesn’t violate any of our rules,” so it’s okay if you hate white people and you hate Trump. That’s okay. Fuck you. It’s fine. According to Twitter it’s free speech, fine. By the way, I don’t care because I don’t like censorship at all, so that doesn’t bother me personally. If somebody says that I don’t really care, but here’s the thing that will probably bother some people. They did another tweet using a different account saying, “I fucking hate black people and they’re inconsiderate asses for voting for Clinton. Fuck you.” The exact same tweet, just a different color and a different politician. Twitter suspends that one. Said they broke all the rules, and he showed screen shots of this. My whole point is this. Life isn’t fair. There is no equality. It’s not fair. Deal with it. Who cares? Everybody comes into this world with different advantages, or I’ll use the word that everyone likes to use, Jonathan. I’ll use privilege, because that’s the word all the social justice warriors like to use. It’s true. Some people are more privileged than others. Some people have advantages that others don’t. That’s life. You can’t change it. You can sit there and obsess over it and try to bring others down, or you can try to make yourself better. That’s really your only choice. I’m not saying it’s fair because it’s not fair, but life isn’t fair. This whole idea of equality and all this shit – it’s just not there. You can either accept it and deal with it and actually beat it and – Jonathan, I’m going to use the word that all the chick shows use – ‘empower’ yourself. We talked about power in the first episode of this prestigious podcast. Half the audience is pumping their fist at me right now, but just empower yourself. Just try to gain power in your life.

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A lot of this stuff is just not going to affect you. That’s my advice to everybody. Privilege or not, wherever you’re at, unless you’re a complete invalid and you can’t do anything, you can always act and that’s what I’m going to say. Enough with that one, Jonathan. I’ve already spent I don’t know how much time on that. PRODUCER JONATHAN: That’s a whole show right there. I’m getting pissed off just listening to you. BEN SETTLE: That was like a whole show. I told people I’m going to not hold back as much as I did in the Ben Settle Show, not that I held back a lot in that one, but that was a reflection upon you and certain things too, because you were the partner on that, but this is all on me now. You can’t blame Jonathan for stuff. He’s not guilty by association, very much, maybe a little bit. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I want you to kick it up a notch. BEN SETTLE: Reach in there and turn it up a notch. Alright, let’s keep going here. Maybe I can do that. We’ll see. In the next episode I am going to kick it up. I’m going to offend a lot of people in the next one, and not on purpose, not because I want, but the very nature of what I’m going to do is going to offend a lot of Christians especially. I am a Christian guy and I’m not trying to do this, but there’s a lot of them who kind of need to grow up, so that will be interesting. Would you call that an open loop, what I just did there? PRODUCER JONATHAN: That’s an open loop for you. BEN SETTLE: The open loop. Email Players Rules #108: •

Don’t sell people what they aren’t buying.

You may be tempted to call me Captain Obvious for bringing this up, “Don’t sell people what they’re not buying,” but this happens every single day. This is why people struggle in marketing. They’re sitting there trying to sell things that people don’t want. They simply don’t want it. Just because you think it’s a great product doesn’t mean anybody wants it. You know, Jonathan, I like to talk about interpersonal relationships and dating once in a while on these shows, so let’s take an example. Some chick just 163 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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followed me on Twitter recently and she’s all empowered and all this – “I am woman, hear me roar” and all that shit. By the way, don’t take that as picking on anyone. I love people like that. Their horse shit is so out there in the open. They’re like a piece of clay I can mold. If they’ll just listen to my show, Jonathan, I will have them on the right track very quickly. But she’s on there tweeting over and over and over about how men like a confident woman over looks, and she’s also saying she’s single. And she’s not bad-looking, that’s the whole thing. Assuming that’s her real picture she’s not bad-looking, but I can tell you right now that’s not what guys are buying. We already have confidence. We already have friends that are confident. We’re looking for attributes we don’t have. A nice ass doesn’t hurt, maybe a generous pair of breasts, a pretty face, someone who keeps themselves in shape. We don’t care how many degrees you have. We don’t care if you have a Masters degree or a Ph.D. We’re not looking for a tutor. I remember hearing the great – maybe great in some ways, not in others – but the great late Patrice O’Neal was talking about this once. He’s like, “Look, I don’t care if she can read or not. I’ll teach her to read if she needs to learn how to read.” That’s not what he’s looking for either. He’s not looking for a tutor. “I’m glad you have a car, but I’m not looking for a chauffeur either. That’s not the attributes I’m looking for.” So that’s an example. A lot of girls are out there selling guys what they’re not buying, and they’re frustrated. On the other hand, there’s a lot of guys out there selling girls what they’re not buying. They’re trying to up the romantic vibe and all this stuff, and their feelings and all that. That’s not what they want. You always go by what people are buying, not by what they say they want. I don’t think Cupcake married you because you were busting out your heart every day and writing her poetry, I’m guessing. PRODUCER JONATHAN: She married me because I’m an asshole, but she’ll never admit it. BEN SETTLE: She knew the asshole she was marrying and she embraced it. And she probably complains sometimes. She probably complains a little bit. “Oh Jon, I wish once in a while you just wouldn’t be so asshole-ish,” and you just winked at her and you said, “You know, Cupcake, that sandwich ain’t gonna make itself,” and then all was well. 164 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Then you used the wet towel to kind of slap her in the butt to hurry up and get going, and all was good in the Rivera household after that because you didn’t listen to what they had to say. You did what you know she’s buying, which is your asshole-ish-ness. People say I’m bad. Look at you, dude. I’m telling you, you rival me in this area. PRODUCER JONATHAN: No! I’m going to tell you right now, you’re getting out on the road, you’re getting out of your cave, and you’re getting soft on me. We need to get you back under that bridge in the mud, in the dirt, and get you angry again. BEN SETTLE: I’m working back up to it. Email Players Rule #107 there was not exactly endearing probably to people. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Maybe I’m immune to you and that’s why. BEN SETTLE: But that’s good. They just need to grow up a little bit, that’s all. You know, Jonathan, that’s why I’m here. I’m here to help them. I’ll take care of them. I’m happy to take care of them. Don’t worry about it. Audience, I’ve got your back. I will take care of you. I will lead, guide, and direct you to where you need to go in life, and we’re going to start with Email Players Rule #109: •

Having a gym membership is great, but even better is gym attendance.

How many people do you know like that? They go and get a gym membership and never use it. It does them no good. If you don’t go it does nothing for you. It’s kind of like the difference between reading and doing. People buy a book but they never actually read it, but then they’ll show off their bookcase full of books and their $10,000 library. It’s all horse crap. Just remember there’s no point in having all those books if you’re not reading them. And as I say, Jonathan, as I said on the old show, it’s better to read the 10 best books 10 times than 100 books one time anyway, so pick the really good stuff and go through it. Get a deep knowledge and not a wide knowledge. That’s pretty self-explanatory. Email Players Rule #110: We talked a little bit about this in one of the last episodes. •

Real game is no game.

With ‘game’ we’re talking about the game of life, like ‘guy has game.’ He can go out and charm people and stuff. They say he’s got game.

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If you’re coming at things tactically – you have to learn tactics, I’m not saying you don’t, but it has to become principles that are just ingrained in your psyche. When you approach things with a principle-based way of doing things, you ingrain all this stuff in your mind and you don’t even have to think about it. You’re now unconsciously competent, like driving a car. This is how it should be in everything you learn in life that you really want to get good at. First you start off having to think about things and all that, and freak out about, “How do I write this subject line?” for example for email, or “What do I say to this girl?” But eventually you just kind of get to a point where this becomes ingrained in you. It’s not about tricks and tips. It’s just about you. In fact, the movie Ip Man is about Grand Master Ip Man who is Wing Chun’s great. He’s one of the guys who made Wing Chun great and well-known. In that movie he’s fighting this guy who knows this other form of Kung Fu, and the guy is talking about his style. He goes, “It’s not the style, it’s you that matters.” In other words, it wasn’t the Wing Chun that made Ip Man great. It was his approach to fighting and all that, regardless of the style. And so it is with this. Real game is no game. Email Players Rule #111: •

Being a cheapskate and price shopper is no way to go through business, son.

I’ve got to say ‘son’ like I’m giving this life lesson. We talked about this a little bit about this. Cheap and free is really the new expensive. Everybody wants things cheap and free. Sometimes when I go off gallivanting around speaking at places, Jonathan, I meet new friends. There are just people that I meet that I’m like, “I like this person,” so I keep in touch with certain people for whatever reason, and they’ll start expecting me to give them free stuff. I’m thinking, “No. Why the hell would I do that?” First of all, I’m not going to give free stuff as a principle of how I do business because I know free is the new expensive, because whoever I’m talking about, they won’t apply it. They won’t take advantage of the knowledge. Jonathan, for a very long time I trained certain people – let’s just put it that way – and every time I did something for free for people they never took the knowledge and ran with it and used it. They just don’t do it.

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It’s not a character flaw, it’s not malicious, it’s none of that. It’s just that things that are free, where there’s no skin in the game, are simply not taken as seriously. If you go around being a cheapskate and a price shopper, you’re just making things more expensive on yourself long-term. Enough said on that. Finally, to wrap up this Email Players Rule episode, #112 – Jonathan, you’ll love this one and I’m sure you’ll agree with this: •

Successful people need loving too.

I know I do. I have helped certain people through some very hard times, and gotten nothing but contempt. It’s that whole thing, “No good deed goes unpunished.” It just happens. It’s no big deal. It’s my own fault, because again I’m the common denominator in this. It’s my fault. I’m not blaming them. My whole point is this, though. Sometimes successful people just get shit on. We just do. We get blamed for things. It’s all our fault. But at the end of the day, the economy is driven by successful people whether you like them or not. So if you’re a successful person, I say go treat yourself to a nice vacation or something nice. Buy the baby something nice at the store or whatever you want to do. Treat yourself because you deserve it, and while you’re treating yourself, feel free to give the middle finger to anyone who has a problem with it. That’s a wrap, Jonathan, for this Email Players Rules episode. Next week I kind of hinted at it, and not picking on any specific religion, by the way, I’m just saying there’s certain people who are not going to like what I have to say, but I’m going to talk about negative emotions and why you shouldn’t shy away from them. A lot of what people would consider negative and bad emotions and attributes are actually very good, and a lot of the things that people think are good attributes are actually very bad, or can be bad. That’s what we’ll talk about next week. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I can’t wait. Alright brochacho, that is a wrap. We will be back in your earbuds next time. Thank you for tuning in.

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Chapter 17

Email Players Rules 113-119 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of the BenSettle.com non-elite, nonprestigious podcast. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Dusty and old. BEN SETTLE: I’m not real good at the self-deprecating thing, Jonathan, but once in a while I like to show my humanity, so there we go. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I see it clearly. BEN SETTLE: There’s my chink in the armor, if you will. Last week I said we would do seven more Email Players Rules. It’s just been a while since we did some Email Players Rules, like the first five episodes. I think it was the fifth episode or something. It’s been a while. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Actually it was #6. It’s been a couple months. How have we recorded so many damn shows? BEN SETTLE: I don’t know, man. We’re on a roll. We’re running with it. Probably because I went six months without doing any podcasts, so I have to get it out of my system. It’s energy that needs to be released. I had to release the Kraken, if you will, and I’ve been enjoying this. I hope you’ve been enjoying this, I really do. As far as if the audience enjoys it, I don’t really care. I just do this for you and me, and if they happen to enjoy it with us, great. If they don’t, then why are they listening? I don’t know. Why would you listen to the show if you don’t like it? That would be my thought. Unless it’s just to see how much more mad I can make you, and I’m happy to do that, I really am. I can’t help people, Jonathan, if they don’t listen. And if they’re listening and they’re seething mad at me or they’re rolling their eyes and they’re not taking it seriously, then why bother? Why waste your time? Do you really not value it that much at all that you would actually waste time listening to a podcast that you don’t like?

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To me it makes about as much sense as these trolls on Amazon who leave a 1star review. They read the whole book and they thought it sucked. Why would you even go past page 2? It doesn’t make sense. I’m coming from the point of view of someone who values his time, so because I value my time, and I’d like to say I value everybody else’s time, but all the side trips and the little leeways I take on these things and I just go on all these tangents, I can’t say I totally respect everyone’s time. But I respect my entertainment to myself. Amusing myself is paramount. That said, one of my most amusing types of show to do is the Email Players Rules. Before I go onto the Email Players Rules I’m going to give you the lowdown. The long-term listeners know about it, but this isn’t for them. This is for the new listener, the person who hasn’t heard one of these yet. These are a set of maxims, philosophies, and principles by which I live life and do business, things that have helped me out tremendously, not just for making sales but just having peace of mind and living a peaceful and hopefully successful life. Life has its ups and downs. This isn’t going to protect you from bad things or anything. I got the idea from this guy named Dante Nero of the Beige Phillip show. His show is about showing guys how to get their balls back, and he has these things called the Beige Phillip Rules, which are maxims that he believes in. I said, “Man, I’m going to adapt that – swipe that, if you will – for my show and call it the Email Players Rules.” You notice, Jonathan, I give credit where credit’s due. I didn’t make this up. What I do is I pay homage to someone else who did this, and I say, “I’m going to use that,” and I even plug his show, the Beige Phillip Show. Now, listen to that show at your own risk if you have tender ears, because it’s definitely rated R. You could even say it’s not rated. It crosses into some pretty deep stuff – I don’t want to say shitty, it’s not shitty… PRODUCER JONATHAN: Pimping ain’t easy. BEN SETTLE: Yeah, it gets into some stuff, but again I got the idea from them. I didn’t make all these rules up. We’ve done 112 so far, so we’re going to cover 113-119. Some of them I made up and figured out. Some of them I’ve learned through trial and error. Some of them I’ve seen other people say or do, so I try to give credit where credit’s due in these things. Some of these were just brain farts I’ve had that I said, “Huh, let me apply this and test this in my life and see what happens.”

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The bottom line is this. If you’ve never heard an Email Players Rules episode, these are like the cult episodes. These are the ones that have the biggest following. I would guess, Jonathan – I have no idea because I haven’t looked at the stats, obviously, nor do I even obsess over such things – but I would guess that these get the most downloads for the most part of all of our shows. I could be wrong about that, but if I am wrong about it I can tell you the people who do follow these rules tend to be the more passionate listeners, and those are the ones I really cater to the most, besides myself and you, Jonathan. I cater to the passionate listeners, the ones who hate me or love me, but there’s no indifference. That said, let’s start with Email Players Rule #113, and these are continuing from the old podcast. If someone is listening to this and they’re like, “You’re only on episode 17 right now. How does the math work?” It’s because we did 137 episodes of the old podcast, the Ben Settle Antipreneur Show, and most of them are in those, and those are on my site. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Except there’s a lost batch in the 12 that we never released, so there’s some that you will never ever hear. BEN SETTLE: You’re right. There may be at least one, but maybe two in the 12 lost episodes, and I still haven’t decided what to do with those yet. Who knows. I’ll figure something out. If you listen to them all and you really want those, you’re going to have to pay attention because one day I’ll have some kind of way for you to access them, but it won’t be today. That said, back on track. Email Players Rule #113, and this isn’t Yoda-like advice or anything, so don’t expect to be blown over by it, but it is something that I think people should follow. •

Never ever kiss a snowflake’s butt or even allow them to stay on your list.

Snowflakes are these people who are so easily offended that they literally melt and crumble when the wind is just a little too strong. They also think they’re these unique little beautiful flowers. They put themselves on some kind of pedestal, which is fine. I don’t have a problem with that, but at the same time they’re so fragile that they don’t belong on that pedestal at all. That’s what I mean by snowflakes. They’re easily offended. I had this debate several months ago, not really a debate but kind of like a pissing match you could say, with this specific copywriting guru, and she turned out to be quite the snowflake. Everybody kept telling me, “She’s a badass, Ben. You better watch out.” No, she was a complete snowflake in every 170 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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possible way. I actually had to go easy on her, I really did. I held back because we have mutual friends and all. Really I don’t dislike the girl. That’s the thing. She just takes life a little too seriously, takes my satire and entertainment like it’s serious, opens herself up for more teasing, gets more riled and angry at me and starts spreading all these bullshit lies about me to other people, which then just caused more people to come to my website, opt in, and buy my stuff, so I should thank her. I did. I was like, “Thank you.” So whatever, that drama has ended, unless it’s erupted by the time this show is aired again. I don’t know, but that would be my example of a snowflake. They’re not bad people or anything. Don’t get me wrong, but I just don’t think you should keep them on your list unless you like dealing with them, unless you just like to trigger them or whatever, which is fine and I like to do. But in a lot of cases if you have a little snowflake, certainly don’t kiss their butt. I would just take them off your list, especially if they’re constantly complaining. If you send an email out every day and they reply every day with how offended they are, I would probably keep them because I kind of get off on that a little bit, but most people should just delete them. If it’s bothering you and it’s getting into your peace of mind, just get rid of them. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Quick detour, Ben. Those people, you say get them off your list. I’m wondering the flip side of that. What about the people that just write you too much, like they want you to be their pen pal. What do you do with those people? BEN SETTLE: I just ignore them, and there’s a little bit of asshole-ness going on there, but mostly I just don’t have time. Unless you’re an actual acquaintance of mine, I just don’t have time to back and forth over nonsense. I really don’t. People will try that and I don’t blame them. I don’t get mad at them or anything, I just ignore it. I read it and I hope they have a gmail address, because when they write me back that helps my deliverability apparently from what people are telling me. I’m talking about the snowflakes. Let them go haunt someone else. You don’t need them, unless you enjoy it, of course, and you can use it. Like I have no problem turning that kind of stuff into sales, but some people just don’t. They don’t want the drama. Just get rid of them. It’s no big deal.

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Email Players Rule #114. This is one of my favorite quotes. I think I was the first one to make this up, but honestly, Jonathan, I have no idea. It’s kind of playing on another thing. •

In the land of dumb asses, the smart ass is king.

This is a play on this one guy’s thing where he said, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” I say in the land of dumb asses, the smart ass is king. There is so much entertainment value in being a smart ass. We’re always told not to be a smart ass. “Oh, you’re a smart ass.” When you’re dealing with people who are clearly inferior to you, be a smart ass. Mock, do what you have to do, get what you need to get out of them, and then just don’t deal with them after that. I’m telling you, there’s a lot of dumb asses out there who will steal your time. They’ll take your energy. They’ll take your attention. They’ll take your money. Believe me, there are people who will do this, and if you let them you deserve it. But I say you just respond to them like a smart ass. Whenever some dumb ass asks for something that they shouldn’t even be asking for, believe me, I just respond back with some smart ass comment, and every time it works. They go scurry away and they will go haunt someone else, just like the snowflakes. So remember this, Jonathan, if you remember nothing else from this podcast, in the land of dumb asses, the smart ass is king. Email Players Rule #115: •

If you have to tell people that you have zero fucks to give, that means you give a fuck.

I’m sure you’ve seen this, Jonathan, around the interwebs, people going around saying, “I have zero fucks to give,” and they’ll make poetry out of it or something. “I had a fuck and it blossomed out of my hand, and then I had no more.” I mean they come up with the stupidest stuff. If they put this time and energy into writing an email to sell something, these people would make a lot of money, but instead they’re going around bragging about have they have zero fucks to give. If they say it, that means they obviously give a fuck, because if you really don’t care why do you have to tell anybody? PRODUCER JONATHAN: If you’ve gotta say it, you ain’t it. 172 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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BEN SETTLE: Exactly. This is very much related to the Email Players Rule, “If you’ve gotta say it, you ain’t it.” It’s a sub-set of that Email Players Rule. It’s like the child of that rule. You see it so many times. There’s even books now about it. “I give zero fucks.” So you give so little fucks that you had to write a book about it, a whole book? “I don’t care so much that I wrote a book about not caring so much.” Look, audience, you do what you want to do. I’m not here to wipe your nose, nor would I, but I would highly recommend instead of going around talking about how you don’t care, and trying to prove it by saying it, you simply adopt a mental attitude that you have a mission in life you’re pursuing and that’s what you’re thinking about. That’s what you wake up thinking about, that’s what you go to bed thinking about, and you really won’t care about all this other stuff. Here’s the thing. You can’t really be friendzoned, you can’t be manipulated, you can’t be flaked out on. We talked about being flaky people last week. You really can’t have these things happen to you if you have a mission you’re ardently pursuing. It just won’t happen because you don’t care, because you care about that mission instead. Jonathan, right now I’m deep into editing my novels. I want to get these things completely published by the end of the year and all that. This is one of my consuming missions right now because I’m excited to have a whole 7-book series. I don’t know anyone who’s done that so it makes me kind of like, “Hey, I got something to brag about.” I guess it’s ego, or whatever the reason is, it is one of my burning desires right now. When I’m spending 5-6 hours a day on that, do I really care if somebody flakes out? I actually almost want them to. It’s fine. I almost prefer somebody flake on me in that case so I can get back to working on my thing. Good, I’m going to get more work done. It’s not like this tough guy posture, it’s literally that I’ve got my mind on this other thing that’s more important than everything else, so I don’t care about everything else and what happens out there. That’s my whole point. If you need guidance on that, I’m only too happy to do this for the listeners. If they need a guide on this go to EmailPlayers.com/villains. Actually, I don’t know if that forwards to the Amazon page. Just go to Amazon and type in Ben Settle Villains, and my book, Persuasion Secrets of the World’s Most Charismatic and Influential Villains will show up. I have a whole chapter on just the mission.

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Jonathan, if there’s one thing about that book that I get the most compliments about – and not just compliments, but literally that this changed the way people think about things and their lives are on better courses now – it’s that whole part about getting a mission. Once you get that, everything else falls right into place. So many things will fall into place if you just do that. Email Players Rule #116: •

Trying to get a no is the best way to get a yes.

That sounds almost like a contradiction, doesn’t it, Jonathan? Like how does that work? This could be an entire series of podcast episodes itself. This is something I learned from the late great Jim Camp, who I always talk about on here, the world’s most-feared negotiator in his day. He was all about trying to get people to tell him no. He would rather you tell him no. You know what he did, Jonathan, that made him a lot of money? He was a commercial airline pilot, and as a part-time job he was selling expensive water filters door-to-door, because I guess he wasn’t making enough just as a pilot. For three weeks he couldn’t make a single sale. He was following the script. He was the best objection dealer in the world. He could counter every objection. He knew all the sales tricks and all that. Still doors slammed in his face one after another. Finally he throws out the script. I guess the neighborhood had terrible water quality so he goes, “Look, I don’t really know if I can help you or not, but how is the water here treating your hair?” That was his sales pitch. “How is the water treating your hair?” He got in their world. He didn’t try to sell them anything or any of that, so he made sales doing that. But then something else happened. He went to all the people that had told him no before he figured this out, and he went to them and said, “Look, I kind of did you a disservice when I saw you last time. Would you do me a favor and just tell me no? I’m going to ask you to do something, but would you just tell me no and I’ll just leave you alone. I didn’t really do you a service last time.” He said he turned a whole bunch of those people who told him no into sales doing that, but just asking them to tell him no. “If this doesn’t fit, just tell me no and I will leave. I prefer you to tell me no than waste any more of your time,” and that’s how he got yes’s. You cannot get people to be completely honest with you until you get them to tell you no. It’s the weirdest thing. It’s very counterintuitive, but I do it in my copy all the time, in my emails and my sales letters. I’m constantly just being completely blatantly honest about something like, “Look, this is very expensive. 174 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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I’m the first to admit this is expensive, and if money is a thing for you, you should probably just pass on this.” I want them to tell me no. I don’t want them going into debt over something I’m selling, for example. I don’t like that. But paradoxically you will get a yes a lot of times when you try to get people to tell you no, and it works in relationships, too. If you’re a guy listening to this and you’re trying to pursue this girl and you can’t tell if she really likes you or she’s just not that into you, just go up to her and say, “Look, let’s just be friends, okay? I’m not sensing that you’re really into this, and that’s completely fine, so let’s just be friends and I’m going to go pursue someone else who is more interesting.” You’d be amazed. If that girl is just playing a game or whatever, you’d be amazed how much that would change someone’s attitude, just by you telling them no and trying to get them to tell you no. It’s just a powerful thing. There’s a whole book on this I’ve been reading. It’s one of the books I’ll read 10 times called No: The Only Negotiation System You’ll Need for Work and Home by Jim Camp. I highly recommend it. Email Players Rule #117: •

Always go for the kiss on the first date.

This has two meanings, a double meaning. First of all, the literal meaning. Now, if the date is going bad and she’s obnoxious and you don’t like her and maybe you’re not that attracted to her after all, I’m not talking about that. But if you actually like the girl you just went on a first date with, you genuinely like her and all that, you might as well go in for the kiss. You’ve got to let it be known what your intentions are. Now, she may turn away. That’s happened. Remember that story I told, Jonathan, about the girl who I tried to go for and then she said no, and then at midnight she said, “Okay, now we can do it because it’s not technically the first date.” PRODUCER JONATHAN: The female rationalization hamster. BEN SETTLE: It was totally the rationalization hamster, and I walked away after that. I said, “I get it, but I’m moving on,” and then she followed me down the street in her car. That was over three years ago. That girl has since been married and has a child, so congratulations to her, but she did have the 175 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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privilege, Jonathan, of dating me for about a month and a half, and what a fun time it was, because I went for the kiss. Had I just sat there and said, “Oh, I’m just going to play it timid and all that,” she never would have known what my intentions were. She probably would have friendzoned my ass and so be it. This has another meaning too, though, in business. People ask me, “How many emails do you wait to sell somebody?” I say the first email. Go for the kiss on the first date and the first email. It doesn’t mean you have to try to have sex with them on the first date, but at least go in for the kiss. The first email, I at least put a link in there for people to buy from. I’m not here trying to build up their value and their ego and all that. I’m here to sell them something that can improve their lives. The only way I can do that is by going in for the kiss on the first date, so to speak. It saves you time and weeds out the people who aren’t interested. It does so many good things for you to just do this in every aspect of your life. Email Players Rule #118: •

It’s a dog eat dog world and we’re all wearing Milk Bone underwear.

I heard this from a guy in the MLM world when I was in MLM. He was one of the top distributors in that company. His name is Chris McGarahan, a brilliant speaker and brilliant salesman. You talk about a story. This guy was selling cars in the 90s. He was a sales manager and I think he was selling at a car dealership or something, and he was so stressed out that one night he woke up in the middle of the night and he told his wife, “You’ve got to call someone. Something’s wrong.” Apparently his heart almost literally beat out of his chest. That can actually happen. The paramedics came and they got him fixed up and they said, “We see this all the time from people in your profession,” so the next day he went in and quit his job, and that’s when he went out looking for business opportunities and that’s how he found MLM. You can find this guy on the internet still if you’re looking for sales training. I highly recommend him, Chris McGarahan. I remember him saying that. “It’s a dog eat dog world and we’re all wearing Milk Bone underwear,” and it’s true. There are people out to get you right now. If you have any goal in your life whatsoever, and this is especially true if you’re now seeing some success and people are watching you, there are people waiting to take you down. There are dogs out there hungry, looking at your testicles and they want to eat something. 176 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Believe me, some of them will pose as your friends. They’ll smile at you, but then go and talk about you behind your back, and you’ve got to watch out for these people because loyalty is everything in this world. That could be a whole other thing, just the concept of loyalty and how rare it is, but for now just realize you’ve got to keep people loyal to you. Do not keep people around you who are not loyal, because those are the snarling dogs that are going to try to eat your balls, and don’t let them do it. Email Players Rule #119: •

Lay that egg and get it over with.

This was a line of dialogue from a movie called The Princess and the Pirate. It was a Bob Hope movie. I saw it so many years ago that I can’t remember the exact context, but somebody was cackling or something and he was like, “Just lay that egg and get it over with,” because they wouldn’t stop cackling and laughing. This reminded me of something that happened to me when I spoke at the AWAI copywriting boot camp and job fair last fall. There was a person named Mandy, and she’s been on my email list for a year or two, and she really was mad at me, Jonathan, seething mad at me for all this time apparently. I may have even mentioned her in a podcast this year. I can’t remember, but she was mad at me because she didn’t think I made Email Players very appealing to women because of the jokes I make and all that. She was really legitimately mad at me. She goes, “Your emails really piss me off,” because I remember asking her. I said, “Look, which subject lines made you mad?” I had a conversation with her, and she and I ended up becoming like pals over that. She stopped being angry with me, and she had held it in for all that time, when all that time she could have just brought this to my attention. Subsequently after that she became an Email Players subscriber and she had me on her podcast. I think she’s really cool. She plays Dungeons and Dragons and all this stuff. My point is this. Had she just laid that egg and got it over with she wouldn’t have been seething for all that time and she would have benefited by being an Email Players subscriber earlier. I’ll just leave it at that. So lay that egg. Don’t hold things in. Just lay it. Lay that egg and be done with it. That’s the only way you can “next” people and move on anyway if you have to. Holding onto stuff like that is not good for you. Jonathan, that’s it for this time. Next time I’m going to go in more depth on this idea of why no is good, that we just talked about briefly, and the stuff I’ve 177 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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learned from Jim Camp on this. I think it’ll be a very interesting episode for the listeners, so we’ll see you then. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Can’t wait. That’s a wrap for the BenSettle.com podcast. We’ll be back in your earbuds next time. Thank you for tuning in.

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Chapter 18

Email Players Rules 120-126 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of the BenSettle.com podcast, and we are going to do another seven glorious Email Players Rules. There’s well over 100 now, Jonathan. It’s #120-126 today. I never thought we’d make it to 100, quite frankly, on those, but I always thought that we’d end them around 50 or 60. I’m like, “I don’t have anything to say after that,” but apparently I have too much to say. I don’t shut up, apparently. Do you know there was a girl who accused me recently, Jonathan, that when I hung out with her I guess I’m a chatterbox? When I’m hanging 1-on-1 with a girl that I’m hanging out with, I guess I just have no problem talking. I will do all the talking. I have no problem doing that because my life is just more interesting than theirs. It’s just how it goes. But she was very angry when I wouldn’t keep talking to her on Facebook Messenger. I hate chatting on those things. She goes, “You won’t shut up in real life, and I can’t get you to say anything on here.” I said, “Well, that’s the way it goes. I don’t know what to tell you.” I don’t know what this has to do anything. The idea for Email Players Rules – and I have to say this every time because I like to give credit where credit’s due – I got this idea from the Beige Phillip podcast by Dante Nero, who’s a comedian and former pimp. That’s what he calls himself, at least. He’s a former exotic dancer of the year and all this stuff, and he has a very raunchy podcast – or it’s not for any snowflakes, that’s for sure – which shows guys how to get their balls back basically. He has things codified into rules and he calls them the Beige Phillip rules. I thought, “Man, I could do that with my podcast.” The Email Players Rules are obviously named after my Email Players newsletter, and so it is. I’ve got to say one other thing, Jonathan. I’ve got to say one other thing because if I don’t say this people will start quoting some of these as if I said them, and some of these I did not make up. These are just maxims, rules, and principles that I live life by, business and personal. Some of these things I’ve discovered on my own. Some things I’ve had taught to me. Some things I’ve just observed others say or do. Sometimes they’re quotes from other people. Sometimes they’re quotes I somehow pulled out of my bootocks, and so it is. They’re all over the thing. 179 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Email Players Rule #120 is going to sound so profound, Jonathan. This is going to be the most profound of all of them. •

Keep breathing, because you never know what the tide will bring tomorrow.

That comes from a movie called Castaway, which I had watched a few months ago. It wasn’t the first time I saw it, but it was the first time in a while that I’ve seen it. That movie came out in like 2000 I think. I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not, Jonathan. It’s the one with Wilson in it, the soccer ball that’s his friend. It’s Tom Hanks and he’s been rescued and he’s talking to his friend, because he’s lost everything. In the seven years or however many years it was he was gone, his fiancé or girlfriend at the time, who was the love of his life, she’s married to another man and has a kid and a house and all this, and he’s lost her. She was his everything. She was the reason that kept him going every day, why he didn’t just succumb and die, because he wanted to see her again. That’s how much he loved her. He drew a picture of her in the cave and that’s all he had. He had this picture of her with him and that was everything. She was everything to him. He realized one time when he tried to kill himself on the island, or he wanted to kill himself but he just couldn’t do it logistically and not have it be a painful experience, he goes, “That’s when I realized I just have to keep breathing. I just have to keep breathing every day. Just get up and keep breathing,” and he did. Then one day the tide brought in a part of a porta-potty, like a door of a portapotty or something, and he looked at it and he realized he could turn that into a sail. He couldn’t get past the tide and all that if he tried to go out to sea. He could build a boat and everything, but he needs to get through those big waves, so he realized that that sail came in. He was telling his friend. He goes, “And then one day a sail came in. I just kept breathing and I was there and a sail came and here I am. Now I’ve got ice in my glass. I’ve lost everything, but I just kept breathing because you never know what the tide is going to bring in.” Some people might say, “Ben, that’s a little bit of gay example that you just brought up. Ooo, that’s a real big Email Players Rule, Ben. You’re really bowling me over.”

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Here’s the point. For people just starting out like in copywriting especially, or any business really, where you’re really struggling with getting clients and customers and all that, just realize you’ve just got to be in the game every day because you never know when a client’s going to come around. You never know when a big customer is going to come around. You never know when some kind of break is going to come along, like somebody is going to want to joint venture with you. You just have to be in there every day consistently doing your thing. Your thing should be writing a daily email, of course, not that no one’s ever heard me say that before, but that should be the thing. You should just be in there every day consistently, and you don’t know what opportunity might come along. I’ve had so many weird opportunities come up, Jonathan, just because I’m consistently in the game every day, things I never could have planned out. I remember back when I was struggling as a freelancer and a client would just come out of nowhere, literally out of nowhere, and say “I love reading your stuff and I’d like to hire you.” I didn’t even know who these people were, and some of them ended being some of my best clients and highest-paying clients. You’ve just got to stay in the game because you never know what’s going to happen tomorrow, so don’t give up. I guess that’s another way of saying it. Just don’t give up. Keep breathing. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I feel a Journey song coming on. BEN SETTLE: Heaven forbid. Email Players Rule #121: •

When the green-eyed monster laughs, act confident and pray.

This is an epiphany I had last year actually, Jonathan. I noticed there’s certain people – let’s say girls, for example, we’ll pick on girls again – who get very confident because maybe they’re really hot, they’re really pretty, they’re in really good shape, and they have like 1,000 guys. They can’t even leave the house without guys hitting on them so they get confident, until they find a guy that they like who doesn’t really just like them. They might be dating multiple girls or they may just not be as interested. That’s when the jealousy comes out, and that jealousy will reduce the most confident person to a pile of jello. I’ve seen it happen so many times. I’m sure it’s happened to probably everyone listening to this in some way, shape, or form. You think you’ve got it all together, and this goes beyond girls and all that. I’m just saying in general. 181 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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“Oh, I’ve got this great client. They would never get rid of me,” and suddenly they’re talking to your competitor, and suddenly you’re getting jealous and all that confidence goes away and it starts screwing with your head. Just realize what’s going on. This is a completely emotional thing. It’s not necessarily something you need to panic about, but that jealousy can help you if you use it to go further and you use it to work harder and try harder. Don’t fight it. Go with it. When the green-eyed monster comes at you because you get jealous of something or someone, use that to work harder and don’t get lazy. Don’t get complacent and it will be your friend. The green-eyed monster will be like a friend of yours. It’ll be like you have the green-eyed monster chained up with a muzzle on it so it can’t attack you, but you can control it and have it attack other things. That’s the only analogy I can think of for that, Jonathan. That’s the best I can do. You people are always getting on me about this stuff. It’s the best I can do. What do you want me to do? That’s the best analogy I can come up with. Enough said on that one. Email Players Rule #122: •

Don’t give away your super powers.

I wrote about this in the February 2017 Email Players issue. It’s something I heard the late great comedian and deep thinker Patrice O’Neal say. If you don’t know who he was, just trust me, he was one of the greats. He died just shortly before he probably would have become a world-wide phenomenon. He was just a very deep-thinking guy. I remember reading this thing from him, and he was talking about don’t give a girl your super power, like don’t change for them and all that, and he used the analogy of the movie Superman 2 with Christopher Reeve back in the 70’s or whenever that came out. He goes, “Remember Superman 2?” Did you ever see Superman 2, Jonathan? PRODUCER JONATHAN: A long time ago. BEN SETTLE: Okay, but you’ll probably remember part of the plot. Lois Lane asked Clark to give up his super powers and become a mortal like her, just a regular person like her. She didn’t fall in love with Clark Kent. She was in love with Superman with those powers, but she just didn’t know it, and he let her take his powers away.

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So he went and had his powers taken away, and suddenly he’s getting his ass kicked in the diner. He’s walking through the snow in Antarctica to get those powers back. The villains that he’s supposed to be defending the world against are attacking everybody and threatening and everything, all because he gave his powers up. And Lois wasn’t even that attractive. That’s the amazing thing about it. You think they would have picked – I shouldn’t go there. I’m not going to go there, but I’m just saying he gave up his powers for her, and she ended up despising him for it and he ended up getting his ass kicked, and so it is. This doesn’t just happen with guys when they find a girl who tries to change them, because to quote the aforementioned Dante Nero again, “A girl falls in love with you for what you are, spends the rest of the relationship trying to change you into something you’re not, and then leaves you for someone who is what you originally were.” This happens all the frickin’ time. When I first quoted that in the February 2016 Email Players issues, that one quote got me more feedback. Married dudes were writing me back, and in some cases on the phone calling me saying, “Ben, that is so true. You really got me thinking about this.” I didn’t come up with this. These other guys did, but it’s very true, and so it is when you give away your super powers. Don’t give away whatever it is that made you what you were – attractive to someone. Don’t give that up because they ask you to. They don’t know what they’re asking. Jonathan, they don’t know. You cannot listen to them. This goes for clients and customers and all that. If I listened to what my clients or customers told me to do, Jonathan, another Dante Nero quote – I’m just quoting him like crazy today – another one of his things is, “Don’t let your girl steer your ship or she’s going to run it up on the rocks,” and I’ve adapted that to business. You can’t let your customers steer your ship, or they’ll run it up on the rocks. You can’t let them take your super powers away, either. If what you do – whatever it is – you can’t be changing for people just because they have a brain fart, and people will do that. They will try to get you to change your entire business and the way you brand yourself and all that stuff. I had one person, who I won’t name, and I’ve been building my personal brand. I don’t mind using the word ‘brand.’ A lot of direct response guys don’t like it, but I don’t mind it because I think it’s a good description. I had a friend try to get me to change my personal brand, like how people look at me, because they had this silly white bread epiphany, or his wife did. It wasn’t even him. He 183 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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wanted to make her feel better, so I’m supposed to use her idea, which would have made me look like an idiot to my audience to appease somebody else. I said, “No. I reject this whole idea. I’m not doing this. I don’t care who it makes feel bad. Screw that.” Don’t give away your super power. Jonathan, never give away your super powers or Cupcake will be getting you beat up in the diner and you’ll be walking through Antarctica to find your green crystal and get your powers back and all that. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Don’t worry, Ben. My balls are still right here attached to me. BEN SETTLE: And on that note, let’s move on. Email Players Rules #123: •

If you want to make an angry woman behave, ask if she’s hungry.

Jonathan, have you ever tried this, where Cupcake is mad at you and you know you screwed up. She’s deservedly mad at you. It’s not like something you could even cover up. You can’t talk your way out of this. But then you just say, “You want to go get something to eat?” I saw this on Twitter once. Somebody took a picture of their pug from behind, so it was looking straight. Then there was a picture next to it of that pug where the head was slightly turned toward the camera. The caption on the first one was, “When your girl’s mad at you, like she’s staring away ignoring you.” Then the second one is, “When you ask if she’s hungry. Suddenly she’s perked up looking at you.” I’m telling you it works. It works like crazy. There are girls listening to this who would say, “That would never work on me.” Oh, it’ll work. In fact, the ones who say it won’t work on them, it works on them the most. Before anybody thinks that there’s not a business application to this, let me just dispel that for you right now. There’s a story I remember Dan Kennedy talk about. I don’t know what the flight was, I don’t know where he was flying to, I don’t know what airport or what airline it was, but apparently he was on a plane and something was wrong. They couldn’t take off or anything, but they wouldn’t let people off the plane either. They were there for like 6 or 7 hours on the plane just sitting there. They wouldn’t even let them get off the plane to go back into the airport, and obviously people were fuming angry. That’s a long time. “Well, you’re going to be here for six hours.” Shoot, the flight was only supposed to be like two hours. 184 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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He said what the airline did was they just started serving everybody ice cream and everybody was happy suddenly. There’s many applications to this very simple stuff. You could look at this tactically, and in a way it kind of is, but it’s based on the principle of find out what people want and show them how to get it, like the great Bernard Baruch said, who was known as the most persuasive man of the 20th century. Everybody likes ice cream, and every girl wants to go out to eat, so there you go. Free advice. Email Players Rule #124: •

Typos build character for spelling Nazis.

They really do, Jonathan. I know that you probably find spelling Nazis as annoying as I do. You spend an email out that you spent like 4 minutes writing that just made you a bunch of money, and some idiot has to write back and say, “There’s 5 typos in this!” as if proofreaders make anything. There’s an A-list copywriter named Kim Krauss Schwalm. She’s become a friend, and a brilliant copywriter, by the way, just brilliant, one of the best in the game, but she’s got this thing with typos. They really bother her. I said, “Don’t worry about it. Typos will build character for you.” I’m going to purposely put them in there now to help build her character, but it’s true. If you really want to help a spelling Nazi out, put some typos in there. This has other applications to it, too, obviously. This isn’t just about typos. When something really bothers someone, sometimes it’s good to just do whatever it is that bothers them so they stop being so hung up on it, so they realize how silly it is, and so that you can make them a better person. Jonathan, I can’t really think of any specific examples off the top of my head, other than the typo one, but I know there’s many times when I’ve tormented certain people by doing things that they didn’t like. I did them a favor and they should be thanking you when you do that. Email Players Rule #125. Chicks are going to love this one. You’re already laughing. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I’m going to share that with Cupcake. BEN SETTLE: You’re already laughing at this one, but it’s true. What I’m about to say is true. It’s my opinion, but it also happens to be a fact. 185 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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•

Single girls are single for a reason, and it’s not because, “Oh, I want to be single.”

Whenever they say that, they’re lying to themselves. That’s what they have to do. The rationalization hamster is spinning out of control. No, it’s because they don’t want to fix something about themselves or whatever needs to be fixed. Either they’re too picky or maybe they’re just doing something that turns dudes off. I don’t know, it depends on the girl, but there’s no reason for a hot girl to be single if she doesn’t want to be. That’s just a fact. Now, for guys it’s a totally different thing. Guys are single because they don’t know how to play the game. That’s a whole different thing in itself, but for attractive girls especially, there’s no reason why they’re single if they don’t want to be single, other than themselves. And unfortunately, many don’t want to change anything about themselves because of the princess attitude and all that. This is the medicine we dispense here on the BenSettle.com podcast, Jonathan. I’m trying to help people here, I really am. You’re welcome. People are going to hear this and they’re going to say, “Ben, you’re just being mean.” I’m not. I’m trying to help. Now, they might not appreciate it. PRODUCER JONATHAN: You sound like my dad. He says, “You look fat. I’m trying to help you.” BEN SETTLE: See, I don’t give that kind of medicine to people. I’m not even saying anything is wrong. I’m not calling a specific trait out. I’m simply saying there’s a reason. I’m just going to leave it at that. A lot of times it depends on them, it obviously all depends on them, but a lot of times it’s just something that they could easily fix and change, but they don’t because they don’t think they have to. That’s been my experience. Now, granted there are many people listening to this that this does not apply to, and I’m not talking to them. But those who need to hear this message have heard it. They can accept the medicine, they can reject the medicine, or they can attack the doctor. I don’t care, but at least the medicine has been administered. Moving on to Email Players Rule #126: •

You need to take responsibility if you want to be taken seriously.

Last year I had a snafu with a specific Facebook group, an entire Facebook group, of girls who did not quite like my ways, as I would try to pick fights with 186 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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them all the time. But at the same time, some of the people in that group would come at me and attack me for no reason. Then they’d go back to their group and start crying about me – which, by the way, was one of the most profitable weeks I’ve ever had. It was amazing. This is a whole other thing of itself. I’m avoiding names and avoiding any details because that group is owned by a friend of mine and I promised her I would not do that and I’m not going to, because I think she’s doing a good thing with her group there and I want it to be what it is. In fact, I was the one who encouraged her to build that group of all girl copywriters, but sometimes things happen. So someone comes in attacking me, and of course I’m giving back in my own way twice as hard, because Wing Chun, this is what we do. When all the smoke finally cleared I had to tell my friend, “Look, I’ll stop this. I’m not going to mess with you people anymore. I’m not going to do it. I was out of line in a couple cases, probably more than a couple cases, but at the same time you’ve got to tell your group to stop doing the same horse shit to me. They’ve got to take some responsibility. This isn’t all on me. They’ve got to take some responsibility.” They did, and at the time of this recording everything is fine. I don’t know what will happen by the time this is aired, because as I said at the beginning of this podcast, Jonathan, you never know what the tide is going to bring in tomorrow. I think that is a very poetic and fitting end to this episode of the BenSettle.com podcast. You probably want to know what I’m going to talk about next week. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah. What you got for us? BEN SETTLE: The next couple weeks I’m going to go all Wing Chun on your butts and I’m going to talk about the concept of why you should embrace elBenbo’s sticky hands. That’ll be fun. PRODUCER JONATHAN: For all you ladies out there. Another BenSettle.com podcast is in the can. We’ll be back with you next time. Thanks for tuning in.

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Chapter 19

Email Players Rules 127-133 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of the BenSettle.com podcast, and we’re going to do another Email Players Rules, which has become kind of like – I don’t know if I’d call it a cult favorite, but certainly favorites among the long-term listeners, Jonathan. I think you’ll agree. PRODUCER JONATHAN: The hoard favorite. BEN SETTLE: I love that. That is the new official word, the hoard favorite, Email Players Rules. This is an idea that I got from the Beige Phillip Show, which is a show by comedian Dante Nero. It’s a show about helping guys get their balls back, basically, a relationship show. It’s a very good show for guys who need that kind of help. It’s a little too raunchy for some people, but if you can see through all that you’ll be just fine. He has these things called the Beige Phillip Rules, which is kind of how he’s put these principles and maxims together into a set of rules, and I thought, “I’m going to do that with my show.” There’s a lot of maxims and ideas and principles that I live by, and not just business but my personal life too, that have been a tremendous help. Some I’ve discovered on my own, some I’ve observed other people doing, some I’ve seen taught. They come from all kinds of directions and all types of sources, but I have found that these have been tremendously helpful. We’ve done 126 so far, and we’re going to do another seven today. Jonathan, are you ready for another seven? Because I can put this off another week. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Ready. BEN SETTLE: Is Cupcake ready? Is she listening? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah, she might be, hopefully. BEN SETTLE: So Cupcake’s listening and you’re listening. Really the only two listeners I care about are listening.

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Email Players Rule #127: •

Always be patient, but never waste time either.

Jonathan, I’m a big fan of patience, and you’re a big fan of patience. In fact, if I remember correctly, the old Ben Settle Show podcast episode about patience was very life-changing for you, was it not? Or am I getting that mixed up with another one? PRODUCER JONATHAN: It really was eye-opening about the patience, and I practiced it for a little while, but I’m kind of not so patient anymore. BEN SETTLE: I’ll tell you what, a patient man gets what he wants. Patience is powerful because it gives you power because so few people have it. A whole chapter of my Villains book is just about patience. I know it’s not easy, especially in today’s day and age where nobody wants to delay gratification and all that, but patience is powerful. That doesn’t mean you waste time though, either. You can be patiently waiting for one thing, and it doesn’t mean life stops and you stop working on other stuff. This is where people go wrong a lot. They’ll become real patient and they’re masters at patience, but they’ll stop going forward altogether while they’re waiting. You don’t want to do that either. Here’s a minor example of this. This is a recent one. For my fourth Enoch Wars book, Evil’s Child, I’ve never rushed the cover artist, Kirk DouPonce. I’m not going to rush him. He’s one of the best in the business. The guy is just an incredible talent at this and I’m not rushing him. I’m very patient. I don’t even check in to say, “Hey, how’s it going with that?” I don’t even bother him with that. I don’t want his brilliance to be held back in any way, especially not being annoyed with me asking all the time, so I patiently wait for it, but I don’t stop working on the next book while I’m waiting. I’m patiently waiting for that, but I still go forward on the next book. So it is with business, anything that you need to be patient with. Maybe you’re waiting on a client to get back to you or something. It doesn’t mean you stop going forward looking for other clients and wasting your time and just sitting on your thumbs all day. This seems like a very basic thing, but a lot of people do this kind of stuff, Jonathan, and it’s my job to put a stop to it, period, end of discussion. Everybody can go home now. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Drop the mic. 189 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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BEN SETTLE: I’m going to drop the phone. Email Players Rule #128: •

Instead of obsessing over open rates, obsess over becoming a better email copywriter.

I don’t know how many times, Jonathan, I have to go through how open rates are so inaccurate. There are reasons you might want to track them, like for example if you want to remail un-opens. That’s fine and it’s a very good thing to do. I’m not motivated enough to do it, but that’s okay if you do, or just to test the overall health of your list. I think if you’re doing emails right you’ll know, though, because you’ll get replies from people who have Gmail, so you know Gmail is being delivered. Smart phones have made it so that open rates aren’t accurate. Android phones at least have HTML turned off by default. That means they’re not registering your opens. iPhones I think are a little different, but Android’s not. Plus I’ve been told recently, and I believe this to be the fact, that Gmail now hosts the remote images on something else other than in your email or something like that. I may be explaining that wrong. Computer scientist Jim Yaghi could explain this better than I could. It’s not even necessarily registering your Gmail opens very accurately, or it’s screwing them up all over the place. An example of this was last January I got this testimonial from an Email Players subscriber. He’s like, “Ben, I used your methods in December for my client in a month where they really get very few sales if any, and we’ve just gotten more sales from that month than we do all the other months using your methods,” which of course was nice props for me. I’ll take the props. But here was his problem. He goes, “But I’m only getting 9% open rates. I’d really like to get these opens up.” Jonathan, he’s doing more sales than they’ve ever gotten in December, and worried about a 9% open rate. I can assure you it’s more than 9%. They’re just not being tracked properly because of technology. Instead of obsessing over open rates, which is a very amateur thing to do, in my opinion, and open rates you cannot control at all, you’re better off obsessing over making yourself a better email copywriter, sitting down every day and writing emails and getting better at it, thinking about it, studying emails, studying communication in general, studying talk radio, studying the great comedians, studying the great sitcoms, studying the great communicators and orators, studying the great copywriters. 190 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Do that and write a lot and apply the things you learn, and all the rest will take care of itself, I can promise you that. Become a better copywriter, a better marketer, better salesperson, better at persuasion. You can control that. You cannot control how many people open your emails. That’s a whole goal-setting thing in and of itself. I like to have goals that I can control, things I can control. If I need to lose some weight, I can’t control how much weight I lose but I can control eating better and exercising more. PRODUCER JONATHAN: You can’t control the fat in a Big Mac? BEN SETTLE: I cannot control the fat in the Big Mac. I would love to control the fat in the Big Mac, but so be it. Email Players Rule #129: •

Seek ye not the Facebook Like, but the hate.

PRODUCER JONATHAN: What!? BEN SETTLE: Everybody wants to be liked on there, right? They all want Likes. I go for hate on there or I go for some kind of irritant. I want to be an irritant so the people who like my stuff genuinely like it and aren’t just doing it because, “Oh, everybody’s Liking it.” They’re actually Liking it because they genuinely do, because I’m actually trying to repel. For example, in elBenbo’s lair one time I was doing some really controversial stuff. I posted a pro-shaming post, Jonathan. I was pro-shaming, and I am pro-shaming actually. I’m pro fat shaming. I’m pro every shaming. I think shaming works. It’s always worked. It’s just that nowadays the mushcookies say it doesn’t work. It’s too bad because there’s a lot of people who are in bad health because they’re not being shamed, because they’re being told, “It’s okay.” I just got an email. This is so ironic. I’m going to read this. I just got this from Dan Meredith today. Dan Meredith and I have very interesting conversations. One day we’ll have to do some kind of joint podcast together because we’re really bad when we get together. We’re so obnoxious. He sent me this Facebook message today. He goes, “What makes me think you’ll find this funny?” and he sent me a link to a new site and the headline is this. “Fat Acceptance Activist is Dead from Heart Attack at 34.”

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Nobody shamed that girl. I guarantee you nobody shamed her and said, “Look, here’s why you’re dying right now and why you’re a bad example for people right now. What you’re doing to your body is not healthy. It’s not good. Now, that’s fine if you want to be that way, but don’t sit there and promote it like it’s healthy,” like some of these people do. People are going to listen to this and think I hate fat people. That’s not true at all. In fact, I’ve been in the weight loss market. I have more empathy for them than most people do. Shaming does work. It just has to be done the right way. You can’t do it maliciously. Malicious shaming will do nothing for anybody. I’ve got to be very clear about this because there’s some people who don’t understand context. They can’t read and they’re not listening to what I’m saying because they’re too caught up in the shaming thing right now that they’re ignoring everything else I’m saying. Let me repeat this. You cannot do it maliciously. You have to do it because you actually care, and you don’t do it in a finger-pointing way. That’s not what I’m talking about. Here’s an example, Jonathan. This was an email that did very well. It was for a blood sugar supplement that I wrote, and I told the story of Patrice O’Neal. Patrice died in 2011, an overweight comedian. He had a blood sugar of like 500 or something when he was in his 20’s. I mean the dude was not in good shape. He had diabetes and he was suffering from that, and he just did not take his weight very seriously. He was just a really obese guy. He probably had the attitude, “Well, you know, so what? It’s my right and all,” and that’s fine, but I told the true-life story in the email that he woke up one day and he couldn’t move his legs. He could not move his legs. He calls his girlfriend in a panic. Later that day he couldn’t move his arms. And I don’t know if it was another day or two or whatever, but soon he couldn’t open his mouth. He couldn’t breathe on his own. Eventually he couldn’t even open his eyes. He was just existing in his body because he let himself go. Nobody shamed him properly, I guarantee it. Nobody told him a story about what could happen to him. Now, that could happen to anybody who’s obese right now. I think it’s a stroke that you can get from diabetes, and after that you’re existing in your own body, just like the guy in the Metallica video, One. His whole body is practically destroyed. He’s living like an amoeba or a starfish in his body. Is that something we should not bring up to people? We just sit there and say, “It’s okay. You can just be who you are,” if you really love somebody? Of course not. So in a way, telling that story is a way to shame people into wanting to change themselves, because I do care about them. Or I could be like the people who just pretend to care and say, “It’s okay. You just be you. It’s all good. 192 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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You’re beautiful inside and out. Jonathan, I know you’re 600 pounds but you’re beautiful inside and out. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.” PRODUCER JONATHAN: Thank you. I’m glad you noticed. BEN SETTLE: “When you’re existing in your own body like a starfish and you can’t move, it’s okay.” No, that’s not how it works. If you really care about people, you shame the hell out of them, but you do it in a way that’s not malicious. Thus, if you do that on Facebook you’ll get the hate and not the Like, but you’re doing more good than bad. So seek not the Facebook Like, but the hate. And I have to go back. I’ve got to preempt the horse shit that’s coming my way from saying all this. “What about people this? What about people that?” Listen, I know there are certain circumstances where people are temporarily in a situation and this is just what’s happening. It happened to my friend Shane Hunter. From car wrecks and all this stuff his back was in 10 out of 10 pain. The medications he was on, there’s no way he was going to be in good shape during those days, but he didn’t stay that way. If you look at pictures when he was going through that compared to now it’s a totally different guy, and that’s my whole point. Now, he didn’t need to be shamed. That’s what I’m saying. But if he did, I would have done that for him because I’m his friend. I would have done it in a way that’s not malicious and not finger-pointing and any of that. But don’t give me these excuses, “Oh, I’m doomed to be a somnolent sloth the rest of my days.” That’s bull crap. You’re not, so I don’t want to hear it. Email Players Rule #130: •

Good things happen to those who write.

We talked about patience, that good things happen to those who wait, which I don’t always agree with, by the way, but good things do happen to those who write every day. I’ll give you some examples, Jonathan. First of all, you’re a living example of this, are you not? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Thank you. The best decision I ever made was to follow your system and write every day, because it unlocked a lot of potential that I didn’t even know I had. 193 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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BEN SETTLE: Absolutely, and this is the beauty of it. I want to give a real-life example of how this could work, the power of just writing every day. First of all, there’s a girl named Christi Johnson, who we’ve talked about on the show, and she did like a 90-day thing where she wrote every day for 90 days, and her life completely changed. I’ve got a long testimonial from her about this. I don’t know if she’s still doing it or not, but at the time I couldn’t have been more proud. She kicked butt. It wasn’t just sales. It was opportunities that arose, joint ventures, and all these things that never would have happened if she hadn’t been writing emails every day. And it’s not just emails. In elBenbo’s lair I like to have a scribe, someone who goes through all the posts every day and summarizes everything for people, because there’s so many things going on sometimes. The person who does that is Marlene. She’s an Email Players subscriber. I cannot remember how to pronounce her last name, sorry Marlene, but you know I think the world of you. She does this every day, and she doesn’t even get paid for it. In fact, I want her to get paid for it so I told her to put a PayPal tip jar down there and I shame people into donating to her, Jonathan. I do, because she works hard. She does this every day and she’s getting really good at writing entertaining content. I can just tell you right now, whenever somebody emails me or contacts me saying, “Ben, do you know a content writer?” I always refer them to Marlene. I always do. Why? Because she writes every day. She shows up every day and writes and gets into it, and she’s getting better all the time. I would tell anyone listening to this, if you want a content writer, let me know and I will put you in touch with Marlene. She’s awesome at this. And I’ve done this for other people too who write all the time. Good content writers are hard to find, who know my ways especially. Good things come to those who write, so stop not writing and start writing, period. Just start writing an email every day. I don’t know why I have to keep saying this, Jonathan, but I’m going to keep saying it until everybody I know on this planet is doing it. Email Players Rule #131: •

Dive bars are for proles

I don’t know, Jonathan. It’s so funny. You’ve been married a while now so you don’t have to deal with these single girls who are into irrelevant things. You know how many girls love dive bars and they brag about how they go to dive 194 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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bars. “Oh, we went to this dive bar. It’s so fun. Me and my friends like to go to dive bars.” I’m like, “You are hanging out with proles.” Now, girls who are proles, who cares, but I’m talking about girls I know in business who brag about going to dive bars, and then they’re the ones always complaining they can’t find a good guy. What a coincidence. Dive bars are for proles. If you want to be around proles, fine. If you’re a business person, you should want to be influenced not by proles, but by actual successful business people. In the business world, the dive bar version of that are these cheap internet marketing seminars and events and masterminds – not the good ones. There’s some really good ones out there, so I’m not downing all of them, and even some of the low-priced ones are actually pretty good. But there are the equivalent of dive bars out there. Girls like to go to dive bars because they get attention and all this, and they think it’s cool and they think they’re being cool, and that’s why people go to these cheap internet marketing seminars. They get attention. They get entertained a little bit. They get to walk away all inspired. They get dressed up with nowhere to go, basically. They don’t actually implement anything, but it’s like an addiction. It’s like a dive bar, is basically what it is. Now, there are good ones. For example, Brian Kurtz has a really good mastermind and really good master classes. I heard John Carlton – who I don’t know, but I’ve heard this from a couple people actually – Deb Law specifically was telling me how in his mastermind he doesn’t even allow their girlfriends to come with. A lot of these masterminds you can usually bring your +1 or whatever, but he doesn’t let you, which I think is a good idea, by the way. I think it should all be guys actually, Jonathan, me being the sexist misogynist that I am. I think they should just be guys. I think when I come out of a mastermind there should be a hot meal waiting for me personally. I don’t know if I’m out of line on this, Jonathan. I’m going to catch some crap for that from people who don’t understand context or satire, but that’s perfect. That’s what I want. But that’s the thing. You can tell if something’s good by if there’s a little bit of a barrier for you to even get in there in the first place. The best clubs, the best bars, the best restaurants you have to do reservations and they have a waiting list and all that, and you have to be on the list to get in. Dive bars will just let anybody in there. That’s how you should be looking at these internet marketing seminars and stuff. Is it really that easy just to show up? I’m not saying they’re all bad, but 195 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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you may want to go to the ones where they qualify you a bit. That’s all I’m saying. With our wine Villains event in Napa for July, believe me, Troy Broussard partnered with me on this and we had him close everyone on the phone. It was not like, “Just go to this link.” We wanted him to talk to everybody so he could kind of weed out the low-class jackass people who just want to go to get drunk or whatever. We don’t want that. We don’t want just a bunch of drunken slobs showing up, so it was kind of hard to get in there. We raised the price considerably after a certain point because we could, because we weren’t just allowing everybody. Email Players Rule #132: •

Be patient and your patience will be rewarded.

Jonathan, what do you think of that one, Mr. Patience? PRODUCER JONATHAN: I guess it works. I feel like patience and then focus kind of go together, so this might be a little bit of both. BEN SETTLE: And you will be rewarded for both, as opposed to people who are impatient and have no focus. My goal now is to get you to be more patient, and I can teach you this because all I have to do is be my normal obnoxious self and it will force you to be more patient. That’s the way I look at it. Email Players Rule #133: •

Being boring is a curable disease.

This is good news, Jonathan, for everybody listening to this who’s boring. It’s funny because a lot of people who think they’re boring really aren’t. They’re just holding back in some way. It’s a curable disease. If you’re boring it’s a choice. You can choose to be boring and be irrelevant and not get your precious social media engagement, or you can choose to be interesting. And you can become interesting simply by doing interesting things and knowing your market and studying them and finding out what’s interesting to them, and let those two things meet together in the middle. That’s how you become interesting and not boring. It’s very simple, Jonathan. That’s so simple, I don’t even know how to make it easier to understand than that. It’s a curable disease. If you’re boring, if your emails are boring, if your marketing is boring, if you give talks and those are 196 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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boring – and most talks are boring – if you’re doing a podcast, and most podcasts are boring, it’s your fault. It’s a disease but it is curable and you have the cure. If you still need help with that, just keep following what I’m doing here on the BenSettle.com podcast and you can try to learn to not be boring through osmosis. That’s assuming I’m not boring, Jonathan. It kind of takes a lot for me to say that, doesn’t it. It’s kind of daring for me to just assume you’re not boring, because for all I know you and I are the only two people listening to this right now. PRODUCER JONATHAN: And Cupcake. BEN SETTLE: And Cupcake. I think I’ve got your attention so I’m doing okay. Cupcake doesn’t just listen to everybody. No, she’s got standards, so there you go. I don’t know what we’re going to talk about next week, Jonathan. I have no idea, but it’ll be something that’s not boring. That much I can guarantee. PRODUCER JONATHAN: I’ll leave you guys with an Eleanor Roosevelt quote. “Never be bored and you’ll never be boring.” Pretty simple. That’s a wrap for another BenSettle.com podcast. We brought you the Email Players Rules #127-133. We’ll be back with you next time. Thanks for tuning in.

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Chapter 20

Email Players Rules 134-140 BEN SETTLE: This is Ben Settle of the BenSettle.com podcast. I was just telling Jonathan that the last couple episodes have been very short because my attention span I think is getting so bad that even my own podcasts bore me. I don’t know if this is good for you or me or for anybody, but Jonathan, we could get these down to like 3-minute podcasts at this rate. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah, I would like that. BEN SETTLE: I would love that. That would be great. There are people who do that. They do these daily podcasts that last two or three minutes, but we’d have to do like 30 at a time. I’m not that pithy, unfortunately. I like to speak to hear myself talk a little bit too much for that. So as promised, we’re going to do another 7 Email Players Rules. We’ve done 133 up to now. PRODUCER JONATHAN: Wow! BEN SETTLE: I know, I hadn’t realized that either until I sent you those notes. So here’s the thing. For anyone who isn’t familiar with these, these are these periodic shows I do where I talk about maxims, principles, and just rules of life that I’ve used to improve both my business life and my personal life in many cases, and that I’m just passing on to you to use or discard as you like. The inspiration is from a podcast named the Beige Phillip Show, which is a show by the comedian Dante Nero. I think that’s a paid podcast now, Jonathan. I’m pretty sure it is. I think they charge for it now, but that’s a show that’s basically for guys to get their balls back so they don’t let girls walk all over them and all that. He had these episodes called the Beige Phillip Rules where he would do a variation of this, and I thought, “That is a cool idea. I am going to humbly swipe that idea for Email Players,” and thus I am, Email Players Rules – Email Players obviously being the name of my flagship product, the Email Players newsletter.

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So we’ve done 133. We’re going to do 134-140. We’re almost to the 150 mark on these, Jonathan. I don’t know when it’s going to end. I thought it was going to end at like 100, so I don’t know what to tell you at this point. PRODUCER JONATHAN: You’ve got a lot of rules. BEN SETTLE: Apparently I’m typing just to hear myself write. What can I say? I’ll keep coming up with rules. Email Players Rule #134: •

Don’t lead a horse to water, simply salt the oats.

This is something I was thinking about recently, and I actually put this in my Zombie Cop book in the first chapter. I don’t know if anyone listening to this has read Zombie Cop or if they remember the first chapter, but I did use this as a plot device for the first chapter. I heard this originally from an MLM trainer named Tom “Big Al” Schreiter, who to me is a brilliant, brilliant guy. If you’re going to be in MLM, this is the guy to follow. He’s not going to dazzle you with all the sexy bells and whistles and all that, but just a solid direct marketing guy who knows his stuff, very witty, very funny guy, a very interesting guy too. He had this book, and I can’t remember the name of the book, but I bought this book back in 2001, so that tells you how far back this is going, and I remember him talking about this principle. You don’t have to lead a horse to water, just simply salt the oats because that will make them thirsty. An example of this is people who sell newsletters – health newsletters, financial newsletters, all that. They do this all the time, where they don’t try to sell you the newsletter. They’re not trying to lead you to water. You’re the horse and they’re not trying to lead you to water because they know that you’re probably not going to drink it unless you’re thirsty, so instead they salt the oats by coming up with really good premiums or several premiums, and they sell you the premiums in the ad. They don’t really sell you the newsletter. They spend most of the ad talking about these bonuses you’re going to get if you subscribe to the newsletter, i.e., they’re salting the oats so you want to drink the water. They’re giving you premiums so you want to buy the product. The product on its own may not be that appealing to you, but these impulsive types of products you’ve just got to have because the copywriters know what 199 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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they’re doing. These A-list copywriters are so good at this, and that’s what they’re essentially doing. Anybody can do this in their own business. I pretty much do this with Email Players, too. I don’t really sell the newsletter. I’m always trying to sell the book that comes with it when you subscribe to Email Players, because my entire evergreen system is contained in that book. It’s good for you to have it if you’re going to have the newsletter. In fact, I’d rather people not even read the newsletter if they haven’t read the book first because they won’t have the context. That’s an example of me not trying to lead anyone to water, but just salting the oats so they want to drink the water. That’s #134. Email Players Rule #135: •

If you want cheap customers, sell them cheap products.

Jonathan, a lot of my colleagues – and for reasons that make sense; I get it, I really do, and I don’t really talk about it very much but I’m definitely in that camp, but I do think there’s a time for it so that’s why I don’t really rip on the whole idea – but you hear the term ‘tripwire offer’ all the time. It’s a cheap little $4, $5, or $7 thing to get you on a list. They call it a tripwire and I don’t really understand. Those guys at Digital Marketer come up with a lot of interesting names for very old concepts. Let’s just put it that way. This has been going on forever and it’s actually a very smart thing to do. There’s nothing new about it, but when you give it this coolsounding name everybody thinks it’s new, but it’s really not. It’s just solid direct response marketing. They’ve been doing this for over 100 years. They don’t call it tripwire, which kind of implies you’re going to kill somebody. It’s usually just called a lead generator. Here’s the problem with those. In my main thing I generate free opt-ins, and you could say that’s a cheap customer and in a way you’d be right. I do open the door to freebie seekers and all that, but there’s something very interesting about these offers where it’s like, “For $7, now I’ve got you on my list.” The clients I had that were the most successful, like in the self-defense niche, I can’t remember the exact numbers and I was never told this directly so I can’t say this is exactly true, but I heard from someone else who heard from someone else that my client was doing like $33 million a year. I knew he was doing tens of millions, but I didn’t know it was that much.

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I remember he didn’t have a tripwire offer. He literally sold you a $70 or $80 product up front. He didn’t try to collect free opt-ins. He just sold you an $80 product and you bought that, and now you’re on his buyer’s list. You could call that a tripwire but it’s not a cheap tripwire. I don’t like using the word tripwire. I’m going to say lead gen. It’s not a cheap one. It did not give him cheap people on his list. It gave him buyers on his list who spent good money. I’ve not had this problem with just generating free opt-ins. I have to say this. Maybe it’s because of the way I email, I don’t know, but I always had good luck with that. I always had good response like that, but when I brought people in with something cheap we would always get whining and complaining customers. For example, Jim Yaghi and I used to work together in the weight loss niche and we sold a lot of products in the weight loss niche. Over 40% of the list became buyers. That’s not bad. It was actually more than that because we couldn’t really track Kindle book sales, so I’m sure it was a lot more than 40%. But here’s the problem. I remember having a list in the shopping cart just for people who came from one of the Kindle books that were out there for like $2.99. We got a lot of sales of those books, but they were like the worst buyers. These people complained and they wouldn’t buy anything. They were used to buying $2.99 books, so when you showed them like a $19 ebook on Clickbank they balked at it. Now, for some reason this doesn’t happen to me with free opt-ins. I don’t know why. It almost seems like it should work out even worse, but it doesn’t. For some reason, people who buy inexpensive things tend to just be cheap customers, so tuck that away and use it however you want. I’m just telling you this has been my experience. I’m a big fan of the free opt-in, then sell the flagship product, then sell them some other stuff, whether it be coaching or other products or whatever. Some people like to bring people in with these cheap little $7 offers or whatever, and then they’re technically a buyer but you have to be very careful of the kind of buyers those are. There’s a big difference between someone who buys a $7 or $3 book and someone who buys a $50 or $60 or $100 product on the front-end. Me, I just like to use the free opt-in, but that’s how I am. So that’s Email Players Rule #135. Email Players Rule #136: •

Douche canoes like to paddle upstream. 201

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I still love that word, douche canoe. I know I’ve over-used it, and I’m sorry, April Dykman. I think she listens to this podcast still. I know that’s her word, or at least I heard it from her. She probably wants me to stop. “Ben, way to burn out a word, man.” Okay fine, I take full advantage of it. Somebody come up with a better one. That’s fine, so I can use that, but I love the image of the douche canoe. Back in February in my Facebook group I had this thing where I made a bunch of the girls in my Facebook group go to Dan Meredith’s Facebook group where he was having this dating thing. It was Valentine’s Day and he wanted people to be able to find dates with each other in his group. I thought it was a pretty cool little concept. I thought, “That’s interesting, Dan.” It’s really nice for him to actually be looking out for his people like that, I thought, so of course I sent a bunch of girls over there. I sent the harem over there and I said, “You need to put your profiles up,” and one of the girls did. She got this one guy who was just a complete idiot, and she was screenshotting it and putting it our group – not giving the guy’s name away, because you don’t do that, but just showing it. I asked her to do it because I said, “Look, I want guys to see this is what not to do.” This is what most guys are doing. They’re trying to act like they’re cooler than they really are. They’re all cocky and they really have no reason to be. They’re just kind of insulting and they’re trying to neg everything. They think they’re a 1995 mystery pick-up artist basically. That was fine back then, and it may work in clubs and all that on some girls, but for these girls it was laughable. I remember thinking, “This guy is just totally paddling upstream.” He had this girl’s attention, but he was being such a douche canoe about everything that he was getting laughed at. That’s when I thought, “Why do these guys do this? It’s like they’re paddling upstream.” They’re purposely trying to make this hard on themselves. I remember thinking, “This guy needs the Villains book,” because it probably would have saved him a lot. Don’t paddle upstream. This is why I’m against all the tricks and tips and all that, Jonathan. This goes beyond just a business sort of thing. You know I’m very “principles vs tactics,” which I know has become like this trendy thing now on Facebook. Even though I heard it from Jim Camp, everyone’s pretending like they invented wording it that way, when nobody was saying it before that I ever saw. 202 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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There were people already doing it, smart marketers. Like I said, I didn’t invent anything, but it’s just funny how these people just pick up terms. “Oh yeah…” and it makes them sound cool or whatever, but that’s why I’m against all that tactical stuff. Tactics without solid principles behind them, it never turns out good. It looks tactical. It looks like you’re just trying to trick and manipulate people. All this guy had to do was not act like an idiot, and get to know this girl and talk to her, and maybe he would have found something in common with her and maybe would have gotten a date with her. But instead he’s coming out all tactical, trying to act like he’s got 10 different girls wanting to talk to him. I don’t remember, but the screen shots were kind of funny. So that’s #136 – douche canoes like to paddle upstream. Don’t be a douche canoe. Email Players Rule #137 – this is just common sense, but common sense ain’t common, which is actually a Beige Phillip Rule, by the way. •

If you don’t want to be ignored, don’t be ignorable.

How many people, Jonathan, complain that nobody’s reading their emails or listening to their podcast or watching their geeky little livestream videos or any of this stuff. They’re being ignored and people wonder, “Why are you ignoring me?” Probably because you’re being ignorable. There are some people that are hard to ignore, Jonathan, and there are some people that are very easy to ignore. For example, let’s take this outside of business. In business this is very obvious, but let’s take it outside. Let’s just talk about guys and girls. A lot of times a girl will get mad if she’s being ignored. Have you ever ignored Cupcake and she got kind of mad at you, Jonathan? PRODUCER JONATHAN: Yeah, I have. BEN SETTLE: When you ignored her, was she being ignorable? Was she acting in such a way that it was just easier to ignore her than to give her your precious very valuable attention? PRODUCER JONATHAN: I was rewarding her bad behavior. BEN SETTLE: Which we don’t like to do. For example, if I’m dealing with people and if they’re acting in a way that’s just pissing me off or they’re just being overly dramatic or something, it’s easy to ignore people like that. 203 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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It’s easy to ignore bad emails. It’s easy to ignore boring videos. It’s easy to ignore podcasts that are like mine, where we’re just speaking to hear ourselves talk. Jonathan, I’m going to troll myself so nobody can troll me, just so you know. That’s why I keep doing that. If you don’t want to be ignored, don’t be ignorable. Find out what people want and show them how to get it. That’s from Bernard Baruch. I heard that via Gary Bencivenga. He was the most persuasive man of the 20th century I guess, Bernard Baruch, and that’s what he said. “Find out what people want and show them how to get it.” That’s how you don’t get ignored. You get ignored by sitting there following trends and just trying to push things on people that they don’t want or need, without even trying, basically when you’re pitching versus selling. If you’re pitching and not selling you’re going to get ignored. So if you don’t want to be ignored, do stuff that’s not ignorable. That’s the whole point of that. Email Players Rule #138. There’s this guy I’ve known for a few years now. His name is Kevin Madison and he’s an interesting guy. I remember he posted something. I think it was Twitter. It may have been Facebook. It’s one of the two, and he posted something very interesting. He said, “Depth cannot be taught,” and I thought makes a hell of an Email Players Rule. •

Depth cannot be taught.

You cannot teach depth. It’s very true. We did a whole podcast once – I think this is in the lost episodes, which are on my site now at BenSettle.com/ podcast; I put all 12 of them up there – where we did a whole podcast just on depth vs width, going deep into knowledge and not just wide, not knowing a whole bunch of things a little bit, but knowing two or three things at a deep level. You cannot teach that depth. Kevin is absolutely right. You can’t teach somebody depth. You can teach them a concept and they can go deep with it. They can relentlessly study the principles and apply them on their way, but you can’t teach depth. Sifu can teach me how to punch in Wing Chun, but if I want to learn how to punch so fast I can put a candle out, that’s going to take a lot of work on my part. He can’t just teach that to me. I remember the very first lesson when I went there. He has this 80-lb training dummy that slides along the wall, and he’s like, “Here, try to hit this thing across the wall,” and it took me five or six whacks to get this thing across. I’m 204 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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talking an 80- or 90-lb dummy. He takes it, barely even moves his hand, and punches it all the way across in one little shot. I was like, “Holy crap!” Nobody could show him that. That was 40 years of practicing and understanding the biomechanics of the body and physics and how the body moves, and how moving your foot in a certain way and using your elbow and your shoulder – all this stuff. It took depth to do that. That’s how it is in business, too. I can teach you the principles. I can teach you tactics. What I cannot teach you is depth. I can teach it to you, but it takes a lot of study and work. In fact, my Email Players newsletter is all about this. At the end of the day, I teach you very basic fundamentals but then I go deep into them. That’s the difference between Email Players and all the other email stuff I’ve seen for the most part. They don’t go deep. They know a bunch of surface stuff, and that’s fine, but at the end of the day you’ve got to take people deep if you want them to learn depth. But they cannot be taught. They have to actually do work. I can show them the depth. I can take them down into the depths, into the abyss of elBenbo’s soul, but I cannot teach it to them in a way where they can use it without my help, if they don’t do the work. And so it is anything. Depth cannot be taught. Email Players Rule #139: •

The math is on your side.

You’ll never have to worry about anything, because once you realize there’s less supply of you or your product or what you offer than there are customers who need what you have, the math is automatically on your side if you have a quality product or service that people really want. This is why people need to quit having these scarcity mindsets. If you have a solid product, you don’t need to beg people to buy it. You don’t need to do any of that. You don’t need to use all these lame tricks and tips, trying to manipulate people and get them in a choke hold until they give you their money and all that. Those are the analogies people like to use. You don’t have to do any of that. The math is on your side. Once you realize there’s way more customers that need what you have than you could possibly ever sell to anyway, it changes everything in the way you communicate with your list, with your market, with your clients, with your 205 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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customers, or with anyone else. That neediness instantly goes away when you understand the math is on your side. It’s very, very important. This goes with anything. This goes beyond business, into your personal relationships or anything. If you’re a valuable person there is less supply of you than there is of people who need what you have or who want you around them, so keep that in mind. It applies to dating especially. If you’re a guy who’s got something to offer, you don’t have to be begging girls for dates and all this. You give them the opportunity to go out with you, because if they don’t do it, you’ll find someone else who will. There’s plenty of them who want what you have. So it is in business and so it is in pretty much any aspect life. So that’s Email Players Rule #139: The math is on your side. And this works even if you don’t do math, like me, Jonathan. You don’t need a calculator. Email Players Rule #140, and this is a question to ask yourself. Whenever you’re despairing, whenever you’re worried about something outside of your control, ask yourself this question – •

Isn’t there something better you could be doing?

Worried about a client who didn’t get back to you? They’re taking forever? They’re dragging their feet? Sitting around worrying about that is not going to do you any good. Isn’t there something better you could be doing like, I don’t know, writing an email to your list to find more clients or customers? Are you waiting for a big contract to come through? That’s beyond your control at this point. You’ve done everything you can. Sitting around worrying about it and obsessing over it does you no good. Maybe you should be working on getting another big contract from somebody else. Are you waiting for a girl to call you back who’s been ignoring you? Worrying about that, Jonathan, is not going to do anyone any good. Shouldn’t they be out finding other girls that they want to talk to? This applies to so many aspects of your life. Isn’t there something better you could be doing? The answer is always yes, no matter what it is. There’s always something you could be doing, especially if you’re plagued by fear, if you’re scared of stuff. Always remember this. Just because you’re scared doesn’t mean you can’t act. I ripped that off, Jonathan, from a Batman comic so I’m going to come right out and say it. I got it from the character Robin in Batman. He got sprayed by the 206 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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Scarecrow’s fear serum or something and he realized, “Just because I’m scared doesn’t mean I can’t act,” and he ended up saving Batman’s life and all that. The whole point is this. Isn’t there something you could be doing? Are you getting sick of hearing my voice right now on this podcast? Isn’t there something better you could be doing? Ask yourself that, and the answer is always yes and you will always find something better. This dovetails right back with the Villains book, by the way, for anyone who’s read it. If you haven’t read it, one of the first chapters is about having a mission. Once you have that mission, these little things just don’t get to you. You really don’t care what anyone thinks. You don’t have to go around pounding your chest about how you give zero fucks, when everyone knows you do. You don’t have to do that because it will just be obvious, because you really do have better stuff to think about than some petty crap that you have no control over. That’s it for this time, Jonathan. I’m not sure what we’ll be doing next week, but I’m sure it’ll be a doozy. That’s all I’ve got for this time. PRODUCER JONATHAN: That’s another BenSettle.com podcast in the can. We’ll be back in your earbuds next time.

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representation by others. Any earnings or income statements, or any earnings or income examples, are only estimates of what you might earn. There is no assurance you will do as well as stated in any examples. If you rely upon any figures provided, you must accept the entire risk of not doing as well as the information provided. This applies whether the earnings or income examples are monetary in nature or pertain to advertising credits which may be earned (whether such credits are convertible to cash or not). There is no assurance that any prior successes or past results as to earnings or income (whether monetary or advertising credits, whether convertible to cash or not) will apply, nor can any prior successes be used, as an indication of your future success or results from any of the information, content, or strategies. Any and all claims or representations as to income or earnings (whether monetary or advertising credits, whether convertible to cash or not) are not to be considered as "average earnings". Testimonials & Examples Testimonials and examples in this ebook are exceptional results, do not reflect the typical purchaser's experience, do not apply to the average person and are not intended to represent or guarantee that anyone will achieve the same or similar results. Where specific income or earnings (whether monetary or advertising credits, whether convertible to cash or not), figures are used and attributed to a specific individual or business, that individual or business has earned that amount. There is no assurance that you will do as well using the same information or strategies. If you rely on the specific income or earnings figures used, you must accept all the risk of not doing as well. The described experiences are atypical. Your financial results are likely to differ from those described in the testimonials. The Economy The economy, where you do business, on a national and even worldwide scale, creates additional uncertainty and economic risk. An economic recession or depression might negatively affect your results. Your Success or Lack of It Your success in using the information or strategies provided in this ebook depends on a variety of factors. The Author and the Publisher have no way of knowing how well you will do because they do not know you, your background, your work ethic, your dedication, your motivation, your desire, or your business skills or practices. Therefore, neither the Author nor the Publisher 211 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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The Email Players Rules Volume One

guarantees or implies that you will get rich, that you will do as well, or that you will have any earnings (whether monetary or advertising credits, whether convertible to cash or not), at all. Businesses and earnings derived therefrom involve unknown risks and are not suitable for everyone. You may not rely on any information presented in this ebook or otherwise provided by the Author or the Publisher, unless you do so with the knowledge and understanding that you can experience significant losses (including, but not limited to, the loss of any monies paid to purchase this ebook and/or any monies spent setting up, operating, and/or marketing your business activities, and further, that you may have no earnings at all (whether monetary or advertising credits, whether convertible to cash or not). Forward-Looking Statements Materials in this ebook may contain information that includes or is based upon forward-looking statements within the meaning of the securities litigation reform act of 1995. Forward-looking statements give the Author's expectations or forecasts of future events. You can identify these statements by the fact that they do not relate strictly to historical or current facts. They use words such as “anticipate,” “estimate,” “expect,” “project,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” and other words and terms of similar meaning in connection with a description of potential earnings or financial performance. Any and all forward looking statements here or on any materials in this ebook are intended to express an opinion of earnings potential. Many factors will be important in determining your actual results and no guarantees are made that you will achieve results similar to the Author or anybody else. In fact, no guarantees are made that you will achieve any results from applying the Author's ideas, strategies, and tactics found in this ebook. Purchase Price Although the Publisher believes the price is fair for the value that you receive, you understand and agree that the purchase price for this ebook has been arbitrarily set by the Publisher. This price bears no relationship to objective standards. Due Diligence You are advised to do your own due diligence when it comes to making any decisions. Use caution and seek the advice of qualified professionals before acting upon the contents of this ebook or any other information. You shall not consider any examples, documents, or other content in this ebook or otherwise provided by the Author or Publisher to be the equivalent of professional advice. 212 Copyright 2018-2020 Ben Settle

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The Email Players Rules Volume One

The Author and the Publisher assume no responsibility for any losses or damages resulting from your use of any link, information, or opportunity contained in this ebook or within any other information disclosed by the Author or the Publisher in any form whatsoever. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS CONDUCT YOUR OWN INVESTIGATION (PERFORM DUE DILIGENCE) BEFORE BUYING PRODUCTS OR SERVICES FROM ANYONE OFFLINE OR VIA THE INTERNET. THIS INCLUDES PRODUCTS AND SERVICES SOLD VIA HYPERLINKS EMBEDDED IN THIS EBOOK.

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