The infamous personal ad that taught me how to sell even to people who hate my guts

One of my all-time favorite Gary Halbert ads is from the 1980’s. Specifically: His infamous personal ad. According to him, when he wrote it (as a full page LA Times ad), it was featured on LA’s largest radio station (KABC) 5 times… he got a couple offers to write a book about the ad… there were even a couple movie offers about the ad submitted to him… he was offered at least one TV interview to do about the ad… was paid to write an ad about that ad… and, yes, because of that ad, he dated some of the hottest women in LA. In some ways, it’s one of the best ads he ever wrote. And it is still held up by some I know as one of the single best ads to study in our industry. If you have not read it, I highly recommend doing so. Google is your friend as far as how to find it. Anyway, everyone will get different insights & inspiration from it. But for my business, there was an especially persuasive thing that ad did that I have been using ever since I first read it some 20-years ago. Something that has made my sales copy, emails, social media posts (that are intended to sell, at least), and other persuasive & influential endeavors “pop” in ways I am not sure anything else I’ve done has. It’s something I originally had to think about doing. Then, eventually, it became automatic in all my writings. Now it’s at that “unconscious competence” level where it’s like driving a car — I don’t even have to think about it. I just start writing and it happens. I am, frankly, doing it in this email and using it “on you” probably in some ways as I type this. Even better: This thing I am talking about does far more than just get my business lots more sales. It also gets my business lots more engagement, too. And there have been a few cases where it has turned people who admittedly hated my guts and what I write about to the “dark side” (i.e., my side) of things… turning them into not only passionate readers of my daily musings, but becoming rabid buyers, advocates, referral-senders, and the list goes on. The most dramatic example of this was many years ago at the Oceans 4 hot seat masterminds I used to co-host with Ryan Levesque, Andre Chaperon, and Jack Born. One of our clients at the Vegas one we did was Email Players subscriber Russell Brunson. And, when we had dinner that night we were geeking out over marketing (if you ever have a chance to talk marketing with Russell, I highly recommend it, he’s like an endless ball of energy on the subject) and he told me point blank he couldn’t stand me. I mean, it sounded like I just really irritated him. But, he said he kept reading my stuff. And eventually I “grew” on him. And he said ultimately the main reason he attended that event was to meet me. There are probably a lot of reasons for that kind of phenomenon. But when you drill down to the root of it, it is because my emails, my sales copy, my books, content, talks, even customer service do this thing I picked up from reading Gary Halbert’s personal ad. And I give the Prince of Print much credit for that. More: This thing I am talking about is also a reason my emails tend to get high inbox deliverability. I don’t claim to be an email “deliverability expert.” And I don’t claim to get 100% deliverability into all inboxes. Frankly, there are probably 1,000 variables at play with every email you send. BUT… BerserkerMail’s Chief Architect Pedro — a true savant, who has used his developer skills to help build a platform to contribute to brain cancer research at a major university when his friend was diagnosed with that dreadful condition, if that tells you something — recently tweeted at me about the off-the-wall results I get at this, and how it goes beyond just DKIM/SPF/DMARC, and technical details. My opinion? I believe a lot of it is from this thing I learned from Gary Halbert’s personal ad. And that I talk about inside our new “Email Down ’n Delivery” course. This is a totally non-technical thing. It’s not even really a “writing” (mechanical skill) thing. It’s more of an approach. And you can learn all about it, as well as dozens of other things you can do (95% of them non-technical in nature, that really anyone in business should be able to do) inside our new course… and for what comes out to the price of having a pizza delivered if you get it by tonight’s Friday, 9/8 at midnight EDT deadline. You can get the details of this course and what’s inside here: [https∶//www.EmailPlayers.com/deliver]( Ben Settle This email was sent by Ben Settle as owner of Settle, LLC. Copyright © 2023 Settle, LLC. All Rights Reserved. No part of this email may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from Settle, LLC. Click here to [unsubscribe]( Settle, LLC PO Box 1056 Gold Beach Oregon 97444 USA