Back in August I published a book on Amazon called “BizWorld.”
(About business World-Building)
I’d been writing about the subject since 2014, and it was quite well received considering its esoteric nature. So well received, in fact, I’m going to be publishing another far more expensive and way more comprehensive book about World-Building later this year. It will be made up of the various Email Players issues I’ve written over the last few years on the subject + I might also (if I have time) do some 1-on-1 consults with various long time customers applying this to their unique situations, and include the transcripts of those calls.
But, not everyone liked BizWorld.
Like, for example, one of the complaints in the reviews was:
“There’s too much repetition!”
Yeah, Spanky, it literally says that in the Amazon description.
And it says that in the description for the sole purpose of deterring people who hate repetition or don’t understand the value in repetition. It also says it in the intro, too. And all that repetition is also necessary for the reader to dig out the deeper concepts to see the same information told from different perspectives.
People who need “new!” are always behind the 8 ball in whatever discipline they’re learning.
Solomon wasn’t just whistlin’ dixie when he said there is nothing new under the sun.
There are merely different ways of doing what’s already been done, or different ways of combining what’s already been taught, or different ways of looking at problems, different ways of expressing knowledge, or different ways of thinking about ideas.
i.e., giving and receiving options for thinking differently, as the late Patrice O’Neal used to say.
Which, in and of itself, is not new.
But in my opinion it’s still quite profound when you apply it if you teach in any way and want what you teach to stick in peoples’ mind, and possibly even change the way they think – which is the goal of everything I teach in my business.
I’m very much a fan of what Earl Nightingale said:
“A mind reshaped by a new idea never regains its original form”
Something, not-so-surprisingly, I had to hear him repeatedly say a dozen or so times before it finally stuck in my head and re-shaped the way I approach my entire business about five years ago, after which more growth happened in my business since then than in the prior 17 years I’d been in business before that.
Maybe that is just coincidence, but I doubt it.
More:
Constantly going wide without going deep on something means never really mastering that which they are trying to learn. And oftentimes the best way to go deep is through repetition, application, failure, trying again – rinse, repeat, forever, of the same info, and especially the fundamentals.
A couple brain farts on this:
1. In Dan Kennedy’s excellent Renegade Millionaire course he admits, clearly and almost proudly, that he’s been teaching the same information for decades to the same customers – and especially to his most successful customers who come back over and over and over to learn it, re-apply it, go deeper with it.
2. Paul Hartunian (the publicity guy) had a monthly print newsletter that ran for over 600 issues before he basically retired. I was subscribed to it for at least a good 5 years or maybe longer (I lost track) before he retired it. And those issues are almost ALL repetition of the exact same 10-15 or so fundamentals by my count and from what I remember, that he taught in his course. Often they were applied to businesses and industries that have nothing to do with my own (dentists, plumbers, etc). And yet, I’d devour each issue, think about it, and have lots and lots of light bulb moments that I used, and still use, in my business today — including a way I’ll be testing soon to promote BerserkerMail.
Anyway, here’s why I am bring this up:
Repetition in a way that talks about the same thing over and over, but from different perspectives, over time, is probably the single most powerful “cheat sheet” there is for both learning and teaching.
Which is probably why so few do it.
And, also, it’s probably why so few people ever achieve any kind of real mastery in anything or get known for anything or add anything new to the body of knowledge in their industry/profession/trade/niche – which is quite ironic, too.
Exceptions obviously exist.
But, in my experience, they are few and far between.
Another story about this:
Back in the late 1990’s I was in MLM, and the company did a lot of business with Kevin Trudeau. For all KT’s faults, his public speaking & training game is about as good as I’ve ever seen even to this day. And during one of his talks, and I still remember this very clearly, he said it was good to listen and re-listen to the same training tapes over and over and over.
His reason:
No, the information won’t have changed,
But YOU will definitely have changed.
Thus, it’s almost like it’s new info every time you change, grow, fail, succeed, have new info that you can now apply in the context of that info you’d already heard, and the list goes on. In some ways that advice has been more profitable to my business than probably any other one piece of advice I’ve ever learned in this racket. It’s why I go through anything of importance not once or twice, but often 10 times. And then I’ll go through it once or twice a year after that in a lot of cases. And each time I dig some new insight, idea, or inspiration from it that leads to something I never would have done otherwise – and many of them are things that have added the most success to whatever it is I am applying it to.
Example:
I used to keep track of these things, probably out of some kind of OCD or something. But before I lost the note card I was keeping track of it with during a move several years ago, I went through Gary Bencivenga’s Farewell course some 35 times, and still go through it at least once or twice per year.
Same with Matt Furey’s original email course.
On his blog there is a post where, in the in the P.S. he says:
“In fact, one of the greatest email copywriters of all times, Ben Settle, says he has listened to this series at least two dozen times… and counting.”
It’s definitely more like nearly three dozen times by now.
(And it’s a 10+ hour long course, so you have context).
Same with Ken McCarthy’s copywriting course.
When I wrote the sales letter for it back in 2005-2006 I went through it 13 or 14 times.
Same with Gene Schwartz’s Breakthrough Advertising – well over 20x’s since 2004 when I first read it – and I still grab insights & ideas from each read, with notes and headline ideas and sentence transition (he was great at that) ideas, and whole new offer/product ideas from a sentence that caught my attention during repetition. Repetitively reading that book is, in many ways, one of the reasons I started experimenting with comicstrip-style ads, even though there is maybe 6 – 10 words on the subject in the book. And those ads then helped inspire my book Markauteur which is not only my most expensive book ($1,108.00, unless it’s on sale, which it will be in a day or two), but one of my most profitable too. Not to mention just working on that book has led to several opportunities that never would have happened otherwise I won’t bother going into here. I’m also going to be experimenting with comicstrip style ads in a totally different way than I have been the last few years (where I created a running storyline that started with the January 2022 Email Players issue and will end with the December 2024 Email Players issue) starting in 2025 Email Players issues that I am going to be writing them, next week. All from a stray sentence in a book I’ve read over and over and over.
And on and on and on it goes, with many other books:
Including books like Ken McCarthy’s System Club Letters (which, TMI, was my bathroom reading for 8 years straight… not even exaggerating, have read it over 50 times probably by now), Dan Kennedy’s Ultimate Sales Letter and Ultimate Marketing Plan books, all the copywriting-themed issues (which I bought as a spiral bound book from the late Scott Haines back in, I think, 2003) of Gary Halbert’s newsletter, and Joe Vitale’s 7 Lost Secrets of Success (which is probably the sole reason I got into direct marketing and copywriting), as well as Halbert’s Boron Letters book (which, thank God, I bought for nearly $100 when I was dirt broke as it forced me to take the info way more seriously, can trace untold profits to that single book).
And the list goes on.
The more I repetitively read, re-read, and keep re-reading the same books/courses, the more I draw from them, the more insights/ideas/money I make, and the more my evil grows…
I don’t know where else I am going with this.
Probably this has been very repetitive in some ways, of prior emails I’ve already written.
And that is as it should be, for all the reasons I went into here.
If you’re addicted to new, always chasing new, are obsessed with new you are losing out on a lot of growth. And if that is the case, stop, force yourself to look at the top 2 or 3 resources you’ve gained the most knowledge from, and go through them 10x each.
Do that and I defy you not to grow, get better, become more successful.
Enough about World-Building.
Let’s talk more about email marketing instead.
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Ben Settle
