A BizWorld reviewer expresses her true feelings for me:
“Don’t waste your time with this nonsense”
2 things:
1. There are some real gems in there that I’m excited about and have my juices flowing. His concept of world building in business is intriguing but he gave very few examples of exactly HOW to build a world. It was the same 3 stories over and over again. That was a bit frustrating. But overall he validated a lot of things I’ve been thinking for awhile with “softer” marketing that focuses on engagement and relationships, not so dependent on stats, tracking, etc.
2. He is a terrible person and I actively dislike him. I’m used to sexist marketing gurus, never had much of a choice but to learn from them because they are everywhere. This book contains straight up misogyny. I honestly believe he thinks women are less than men (definitely less than him).
I gave him the benefit of the doubt for half the book and then I just couldn’t anymore. He talks about only using these marketing powers for good and not evil but then he does some really gross things in his world. He plays it off as being provocative but having been in a cult and experiencing life as a woman, this book was one red flag after another (his group members sending death threats to two women because they called him sexist, demanding single women in his FB group fill out dating profiles or get kicked out, and much more).
Looked him and his wife up on Twitter just to see if maybe I was missing context…it only got worse.
Because he’s a good marketer he gets away with a lot of bad behavior that I find actually dangerous because he’s right about some things. That can make some people swallow his other ideas with out question because “he’s so smart, he must be right”
On top of all that, any push back he gets he thinks is just validation that he’s right. In the book he tells a story about a man that reached out to him saying his wife loved his books but that his covers are disturbing and she doesn’t really like that. Ben concludes that she secretly LOVES his covers but is too afraid to admit it because it’s not popular/main stream.
He comes across as a very insecure person trying to compensate for something. Of course he’d tell you that’s just my insecurity coming through and that I secretly love his honesty and want to be in his world. He’s that deluded.
While there are good concepts in this book that I will use, I can not in good conscience recommend it and, in fact, would encourage people to not read it and stay away from Ben Settle “worlds”. There are much better books out there that give solid marketing advice. Don’t waste your time with this nonsense.
Sheer… perfection.
Although Stefania was none too happy to see another woman have so many spare emotions for your daily email horror host.
But it’s like I told her:
She needs to learn how to share if she wants to keep her spot…
Still, her complaints about the repetition and a lack of “how to” are valid.
As far as how-to info goes – I can only give a framework and beacons to follow.
To give a “do this, that, and then this” training on it defeats the purpose of creating a World which comes from within, not from without. And to seek a checklist or hand holding is to miss the point. Nobody can tell you how to do it. You have to figure it out. Although I have long toyed with the idea of having a small workshop here at elBenbo’s Lair, 4 or 5 people max – and doing live “hot seat-style” World-building back-and-forth feeding frenzies… with more beacons and insights to explore… but without telling anyone exactly what to do which, again, would defeat the purpose.
It’d be very expensive if I did that though.
Likely $10k a head, and probably a lot more.
And as for the book’s repetition:
It is true there is a ton of repetition in the book as the Amazon description clearly says there is. It’s even in bold letters so it’s easy to see, and so people would know what they are getting before they buy it. This concept of World-Building the way I teach it demands repetition. And to think you can just read it once, nod, then file away is not a realistic way to learn something as comprehensive as this particular topic.
We truly do live in a post literate society though.
And so I’ve come to expect this sort of thing.
But if repetition is a problem, probably you should pass on reading it. Same goes for needing a checklist/specific how-to’s if you dislike having to think.
Anyway, you can find my BizWorld on Amazon.
But the above also goes for my Email Players newsletter.
Sometimes repetition is used obnoxiously – although from different angles I’ve taught things before.
So keep that in mind before subscribing.
More on that here:
Ben Settle
P.S. I never thought BizWorld would be divisive. Yet, if I get more reviews like the above and a couple other negatives ones I’ve seen for it, it may very well end up being more divisive even than my first Villains book, which still gets a lot of peoples’ panties in a twist.
