Questions, Comments & Contributions 

From PW re “Senators Against Smut and the Curious Case of the Johnsons in the May 23  issue: 

“I admire Johnson in spite of political differences. HOWEVER, I think this is one of the best entries I have read in your blog. VERY FUNNY.”

From SH on Copy Logic 

“I recently read Copy Logic and it’s been such a game-changer for my copy editing, so thank you so much! I wasn’t sure how your processes would work out for a freelance copywriter without the benefit of a team around them but it turns out that Claude AI does a great simulation of the CUB test which has really strengthened my copy.

“I enjoyed Copy Logic so much that I featured it on the podcast that I cohost about copywriting and I thought you might like to hear it here.”

From SL re my collection of Mexican modern art:

“Thought you might enjoy these two posts (click here and here) on amate paintings from economist Tyler Cowen and his time discovering/exploring some 30 years ago. I know nothing about the topic but found the story of his process fascinating.”

From JS: What Sugar Does to You

“This data comes from Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM), which provides real-time readings of your blood sugar levels as you eat.

“It doesn’t get any simpler than this – but why does it matter? If your blood sugar spikes, you’re igniting inflammation inside your body. Your insides are On Fire!!!

“Too dramatic? But it’s the truth.

“If you don’t care for yourself, at least consider your children and grandchildren. Their health is declining, and the choices you make today impact their future.

“Still too dramatic? But again, it’s the truth.

“Stop falling for the idea that if something is sold in a store, it must be safe – or that government approval guarantees its health benefits.

“The reality? We’ve been misled, and there’s a reason for it. Someone is making a fortune at the expense of our well-being.

“Now that’s the truth!”

From AS re the May 27  issue: 

“I saw your column today and was excited to read it, especially the Nice story. I noticed your first subject was very long and I was about to embark on reading it when I saw it was about Joe Biden’s senility going back five years. I gave a sigh of relief. I didn’t have to read it!

“When I woke up at 5 am, I watched the news and the news anchor said there was a tweet from Trump last night. According to Trump, Joe Biden was assassinated five years ago and all his appearances were AI generated. Who knew?

“One of my favorite places I ever visited was Nice. For a week we were in a 3rd floor apartment next to the boardwalk facing the Mediterranean Sea. It was so beautiful I couldn’t believe it was real. I shopped for food at the market every day, and right now I wish I had a pastry from one of the concessions.

“We rented bikes and rode to Monte Carlo, a 15-minute ride. When I returned to the States, I told my brother about the trip and asked him, ‘Did you ever ride your bike to another state?’ With pride he said, ‘yes.’ Then I asked, ‘Did you ever ride your bike to another country?’ With an inquisitive look he said, ‘No.’ With pride and joy I said, ‘I have.’”

My Response: About the Trump tweet – I had no idea that he had access to that level of information! But seriously, that’s what I like most about Trump. He is the ultimate troll.

The idea that he can post that and the Legacy Media will pick it up as an “unsubstantiated conspiracy theory” is fantastic. Everyone who understands Trump is laughing at everyone who doesn’t understand what is so blatantly obvious: that Trump is seeing how far he can embarrass the mainstream media and all those who don’t get the joke.

From DF on why I think vaccines are especially subject to corruption 

“You’ve said more than once that vaccines have some kind of special exemption that makes them more susceptible to corruption. I find that hard to believe. Please clarify.”

My Response: In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA). It was written and enacted after lots of costly lawsuits were filed against Big Pharma for the DPT vaccine and, as a result, Big Pharma was threatening to discontinue production of the vaccines due to escalating legal costs and liability fears.

To mitigate this, the NCVIA established the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system for resolving vaccine injury claims. Under this program, individuals alleging injury from certain vaccines must first file a claim with the US Court of Federal Claims, often referred to as the “vaccine court,” before pursuing civil litigation. The VICP is funded by an excise tax on each dose of covered vaccines.

I asked Nigel for details on the NCVIA. Here is what he gave me:

* Liability Protections: Vaccine manufacturers and administrators are shielded from liability for unavoidable adverse events, provided the vaccine was properly prepared and accompanied by appropriate warnings.

* Compensation Limits: The act caps awards for pain and suffering at $250,000 and prohibits punitive damages.

* Advisory Commission: The Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines was established to advise on the implementation of the VICP and recommend changes to the Vaccine Injury Table.

* Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS): The act mandated the creation of VAERS, a national system for monitoring vaccine safety and reporting adverse events.

Since its inception, the VICP has awarded over $4.6 billion in compensation to individuals who have experienced vaccine-related injuries. While the program has been instrumental in maintaining vaccine supply and public confidence, it has also faced criticism regarding the burden of proof required for claimants and the limited scope of compensable injuries.

Re my reports on COVID in the April 11, May 6, and May 27  issues:

“Thanks, Mark. Great research. Some shocking revelations.” – RI

“Mark, you should be commended for such a compelling research effort on the COVID-19 debacle. I always enjoy your newsletter, especially the tidbits that most often motivate me to do more digging on the subject. Keep up the great work – I am a big fan!” – RF

My Response: I am making COVID articles a mainstay because I believe it was the biggest humanitarian crime since the Holocaust. I’ve gotten some negative feedback on this from some people who think I’m overdoing it, but I can’t stop writing about it just because they don’t like it.

One Step Removed… It Works with Embroidery Too!

From MS, who has the unfortunate job of simultaneously translating my speeches into Japanese:

“I am writing to let you know that your business/marketing concept of ‘one-step removed’ works in areas that are totally not related to business. For example: About 18 months ago, I began to learn haute-couture embroidery and I’ve I have been really into it. Last month, I completed a project – a project that had a clear design instruction on what materials (beads, threads, codes, raffias… etc.) to use where, and that is this (all black).

“Now, since there were many new techniques involved and I wanted to redo them on my own just to keep my memory fresh, I decided to use the same techniques and make something else. First, I was thinking of making a new design by myself, change colors… etc. etc. But then I remembered the ‘one-step removed’ philosophy and decided to only change one element – a color. So I decided to keep design the same, size the same, everything the same… but just new colors, so that I should have 50% of success rate.

“My embroidery teacher was so happy to see the new version with new color, and she is more than ever willing to share what she knows. Also, since I kept everything the same except the colors, it was really clear for me to spot when I messed up and how. It really boosted the quality of my learning experience as well.

“What you teach really works!!!!! “

From AS re being old:

“Having spent some time doing physical labor as a young man, I was conscious of the labor of the men who delivered supplies to my restaurant. From their trucks, they would unload 25-pound boxes of liquor and wine bottles, 30-pound packages of ribs, 50- and 60-pound beer kegs, and fully packed cartons of everything else. Some of these men remained on our route for 30 years. I watched them age along with me.

“Memorial Day weekend was always a busy time for the restaurant, and so deliveries would arrive in the days leading up to it all day, back-to-back. One weekend – about 10 years ago – I was, as always, watching the older deliverymen, worried a bit for their safety but mostly in awe of their ability to lift, drag, and pull the loaded handcarts and dollies.

“I asked Lou, who had been delivering to my restaurant for many years, how he did it. ‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m in constant pain, but I have a wife, and one of my kids is still in college. I have no choice.’

“I wanted to believe that if I had to, like Lou had to, I would find a way to do that kind of work at Lou’s age. But I didn’t know.

“Today, I was at a gas station and I saw a man in his mid-seventies, like me, rolling a handcart stacked more than six feet high with large boxes. I held the door for him and was about to compliment him on his tenacity, when I saw that he was delivering potato chips.”

From JS re my article on the Pareto Principle in the May 17  issue: 

“I was particularly interested in the returns (ROI) on the 10% allocated to ‘outside the box’ strategies – or, as you put it, ideas that are ‘far away from what has traditionally worked.’

“From my own experience managing budgets, I’ve typically used a 95/5 split, with the 5% dedicated to marginal changes. I found that beating the control was challenging, and the most effective gains came from small tweaks that, over time, compounded nicely.

“I generally avoided searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. In the old Print world, the time required for testing and retesting made those more unconventional approaches too far outside my acceptable range. I suppose I was simply in a hurry… Dammit, I didn’t see 70 coming so quickly.”

My Response: You make a good point. I wonder if the difference was in the nature of our different markets. Your market was very large, but I see it as having been more stable because you were marketing to buyers of mainstream products. (Is that fair?)

I was a BIG believer in incremental improvements when our file was 100,000. I had more theories than a barn dog has ticks. (One day, I’ll tell you some and you will laugh at me!) But when our file size reached a million, all those incremental changes didn’t pan out. I tested and retested them because I wanted to believe them. But on test panels of 100,000 rather than 20,000, they didn’t work.

What made the difference were radical changes… like turning an investment newsletter into an international club of wealth seekers (The Oxford Club), which is still selling over $100 million a year in subscriptions 40 years later!

Laid off? Could be the best thing that ever happened to you… 

From AC: “I turn 32 this year, just got laid off from work, and I feel stuck. Making a new start seems so far out that it’s got me quite depressed. Should I begin by reading your Ready, Fire, Aim, or is there some other book to read?”

My Response: First of all, don’t let “making a new start” bum you out. This could be an opportunity in disguise.

My guess is that you were not what I would call a “superstar” employee. Why? Because superstar employees are never “laid off” unless the business closes. I’m assuming your business didn’t close. Therefore, your being laid off indicates you are not an amazing, super-valuable, super-hardworking, and super-conscientious employee. You are probably “ordinary.” You get to work on time. You leave after eight hours. You do what you are told to do competently. And you think that should be enough. It’s not. You are ordinary. And performing as an “ordinary” employee is a 95% guarantee that you get nowhere.”

So the first thing you must do is to desist from being ordinary. That requires admitting to yourself that you are not extraordinary. The next thing it requires is to create a plan that allows you to become the best employee at your next business. And the third thing you must do is stick to that plan even if it feels like you are not progressing.

You can accomplish all three of the above by purchasing a copy of The Pledge, the book I wrote in 2010, to help people in the very situation you find yourself in now. The Pledge is not a book of big ideas. On the contrary, it is a book of smaller pieces of common sense. But if you commit to it, you will become an extraordinary employee, which is the first step towards becoming a successful wealth builder.

In 52 weeks, you will have changed a good deal from who you are now. You will be smarter. You will be shrewder. And you will be a much better worker.  You should also be making a good deal more than you are making now. And you should have a saving account you can use to start your own business.

If you’ve accomplished all that in a year, then you can decide whether you want to start your own business. And if you decide you want to, then you should not just read Ready, Fire, Aim, you should use it as your business plan.

Re my piece in the May 17  issue on the Pareto Principle

From SJ: “As someone who ran a fitness business for 30 years, I can tell you that you’re right on the money with your version of the Pareto Principle. You wouldn’t think it would apply to my industry, but it does. Once I figured out that 80% of my revenues were coming from 20% of your customers, it didn’t take me long to realize that 25% of those 20% are the people that are giving you a bottom line. Treat them like gold!”

This Has Gotta Be the Best Business Ever!

MP recommended this article to me on the way to Courtomer. It’s another example of two continuing facts about entrepreneurship: 1. If there is a clever new way to make a profit, there’s a good chance it will be an American who figures it out. 2. Life Insurance is the Buddha of financial strategies. It has a thousand reincarnations.

My piece on copywriting in the May 9  issue prompted about a dozen questions from readers who were starting or contemplating copywriting careers. I’ll answer just one of them today. 

From PL: How did your pre-copywriting jobs shape how you approach copy now?

My Response: When I was 18 or 19 (a child really), I spent several weeks trailing a man in his thirties, a seasoned pro who was trying to teach me the basics of door-to-door sales by selling pots and pans in an apartment complex in Brooklyn. Not too long after that, I spent half a summer selling aluminum siding door-to-door on Long Island.

Those experiences, painfully embarrassing as they seemed at the time, taught me more about selling than I realized. For one thing, I discovered the miracle of persistence – seeing how my mentors could take rejection after rejection because they knew that they needed only one sale out of ten to hit their goals. I also learned how important it was to pay close attention to the eyes and body language of the prospect when giving a pitch, so you could change up the approach the moment you saw signs that you were losing them.

You might think that person-to-person selling – and these “secrets” in particular – might not apply to writing advertising copy, but they very much do. The first one allowed me to understand the power of direct marketing – first direct mail marketing and then direct marketing on the internet. And the second one taught me to read my written copy out loud to get a sense for when it might become boring or incredible.

I am not the exception in benefiting from this sort of sales experience. Most of the best and most successful copywriters I know spent some time selling door-to-door.

About my “100-Day Report Card for Donald Trump” in the May 13  issue…

From BJ: “Re your comment on Trump’s popularity and the polls, the WSJ today (May 15) came out with an editorial titled ‘Poll: Trump Has Higher Approval Rating in New Jersey Than Democrat Governor.’ You can read it here.”

Note: This Readers Write “department” has so far consisted mostly of comments and or questions from readers. Lately, though, I’ve been getting a regular stream of articles recommended by my regular readers, including friends and colleagues. I’ve been collecting them and thought I’d pass three along to you today.

A T-Shirt Was Grown, Spun, Knit, and Made Entirely in America. It Took Only 4 Years 

This one was sent in by LC, no doubt stimulated by Trump’s trade policies.

Is This Daily Habit Driving a $4 Trillion Health Crisis?

Dr. Mercola, one of the best-known COVID skeptics and a crusader for healthy living, is sometimes criticized because he supports his newsletter through subscriptions and selling natural health products. “Don’t judge him, for that,” says JS, who has been researching the Health Industrial Complex for years. “Read what he says here, and decide for yourself.”

The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity

Responding to Part Two of my monograph on COVID in the May 6 issue, GM recommended this report on Pfizer.

From SC re Part One of my monograph on COVID in the April 11  issue: 

“You do your otherwise good work in your report on COVID damage by suggesting that the government (Dr. Fauci in particular) was purposefully making false public statements about it rather than reporting on the best available scientific evidence at the time. There’s no proof of that.”

My Response: There is a hill of evidence that’s quickly growing to the size of a mountain. I know it’s not easy to find it if you are looking on Google. Since COVID became controversial in the mid 2020s, I’ve seen a strong pro-government bias in its ranking systems. And let’s not forget that Mark Zuckerberg, in his Congressional testimony, admitted to allowing the Biden Administration influence Google’s “fact checking” in favor of the official narrative.)

In addition to Part Two in today’s issue, I’m going to be publishing more of my monograph on COVID in the coming weeks. Please read all of it, as I’m including dates, times, and figures that I hope will persuade you to take a more critical view of what happened.

I’m convinced that the response to COVID (the response of the governments of the majority of developed countries) was the greatest abridgment of political, legal, and social freedom in my lifetime. And the egregious wrongs that were done to billions of people all over the world were done with the passive cooperation of most of the populations affected – mostly with their naïve and stubbornly ignorant consent.

I know you will reject that accusation out of hand. But just think: What if it is true?

About my “early to bed, early to rise” pledge in the April 7  issue… 

“Try this: Waste your most productive time during the day on TikTok, etc., and then try to be your most productive from 11:00 pm until 2:00 am. I expect it won’t be long before you’re going to bed early.” – JJ

My Response: I appreciate the suggestion… and that is essentially what I’ve been doing. My social media addiction of choice is YouTube, which my limbic/reptilian brain absorbs like a needed nutrient. I haven’t lost faith. So long as I continue getting up at 6:00 or 6:15, there is hope my thinking brain will have its voice heard!

From DG: “An aside to your USAID article in the April 22     issue” 

“Not only is there a question about how efficient USAID was, there have to be questions about where it was going.

“Until it was stopped, I didn’t realise that a recipient was a UK ‘charity’ called Stonewall. Why would a UK charity need funding from the US? It’s not as if Stonewall helps poor/ill people. They are a very militant group that drives a pro-transgender, anti-anything-else ideology, they have managed to get a big foothold in defining how UK government and government-funded organizations run their recruitment, etc. I believe they are really dangerous.

“Not the sort of organisation that can get funding from individual contributions. I had never thought about where they got their money, but Trump has done us a big favour cutting funding to USAID. In the current woke climate, not something many people will say, but it’s true.”

Two comments on the tariffs essay in the April 3  issue…

“I can’t believe you were trying to defend Trump’s tariffs. The guys a maniac. He’s going to destroy the world.” – PG

“Your point about Trump using tariffs for geopolitical reasons is a good one. It’s worked so far. It will be interesting to see if it continues to work – if he can pull it off without causing the inflation his critics are predicting.” – NSP

On my review of A Man for All Seasons in the April 15  issue…

“I was glad to see your review of A Man for All Seasons. It’s always been one of my favorite films, but when I recommend it, people seem uninterested because it is so old.” – SL

My Response: I’m not surprised. But for me, I find myself preferring to watch something that is decades old, even if I’ve seen it before, rather than taking a chance on something new.

Thanks for your piece on Trump’s tariffs

“I knew nothing about tariffs before Trump started imposing them. I read lots about them since, but the more I read, the more confused I got. The Liberal media seems to be against tariffs, and yet I thought they were traditionally in favor of them “to protect American workers.” And the Conservative media seem to be supporting them, even though I thought conservatives and pro-capitalists hated tariffs. Your piece helped me understand that I wasn’t crazy – that this is an issue, like so many today, that is clouded by politics.” – SG

Time to buy? Time to sell? He wants to know what I think:

“What are your current thoughts on the markets? Is it a time to buy the dip and get wealthy?” – JG

My Response: I’ll give you the briefest answer. If your approach to investing is like mine – buy world-dominating companies that have “moats” and hold on to them – you would not be selling.

As for buying, I look at value for that, and the P/E ratio in particular (because it’s simple). Thus, I will buy when the P/E ratios are at historical averages. Like 15 for the Coca Colas and IBMs and so on, and maybe 20 to 25 for the Amazons and Nvidias.

Until prices drop to those levels, I’m not an eager buyer.

“I’m so happy to hear you are OFF statins!”

“Along with the other negatives, I recently read that there is new evidence that long-term use may contribute to neurocognitive diseases. Your followers are curious/interested, even if no one asked!” – KI

My Response: Thanks – but I should make it clear that in recounting my own experiences and decisions, I’m not prescribing anything. Just telling my readers what I did and what I’ve discovered. As we say when we are selling health products, “individual results may vary.” In any case, whether my results are good or disappointing, I will keep you up on this and other little projects I’ve initiated.

A thank-you for copywriting advice she found in one of my books: 

“I recently read Copy Logic, and it’s been such a game-changer for my copy editing – so thank you! I enjoyed it so much that I featured it on the podcast that I cohost about copywriting.” – SH

My Response: Thanks! I’m happy to know that you found it useful and appreciate the mention on your podcast. I’m including the link that you provided here so my readers can check it out.