I got a DM on Skool yesterday. It came from a dude I've never talked to or heard of. He's in a group I am a member of, though I've never ever participated in it in any way. Here's the message the dude sent me: "Hey John, saw you in this community. What are you focused on these days?" I did not respond. Since we've recently been talking about opening up qualified conversations with short messages... ... what are some reasons that this short message (including the 7 word question) was not an effective conversation starter? Think about what you would tell this dude. Write it down in a comment below to make it clear for yourselves and others in the group. And the next time you want to start a conversation, you will have a 100x chance of doing better and avoiding some of the traps this guy fell into.

I have a friend named Will. Will and I were both in Dan Ferrari's coaching group at the same time back in the late 19th century. I talked to Will earlier this week to catch up. For the past couple years, he's been doing all the email marketing for Polymarket, one of the two big prediction markets. First he was doing a cool weekly email, which I even read, because it's interesting. Then they got him to start doing a daily email as well. It's a lot of writing and a lot of work. Will is looking for help, for somebody to handle either the daily email, or segments of the weekly newsletter, or some combination of both. I offered to put the word out to people in my audience in order to: 1. Help Will 2. Look cool to people in my audience There's a conflict between those two goals. Will's first question was, "Will I get inundated with replies." I told him that chances are yes. And I offered to act as an intermediary, to vet people before I pass them on to him. If you are interested in writing for Polymarket: 1. Write me an email at [email protected] 2. Tell me you specialize in writing Morning-Brew style newsletters 3. Include highly relevant samples to back up your claim in 2 above If you don't have relevant samples, you have two options. Option one is to not apply for this job. If you don't send me highly relevant samples, I will not forward your stuff to Will, and I will not listen to you when you explain to me why I should hear you out. Option two is to create highly relevant samples on the spot, maybe even a sample Polymarket email or two (their stuff is all online and you can find it and model it). NB: If I have to parse, read into, or interpret your message your samples to figure out how they could be relevant to this job... I will just skip you and go to the next person. The whole point here is to figure out if you are the kind of person I should hand off to Will. A part of that is your writing experience and skill. Another part of that is your ability to make his job easier, rather than harder, and right now I'm the proxy for that.

How many of you keep images turned off by default in your emails? I have been for 20+ years, but I know most people aren't as paranoid as me to avoid tracking.

This morning I woke up and saw that i have a new ThriveCart order notification. I'm not promoting anything new, I have no current deadlines, and this was not simply a rebill notification for a Daily Email Habit subscriber. What could this order be? I opened up the email to see: DESCRIPTION: Copy Riddles AMOUNT: $997.00 I started to pat myself on the back. For one thing, it's always nice to get a $997 course sale. For another, I figured that this emails an email I wrote a few days ago, in which I promoted Copy Riddles, can now go into my "Emails that did well" file. And sure enough, the dude bought thorugh that email ("A new episode about clever product names"). Only one problem though... The dude got onto my list on May 18. He bought today, May 28. I haven't reached out yet to this guy. I don't know what he knows about me, how presold he was, or whether this email really did do magic. I suspect that ANY decent email promoting Copy Riddles might have gotten this guy to click through, at which point, maybe the sales page is what really sold him. On the flip side, had I not sent this email a few days ago, promoting Copy Riddles, odds are excellent I would NOT have made this sale. That's an argument for regularly promoting offers from your back catalog in your daily emails. It's also an argument for having a welcome sequence, in which you gradually guide new people along through the offers you have. I don't have a welcome sequence. I'm apparently losing money. Do you have a welcome sequence? Why or why not?

It's Memorial Day in the U.S. It's Whit Monday in Spain. (I'm not Catholic and I have no idea what Whit Monday is, but apparently it's cause enough for everything to work like it's Sunday.) Are you working today? If so, where? On what? I myself am working. My cleaning woman is here so I am on the roof of my building. There's a small pool here, one German girl tanning herself, a couple young Russian guys who I guess live in the building, a woman who must be the mother of one of the guys. She is drinking beer, they are not. Up above, I can hear a few seagulls shrieking and a police siren somewhere in the distance. I'm replying to emails that have built up over the past few days. And in a half hour, I have to get on a call with @Nick Bandy , to hatch evil schemes.