{"id":26,"date":"2007-03-19T20:10:05","date_gmt":"2007-03-20T02:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/26\/look-ma-no-brains\/"},"modified":"2007-03-19T20:10:05","modified_gmt":"2007-03-20T02:10:05","slug":"look-ma-no-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/26\/look-ma-no-brains\/","title":{"rendered":"Look, Ma, no brains!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got a phone call today.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is Jim. I&#8217;m calling because you bought our ebook about affiliate programs &#8212; are you looking to make more money, or quit your dayjob, or are you not serious about changing your life?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; I replied, completely unaffected by his opening gambit, &#8220;it&#8217;s interesting to hear you frame my purchase, as if those are the only choices. But I didn&#8217;t buy the ebook for any of those reasons&#8230; and I don&#8217;t see how any of that has to do with changing my life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Uh&#8230;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Actually, I bought it because I have my own product and I wanted to know more about how smart affiliates run their businesses so I could help the people who promoting my product&#8230; More importantly, I know realize that that selling that ebook isn&#8217;t where you make your money, and I&#8217;ll bet you&#8217;re about to pitch me on the expensive &#8216;mentorship&#8217; program where you <strong>do<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In fact, if you qualify, I can try to get my manager&#8217;s approval and show you how you can join us for free.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>PAUSE&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Now, you have to realize, that I have NO interest whatsoever in the mentorship program.  Even if I were interested, I don&#8217;t have the time. And, frankly, even if I had the time, I&#8217;ve seen so many of these &#8220;mentorship&#8221; programs that are a total scam that I 100% completely don&#8217;t want to be part of this one.<\/p>\n<p>And, yet, when he said that sentence&#8230; and let me write it again, emphasizing the important parts&#8230;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">&#8220;In fact, <strong>if you qualify,<\/strong> I can <strong>try <\/strong>to <strong>get my manager&#8217;s approval<\/strong> and <strong>show you how you can join us for free<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230; my brain turned off, my stomach started to turn inside out, and I could feel the desire to <strong>QUALIFY<\/strong>, to <strong>GET THE MANAGER&#8217;S APPROVAL<\/strong>, and to find out what secret he was going to <strong>show me <\/strong>&#8230; especially since it could be <strong>FREE!<\/strong><br \/>\nFeeling like I was in a bit of a trance, I said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;m your guy,&#8221; and I hung up the phone.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s 3 hours later and I&#8217;m still reeling from the experience&#8230; I mean, I know the advertising and marketing tricks he was pulling. I know that to &#8220;qualify&#8221; you need a credit card and a pulse (and the pulse is optional). I know that the &#8220;manager&#8221; is the guy sitting next to him and probably has a deeper voice to convey &#8220;authority.&#8221; I even know what they&#8217;re going to teach.<\/p>\n<p>And, knowing all that I still have that idea\/feeling that &#8220;I lost out on something I want&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>You could (and others have) write a book about all the persuasion tactics built into that one sentence. And then a graduate level book that describes the whole qualify\/manager\/show you tactic.<\/p>\n<p>What amazes me most is how effective they are even on someone who KNOWS they are tricks and ISN&#8217;T INTERESTED anyway! No wonder so many people lose so much money on so many scams.<br \/>\nI&#8217;d love\u00c2\u00a0 to write more about this, but I just heard a bell in the distance, and I can tell by my saliva that food must be ready.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got a phone call today. &#8220;This is Jim. I&#8217;m calling because you bought our ebook about affiliate programs &#8212; are you looking to make more money, or quit your dayjob, or are you not serious about changing your life?&#8221; &#8220;Well,&#8221; I replied, completely unaffected by his opening gambit, &#8220;it&#8217;s interesting to hear you frame [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gurus","category-psychology","category-self-improvement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sashen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}