So fair warning: you can either find the following post to be highly entertaining and get a good kick and laugh out of it (while learning some valuable lessons on my dime), or it can be a complete waste of your time…

The bottom line is that the events that took place reminded me of two things:

1. The validity of Frank Kern’s idea of “Core Influence”.
2. I should never waste time emailing back and forth with an illogical and ill-mannered person.

This is How It Began

So as you may know, I am a promoter of CarbonCopyPro and as such, have my own autoresponder series where people can opt in and get to know more about the opportunity, myself, and the awesome bonuses Fernando and I offer (SEO Networker, personal coaching, etc.). And in that autoresponder, on day 6, an email goes out with that title, “But who the ___ are you?” The gist of the subject is that there are tons opportunities out there, lots of teams to join, and leaders to follow… So one of the questions on prospects’ minds is, “Who are you and why should I join your team?”

The email goes forth and addresses that, telling them briefly who I am, where I come from, and how I can help them.

This is What I Get One Night…

I get an email that reads:

Ray,

All the talent you or I may have are from G-D. Don’t let it go to your head, nor have I or will I. Your email Subject “But who the ____ are YOU?” is not a very nice way to begin a business relationship.

If you actually want to know more about me, visit my site www.____.Us I invite you to call me directly on my cell.

And then this is followed by some pitch for some business and then a whoooolllleee slew of domains for sale. I kid you not. Here’s a shrunked version of the email this guy sent me, I assume all that garbage at the end is his email signature.

This is his email signature. Seriously.

Two Choices – The Red Pill or the Blue Pill

Now, at this point I had two choices, ignore the email like I usually do or try and set the guy straight. Given that it was fairly late at night, my patience and tolerance weren’t exactly at an all time high. And frankly, like my buddy Jim Yaghi, I am sick and tired of having to just “take it” because I’ve managed to be a large target given what Fernando Ceballos and I have been able to humbly accomplish and continue to do.

So I went for the Red Pill. This is what I wrote back:

From reading your response, I’d wager that you didn’t read my email… otherwise you’d understand the subject was directed at myself (from folks such as yourself who may be looking for a team to join).

The point is, in this industry, there are tons of options, tons of opportunities, tons of folks you may choose to join, so most people, when they decide if they want to join a team or not, are asking the question of, “Who would be my ‘sponsor/upline/team leader’?”

That’s the gist of the subject line.

For you to not read my newsletter, misconstrue it, and come back at me alluding to it “getting to my head”, preaching to me about “G-D”, and then trying to invite me to look at YOUR business… and then lecturing me about how to “begin a business relationship”?

Wow. Talk about irony eh?

Raymond

I really think my email says it all, and things started to snowball from there.

I get this back from him:

1. I wasn’t looking for a fight. If after reading what I have to say in this email, you can’t send a positive reply, don’t bother contacting me again. I hope you decide to be positive.
2. I spent quite a bit of time on your lead capture page already and have just enough of an idea to give you my contact information. If I spend the time reading every PRE-WRITTEN thing in my In Box, I wouldn’t get anything done (you should know how that is).
3. If you don’t see your mistake in sending a new lead an email entitled “But who the ____ are YOU?” than I have a very valuable lesson to share with you, and hope you have some for me.

Okay… so not only did the guy NOT read my email, after what I responded, he STILL didn’t bother going back to read his email. Oh, and he expected me to send a “positive reply”… WHHHAA???

At this point, it was REALLY late at night and Raymond’s patience was wearing thin:

You throw the first punch and say that you aren’t “looking for a fight”? Nice.

You didn’t bother reading my email and jumped to conclusions as to what it’s about and decided to send an email containing some baseless accusation…

I have two lessons for you:

1. Don’t jump to conclusions. Which really goes along the same line of don’t judge a book by its cover (an email by its subject line).

2. Meaning is contextual (take my subject line out of context, and you can go buck wild coming up with all sorts of stories like you have).

I took the liberty of unsubscribing you from my newsletters. Best of luck in your a endeavors.

Raymond
P.S. Honestly, again with the irony… you send me some negative baseless email, and you are preaching to ME about being positive? You subscribed to my email list, I didn’t subscribe to yours.

His True Color Comes Out

This is where it gets fun

I threw the first punch?

You send an email with the subject that reeks bundles of insults (a book with dog shit all over it, no thanks I wouldn’t pick it up, and I have no time to clean it so I can read it, especially when I ALREADY got to know you AS I SAID when I SPENT TIME on your capture page.

If you get anymore email marketing from me, just ignore them, it would be accidental.

Good luck in life with your NEGATIVE attitude. DON’T EVER send me an email again.

Advice: Don’t send emails with insulting subject and expect people to READ the content. Healthy people are not masticates and choose not to spend time reading a MORON’s letter with an INSULTING subject line, all which is after he acts as if he is all that in marketing but makes such a big mistake to attract attention (or whatever you were thinking) has the MOST NEGATIVE Ora plus has no sense to admit his fault…. a sign of NOT BEING OPEN TO LEARNING.

Good luck buddy, you will need it with your attitude. Don’t ever write me again & ignore any emails from me, but just in case. I will take you off my email list.

Turns out, he’s a 52 year old seventh grader who thinks he can get to “know someon” by their capture page… a capture page about a business opportunity no less! And this is coming from a guy who OPTED-INTO my autoresponder while I never opted into his! Heck, I don’t even know if he has one so what’s the deal with him taking me off of his email list? He talkes about “negative attitude”, “not being able to learn”, yadi yadi yadi.

Wow.

So I started to respond:

Haha.

You act so high and mighty (preaching about G-D and “not letting it get over my head” nonsense…) but when it really comes down to it, you have to resort to 7th grader insults. Not to mention you think you can get to “know someone” by reading their “capture page”. Oh right… and again, thinking you know what an email is about by reading the subject line, not to mention that you think it’s insulting YOU and then daring to shoot back a confronting email without getting your facts straight first… how sad.

Again, before you point fingers at other people, take a good look at yourself.

Rethink your attitude, if you had one of an optimistic one, would you jump to conclusion that the email is about insulting YOU? That’d be like me taking a look at all that garbage in your email signature with all those links and going, “Man, this guy is obviously a spammer and have no idea what he’s doing.” and then preaching to you.

The only difference is, I’d be right.

But Then I Stopped Myself, and Here’s the First Lesson

You will NEVER “win” an argument with an illogical person – so why waste your time? See, my first mistake was dignifying this guy with a response. While it was fun pointing out all the faults this guy is exposing, at the end of the day, it accomplished nothing – and it ended up costing me some time Time I could've spent...» He refused to listen, to reason, and to examine himself, despite my efforts to convince him to

So my last email never got sent – I can only imagine how much more umm… “interesting” his email will get I wonder if»

And Here’s Lesson #2

I do have to give this guy credit, he made me re-exmine that email subject line and made me ask myself, IS it offensive? IS it insulting? And that’s when I am reminded of Frank Kern’s concept of “Core Influence”. It’s pretty simple really. There is no way will you be able to please everybody and attract everybody to you and your business. And just as importantly, you wouldn’t want to. Why? Because it wouldn’t be fun!

Frank basically says that you really want to attract people that you like and will like you back – said it another way, people you can and will connect with. If you are a laid back surfer dude, you’d probably have a horrible time trying to do business with say… the Amish +/-»

Odds are, they won't enjoy doing business together...

You have to be true to yourself and not try to please everybody, and certainly not operate out of fear of offending people.

So I ask myself this, do I care to do busines with someone who’s going to get take an email subject line out of context, jump to conclusions, get offended by it, and write some baseless email? NAHHHH.

I say let those folks go elsewhere, because frankly, we wouldn’t get along.

From Me to You…

So next time you get an email similar to the one I got, my advice to you is this, don’t do what I did and dignify it with a response. Simply delete that email, and go into your autoresponder and delete that person from your list. Done and done and done.

In conclusion Dan Kennedy says that if you aren’t pissing somebody off with your marketing, you are probably not doing it right. Guess I am on the right track

To “But who the ___ are you?”,

Raymond

Not that I have anything against the Amish… or surfer dudes, so relax