In fact, the WSJ letter was itself a swipe of a much earlier letter that I’ve traced as far back as the late nineteenth century!
And here, I adapted a little bit of the tone of that WSJ letter as well as the goal of moving readers in the direction of spirituality.
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The WSJ letter was written to men and this letter was written to women so the language reflects the effort of writing to the female audience. My training as a copywriter began with my studies of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). Many people have written about NLP as applied to writing, but they are generally referring to extremely manipulative embedded commands such as “Of course, you want to order right now, don’t you?” That’s the kind of use of NLP that gives it a bad name.
I’m all for the elegant use of NLP, and let me introduce you to one of the concepts used in this letter: It’s called nested loops.
This methodology comes from the work of famed psychiatrist Milton Erickson, who used a technique of embedding stories within one another.
Here is a sample structure of nested loops:
Begin story A.
Begin story B.
Begin story C.
Begin story D.
Give instructions.
End story D.
End story C.
End story B.
End story A.
The use of this technique masks the fact that you are giving instructions. If you leave some of the loops open, you can create amnesia and people will forget the instructions you want them to follow.
So you need to close your loops. As you read the Sylvia Browne letter, pay attention to the loops as I open and close them. (Of course, none of this is in the original WSJ letter.) One of the things I’ve done in this letter is introduce controversy. If you’ll go through the letter to “How You Can Invite Blessing into Your Life,” you’ll see the section about “my accountants and bookkeeper won’t talk to me” and how they
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don’t think that this deal is too good and, therefore, it’s a very limited deal.
Now, the idea of controversy is disturbing to a lot of people and, therefore, go down to the PPS of the letter and you see that the accountants and the bookkeeper join in the holiday spirit and they give you a gift as well.
If you do not resolve that controversy, if you do not resolve the argument, there is an open loop in the person’s mind and, as those who have studied NLP know, opening loops but not closing them creates a risk of amnesia and that people are going to forget exactly what you wanted them to do, which in this case was to order.
Now a little bit of a technical problem was that this letter did very well and Conscious One heard from the Hay House publishers that they didn’t want the letter going out with Sylvia Browne’s name on it. So the first thing that we did was change the signature to a female staff member at Conscious One. Today it goes out with the name of Scott Martineau on it. Scott is the president of Conscious One. The change in signature has not had any impact on sales.
—Harlan Kilstein, EdD (www.overnight-copy.com) THE PSYCHIC DEMAND EXAMPLE
After reading Harlan Kilstein’s example and his explanation, I decided to quickly write a sales letter using his nested loops theory. Here’s the letter. See if you can spot the nested loop.
“I Demand $25,000.00”
Just discovered — The 1910 Secret of Psychic
Demand—The Long Lost Method for Getting What You Want — Guaranteed to Always Work!
Introducing a rare volume in a lost scientific course on success.
This is the actual secret method used by Joseph, Abraham, Moses, Plato, Phidias, Shakespeare and other legends throughout history.
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Read this incredible true story and discover the secret that commands the universe . . . a secret you will be able to use, too . . .
in only minutes from right now . . .
Dear Friend,
“I Demand $25,000.00”
That’s what a sign in a beautiful gold frame read above the desk of an executive’s office in the early 1900’s.
Many people looked at it. Some laughed. Some were curious. But few knew what it meant.
Years later the same executive replaced the old gold framed sign with a new one. This one read —
“I Demand $100,000.00”
Again, he left the sign on the wall above his desk. He rarely if ever explained why it was there. Few people asked about it, oblivious to what was actually happening.
And then again, years later, a new gold framed sign went above his desk. This one read —
“I Demand $1,000,000.00”
What was the purpose of the signs?
Why were they in gold frames?
Why did they keep increasing in amounts?
You have to remember all of this was happening before 1910. Even today, in 2006, those sums of money are impressive.
But to be demanding $25,000, or $100,000 or one million dollars
— in 1910?
That’s either ludicrous or . . . miraculous.
I recently discovered a little booklet that explains what those signs were doing and the science behind them.
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I found the booklet and the story behind them rather . . .
hypnotic.
Let me tell you about it...
The Amazing Story Behind “Mastery of Success”
The booklet was by Frank Channing Haddock. You may or may not know his name. He’s famous for a book titled Power of Will.
But few know he wrote a series of 30 little books, consisting of 60
lessons, called Mastery of Success. They’re rare to find in the original set. And very expensive if you do manage to unearth a complete set.