Jeff Vece

01/30/2025

⌛"What the f% is nineteen eighty-six?"📅

Lemme tell ye about one of the biggest mistakes ye can make as a business owner: discounting yer own knowledge.

Wuh-dew-eye mean by that?

Here’s a lil’ story to demonstrate.

I remember one of the first days of kindergarten at ol’ Horizons Elementary in beautiful, historic Appleton, Wisconsin. We were all sitting Indian-style (remember when they used to call it that?) on the floor, and the teacher axed us, “Does anybody know what year it is?”

One of the other kids raised his hand and said, “nineteen eighty-six.”

I thought, “What the f% does that mean?” (mayhaps not in those exact words).

Because, see, I had no conception of numbering years. Never heard of it. If a big lumbering adult had tried to explain something to me by referencing the year it happened, I would have had no idea what they were talking about. Said adult would have been talking over my head in more ways than one.

So it is in your business, too. No matter what you do for people, I can virtually guarantee that you’ve already forgotten how knowledgeable you are compared to the average person — and by extension, how valuable that knowledge is.

This is the root of what a lot of people call “imposter syndrome” (a phrase I’m not wild about, but that’s a tale for another ‘mail).

It’s also the reason so many people can’t muster the cojones to charge what they’re worth. Because they’ve literally forgotten what they’re worth.

So the next time you feel the urge to discount your rate in order to secure a client (something I don’t recommend ever doing), try stiffening yer spine, remembering how much more that client needs you than you need them, and with a steely gaze, quoting your full price.

Just for kicks, why don’t you quote 10% more than normal (even if that price makes you sweat bullets, I’ll bet a short stack you’re still under-charging…almost everyone is).

01/29/2025

⏳ Things you don't have time not to do ⏳

Most people’s priorities are fooked. But it’s how they’re fooked that’s most interesting.

Classic example: claiming you don’t have time to do something that’s far more important than most of the dumb s**t you’re currently doing.

Don’t have time to work out? Then how do you have an hour or more to scroll through the idiot archives (AKA social media) and/or watch trash TV?

Don’t have time to meditate, journal, or work on that meaningful project you’ve been putting off for months? See above.

Business owners are the worst about this. They’ll do anything they can think of to avoid getting down to the meat and potatoes of their business, which mostly amounts to “getting clients.” They’ll screw around with their website, check their email for the thirteenth time today, or make another dumb LinkedIn post about something they’re convinced their dog was thinking about.

“Playing business,” this is called.

As the great Gary Halbert once said, if running a business is 100, then making a sale is 99. But that’s scary, because most business owners have no idea how to do it.

Here’s one of those great I don’t have time to do that statements: “I don’t have time to learn a system for marketing and selling.”

This is an all-time doozy. Because the truth is that as a business owner, you don’t have time not to learn a system for marketing and selling. By not having a system (but instead a random collection of cobbled-together tactics, many of which are either highly questionable or not understood in their proper context), you’re dooming yourself to spinning your wheels ’til the bulls come home.

Like most things that pay off, it takes some upfront investment — in time, treasure, or sweat...and usually all three.

But it’s the only way out of the cycle of frustration and mediocrity.

That’s what my course, Prime Business Mastery, is all about. It's meant to be a light in this dark time of confusion and (if I may speak French for a moment) bulls**t advice.

If you want to learn more about it, here’s the link: https://jeffvece.com/prime

01/28/2025

🚰 All the plumbers will be millionaires 💰

There’s an episode of South Park where the all the handymen and plumbers are suddenly filthy rich, because reliance on technology has rendered everyone incapable of doing even the most basic physical tasks. Thus, the simplest practical skills like tightening a screw or unclogging a toilet are completely beyond the ken of normal folk.

Like most South Park episodes, it’s funny ‘cause it’s true.

As a business owner, this has more relevance to you than perhaps anyone.

First of all because it highlights how, in this brave new world, even a baseline level of competence will make you a superstar in your industry.

But also because it should have a real impact on how you think about hiring outside help.

Back when I was starting out as a copywriter, my single biggest surprise was how inept most other copywriters were. I was truly astonished (and in some ways quite happy) to see how bad the competition was, and how little they even seemed to care about how bad they were.

I wasn't the only one who noticed. Nearly every single client or potential client I talked to had an epic tale of frustration and disillusionment regarding copywriters they had hired in the past.

It was a rare dodo that had a story about having worked with a really good copywriter. And in most of those cases, that star copywriter had moved on to bigger and better things. These precious gems were spoken of wistfully, like a beloved dog that ran away.

Here’s the thing: it’s only going to get worse.

I’d bet good green money that the next wave of copywriters — those just cutting their teeth now — are going to be so laughably incompetent it’ll make your eyes bleed. The reason is simple: none of them are going to struggle through the process of figuring out the hard stuff. As soon as they hit a roadblock, or get a little tired and want to be finished with an email or a sales page, they’ll go running to “AI” to do the work for them.

I even expect the veteran copywriters who are currently pretty good will gradually get worse, because most of them will give in to the siren song of technology and let their thinking muscles get lazy and flabby too.

And it’s not just copywriters — this goes for all specialists. Any profession where people can offload their thinking to “AI,” the majority are going to get rapidly dumber.

As a business owner, you need to be ready for this — and that means, to some degree, being less reliant on specialists. It’s already a minefield trying to find a good one. Unless you’re paying heavy money, you really don’t know if you’re getting a superstar or a dufus — and I can tell you from experience, the dufuses outnumber everyone else like 100 to 1.

If you’ve ever had to hire anybody, you know exactly what I’m ranting about.

The point is, it’s more important than ever to be conversant in the most important parts of your own business, even if you intend to outsource the gruntwork. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is nothing more important to your success than sales and marketing.

How do you fix that? Join my list:

Enter your primary email address below to get my daily emails and your free copy of my premium guide, 8 Reasons You’re Not Getting The Clients You Want, And How To Change That…Fast.

01/08/2025

** How to lose $15,000 without even trying **

A couple of days ago I told you about the geezer who lost three fingers because he took his eye off the ball for a couple of seconds.

Today, I’ll tell you about the $15,000 car ride I took on New Year’s Day.

Some would call it bad luck, but the truth is it was 100% my fault.

I knew my car battery was starting to go, because the Jiffy L**e guy told me so a couple of months ago. But because I like to live dangerously, I decided to see how much life I could get out of it. After all, the car was starting up just fine. What could possibly go wrong?!

Anyway, that little seed of an idea — that my battery was on the fritz — is what kicked off the whole catastrophe. You’ll understand what I mean (and why it’s relevant to you as a business owner) in two shakes.

On New Year’s Day I drove out to the suburbs with Whitney to visit my dad — about a 45 minute drive in total. NYD is the best day of the year to drive, even in Chicago -- with the highways as clear and empty as the height of the pandemic.

The first 90% of the drive was blissfully uneventful. Then, about 10 minutes from our destination, just as I was exiting the highway, the battery light came on.

"Ah, s**t. It's finally caught up with me," I said.

Strangely enough, the power steering went out at the same time.

“Huh, didn’t know that could happen,” I thought.

I pulled into the first gas station to figure out what to do next. Driving to an auto shop wasn’t an option as they were all closed for the holiday.

It seemed the only thing to do was to drive back home. The issue (so I thought) was that if I stopped the car it might not start again on account of the dying battery, and then we’d be stranded until the following day.

Oddly enough, I noticed the heat was no longer working. Not a great thing when it’s under 20 degrees outside.

“Huh. Weird,” I thought. “Didn’t know that could happen.”

I pulled out of the gas station and got back on the highway to head home. This is when it became clear I’d made the wrong decision.

Within a few miles, the engine started losing power. I was having a harder and harder time accelerating. Then smoke started pouring out of the tail pipe, and then out of the hood.

I took the nearest exit and coasted to a stop on the side of the road.

She was kaput, totally cooked. Baked engine. Had to call a tow truck to come get the car, then walk 10 minutes into town and call an Uber to get back home.

Good thing I had my light jacket on.

Anyway, here’s the part where I explain what happened and why as a business owner you need to understand my mistake.

The problem wasn’t the battery, it was the alternator. Don’t worry if you’re car illiterate and don’t know an alternator from a terminator — the point is, that’s a way more dangerous problem because not only will it eventually cause the battery to fail, it will also cause the water pump to fail, which will cause your engine to overheat, which will eventually bake it to a crisp, leaving you stranded in the suburbs and many thousands of dollars poorer as you now need to buy a new car.

Now, I didn’t know any of this at the time either. But I should have known that something much more serious than a drained battery was afoot when the heater and the power steering both failed.

If I had my wits about me, I would have noticed the temperature gauge approaching the death zone, and I could have prevented the engine from cooking like a turkey left in the oven for a week.

Why didn’t I make this obvious realization? Simple. Because someone had already put it in my head that the battery was dying, so I was fixated on that and that alone.

That’s all it took. That’s all it ever takes. The seed of an idea pointing you in the wrong direction, and you become blind to what’s really going on, even when it’s screaming right in your face.

In the matter of a few minutes, this cost me thousands and thousands of dollars.

So I ask a similar question to the one I asked in the last email about the 7-fingered geezer. If a few minutes of misdirected attention can cost you thousands of dollars, how much does it cost to have your focus in the wrong place for years on end?

Chew on that for a while.

Because that’s exactly the state that most business owners are mired in. Somebody gave them very bad advice (or, just as often, they came to the wrong conclusion from observing what all the muffin brains are doing on social media), and they’ve been rolling along down the wrong road ever since, wondering where all the good clients or customers are.

“Just a few more miles, I can feel it.”

Sorry to tell you, but there’s nothing but more struggle down that road.

Does that make me the tow truck driver? The mechanic? I don’t know — you go ahead and finish the metaphor however you want.

The point is, the situation for most business owners is dire, and they don’t even realize why.

The good news is I can help you fix that, quick.

The first step is to get on my email list (link at top of page).

01/06/2025

** How to lose three fingers in two seconds **

Every once in a while, I think about the old guy missing three fingers that I met on a golf course when I was 14.

I grew up about a mile away from the local municipal course, and when I was a young’un, I would often get up early in the morning, drag my clubs over there and play a round with whoever else happened to be teeing off at the same time.

It was during one of these rounds that I met the septuagenarian who had just lost three of his fingers through the briefest moment of stupidity.

I don’t remember the exact story, but he was working with some piece of home machinery and made one of those “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking” mistakes that involved sticking his hand somewhere it didn’t belong, and — p**f! — in the space of a couple of seconds, three fingers were gone.

Just the briefest moment of thinking about the wrong thing.

I have my own similar story that happened just last week, which I’ll share tomorrow. No, it didn’t cost me any fingers. Just $15,000 or so.

But here’s the point: If you can suffer this kind of loss from a few seconds of misdirected attention, think of how much you can lose by focusing on the wrong thing for years on end.

That’s exactly the situation that virtually every single one of my clients is stuck in before they come to me.

It’s not just that they’re executing their marketing poorly. It’s that they’re looking at the wrong things altogether.

They started off with bad directions, as Tom Waits would say.

When you have clarity about what you should be focusing on and how to know when you’re doing it right, it’s like the veil of illusion has been lifted. The fog of confusion is finally gone.

That’s a powerful thing in itself.

Looking to cure the fog syndrome? The smart thing to do would be to join my list.

In the meantime, don't stick your hands where they don't belong.

01/03/2025

**This Is What I'd Sell You If I Had No Morals**

Sometimes it hurts to be ethical.

If you’ve spent any time in the seedy, squirming underbelly of online marketing and sales “education,” you’ve probably noticedwhat I’m talking about.

Yes, it’s infested with dirtballs and bulls**tters.

Not that it’s the only industry like that. Just look at the lunatics who populate the upper tiers of the health and wellness space.

But something about marketing and sales seems to attract sociopaths and their close kin. Maybe it’s the fantasy of achieving creepy NLP-style “mind control” over strangers, or something like that.

Not that all “influencers” in this space are rotten — they’re not. There are a small handful of luminaries (I’m talking about the Dan Kennedy types) that are completely above board and actually hostile to the typical softbrain bulls**t.

The problem is, for anybody who’s not well versed in marketing or sales, it’s often hard to tell the difference.

Here are the two easiest things to sell to business owners looking for help with their marketing right now:

1. AI�2. Social media

Why? Because you’re selling people what they want to hear.

Most business owners desperately want to believe there’s a conscious slave algorithm that can spit out reams of money-making marketing assets on command.

Or that all they have to do is show up every day and post corny, superficial tricks ’n hacks on LinkedIn, or cry into their we**am about the existentially paralyzing decision to inform their spirit guides that they’re changing their brand colors, or whatever.

And it’s ALWAYS easier to sell people what they want to believe.

Especially the bug-eyed newbies coming in with their ge****ls all inflamed, riding high on a wild idea they got to “sTaRt A bUsInEss!” The kind who are destined to quit after a few months when they realize the life of a business owner ain’t what the gram told em it was.

There’s a ton of money to be sucked out of these poor rubes before they run out of gas and drop out of the dream. And the typical online marketing education business is designed to do exactly that.

Personally, I’d rather be dead broke, living in a janky self-built cabin on a mountain in the wilderness, spending all day talking to my dog and signaling for UFOs than run that kind of business.

This isn’t moral posturing, it’s just the truth.

In fact, it’s partially selfish, because I have to admit I derive a perverse joy from making people squirm by telling them the truth they don’t want to hear.

It’s just one of my quirks.

I quite enjoy running a business that repels the weak minded people who only want to hear the fantasy about how business works instead of the truth about what it takes to succeed.

And I especially like working with the people who do want to know the truth, and who have the determination to follow through and do what it takes.

Anyway, enough of making myself sound like an as***le.

If you’re not repelled by anything I’ve already said, and you’re looking to get more and/or better clients/customers this year and sell to them at premium rates — AND you’re willing to change your behavior in some fundamental ways when it comes to marketing and sales — I can help you with that.

Shoot me a DM and tell me a little about your biggest challenge right now, and I’ll get back to you shortly.

12/13/2024

**Lessons From a Lawyer Who Never Lost**

Gerry Spence is famous for never having lost a criminal case — either as a prosecutor or a defendant — in almost 60 years as a lawyer.

Now, some of that surely has to do with carefully choosing cases that he can win, and avoiding the ones that are probably gonna lose.

But with a record like that, the man is clearly doing something right.

And if you read his book “Win Your Case,” you’ll see that a lot of what he talks about has direct application for business owners.

One of the many lessons that stuck with me is when he talks about opposing lawyers not listening to witnesses when cross-examining, but rather reading off a list of prepared questions one after another like it’s a movie script.

And in the process, missing opportunities galore to explore new avenues of questioning that could easily turn the case on its head.

It’s like they were cross-examining with ear muffs on.

I knew exactly what he was talking about when I read this — because this is exactly how most business owners sell.

Except, instead of reading off a list of questions, they try to rattle off every reason the prospect should buy — listing features and benefits, talking about the results they can get and what they’re doing for other clients, etc.

Basically, doing everything but listening.

When you're on the receiving end of one of these sales pitches, it's absolutely exhausting and vexing. You just can't wait for it to be over.

Long sections of “Win Your Case” are all about how you can learn to listen better — not as a lawyer, but as a human being.

Most people aren't nearly as good at it as they think they are. When you know how to listen, you don’t actually need to “sell” at all — at least not in the traditional sense that most people find sleazy and off-putting.

The best salespeople are able to essentially “sell without selling.” And they do it by being more honest, more upfront, and more empathetic.

It’s not about closing techniques, objection handling, or any “brass balls” bulls**t. It’s about knowing how to ask the right questions, in the right order — and how to listen to the answers — to help the prospect come to the right decision for themselves.

Not only is this approach more effective than traditional “Greasy Strangler” salesmanship, it also produces way less buyer’s remorse and is far better for creating long-term customers.

But there IS a method to it, and you have to take the prospect through very specific steps in order to be predictably successful with it.

Person-to-person sales is one of the three areas of heavy emphasis in my private coaching program. Because as a small business owner — especially if you’re a service provider — mastering sales is arguably even more important than getting your marketing right.

Hardly anyone wants to hear this, because most business owners will practically hide under the bed to avoid having to “sell” — all because they have the wrong idea about what it looks like when done right.

But the fact remains that when you know how to sell, you need far fewer leads to be profitable in your business.

Anyway, if you’re at a point where you’re realizing you need to up your sales skills, I can help with that.

But be forewarned: it’s not cheap, and you’ll have to do some things that are probably going to be uncomfortable at first.

In other words, it’s decidedly NOT for everyone.

If I still haven’t scared you off, maybe it's time we talk. DM me and we'll see if what I teach is right for you.

Gerry Spence is famous for never having lost a criminal case — either as a prosecutor or a defendant — in almost 60 years as a lawyer.

12/06/2024

**Skeleton Dance**

One thing you’ll notice about highly successful business owners: they often do things the exact opposite way that everyone else does them.

Here’s a prime example: presenting your “warts” upfront.

Email guru Ben Settle calls it “making the skeleton dance” — echoing the George Bernard Shaw quote that “if you can’t get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”

It’s always tempting to hide what you think is least desirable about your business, your product or service, or even yourself.

Like if you lack experience or your offer isn’t unsuitable for a big part of the market. Or maybe you have the personality of a bridge troll and it turns a lot of people off.

Instead, the best thing to do is often to lead with your skeletons. Put them front and center, and make the suckers dance so nobody can miss ‘em.

Do it right, and they even start to look like a strength.

Way back when I was in my early days as a copywriter, I applied for a job on UpWork writing sales letters for a local real estate broker in Aspen, Colorado. The problem? I’d never written a sales letter.

I started the proposal by saying, “First off, I’ve never written a sales letter. If that’s a deal killer I completely understand, and you can stop reading now.”

I then went on to explain all the reasons he should consider hiring me.

And wooden-cha know it, it worked. We got on a video call and he spent the whole time basically pitching me on taking the job. He seemed genuinely deflated when I politely declined (realizing it was something I wasn’t interested in after hearing the details) and continued trying to convince me to take the job even after I said no.

This guy was a successful broker, who certainly could find other sales letter writers, and here he was bending over backwards to try to hire someone who had never written a sales letter in his earthly life.

Why? I strongly suspect it was the radical upfront honesty. He knew I wasn’t a bulls**tter.

It’s a valuable lesson that I’ve never forgotten, and I’ve applied the principle in myriad different ways since.

I’d be willing to bet there are ways you can do it too, and that just might benefit your business by increasing trust and breaking down barriers.

After all, nobody likes someone who seems too perfect. We all want to see your bones.

Anyway, radical honesty is a core part of the simple sales process I teach to business owners.

And that radical honesty helps you sell way more predictably, at higher rates — and without feeling like you need to take a shower afterward.

If you’re interested in learning more, let’s talk. DM me and tell me a little about your current sales process.

12/05/2024

**Unless you're a rancher, stop with the branding**

For a lot of small business owners, this is where it starts.

This is how the floodgate first opens and the truth starts to rush in…

In other words, this is how they finally GET IT!

If you’re not getting results from your marketing, the very first thing you should do is ask if you’re doing the right kind.

‘Cause at the simplest level, there are only two kinds: branding, and direct response.

Here’s what everyone needs to know: branding is a waste of time for small business owners (especially solo providers).

Some business owners practically scream at hearing this, as if their ears are burning. And plenty of social media muffin-brain types would like to subject me to Chinese water torture just for saying it.

But it’s true anyway, feelz notwithstanding. And the reasons are simple.

Here’s one: as a time-strapped business owner, how many spare hours a day do you have to spend on marketing that can’t be tracked, where you’ll never know (even after hundreds of moons have passed) whether it’s brought in a single red cent?

Hopefully you said none.

Well, that’s the cold hard reality with branding. Its effectiveness is all based on conjecture.

And that’s exactly why it’s so popular on the socials and with unscrupulous agencies and marketers. It’s gloriously anti-accountability.

Well, not glorious for you, because the money’s coming out of your pocket.

Of course, this is just the start of the journey, because now you have to figure out which kind of direct response marketing to do -- a topic waaay to big for a humble ol' email like this.

But when you accept this eternal truth, you're at least entering the ground floor of the right building. If you look around enough, you'll open the right doors eventually. And if you ask the right people for directions, you can get there sooner rather than later.

12/04/2024

**Why It's Smart to Stuff Your Customers Down a Narrow Pathway**

There’s a little design quirk on Amazon that used to drive me nuts until I realized why it was so smart.

It also has direct bearing on how you design your own website — especially if you’re a solo provider or a small business owner.

I’m talking about that tiny little text-only “Add to List” link.

When I first started using the Amazon shopping list I used to get annoyed having to search around for the little text link buried down the page. It would be a lot easier if there was at least a button so you could easily find this useful feature.

After using it several times, it dawned on me that this was obviously done on purpose, and not a temporary design flaw like I first assumed.

Amazon doesn’t want to encourage you to use the shopping list, because they know that digital shopping lists are where purchases go to die. Amazon is all about frictionless buying, and they want you to buy now.

Here’s the most obvious way this relates to you as a business owner: All of your marketing needs to be optimized to get a response now — not at some indeterminate time in the future.

This is the basic principle of direct response marketing, the only form of marketing that a small business owner has any business at all engaging in.

In contrast, most small business owners waste tons of time, energy, and sometimes money on fluffy “branding” or “brand exposure” marketing that ain’t going to reel in a wooden nickel.

The second lesson is less obvious, and almost nobody gets it — yet it’s critical for having a high-converting website that brings in clients and money, instead of just taking up space on the interwebs.

Here it is: Your website needs to be organized around sending prospects through a single pathway that is most likely to lead them to becoming a customer. Everything else should be cut out ruthlessly.

In fact, if you’re doing it right, there’s a good chance that a conventional minded marketer or business owner would scoff at it if they saw it, thinking you don’t know what you’re doing.

That’s alright, let ‘em laugh. You’ll be the one making all the money.

Your website is far from being the most important element in your marketing, but it does play a role. It doesn’t need to be glitzy, and it doesn’t need to be perfect, but it does need a strategy behind it.

This is one of the things I help small business owners with as part of creating a system that brings in better clients and helps them close deals at far higher rates. If that sounds like something you need, DM me and tell me a bit about your business and what you’re struggling with right now.

12/03/2024

**Why Marrying Yourself Off Can Make You More Successful**

Cicero once said that to be completely free, one must become a slave to a set of laws.

This is some timeless wisdom, and it applies to more than just enforcing legal codes.

In his famous book Flow, the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi echoes that Cicero quote when talking about marriage.

Specifically, he argues that marriage makes people happier because having freed themselves from worrying about whether the grass is greener somewhere else, they can put all of their energy into having the best family life possible in the here and now.

For anyone who’s seen the ugly underbelly of our “swipe left” culture, this has the glorious ol’ ring of truth to it.

But that Cicero quote also holds true for business owners, in a million different ways you may not even realize.

Here’s one of the most important: committing yourself to a sales process.

Hardly any of the business owners I meet have any kind of sales process at all. Some of them even claim they’re better when they just “wing it.”

Bulls**t. This is literally never true.

For one thing, if you don’t have a process, how can you possibly measure what you’re doing to know if you’re better one way versus the other?

You can’t. The real reason business owners don’t have a sales process is because they don’t like to sell. They think that only the sleazy “greasy strangler” type salesmen have a sales process.

This is because they’re thinking about it all wrong. A good sales process has nothing sleazy about it at all. Quite the opposite in fact.

And the truth is that it’s nearly impossible to be highly successful in business without a good sales process.

In many ways, it’s even more important than your marketing.

Because even with the greatest marketing in the world, if you don’t know how to sell, you’re never going to secure projects or close deals with enough of the best clients at the rates you want. You’ll be forever stuck in business purgatory, sifting through the low-character bottom feeders to find a diamond in the rough.

In large part because great clients are turned off by providers with shoddy sales processes.

You might think it makes you look “super chill” and “not like those sleazy salespeople.” Great clients think it makes you look low-rent and possibly incompetent.

That’s the cold hard truth.

On the other hand, if you have a great sales process, you don’t need a massive pipeline of leads to make a lot of money. A great sales process makes your marketing more effective, without changing your marketing at all.

So maybe it’s about time you married yourself off to a sales process after all, so you can start enjoying your business more and raking in all the extra money you’ve been leaving on the table this whole time. And so great clients stop swiping left on your business.

If this sounds like something you could use, send me a DM and tell me about your current struggles closing deals. I’ll get back to you ASAP.