John Bejakovic

The unsexiest sales funnel Broadway has ever seen

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On November 29, 2018, I sent an email to this marketing list with the subject line, “The worst aromatherapy book Broadway has ever seen.”

The topic of that email was the launch of my new aromatherapy book, Essential Oil Quick Start Guide.

At that time, my marketing list had exactly 2 readers — me and some other dude who had somehow found me.

On the other hand, my aromatherapy list had a staggering 814 readers. But over the next 6 weeks, my aromatherapy would grow still more, to well over 2,000 readers. These were quality new readers, and getting them cost me nothing net.

How?

Well, I’ll tell ya. But I don’t think you will be happy. It’s nothing new, and nothing magical. Here’s what I did:

1. I “wrote” a second little ebook, titled “Little Black Book of Essential Oil Scams.” The title was a flat-out swipe of Gary Bencivenga’s Little Black Book of Secrets.

I put “wrote” in quotes because there was almost no writing involved. I basically repurposed a dozen “what never to” emails I had already written to my aromatherapy list — warnings about unsafe use, shady sellers, dangerous oils, etc.

​​I put those emails into a Pages document, exported as PDF, and tacked on a black-and-red cover I’d made in Canva.

2. I ran a FB ad campaign giving this EO scams ebook away if people signed up to my list. I know nothing about running FB ads, and I’m sure this ad campaign was far from optimal.

3. I sent daily emails to my aromatherapy list with a pitch to buy the $10 Quick Start ebook. Enough new people, who had signed up via the Little Black Book ad, bought the Quick Start book to offset all the costs I had from the FB ads.

And that’s it. That’s how I grew my list from 800 readers to over 2,000 qualified readers in about 45 days.

I know, about as sexy as a potato. But what to say?

If you want to grow your list quickly and even without cost, then consider doing the same. Run ads to some kind of attractive and relevant giveaway in exchange for people opting in to your list, and write daily emails that sell something to offset the ad cost.

At this point, it would make sense to try to sell you my Simple Money Emails course, which is all about writing simple daily emails that make sales. In that course, I even include some examples emails from the aromatherapy list I had years ago.

But with all the promotion of SME over the past few weeks, I believe everyone who was going to get this course during this lunar cycle now already owns it. So let me just remind you to go apply what I show you inside that course.

Meanwhile, I no longer write anything in the aromatherapy space and I no longer sell any offers there.

But I am proud of my little Quick Start Essential Oil Guide, and I still stand by it.

​​I put a lot of work into researching and writing it, and if you are interested in essential oils, I believe it’s the perfect introduction.

​​If by chance you want it, PayPal me $10 to john@bejakovic.com, and I’ll send you the PDF.

The psychology of being an idiot

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In reply to my email yesterday, a puzzled reader wrote in to ask:

===

How did you initially start your list? Like to get those first few people in the door. I feel like we’ve never been told your origin story to how this list became to be what it is.

Maybe I’m wrong, I’ve only been reading for 2 years, though your list is older then that. And I don’t even know how I got here.

===

I’ve been reading a lot about newsletter growth lately, and the above is a frequent question that comes up.

“How did you get your first few subscribers? Your first 100? Your first 1,000?”

The most common answer I’ve read is, “Oh, at the start, I just asked people in my network if they’d like to sign up.”

That is not what I did. For one, I don’t have a network. For another, I don’t like asking anybody for anything. (They might say no, and then what!)

I started my list over 5 years ago.

​​I checked just now, and it took me 18 months and 5 days from starting daily emailing to my get my first 100 subscribers.

The background of why it took me that long is that I’m an idiot, or just very stubborn, depending on your moral compass.

For the longest time, the only thing I did was write my daily emails, and post them to my website.

I did on a few occasions post something smart and professional in copywriting groups on Facebook. I believe I managed to get two, maybe even three new subscribers that way.

But mainly, I was just grinding away, because like I said, I’m an idiot, or just very stubborn.

My plan was never really to build this email list into anything.

My only vague goal was to get better at writing emails, and to have something to show potential clients as a demonstration of my skill. That was back when I still did client work, which is something I don’t do any more.

And yet, I continue to write daily emails today.

I’m currently reading a book, The Psychology of Money.

It was published a little over three years ago. Today, it has over 43k reviews on Amazon, 32k of them being five-star.

Basically, the book tells you how your own psychology gets in the way of your making money, growing money, and keeping whatever money you’ve managed to make or grow.

None of those are topics I’m interested in at all. But I realized I could make this book more interesting to myself by switching out “money” and switching in “business” or “project.” Suddenly, the lessons became familiar and dear:

– Think long term, and let the power of compounding work for you

– Be okay with a wide range of outcomes

– Realize that you will change — what you think you will value in the future is probably not accurate

So that’s kind of the Bejako origin story, and the explanation of my motivations in driving this newsletter onwards in the way that I do, well into my 6th year with it.

Now, I can imagine that my origin story sounds entirely uninspiring. It’s kind of the opposite of wandering into the wrong room, lingering just a second too long, and getting bitten by a radioactive spider that dropped from the ceiling.

To make up for my uninspiring email today, tomorrow I will tell you a way that, while I still had practically nobody reading this newsletter, I grew another newsletter to a few thousands readers in a matter of weeks, and filled it with quality subscribers.

That’s on tomorrow’s episode of the Bejako Show.

Meanwhile, if you want lessons on success with any long-term project, consider Morgan Housel’s Psychology Of Money, and it’s 32,000 5-star reviews.

​​If you’d like to take a look, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/housel

Flip the script or your life

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Time for flip-the-script Friday:

Today I have an ancient story for you. I know, you’re thrilled.

In an attempt to bring your eyes back from their trip to the back of your skull just now, let me preframe this ancient story by saying it could 1) save your life and 2) make you lots of money.

More modestly, maybe this story can simply teach you an important thing about influence.

The hero of our ancient story is a man named Eumenes, a Greek, who started out as a secretary in Alexander’s army.

Eumenes had secretarial ability but he also had strategic ability. He became a successful general in his own right, and invented lots of clever strategems to win battles against much bigger and more experienced armies.

Following Alexander’s death, Eumenes was brought in to keep order in a region of Alexander’s vast empire. The satraps of that region — the Macedonian and Persian governors — all hated each other, constantly bickered, and fought regularly.

The only thing they could agree on was that they hated their new Greek chaperone even more, and wanted him dead.

Now perk up your ears, because here’s an example of Eumenes’s strategic brilliance:

Eumenes knew that he would soon be dead by poison or dagger, unless he somehow dealt with the hatred of the satraps he was brought in to control. So he did the opposite to protect his life from what most people might do.

Instead of trying to win the favor of the satraps who hated him, he pretended to be in need of money. And he borrowed large sums of money from the satraps whom he suspected of being most ready to have him assassinated.

In this way, says the Greek historian Plutarch, Eumenes “secured the safety of his person by taking other men’s money, an object which most people are glad to attain by giving their own.”

Result:

Some time later, an assassination plot indeed formed against Eumenes’s person. But the plot was independently betrayed to Eumenes by two satraps, both of whom were afraid of losing the large sums of money they had lent to him.

So the next time your life is in danger or you are about to be brought down by political intrigue, think of Eumenes. Flip the script, and you might not only survive but thrive.

The end. Except…

As you might know, flipping the script is one of the chapters I am planning in my new 10 Commandments book, tentatively titled, “10 Commandments of Hypnotists, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Con Men, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Spirit Mediums, and Stage Magicians.”

But since I’m currently doubling down on my health newsletter, that book is on hold.

The only thing I can therefore offer you today is my first 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters.

Here’s one Amazon review to get you curious:

“A quick, easy read with great quotes, a bunch of other books it guides you to read, and evergreen information based on psychology and proven results. It’s got a soft but classy pitch for the author’s newsletter leveraging a bunch of the commandments right there in your face. He practices what he preaches.”

If you’d like to get this quick and rather affordable book now:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Eye-opening stuff following my first newsletter consult

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Yesterday, I fixed my hair and smiled and fired up Zoom.

On the other side of the Zoom tube was the writer and publisher of a free newsletter, which promotes a premium content subscription.

The cost of this premium content subscription?

$2,625 per year. And yet, many individual readers happily pay for this subscription, and a few companies buy 30-40 user packs for their employees.

Eye-opening stuff, when you compare it to $9.99/month paid Substack newsletters, or even to $97/month print newsletters by marketing gurus.

The reason I was on Zoom yesterday was that this was the first of three paid newsletter consults I offered last week.

The reason I offered these paid newsletter consults was that, as I said when I made the offer, it was research for my own projects. I’m thinking of creating newsletter community or mastermind, and I want to know what problems newsletter publishers have.

When I made that offer last week, all three available spots were snapped up in the first ten minutes after the email went out. And as I raced to turn off the cart, a fourth buyer sneaked in.

One of the people who got in, in fact the person I talked to yesterday, said that getting one of the three spots felt like winning the lottery.

Compare this to when I offered free coaching some five years ago, as a way of preparing for a book I was planning to write.

Out of my entire list, just one dude from Germany signed up. I think somebody else scheduled a call and then canceled last minute.

Granted:

Stuff has changed in past four years. My list has grown… I’ve written 1,000+ additional emails… I’ve learned a lot about marketing and copywriting… I’ve worked with several large clients with whom I made a lot of money… and I’ve built a name for myself in the copywriting and email marketing field.

But with or without all that, the point I want to share with you still stands:

You can get paid to do research for your own projects.

​​Or you can get paid for a diagnostic call.

​​Or to learn stuff that you’re interested in learning. Or for content that you’re currently giving away. Or for answering questions that you currently answer for nothing.

Somebody smart said it, and I believe it’s true — it takes as much work to give something away as to sell it.

So why not sell it instead?

If you don’t have the status or the experience yet, then charge a little bit.

If you do have the status or the experience, then charge accordingly.

But pretty much anything you are currently doing for free, you can ask money for.

There’s nobody and nothing stopping you, except your own beliefs of what the market will accept. And those beliefs are often wrong.

All right, on to my offer:

I am not offering any more one-off newsletter consults. But I do offer ongoing coaching about publishing a newsletter — everything from audience selection to zero-cost ways to grow.

My coaching program is expensive. It’s not right for you unless you already have some experience, or even better, an already running newsletter.

If you think this might be for you, reply to this email. Tell me a bit about who you are, what you do, and what the current situation or ambition is with your newsletter.

If I think it could be a good fit, we can get on a call and talk more.

​​Thinking of it now, maybe I’ll take my own advice and start charging for those calls. But that’s in the future.

​​For today, it’s still free. If you’re interested, you know what to do.

Conclusions from my “what’s fun and keeps charging your credit card” poll

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I read just now that Sam Altman of OpenAI announced that they are pausing ChatGPT-plus signups. Too many people want in and OpenAI cannot cope.

In other news, yesterday I asked what subscriptions you enjoy or even find fun. I got lots of replies. And that’s a problem.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but all the replies were very different and many clashed with each other.

I guess that’s no surprise, given that I was asking what’s enjoyable or even fun. That’s kind of like asking, “What’s some good music you heard in the past month?”

The replies I got were so all over the place that it’s got me reconsidering my point from yesterday.

Maybe in order to have a successful subscription that actually delivers value to people, you don’t need entertainment.

Maybe you simply need self-interest.

I mean, look at ChatGPT. It’s got all the fun of an MS-DOS terminal, and yet they have to turn people away from subscribing.

I’ll think more about this, and eventually I’ll let you know how it impacts my plans for my own subscription offer.

Meanwhile, here’s a non-subscription offer to appeal to your self-interest. It’s my most expensive course, also my most valuable course, and the most likely to pay for itself quickly, in fact within just 8 weeks, if you only follow the step-by-step instructions it gives you.

For more info, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

My new chore-of-the-month arrived yesterday and is looking at me accusingly

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Yesterday I pushed my way into the lobby of my building — too many grocery bags in my hands — and I peeked into my mailbox.

My ex-girlfriend (still living together) was already by the elevators, holding her own batch of grocery bags. “There’s nothing,” she said. “I checked already.”

But I don’t trust anyone. So I peeked into the mailbox. And I saw it:

A narrow cardboard package that somehow telegraphed class and high-value.

I opened up the mailbox. The ex came over wide-eyed. “What is it? What did you order?”

Frankly, I had no idea.

The package was postmarked UK. I thought for a minute. And then I remembered.

I’d signed up to a magazine-of-the-month club a while back. Each month, they send you a new magazine, so you can get exposed to new stuff, be entertained, have new email fodder.

This was my first issue.

I couldn’t wait to see what I got. I tore open the cardboard package right there in the lobby.

Inside was more beautiful paper packaging. I felt bad ripping it apart. In the elevator up to the apartment, I tried to peel it open carefully. But impatience to see my cool new magazine bubbled over.

I ripped up the paper packaging as well.

As I entered my apartment, I could finally get at the fascinating and intriguing contents inside. And what I found was:

A squat, black cover, showing a hand holding a spoon, and taking a bit of some kind of unidentified mass from a platter, which was held by another hand.

A vague, arty photo. There was nothing else on the cover except the magazine title. Not a good start.

I flipped to the back.

​​”FEATURING,” the back cover said, “Fiction:” and then a long list of contributors. “Poetry:” and then another long list of contributors. “Art and photography:” and then more contributors.

“Ugh,” I sighed. “This feels like it’s gonna be work.”

I tossed my new chore-of-the-month onto the little stand next to the couch, where it’s still sitting, in its shrink-wrap. I’ll have to schedule a time during my work hours to sit down and face this obligation.

In case you’re wondering how this could possibly be relevant to you:

Between 2017 and 2021, I subscribed to Ben Settle’s Email Players print newsletter.

After I decided to unsubscribe, I asked myself why. What did it?

There were several logical reasons.

But I realized that the real, emotional reason was simply that reading Email Players had become a chore.

I’m sure there were still some valuable ideas in each issue. But it was no longer fun to read.

I kept looking at it sitting there by my couch, and thinking, “Ugh. There’s that to do.” And since Email Players is hardly the only source of valuable ideas in the universe, I decided to unsubscribe.

I myself am now planning a subscription offer, a community around newsletters, which I’m planning to call Publishers Club.

But I realize that — and here’s the takeaway of today’s email — value notwithstanding, my subscription offer will have to be enjoyable and even fun if people will have any chance of getting value out of it.

So I am appealing to you for help and input.

Write in and tell me one subscription offer that you pay for, and that you actually enjoy or even look forward to.

It could be a newsletter, a community, a magazine, a magazine-of-the-month club, a streaming service, whatever.

For bonus points, tell me what makes this subscription offer enjoyable or even fun.

In return, I will 1) telepathically send you good vibes along with my gratitude and 2) reply via email and tell you the only subscription offer I am currently enjoying, and why I suspect I am enjoying it.

I’ve mentioned this subscription offer in passing a few times in the past. But I’d say chances are about 99.9% you do not know what I have in mind.

​​If you’d like to know, write me with your fun or enjoyable subscriptions, and we can do a tit-for-tat trade.

Everything I have to offer you

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I was gazing out the window of a small, out-of-the-way bookshop in Barcelona’s Gothic district. Time had stopped.

In my hands was a leather-bound 1948 edition of Hemingway’s a Farewell To Arms. But I had long left off reading, lost in reveries of distant moments and faces long gone.

A notification on my iPhone 12 mini brought me back to reality — a handcrafted question from a reader, full of enigma and intrigue:

===

Hi John,

I recently saw an email for your MVE course. I didn’t realize you had so many.

Do you have a list of all of your courses floating around somewhere? I can’t seem to find them on your website.

===

The fact is, I have been thinking for a while about creating a page on my site where I list all my offers.

A kind of catalog page.

​​That’s why I started off writing this email in a J. Peterman catalog style — lots of adjectives, some Old-World glamour, a touchy-feely snapshot to start.

​​I even got ChatGPT just now to condense the sales pages for my various courses into J. Peterman language. Here’s what it gave me for my Copy Riddles course:

Copy Riddles unveils itself as a transformative journey into the art of copywriting. It’s a tool, a guide, a companion on a path less traveled, designed to implant the wisdom of A-list copywriters into the eager mind. Each “round” of this game-like experience is a step closer to…

Kind of funny in its self-importance… but also annoying.

​​I realized this is exactly the kind of writing I’ve always hated. And it’s the kind of copy I never want to be associated with.

So instead of J. Peterman fluff, here’s my own, bare-bones description of everything I offer at the moment:

Copy Riddles: A new way for marketers and copywriters to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe.

​​Big course, expensive, but also the best thing I sell, at least if you want to learn the lucrative skill of sales copywriting.

Most Valuable Email: The most valuable “trick” I have found to produce engaging, influential, and audience-building emails about copywriting and marketing.

​​This is the secret sauce of what makes my emails to this list work. People love this course, and many have even used the Most Valuable Email trick profitably in their own marketing.

Simple Money Emails: A simple, “hypnotic,” 1-2 process to make more money from your email list today, and keep your readers coming back tomorrow.

​​In a nut, how to write effective, no-frills sales emails in any market. Distilled from my experience writing close to 2,000 such emails.

10 Commandments Of A-List Copywriters: Control-Beating Breakthroughs From Gary Bencivenga, Gene Schwartz, Jim Rutz & More.

​​Kindle book. ​Quick. Short. $5.

Over the past couple years, I’ve also had other courses, and I will make some of them available again soon.

I will also create a catalog page on my site where add all these offers.

Meanwhile, we’ve reached the bottom of this email. I don’t know what to do now, because I don’t have a link to end with.

So let me simply invite your eyes to caress the exotic and luxurious copy describing the four offers above — the four pillars of my house of wisdom. Choose whichever of these jewels strikes your fancy, and follow the link to peruse the rich and distinctive sales page waiting for you, like a cozy home, on the other side.

10% success vs. 100% success

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Once upon a time, I found myself in a frightening environment — a night club. ​​I was there with a friend. Let’s call him Dave.

​​Dave is not a remarkably beautiful man. If anything, he’s rather physically unattractive.

Now, as you might guess by my opening sentence, a nightclub is not my kind of place.

But from what I understand, the one I was in with Dave was typical. There was a stage, people dancing, music, lights.

Dave started dancing in place next to me.

He then danced his way over to a girl in the crowd.

​​He continued to dance, all the way around her, like some kind of bird of paradise.

When the girl showed no interest, Dave danced his way back to me at the edge of the dance floor.

He shrugged his shoulders and explained his philosophy. “If I go out, and only one out of ten girls likes me, that’s not a 10% success rate. That’s a 100% success rate.”

This message has stuck with me ever since.

Incidentally, today Dave is a highly paid lawyer, working when he wants and from wherever he might feel like. He also happens to be married to and have a kid with a beautiful girl who initially wouldn’t give him the time of day.

I thought of this story today after I got a message from long-time reader Logan Hobson.

Logan is an email copywriter. He writes emails for big-time real estate investing gurus who have audiences of 80k+ people. He repeatedly does 5-figure email-based launches for these guys.

Logan was writing in response to my email yesterday, in which I explained my simple, 5-minute way to come up with 2-3 good email ideas each day — no writer’s block required. To which Logan wrote:

===

I like the idea that writer’s block doesn’t really exist – it’s more just idea block.

Once you have a good idea, the words just write themselves. If one of your 10 ideas stands out a good one, then the words just flow.

===

In other words, if you sit down to write… and only one out of ten ideas flows well and turns out to be something that makes you money… then that’s not a 10% success rate. That’s a 100% success rate.

Seamless transition alert:​​

If you want more help coming up with email ideas, specifically ones that flow well and make you money, then check out my Most Valuable Email course.

Logan got that course a year ago. And after he went through it, here’s what he wrote me to say:

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After going through MVE, it feels like the veil has been lifted off some of your writing in the most enjoyable way.

Like a magician who is about to do a trick, but winks at those who know and revealing exactly what he’s about to do, leaving those who aren’t in the know none the wiser.

However in this case, it doesn’t ruin the magic, it just makes it even more enjoyable.

===

For more info on Most Valuable Email, and how it can help you grow an audience and make money:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

How to come up with 2-3 good email ideas each day

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Last night, I was sitting on the couch when my ex-girlfriend came over from the kitchen.

It’s an odd situation. We’re broken up. But we still live together. And we’re on good terms.

“Are you writing your email?” she asked.

I looked at her like she’s crazy. “No, I did it this morning. I’m done for today.”

She nodded. “What’s tomorrow’s email going to be about?”

“Who knows,” I said.

“So how will you write it then?”

“It will be very, very hard,” I said with mock sadness.

​​But like I explained to my ex last night, it’s never really very, very hard, because I have a large and growing list of email ideas in my BEJ journal.

If I ever don’t have something fresh to write about, I can always reach into my journal. I find this resource so valuable that I even created a course once, Insight Exposed, all about my obsessive note-taking and journaling system.

But that’s not what I want to share with you today.

Because today, I didn’t reach into my journal for this email’s topic.

Instead, I did what I often do when I don’t have a clear idea of what to write.

I opened a new text file and started a list. I titled it daily10. Under that title, I came up with 10 possible ideas for today’s email, without discarding even ones that are not really good.

It took me all of 5 minutes.

Not all the ideas were ones that I will turn into an email. But of the ten, one was promising and three were good.

A couple of these possible email ideas I liked better than telling you about my ex and my daily10 process.

​​But since the reason I came up with those ideas in the first place was that daily10 process… I thought I would put those better ideas on hold and tell you about this valuable way to quickly come up with 2-3 good ideas for your daily emails.

So now you know.

And if you ever thought you suffered from “writer’s block”… well, now you also know that it’s really just an excuse not to sit down and write down 10 possible ideas, even if all of them are bad.

But enough inspiration. On to sales:​​

In a convoluted way, my email today is an example of my Most Valuable Email trick in action.

I hope I haven’t given too much away. Maybe I have.

​​But if there is still something that you think you can learn about the Most Valuable Email trick, then you can get educated via the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Fish finder business Cinderella story

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Here’s a Cinderella story you might like and even profit from:

A guy named Yank Dean (yes, real name) started a new company called Hummingbird.

Hummingbird sold an innovative product — a sonar-based fish finder for recreational fisherman. Previously, such fish finders were only available to commercial fishermen.

Quickly, sales shot up to $6 million a year.

Dean estimated the market for his product was $50 million a year. But Hummingbird couldn’t get past that $6 mil limit.

They interviewed and observed customers. They came up with nine new, better variations of the fish finder. The spent time and money on marketing.

And sales still wouldn’t budge. This drove the company close to bankruptcy.

And then one day, a woman working for Hummingbird, Sue Symon, was hanging out at a Bass Pro Shop. She saw another woman reaching for Hummingbird’s fish finder.

“Excuse me,” Symon asked, “what are you buying?”

The other woman replied:

“I don’t care. My husband takes me and the kids out on the boat on the weekends and it’s boring as hell. The kids go crazy. I thought maybe one of these would at least keep them entertained.”

Symon went back to her fish finder overlords and suggested that maybe they are in the wrong business. They thought they were in the fish-finding business. Maybe they are in the entertaining-kids-and-wives business.

The fish finder execs were convinced to give it a go. After all, the company was all but bankrupt.

So they stripped out lots of features from their product. They made it easier and more fun to use. They started selling where kids and wives might see it.

Result:

The first year after the change, Hummingbird went from selling $6 million of its sonar fish finder to selling $75 million of its wife and kid entertainment stations. At the peak, they sold $120 million in a year.

​​The end.

Nice story, right?

​​One of those inspirational and yet useless business case studies.

The conclusion to such case studies is usually one of:

​​Think outside the box…

​​You might not be in the business you think you’re in…

​​Give a man a fish, you feed yourself for a day… teach him how to keep his kids from screaming and his wife from nagging, and you feed yourself for a lifetime.

But how do you possibly recreate something like the Hummingbird story in your own business?

I don’t know. But I know somebody who might know.

His name is Merrick Furst. Once upon a time, he was the dean of the computer science school at Carnegie Mellon. Now he is the Director of the Center for Deliberate Innovation at Georgia Tech.

Basically, using his large brain and his mathematical and CS skills, Furst tries to answer such questions as, “Is this a good idea? And if not, could it be a good idea somewhere else? And if not, what might be a better idea? And how can we systematize this?”

Here’s why I’m telling you this:

Along with a few other smart, oversuccessful people, Furst has written a new book. That’s where I got the story above.

I haven’t read more of this book yet except this story (the book was published 3 days ago).

But if you’re in business… if you create innovative offers… if you want to maximize your chances of making something like $120 million with a change of approach that might be systematizeable… then the following book might be worth a read:

https://bejakovic.com/furst