John Bejakovic

Free quiz: See if you should give up on that dream

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A while back, I came across an insightful analogy by a guy named Jeremy Enns. I don’t know Enns from Adam’s off ox, but the man seems to run a successful marketing agency.

Anyways, Enns had this to say (I’ve cherrypicked the most insightful bits):

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Podcasting Is Like Investing

I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside and talk with dozens of podcasters about how their shows have grown and when the effort finally started to feel like it was worth it.

The most common response is that it took at least two years before the investment really started to pay dividends.

I like to say that you can podcast for a year and it will feel like a massive waste of time. Podcast for three years and it can completely change your life.

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This ties into a little quiz I devised last year, while writing my never-released Copy Zone project, about the business side of copywriting.

The quiz is a way to decide if any dream project is worth embarking on.

The quiz is simply this. Ask yourself:

“Would I be ok working on this for the next five years?”

If your answer is, “No way!” or “Really, I want to do this for a year or max two and get out,” then quit now.

And when you do quit, send me a thank-you note for saving you months or maybe years of your life, dabbling on the sidelines, and possibly wasting thousands of dollars on books and courses and seminars. Because the fact is, this project, dreamy though it sounds, is just not for you.

And if by chance your dream project involves an email newsletter, take my little quiz above.

If you find yourself thinking, “I’m willing to write this newsletter for the next year so I can then move on to something else,” then you know what to do. Don’t even get started.

But if your answer is a grudging but honest yes — yes, you’d be willing to work on this for the next five years — then I can tell you that:

1. After one year of writing the newsletter you’re reading right now, I had nothing to show for it — at least nothing in the way of money or recognition or red panties being thrown my way

2. After two years, this newsletter started to pay dividends

3. After three years, and and now moving on to four and more, it has completely changed my life

If you are willing to stick with it for the long term, then it makes sense to start. Even today.

Now for my pitch:

If you want to discover the one type of email I would write every day if I had to — the one I would choose above stories, or personal reveals, or how-to, or pop culture illustrations, or shock and controversy — then you can find that in a little course I’ve called Most Valuable Email.

For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Dan Kennedy was hoping for a laugh, but when he finished his joke~!

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I was listening to an awkward moment from a Dan Kennedy seminar this morning.

First, a bit of background is in order:

If you don’t know much about Dan, he is a marketer who has influenced more marketers than anybody else.

Dan got his big break back in the 90s, going around the US as part of the Peter Lowe Success Tour.

That was a bunch of famous and influential people — former US presidents, Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks, Suze Orman — giving motivational speeches to an audience of tens of thousands, in a different city every night.

At the end of each night, after the famous and influential people had finished their speeches, Dan would get up on stage as the last speaker. He would then deliver a blistering 60-minute standup routine that sold you on buying his Magnetic Marketing product.

If you’ve never listened to Dan’s speech, it’s fantastic. It’s worth searching around the Internet to dig it up.

The thing I listened to this morning was something else – a recording of a $12k/head seminar that Dan gave many years later, to a small group of select customers and proteges.

Dan was talking about the audience for the Peter Lowe Success Tour, and how politically conservative they were. So conservative that when Mario Cuomo, the liberal New York ex-governor, joined the Tour, the audience booed.

So far, so good. At least for Dan’s story.

And then, Dan, who is practiced at selling through humor, shifts into an exasperated tone of voice:

“… Mario Cuomo comes out, and everybody’s booing! By the time he’s done, I’m booing too, cause the schmuck’s thirty five minutes over, and people are streaming out in droves, you know???”

Beat.

Nobody in Dan’s seminar reacts. On the seminar recording, there’s a pause. You can hear Dan swallow hard and then move on to the next bit of his educational material.

That’s an illustration of something I just read in a book called Comedy Writing Secrets. “Humor in front of a small audience is very hard to bring off because each individual is afraid to laugh for fear of being conspicuous.”

Sitting at home and listening to Dan’s presentation, the image of him booing put a smile on my face.

In a large 10,000 person arena, the same bit would almost certainly draw laughs, and maybe loud laughs.

But in a small seminar, made up of 12 or 15 people, all it drew was a moment of awkward silence, and a gulp from Dan Kennedy.

That’s something to keep in mind if you’re ever trying to give a humorous speech.

But the bigger point is that the response you draw is not only a function of your message… of the audience you are talking to… or even your relationship to that audience.

There’s an extra thing, and that’s the context in which you are delivering your message.

Big room, small room, medium room… seminar stage, webinar, bus.

Maybe that idea seems super obvious to you. But the only thing that’s super obvious is that even masters of influence, people like Dan Kennedy, will forget about this crucial element to their own embarrassment and loss.

But enough about embarrassment and loss. Let’s talk about gain instead.

Specifically, my Most Valuable Email training, and some most valuable Dan Kennedy ideas.

In the Most Valuable Email training, I pull back the curtain on my Most Valuable Email trick.

And then, at the end of the training, I give you 10 riddles to ponder. These are valuable and interesting marketing ideas, each of which you can use as a prompt for creating your own Most Valuable Email, and applying the Most Valuable Email trick.

Two of those ideas come from Dan Kennedy. And in typical DK style, they are both very ugly truths, but also very insightful and practical…

You know???

To find out more about MVE:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Standing on stage, holding an award, to applause from colleagues and clients

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Last month, I got an email with a subject line in all caps:

“THANK YOU JOHN!”

Inside the email I found a picture of a young guy in a sharp suit, standing on stage, holding a microphone in his left hand and some kind of glass trophy in his right.

Behind him on the wall, projected in large letters, was his name, Carlo Gargiulo. That’s who was writing to me. Carlo had this to say:

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Hi John,

I am writing this email to say thank you.

Last night was one of the most important nights of my life.

I was awarded in the company as the most productive copywriter in the company where I work.

I was awarded for constant study, application of new writing techniques, and great results generated by my emails.

As for productivity, I really want to say thank you because I started writing much more quickly after taking the Most Valuable Email course.

Studying and re-studying the course and re-watching the video of your critique of my email several times was critical to my growth.

Despite the award and applause from colleagues and clients, I still feel like a copywriter eager to grow and improve!

I look forward to learning so much more from you and taking it to the next level!

Thank you for the valuable insights, information, and techniques you tell us about every day in your emails and in your amazing courses.

They are invaluable to me 🙂

Carlo

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Obviously, this testimonial serves me very well. But can you possibly get anything out of Carlo’s message above?

Well no. At least not if you are looking for the secret shortcut to the Cave of Treasures, preferably a shortcut which doesn’t involve any walking.

On the other hand, if you are still reading, then let me repeat Carlo’s longcut to success:

“Constant study, application of new writing techniques, and great results generated by my emails.”

If the sound of constant study and the application of new techniques doesn’t make you cover up your ears in horror… and if you like the sound of great results generated by your emails, then consider my Most Valuable Email course.

It might be the first step on your path to the Cave of Treasures.

And who knows, maybe like Carlo, you will find MVE helps you write much more quickly, be more productive, and even win awards and applause from colleagues and clients.

For more info, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Announcing my new course: Somewhat Good Email

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Last October, I wrote an awesome email to promote my awesome Copy Riddles program. The subject line read, “Why would you ever say anything that’s not awesome?”

After I sent that email out, I was flying high for a bit. But then I was rudely brought down to earth. Because in response to my awesome email, reader Frederik Beyer wrote:

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Mr Bejakovic,

Is there a use for wildly understated testimonials?

’cause then I’d like to say: “Your emails are somewhat good”

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Somewhat good? Somewhat???

After the initial trauma to my ego, I thought for a moment.

And I realized that of course there is a use to testimonials such as this. You are looking at it right now.

Thankfully, I am not at the moment promoting Copy Riddles.

So I can get to promoting my first love, which used to be called Most Valuable Email, but which I will soon rename to Somewhat Good Email.

Somewhat Good Email shows you how to take important but dry marketing ideas and turn them into cool and insightful emails. Somewhat.

That’s what I did with today’s email, which uses the Somewhat Good Email trick.

Perhaps the underlying important but dry idea is not obvious to you. No matter. You can find that idea spelled out in Somewhat Good Email Riddle #10, at the end of the Somewhat Good Email training.

If you’d like to get your hands on that riddle, and on the rest of the Somewhat Good Email training, head to the link below. Don’t allow the old course name on the sales page to confuse you. I’ll change that soon enough.

​​Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Bare metal: Poor single mom risks death to feed her family

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A couple days ago, I sent out an email about charging out, King Arthur-like, to fight dragons on the borders of your kingdom. That was my metaphor for defending your business interests.

I got lots of interesting replies to that email, and none more so than from Shawn Cartwright. Shawn runs TCCII, an online martial arts academy. He wrote:

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While I sympathize with your position on this, I’d just like to ask this question…

Why are dragons always made out to be the bad guys?

Seriously…

Imagine you were the millenia old beast who woke up one day to find a bunch of unwashed simian descendants using your pristine mountain stream as a latrine?

Or erecting god-awful ugly structures made from your trees they took without so much as a please or thank you.

And shot at you when you went down to have a little chat with them to sort it out.

And then organized some sort of genocidal campaign to eradicate you and take all your stuff.

Is it any wonder they might be a little ill-tempered?

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Shawn asks a great question. In response to it, my mind jumped to a tense scene from the 2015 Disney documentary, Monkey Kingdom.

The scene shows a tiny and cute macaque monkey dangling from a vine a few inches above some murky water.

This monkey is a single mother, the narrator tells you. But not only that. She’s also at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Higher-caste females are safe up in a tree eating figs. But even though there’s plenty to go around, these higher-caste females are not willing to share any food with the low-born single mom.

So she is forced to roam deep into the jungle to feed her family. That’s why she’s now dangling above the murky water, so she can harvest some water lily seeds.

And then the scene shifts. It suddenly shows a monitor lizard.

The lizard is huge. It’s seven feet long, three or four times the size of the tiny monkey mom.

The lizard is ugly. It’s thick and black and scaly, with a long flame-like tongue flickering in and out of its mouth.

And worst of all, the lizard is treacherous. At first it’s lurking at the edge of the water. But then it slips in silently, and swims under the surface to where the water lilies are.

So why are dragons always made out to be the bad guys?

Because our race and their race have been at war since time immemorial. Because this feeling is baked into us. Because it’s bare-metal.

Bare-metal is my term for the fact that if you keep asking why long enough, you eventually always get to the answer, just because. Because it’s how we humans are. Because it’s right, whether or not it’s historically fair to the dragons, whether or not it makes sense in today’s world.

If you want to influence people, then write about bare-metal topics.

It’s not just slimy, treacherous serpents.

I gave you a few other bare-metal topics above, in that monkey scene setup. But there are many more.

I rewatched Monkey Kingdom last night. And because I’ve become obsessive through writing this newsletter, I took notes every minute or two.

I found 40+ bare metal topics in Monkey Kingdom. They are brilliantly illustrated because it’s monkeys. Monkeys are close enough to us to be relevant, but different enough to illustrate each bare-metal topic distinctly.

So my advice to you is, watch Monkey Kingdom. And take notes.

If I ever create my mythical AIDA School, this movie will be a part of the first-semester curriculum.

And now for something completely different:

Specifically, my Most Valuable Email course.

That course is connected in some way to today’s email, though only lightly.

That don’t change the fact that, as the name of it says, this course is about a type of email that has been most valuable for me.

If you also write about marketing or persuasion or copywriting, this type of email might be just as valuable for you.

To find out more about it — and about love, death, and politics — go here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Keep doing a good job

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A few weeks ago, I was at the gym on the elliptical, getting in my weekly hours of Zone 2.

I was staring out the big gym windows to distract myself. Out on the street, I saw a family of three in a miserable scene.

At the head of the pack was a mother, standing, weighed down by several heavy bags of groceries, looking exhausted.

Staggering towards her was a five-year-old boy. He was pulling his hair in a gesture that seemed to say, “I can’t do this any more.”

And a few steps behind him was his three-year-old brother, the cause of all the misery.

He was rooted in place and obviously throwing a tantrum. What killed me was that he was wearing a rainbow-colored t-shirt that said, “Keep doing a good job.”

All of which is to say, be careful of what behavior you encourage.

I had more to say on this topic. But I reserved that for people who are signed up to get my daily emails. Maybe you’d like to join them, so you can get my entire messages, including some special offers that I never make outside my newsletter. In that case, click here and fill out the form that appears.

Daniel Throssell is right

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“Whether liketh you better, said Merlin, the sword or the scabbard? Me liketh better the sword, said Arthur. Ye are more unwise, said Merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while ye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded, therefore keep well the scabbard always with you.”

Australia’s best copywriter, Daniel Throssell, wrote an email two days ago in response to my own email from New Year’s Day.

Daniel’s subject line read, “John Bejakovic is wrong.”

In his email, Daniel started off by saying he and I are on good terms and that he has helped me before. And he’s absolutely right.

In 2021, I had been stubbornly writing this newsletter in silence for three years. With one email to his own list, Daniel changed that. In the three days after he first promoted me, I tripled my list size, and made a bunch of money as a result.

Daniel has also promoted me since, and every time, I’ve gotten a big boost in new subscribers. I’ve written before to say how grateful I am for that, and how impressed with the influence that Daniel has over his readers.

But back to Daniel’s email from two days ago. After that “we’re good” intro, Daniel went on to the heart of it:

A five-point argument that paid newsletters are a desirable or even superior info product. That’s opposed to what I wrote in New Year’s Day email, where I said that nobody really wants a newsletter, not without lots of bribes, indoctrination, or shaming.

If you haven’t done so yet, I’ll leave you to read Daniel’s email and see if you are convinced by his arguments. I’ve heard from readers on both sides.

Some said Daniel is a magician with words and that he turned it around brilliantly. Others said they found Daniel’s arguments unpersuasive.

As for me, I will only say that, even after reading Daniel’s email, I am still not selling a paid newsletter, or planning to do so.

But Daniel is selling a paid newsletter. In fact, he wrote recently that adding this paid newsletter to his business is one of the best things he’s ever done.

And that’s why he’s absolutely right to publicly fight for his position, to make a black-and-white case of it, and even turn it into an issue of what’s noble or not.

If you want to be seen as a leader, or if you have a kingdom to protect, then Daniel’s example is well-worth studying and following.

Like King Arthur, you have to mount your horse, brandish your sword Excalibur, and lead the charge against any flying serpent that crosses your borders and into your marches, before the ugly beast has a chance to threaten your heartland.

If I were in Daniel’s position, I would have to do the same. But fortunately for me, that’s not the position I am in.

Like I’ve said before, I don’t look at what I’m doing here primarily as a business. Yes, these emails have been making me money, and sometimes good money. But this is not only project I’m working on, and it’s not the main way I’m looking to make money.

That non-dependence is like the scabbard of Excalibur for me. It means I don’t lose no blood, no matter the wounding things anybody may write about me, about the content of my emails, or about the offers I promote.

And if you value your freedom more than ten kingdoms, then this kind of non-dependence is something to keep always with you.

Moving on. I have tribute to collect from various places around the world. Meanwhile, if you would like to read more essays I’ve written, then sign up to my daily email newsletter. Click ye here and fill out the form that magically appears like Merlin out of a cloud of smoke.

The bigger point of the rising AI flood

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Yesterday, Australia’s best copywriter, Daniel Throssell, wrote an email with the subject line, “John Bejakovic is wrong.”

​​Daniel’s email was about my email two days ago, in which I said that nobody really wants a newsletter.

I would like to respond to Daniel’s email, and I will. But a promise is a promise.

And yesterday I promised that today I would continue and finish my email from yesterday, and reveal the bigger point.

My smaller point was that there’s already a ton of fluff on the Internet, and it will only get worse now that anybody can write quickly, cheaply, and convincingly thanks to AI.

You can choose to take advantage of the current moment, which is what my email yesterday was about.

But there’s also the bigger point I promised you yesterday. It’s this.

Last month, over the course of two weeks, an estimated five billion people gathered in bars and on street corners all around the world, or squeezed in on the couch at home next to their friends and family, while watching opposing groups of 11 grown men desperately chasing a rubber ball around a grassy field.

The reason why billions of people engaged in this strange ritual is the same reason why I sent a physical postcard last year as part of my Most Valuable Postcard project.

Because it’s something real.

All those people around the world, hanging out with friends, tuning in to a live football game that everybody else is watching at exactly the same time, with the result still unknown and even uncertain — that’s real.

On a much smaller scale, so was my physical, handwritten postcard.

So that’s my bigger point for you.

The world will soon be flooded by AI-generated and AI-augmented content. This content will be warm, sweet, and inviting.

​​That means the flood will stay, and it will cover and absorb all the other warm, sweet, and inviting content that’s being created by the last generation of well-meaning human influencers and personality-based content marketers.

But islands in the flood will form, created by people who want some actual real experience of human connection to complement all the time spent being plugged into the solipsistic AI heaven.

So start thinking now, about how to create something real, and how to give that to people.

At least that’s my advice if you want influence and impact in the nearly developing future, or maybe just a better society to live in.

Anyways, I had a special, time-limited, free offer today for people who are subscribed to my email newsletter. You missed that, since you are not subscribed, but are only reading an archived version of this email.

In case you’d like to keep this from happening in the future, you can sign up to my email newsletter, and get my emails as they come out, in real time. To do so, click here and fill out the form that appears.

There’s a new railroad across America, and it’s turning some copywriters into firemen

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I woke up this morning to an email from an old client:

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Hey John, happy new year!

We’re seeing a lot of growth again in [his wife’s] business… you totally nailed the voice and tone last time, wondering if you’d be interested in revisiting that engagement?

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The fact is, I didn’t totally nail the voice last time. Not even close.

I even wrote an email in this newsletter about that miserable experience, with the subject line, “My so-called life as a 32-year-old Brazilian female fitness model.”

In that email, I said it was impossible for me to really mimic somebody’s voice, at least in daily emails, at least to an audience who genuinely knows that person.

Pretending to be a 32-year-old Brazilian fitness model, I spent 15 minutes writing each email, and another 30-40 minutes massaging the emojis and Instagram inspiration buzzwords and agonizing whether something was just important! or really super important!!!

I hated the process.

But things have changed in the past two years. And if my old client thought I nailed the voice last time, he would be amazed now.

Because after I got his message, I clambered into my connection pod, plugged the metal cables into the back of my skull, and initiated a telepathic conversation with the General Networked Intelligence. I asked it:

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Rewrite the following in the tone of a peppy, enthusiastic, 32-year-old female Instagram fitness model, who loves using emojis and a few words in all caps: It’s important to be healthy and fit. But what’s equally as important is to feel good about yourself, not to compare yourself to others, to enjoy each day without worrying about living up to a standard. And that’s what I want to do for you.

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In an instant, the Great Networked Intelligence replied with the following:

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“💪 Hey friends! Staying FIT AND HEALTHY is super important, but it’s not just about hitting the gym and eating right 🥗 It’s about FEELING GOOD IN YOUR OWN SKIN, not comparing yourself to others 🙅‍, and ENJOYING EACH DAY TO THE FULLEST 🌞 That’s what I’m all about, and that’s what I want to help you achieve 🙌 Let’s make every day POSITIVE, HEALTHY, AND HAPPY together! 🤗”

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This is pretty close to perfect. Maybe a tiny bit over the top, but as copywriter John Carlton likes to say, better start with extreme inspirational fluff and dial it back a notch, than try to squeeze a pizza-slice emoji into an unenthusiastic and limp Instagram post.

And then, suddenly, I had a vision.

I saw a 19th-century steam locomotive, a huge and ugly engine spewing smoke and eating up the American landscape.

​​Inside that locomotive was a small, sweaty, sooty man, shoveling coal into the blazing fire that drives the great steam engine on.

But what do you call that small, sweaty, sooty man? I never knew the term. No matter. As soon as I had that thought, without speaking a word, I immediately had the response:

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A person who shovels coal on a locomotive is typically called a “fireman” or “stoker.” The fireman is responsible for maintaining the fire in the locomotive’s furnace, which generates steam to power the engine.

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So there you go. There’s a new railroad across America, and it’s turning some copywriters into firemen. Maybe some of those firemen will get very rich.

Anyways, you might wonder if I have any bigger point to this email besides that you can now quickly and cheaply imitate the voice and tone of Instagram fitness models.

I do have a bigger point. But this email is getting long, and several other steam locomotives demand my attention. So I will tell you the bigger point in my email tomorrow, in case you are interested. If you’d like to read that email when it comes out, click here to sign up for my daily email newsletter.

Threats and shaming in early-morning emails

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Two mornings ago, I found myself on the street outside my house, in the dark. There were no cabs because it was 4:30am on New Year’s morning. I took my phone out to rent a city bike as the first step of catching my 7am flight, but instead of opening the bike app, I automatically opened my email inbox.

“Hello,” I said. “This will be useful.”

It turns out I’d gotten a new email from marketer Ben Settle. The subject line read:

“Why my ‘no coming back’ policy will inevitably be the new normal”

Ben was talking about his policy of never allowing people who unsubscribe from his paid newsletter to resubscribe.

I have no doubt that Ben’s prediction is right, and that this policy will become more and more common.

After all, newsletters are the Ford Edsel of the information publishing industry.

As Agora founder Bill Bonner, who has sold billions of dollars’ worth of newsletters, supposedly said once, nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, heart racing, pajamas wet from sweat, with the sudden realization, “Good God… we’re all out of newsletters!”

Newsletters are something that the marketer dreamed up, because they provide continuity income, automatically, without the need to keep getting credit card details.

Newsletters are something the market doesn’t really want, not without a huge amount of bribes, indoctrination, and in Ben’s case, threats and shaming. From his email about his “no coming-back” policy:

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“Plus, practically speaking, if the trash lets itself out why take it back in?”

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Whatever. People will justify anything to themselves out of self-interest.

Fortunately, my self-interest isn’t aligned with selling you a newsletter, because I tried it and found I hate it, even before I had to give a single thought to retention.

The good news of that is, I don’t have to threaten you or shame you, which is something I find personally distasteful.

The bad news is, I don’t ever hear the satisfying sound of shopping-cart notifications telling me I’ve made a bunch of sales on autopilot.

Instead, I have to keep sending emails, writing sales letters, and doing my best to tempt you into buying the offers I’m selling.

That’s okay. Like I keep saying, I’m okay with working a bit, regularly, and for the long term.

And I’d rather have my freedom, both from the fixed schedule of publishing a paid newsletter, and from the psychological toll of barking at my subscribers and cracking my whip at them.

Perhaps you also value freedom over automatic shopping cart notifications. Perhaps you can understand where I am coming from. In that case, you might like to sign up to my (free) daily email newsletter.

You can try it… find it doesn’t work for you… unsubscribe… and later, if you change your mind, you can subscribe again. No threats or shaming.

To get started, click here and fill out the form.