John Bejakovic

Cats and rats and Dan Kennedy

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The siege of Leningrad lasted 872 days. During that time, the city was ruined, the people were desperate, and hunger was rampant. As a result, the cat population suffered.

By 1943, when the siege was finally lifted, the people of Leningrad had eaten all their cats.

This turned out to be a short-sighted decision. Because without the cats, the rats multiplied. The rats attacked the few remaining stores of grain and spread disease throughout the city.

The people of Leningrad hunted the rats, shot at them, even squashed them with tanks. Nothing helped.

That’s why, when the siege was lifted, four wagonfuls of cats were the first to enter the city.

At that time, a kitten in Leningrad was worth 400 rubles, the equivalent of 10 precious kilos of bread. But it was worth it. Because the meowing division, as it was called, soon took care of the rat problem.

​​Grateful citizens of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, raised statues in memory of the heroic cats.

I mostly wanted to share this story with you. I thought it was both horrifying and funny. But since this newsletter is about copywriting, let me also try to connect it to something useful.

One of the best copywriting resources I own is the Business of Copywriting Academy that Dan Kennedy did with AWAI. It’s not about how to write copy. Like the name says, it’s about the business of being a copywriter.

And in there, Dan says that if you want to get rich as a copywriter… if you want to have lots of work and clients who celebrate you as a rainmaker… then you should get adept at finding certain wins.

That’s usually not the projects the client will come to you with.

The client will usually come to you and say, “We think we have a rat somewhere in the building. We’ve had four other cats come through and search for the rat. They failed. We’d like you to try next.”

No no no, says Dan. You want to work on things that are a certain win, or as close to it as possible.

The client won’t tell you what those are. He can’t see them himself.

But if you keep your ears up and your whiskers out, you will start to spot situations where you will succeed, almost regardless of what you do. Situations that are the copywriting equivalent of being a cat in post-siege Leningrad. Where bare competence is enough to deliver heroic results.

And if you make a habit of hunting down such opportunities, you can soon start to charge all the rubles you want… in spite of wagonfuls of competition… and who knows? One day, you might even get a statue raised in your honor.

In the meantime, you might like some more ideas on the business of copywriting. One option is to go for Dan’s AWAI course, fully worth it. Another option is to sign up for my email newsletter, where I sometimes share ideas and experiences on this topic.

Unmasking the real Ellen (and everybody else in your life)

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“Thanks very much. This is exciting, isn’t it? This is really great. I’m happy. You seem like a great crowd. Of course, you never know. Never can tell.”
— Ellen DeGeneres, One Night Stand

A few days ago, I watched a bunch of episodes of One Night Stand. That was the half-hour standup show that ran on HBO in the early 90s.

One of the One Night Stand specials from 1992 was Ellen DeGeneres. I’d never seen her standup before. In fact, I’d never seen her talkshow. I only knew her as the TV “Queen of Nice” who was unmasked as being a bitch in real life.

Whatever. I was surprised I liked Ellen’s 90s standup. Here’s a bit about her going for a mud bath:

“You submerge in mud. You’re naked. They always want you to be naked to be rid of stress. Ever notice that? To me that’s more stressful actually. You’re naked around people you don’t know who are naked… and you have no pockets. You don’t know what to do with your hands. [She does a little pantomime of covering her crotch, crossing her legs, crossing her arms.]”

After watching Ellen’s One Night Stand, I found it very credible that she is not a nice person in real life.

In her comedy special, Ellen is very smiley, blonde, and cute. But she doesn’t hide her snarky, judgmental nature. Or who knows, maybe I’m just reading into it, since I know the stuff that’s been said of her recently. But I don’t think so. Because there’s this general truth:

People are often talking about themselves, regardless of the apparent topic of conversation.

And all you have to do is to be aware of this fact. You can then get a lot of useful information without asking any prying questions. Maybe, if you’re curious, you can even go look over this post and find out things about me. Stuff I didn’t mean to reveal. You never can tell.

Anyways, if you want more advice on figuring out the true nature of your friends, family, and sales prospects, it’s stuff I occasionally talk about in my email newsletter. If you’d like to try that out, and see if you find it entertaining and educational, click here.

The strange story of three girls who became one

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“We can’t go anywhere without each other!” said the first girl.

“It drives us crazy! But we can’t split up no matter what we do!” said the second.

“Can you help us, doctor?” asked the third. “We still want to be friends, but this is too much!”

In 1972, three college girls showed up to a therapist’s office. They were suffering from what psychologists call fused identity. It’s the personality equivalent of leaving a bag of gummy bears in the sun until they all melt together.

The girls were aware of what had happened. They wanted to change. But they couldn’t. So they were seeking help.

“I understand,” said the therapist. “There’s an important first step I want you to take. After that, I can recommend a course of action.”

“Tell us!” said girl one.

“We’ll do anything!” said girls two and three in unison.

“First, I want you to make a list of your planned activities for tomorrow,” the therapist said. “The ones you expect you will do together.”

The girls nodded and did as he asked.

“And then tomorrow,” the therapist said, “it’s extremely important that you do each of these things together, as you just told me you would. Don’t deviate from this plan one bit. You have to be at all of these activities, together. All three of you. Then the day after, come see me again.”

This case was reported in a paper titled, “Dissolution of fused identity in one therapeutic session.” Because one session was all it took. The girls lost interest in spending all their time together… after they were told they HAD to do it.

This is a core part of human existence. Your prospects have it inside them also. They have a problem… they might even want help… but they are repulsed by being told what to do.

So here’s an important first step:

Forget what you just read. And it’s extremely important that the next time you craft a persuasive message, you do NOT think of clever ways to deal with your prospects’ stubborn resistance to outside influence. Particularly if you sell in a really skeptical, jaded market. Then the day after you do that, come and see me again.

Do you think you’re smarter than average?

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I think I’m pretty smart, and I’d bet you think the same about yourself. I mean that literally. I would bet money on the fact that you think you are smarter than most other people.

I’ll tell you why in a second. But first, let me tell you how I broke a nonsensical law a few days ago.

There’s an intersection near the apartment where I’ve been staying for the past week. It has a stop light. There’s never any traffic in the cross direction, or even the chance of traffic in the cross direction.

To top it off, the red light stays red very long… and the green light only appears for a flicker.

So a few days ago, following a few other cars, I drove through that intersection. Even though the light had turned red right before me.

A trivial thing, right?

Well, it turns out I got lucky. Not because of any cross traffic. Like I said, no traffic there, then or ever.

But every time I’ve walked by that intersection since, I’ve seen a lurking cop car on the side, watching the intersection like a cat in the grass watching a mouse burrows.

Gulp. I must not be the only one to think that traffic light is stupid.

And that’s my point for you for today. People act and think in predictable ways. And this can be useful to you when persuading. Or giving out traffic tickets.

And now, let me tell you why I’d bet on you and your smarts.

It’s the same reason I’d bet you think you’re more curious than most other people… that you change your bedsheets less than other people… and that you have sex less often than other people.

Here, check it out. You might learn something about yourself, and about how to persuade others too:

https://thanaverage.xyz/

(Oh, and since you think you’re so smart, you might like my email newsletter. It’s the thinking man’s source of ideas about persuasion, designed for smart people like yourself. You can sign up here.)

The silent killer of effective sales messages

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In the next 59 minutes, 100 marketers will suffer a devastating defeat of their marketing message…

… and for half of them, this defeat will come even though their message kicked off with a big promise or a really scary warning.

Today, I want to give you an example of a powerful and undercover copywriting technique. It comes from a Clayton Makepeace sales letter, which I guess ran about 20 years ago.

Clayton’s sales letter had the headline “Cholesterol’s Evil Twin.” And the sales argument went like this:

Fact 1: Only half of people who die of heart disease have high cholesterol.

Fact 2: The other half have heart disease because of inflammation.

Fact 3: Serious conditions like arthritis and diabetes set off inflammation.

Fact 4: Less serious conditions like skin rashes or gum disease also lead to inflammation, which could have dangerous consequences…

Fact 5: And even less serious, everyday conditions, like a splinter or an in-grown toenail… “could trigger an inflammatory response capable of turning plaque into a deadly heart or brain bomb!”

So there you go. An in-grown toenail can make your heart or brain explode.

Pretty wild, right? And apparently, effective, since this sales letter mailed in huge numbers. But here’s my guess:

Had Clayton said this in-grown nail thing at the start of his message, he would have just gotten a roll of the eyes in response. It would have made the rest of his message hard to swallow.

So let me take a page out of Clayton’s book. And let me make a modestly outrageous claim to finish this message:

Beware of putting your most dramatic promise or your scariest warning first. Even if you’ve got facts to back it up. Because the right claim delivered at the wrong time can trigger a defense response in your reader… capable of turning your entire sales message into a deadly marketing flop.

Speaking of deadly marketing:

I write an email newsletter. Deadly copywriting and marketing brain bombs. If you’d like to try it out, here’s where to go.

A-ha moment that makes millionaires out of creative workers

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HER: Started at age 28 with a net worth of $88k. Worked first as a writer. Then as a photographer. Each year, managed to save a bit more. Now, 10 years in, makes a steady six-figure income, still doing consumer photography. Net worth is $1M+.

HIM: Started at age 34 as a freelance artist. Net worth of -$39k. (Yes, $39k in debt. Lots of fancy trips and partying, and not a lot of income.) Switched to a salaried position while continuing to freelance. Now, five years in, has a net worth of $673k.

A few days ago, I read the financial independence journey of a husband and wife team. Their stats are above.

How did a photographer make a million in 10 years? And how did an artist go from -$39k to +$673k in 5 years?

Well, it was some of the usual. Work and budgeting and avoiding foolish financial bloodlettings.

How depressing. Was there anything else? Anything more inspiring? Yes. From the wife:

“I was exercising the same skill set, but applying it to an industry where they valued it and paid much more for it. This was the a-ha moment that really helped propel my professional life forward, (and later helped my husband as well).”

I’m telling you about this a-ha for two reasons:

First, because I think this idea is genuinely powerful.

I once heard marketer Greg Rollett say how he sold Internet marketing advice to broke musicians… $27 at a time. Then Greg took the same information, repackaged it so he was selling it to lawyers. He made $2700 now, for the same product. And my guess is he actually sold more units at $2700 than at $27.

So whether you’re a copywriter or a marketer, evaluate whether there aren’t people who would pay you 5x, 10x, or 100x for the exact same work you’re doing now.

That’s reason one.

Reason two is that the above story, about the husband and wife team, was part of presentation I gave last night.

The background is that, over past year, I wrote daily emails to two large lists. With each email, I promoted various affiliate offers and in-house products of the ecommerce company I’ve been working with.

Our best month in terms of email profit (not revenue) was over $70k. Typical days were between $1k and $2k. It all came from sending an email a day to each of these two lists.

And because this was secondary work, and there was a bunch of other copy to write as well, I had to make these emails as easy and quick as possible. Which is why I came up with a very streamlined process to stamp out these emails each day.

And when marketer Igor Kheifets asked me to speak to members of his mastermind, it was this process that I went through in detail. That was the presentation I gave last night.

So here’s the deal:

I’ll share the recording of this presentation with you, if you like, and if you take me up on my free GrooveFunnels offer.

In case you haven’t been reading my emails over past two days:

I’m trying to get you to sign up for free account to GrooveFunnels.

And if you don’t know GrooveFunnels, it’s a marketing funnel software like ClickFunnels. Except if ClickFunnels is an iPhone, then GrooveFunnels is a tin can with a length of string coming out the bottom.

So why am I pushing you to try it out? And why am I even willing to bribe you into signing up?

Well, I’m counting on some reckless person out there going one step further, either today or in the future.

Because GrooveFunnels is free for three sites if you sign up right now. But a premium lifetime license, for an unlimited number of sites, is not free.

In fact, the premium license is expensive. I know, because I bought one myself last week.

You might say I’m reckless or even foolish. After all, Groove is still a half-baked product, full of glitches and bugs.

It’s a gamble I am willing to take. My reasoning is that GrooveFunnels, while only functional now, will get good soon. And a premium lifetime license to Groove, at the price I got it at, is still a fraction of what just a year of ClickFunnels would cost me. But it’s not clear how much longer this will last.

Anyways, you don’t have to make the decision about a premium license now. Or ever.

Because you can sign up to GrooveFunnels for free, without a credit card. So look at it this way:

In the worst case, you do nothing with your free GrooveFunnels account.

In the best case, you get at least a 3-website license for a service that will one day rival ClickFunnels. This is potentially worth hundreds of dollars a month to you, when Groove starts charging a monthly fee.

And maybe you can use your free Groove sites to test offering your products or services to entirely new niches… ones that might pay you 10x or 100x what you’re getting paid now.

Or maybe you can use the simple email system in my presentation to promote some affiliate stuff in a new niche. (Groove will soon have an email service also, and you will get it if you sign up for the free account today.)

So that’s my pitch. Nothing to lose, and maybe something good to gain.

If you’re in, sign up for the free Groove account at the link below. Then forward me your confirmation email, and I’ll send you the email marketing presentation. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/groove

A red hot deal on a pain in the ass product

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At the start of this month, a few days before I launched my Copy Riddles program, I naively decided to make some changes to the sales page.

I’d gotten testimonials back from people who had gone through the test round. I just wanted to paste those in.

So I opened up my page builder and —

It looked like the fridge scene in Ghostbusters. The one where Sigourney Weaver opens her fridge, and instead of shelves with salami and cheese, she sees a vortex of evil energy and a demon hound growling, “Zuuuul.”

I immediately closed down the page builder and pretended like nothing happened.

After a few moments, I carefully opened it up again. I peaked in.

“Zuuuul,” I heard the hound say again.

My sales page had completely collapsed. All the text, supposed to flow from top to bottom, had gotten crushed down and was running to the right, off the page. The images were piled on top of each other. It was unreadable and unusable.

Yesterday, I mentioned GrooveFunnels. That’s the new marketing funnel software looking to compete with ClickFunnels.

Well, I built the sales page for Copy Riddles using GrooveFunnels.

My reasoning was this:

I know how to build a webpage. That’s easy.

But what I don’t know is how to build an order page and upsell pages… how to connect to payment processors like Stripe and PayPal… how to integrate all this with affiliate tracking so I can get other people to promote my stuff and become a millionaire in the process.

I’m sure there are tech solutions for all these problems. But I didn’t feel like researching them. And I didn’t feel like paying hundreds of dollars a month to try them out, especially since Copy Riddles is still a small and experimental project for me.

So I went all in on Groove. It does everything. Builds your webpages…. creates the sales funnel… processes payments… handles affiliates.

It sounded great.

The reality of course was a mess of supernatural proportions. Lots of glitches, confusing design, and a vortex of evil energy in my fridge.

And yet, like I said yesterday, I’m actually recommending GrooveFunnels. If you are a marketer or copywriter, and you expect to ever need a new site for a project, I believe it makes sense to try GrooveFunnels out. Here’s why:

1. My sales page ended up working just fine. In fact, it fixed itself, or the little Groove elves working behind the scenes fixed it. In fact, whenever I contacted the elves with questions or requests, they were very responsive and helpful.

2. Even though simple stuff (like changing the size of a headline) was almost impossible in Groove, the hard stuff (like handling affiliates across different pages) was instant. All the stuff I didn’t know how to do came ready to go out of the box.

3. Groove is free to use. Did I mention that yet?

Fact is, Groove is a huge project. Along with the page builder and the affiliate stuff and the sales funnels, they are also working on an email service and a shopping cart and membership site software.

And since they are working on a million things in parallel, everything is full of glitches and bugs.

But those bugs are getting worked out. Groove as a project is very hot and growing. Money is being poured into development.

And one day, or so I hope, Groove will be a stable, reliable platform, which actually gives you all you need to run a business online.

So that’s why I say it makes sense to try Groove out. And to do it now.

​​Because Groove won’t always be free, but it still is. There are no restrictions on the free program, except you can only use Groove for three websites max.

The only thing is they put an ugly black bar at the bottom of your site, saying “This site was built with Groove Funnels.” But if you sign up for a free Groove account today, and forward me your confirmation email, I will even tell you how I got rid of the ugly black bar on my site, while still being on the free Groove account.

Oh, and I will give you something else too. But this post is running long, so I’ll tell you about that tomorrow, when I finish my Groove promotion. (Or you can find out today, by sending me your confirmation email.)

​​For now, if you’d like to try out Groove, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/groove

Name your own price: how about free?

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In 1998, Priceline went from nothing to being worth $23 billion. They did it thanks to radio ads starring William Shatner and ending with the famous appeal:

“Priceline. Name your own price.”

In 2010, Fiverr launched. Their basic appeal was fixed freelance services, all for just $5. No need to haggle, negotiate over scope, or pay a lot. Fiverr went public in 2019, and is worth a little over $7 billion today.

Eventually, both Priceline and Fiverr backed off from their original appeals. You can’t name your own price on Priceline any more. And most services on Fiverr will cost you much more than a fiver today.

But those initial appeals were powerful. They made those companies worth billions of dollars.

Why?

What was so good about those two original appeals?

Direct marketer Fred Catona, who ran those Priceline ads in the 1990s, said that Priceline’s appeal was an “empowering statement.”

People felt in control, Catona argued, because they could name their own price. And so they took action and jumped on the Priceline website.

There might be something to that.

But Fiverr’s appeal was just the opposite. No control. Not only could you not name your own price… but you couldn’t even name the service you wanted. Five dollars. Fixed services off a menu. Take it or leave it.

And like I said, both appeals worked great.

So here’s my feeling:

Both Priceline and Fiverr appealed to simple greed.

“Name my own price? Hell yeah! I’ll take a ticket to Maui for $10, please!”

“$5 for an email sequence? Hell yeah! I’ll become an Internet marketing millionaire without doing any work!”

So my takeaway for you is to come up with new packaging for “cheap.” It might make you a billion dollars. Or 7. Or 23. And you don’t have to keep making the same “cheap” appeal forever.

Speaking of which:

There’s a new marketing funnel company in town, aiming to rival the $2B-valued ClickFunnels. The upstart is called GrooveFunnels.

GrooveFunnels does everything ClickFunnels does… and more. But while ClickFunnels costs hundreds of dollars a month to use… GrooveFunnels is free. For up to three websites… and for now, until they grab their share of the market.

Can you say cheap?

Of course, with cheap comes a whole host of headaches. I’ll tell you about a few of them tomorrow. And I’ll also tell you why it still makes sense to try out GrooveFunnels… and to even pay to get lifetime access for it, for more than three websites. Hell, I’ll even give you an incentive to do it.

But that’s tomorrow. For now, if you want to find out more about (FREE!) GrooveFunnels, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/groove

Conflict produced this legendary ad — do you know it?

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“We’ve spent a fortune,” screamed the red-faced exec, “but this damn thing still won’t sell! What the hell am I paying you people for?

The gray suits around the table hung their heads.

The time was 1911.

The executives at Colliers Publishing had heard an incredible idea. It came from Harvard University President Charles Eliot.

Eliot said any man could get a world-class education in 15 minutes a day, just by reading a few books. All the books could fit onto a 5-foot shelf.

So the Collier’s people asked Eliot which books exactly… and Dr. Eliot’s Five Foot Shelf was born.

Collier’s ran ads in their own magazine to get leads for the Five Foot Shelf. The ads talked about the joy and satisfaction of owning and reading great books. They featured the Harvard coat of arms.

​​And yet the damn thing wouldn’t sell. It looked hopeless. But it turned around, by accident.

Advertising man Bruce Barton had to fill some empty advertising space. So he flipped open one of Dr. Eliot’s great books and landed on a picture of Marie Antoinette in a rickety peasant cart. He ripped the picture out. And he scribbled the headline above it:

“This is Marie Antoinette riding to her death. Have you ever read her tragic story?”

According to Barton, Marie Antoinette outpulled the old “joy and satisfaction” ads 8-to-1. She kept running successfully for years, and helped sell hundreds of thousands of copies of the Five Foot Bookshelf.

This shows the power of a dramatic snapshot. This is a great way to start your sales letters, advertorials, and even emails.

Of course, that’s not the only good thing Barton’s ad has going for it.

The whole thing is full of copywriting and marketing tricks which worked in 1921… and continue to work in 2021. It might be worth taking a look and seeing how many you can spot.

And if you’d like to do that, I’ve tracked down a copy of Bruce Barton’s original Marie Antoinette ad for you. You can find it below. And if you’d like more occasional trips down 1911 marketing lane, you can sign up for my email newsletter here.

The vulnerability myth

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Ron was waiting in his wheelchair, looking up the stairs.

The necklace he had just bought was wrapped up on the table in front of him.

Finally, he saw her.

She was coming down the stairs, laughing and talking to another man.

At the bottom of the stairs, she kissed the man on the lips and grabbed him by the crotch. She then noticed Ron from the corner of her eye.

Ron quietly pulled the wrapped present off the table.

The woman came over. “We get married today?” she chuckled.

“Oh yeah, yeah,” Ron said. “That would be great.” He slumped down in his wheelchair. And he wheeled himself away.

That’s a scene scene from Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July. It’s a fictional look at the real-world horrors that paralyzed Vietnam vet Ron Kovic went through, both during the war and after.

I thought of this scene today when I heard yet another recruiting pitch for the cult of vulnerability. “Wear all your hidden handicaps on your sleeve,” the cult leaders say, “and people will love you for it.”

I want to offer you another point of view. It’s a simple formula:

Charisma = Power + Liking

I read that a long time ago in a book called The Charisma Myth. It’s stuck with me ever since.

It’s why a brutal, undefeated knight makes hearts beat faster with small acts of chivalry…

But why a vulnerable “nice guy” with flowers and gifts gets a pat on the head, at best.

Good news is, there’s a way out.

For example, at the end of the Oliver Stone movie, Ron speaks to a crowd of millions. People hang on to his every word. They absorb his anti-war message. And they applaud and cheer him.

But here’s the crucial point:

This only happens after Ron and a bunch of other vets make a scandal at the Republican National Convention… after they storm the convention hall… and after they get on TV.

So my pitch to you is to work on your power and your authority first.

​​Once you’ve got em in buckets, then bare your stories of self-doubt and failure.

​​People will listen then… they will feel good about following such an effective and yet human leader… and they might even love you for it.

In other news:

I’ve got an email newsletter. Full of effective marketing and copywriting ideas, and occasional personal stories. In case you’d like to sign up, here’s where to go.