John Bejakovic

How to sell coaching even if you have no experience

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Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I met a strange but powerful wizard.

Ok, the “once upon a time” was last autumn, the strange but powerful wizard was a guy named Rob Goyette, and the faraway land was Zoomlandia. I was jacking in from Spain, where I live alone, and Rob from Puerto Rico, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

Rob was telling me about his offer, Laser Coaching. Laser Coaching shows coaches how to make money this week, even if they have little to no experience, and even if they’ve never managed to sell their coaching before.

It sounded pretty amazing as a promise. Too good to be true? I was thinking I might promote Laser Coaching to my list. So I decided to try it out myself.

Now, just to be 100.1% transparent:

I have experience coaching. And I have managed to sell coaching before to my list. Plus at least some people on my list really like me and wanna work with me.

Even so, following Rob’s exact Laser Coaching blueprint, which was different to any offer I had ever previously made, I managed to sell $3k worth of coaching by the end of the first week, with just a single post in my Skool group, without struggle or even doing any “sales,” based solely on the strength of the Laser Coaching offer alone.

To me that was proof that Rob’s system was legit, even in the face of my confounding experience. (Rob has hundreds of other successful case studies from people with less experience than me.)

After my experiment, I asked Rob if I could promote his Laser Coaching offer to my list.

He said “Sure… just let me fix the sales page.” That was back in January.

It took a while for Rob to fix his sales page in a way that made him happy. Specifically, it took him until April.

By that time, I had other stuff to do, and I put Rob’s coaching-selling miracle on the back burner.

I am getting to it now.

If you offer coaching, but nobody is taking you up on your coaching, Laser Coaching is a way to get paid by the end of this week.

I’ve tried it. It works. I will have full details tomorrow about it, including an uncomfortably generous bonus I am offering if you take me up on it.

Do you want MY minions researching YOUR new subscribers?

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A couple months ago, a new and mysterious subscriber signed up to my list.

As they always do, my minions immediately scurried off into the cracks of the internet, researching who this person might be, based only on the email address and first name he had put into my optin form.

The minions identified who this new subscriber is likely to be in real life. They then wrote up a brief report on this person, and sent me the report via email (I don’t like to deal with minions directly, because they are minions).

I looked over the report. This new subscriber turned out to have a personal website, several books and courses, and a high-ticket mastermind.

As I do, I then wrote this person a 1-1 email. This led to a conversation and eventually talk of doing an auction together to the new subscriber’s paid community of 6k members.

This email is not about auctions. This email is about minions, and how you can use mine.

The fact is, I have opened many many doors for myself, and ultimately made a lot of money, by simply starting a conversation with new people who join my email list.

Yes, I have an automated email that asks people, “What business are you in?” But that doesn’t work, not when compared to the results I get when I actually do 5 minutes of research to figure out myself what business a new subscriber is in, and if it makes sense to do so, to write them a custom email based on that.

Problem:

5 minutes of research adds up, even when you get only get a few subscribers each day, as I do.

Solution:

Minions.

A few weeks after I first contacted that new and mysterious subscriber, based on the research my minions had done, the subscriber wrote me an email to ask:

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When we spoke on Zoom, I mentioned how much I appreciated the research you did on me after I joined your email list. You said you had one of your “minions” handle that, which caught my attention.

Would you mind clarifying what you meant by that?

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Minions. You know, like in the Gru movies. Little squeaky creatures that do my bidding.

You don’t really need to know how my minions look, where I got them, or the strange noises they make when they work.

All you might want to know is that, if you like, I am willing to set my minions to work researching your new subscribers.

I would charge for this. Minion labor isn’t free.

But would you pay, say, $5 to get 50 of your new subscribers minion-researched each month?

Or would you pay $25/month for 500 subscribers minion-researched each month?

… and then to get the individual reports on each of those subscribers sent to your inbox as an email, only a short while after each new sub subscribes, so you can start a 1-1 conversations that might lead you to opportunities, money, and maybe love?

If you would, reply and let me know. Thanks in advance.

I watched 3 hours of MTV for you

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I was reading a comment thread recently where MTV was mentioned, and somebody asked, “What’s MTV?”

If you were a child of 80s, as I was, you know.

If you were not a child of the 80s, it’s hard to overstate the cultural importance that MTV had in the 80s and 90s.

MTV originally stood for Music Television, nominally the first-ever TV channel showing only music videos, but really, a source for kids to find out what was cool before there was social media.

A few days ago, on August 1 to be exact, somebody uploaded to YouTube the recording of the first three hours of MTV broadcasting.

The date was significant, because it was exactly 45 years since the original broadcast, which happened on Aug 1 1981.

Over the past week, I watched all 3 initial hours, bit by bit, and because I always need stuff to write emails about, I took notes that pertain to business. Lemme tell you the most interesting things I found, grouped into 3 points:

#1. Even on day 0, so little of MTV programming was actually music videos.

MTV eventually became accused of showing more reality TV than music. But they didn’t show a lot of music even at the start.

Instead, there were lots of commercials… a good-looking “VJ” talking at you while sitting on top of a desk… music-related news segments.

As I’ve written before, even the most entertaining kinds of entertainment, music in this case, become dull after a bit and require a regular change to a different form of entertainment.

#2. Much of the content was actually advertising for MTV itself.

There were segments encouraging you to call your cable company to get MTV if you don’t have it yet (which soon became the “I want my MTV” ad campaign).

There were ads for merch that would encourage you to watch more MTV and spread the word (a poster, an “MTV dial sticker” because I guess TVs had dials?).

But most important were short clips that hammered home the positioning — the uniqueness and significance of what MTV was. “TV used to be called a wasteland,” the clips said. “That was before MTV.”

#3. MTV got going before they were “ready.”

The production was barebones and by today’s standards amateurish. They didn’t have enough advertisers. And hard as it might be to imagine today, MTV had a shortage of music videos to play on day 0.

A bunch of artists appeared multiple times with different songs.

Many of the “videos” were actually concert clips.

Some of the videos that they did show then…. could not appear today, at least without being censored. Consider the following line from Elvis Costello’s Oliver’s Army, which appeared uncensored around hour 2:

“Only takes one itchy trigger

One more widow, one less white nigger”

And yet, in spite not being “ready” on day 0, MTV went from a marginal cable channel to international arbiter of youth culture, as well as a multibillion-dollar business, against a $20m initial investment.

You can take from this email what you need from it.

I’ll just end on that last point, about being “ready.”

You can get going today, even if you’re not “ready.”

The fact is, nobody is ever ready, and you won’t ever be ready, not really, because the world is a complex and changing place, and your ability to prepare for that is limited.

So might as well get started today, and adapt tomorrow, and profit the day after.

My thing is writing emails like this, about stuff that interests me, and somehow making money in the process.

If you like, you can make it your thing as well. You don’t need my help to get started, but in case you want it, I have something to help you here:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

How I run 36-hour promos that make between $2-$6 per newsletter subscriber

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This morning I woke up unusually late, at 9:30am. As soon as I came out of the bat cave that is my bedroom and into the blinding light of the living room, I opened my laptop and turned off the shopping cart for the Age of Insight promo, which had been running for the past 36 hours.

The results of the promo:

* 27 sales

* 8 of those 27 paid in full

* $8,100 total ($4,200 collected, $3,900 in future payments)

Good? Bad?

In my book, whenever I can make $1k from my email list in a day, I figure it’s been a good day at the office. And by “office,” I mean the couch.

In this case, the promo effectively ran for 3 days – one announcement day to pre-sell the offer, and two days of actually selling. I’ve collected $1,400 per day already, and will be collecting more in next couple months (my readers have diligently paid me whenever I’ve offered payment plans).

This is the third such 36-hour promo I have run.

All in all, I have made $31,312 from these three 36-hour promos. That’s 31k I ascribe to a single idea, common to all 3 of these promos, which I got from marketer Travis Sago.

About that, I’ve prepared a report I’ve creatively titled:

“How I run 36-hour promos that make between $2-$6 per newsletter subscriber”

This report summarizes what I’ve done in these 3 promos, and tells you how (and when) you might be able to do the same.

I’m willing to give you this report for free. I’m wanting to give it to you for free. I’m WAITING to give it to you for free.

Here’s the deal:

Like I said, these 36-hour promos were all built around a single idea I got from marketer Travis Sago.

If you are interested in running money-making email promos, whether for yourself or for clients or partners, then you should be in Travis’s world, because the man has many excellent ideas, not just this one. I estimate that, all in all, implementing Travis’s stuff over the past few years has been worth on the order of $200k to me.

Travis’s world today is a paid Skool group called Royalty Ronin. I myself am a paying member, and I keep promoting it because it keeps making me money.

Ronin has a 7-day free trial.

My deal to you today is:

1. Sign up for the Ronin free trial using the link below

2. Read the “Welcome! Plz START HERE” post linked to in the sidebar

3. Introduce yourself in the comments to that post

4. Send me an email or a Skool DM to let me know you’ve done steps 1-3

That’s it. Do this and I’ll hook you up with my “How I run 36-hour promos that make between $2-$6 per newsletter subscriber” report.

This offer is good for the next 24 hours, until tomorrow, Sunday, at 8:30pm CET.

If you’d like to make more money from your email list, or from the email lists of others:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you’re already in Ronin, my offer extends to you. So does the deadline. Just write me and let me know you want the report before the deadline, and I’ll get it to you.

Last call for Age of Insight

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This is the last email I will send before the end of my 36-hour-only offer of my Age of Insight training. About that:

A few days ago, I was walking around in the blazing heat and trying to avoid sunstroke, when an insight hit me right on the head.

This insight was very meta, because it was actually about the topic of insight.

I’ve long been looking for a definition of what “insight” is. While I got pretty close to it on occasion, I never found a definition that I was 100% satisfied with.

I’ve got it now. I’ll even tell you what it is. Unfortunately, you won’t find it insightful or very useful. Here, try it out. The essence of insight, in three words, is:

1. New

2. Cohesive

3. Explanation

So? Are you enlightened? Are you gonna go out and start creating insightful content or sales materials with my amazing TRUTH above?

I doubt it.

You will probably forget all about what I just told you, as soon as you close this email, just how your readers will forget when you tell them YOUR TRUTH, without making the presentation of that TRUTH feel insightful.

For the TRUTH to pierce your readers’ indifference and reactivity, you need to not just know what insight is. You need to know to create it in your content and marketing.

That’s what I show you how to do, and tell you how to do, inside the Age of Insight training.

I haven’t sold Age of Insight since 2022. After today, I have no plans to sell it again as long as Spain holds the World Cup.

If you wanna get Age of Insight, my advice is to get it now. For more details:

https://bejakovic.com/announcing-age-of-insight-for-36-hours-only/

People have questions

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Earlier today, I wrote wrote that people are buying my current 36-hour Age of Insight offer, and I shared some of their reasons why…

… but not everybody is buying.

Some people have questions.

A few of those people sent me their questions about Age of Insight.

I will now crush these questions, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentation of their women.

First, from a skeptical long-time reader:

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whyd you stop selling it?

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The fact is, I only sold Age of Insight once, as a series of three live training. After that, I never sold it again.

The reason is, Age of Insight is… dense.

I’ve been thinking about the topic of generating insight for a long time, and I put a lot inside of the live trainings.

Afterwards, I planned to make a cleaned-up course out of it. I also planned to write a book about insight. But you know, of mice and men.

I will say that I worked hard to make the Age of Insight training full of infotainment, as well as full of applications of insight techniques I was talking about.

So if you don’t mind going through live recording of three trainings with inevitable live recording hiccups, and if you’re ok digging into this material, I believe it can be very valuable for you.

Next, from a customer who has my Most Valuable Email program:

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Sounds great! John, it may be a silly question, but what’s the difference between MVE and Age of Insight?

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The big difference is that the MVE trick is one specific technique for writing exciting emails, particularly relevant if you write about marketing or copywriting.

One of the reasons the MVE trick works is it generates a feeling of insight.

Age of Insight is about three big, widely applicable strategies for generating insight.

Each of these three strategies is as relevant to emails as it is to sales letters, VSLs, advertorials, books, articles, cereal box copy, and TV Guide summaries.

Each is also applicable if you write in any field, not just if you write about marketing or copywriting.

Last, from a very patient reader who doesn’t like being in anybody’s debt:

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Been waiting for this for bloody ages!

Do you have a PIF link please?

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That reader is asking for a pay-in-full link, because during this 36-hour promo, I am offering a “no-punishment” payment plan. That means I am breaking up the original $300 I charged for Age of Insight into $100 today and two more monthly payments of $100.

But like I said, some people don’t like to be in anybody’s debt. And in response to their overwhelming demands, I’ve added a pay-in-full option to the order page.

You can buy Age of Insight right now and through the end of today, until 11:59pm PST.

If you’d like to get it, or read more about why you might want to get it:

https://bejakovic.com/announcing-age-of-insight-for-36-hours-only/

People are buying

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Yesterday, I announced that, for 36 hours only, I will be once again selling Age of Insight, my training on how to generate the feeling of insight in your audience.

I had no idea if I’d have any takers on Age of Insight, since this is an offer I created four years ago, and haven’t been promoting or talking about to my list since.

But takers there were. I followed up with some of them last night to ask what made them buy Age of Insight. Here are their whys, in their own words.

First, from tech founder, coach, and former nuclear engineer Erik Gross:

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My entire business I’m building is about helping software engineers and architects change the way they think so they can do better work, get noticed on the job, and make more money.

In other words, I am selling insight.

So I figured there was something valuable to learn here – something that could apply both to my marketing and to my work in serving my people.

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(Erik raises a good point. I keep advertising insight as a marketing tool, and it is that. But it’s just as valuable as a teaching tool, to get people to accept concepts and then actually apply them.)

Second, from DTC copywriter Ben Carter, whose copy has made $21 million in tracked sales:

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You sent an email a couple of years ago

(Literally, I just checked; 2024.)

That email has stayed with me.

“When Orcs Were Real.”

Your email, and the piece which inspired it, cemented the value for me in being able to write insightfully:

When Orcs Were Real is a logically-absurd piece of writing, and yet each time I return to it it’s utterly compelling all over again. I find this phenomenon both confounding and fascinating.

Writing this way is also a skill I’d like for myself.

Interestingly, when I looked up your email you mentioned you still think about that piece too (when you wrote it).

Do you still find yourself thinking about when orcs were real from time to time?

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(I talked abut When Orcs Were Real in Age of Insight back in 2022… and I still think about it! Earlier this year I in fact asked ChatGPT to fill me in on the science. ChatGPT was skeptical. I guess the fact that the idea won’t leave my head after years is proof positive this insight stuff works, not only change minds but to make the change stick.)

Finally, from Robin Timmers, the “largest copywriter in the Netherlands”:

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I have 5 why’s, actually:

1. I had a great experience with every single offer I bought from you. They are always unique, insightful, and full of unique insights I can’t get anywhere else.

2. I enjoy consuming your offers.

3. Vasilis’ testimonial.

4. I am a crack junkie for copywriting/persuasion wisdom.

5. I think I actually want to try my luck in the US DR space, so this might give me an edge.

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(No shame in being a crack junkie for persuasion wisdom. At least that’s what I tell myself, because I am a junkie for that stuff as well.)

Age of Insight is available for sale through the end of today, until 11:59pm PST.

If you’d like to buy it, or if you’d like to see the fantastic testimonial I recently got about it, which Robin refers to in his 3rd why above, here’s where to go now, while there’s still time:

https://bejakovic.com/announcing-age-of-insight-for-36-hours-only/

Announcing: Age of Insight for 36 hours only

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Starting today and lasting for 36 hours only, I am selling my Age of Insight training.

Age of Insight shows you how to generate the feeling of insight in your audience, with the ultimate goal of generating a feeling of satisfaction in your belly as you watch $$$$ pile up in your bank account.

I don’t normally sell Age of Insight, but I decided to do so today, because a few days ago, I got a pretty fantastic testimonial about it from Vasilis Apostolou.

Vasilis is a former Agora copywriter, who then went on to work with A-lister Parris Lampropoulos, to mentor copywriters himself, and to write copy as an inhouse copywriter at another big DR brand.

Here’s what Vasilis wrote inside my Skool group a few days ago:

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I’ve bought almost all John’s trainings. The one that has made the most money for me and my clients is one he no longer promotes.

The training I’m talking about is Age of Insight.

Seriously, nothing boosts your copy’s persuasive power like giving your readers a new insight.

You can sell stuff without a big idea or a unique mechanism if you deliver a new insight.

Recently, one of my sales letter passed $1 million in sales. This letter starts by giving readers a new insight. More specifically, insight type number 2 from John’s training. (So consider this post a thank-you to John.)

Also, I’m coaching a bunch of creative strategists who work for 8- and 9-figure brands. When I review their work, I often notice that the creatives that scale are those delivering new insights. Usually the winning creatives use insight type number 1.

There’s also an insight type number 3. Which is harder to pull off but it might be the most effective. In fact, the idea that landed me a job at Agora as a newbie copywriter was an insight of that type. (At the time I didn’t know of John, so I just developed this idea instictually. But now that I’m aware of this type of insight, I can develop these ideas more often)

Anyway…

If you want to make more money from your marketing – or make your content more interesting – beg John to start selling Age of Insight again.

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When I first sold Age of Insight, I sold it for $300. It’s a price I am honoring still, and to make it even easier to take me up on it, I am offering you a zero-punishment payment plan during this 36-hour window, only $100 today and two more monthly payments of $100.

The deadline to get Age of Insight is tomorrow, Friday, 11:59pm PST. If you wanna get in before this rare and priceless opportunity disappears:

https://checkout.bejakovic.com/age-of-insight/

Turns out I’ve had a tough life

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I was cruising along the Daily Mail website today, looking for something to pique my jaded interest.

Sure, there were stories about Harry and Meghan, about David and Victoria, about Brad and Angelina. Yawn.

But then, right as I was losing hope and nearing the end of the page, my eyes lit up. The headline read:

“Are you a Flat Earther? You’ve probably had a tough life! People who have experienced hardship are more likely to believe conspiracy theories, study finds”

As the tagline on my website can attest, for much of my life, I’ve had sympathy for Flat Earthers.

And now that the article pointed it out, I realized that, why yes, I have had a pretty tough life:

My parents divorced before I can remember… the country I was born into broke up amid civil war around the time I was 10 years old… my mom and I fled to America, where we were alone and for years pretty poor… during this vulnerable time, I moved around from state to state and school to school 5-6 times in 2-3 years… I developed epilepsy in my teenage years… I once twisted my ankle bad while playing badminton.

So yeah, pretty tough.

On the other hand, I’ve also had a pretty easy life:

I’m white, male, and with an IQ north of 101… my parents were both well educated and pushed me to get well educated also… aside from that initial onset of epilepsy at age 16, I haven’t spent a single night in a hospital my entire life… even though I’m lazy and careless by nature, and though I’ve made many dumb mistakes in my life, things have magically worked out for me, and I have long been living a life that many people envy.

So yeah, pretty easy. And had that Daily Mail headline read…

“Are you a Flat Earther? You’ve probably had a privileged life! People who are born smart, talented, and beautiful are more likely to believe conspiracy theories, study finds”

… I might have convinced myself that my easy life and privileged background explain my sympathy for Flat Earthers.

There is subtle psychology at work here.

It’s the psychology of generating the feeling of insight.

I’ve long been fascinated with the topic of insight, because insight feels fun when you experience it… and because it’s one of the most powerful, most effective ways to change people’s minds, and to get them to go from A to B, in a way they feel like it was all their own idea.

Maybe you can see how that can be useful for marketing, sales, and business.

I once put together a training about the most insightful things I had figured out about generating the feeling of insight. I used some of that even in the name of the training, which I called Age of Insight.

I recently got a brilliant testimonial for the Age of Insight. And while I don’t normally sell Age of Insight, I decided this brilliant testimonial was an occasion to do so. So I will be selling Age of Insight tomorrow for 36 hours only. (I’ll also share the testimonial then.)

I’m letting you know all this today so you can set your alarm, take time off work if you need to, and make sure to check my email or emails as they arrive tomorrow.

Meanwhile, just so you know I’m not fooling when I say I have sympathy for Flat Earthers, here’s a personal confession:

https://bejakovic.com/why-i-can-no-longer-be-a-flat-earther/