John Bejakovic

You’ve got everything it takes to motivate people

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“Come on, let’s play!”

“No you go ahead. It’s black magic to me.”

“Don’t be silly. There’s nothing to it. It’s only judgment and memory. Judgment you’ve got plenty of… and didn’t you once write an article about how to remember just about anything?”

“Memory and judgment, huh? All right, I guess I could give it a try.”

In How To Win Friends And Influence People, Dale Carnegie tells a story about being roped into playing bridge with some friends. “Bridge? Oh, no! No! Not me,” said Carnegie. “I knew nothing about it.” And yet he wound up playing.

The above little dialogue gives you a clue how. Because Carnegie’s friend used a standard way of motivating and inspiring people. Speaking of which, here’s a quick aside:

For a long time, I considered myself congenitally unable to motivate or inspire people. Perhaps it’s my own lack of enthusiasm, which I was projecting outwards.

But it turns out that, just as with the broader topic of persuasion, there are formulas for motivating people and stirring them to action.

Carnegie’s friend may have known that intuitively.

But if you can read (which you can), and if you’re willing to follow a few simple directions (and why wouldn’t you be)… then you can motivate people, whether it comes intuitively or not.

Anyways, once upon a time, I collected a list of 10 such formulas for motivating and inspiring.

The tactic from Carnegie’s anecdote above, telling people they already have everything they need to succeed, is no. 1.

If you’d like to read the rest… and maybe even apply them in your own dealings with customers, clients, and perhaps your sullen friends and family… then take a look below:

https://bejakovic.com/99-problems-and-folsom-prison-blues-how-to-write-copy-that-inspires/

Near miss: 100-0 in business and private

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A tense and awkward situation today:

I was walking on a large, wide, empty road. Down the road, I saw a guy walking toward me.

I recognized him. I see him every time I go to the gym. I’ve never spoken to him, but I bet he recognized me, too.

So we were walking toward each other. There were no other people around, and no other distractions.

He saw me coming nearer.

I saw him coming nearer.

Would we say hello, even though we’d never spoken before?

Or would we ignore each other, even though we’d spent hours in close proximity?

At about 10 yards to impact, the guy dropped his gaze and started studying the pavement. I kept my eyes in the middle of his chest — a safe place in case he decided to look up at the last minute, but also not accusatory.

He didn’t look up. I kept quietly staring at the middle of his chest, without making any sudden movement. We passed by each other, as David Ogilvy says, like ships in the night.

Thank God. A near miss.

This brought to mind a post written by Brian Kurtz. You might know Brian as the former VP at direct response giant Boardroom.

Back in the 80s and 90s and 00s, Brian was the guy who hired all those copywriting legends like Gary Bencinvenga and Parris Lampropoulos and Jim Rutz. And today, Brian is still a very successful and well-connected guy in the direct response industry.

Anyways, Brian once shared an idea he called 100-0. 100-0 means you put in the extra effort to build and keep up your relationships. And you don’t grumble about it. Because it will be worth it.

It’s something I clearly need to work on, because it doesn’t come natural. I’m passing on Brian’s idea to you because maybe you are the same.

You can draw your own conclusions. But if, like me and like my nameless gym buddy, you keep waiting for others to make the first move… perhaps try 100-0 and see what it can do for you. In your private and your business life.

And maybe you’d like to start a modest relationship with me today.

Just by email. At least for now. In case you’re interested, here’s where to start.

Guilt deflection

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Here’s a powerful persuasion tactic for your copy and private life. Let me illustrate it with a dramatic scene from the Seven Samurai, in which the samurai find the farmers’ hidden stash of armor and weapons.

A bit of background in case you haven’t seen the movie:

A poor village is being strangled by marauding thieves. So the farmers hire seven samurai for defense. The samurai aren’t getting paid much, but they agree because of the honor of defending the poor helpless village.

And then they find the hidden stash of armor and weapons.

How did the farmers get it? There’s only one way. They must have killed and robbed to get it. And they killed and robbed retreating samurai.

Six of the seven samurai are disappointed and angry. Then the seventh samurai, Kikuchiyo, played by Toshiro Mifune, starts to fume.

“Well, what do you think farmers are? Saints?”

Nooo, he explains. Farmers are cowards who lie, cheat, pretend to be oppressed… and yet they have hidden stores of food where you will never find them.

“They are the most cunning and untrustworthy animals on Earth,” Kikuchiyo says.

And then, he suddenly stops.

“But who made animals out of them? You!”

The other samurai are stunned. How are we to blame, they seem to say.

“Each time you fight,” Kikuchiyo explains, “you burn their villages, you destroy their fields, you take away their food, you rape the women and enslave the men. And you kill them when they resist.”

And then Kikuchiyo falls to his knees and starts to sob. It turns out he is not really all that samurai… he also comes from a farmer family.

Anyways, the point is that in the movie, this works. The samurai accept the farmers for what they are, and they stick around to defend the village.

I call this guilt deflection. It’s a powerful technique to use in your copy.

Because where there’s trouble, there’s guilt being assigned. As I’ve written before, in the copywriting space, that guilt is often directed inwards.

People feel there’s something wrong with them… that they are the ones to blame for their ongoing unsolved problems.

You can’t just skip over that. If you do… if you jump straight into your promise and how great it will be to finally get there… you will just make your prospect disappointed and maybe angry.

So here’s what to do instead.

Yell at your prospect. “Yes, it’s true! You are the most cunning and untrustworthy animal on Earth. But who made you that way?”

And then deflect your prospect’s guilt. Give him an explanation that shifts that guilt somewhere outside him. To other people… to institutions… to ways of doing business.

And like I said, this can work in your private life, too. I learned this from a friend who told me the best way to deal with a woman’s accusation is to accuse her of something in turn. I tried it and… well, I guess that’s a story for another time.

My whole life has been leading to this

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1. Age 7, second grade. I’m standing in front of the class and reading a little story I’d written. It’s about a yellow raincoat I had and a googly-eyed giraffe sticker on it which I tried to rip it off and give to Ivona, the girl I was in love with back in kindergarten.

Some 7-year-old monster in my class gets restless and starts to talk. The teacher shushes him angrily. “Listen!” she says. “It’s such a wonderful story.”

2. Age 17, English class in 12th grade. We break into groups of four and read each other’s college application essays. Everybody else’s essay is a dutiful list of lessons learned and life goals to be achieved. My essay is about my first time waiting at the DMV. I know when people are reading it, because they first snicker and then start to laugh.

3. Age 23, senior year of college. I’ve taken an advanced math class, thinking I might go to graduate school for the same. Well, we’ll see about that.

“Roses are red,” the intimidatingly smart professor says. I nod. I believe I understand what he’s saying.

“If roses are red,” he goes on and faces me, “then violets are…?”

My mind is blank. I can’t follow his simple reasoning. I squirm in my seat. But he wants an answer.

“If roses are red,” I start, “then violets must be… a type of common flowering plant?”

Not the right answer, it turns out. Graduate school for math? No.

Instead, pretty much my whole life has been leading me to this point right here, where I write copy for a living and I write these daily emails for fun.

Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. In fact, it’s very much an exaggeration. But you might believe it, based on the little snippets I just shared with you.

And that’s my point. Because snippets are often all you need.

Yesterday, I gave you a Dan Kennedy story titled, “My chief asset was a cat who licked stamps.”

Part of that story was exaggeration and absurdity and humor. But there was something else. Because Dan’s story wasn’t really a story. It didn’t have a tail and horns and everything in between.

Instead, it was really a snapshot, a scene, an episode.

That’s often all you need. And in today’s world, where everybody and his cat is forcing their life to fit a “hero on a quest” story mold, you might even stand out as somebody more honest. A few snapshots from your life to add color. An episode to make a point — without making yourself out to be Luke Skywalker.

And by the way, if you want a real-life example of selling yourself for millions of dollars using this episode-based approach, track down Dan’s Magnetic Marketing stump speech. It’s available online, and it’s a great sales presentation. Plus, it’s as funny as a Bill Burr comedy special — pretty amazing, considering Dan gave these speeches almost 30 years ago.

And for more intimate snapshots from my private life, you might like to sign up to my email newsletter.

“My chief asset consisted of a cat who licked stamps”

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A few days ago, a reader of this newsletter wrote in with a problem.

He’s an expert in his field. But he feels sick telling his mess-to-success, rags-to-riches origin story. He hates hyping it up and repeating it over and over, even though it’s all true.

I can understand. So here’s an alternative. Take a look at the following background story from Dan Kennedy:

I often tell the story, when I went through a divorce and went broke I started over in info-marketing and my chief asset consisted of a cat who licked stamps.

My wife abandoned the cat and left the cat behind. We quickly came to an agreement that, if it was going to get fed, it had to do something other than hiss, and snarl, and scratch, and bite, which were unattractive attributes of this little monster.

We arrived at a working relationship where it sat on the coffee table, I sat facing the TV at night stuffing my envelopes and getting my mail ready. It sat facing me, and I took the strip of stamps and held it out and the cat licked them and then I did all my stamps.

I kept a little bowl of water there so the cat could, you know… I’m sure all that glue … but they’ve got nine lives! All the glue probably didn’t kill it, its personality probably did.

That’s the end of Dan’s story. In the presentation he gave, he moves on and talks marketing.

So what’s my point in bringing up this story?

You might think it’s humor. And yes, humor is a big part of the story above. If you can be funny like Dan, you are that much ahead of the rest of us.

But there’s something else to Dan’s story. Because it’s certainly not rags-to-riches, is it?

No, something else is going on. I’ll spell it out in my email tomorrow (click here if you wanna get it), and I’ll tell you how it’s relevant for your sales copy… or for your in-person, nose-to-nose, toes-to-toes origin story. Whether you are funny or not.

The opportunity of the Inner Ring

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“For all the world, Christian and heathen, repair unto the Round Table, and when they are chosen to be of the fellowship of the Round Table, they think them more blessed, and more in worship, than if they had gotten half the world; and ye have seen that they have lost their fathers and their mothers, and all their kin, and their wives and their children, for to be of your fellowship.”

That’s from a collection of stories about King Arthur, written down in the 15th century. Lots of things have changed since the 15th century, but a few things stay the same.

Such as, for example, the need to belong. And, in particular, to be on the inside of what C.S. Lewis called the “Inner Ring.”

It’s a very strong drive. It’s so strong it can even overcome self-interest, like in the quote above. Other times, the drive to the Inner Ring might disguise itself as self-interest. In Lewis’s words:

“I wonder whether, in ages of promiscuity, many a virginity has not been lost less in obedience to Venus than in obedience to the lure of the caucus. For of course, when promiscuity is the fashion, the chaste are outsiders. They are ignorant of something that other people know. They are uninitiated. And as for lighter matters, the number of people who first smoked or first got drunk for a similar reason is probably very large.”

C.S. Lewis believed in a universal morality, and warned against lust for the Inner Ring. I do not believe in a universal morality, and have no issue with lust, for the Inner Ring or otherwise. That’s why I’ll leave you with the following:

The need to belong to an Inner Ring is not met for many people. That was true in the 15th century, and it is true today. It’s almost true by definition, because an Inner Ring is formed by excluding people.

So a lot of people have this yawning, unmet need… and they have few options for sating themselves. Do you know what this is usually called?

You guessed it. An opportunity.

Anyways, I’ve got my own Inner Ring. It’s a small group of people I write an email to each day with thoughts like what you’ve just read. I occasionally open up spots to a few new people to join… but not right now.

The value of being wrong

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I had a guy write in today and tell me to get my reporting straight.

This was in connection to a daily email I’d sent to the dog ecommerce list I manage. The email was about Lady Gaga’s stolen bulldogs.

Perhaps you know the story. There was a heist. Some guys pulled up on the street, shot Lady Gaga’s dogwalker, and then sped away with the two dogs.

In my email, I wrote the kidnappers arrived in a van, because, well, that’s how kidnappers do, at least in the movies I’ve seen.

But it was not a van. It was a car. And one upset reader rightly wrote in to correct me.

I’ve talked about this before, but often the best way to get a response out of somebody is to say something wrong.

Blood rushes to your prospect’s head, and he has to write in to tell you how wrong you are. Because you’re careless… you’re offensive… maybe even because you’re stupid.

Why would you ever want your prospect thinking that?

Simple. Because hate, irritation, and scorn, are much closer to love, identification, and sales than you might think. They are certainly much closer to each other than they are to indifference.

Sometimes you get lucky, like I did, and stir up a reaction by accident. But you can do it on purpose too. As long as you don’t mind being told you’re wrong, by people who feel strongly enough about the matter to take time out of their day to write and correct you.

Well. I doubt I stirred up any controversy with this email. And so you probably didn’t get any closer to loving me or identifying me. Still, perhaps you’d like to join my email newsletter. If so, here’s where to go.

The best copywriting tactic ever

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Why does a giraffe have the longest neck?

The canned answer is because it’s useful. It allows the giraffe to browse books on the top bookshelf.

The real answer is that giraffes love extremes. That’s according to V. S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist and psychologist at UCSD.

Ramachandran says giraffes, and all other animals, have to know who’s a sexual target and who’s not. Otherwise, they might waste their prime dating years humping couches or human legs or other animals species. (Clearly, something went wrong with dogs.)

So how does a giraffe find love?

The simplest and easiest way it can. It looks for shortcuts.

“Long neck? Gotta be another giraffe! Time to get the cologne.”

But here’s where it gets tricky and interesting:

If a long neck is a mental shortcut for a giraffe to pick out another giraffe… then a longer neck is an even shorter cut.

The conclusion is giraffes’ necks get longer and longer. The longer your neck, the more likely you are to get some giraffe action and pass on your long neck genes. In the end, the longest neck wins.

As I said, giraffes love extremes. Almost as much as humans love extremes.

Because the human brain is like a giraffe’s. We also like shortcuts. And we want to follow these shortcuts to the end. Which leads me to the best copywriting tactic ever:

Go to extremes, whenever you can get away with it.

The most successful direct response copy is filled with the most dramatic stories… the scariest warnings… and with superlatives like fastest, easiest, and best.

The world is complicated. Too many choices. Too much information. That’s why we seek out extremes, to make our lives easier. And that’s something you can use to make your copy not better, but best.

Speaking of which, here’s the safest offer you will ever hear:

Try out my email newsletter. If it doesn’t make the highlight of your day tomorrow, simply unsubscribe.

UpCopy: Open for business

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I was leafing through the newspaper and I read that LinkedIn is launching a freelance marketplace. This could be interesting to you, whether or not you’re offering services for sale.

But let me give you a bit of background first:

LinkedIn got started by buying assets of UpCounsel. This was once a marketplace that connected freelance lawyers to clients.

So the first planned step for LinkedIn is to start its own marketplace by offering legal services. It could happen as soon as September.

Step two will be to repeat the same model across “100 different industries.” That’s according to Matt Faustman, who founded UpCounsel and is now heading the LinkedIn marketplace effort.

Of course, there’s already UpWork and Fiverr for finding freelancers. But if you ask me, LinkedIn could grab a position for itself. Perhaps higher up than UpWork, which is itself higher up than Fiverr.

I bring up this up for two reasons:

1. Maybe you’re a copywriter (or other service provider) looking for clients. If you haven’t done so yet, it might be high time to get on LinkedIn. Start posting articles or videos of yourself. Tap into this marketplace thing before others do.

If you need more motivation:

A LinkedIn spokeswoman said there’s been a surge in people hiring LinkedIn users who list they are “open for business.” Maybe that’s mere puffery. But maybe there’s something to it.

Still, LinkedIn client hunting might not be your thing. In that case…

2. I’ve got a business idea for whoever wants it.

The world of copywriters is notoriously disconnected from the world of business owners. For a long time, I only knew one half of this equation. But as I wrote a while ago, I’ve now seen the other side too. There really are many business owners who want to hire a good copywriter — and even pay him well. But they don’t know where to look or what to look for.

So my business idea for you is to create UpCopy, a freelance marketplace specifically for copywriters.

You’ll probably need to be well connected in the industry or at least good at networking. And even so, there’s a chance that may top copywriters will never want to be listed on your marketplace. It would be contrary to the kind of positioning they want to cultivate.

But who needs to know that?

If you can get a bunch of good-enough copywriters to sign up, getting business owners might be easy. And even if not, the end goal here is not to really create a thriving marketplace.

The goal is​​ just to build something that 5 months down the line, LinkedIn will be happy to pay for. Like they did with UpCounsel. I don’t know how much that was… but my guess is it’s more than anybody can make in several lifetimes of writing copy.

For more free ideas:

You might like to sign up to my email newsletter. It’s like a newspaper, in that it arrives each day. To get your trial one-day subscription, fill in the order card here.

Exploiting the disorder spectrum for marketing mischief

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About ten years ago, Dean Burnett went on TV and invented a new psychological disorder.

The background of the story is this:

Some English TV channel was making a documentary about personality quirks. So they invited Burnett to say something, since he is a neuroscientist with a diploma to prove it. At the end of the segment, they asked if Burnett had any personality quirks of his own.

Burnett was stumped. He had nothing to report really. But he didn’t want to disappoint under the glaring lights of a TV studio.

So he told a personal story about baking a potato, and he turned it into a condition.

Burnett was once baking a potato in the oven. He sat in the kitchen, reading a book, occasionally checking the potato. It looked so lonely, Burnett thought, all alone in the large oven. So he popped open the oven door and threw in another potato to keep the first fella company.

Back in the TV studio, Burnett concluded:

“I only found out later I’ve got what’s known as lonely potato syndrome.”

It was meant as a joke, or something like it. But it took on a life of its own. A crew member in the studio took Burnett aside later. “I might be suffering from lonely potato, too.” The show producer confided the same. Burnett says that now, years later, he still hears of people who feel afflicted by this condition.

In case I’m not making it clear, these people are serious. And they are concerned, or at least intrigued.

And here’s where I want to tell you my idea of a disorder spectrum:

On the one extreme of this spectrum, you’ve got genuine insights.

Some smart and caring person spots that a bunch of symptoms tend to go together. This gives hope for a common cause to it all, and maybe a common treatment. So this smart and caring person gives it a name — attention deficit disorder, shiny object syndrome — and puts it out into the world for people to be aware of.

But then there’s the other side of the spectrum. It’s something I heard marketer Will Ward speculate on a few days ago. It’s where you name a new disorder or syndrome, with no insight, research, or value to back it up.

When Will brought up this idea, I didn’t think it had legs. Not without some kind of real substance. But the Dave Burnett story changed my mind. It seems a new name, along with a bit of authority, is all you need to create a disorder out of thin air.

So where do you take this?

That’s for you to decide. Maybe you can just create a harmless identity for your followers. But it certainly seems like this could open the door to marketing mischief. At least in the hands of the right person, suffering from “uncertain identity” disorder.

Don’t know about uncertain identity disorder? It’s something I discuss in more detail in my email newsletter. But you’ll have to sign up to find out more. Here’s where to do that.