John Bejakovic

On a rainy October evening, back in 2017…

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On a rainy October evening, back in 2017, a poor copywriter huddled in his small and drafty garret in Baltimore, MD.

“How will I ever get better at this?” he kept asking himself.

He got up and paced around the tiny room.

But it was cold, so he came back to his creaky wooden desk, where a solitary candle provided a little light and even less heat.

Suddenly, the copywriter tensed up.

His brow furrowed up and his eyes started to sparkle.

With a whoosh, he pulled out a thick stack of printed papers from a drawer, and got out a cheap Bic pen.

He sat down at his desk and started reading frantically.

“Magic bullet,” he said to himself, and circled a line of text halfway down the top page.

He kept reading.

“Making the chef eat his own pudding,” he said and circled another line.

And so he kept going, deep into the night.

He’d read a bit…

Mumble a strange phrase…

And then circle a line or two of text.

The copywriter in question was Kyle Milligan.

And though I made up the above scene, the gist of it is true.
​
Kyle was in fact a green newbie just a few years ago, with very little understanding of what copywriting really is.

In spite of his lack of experience, he managed to somehow land a job at Agora Financial, one of the most competitive copywriting shops in the world.

And within a short while, he became one of the biggest stars at Agora. In fact, last year alone, his copy was responsible for bringing in $7.1 million in sales and over 51,000 new customers.

How did Kyle do it?

Well, according to an interview I listened to today, one big part of his success was a simple two-step process:

1) He read a lot of successful sales copy

2) He labeled the things he kept coming across over and over

In fact, Kyle even has a YouTube channel where he dissects successful promotions in this way for all the world to see.

If you’re a copywriter, it’s definitely worth checking out.

And it’s also worth keeping in mind how a simple process of self-improvement, applied day in and day out, is really all it takes to produce massive results over the course of a few years.

Anyways, if you wanna follow Kyle directly, you can get started at his site. Here’s the link:

https://kylethewriter.com/

Chlamydia-ridden cuties

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I saw a video just now of a baby koala that somehow mounted a small dog, thinking the dog is its mother.

The dog keeps turning around in confusion, trying to get this thing off its back.

But the baby koala (aka joey) holds on for dear life and stays put, regardless of how much the dog spins and frets.

Such a cute video.

In fact, koalas as such adorable animals.

​​Or are they?

Because while reading the comments of the koala video, I came across an apparent koala expert, reddit user u/jonthecloser, who shared some shocking facts. Such as for example:

1. Koalas have one of the smallest brain-to-body ratios of all mammals, and they are immensely dumb as a result (they will literally starve to death even when surrounded by food)

2. When a koala joey transitions from eating milk to eucalyptus leaves, it has to first nuzzle its mother’s anus to retrieve the appropriate gut flora

3. In some areas, over 80% of koalas are infected with chlamydia, which makes them incontinent

4. Male koalas often engage in rape, that is, non-procreative sex with unwilling females

The koala expert wraps it up by saying, “Koalas are stupid, leaky, STI riddled sex offenders. But, hey. They look cute.”

Whaddya know. You learn something new and dispiriting every day. And that brings me to my point:

If you are writing daily emails to your prospects or clients, you don’t need to have something monumental to say.

In fact, it’s better to say something slightly surprising or new about a familiar thing.

E​​ven if it’s not immediately related to what you’re selling.

Think koalas and email copywriting.

Speaking of which, if you need some help writing shocking, amusing, and sales-generating emails, then I have just the right cute offer for you. Go here to check it out:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The libertine’s guide to motivation

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“Man is a free agent; but he is not free if he does not believe it, for the more power he attributes to Destiny, the more he deprives himself of the power which God granted him when he gave him reason.”
― Giacomo Casanova

At some point in my life, I became obsessed with an unpleasant idea.

“Maybe the future is all predetermined?” I thought.

Even if we had no say in how the future would turn out, it could still feel like we do. Maybe the universe has been rolling along for eons just so it could force me to write this exact blog post today, and even make me feel like I did it all by myself.

I don’t wanna get bogged down into the philosophical nutty grutty here.

People have been wrestling with this question for thousands of years, without coming up with any conclusive answer.

My own solution to the conundrum was simple.

“I could be wrong in two ways,” I told myself.

Either I believe there is free will, but there actually is no such thing. In that case, no problem! I had no choice in the matter to begin with.

But what about the other way to be wrong?

Maybe I convince myself there is no such thing as free will, but free will actually exists. This seems pretty tragic.

So my conclusion was to believe in free will, because whether I’m right or I’m wrong, I’m okay.

I thought I was pretty clever with this solution.

Until a few days ago, when I found out that this argument has been around, in one form or another, for at least 400 years.

French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal used it as an argument for believing in God (it’s even known as “Pascal’s wager”).

And I guess people (like Casanova above) have been using the same basic idea to motivate themselves to action in the intervening centuries as well.

The point being, I don’t know whether it’s your destiny to be successful or not.

I just feel you could be wrong in two ways.

Maybe you’re not destined for success, but you go through life acting as though you are. In that case, no big loss if you fail, and no fault of your own.

But maybe you are destined for success, but you do your damnedest to thwart destiny and to wind up as a big failure instead. Maybe you even succeed in failing. And that would be pretty tragic.

I hope the conclusion is clear.

Maybe even motivational.

And so ends my libertine sermon for this Sunday.

The counterintuitive secret of effective positioning

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Today, I ate a handful of jujubes.

These are little fruits, kind of like dates. I grabbed some from a bowl and as I went to wash them, one jujube fell, hit my foot, and rolled off under the counter.

“No matter,” I said to myself, “I’ll get it in a second.”

A second later, I looked under the counter. The jujube wasn’t there.

I kept looking. Nothing.

I reached under the counter to see if it was there but I couldn’t see it. Nothing.

I changed positions to see if I could see it better from a different perspective. Nothing.

Maybe you know this maddening.

W​​hen you think you know where to look for something, but it’s not there.

Maybe it’s your keys, which should be at the bottom of a bag… except they’re not.

Or somebody’s name, which almost certainly starts with the letter “A”… except no “A” names sound right.

Or maybe it’s even a marketing situation.

Such as, for example, deciding on how to position a product, a brand, or even a person.

Many business owners think they know where to look for such positioning intel.

After all, it seems very intuitive that the positioning for their products must be hidden somewhere in the product itself.

Similarly, the positioning for their personal business must be lying somewhere inside their own person.

So they keep looking and looking…

And even though they are sure they are looking in the right place, they never find the positioning answer they’ve been searching for.

Why is that?

Simple. Because the positioning they are searching for won’t be found inside their product, or even inside themselves.

Instead, it’s found in a rather counter-intuitive place.

Maybe you know what I have in mind.

And if you want my help in searching in this counter-intuitive place, and helping you come up with a winning positioning strategy for your business, brand, or even person, then simply write me an email and we can talk.

The George Costanza sales close

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There’s an episode of Seinfeld in which George and his new girlfriend are walking on the beach — and George gets caught in a lie.

The whole time he’s been with the girlfriend, he’s been telling her he’s a marine biologist.

“Then of course with evolution the octopus lost the nostrils,” he says modestly as the girlfriend hangs onto his every word.

Suddenly, the two lovebirds come on a group of people on the beach who are all pointing to something out there among the waves.

It’s a beached whale, who seems to be struggling and maybe even dying.

“Save the whale, George,” says the girlfriend, “for me.”

And so rather than get caught in his lie, what does George do?

He throws off his baseball cap, rolls up his pants, and wades out there among the crashing waves to face the great beast like a true marine biologist.

Because George knows talk is cheap.

All the stories in the world won’t build a bullet-proof sales argument.

Not like one solid demonstration can build.

And that’s why Claude Hopkins, who has been called the father of direct advertising, once wrote:

“The way to sell goods is to sample and demonstrate, and the more attractive you can make your demonstration the better it will be.”

So if you’re looking to close a sale, think of ways your prospects can try out a sample or a demonstration of what you offer.

And if you can’t get them to sample your product directly, then at least make sure they witness a second-hand demonstration, just like George’s girlfriend witnesses him climbing out into the splashing waves to rescue the great fish. Mammal. Whatever.

One multimillionaire’s secret of uniquely profitable email lists

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Multimillionaire marketer and copywriter Justin Goff recently described his uniquely profitable email list.

His list has fewer than 1000 subscribers.

Even so, he’s managed to get hundreds of customers from it, all of whom have given at least $2k to Justin, and some of whom have given $10k and above.

One way he did this was by making people fill out a form to get on his email list, and (presumably) rejecting those who aren’t a good fit.

Should you do the same? Well, here are 7 reasons in favor of such an approach:

#1. It makes people more eager to get on your list

I’m on Justin’s list. Before I was on it, I was just so curious. What do his emails talk about to make them worth protecting in this way? It was probably one of the two main reasons that made me sign up (or rather, apply) in the first place.

#2. It makes people on your list pay attention more

One of the conditions for joining Justin’s list is to make a commitment to open his emails and read them. And commitment might just be the most powerful motivator of human behavior.

#3. It makes for better prospects

Like I mentioned above, fewer than 1000 subscribers… hundreds of thousands (or possibly millions) of dollars in earnings.

#4. Fewer trouble makers

I recently got a flood of new subscribers to my own email list from some unknown source. Inevitably, I got some spam complaints as well. You reduce the odds of that happening if you make people jump through hoops before subscribing.

#5. Your emails get delivered instead of flagged as spam

Just a consequence of #4 above.

#6. Your emails get delivered instead of flagged as promotion

The more that people open, read, and engage your emails, the more likely it is that your future emails to all your future subscribers will also land in prominent places rather than in the promotions tab.

#7. It’s cheaper

Many businesses I’ve worked with have email lists in the hundreds of thousands… and some in the millions. It’s not free sending all those emails, even if you’re doing it from your own servers. And if you don’t have your own servers, then a constant drain to pay for email sending you will never get anything out of.

And there you go. 7 reasons. There might be others I’m not thinking of.

So am I saying to stop growing your email list?

No.

​​It’s just that in this situation (as in so many things), there are two objectives you need to simultaneously optimize or meet.

One is the number of new subscribers…

The other is the quality of those subscribers.

It’s possible to create a business doing just one or the other.

But as an increasing number of marketers (even those like Justin, who cut his chops on converting cold traffic) are finding out, it doesn’t pay as well per unit of work invested.

Are you violating the basic rule of positioning?

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I’m still in Istanbul and I’m getting sick of the place.

Every restaurant, every bar, even every apartment I’ve stayed in, has a great view.

A view of the grey waters of the Bosporus… of the millions of lights that go on at dusk… of the dozens of monstrous-sized mosques that line the horizon.

Now of course, I’m being a little facetious.

I like a great view just like your average gadabout.

But the fact that EVERY place in Istanbul has a view actually complicates my job of being a tourist.

Because deep down, I keep remembering something that a frequent traveling partner of mine taught me:

“I won’t eat in that restaurant,” he would say, “because it has a good view. A restaurant can either sell the view or the food, but not both.”

That might sound simplistic, but it’s the basic way the human mind works.

At least if you believe one of the most influential marketing books of all time, Positioning, written by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

There’s a lot in this book about how companies, brands, and even individuals can carve out a position for themselves in a crowded market.

But the basic image that Ries and Trout give is simple:

Your position is like a hook in the customer’s mind that you hang your product on.

And if you try to hang multiple things from that hook, or try to hang your product from multiple hooks, that’s when trouble starts.

In other words, you want to position your restaurant as either having good food…

Or a good view…

But not both, because your customers’ brains simply won’t follow you.

And the same thing holds if you’re not in the restaurant business — but in any other business.

Of course, you can offer, say, great prices as well as a dedicated service.

But put just one of those forward as your main position. And if Ries and Trout are right, you will create a position in the market that allows you to win customers more easily and keep them around for longer.

Beware the trap of the digital bazaar

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I’m in Istanbul, Turkey this week. And though it’s my third time in this city, there are some things I didn’t notice before.

Such as how similar businesses here seem to live in packs.

Maybe it all started at the Grand Bazaar. The spice sellers stick to themselves. The leather shops do too. But the same thing happens throughout the city as well.

So for example, there is a large metal bridge right in the center of Istanbul

On the top level of this bridge is where the cars go.

One level down, there are a bunch of restaurants selling fish, mostly fried, mostly just stuck in a hunk of bread.

There are about a dozen of these fish restaurants in a row, and they are all identical.

Including the fact that in front of each restaurant, there is a tired-looking man with sunken, hungry eyes who is in charge of roping in passersby to sit down at his restaurant specifically.

“Come inside. We have fish. We have the best fish.”

Now these guys are obviously making a living out of it, because these restaurants have been here for decades or even longer.

But it looks like bloody work.

And it seems like it would be much better and more lucrative for them to differentiate themselves in some way, whether by picking a different location, or by offering a different menu, or even by telling a different story than the guy next door.

And that’s true for any other kind of business as well.

You might think that your core offer is no different than that of a dozen other businesses.

And you can decide to live with that… To compete simply by working harder… And to accept that eventually, some customer will sit down inside your den instead of the identical one next door.

By why not make your job a little easier by differentiating yourself from all the other people inside the digital bazaar?

One easy way to do that is simply through your personality, and through the relationship you have with your clients, customers, or restaurant patrons. All you have to do is to reach out to them regularly, with a unique point of view, and that relationship will start to develop, and eventually, it will bear fruit as well.

Just something to keep in mind. And of course, if you want some help with that, then this can get you started:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Ape outperforms Trump?

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There was a gorilla video that went viral a few days ago.

It shows (wait for it…) a gorilla, sitting on its haunches, on a lawn in a zoo.

Then somebody offers to throw the gorilla some food.

To which the gorilla, by using a combination of sign language, nipple pinches, and chest pounding, effectively says,

“No thank you, we zoo gorillas are fed well by our keepers and don’t accept food from visitors.”

Smart ape.

And that’s why the internet went all warm and bubbly, saying things like,

“This gorilla has more impulse control than I do,”

and

“This gorilla has more impulse control than our president.”

But here’s the thing.

This viral video didn’t tell the whole story.

In the full version of the video, the visitor waits a few seconds and then throws the food to the gorilla after all.

The gorilla turns around to see if the keepers are looking, and seeing there’s nobody there, he sneakily eats the food, while staring directly at the visitor as if to say, “This stays between you and me, man.”

I bring this up for two reasons.

First, I want to bring gorillas down from their holier-than-thou pedestal. They lie and cheat when given the opportunity, just like other apes, including you and me.

The other reason is to point out the power of the story-within-the-story.

There are lots of professional tricks to telling a story in an engaging way.

But the easiest, and possibly most effective, is simply to crop your stories to make them more dramatic, impactful, and interesting.

That’s what happened in this case.

A gorilla that eats food thrown at it doesn’t make for much of a story.

But a gorilla with more self-discipline than your average human makes for good news.

So if you sense there’s a good story hiding in an anecdote you witnessed or in something you read, first ask yourself, “How could I cut this down for maximum effect?”

Because most of the details of the real event don’t need to be included — and can even weaken your case.

Anyways, if you need help writing stories, specifically for the purpose of making sales to your existing or potential customers, then you can find some ape-sized advice in the following little offer:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/

Big Bottom Sunday

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“I saw her on Sunday, ’twas my lucky bun day, you know what I mean.”
— Spinal Tap, Big Bottom

I used to struggle writing daily emails until I made a small change.

It took me all of 5 minutes to set up, but it’s saved me hours and hours of frustration…

It’s made writing daily emails easier and more fun…

And it has created better results, by forcing me to ferret open some creative drawers I didn’t know I had.

So what was the change?

Simple. I made a “calendar.”

At the start of each month, I set up a planned-out structure for the type of email I will write each day.

It turns out creativity is easier with boundaries.

And it’s a lot easier with a lot of boundaries.

So for example, yesterday was a “On today’s date…” email. Instead of sitting and staring at an empty screen while waiting for inspiration, I went online, did 2 minutes of research, and found out it was the 50th anniversary of the first episode of Monty Python. The email wrote itself after that.

Same thing today. Today’s email structure is… well, I bet you can figure it out. Though I did have to tweak it to make it fit.

Anyways, if you’re struggling with topics for daily emails, then maybe a “calendar” of restrictions could help you, too. And if you want more advice to help you stimulate copywriting creativity, check out the following:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/