John Bejakovic

Get expert training in Scheming, raise your income

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I once read a book called The Man Who Sold America and in it I came across the term “scheme man.”

Once upon a time, a scheme man was a legitimate and even highly coveted and paid profession.

Scheme men were basically marketing consultants who could devise new selling “schemes” — ideas, concepts, breakthroughs. As master direct marketer Robert Collier put it, “It’s not the copy so much as the scheme back of it.”

Claude Hopkins, often thought to be the first A-list copywriter, was the premier scheme man (he was the one discussed in that book I read).

Hopkins didn’t really use clever copywriting to turn his clients and himself into billionaires (in today’s money).

Instead, he did it by devising new selling schemes.

As an example, Hopkins’s first big marketing job was to sell “carpet sweepers.” His innovative scheme was to start offering these carpet sweepers in a dozen different fancy wood casings, rather than the single drab choice available previously.

Stupid, right? Who cares about the casing?

This was a completely impractical and unnecessary new development. And yet, it resulted in 250,000 carpet sweepers being sold in 3 weeks.

After that, some of Hopkins’s schemes involved the “world’s biggest cake” (100,000 people came to see it)… the “paid free sample” scheme for Liquozone (which took the company from bankruptcy to making $60 million in profit the next year)… and the “engraved with your name” pen that doubled response when added as a bonus to an ordinary offer.

Point being:

Become a skilled Scheme Man, then or now, and your future is settled.

If you can devise new ways for a company to sell what they’ve already got, your services will ALWAYS be in demand, and you will get paid BIG MONEY IN BIG CHUNKS. Plus, the work can be exciting and challenging and even fun.

Except how? How do you become a skilled Scheme Man, today, in 2026?

For that I’d like to point you to Mike Samuels, and his 6-week ABP cohort.

Mike’s cohort is currently open for signups. The signup window closes tomorrow. After that, you won’t be able to get in, and also the bonuses disappear, and if this program is ever opened again, the price will go up.

Like I said, Mike’s cohort program is called ABP, which stands for Action Based Psychology. I don’t think that name does justice to what Mike is offering here.

What Mike is offering is a full-on certification program for Scheme Men, though he calls them “ABP Consultants.”

Mike’s program first gets you trained on the relevant underlying psychology and translates that into specific marketing techniques, so you can own these ideas yourself and turn them into new selling schemes for specific businesses.

Mike then gives you “audits” so you don’t have to count on remembering all these ideas and schemes, but can simply refer to the audits when the time comes.

And then finally, there’s a client-getting section so you can actually turn your new Scheming skills into profits for clients and income for yourself.

Like I said, the signup for this cohort closes tomorrow. If you’re interested in the full details before this opportunity goes away:

https://bejakovic.com/scheme

Do you have a great gig right now? Beware and prepare

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Yesterday, I talked to a coaching client, someone who has a sizeable email list and a bunch of offers he’s been selling for a while.

Recently, he decided to step back from this to take a proper job. He enjoys learning something new at his new role, and he finds the work exciting, and he likes the company and the people, and there’s more money, stability, and free time than with all the stuff he has been doing by himself.

He asked if I have any advice as he transitions from his online business to this new job.

I’ll tell you what I told him:

Over the course of the past six months, I have had a number of people come to me and say, “I used to have this great gig, until yesterday.”

One was a business owner whose business partner screwed him and took everything.

Another was a freelancer whose main client’s business turned out to be shaky, so the client decided to bring the work in-house as a cost-cutting measure.

A third was a salaried employee whose employer decided to simply terminate the role, even though the guy was making the employer more money than he was getting paid, and could prove it.

All these people, and a few others, came to me after their once-great gig disappeared, with the idea to build a personal brand as a way of making money now.

So what I told my coaching client yesterday is, enjoy the new job and make the most of it. But at the same time, even the best, most certain gigs can disappear, overnight.

Businesses go out of business. Partners cheat you or simply step away. Employers get sick, die, or go bankrupt.

For all these reasons and more, it makes sense to have a backup to your great gig.

My coaching client is very lucky, because he’s already got the best backup I know, a personal brand, an audience, and a relationship with that audience.

If anything happens to his current job — the company is sold and the new owners fire everyone, or they slash everybody’s salaries while keeping the workload the same, or they hire somebody else to do the job because he’s cheaper/better/a nephew — then he can go to this list, and write an email or two, and most likely find a new client or a series of clients by the end of this week.

So my takeaway for you is, if you have a personal brand, don’t let it go.

You don’t have to email daily or create new offers or moonlight in addition to your day job. All you have to do is show up on some regular schedule (once a week is good), and let people know you are alive, and give them proof that you’re doing well, and are still worth listening to and knowing about.

And my takeaway for you if you don’t have a personal brand but you have a great gig going… is also to start now.

For one thing, your great gig can give you authority and content ideas and behind-the-scenes data to make it easy to be somebody online.

For another thing, as I’ve been saying, your great gig might not always be there, so it makes sense to beware and prepare for that possibility now.

Here’s one more thing I told my coaching client yesterday:

Just focus on the content. Don’t worry about list growth or about offers or about what form this personal brand might take in the future.

This is true for you even if you are starting a personal brand now.

There’s value in creating content online EVEN IF NOBODY’S READING. For one thing, it makes you better at what you do. For another thing, it can grow your list on its own (albeit slowly), and it becomes fodder if you do want to create offers or lead magnets or books in the future. Most important of all, it becomes a proof element if you are ever talking to someone you want to impress. Compare:

“Why should you hire me? Gee, let me try to sum up the past 12 years of my career for you in the next 45 seconds before I lose your attention…”

… to…

“Why should you hire me? I don’t know that you should. Here’s my website where I’ve written tens of thousands of words on this topic, based on my previous experience. Take a look at it and we can talk afterwards.”

So let me ask you?

Do you have a great gig right now?

Do you want to have a personal online brand, and an audience, and a great relationship with them that you can use as a backup in case your great gig ever vanishes?

Then write me and let me know.

You can’t buy anything here. But I am curious what you do, and what kind of a personal brand you want to build and how, and what questions you have about the process.

Why not just double your prices

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You may have heard the following story, because I’ve shared it before in these emails, but it’s worth repeating:

A business owner, an info marketer who sells marketing advice to martial arts schools, is in the red. He’s making a million a year, but he’s spending a million five — on ads, on employees, on fulfillment.

What to do? He has tried everything, and he’s still bleeding cash.

The business owner somehow manages to get in front of Jay Abraham, the “75 Billion Dollar Man,” a business coach who has mentored the likes of Tony Robbins and Dave Asprey and Ramit Sethi.

Over the course of a morning, Jay Abraham grills the business owner on all aspects of his operation. Jay makes one suggestion after another. But the business owner has tried it all already! It didn’t fix his problem!

Finally, after suggestion #1,001 has been shot down, Jay Abraham has had enough. “If you’re so fucking smart, you figure it out!” he says and storms out of the room. The business owner is left stunned.

A few moments pass. Jay Abraham comes back into the room, looking calmer and a bit apologetic.

“How much did you say you’re making?”

“A million a year.”

“And how much are you spending?”

“A million five.”

“How much would you want to make?”

“Two million would be great.”

“Ok,” says Jay Abraham. “That’s easy. Just double your prices.” And he walks out again.

That’s kind of the punchline of the story. Because the business owner, after shaking his head for a while and thinking what an ass Jay Abraham is, decides to actually take this advice. He doubles his prices, finds his market will tolerate them, and is suddenly and magically making a profit for the first time in forever.

The end.

So go and double your prices also! And let me know how it goes.

Maybe you are shaking your head right now, and thinking what an ass Bejako is.

Yes, “Just double your prices” can be a legit business strategy.

It can also be poor advice, for a few reasons:

1. You might need to update the offer along with the pricing. That can mean your positioning, your promise, and in some cases, your deliverables. (This was actually the case of the info publisher above, though the changes he had to make were small.)

2. You might have internal resistance to doubling your prices, and being told to do so can be useless. (Again, this was the case of the info publisher before. It took him several days to actually accept Jay Abraham’s advice as genuine. Many people never get there, because they aren’t as hard pressed as that guy was.)

3. Doubling your prices can be too little! You might be severely undercharging, and there might be people who would happily pay 5x or 10x for the same thing you’re offering now, if you would only ask.

4. Your current audience, or even your current market, might not support double your current prices, and you might need to get in front of different people first.

Which brings me to the Enterprise Clients workshop.

It shows copywriters and agency owners how to charge $15K-$100K for their current service by selling to “enterprise clients.”

Because you can put in the same effort you’re putting in now, or even less, and get paid 2x or 5x or 10x what you’re getting paid now, while working with better, nicer, more appreciative clients.

While increasing your price alone can have magic effects, you are likely to need some other things too, and this workshop will cover those.

This workshop, or actually series of workshops, is happening live on Zoom, from September 21 to 25, for an hour a day.

I’m telling you about it now, weeks in advance, because the early bird pricing is ending in a few days.

It’s only $97 if you act before the deadline. This is the last email I will personally send about this offer before then, because I have other things to talk about.

If you sell DFY services for clients, I figure it’s worth signing up for this workshop, seeing what they have to say, and then deciding whether or not it’s bullshit or whether it’s the transformation you’ve been waiting for years.

I myself bought it and signed up. So have a few of my readers after my email yesterday. Here’s what a couple of them wrote me about it:

“Bought this, looks interesting. We’re already aiming $100k+ per client, so any additional increase because of his approach will be worth a ton.”

“Now THIS offer is exactly perfect for me right now. Just about to launch an AI Agency. Couldn’t have been timed better. Got the VIP – no brainer. Thanks John!”

If you wanna charge more, work with better clients, and have a happier business:

https://bejakovic.com/enterpriseclients

How copywriters and agencies can go after enterprise clients and close them

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I just paid and signed up for a live series of workshops, happening later this month, which promises:

“We’ll Help Your Agency Charge $15K-$100K For Your Current Service In 5 Days By Selling To ‘Enterprise Clients'”

I’d never heard of the guy who’s putting this on, Alex Hartstuff, until a few days ago. I was introduced to him by copywriter and business owner Paul do Campo. As Paul put it, “Alex teaches copywriters and agencies how to go after enterprise level clients and close them.”

Sure enough.

If you go to the sales page below, where you can sign up for Alex’s workshop, you can see a wall of video testimonials from various copywriters and agency owners.

Inevitably, many of these are testimonials about how valuable and informative and inspiring the workshop is. But among those, there are also a bunch of hard, results-based case studies:

* An “email and SMS” agency owner (Adam Rehm) who went from $2.5k retainers to $10k retainers

* A LinkedIn content guy (Matthew Brown) who went from $5k deals to $18k deals

* An “AI agents” agency agent, I mean, owner (Tyler Savoy), who went from getting paid $4k per deal to getting paid $20k per deal

* A girl who runs a web development agency (Namya Hhan) who went from $5k deals to $22k deals

* A guy who runs a cold email agency (Nick Block), who went from $3k/month retainers to $30k/month retainers

Alex and his sales page have bigger success stories too. But do you really need to hear those? I think maybe not. Because if you’re doing good work but not charging $10k, $20k, $30k for it, there is probably some internal resistance there. I don’t want to pile on to that.

Instead, I’ll just tell you the following:

Alex’s workshop is happening live on Zoom, from September 21 to 25, for an hour a day.

I’m telling you about it today because I signed up just now myself, so it’s top of mind for me, and because of the early-bird pricing.

Currently, this series of 5 workshops is just $97. In five days, the price will go up from 97 dollars to 97 million dollars. Don’t quote me on that exact price increase, but the price does increase in 5 days to some higher amount. And why not just sign up now, instead of procrastinating on it and maybe letting it slip away?

If you are a copywriter… if you do email… if you create content for clients… if you build AI agents… if you do web development… if you run cold email campaigns for people… or if you are a freelancer or run an agency offering some other service…

… and if rather than working with clients for whom $3k per month is a big deal… you might rather work with clients for whom $13k per month is not a big deal and $30k per month is doable… then sign up here to have your mind expanded:

https://bejakovic.com/enterpriseclients

I am abolishing my $5 typo bounty

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Back in February, I set up typo bounty for my 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians etc. book. That was in response to a 3-star review I got back then, which said the book is full of typos.

I found that hard to believe, since I had more than a dozen people proofread the book before I published it.

But money can fix many things, and maybe it could find and fix typos my proofreaders had missed?

So I set up the bounty, and announced it to my list.

Since then, thanks to the Herculean efforts of nitpicking readers around the world, I have been clued into 3 legitimate typos in the book. Actually, make that 4, because just this morning I got an email notifying me of one more.

I’ve honored all typo bounty hunters so far, and paid out $5 via PayPal, as promised.

But from this moment on, I am abolishing this typo bounty, for two reasons.

The first is that I have no interest in actually updating the book to fix a few spread-out typos. Amazon makes it a pain to update the manuscript, and I don’t want to mess with it for the sake of changing “Cialidini” to “Cialdini” in one place on page 7 (that’s the typo I was notified of today).

The second reason is that this entire bounty process makes me actively dislike the people who write in to tell me about the typos.

Which, appropriately enough, goes back to most important Commandment of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians etc., a commandment so important, so prime, that I put it at number one, in the first chapter of the book.

If you disobey this prime commandment, it becomes absolutely impossible to influence people to do what you want.

If you obey this commandment, you can perform almost magical feats of persuasion.

You can find Commandment I, and 9 more surprising and valuable commandments, in my book. Beware though, because there are 4 typos there as well, on pages 7, 48, 80, and 136. If that doesn’t scare you off:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Looking to help all-stars improve

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A couple weeks ago, I promoted an affiliate offer around creating an easy coaching offer from your expertise. As part of that affiliate promo, I offered, as a bonus, to get on a consulting call with people who bought, and work with them until they get their first client.

I got on a call with one of those folks. I won’t say what he does, outside the fact he is in a traditional and highly respectable profession.

I will say that, on top of his regular job, this guy has a side gig related to his main career, which makes him an extra $200k per year.

On our consulting call, he brought up the idea of teaching other people in his profession how they could also make an extra $200k per year by bolting on this side gig to their regular business.

Cha-ching!

I was all for it and told him so.

The next step was simply to send out some handraiser emails to a few people he might know to see what they say to the idea. I figured that within the first five emails sent, he would get his first coaching client.

A week passed. Two weeks. I followed up with the guy to ask him what’s up. He replied:

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2 major obstacles for me: 1. finding who I can send these emails to. I don’t know any [professionals who do what he does] that would need coaching for [how to make an extra $200k/year], or that would pay for it. 2. I have this block where I am telling myself – this is really cheesy, trying to sell coaching to any fellow [professional]. It’s just not done.

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I didn’t reply to this. Not because I think anything bad of the guy or what he wrote.

From the little I know of him, he seems like a very nice person and good at his job.

I didn’t reply anything because I’m not in the business of convincing people to do stuff they don’t want to do.

I recently read a book titled Million Dollar Consulting. It has the following advice:

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Everyone can solve problems, and problem solving is a commodity. But few people can systematically raise the bar and improve the performance of already stellar operations. Yet that’s where the value is. It’s a question of the all-stars improving still further. Orient yourself to innovation, not problem solving, and the worth of your project will be commensurately higher.

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I’ve learned already that there are plenty of people with valuable and marketable expertise who just don’t want to put themselves out there with a personal brand and offers of their own.

That’s fine. It’s a perfectly legit choice. I respect it. In fact, I respect it so much I would never try to change anybody’s mind about it.

But maybe YOU have expertise and you’ve proven you’re willing to put yourself out there.

What I mean is, you have an email list already and some offers, and you’re trying to make those work better, faster.

In my book, that makes you a budding all-star. And I would LOVE to work with you.

I don’t know yet how that would look. I know the outcome is that you make MORE money and get to MORE success FASTER.

In case you’re interested, reply to this email and let’s talk.

3 random things on my mind

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Yesterday, copywriter Svet Dimitrov posted in my Daily Email House community about a kind of email he writes each Saturday. It’s a “3 random things on my mind” email that Svet picked up from evaporated marketer Justin Goff.

Says Svet about this kind of email:

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Well, a lot of folks who read my emails tell me they’re always excited to read my Saturday email.

Why?

Because that’s one way to get to know the person on the other side of the screen more.

I love it. My audience loves it. And I don’t need to always think about a marketing lesson in every single email I send.

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I’m game to try anything once (in email). So here’s 3 things on mind on this Saturday, September 5, 2026:

#1. What it’s like to learn something new these days

I recently started taking Thai kickboxing classes. A former pro fighter has been putting on these classes for the past 10 years, down by the beach in Barceloneta.

I saw them training once, got curious, signed up, and loved it. I’ve been going for my third month now.

Somehow, YouTube found out about my new hobby, and has since been serving me up a steady diet of boxing, kickboxing, and MMA advice.

I find myself inevitably clicking on much of it, and I find myself pulled in a hundred separate directions, feeling both inadequate and hyped up.

I have no idea what’s important, what’s not important, or who to listen to. I’m ready to jump on every new suggestion in the hope of getting better sooner.

It’s the first time I’m learning something genuinely new in a long time, and I’ve forgotten how disorienting it can be, particularly now in the days of the mature “creator economy.”

#2. 24-hour info fast

In part to escape the mature “creator economy,” as soon as I finish and schedule this email, I will turn off my Internet, power down my laptop, and hide my Kindle and my New Yorkers under a couch cushion.

For the next 24 hours, I have decided to hold an information fast.

I can write in my Remarkable, I can go for a walk, or I can stare at the wall. But there will be no media consumption, modern or ancient.

If you don’t hear from me again, it’s because I’ve gone insane and have been committed to an asylum in the Barcelona hills.

#3. Substack pop-up newsletters

There’s a guy on my list who joined a few days ago. He used to be on my list before, but then unsubscribed, and now has rejoined.

Two years ago, we exchanged some messages. That’s how I know that back then, he had an email list of 72 people.

We exchanged some messages again now, two years later. Today, he’s got an email list of 12,000 people.

How do you go from 72 to 12,000 in two years? In his own words:

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First, I was finally able to grow my audience on social media (this helped me go from 72 -> 2,500ish subscribers). But at the start of this year, I started taking Substack more seriously as I also like to write long-form newsletters and this helped me go from 2,500 to 12,000.

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This stuck out to me because I’ve recently heard the idea of “pop-up newsletters” — newsletters that only run for a fixed length of time or number of issues.

I’ve since been thinking about creating a pop-up newsletter on Substack for a project that’s been on my mind for years, a series of persuasion lessons illustrated with scenes from movies. Now that I hear the list-growth benefits of a Substack newsletter, well, I’m still thinking about it.

And that’s it.

I have more things on my mind this Saturday, but three is the magic number.

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Daily Email House group.

Lots of good and random ideas are getting shared there by House members, and I’m also in there participating regularly, whenever I’m not on a 24-hour info fast.

If you’d like to get inside the House, here’s the entrance. Just knock and I’ll let you in:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house

Here’s what I CAN do for you, and it’s great

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Here’s what I CAN do for you today:

I can give you a marketing tweak so simple, so brilliant, so money-making that when you hear it you will clap your hands and jump for joy.

When you unleash this tweak into your business, the result will be a large swimming pool, filled with gold doubloons, that you can toss yourself into and swim around in like Scrooge McDuck.

Best of all, this tweak is super easy. It’s really just a matter of changing a few words, and more than anything, of throwing out a bunch of dead weight that’s been slowing down the gleaming ship that is your business.

Ready?

Ok. Then lemme tell you that earlier today, Maliha Mannan of the Side Blogger shared a success case study in my Daily Email House community.

Maliha has been promoting her paid membership regularly to her email list. Recently, she had a success getting new members with a specific email hook. That hook, in Maliha’s words:

“Promise a big result with very little effort.”

“Shyeah,” you might say in your best Wayne’s World voice. “That’s kind of what direct marketing is all about?”

Yes but:

I’ve been consulting business owners on how to make more sales from their email lists. These are smart people, with good offers. And yet, I’ve seen the same pattern pop up in their copy, over and over, across various launches and various businesses. It goes like this:

1. “I have this new offer”

2. “I cannot promise you a result with this new offer”

3. “But I can promise to get on a bunch of calls with you, and to give you a bunch of homework, and to keep inflicting this on you for the next 90/180/365 days”

My diagnosis for this is that there’s a generation of business owners who have been raised on the new crop of “authentic” and “transparent” Internet marketing.

As a result, all they end up talking about is what their offer CANNOT do… and how the odds of success are UNKNOWN… and how it ultimately ALL DEPENDS ON THE BUYER, and the effort the buyer puts in, and his natural intelligence, and how many adverse childhood events he may have had…

… which is all fine and good, once you’ve got people foaming at the mouth for your offer.

But unless you’ve already got folks who are fighting to give you money for what you are selling, it’s best to first talk about the super cool outcome you can lead them to, and how your offer makes it super easy compared to all the other stuff out there. As direct marketing legend Gary Halbert said, “Maximum Money in Minimum Time.”

Speaking of Gary:

Gary used to have to pay each time he attempted to sell anything to his WARM audience (he had a paid print newsletter, and sending that out cost printing and postage).

Gary for sure had to pay each time he attempted to sell anything to a COLD audience (either by renting direct mail lists, or by paying for advertising spots in newspapers and magazines).

That kind of discipline — that kind of fear of LOSING money each time you say something stupid, self-defeating, and ineffective — made Gary figure out what copy sells, and what doesn’t.

I’d like to transplant Gary Halbert’s hard-won secrets directly into your brain so you can make money and run successful launches and sell a bunch of your good offers.

And I have a way to do it — the simplest, easiest, fastest way I know of. For more information:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Transformative power of catastrophic thinking

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These days, I’m reading a 50-year-old book called How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, by a libertarian guy named Harry Browne.

In spite of Browne’s absolute trust in markets and the infallible human ability to rationally choose what we most want, the book gives a bunch of good and practical advice on how to live life more happily. Here’s one bit:

“If your lover is going to spend an evening with someone else, imagine the situation you’re afraid will happen. Imagine the worst. Picture them talking, laughing, kissing, making love – whatever it is you fear will happen. Keep doing it over and over again until it no longer affects you emotionally.”

I haven’t tried this with a wayward lover, but I have tried it when I was thinking to quit my office job, back in 2014, to start writing online.

On the one hand, I never wanted an office job. I didn’t particularly enjoy the one I had, even though it was as good as I could ever hope for. I wanted to control my own time and be productive rather than simply filling a seat.

But what if I quit my job to write online, and it didn’t work out? I would be leaving behind this sure thing for something unknown and unlikely to succeed… but I also didn’t want to stay at my job… but I also couldn’t commit to quitting… but the current job was unsupportable…. but the alternative could be even unsupportable!

I had read Tim Ferriss’s 440-Hour Workweek some time earlier, and Tim advocated pretty much the same thing that Browne suggests above — imagining the worst case scenario in detail, when faced with an uncertain and out-of-control life situation.

So I did what Tim Ferriss advocates for business, and what Harry Browne advocates for cheating, and I imagined the worst.

In my case, the worst meant I’d quit my job… try to make it online… fail… eventually burn through all my savings… have no money to even support myself while I looked for a job… have to move back to Croatia to live in my dad’s spare apartment… and look for a job there, without pressure.

When I faced up to the “worse than unsupportable” worst outcome, my anxiety and indecision vanished. Honestly, the worst really wasn’t that bad. And I could see now there was a fair chance it wouldn’t happen. I quit my job soon after, and I’ve been jobless ever since.

So that’s my bit of advice for you.

Here’s another bit of advice:

If you would like to take advantage of the above psychology to influence people — not by scaring them, but by getting them excited and encouraging them — then go ye and get my Copy Riddles program.

Because the same psychology that makes the unexamined “worst outcome” so scary also makes the unexamined “secret” or “blind opportunity” so exciting and tempting.

In both cases, we are standing outside the temple, with only a childish sense of all the wonders and terrors that must be hidden inside.

Copy Riddles guides you and imprints on you all the fine and delicate ways that A-list copywriters have discovered to play with this bit of human psychology. Owning these skills will be the most valuable skill, or thereabouts, you possess if you too write online.

For more info on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr