John Bejakovic

How to save time “productizing your knowledge”

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Last week, I got a text message from Kieran Drew, who has a big newsletter and an even bigger audience in the creator space.

Kieran wrote to say he will be stopping by Barcelona in a couple weeks’ time, so let’s meet up.

Yes definitely, I said. I kept reading.

Also, the message went on, Kieran will be launching a product soon about “productizing your knowledge.” Maybe I’d be interested in promoting it as an affiliate?

“Oh God no please,” I thought. “Not a course of ‘secrets’ about how to build a course.”

Here’s my problem:

There’s no doubt you can make money with a course. I’ve done it. Kieran’s done it even more than I have. So have thousands of other people.

But to make a course and then actually make money with it takes time and effort that dwarf anything you might pay for the “how to” info itself. This is why a course on how to build a course is an investment that’s particularly unlikely to pay off for the vast majority of people.

Now here’s a spoiler:

I have since agreed to promote Kieran’s “productize your knowledge” offer. I did it because I’m greedy and unscrup—

No.

I did it because, out of politeness, I asked Kieran to send me his sales page. “I’ll take a look,” I said. “I’ll let you know if it’s something I could do a good job promoting.”

Kieran sent me his sales page. And since I’m as literal-minded as a three-year-old and I feel compelled to do things I said I will do, I took a look, even though I was sure this was not something I was going to promote.

Here’s three things that flipped me:

#1. There’s a legit mechanism

Right at the top of Kieran’s sales page, I found out this is not primarily a bunch of “secrets” about how to make a course, but a genuine mechanism about how to make an info product that sells.

The thing is, rather than teasing you about this mechanism so you have to buy to find out, Kieran actually lays it out on the sales page. That might not be good for sales, but it’s a positive in my book.

#2. Who it’s for

Before turning this process into an info product (hint), Kieran took on 7 private clients, each of whom paid $2,997. Kieran helped these clients implement this process themselves.

I took a look at who signed up for that, and it was people who had legit knowledge to share — athletic performance, personal finance, injury specialists.

This gave me a bit of an aha moment.

I realized that, while I’m not happy to promote an offer on “productizing your knowledge” to the vast majority of people, there is a segment of people who actually have expertise and knowledge.

Some of those people are looking to go the next step from their current service or one-on-one work, and Kieran’s process can be genuinely valuable and helpful for them.

#3. This is not primarily a course, at least not during this launch

During this launch, Kieran’s offer is really an implementation group, a cohort with feedback and accountability along with how-to info. That’s because Kieran’s running “Product Summer Bootcamp,” an 8-week private community, as part of this launch.

Speaking of:

Kieran is launching his offer tomorrow.

Again, the process he is teaching inside is outlined on the sales page.

You can read the sales page when it goes live, take the process for yourself, and run with it.

It will take weeks or more likely months to implement — that’s inevitable.

If you decide to pay Kieran $297 to get the tools, tips, direct guidance, accountability, and support to shave off weeks or maybe months off that time, you will be able to do so tomorrow.

I will also have a couple of congruent bonuses, not to entice you to buy if this isn’t right for you, but to make it more likely you have a successful long-term business, selling your products or a mix of your products and services. But more on all that tomorrow.

A mystery on today’s date

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At 10am on July 2, 1937, precisely 88 years ago, the following happened:

An overloaded plane, 5,000lbs over its normal weight, rumbled down a grass runway.

Observers at the airport thought the plane had actually fallen down the cliff at the end of the runway, but a few moments later, the plane reappeared, apparently airborne, and gradually rose up into the clouds.

Aboard, there were only two passengers: a navigator, named Fred Noonan, and the most famous female aviatress of all time, Amelia Earheart.

Earheart and Noonan were completing the final leg of their round-the-world flight, crossing the Pacific from Melanesia back to the U.S.. If successful, Earheart would become the first woman to fly all the way around the world.

But Earheart and Noonan never made it to the next stop. Some 20 hours later, also on July 2 (thanks to crossing the international date line), they disappeared somewhere over the Pacific, never to be heard from or seen again.

Except… maybe they were heard from or seen again?

A woman in Texas picked up an SOS radio transmission the next day, in which she heard a woman who claimed to be Earheart, and a man groaning in background. The two were supposedly stranded on an uninhabited island in the Pacific.

Then again, a Japanese woman on the island of Saipan claimed she had personally witnessed Earheart and Noonan, following their crash on the island, being executed by the Imperial Japanese Army.

There were also claims that Earheart was captured but not executed by the Japanese. In this scenario, she was forced to work as Tokyo Rose, an English-speaking radio broadcaster used to spread Japanese propaganda during WWII.

And finally, there was the theory that Earheart completed her flight as planned but immediately chose to go into obscurity, only to reappear years later as a New Jersey banker.

All in all, around 100 books have been written about Earheart and what really happened to her.

Organizations and well-funded expeditions have been established to really get to the bottom of it.

Numerous TV shows and documentaries have tried to shine light on the mystery. I’m surprised Angelina Jolie never made a movie about Earheart.

Now I think you will agree with me, because I happen to be right about the matter, that none of this would have happened had Earheart simply crashed and burned in a certain death, or had she even managed to complete her round the world tour as expected.

There’s something about the mystery of not knowing what really happened, a lack of closure, which drives intense attention or even obsession, which cannot be created in any other way.

If you have basic knowledge of copywriting, you are familiar with this human quirk, and you probably even exploit it via “open loops” in your copy.

What you might not be familiar with is the underlying neurology of why we feel the need for closure so strongly, or how the same neurology can be exploited by magicians (if you ever hear a magician tell a corny joke, that’s why), by negotiators (Jim Camp’s advice to “negotiate in the bathroom”) or by hypnotists (to perform a rapid induction that gets 5 weeks’ worth of hypnosis down into 3 minutes).

If any of that sounds intriguing to you, take a look at Commandment X of my new 10 Commandments book, waiting patiently for you here:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Sloppy agree & amplify

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I’m reading a frustrating/fascinating article about Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin has been writing various blogs for close to 20 years, in which — so says the article — he advocates for shutting down the American experiment in democracy, and a return to monarchy.

You might think, so what, another Internet kook.

The difference is that Yarvin has the ear of the rich and powerful.

He’s apparently buddy-buddy with Vice President J.D. Vance, and, according to the article, he has become a kind of Machiavelli for Silicon Valley billionaires Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel.

And that’s where the trouble, or rather the sloppiness, starts.

Says the article, after Thiel wrote his book Zero to One and went on a publicity blitz, he reached out to Yarvin for advice. How to handle the inevitable question he would get from journalists, about getting more women into tech?

(Thiel apparently thinks this is a misguided question, and that the numbers of women in tech are fine as is.)

Here’s Yarvin’s advice, from the article:

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Yarvin suggested that Thiel deploy a pickup-artist tactic called “agree and amplify” — that is, ask a journalist, who probably had no solution in mind, what she would do to tackle the problem. “The purpose here is not to get the interlocutor to sleep with you, but to get her to fear this issue and run away from it — and ditto for future interviewers,” he wrote.

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I’m not sure who’s to blame for this nonsense — Yarvin, or the author of the article I’m reading, or both. But this is 100% not what agree & amplify is. It doesn’t even make sense when you think about the name:

Agree & amplify = First you agree, and then you amplify, or exaggerate, to make the whole thing absurd. For example:

JOURNALIST: Don’t you agree we need more women in tech?

THIEL: I absolutely do. I also think we need more women in coal mines, in slaughter houses, and on oil rigs, all of which are places of employment where women are vastly underrepresented.

I suspect Yarvin still hasn’t read my 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, etc. But it seems he needs to. He’s getting his commandments confused, and he’s giving out bad advice as a result.

Agree & amplify, and the strange psychology of why and when it works, is Commandment VI.

I have another commandment, Commandment VIII, about what Yarvin recommended to Thiel, to take the journalist’s question and reverse it.

Thing is, reversing a question is unlikely to have the effect Yarvin predicted, but the technique can be used to get people to work with you instead of against you, and to sell themselves on your plan, as if they came up with it on their own.

If you’d like more (properly researched and fact-checked) detail on all this, or you simply want to learn some powerful communication techniques that straddle the world of pickup artists, political propagandists, con men, and other savory and unsavory types:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

10 hacks for writing daily emails

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I’ve been writing daily sales emails, first for clients and then for myself, since 2017. In that time, I estimate I’ve written 3,000+ such emails. I have learned a thing or a thousand in the process. Here’s 10 of ’em, selected for impact and ease of use:

1. Write a 1-2-3 outline. Point 1 is your opening. Point 2 is your takeaway. Point 3 is your offer. Each point should be a few words to a sentence max. If you cannot express what you want to say in 3 points and each point in max a few words, your email will turn out a mess with startling probability.

2. Repurpose the headlines of long-running but little-known sales letters as your subject lines. One of my most successful (notorious) ones:

“Start a profitable repositioning business… with your own home as headquarters”

3. If you are ever in a horrible crunch for time or brainpower, you can always write a super basic email using the following format:

– Where you are right now

– How you are feeling

– Why you are short of time/brainpower to write a better email

– Why you’re writing an email nonetheless (and make this into a net positive for you reader)

– A link to your offer

An email like this can be just 150-250 words. It’s something you can do in 5 minutes or less, even if you’re brain-dead at the time.

4. Reuse content you’ve already written in other emails (eg. my point 3 above), or in your courses, books, blog posts, comments on Facebook, comments on Reddit, letters to your grandma.

5. The #1 most powerful editing tool is the delete key. If something isn’t quite working, take it out instead of trying to fix it.

6. If you have written a cliche, either take it out or “lampshade” it — exaggerate it and draw even more attention to it.

7. If you have written something your reader already knows, either take it out or acknowledge your reader already knows it, and explain why you are still talking about it.

8. Writing ungrammatical gets people to pay more attention, to notice and remember you more, and maybe even to be amused. It sometimes also draws replies from very intelligent people, replies which can be profitably put to work in future emails.

9. Just about anything can be a daily email topic. If it doesn’t look like it, it’s because you’re not looking close enough. Look closer.

10. It’s helpful to restrict yourself in terms of topic, style, core idea you want to get across, etc. It saves time and makes your emails more impactful and surprising day after day. For help with that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

New money from old courses

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Do you have an old course that’s not selling much any more?

Or do you know somebody else’s great course from a ways back?

If so, here’s my deal for you:

1. Hit reply.

2. Tell me what the course is.

3. In turn, I’ll share with you a resource about how to make new money from this old course, without paying for ads, or running a promo, or recruiting affiliates, or becoming an affiliate yourself.

Scientists shocked to discover AI does what it’s supposed to

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I’m signed up to get the weekly newsletter of Nature, the big science journal. The deal is, I give them my email address, and each week they send me a summary of the most interesting science breakthroughs.

But here’s what they sent me yesterday, reporting on new research from MIT:

“The brains of people using the artificial-intelligence bot ChatGPT to write an essay are less engaged than those without access to online tools.”

At the risk of sounding crude, no shit, Sherlock. Isn’t that the whole point? In the words of a smart dead guy, Alfred North Whitehead:

“It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy‑books and eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.”

The MIT research is only newsworthy because we all respond to anxiety-stirring and fear-mongering. If it’s not second-hand smoke, then it’s parabens in the water, or now, ChatGPT. “It’s coming for your brain!”

But let me turn this email around to be constructive instead of destructive:

I use ChatGPT daily. My brain is very little engaged while it’s happening. And I don’t think any kind of a problem.

At the same time, I also force myself each day to perform a kind of mental cavalry charge, specifically, to write an email like this.

There’s value in such a daily routine from an outside standpoint. I think people can sense that I write these emails, for real, flaws and flops included, live every day.

There’s also value from an inside standpoint. Writing a new and fresh email each day keeps what little brain I have sharp, active, and engaged.

All that’s to say, if you are worried that your brain is going to mush, or even if you aren’t, then start writing, regularly, and your brain will get fit right quick.

And if you put what you’ve written into an email like this one, and send it out to the world, then there’s extra value to that, even if it’s just you reading at the start.

If you want some guidance and help with that, take a look at my Daily Email Habit service.

A key idea behind Daily Email Habit is that there’s value in writing, even if AI could do it for you.

Daily Email Habit helps you get that value by sending you a new email prompt or “puzzle” each day, and narrowing the scope of what to write about.

If you think of a daily email as a cavalry charge, then Daily Email Habit gives you the direction to charge in, so you and your mental horse don’t stay locked in place due to indecision, and so you don’t half-heartedly trot here and there and back again, tiring out the poor beast without getting anywhere.

For more information on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Why Parker Worth has got me beat in email marketing

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Back in January, I got a message from Parker Worth that said:

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I just did a list swap with Chris Orzy.

Was wondering if you’d be down to trade lead magnets?

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In case you don’t know Parker, he is “just a guy with a neck tattoo,” as per his Twitter bio.

In reality, Parker is a bit more than that. He’s got an online audience of over 70,000 people spread across Twitter and LinkedIn and his email list, and he’s built a 6-figure business on the back of it, teaching people how to write online. And most impressive:

Parker has done it all starting in 2023, in under 2 years.

I replied to Parker to say yes to his offer of a list swap and… five months later, here we are, finally getting it done.

What to say? Parker lives in Brazil. I live in Spain. I guess we’ve absorbed the wrong things from the local cultures.

Anyway, the reason why I introduced Parker by talking about how short he’s been in the game, and yet how well he’s doing, is that nobody gets results like this without being systematic and strategic about it.

I know whereof I speak, because I myself am anything but systematic and strategic.

I like novelty. I like to improvise. I like to prove to myself I can do something and then move on to the next thing. It’s the only way I can live long-term, but it’s got its downsides. For example:

The first 2 years of this newsletter, from 2018 to 2020, in the same time that Parker built up an audience of 80k people and sold $250k worth of stuff, I managed to build up an audience of 100 people, and I earned precisely 0 dollars from the 100+ emails I had written to that mega-list.

That’s ok. It worked out for me in the end.

But my point is that maybe Parker has something worthwhile to teach you (did I just manage a pun), specifically, how to be more strategic and systematic when it comes to email marketing.

Enter Parker’s 3-Minute Email Template.

Parker wrote an email once that made him money. So he ended up reusing it over and over. It has made him tens of thousands of dollars since.

He has given this email to others. It has made them tens of thousands of dollars as well.

Parker has turned his email into a template, along with couple real-life examples, and has recorded a video explaining the psychology of why it works, if you really wanna go that deep.

He’s giving it all away if you sign up to his list below.

Yes, sign up for the profitable email template.

But really, sign up to Parker’s list for a different perspective than you might get in my own emails, one that can make you more strategic and systematic about what you do, so you can get to success with your newsletter or email list more quickly than I did with mine.

Here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/parker

100x return

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All week long, I’ve been promoting Shaina Keren’s Get A Raise course. As I’ve been saying over and over, if you work a 9-5, this course offers the best and clearest ROI of anything I have ever bought, sold, or even seen.

But what does “best and clearest ROI” actually mean?

Lemme give you example.

I got on a call with Shaina before agreeing to promote her course. I asked her for some success stories.

She shared a few with me, which I’ve already written about in an earlier email, involving people she coached to significant salary raises, following the same process she lays out inside Get A Raise.

And then, a couple days after that call, Shaina wrote me with a followup:

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Got another great testimonial from a client today who followed up on a call to update me (verbally) – last year in coaching I helped her move from a Creative Director position at a small agency earning $72k to an internal role with the same title at a large RE firm earning $135k. She then took the Get a Raise course and used it to make an ask up to $150k at her annual review this year!

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Yes, there was a big jump in salary from switching roles, but that’s not what I wanna focus on.

Rather, even after switching to a new role, Shaina’s client got a salary increase of an extra $15k, in the first year, by following Shaina’s course.

Get a Raise normally sells for $197.

Until tonight at 12 midnight, there’s also a blue-light Bejako special, so you can get get $50 off usual price, and so the course is just $147.

At that price, the $15k in extra salary that the creative director above got is a 100x ROI to going through this quick and easy course, and then following simple process that Shaina lays out.

What kind of an ROI can you get?

I can’t say, but I bet it’s better than from any other info product you can buy right now, at least if you work at 9-5.

In any case, the deadline for this opportunity is tonight, Thursday, at 12 midnight PST. if you wanna take advantage of it:

1. Head on over to ​https://bejakovic.com/raise​ and get Shaina’s course. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

3. Go through the 1 hour or so of training, then apply it in the next few days or weeks, and profit, hopefully to the tune of tens of thousands of new dollars in salary.

Abe Lincoln’s historic mistake at Gettysburg

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Today is the last day to get Shaina Keren’s course Get A Raise, at a special Bejako-only $50 discount.

If you work at a 9-5, I believe this course has the clearest and surest ROI of any course I have sold, bought, or even seen.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of this opportunity before it disappears, the full details on how to claim it are at the bottom of this email.

And now, with that important announcement out of the way, let me tell you that I have recently taken to memorizing stuff by heart.

First came a few famous poems by Williams Blake and Shakespeare.

After that, I memorized Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which I’d never even read before, even though it’s one of the most famous speeches of all time, and certainly the most famous by an American president.

Thing is, I found something frankly wrong inside the Gettysburg Address, which I wanted to share with you. After the famous “Four score and seven years ago” opening, Lincoln says the following:

“The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they [the soldiers who fought and died at Gettysburg] did here.”

I don’t know whether this is just humility or a lack of historical perspective.

But the fact is that the world greatly noted and has long remembered what Lincoln said at Gettysburg.

On the other hand, the world has largely forgotten what the soldiers did at Gettysburg. Was it a big battle? A small battle? Who won? Was it pivotal in the war or just a waste of human life?

And if you don’t agree with me, then think of the dozens of other major Civil War battles that didn’t have their own address by Lincoln. Unless you’re a Civil War buff, odds are you cannot name any of them.

Same goes for the thousands of major battles that have raged throughout history — completely nameless and forgotten, if they didn’t have a Lincoln or a Caesar or a Thucydides to write or speak about them.

My point is that Lincoln, in that statement that “the world can never forget what they did here,” fell into the usual trap of thinking that the act is ultimately what matters, rather than the presentation, the transferable image, the meme of the thing.

What I’m telling you is, if you build it, they will NOT come — not unless you do a good job telling the story of it. That’s true in history. It’s true in business. And it’s true equally in your own personal career.

Which brings me back to Shaina’s course. Because maybe you’re working at your job and you’re thinking, “I shouldn’t have to ask for a raise. They should just give me one based on how hard I work and the value I bring here. And certainly they will figure it out, in time. My boss will little note nor much appreciate my asking directly for more money, but he can never forget what I do at this company.”

If that’s what you’re secretly thinking, I’d like to tell you that history is not on your side. And if you want to take fate into your own hands, and make sure your boss notes and remembers what you do, and pays you accordingly, then here’s my suggestion:

1. Head on over to ​https://bejakovic.com/raise​ and get Shaina’s course. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

3. Go through the 1 hour or so of training, then apply it in the next few days or weeks, and profit, hopefully to the tune of tens of thousands of new dollars in salary.

The deadline for this offer is today, Thursday, June 26, at 12 midnight PST. After that, this special discount, of the people, by the people, for the people, shall perish from the earth.

Last call for Get A Raise

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This is the last email I will send to promote Shaina Keren’s course Get A Raise. The promise behind this course is straightforward and is right there in the title.

The background, in case you missed it, is that Shaina is a highly paid career coach and consultant.

She has helped lots of clients get major raises for the work they were already doing, from $15k on the low end all the way up to $250k on the high end.

Now here’s an unrelated fact:

When the 1,037-page book Gone With The Wind was published, some ankle-biter wrote, “Well, people may not like it very much but nobody can deny that it gives a lot of reading for your money.”

Shaina’s course doesn’t give you a lot of reading for your money.

It’s short — you can go through it in an under an hour.

It’s also stress-minimal. It’s easy to put into action, without causing you sweaty, sleepless nights as you anticipate the salary conversation you’re supposed to have with your boss. None of that. Just put together a doc, the way Shaina advises, and deliver it to your boss along with a 55-word script, which Shaina gives you.

How much can this be worth to you? I can’t say for sure. But as I’ve been saying all week, I believe Shaina’s course offerst the surest and biggest ROI of any course have bought, sold, or even seen.

And if you act by 12 midnight PST tonight, you can get $50 off the usual price, so you can get still more value for your money. If you’d like to do so:

1. Head on over to ​https://bejakovic.com/raise​ and get Shaina’s course. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

3. Go through the 1 hour or so of training, then apply it in the next few days or weeks, and profit, hopefully to the tune of tens of thousands of new dollars in salary.