The maple syrup theory of influence

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Fascinating fact about me:

I studied math in college.

Like I said, fascinating. And it gets even more so, because I was never good at math.

Not in elementary school. Not in high school.

Somehow though, when college came, and I could choose to study what I wanted, and I never again had to take any math classes, I wound up taking math classes, and lots of them.

I think I was trying to prove something to myself. I managed it, too, because it turns out you can get a lot done with just curiosity and internal motivation, even in the absence of talent.

Anyways, one time I was taking a math class about “complex analysis” — about how to work with complex numbers, which have both a real and an “imaginary” component (ie, involving the square root of -1).

Whatever. Don’t worry about the math.

The important thing is simply that complex numbers have their own bizarre rules for how they are multiplied and divided, how you take a derivative, how you do integrals.

I never understood complex numbers, not really. But I diligently worked through the course.

I remember a specific homework problem, and the epiphany that came with it.

I was struggling to apply the rules in the textbook. But with some derring-do and with a few leaps of logic, I managed to finally solve the problem and reach the answer.

The answer was simple and elegant.

I remember a feeling of understanding washing over me. I got it, whatever this particular section was about. It made sense to me now. All the struggle and confusion and work had paid off.

Then, as a proper diligent student, I double-checked my answer in the back of the textbook.

It turned out I was 100% wrong. Not just that I’d made some screwup in the calculation, but that I was completely off track. I had misapplied and misunderstood the rules. My feeling of understanding, which had washed over me and given me such relief, corresponded to nothing in reality.

When I was a kid, like 9 years old, I had a feeling I understood myself and the world perfectly.

It was pretty late in life, in my late teens or maybe my early 20s, when I started to notice cracks in my confident understanding of the world.

Gradually, I started to develop a theory that emotions like certainty, understanding, and insight are like maple syrup.

Maple syrup can be poured over whatever you want — pancakes, French toast, waffles.

Likewise, emotions can be poured over ideas that are true, ideas are not true, or even ideas that are complete waffles, meaning some kind of undefined nonsense, like my understanding of complex analysis rules.

On the one hand, it doesn’t get more unsettling than this. I realized my most basic, certain feelings of rightness are not actually reliable.

On the other hand, it was a powerful realization.

For one thing, it was liberating.

It meant that, even if I’m sure — if it cannot, will not, won’t work, if it’s black and not white, if I am right and not wrong — I don’t really know for a fact. It pays to go get some real-world data — the equivalent of checking the right answer in the back of the textbook.

For another, I’m not the only person whose emotions work like this. I find it’s pretty universal.

And it turns out there are ways to get other people to pour their own emotional syrups — whether of desire, or of insight, or of trust — over pancakes, French toast, waffles, donuts, rice, hot dogs, sponge cake, and pretty much any basic foodstuff you may have to offer them.

You can make hot dogs sweet and sponge cake delicious, even irresistible, if you pour enough maple syrup on them.

And you can make honest, dry, uninspiring information exciting and eye-opening and urgent, much in the same way.

Perhaps you’d like some specific techniques of influence, which you can apply to get your audience to pour out their own emotional maple syrups over your offers?

You can find such techniques, delivered daily to your inbox, inside my Daily Email Habit service.

You even double-check your own answers against my answers, which like today, tend to be based on the day’s Daily Email Habit prompt.

In case you’d like to prove something to yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

It can’t go on for long like this

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I once took a class on “health economics,” which is just what it sounds like.

One thing that’s stuck with me from those lectures is how back in the 1980s, the best and brightest political scientists in the West had no clue that the Soviet Union was about to collapse.

The only guy who was confidently predicting the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union was some low-profile economist who was looking at the rates of alcoholism and alcohol-related deaths in the USSR.

I don’t remember the exact numbers, but they were sky-high. A major part of the Soviet working-age population was either chronically drunk, sick from drinking, or dying from drinking.

It couldn’t go on for long like this, that economist predicted. And sure enough, it didn’t.

I thought of this a couple days ago while forcing myself to read an article about the U.S. Army’s recruiting shortfalls.

The U.S. Army’s recruiting woes are not a topic that I am personally interested in, but I’m glad I read the article. Among many other interesting things, it taught me the following:

“According to a Pentagon study, more than three-quarters of Americans between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four are ineligible, because they are over-weight, unable to pass the aptitude test, afflicted by physical or mental-health issues, or disqualified by such factors as a criminal record.”

I wanted to get a baseline.

A bit of perplexitying told me that during World War II, “nearly half” of men were deemed ineligible to serve in the army… during the Vietnam war, that had risen to “more than half” (though many eligible men were exempted for being in college)… by 2017, the number of ineligible men and women, ages 17 to 24, had reached 71%. In the most recent study, in 2022, that number had gone up to 77%.

In other words, in the span of about 50 years, the share of the “ineligible” has gone up by more than 50%… and the share of U.S. citizens, in the prime of life, who are not significantly compromised by health, mental, or behavioral issues, is now barely 1 in 5.

I don’t know what the future of the U.S. is. But the trend certainly isn’t good. It can’t go on for long like this.

Now that I’ve dug a six-foot-deep hole for myself so far in this email, let’s see if I can clamber out.

One idea I’ve personally found very inspiring over the years comes from Dan Kennedy.

I only know this idea as it was retold by Ben Settle in one of Ben’s emails. In fact, it was this email that got me to sign up to Ben’s paid newsletter.

The idea is the “myth of security.” Because, says Dan, there is no such thing as security. Not really, not if you look close.

There’s no security in the money or investments you already have in the bank… in the job that you have now… in the business that you might own… in the current method you have of getting customers or clients… even in your personal relationships, your community, or even your nation (or your nation’s army).

All of that can disappear, from today to tomorrow, or from this year to next year. It’s happened before, and it can happen again.

The only security you have? According to Dan, it’s only in your ‘ability to produce.’ In a few more of Dan’s words:

“… you had better sustain a very, very serious commitment to maintaining, improving, enhancing and strengthening your own ‘ability to produce’, because, in truth, it is all you’ve got and all you will ever have. Anything and everything else you see around you, you acquire and accumulate, you invest in, you trust in, can disappear in the blink of an eye.”

Another valuable idea I’ve learned, this from “Sovereign Man” Simon Black, is that of a Plan B. A Plan B is a plan that works in case things go bad… and that also works and brings in value even if things stay as they are.

Dan Kennedy’s idea of a very serious commitment to your “ability to produce” falls into this Plan B category.

I don’t know what you can produce.

I’ve personally decided to focus on producing effective communication — on putting together words that can motivate, influence, and guide others, and getting better at doing that, day after day.

I figure if nothing ever changes, and things stay exactly as they are, those will be very valuable skills to have.

On the other hand, if things change drastically tomorrow, those will still be valuable skills to have — and they may prove to be the only things that still have value.

If you’d like my help and guidance in developing your own ability to produce, starting today, so you can be prepared for tomorrow:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

My top 7 marketing books

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I heard once that reading lists make for great lead magnets.

Is that true? I don’t know.

But it got me to put together a recommended reading list of my own.

I started with a goal of 10 books — but though I’ve read many more than 10, I couldn’t honestly recommend 10. That’s a good thing for you — less reading to do.

So here are my top 7 marketing books, for you to enjoy, learn, and profit from:

1. The Robert Collier Letter Book, by Robert Collier

This book has it all — wagons of coal, silk stockings, genies in the lamp, free pens, rattlesnakes, dinosaurs. If you only ever read one book about direct marketing, this is my number-one recommendation.

2. Positioning, by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Tons of other good marketing advice beyond, “Get yourself into a niche of one.”

3. My Life In Advertising, by Claude C. Hopkins

All the wisdom in Hopkins’s vaunted Scientific Advertising, but presented with stories and detail that make it go down more easy.

4. The Adweek Copywriting Book, by Joe Sugarman

Very accessible, usable, and current, even if you never write a full-page magazine ad selling a calculator or UV-blocking sunglasses.

5. Influence, by Robert Cialdini

I wish I had written this book. What more can I say?

6. Start With No, by Jim Camp

You may have seen this negotiation book recommended before by online marketers. It happens a lot. What is it about Camp’s negotiation strategies that could be useful to sales and marketing online?

7. Made To Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath

I read this book only once but it’s stuck. That’s because the authors know what they’re talking about, and because they apply it to their own writing.

Like I said, I’ve heard that reading lists make for great lead magnets.

Do they also make for effective email copy? I don’t know.

But I’m willing to test it out.

If you haven’t already clicked away to Amazon to get one of the books above, maybe you will click below to the sales page for my Daily Email Habit service. It sometimes forces even me to write emails I would never write otherwise. Here’s the link if you’d like to find out more about it:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Bob the mole gets kicked out my garden for the 4th time

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I got an exciting reply to my email yesterday:

===

Hi!

Thank you for the offer. May I please have a copy of What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6?

Bob

===

I rubbed my palms and grinned at this. “Here we go!”

Bob is not a new subscriber to my Daily Email Habit, which was the condition I had set and clearly stated for giving away, as a free bonus, a guide I’ve created, “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6.”

Instead, Bob is both a new and an old reader of this newsletter, who has never bought anything from me, and who I keep unsubscribing from my list, year after year.

Bob first signed up to my list back in 2020. He used to reply to my emails from time to time in a slightly self-entitled tone that always left me feeling put off, though I couldn’t quite place why.

Then in 2021, he replied to one of my emails accusing me of lying. At that point I unsubscribed him, wrote a nice email about it, and then forgot all about Bob.

Fast-forward to 2023. Bob found his way onto my list again. Within a few days, he again sent me a message that had something slyly aggressive and accusing about it.

I unsubscribed him for the second time without even replying, and I wrote a nice email about it.

Then it happened again a few months later in 2023. Same deal.

Finally, Bob resubscribed to my list this past Monday. I was waiting and wondering how long it would take him to reply to one of my emails in some sort of self-entitled, mildly irritating way. It didn’t take long. And so here we are, with me writing a new email about Bob, after I’ve unsubscribed him for the 4th time.

Marketing to an audience is often compared to gardening. The usual biblical analogies apply — you have to prepare the soil, plant the right seeds, tend to them, and be patient.

If you do all those, then those seeds multiply thirtyfold or sixtyfold or even hundredfold. Not only do you get richer as a result, but you get the pleasure of seeing your garden grow and thrive from season to season, and your good work turn meaningful.

Of course, from time to time blights come along, big and small. Sometimes a mole pops up in your garden, and demands a carrot or a beet, for no good reason other than that it wants one, and quick.

My personal policy in that case is to pick up the mole, thank it for tilling and aerating my soil for me, and then place it outside the walls of my garden, so it can come back next season and do its good work again.

But enough mole analogies.

Because the deadline do get “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6” is tonight at 12 midnight PST.

This guide sums up 6 list-growing techniques, which I’ve jokingly called “magic list-growing secrets Big Email doesn’t want you to know.” (I’m telling you now, they’re no secrets at all. It’s a joke, so don’t write in and accuse me of lying.)

Instead, these 6 techniques all take time, money, or effort (pick any two). But if you can get a bit of any two of money, time, or effort, and if you apply them steadily, then people start finding you — like Bob the mole keeps finding me, year after year.

If you’d like to try out Daily Email Habit for a month and get “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6” as a free bonus, the deadline is nigh:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The 4 faces on my Mt. Rushmore

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Direct marketer Brian Kurtz, who used to be a VP at DM behemoth Boardroom, once named his Mt. Rushmore — the 4 greatest copywriters he ever worked with and learned from.

Inspired by Brian, I had the idea to name my own Mt. Rushmore.

Who are the four people who have influenced me the most?

Fortunately, I didn’t really have to think.

I have an objective measure of who has influenced me the most:

On my website, where I archive these emails, I tag people I’ve mentioned in the emails. That means I can simply go by people I have quoted most often, whose ideas I have referred to the most, who have appeared in these emails, and I guess in my head, the most.

So here they are. The four faces on Bejako’s Mt. Rushmore… along with just one, biggest, most important idea I got from each (it wasn’t easy to choose):

Mt. Rushmore #1: Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy tops the list in terms of number of mentions in this newsletter.

As a result, I had the most trouble picking just one idea that I got from him.

I made a list of a dozen ideas, and picked one that truly was revolutionary in my formation.

It was this:

“Infotainment” is not telling readers a fun or touching story and then trying to twist that into a sale.

In Dan’s world, everything is strategic, and is done for a reason. It took me a long time to learn that, and it’s something I’m still trying to fully internalize. As Dan puts it:

“I’m not Harry Dent or Warren Buffet, not an economist or a pundit; I don’t get paid for financial analysis, and I rarely do anything I’m not paid to do. I’m putting this out there to serve my purposes, to stir up and keep stirring up angst about the economy’s hazards and ills, that being with me protects or insulates you from. And again I make the point that this is not news or simply ‘current events.’ […] The sky is either falling or soon to fall, all the time.”

Mt. Rushmore #2: Ben Settle

Ben was my first exposure to many ideas and names in the world of direct response marketing.

He was also my gateway drug — the introduction to many of the legends in the field, including two of the other names on this Mt. Rushmore.

But since I’ve got to pick just one idea for Ben, it’s got to be daily emails.

For years, I had heard Ben talking about how daily emails turn you into a leader. I nodded, and did nothing.

Even after I had started working as a freelance copywriter, and writing emails for clients, years more passed before I had the idea to write daily emails for myself.

Eventually, I paid Ben a few hundred dollars for a book on getting copywriting clients. The book boiled down to the idea, “Write daily emails.”

Somehow, finally, it clicked. I started to write daily emails for myself.

That was back in 2018. I’ve been writing ever since and my life has transformed as a result.

Mt. Rushmore #3: Gary Bencivenga

When I wrote my little book, 10 Commandments Of A-List Copywriters, the first chapter was about Gary Bencivenga.

It was about Gary’s emphasis on proof, which is what he’s best known for.

But there’s one more specific idea I’ve learned from Gary, which has influenced me on a deep level.

It’s to look for offers that have killer proof baked in, rather than offers where you have to somehow conjure up, dig up, or invent proof, which often means it’s second rate.

That’s powerful advice for product creation. But I’ve taken this idea and applied it to content writing as well.

I often get readers telling me how they like my writing, or how I write well.

I appreciate the compliment, because I like to write and I like to think of myself as a good writer.

But really, I don’t like to rely on my writing ability to make my writing good. And when I do rely primarily on my writing ability, I find that the result tends to be lousy.

Instead, I write about things that are inherently interesting — at least to me — and that are easy to write well about as a result. To my mind, this is the same thing Gary was talking about, just in the email and in the book, and not just on the sales page or the order page.

Mt. Rushmore #4: Gary Halbert

Gary Halbert was my very first exposure to direct marketing.

I read the Boron Letters. I didn’t really get it.

Then I started reading the massive online archives of his multi-year print newsletter. I still didn’t really get it.

But at some point I read an issue of Gary’s newsletter titled, “The Difference Between Winners And Losers.” The ideas in this issue have influenced me on a deep level both for business and otherwise. In Gary’s words:

===

I’ll tell you something: This issue of my newsletter is going to make a lot of my readers very uncomfortable. Why? Simply because I know the difference between winners and losers and, in this issue, I’m going to put the choice right dead square in your face. I’m going to give you an extraordinarily simple set of instructions and, if you do what I say, your chances of becoming extremely prosperous are going to be magnified by a factor of at least 1,000!

But most of you are not going to follow these simple instructions. I know that already from past experience. And I even know already the reasons you’re going to give for not doing what I suggest. These are the same reasons everybody (including me) nearly always gives for not doing something which will make our lives better.

===

Gary says that the difference between winners and losers is…

“Movement! Winners go out and get going before they know all the answers or even most of the answers. Losers will study a problem endlessly to make sure they don’t do anything ‘rash.'”

Fortunately, this came early in my marketing education. As a result, I decided to start blindly doing what I’m told to do, by people who I have decided to trust, like the names on my Mt. Rushmore above.

The results have been inevitably good. I only wish I’d have done it all sooner (like with Ben’s advice about daily emails) and more thoroughly (like with Dan’s stance on “infotainment”).

So now you know my Mt. Rushmore. And now for my offer:

Yesterday, I offered a guide I’ve put together, “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6.” It’s a series of posts I’ve written in my Daily Email House community about the evergreen strategies that have grown my list over the years.

You can get this guide as a free bonus in case you join my Daily Email Habit service by tomorrow, Saturday, at 12 midnight PST.

And in case you’re wondering why you might want to join my Daily Email Habit service:

I’ll help you do infotainment in a purposeful and effective way, as Dan Kennedy does…

I’ll help you start and stick with writing daily emails, so you can become a leader in your field, as Ben Settle promises…

I’ll help you dig up inherently interesting things to write about, so you don’t have to rely on any extraordinary word magic, as I’ve learned to do from Gary Bencivenga…

I’ll help you actually take action and move, instead of continuing to read, and plan, and put things off, as Gary Halbert warned against.

Again, the deadline to join Daily Email Habit and get “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6” as a free bonus, is tomorrow, Saturday, at 12 midnight.

Here’s the link:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

Grow your list with relevant people who will eventually buy from you

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I have a special, very time-limited offer for you today. But first, let me give you the background:

Last week, in my Daily Email House community, I ran a “JV Outreach Challenge.”

Basically, the goal was to open up a conversation with somebody who could turn into a potential business partner, however light and temporary.

As part of this, I asked House members to think about their own problems/wants/frustrations.

Not everybody shared publicly. But some did.

Among all the different problems/wants/frustrations, there was one common thread in everyone’s lists, always near the top. That was some variant of:

“Not enough subscribers/list is not growing fast enough/not enough of the right prospects who actually have money to spend”

… ie, the old problem of high-quality list building.

Of course, this problem came up with people who are just starting out. But it also came up even with people who are established and successful, and who already have lists of thousands of subscribers.

A fact that won’t shock you is that I’m no expert in list building.

In fact, I have been very casual about building my own list.

Like I’ve written before, I spent the first couple years of this newsletter writing to fewer than 100 people.

These days, my list remains small by industry standards, though it’s much bigger than it was. It’s also big enough that I can make a 6-figure income from it. I’ve also made a public and definite choice not to focus on list growth, but rather on list profitability.

All that said, I have learned a few things about list growth over the years. And ever since I started Daily Email House, I have been writing a series of posts about 6 techniques that have actually grown my list.

I jokingly called these techniques, “Magic List-Growing Secrets That Big Email Doesn’t Want You To Know.”

That’s because they are no secrets at all. They’re not hacks. They’re not something that is working today because of a glitch on TikTok and will be gone tomorrow.

They’re certainly not something that worked just for me because I was the first to exploit it, and with each subsequent person who tries it after, the results turn more meager and meager.

Instead, these 6 techniques of list growth have worked for me, and will work for anyone else, if you only apply them consistently.

In fact, there’s a good chance they will work better and faster for you than they did for me.

That’s because, when I wrote up these 6 techniques, I didn’t just list them.

For each one, I also included my own case study, along with a few key takeaways based on my experience, so you can get results more quickly and consistently than I did, since you can learn from my mistakes and successes.

So here’s the special time-limited offer I’m making you:

I have put together a guide, which I’m calling “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6.”

I guess I could try to sell this guide for a million dollars a copy. I doubt anybody would buy at that price.

I believe I could sell it for $500 dollars, particularly if I delivered it on a live call or two. I can imagine I might get a few people to take me up on that.

I could certainly sell this guide for $100, as it is now, a shiny and platform-independent PDF of 27 pages (single-column). I bet I could get a good number of people to take me up on that.

But instead, I am making this guide free, as a time-limited bonus for my Daily Email Habit service.

A month of Daily Email Habit puzzles currently costs $30.

I figure $30 is a no-brainer price for 6 proven list growth ideas, which can shave months or possibly years off your climb up the list-growth mountain, so you can get to a place where you have a basic number of good customers and clients on your list.

Once you get to this basic number, it gives you room to decide what you want to do — focus more on list growth, like a lot of people, or like me, on building a business that suits you.

So that’s what you get for $30. Plus, of course, you get a month’s worth of daily email puzzles via Daily Email Habit, so you actually have a chance to convert the people on your email list into long-term customers or clients.

If you’re writing emails already, Daily Email habit can help you write them more consistently, and faster. Even one extra email you send over the next month can easily be worth 10x the $30 of the Daily Email Habit subscription.

And if you’re not writing daily emails already, then this might be your moment.

If you have been faced with the chicken-and-omelette problem of “Why should I write if I have nobody reading?” and “Why should anybody read since I never write?” then consider what would need to happen for you to change what you’re doing.

Maybe you’ll find it’s the opportunity I’m offering today.

As with all opportunities, this one won’t be around long.

I’m making this free bonus offer available only until this Saturday, February 22, at 12pm midnight PST.

Sign up for Daily Email Habit before then, and I’ll send you a copy of “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6.” (I’ll be as quick about it as I can be, but I’ll be sending it out personally and one-by-one, so bear with me.)

If you would like to get started now, and not allow this opportunity to pass you by:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

PS. If you’re signed up for Daily Email Habit but you’re not in Daily Email House, this free bonus offer applies to you as well. So does the deadline.

In other words, write me an email before Saturday at 12 midnight PST to say you want “What’s Grown My List Over The Years, Vol. 1-6,” and I’ll send it to you. Don’t write me after that, because I will have closed the offer, and I am strict with deadlines.

Where it’s at: Two narrow columns and a PDF

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One of the rare daily email newsletters I read more often than not is by Jason Leister.

Jason used to be a direct response copywriter. He used to write about getting and managing copywriting clients. He’s since moved into stranger waters, where he talks about raising his 10 kids, living off the grid, “unplugging from the matrix,” and manifesting your desires.

All right up my alley, minus the 10 kids.

But let’s talk turkey:

Each Monday, Jason sends an email called Monday Hotsheet. It’s a bunch of curated resources — interesting articles, tech, videos that Jason has come across.

That’s pretty normal.

What was weird is that Jason used to send the Monday Hotsheet as a PDF that he’d link to in his email. Even weirder, the PDF was formatted in two columns, like some insurance brochure.

I liked to read through Jason’s Monday Hotsheet but I always chuckled at the experience. Who does PDFs any more? And in two columns like this?

Well, I guess I manifested something myself, and I should have been more careful about what I asked for.

Because Jason for some reason recently switched Monday Hotsheet to be simply delivered in his daily email, and in just one measly column.

I found myself disappointed. From one week to the next, Jason’s Monday Hotsheet looked cheaper, much less valuable and interesting.

Suddenly, I asked myself if I need another weekly email the curates useful and interesting resources online? I feel like everybody from Arnold Schwarzenegger on down has one of those. I ain’t got time for all these curated valuable resources.

A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos once got a tin pot and a wooden spoon. He then started banging on the tin pot with the wooden spoon while jumping up and down on his couch and chanting, “Format beats copy! Format beats copy!”

(Fine. The part with the wooden spoon and the tin pot I made up. But all the rest of that story is true, except the jumping up and down.)

Parris was specifically talking about the format of sales copy.

Once upon a time, you could take a proven sales letter, format it to look like a magazine or an article or a newsletter issue (the print kind), and you might get a 2.5x bump in response. Format beats copy: Ain’t no copy in the universe that’s gonna get you that kind of a bounce, not when you already have top copywriters working for you.

This holds just as well for info products, whether you give ’em away or charge thousands of dollars for them.

Yes, people should only want the truth, and nothing but the truth. Yes, it shouldn’t matter whether you deliver the truth on a 3×5 index card, or in a 3-ring binder, or a never-to-be-repeated secret performance in an amphitheater in the middle of some remote forest.

It shouldn’t matter, but it does matter.

So my point for you today is, think about the format in which you will deliver your truth.

And if you’ve already delivered your truth, and nobody much cared, or they cared at first and then they dropped off… then think about format again.

Rather than coming up with a new message, you might be able to keep the message and simply deliver it as a 2-column PDF, or whatever else feels unique and different and valuable in your industry.

And sometimes, simple word choice is enough to change the format. Or at least be a major part of it.

Take for example my Daily Email Habit service. At bottom, it’s delivered as a daily email. I could have simply said, “Hey, would you like to sign up for a new set of daily emails, and pay me $30 a month for the privilege?”

Maybe some forward-thinking people would have taken me up on this. But i don’t think it would have worked nearly as well as calling Daily Email Habit a service, which happens to be delivered by email, for your convenience.

Speaking of Daily Email Habit, if you’d like to find out more about this valuable service, or even try it out yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The Bejako starter pack

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You might be familiar with the concept of a starter pack. It’s a kind of meme format.

In a starter pack, people put together a few images or phrases or whatever, which are representative of something — a gym bro, a local Mexican restaurant, a 1980s heavy metal video.

New Yorker magazine does its own variant, where it asks people they profile to create a starter pack for themselves, consisting of a movie, a TV show, a book, and an album, which are somehow representative.

I had to try it. So here goes:

Bejako starter pack ingredient #1 (movie): The Princess Bride

If you’ve been a reader of this newsletter for a while, this should be no surprise.

My optin page literally says:

“I write a daily email newsletter about direct marketing, copywriting, and my love for the books and screenplays of William Goldman.”

Well, Goldman wrote the screenplay for The Princess Bride, based on his book of the same title.

(He also wrote the famous line, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” On my website, that morphed into, “Hello. My name is John Bejakovic. You found my website. Prepare to decide.”)

The fact is, I saw The Princess Bride for the first time when I was 11. It was the perfect mix of adventure, romance, and self-aware humor for 11-year-old Bejako.

I guess I’ve never really matured past 11.

The only thing that’s changed for me over the years, as I’ve continued to re-watch this movie, is that I appreciate how it doesn’t talk down or moralize to you.

“Life is pain,” is the core message of the story. In the end, the bad guy goes free. And the main character, Westley, dies. Though ok, miracles do sometimes happen, as do happy endings.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #2 (TV show): Twin Peaks

David Lynch, who made Twin Peaks, died a couple weeks ago. There aren’t many celebrities whose deaths I care about… but I cared about Lynch. He was hinting there might be a season 4 of Twin Peaks, and now it will never happen.

Season 2 of Twin Peaks, which came out in 1990, was largely atrocious.

Season 3 of Twin Peaks, which came out 25+ years later in 2017, was surprisingly good.

But the best is still the original season 1, which Lynch directed and co-wrote.

It has the usual Lynch blend of mystery, sex, horror, weirdness, and quaintness. Plus beautiful shots of wind blowing through the trees.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #3 (book): Dune

I had the most trouble choosing a book for my starter pack.

That’s because, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I don’t particularly enjoy reading, even though I’ve read a lot my whole life.

I also wasn’t sure how to choose a book here. A book that influenced me? Or that I enjoyed reading? Or that I thought was particularly well written?

I ended up going with enjoyment, and picked Frank Herbert’s Dune.

I first read Dune when I was 20, and then a couple more times since.

The story is familiar enough after all the TV shows and movies made based on it in recent years.

I guess what I like in it, beyond the familiar but rousing story of the arrival of “The One,” are the elements of religion… the formation of legend… plus simply the promise of a drug you can take, which makes you so smart you can literally predict the future by seeing all possible outcomes in parallel.

Bejako starter pack ingredient #4 (album): Station To Station by David Bowie

I like a lot of Bowie albums. This one is my favorite. I like the style, sound, strangeness of it, all mostly fueled by cocaine and paranoia.

By the way, coked-up Bowie from this period has inspired the central tenet of this newsletter. In an interview with Playboy, Bowie said:

“Nothing matters except whatever it is I’m doing at the moment. I can’t keep track of everything I say. I don’t give a shit. I can’t even remember how much I believe and how much I don’t believe. The point is to grow into the person you grow into. I haven’t a clue where I’m gonna be in a year.”

Maybe in a year, I’ll have to do another, different starter pack.

For now, this one will give you more insight into me than most people who know me in person have.

As you can probably guess, today’s email was based on the Daily Email Habit “puzzle” I sent out today.

Sometimes it’s good to write emails like this, to surprise people, and to simply let them a bit into your own world.

But other times, entirely different emails are called for. And that’s what I make sure Daily Email Habit puzzles do, day in and day out.

If you’d like to get started with your own daily email habit, starting with tomorrow’s puzzle, which is entirely different and much more difficult to guess at than today’s, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The legend of my upstairs neighbor

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One of my upstairs neighbors is a middle-aged, rather large golden retriever, whose name I’ve never learned.

I hear him frequently trundling across the apartment above mine, his unmanicured golden retriever claws clack-clacking on the hardwood floor.

He he as a passion for barking, often late at night, as I’m falling asleep (warding off robbers who might have climbed up to the 10th floor), or early in the morning, before I’ve really woken up (I guess to announce he is awake and ready to pee).

One time I was sitting on my balcony when a gigantic, disgusting clump of yellow golden retriever hair wafted down from the balcony above and landed at my feet.

For a few moments, I sat there staring at it, considering what to do. Eventually I just decided to just pick it up and throw it in the trash, and never speak of it again (until now).

I’ve run into this golden retriever several times in the elevator. He’s always completely ignored me. He’s never bothered to sniff my hand. There was not the slightest tail waggle. He never even looked up at me — the elevator doors were more interesting.

All that’s to say, my entire experience with this golden retriever has been negative. At no point has this dog ever done anything nice for me or towards me.

And yet, I still have sympathy for this stupid dog, and I keep hoping I’ll run into him whenever I take the elevator.

In part, this is because I’m a sucker for dogs. But in bigger part, it’s that golden retrievers have such a reputation about them — playful, loving, comfortable with and interested in all strangers.

I bring all this up because a couple days ago, I was listening to Dan Kennedy’s Influential Writing seminar.

One of the things that Dan talked about was legend.

He gave the examples of Wyatt Earp (who prolly had little skill with a gun, but developed a reputation as the fastest gun in the West) and Harry Houdini (who created such mystique around his acts that grizzled ex-president Teddy Roosevelt once asked Houdini if the stage illusions were real magic).

The value of such a legend, says Dan, is that it precedes you. Once it’s there, it doesn’t matter much what you do or don’t do. People will still perceive you and think of you through the prism of that legend.

So if you want things to get easier for you in the future, before you even arrive to where you’re going, it makes sense to think about legend, one that precedes you like the smell of galleys preceded them.

And now, I have to go. I have a flight in a couple hours, and I still have to pack and get to the airport.

On my way to the airport, I’ll take the elevator to get to the lobby of my building… and I’m hoping against hope I’ll run into the golden retriever, even though he’s never done anything for me, and maybe this time I’ll get to pet him.

In entirely related news, if you’d like my help starting and sticking with writing daily emails like this one, which get people reading and buying today, and spreading your legend tomorrow, then take a look here:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

The largest copywriter in the Netherlands gives me his endorsement

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Comes a message from Robin Timmers, whose website bills him as the “grootste copywriter van Nederland.”

Google informs me that, translated from Dutch, this works out to “the largest copywriter in the Netherlands.”

I guess a more elegant translation might be, “the greatest copywriter in the Netherlands.” Though as Robin told me, the tagline is meant to be ambiguous, since he stands over 2 meters tall.

Anyways, Robin writes:

===

Hey John,

Just finished MVE and am now halfway with SME.

Man … MVE is so simple, so easy-ish to implement, but such a strong concept and format.

Awesome course, awesome idea.

Same for SME.

Really simple, really powerful and easy to implement, and model with your own ideas.

I’m very happy with both courses, and can’t wait to start with Copy Riddles.

===

In case you don’t know… MVE is my course Most Valuable Email. SME is my course Simple Money Emails.

You might not know that because I haven’t promoted either course in a few months, ever since I started selling my Daily Email Habit service.

I find my enthusiasm for promoting those courses has dipped.

In part, it’s because Daily Email Habit is not just a daily prompt to write an email… but a distillation of the best ideas in both SME and MVE, as well as ideas I don’t have in either of those courses, particularly around building up status and authority.

And Daily Email Habit presents all this to you as an easy and manageable drip-drip of information, in your inbox, every day… rather than as a course, one which you may go through once or maybe not even once, which then sits behind some forgotten login or in some folder you never check.

But much more important:

Unlike those two course of mine — or any other courses, by me or anybody else — Daily Email Habit is really built around the idea of daily, practical, real-world implementation, rather than simply passive consumption of information.

Because even things that are easy-ish to implement, like Robin says the MVE trick is, tend not to get implemented, not without a lot of stubborn nudging and reminders from the outside.

That’s what Daily Email Habit is for. If you’d like to find out more about this “grootste e-mailservice”:

https://bejakovic.com/deh