How not to forget what matters and even put it to use

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I’m in Bologna this week, sitting around parks, drinking Aperols, eating mortadella sandwiches.

I know. I know. Bear with in my time of trouble.

In the mornings, before this intense laying about begins, I also do a bit of work, which includes opening my inbox and reading 2-3 of the dozens of emails that have piled up over night.

That’s how yesterday I came across an email by a guy named Henrik Karlsson, who wrote on Substack about “How not to forget what matters.”

I want to share Karlsson’s answer with you today, because it’s kind of what everything is about.

Says Karlsson, reading is not enough to make a change that you want to make in your life.

Neither is making a resolution to do so.

Instead, it takes habitual practice and revisiting and resetting to the direction you want to go in.

But how to do that rather than letting it slip away? That’s where Karlsson introduces an interesting practice that dates back a couple thousand years:

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During the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, there spread a practice known as hypomnēmata, a type of notetaking system, used as a tool for meditation, in which the writer would store quotes from books they had read. Each day, often in the morning, the notetaker would open their notebook and look for a passage relevant to something they were struggling with, and then they would meditate on that—unpacking it, making the idea top of mind, ensuring it was alive in them.

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I never before heard about hypomnēmata, but I wrote it down in my own notetaking system, which I have been keeping for years now, with the exact same goal, of not forgetting what matters.

I’ve since built an entire journaling and notetaking system around it, so I don’t just pile up notes, but actually come back to them, and make some use of them instead of just meditating on them.

This system has served me very well over the years, and has saved me hundreds of hours of time I would have wasted otherwise… made me hundreds of thousands of dollars I wouldn’t have made otherwise… and has simply turned me into a healthier, wealthier, wiser Bejako than I might have been otherwise.

I eventually packed up everything I have learned about notetaking and journaling and getting value out of notes into a course I called Insight Exposed. It’s not a course I sell regularly, but earlier this year, Maliha Mannan of The Side Blogger promoted Insight Exposed to her list. In an email with the subject line, “If you buy only one course this year,” Maliha wrote:

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This is the course (called Insight Exposed) in which John literally lays out the secret behind his creative genius. It’s a course on how his writing brain works.

How does he collect ideas? Which ideas does he think are worth collecting? How does he retrieve those ideas when he is writing? How does he connect multiple, seemingly random, ideas to create something new every time he sits down to write an email? And how does he make them so damn persuasive that even complete strangers are moved to give him their attention… and money?

That’s what the course is about: the persuasive writing brain-map of one of the most persuasive writers I know.

A disclaimer is necessary here… See, it is a dense course… as expected of such a course. And I recommend that you take your time going through it. Take notes, and then go through it again (I myself have gone through it thrice in the last few weeks).

But it’s worth the time and effort because I don’t know of many people who are as effectively convincing with their words as John is, and seeing how his brain works will give you ways to be more effective in your own thinking, idea collecting, and writing.

To be clear… this is NOT a how-to-be-a-good-copywriter course.

This is literally a course on how John cultivates his own ideas and creativity.

And as a fellow writer and email marketer, I will tell you now, I have never gone through a course quite like this one and gotten so much out of it. That includes John’s other courses, and all of John’s courses are pretty effing fantastic already.

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Maliha recommends taking your time with Insight Exposed. I will make one further recommendation, or rather two.

This course won’t do you any good unless you actually put it into practice. Not only collecting notes, but also connecting them, revisiting them, and ideally, turning them into some kind of content of your own. Such as for example, writing your own daily emails.

Which brings me to my Hogwarts of Influence event. It ends tomorrow at 12 midnight PST. It brings together a bunch of my offers at 3 different tiers, designed to turn you into a persuasion wizard of greater and greater power.

At the Dumbledore tier, you can get your hands on Insight Exposed, in all its dense glory, which I don’t normally sell.

At the Dumbledore tier, you can also get two years of Daily Email Habit, which is my service to help you turn your notes and ideas and experiences into emails that make you money and save you time on sales calls and make you smarter and happier as a person.

There’s a lot inside Hogwarts of Influence. That’s my fault.

It’s also why this offer ends tomorrow.

If you want to take advantage of the most generous offer I will make this year, you will have to wade through all the many things I am bundling inside.

For the full info, before the clock runs out:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

Dumbledore question

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For the past week, I have been promoting Hogwarts of Influence, which is what I’m calling three increasingly large bundles of my offers, at fantastic prices with fabulous terms, meant to turn you into a persuasion wizard of greater and greater power.

Inevitably, I’ve gotten questions along the way.

In the interest of making more sales and maybe setting your mind at ease, let me answer some publicly. A long-time reader and customer writes:

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I want to grab the Dumbledore Level for the Core Promise replay please.

One thing I can’t to confirm first: I’m already a DEH subscriber at $30/m. I joined before you raised the price. Will my existing subscription stay at that rate even after I’ve completed the 2 free years?

Just want to make sure I’m not losing the price I’m on.

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Yes. If you are currently subscribed to Daily Email Habit at less than the current price of $50/month, you will get that same price when the free time from the various Hogwarts levels expires (2/6/24 months at the Hermione/Snape/Dumbledore levels, respectively).

Moving on. A completely new reader who has never bought anything from me writes:

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A few questions on the replay/sales page, specifically the Hermione level:

1– I’m not clear on what a “Copy Riddles Round” actually is. Is this ONE discursive email, a SEQUENCE of such helpful email template/prompts, a MONTH’s worth of such email contents, or what exactly? I’m new to your world and haven’t really learned about this idea of riddles yet, though I’m intrigued.

2– For the “Daily Email Fastlane” I assume this is a digital product like a mini-course with a video or two? At least there must be example emails from the 3 clients of yours? How many example emails? Sounds awesome, but again it’s hard to assess value if you don’t quite know the scope of what you’re getting.

3– And the 2 months of DEH … are those delivered as distinct one-month sets of 30 emails, for example? Or would I be added to the service on a given day and then receive the “next” 60 days? Is there always a specific “theme” to each month? Is there somewhere on your website where I can actually see one or two daily examples perhaps?

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Much like a 2-month old infant, who thinks the entire world is caused and controlled by himself, I forget that there are people on my list who haven’t heard me describe my offers dozens of times, and who aren’t as familiar with them as I am.

As for Copy Riddles and Daily Email Habit, I actually have sales pages that describe what these offers are in gruesome detail, including a wall of glowing testimonials for each offer. You can find them here:

Copy Riddles – https://bejakovic.com/cr​

Daily Email Habit – https://bejakovic.com/deh

As for the two “rounds” of Copy Riddles I’m making available inside the Hermione level, this is simply a small, self-contained segment of the full Copy Riddles program.

And as for Daily Email Fastlane, it is a recording of a paid live training that I gave a while back.

There are no emails included from the 3 ultra-successful coaching students I profile, and in fact I’ve kept them anonymous.

What I talk about is commonalities about things like 1) how they write their emails 2) which segment of their market they go after 3) the kinds of offers they make.

Finally, a second long-time reader and buyer writes in to ask:

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I just saw Copy Riddles on the Dumbledore tier bonuses, so I wanted to ask.

Is there a deadline on the offer?

Because I was saving up money to buy Copy Riddles, to help level up my hook game for creative strategy work.

Please let me know if possible.

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Of course there is a deadline. Nothing and I mean NOTHING sells like a timed deadline.

I just haven’t announced the deadline yet, but I am announcing it now.

This Hogwarts of Influence offer, including the giant bundle, favorable price, and magical payment terms, is disappearing this Wednesday, June 24, at 12 midnight PST.

I’m not sure if my answers to the reader questions above clarified this offer or not.

In either case, you can find the full details of what’s on sale, and for how much, at the following link, though not for much longer:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw

How one copywriter gets hired without making explicit offers

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It’s 8:52am as I write this, and I’m sitting on the terrace of my AirBnb in Bologna, where I arrived just last night.

Crickets are chirping in nearby trees, swallows are circling overhead, and the sun is rising in the cloudless sky.

It’s very pleasant on the terrace at the moment, though that will change soon. It’s supposed to get up to 36 degrees today, or 97 if you do Fahrenheit.

I’m trying to take advantage of the bit of day before the city turns into a furnace, so let me just share with you a reader experience with client-getting.

A while back, in my Daily Email House group, long-time reader Carlo Gargiulo, who works as a senior copywriter at Metodo Merenda, wrote about how he had moved his newsletter to Substack. I asked Carlo why he did that and how it went. He replied:

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I also chose Substack because I want to write purely informative emails. They’re actual articles designed to help readers apply what I’ve taught them.

At the core of these articles (emails) are always the principles you shared with me in Most Valuable Email.

Readers love learning and putting into practice tips to improve offers, copy, etc.

And the interesting thing is that—without making explicit offers—I receive emails from entrepreneurs who want to hire me to write emails, Facebook ads, and landing pages.

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Is it the magic of Most Valuable Email that gets entrepreneurs reaching out to hire Carlo without him even offering?

Is it the magic of Substack?

Is it some combination of the two?

I don’t know.

But if you are looking to get copywriting clients, and if you don’t like the dynamic of you pitching yourself, and the world ignoring you, then hearken to what Carlo says. It’s worked for him, and it might work for you, if you only put it to use.

Substack as far as I know is free.

Most Valuable Email I know for sure is not free.

But at the moment, you can effectively get Most Valuable Email for free, as part of my Hogwarts of Influence event.

I’m bundling together a bunch of my offers, at various levels of craziness, meant to turn you into a persuasion wizard of greater and greater power.

Most Valuable Email is available at the “Snape” and “Dumbledore” levels, along with so many other bonuses to make any of the individual items effectively free.

If you’d like to find out more before this offer vanishes in a puff of magical smoke:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

How to pitch clients who don’t have the problem you solve

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Yesterday, I wrote about a cold email I got with the sneaky subject line, “Intro – John / Matt.”

But what about the body of that email? What was the guy pitching?

The email ran as following:

1. He was writing to me specifically because I have a Skool group

2. Skool owners who sell memberships to their Skool groups via webinars get low conversions

3. The way to solve this problem is by making an AI clone of myself that I can bundle into my webinar offer

If you just shook your head in confusion, let me highlight the good and the bad of this pitch, which might be useful to you in your own client- and customer-getting efforts:

The GOOD:

1. The dude didn’t try to pitch me his AI clone directly, based on its own merits, social proof, technology etc. Frankly, I wouldn’t have cared one bit about any of that.

2. Instead, he picked a problem that people with paid Skool communities might have (it’s hard to get people to sign up), and he tied in his solution to that.

The BAD:

1. I don’t have a paid Skool community (both my groups are free), I don’t have conversion problems, and I don’t run a webinar.

2. If I did have a paid community and did have problems getting people into it, an AI clone of me would sounds as good of a solution as shipping new members a free life-sized cardboard cutout with my smiling mug on it

All that’s to say, if you’re trying to get new clients or customers, if you’re trying to sell your existing products or services, do the stuff in the “GOOD” above.

Don’t do the stuff in the “BAD.”

What to do instead?

Well, honest research. Detailed research. Research into what actual people in your market actually do, instead of what they say they do, or what you think they do.

This is something I’ve covered in detail inside a training I’ve called Heart of Hearts.

It’s about doing research on your market — ideally, your own audience — to find out 1) what actual problems they have and 2) what solution of yours they would pay for to solve that problem.

And no, it’s not something you can automate to Claude or ChatGPT, because it doesn’t involve silently scouring forums.

I sold Heart of Hearts for $297 when I first released it, back in 2024. I haven’t made it available since. I am making it available now, as part of my “Hogwarts of Influence” event, specifically in the “Snape” and Dumbledore” tiers. For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

Intro – You / Me

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A few days ago, I got an email with the subject line:

“Intro – John / Matt”

I’ve gotten emails like this before, and I always open them eagerly. They normally come from one person, who I know, and introduce me to a second person, who I don’t know.

Not so in this case.

This email was from a guy named Matthias, who I don’t know, introducing me to himself (Matthias aka Matt), who I still don’t know.

That was a little subject line trick I wanted to share with you.

It reminded me of how Gary Bencivenga used to get get a great “endorsement” for his offer by having the offer owner say something about his own product, and then having that formatted like a testimonial.

I don’t know if I would use this “Intro You / Me” trick myself, but there’s no doubt it put me into a different, more favorable state of mind, at least right when opening the email, than I would have been in otherwise.

The bigger point is is that it matters immensely how you first position yourself when you try to open up 1-1 conversations with people.

One option is the above approach, to position yourself as a helpful and disinterested bystander, connecting the person you are reaching out to with a valuable new contact.

That’s not bad, but it’s not great either.

What’s much better is to adopt the positioning I talked about during a live workshop I put on a few years ago, called Water Into Wine.

On that workshop, I talked about positioning I had used to open up conversations (and eventually do deals) with business owners who wouldn’t have even opened my email had I come in presenting myself as a copywriter or a service provider.

I charged $197 for Water into Wine when I ran it. I haven’t made it available since. I am making it available now, and as part of my “Hogwarts of Influence” event, specifically in the “Dumbledore” tier. For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

My biggest and most generous offer of the year

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Lesson (maybe) learned:

A few months ago, I ran an auction for the “behind the scenes” details of auctions I have and will be running.

As a bonus to that auction, I buried the most attractive part of the offer, which was the opportunity to ride shotgun with me on a future auction, and split the profits.

The low interest that auction got showed me the error of my ways. Or so you might expect…

… because maybe I’m making the same mistake again.

Yesterday, I launched a promotion for which I’m bundling my most attractive offers, at the most attractive terms I am going to make in 2026 and maybe through 3036.

But I launched this promo, as I often do, spur of the moment. And I made my most attractive offers, at the most attractive terms, available as free bonuses to a small core offer.

I’m currently sitting at the Barcelona airport, waiting for my delayed flight to London.

If the delay keeps getting worse, I’ll revamp the offer page to highlight what this offer is really about.

But whether or not I do that:

If you’ve ever been tempted to try out my Daily Email Habit service… if you’ve been curious to the point of irritation about what the Most Valuable Email trick is that I keep teasing… or if you have told yourself that one day you will invest in my Copy Riddles program, then you won’t get a better opportunity than I’m offering now.

For more details:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

Announcing: PWYW recording of last night’s Core Promise workshop

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Last night, I hosted the inimitable, unrepeatable, wonderful Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call.

To start, I had a bit of a presentation where I broke down, as economically as I could, the two components of a good promise, and why they are often at odds with each other.

That was all right because I got to use, as examples, the 5-Oscar-winning thriller Silence of the Lambs and the Silvester Stallone flop, Stop or My Mom Will Shoot.

Then came the fun part, where I ran through a buncha audience member questions, including:

#1. What core promise a copywriter should make when selling his or her services (hint: don’t sell your services)

#2. How to research what promises to make in an entirely unfamiliar professional industry where you know nobody (no, my answer was not “go on Reddit”)

#3. How to make your promise unique if you cannot (or refuse to) guarantee specific performance outcomes like “we will 3x your LTV”

#4. How to structure a core promise for a paid community

So altogether, a fine evening. And then, once I finished, I checked my email. I saw a message from one of my more dedicated readers, who had registered for yesterday’s call. She just wrote:

“I slept through big promise call…”

Unfortunately, the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on. Yesterday’s workshop was live, and is over.

But thanks the wonders of space-age technology, there is a recording. As I announced a couple days ago, I am only making this recording available as a paid offer.

How paid?

Well, you can choose three levels at which to pay for this recording:

1. The Hermione Granger Level

2. The Severus Snape Level

3. The Albus Dumbledore Level

Each level comes with its own set of magical and mystical bonuses, meant to turn you into a persuasion wizard of greater and greater power. If you’d like to see the levels, and what’s on offer:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

Tiny mechanisms for huge offers

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I’m busy preparing for tonight’s Core Promise Workshop and A&Q call, so I will just share with you something interesting I read a few days ago, in an email by copywriter Mike Samuels.

Mike used to the the head copywriter at Clients on Demand, a big company that works with coaches to get them lients, I mean, clients.

Part of Mike’s job was to advise coaches on copy and offers.

You learn a lot by having to coach hundreds of people, all of whom are making one of three or four basic promises (“get rich, “get thin,” “get laid”), and all of whom are trying to compete with thousands of other people making the same promise.

How do you stand out? How do you say something different? How do you persuade people to go with you and not with one of the thousands of others? Says Mike:

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The offers that worked best were the ones when we really dove into the mechanism to find something unique.

Often, it wouldn’t be the main part of the program.

It might have been something small the coach did.

In a fitness offer, maybe it was actually a mindset practice that we focused on.

For a dating coach, it could have been a confidence ritual that became the mechanism.

In the business coaching space, we might’ve dropped all talk of funnels, social media and ads, and instead spoke to the coach’s background in construction, and how they built their business methodologies around that.

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I have seen smart marketers use “tiny mechanisms” before, meaning they only refer to a tiny part of the offer, in order to sell hugely successful offers.

I have snuck the same “tiny mechanism” idea into some of my own stuff as well.

But I’ve never heard somebody call it out until Mike did. I wanted to pass it on to you, so you can use it in your own marketing, positioning, and offers.

Of course, f you want to stand out with a generic, familiar promise, a tiny mechanism is not the only way to do that.

There are dozens of techniques to do so, which might be more or less appropriate for your specific case.

Oh, if only somebody would catalogue all these techniques?

And then present them in a way that gets you practicing them?

So as to stimulate your thinking about how you promote your own offers?

Yes, I am leading you on. Yes, this is exactly what my Copy Riddles program is about.

Copy Riddles is positioned around a tiny mechanism, the fact that I organized the lessons as riddles, to get you thinking and practicing real copywriting rather than just skimming the content.

In case you would like to create a huge offer, and present it effectively, Copy Riddles can help you do that. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Gary Bencivenga’s ultra secret A-list offer tactic

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Today I want to share with you an ultra secret A-list tactic I spotted legendary copywriter Gary Bencivenga using.

This tactic is not about copy. It’s in the offer.

I found it many years ago, back when I was learning copywriting by hand-copying ads. I spotted the following:

Gary once ran an ad to sell report A.

He also offered a free bonus, report B, which he said was “selling nationally” for the same price that report A was selling for.

Ok, so far, so standard.

But because I’m a bit of a direct response sleuth, I found that Gary was also running a second ad.

This second ad sold report B.

In that ad, Gary also offered a free bonus, report A, which he said was “selling nationally” for the same price that report B was selling for.

With this one tactic, Gary doubled his front-end offers. Plus, his bonuses were perceived as more valuable because he could say “selling nationally for $19.99” rather than “valued at $19.99, by my mother.”

So the offer tactic is to do like Gary, and sell your free bonuses in addition to your main front-end offer. It will force you to make a better, more attractive bonus, which will have higher perceived value than a bonus that you never officially sold. Plus you might actually make sales and get more customers.

“YAAAAWN,” I hear you say. “Bejako, you might not realize this, but I am an extremely loyal reader of your newsletter. That’s how I know that you already shared this ‘ultra secret A-list tactic’… let me check my notes… aha, yes, you shared it back on February 21, 2021. Don’t you have anything NEW for me today?”

Fine. I do have a NEW corollary to Gary Bencivenga’s ultra secret A-list offer tactic.

It is this:

If you do ever offer free stuff, for whatever reason, then sell it afterwards.

What? Yes. That’s it. It’s pretty basic, but powerful. The principles and reasons why are the same. I just want to highlight that:

1. Just because you offered something for free once, that doesn’t mean you cannot sell it later.

2. You probably have a ton of stuff that you’ve given away for free in the past, and are dismissing the real value of that.

Anyways, that’s my NEW marketing tip for today. It’s a marketing tip I myself am going to apply. Because tomorrow, I am putting on a FREE Core Promise Workshop and Q&A Call.

Free Free Free…

… if you decide to be there live tomorrow.

Not so free immediately afterwards, for all the reasons I listed above.

If you need a reminder of what this is all about, here are the details:

Tomorrow, Tuesday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I will hold a Core Promise Workshop and Q&A call.

It’s free & you can ​Register Here​.

I’ll share the most important parts of:

* What makes a good promise

* The importance of being clear over clever

* Choosing a promise that sounds credible

And we’ll end with a Q&A session to answer your Core Promise questions.

Don’t forget to register so I can send you the details.

See you there.

Why yes, I am entirely untrustworthy!

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There’s a well-known Internet marketer who recently ran a webinar on an intriguing topic.

Normally I don’t sign up for webinars. Who’s got time or patience to be teased and massaged into a sale for two and a half hours? But the topic of this webinar sucked me in.

I signed up. Of course, I still didn’t attend. And then, I got an email from this marketer.

Subject line: “a REPLAY??”

Preview text: “ok ok… I’ll cave this time. Replay is up for 48 hours.”

The body of the email talked all about how this marketer doesn’t normally do replays for webinars because people never watch them, and because attendance is higher if you don’t offer them.

And yet this time, the email said, he’s making an exception. Why? No one knows. The email didn’t say anything about that.

I recently ran a presentation I called Manna for Marketers, in which I covered how I consciously apply the commandments in my 10 Commandments of Con Men etc. book in everyday tasks like these emails and the offers that I make.

The example I gave for how I used Commandment II, about overcoming objections that my readers are likely to have, was all of 6 words, buried inside of a daily email.

I admitted inside that Manna for Marketers training that 6 words in the middle of an email might seem like a trivially small use of a persuasion idea.

But trust takes a long time to build up.

It can vanish quickly with one big blunder, or a little less quickly, with a few off-smells that signal that something isn’t right here.

Those off-smells can be implicit, like glossing over an objection or question your reader is likely to have…

… or they can be explicit, like what that well-known Internet marketer did in his emails.

“I never do this! But I’ll cave this time! Just this once! Trust me!”

The sad thing is, it’s so easy to avoid this.

Of course, the strategic way is simply to stick to your principles.

“I don’t offer webinar replays because I believe they are worthless. And so I won’t offer one for this webinar either.”

But if you really must go against principle, there’s a tactic for how to do it in a way that doesn’t tank your trust with your audience.

That’s something I cover in Commandment V of my 10 commandments book. If you still haven’t read that:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments