How to create a conversation when people just reply “yes”

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Today, I had an exchange with a coaching client who I’d advised to send out some handraiser emails to his list.

(Handraiser email = email that invites people to reply with a “yes” if they are interested in learning more, or if they fit a certain profile.)

My dude sent out his handraiser email. He got a bunch of replies that said “yes.” He followed up with those people but then, like a pigeon with two broken wings, response fell off a cliff. Almost nobody replied.

My dude wrote me to say:

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What I’m coming up against is a sense that I really don’t know how to create a conversation with next-to-no interest from the other person. If the other person gives almost nothing in the form of effort or interest (which fits when I ask them a yes/no question) I’m struggling to manufacture that interest without being manipulative.

===

There’s a “glib” and a “responsible” way of dealing with this problem.

The “glib” way is a marketing and business practice I call factoring out.

For my math nerds out there, factoring out goes back to the heady and self-conscious days of 7th-grade algebra:

If you have an expression like 2x + 2y, in algebra they teach you that you can turn that into 2(x + y). You can factor out the 2 so that your inside expression (x + y) remains blessedly free of 2.

Simple enough, right? I hope it’s simple enough to use as an analogy even for the non-math nerds.

In any case, here’s what factoring out translates to your marketing and business:

Rather than hoping that your prospects will do action X at some point down the line, you can force them to take action X as a condition for engaging with you at all.

So for example, rather than hoping for people to reply to your followup question, make answering your followup question a condition to even replying to your email in the first place.

Instead of saying, “Reply to this email and say MORE INFO NOW”… tell people, “Reply to this email and tell me a little bit about your current situation.”

In other words, the factoring out solution to the problem of creating a conversation when people just reply “yes”… is to stop having people reply with just “yes.”

It’s a super effective and practical technique that goes way beyond handraiser campaigns. But maybe it’s a little too glib for you in the present situation.

Like I said, there’s also the “responsible” way of dealing with this problem.

That’s about having a structured way of engaging people who reply with just a “yes,” and guiding them in a proven fashion from that curt reply all the way to an actual sale, even a high-ticket sale, all over email.

Is this something you want more info on?

I have a resource to point you to.

It tells you exactly what to say over 1-1 emails to get people to engage with you in a way that leads to a sale.

It’s not free or even cheap.

If that doesn’t deter you, reply to this email and tell me a bit about your situation when it comes to selling over email.

How to promote yourself with as much energy and enthusiasm as you promote other people

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I was talking to a dude today. He’s a very established, skilled, and successful copywriter who works with big clients. He also has his own personal email list and quality offers that genuinely help people.

At one point, the dude complained that, when he promotes other people’s offers, whether for clients or affiliate offers to his list, he can make his pitches for these offer amazing, incredible, stupendous.

“Why can’t I write this way about the my stuff?” he said.

It’s a legit problem, and one I’ve had in the past.

It’s not just a matter of being coy, of not wanting to brag about your own stuff.

A part of the problem is that we’re all simply too close to our own offers, and we take them for granted, or we even focus on the deficiencies, limitations, and problematic corner cases. Beyond that, there are even neurological reasons why it’s dramatically harder to promote yourself with as much energy and enthusiasm as you can muster to promote somebody else.

Well… until now.

(Get ready. I’m about to make you a pitch.)

I have a way out of this predicament, a mechanism, a “Light Bulb Mental Switch.”

It allows you to promote your own offers with the same persuasive energy that you can summon when you promote others’ offers.

It also doubles as a litmus test, a way to double-check your marketing after it’s written to make sure it passes the test. It tells you how to tweak it in order to transform it, if it doesn’t immediately pass.

This Light Bulb Mental Switch is magical, mysterious, and multifaceted.

It helps you promote your own offers the way you promote others. It also helps you promote others even more effectively than you can now.

And now, the deal:

A 24-hour disappearing bonus.

I will reveal to you this Light Bulb Mental Switch if you get my Most Valuable Email training.

Do so and you will learn my Most Valuable Email trick, which I still stand by as being most valuable, all these years after I first hit upon it, and thousands of emails later.

The Most Valuable Email trick is not stupid stories, not predictable personal reveals, and not rehashed references to Batman movies or Game of Thrones episodes.

The Most Valuable Email trick is something entirely new different, much like my Light Bulb Mental Switch.

Get Most Valuable Email, write me before tomorrow at 8:31pm CET, and ask to have the Light Bulb Mental Switch, and I will reply to you and share it with you.

(Don’t write me after the deadline. This is a 24-hour-only deal.)

24 hours from now, you can be nothing but one day older — or you can be on your way to getting rich by promoting yourself the way you really deserve. You decide.

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

My overly optimistic book-writing plans

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A few days ago, I sent an email in which I collected 10 old emails I’d written with personal stories inside. A reader replied to that to say:

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I really loved reading the story about your mystical experience and how it translated into customer insights. Honestly it was one of the best emails I’ve gotten from you all year.

I’m super curious do you have more stuff like this coming up in your emails?

Also, where are you at with writing that Insight Marketing Bible?

====

Huh? Insight Marketing Bible? I had to check the email in question to remind myself of what this could possibly be.

Turns out Insight Marketing Bible was my early title for a book I have been working on for the past 6 years, on the topic of creating insight in readers’ minds.

If you’ve been waiting with bated breath for that, don’t worry. It will come next year. I promise.

This year though, my overly optimistic plan is to write and publish a different book, The Art of Charging More. Just this morning, I sat down and restarted work on this new book by writing up v4 of outline. I really feel like this might be the one.

Point being, writing and finishing a book is a giant pain in the ass, at least if you’re someone like me and you care about doing a good job and telling people something new and valuable.

And yet I keep writing books, or trying to, and I keep justifying to myself that the long-term payoff is worth it. And no doubt that books open doors that nothing else can, plus they have a host of other knock on benefits, plus I guess some part of me enjoys the frustration.

Anyways.

Today, I would like to turn you onto a new report published by Kieran Drew, which shows you “4 steps to build your business through writing online.”

As you might know, Kieran is a former dentist turned online creator, who has built up a $500k/year business and an audience of over 250k people, and who’s done it all by writing.

Kieran boils down what he did and shows you in a straightforward way how you might do the same.

Except, just last week, I wrote an email in which I highlighted Kieran’s latest public earnings report, in which he honestly and transparently says he was actually in the red for the month of March.

(Kieran’s response to my email: “I feel assaulted by your hungover words.”)

The fact is, Kieran has been writing a book of his own and prioritizing it over other things like creating new products or promoting old ones.

That’s cost him short-term time and money, but it’s in the service of a greater business good to come.

In any case, Kieran is coming out of his book-writing cave, and he has been plans for the coming weeks and months. If you want to see what those plans are first-hand, or if you want to learn about writing online and profiting from your writing from somebody who’s done it quickly and at a very high level, then here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/4-steps

Meet me in Barcelona?

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Two years ago, I organized a live meetup of my readers right where I live, in Barcelona, Spain.

I imagined it might end up just me, having a coffee alone. (I count myself among my own readers.)

Surprisingly, after I sent out the email with the invite, I got a number of replies from people who wanted to attend the meetup and could actually do so.

We ended up meeting a few weeks later. There were around 8 of us from what I remember. It was a pleasant and fun experience, and I even stayed in touch and became friendly with one of the dudes who attended (hi Matthias).

And now, with the spring weather here and me entering my mating networking season, let’s see if we can make it happen all over again.

Here’s my offer to you:

Like I said, I live in Barcelona. It’s a big city, and attractive.

Maybe you live here or somewhere close.

Or maybe, Barcelona being one of Europe’s top 5 tourist destinations, you are planning a trip here some time soon.

I will organize a meetup in person, in the flesh, blood and hair and bones, some time in the next few days or weeks. If you would like to join me — if you live here or are just visiting — reply to this email, and I’ll keep you in the loop.

 

Coaching is dead

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I’m reading a book called Million Dollar Consulting, by Alan Weiss, in which Weiss makes the claim in a subhead that “Selling is dead.”

A few pages later, Weiss tells the story of how he got started as a consultant:

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When I was fired and thrust out on my own with about 250,000 independent consultants around around me in the United States, I asked myself how I could stand out. I decided to write and speak, since those are my strengths and you build on your strengths.

[Weiss decided to write an article with a contrarian take on a then-popular methodology, titled, “Quality Circles Are Dead.”]

The quality movement adherents besieged the magazine. I was so stunned, I called the editor to apologize.

“Kid,” he said, “I want you to write an article like this for us every month, and I’ll pay you $50 for each one.”

“But they hated it,” I pointed out.

“They read it,” he pointed back.

I wrote for 72 months, opposing every flavor of the month and program du jour extant. I became known as “The Contrarian.” And that name has stuck to this very day.

===

I’m reading Weiss’s book because the core message of it is to stop selling your time, and to start selling the value of the outcomes you deliver.

It’s a simple enough message, and one that everybody is willing to accept with their prefrontal cortex.

But go beyond that into the other parts of the brain, and the neural activity changes.

I’ve been talking to various business owners and marketers. Almost all of them fail to sell the outcomes they provide, and instead fall into the trap of selling a 16-page PDF, or a welcome sequence, or coaching once a week, every week, for an hour over Zoom.

The trouble is, PDFs are dead. Welcome sequences are dead. And coaching is really, really dead.

Yes, I am playing along with Weiss’s contrarian thing. But I also happen to believe what Weiss says about outcomes, and specifically, that coaching really is dead.

I’ve been working with a number of people this year. Some of the outcomes I’ve promised to deliver and problems I’ve promised to solve for them:

* Build them up into a name on the Internet, and help them make $31k in the process

* Help them define a new offer that sells 3-5 times copies per month for $1k+

* Increase the money they make from their email list to $1 per subscriber per month

In all these cases, what I’m actually delivering is some Zoom calls, some support by email, some copy critiques, and a lot of listening and occasional talking.

All of that could really be bundled up and called “coaching.” But I can tell you it’s been much more enjoyable and easy to sell it not as a bunch of Zoom calls and email support and some copy critiques, but as an exciting and lucrative outcome.

Maybe you offer coaching or some other form of dead deliverable that your audience doesn’t seem to value correctly. Maybe you also have an email list. Maybe you have a problem, or things just aren’t working right, and you suspect that coaching is dead, or deliverables are dead, or email is dead.

If so, reply to this email. I don’t offer coaching, but we can talk, and maybe I have a way to solve your problem, or to help you get to an outcome that you’d be ecstatic over.

It costs you nothing to tell me about your problem. You take not the slightest risk. You cannot possibly lose anything. And you can gain much.

Do you have a new plan for copywriters to get clients?

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Do you have a new plan for copywriters to get clients?

If so, I’d like to promote you.

One thing that always gets a good response from my list is a new plan for copywriters to get clients. A few examples:

* Using AI-generated advertorials to get ecom clients (the 1 Person Advertorial Agency, which I promoted back in January)

* Using direct mail to get and deliver on revshare deals (Doberman Dan’s offer, which I talked about last month)

* Using Instagram outreach to get email copywriting clients (copywriter Logan Hobson once gave a presentation on this for members of my Daily Email House community)

* Going into a secret cave that nobody knows about and coming out with a legit DR job, up to and including a copy chief position (more on this soon)

So lemme ask you…

Do you already have an offer about an exciting new plan for copywriters to get clients?

If so, I’d like to promote it.

Do you not have such an offer, but you have a cool way of getting clients that’s working well for you?

If so, I can help you turn what you know into an offer, and make that sweet “zero delivery” money, and become a bizopp guru (ok, we can skip the last part if you really hate the idea).

Do you neither have an offer nor a new plan, but you know somebody who does?

If so, I’m happy to pay you a finder’s fee for putting me in touch with that person.

In any of these cases, hit reply, and let’s talk. Thanks in advance.

 

10 personal stories I’ve told in my emails

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A few days ago, I was on a Zoom call with a business owner who reads these emails. He said how he likes reading my newsletter because I lead such an interesting life — “all these podcasts, all these amazing books, all these movies, dates, and traveling and all that. Like, wow.”

That surprised me. I can tell you the inside view of my life. It does not appear very interesting.

In fact, maybe you’ve noticed I almost never write emails that share genuine personal stories any more. (The exception is small status-building snippets, like the one at the start of this email.)

There are two reasons why I almost never write personal story emails any more:

1. I just don’t think I lead a very interesting life, and I don’t want to subject you to trivial anecdotes, pumped up to seem like they are something fun. (Seinfeld did it way better than I ever will.)

2. I have been writing this newsletter for 8 years, and I feel I’ve told every interesting story I ever had. In other words, I’m bored by my own stories, and so I’m projecting that you will be bored by them too.

This, of course, is one of the classic blunders, which can cost you millions of dollars if you do your own marketing.

The fact is, most business owners get bored of their own marketing way sooner than their market gets bored.

It helps that the market isn’t ever fully paying attention, and that it’s also a “moving parade”:

New people are constantly coming in. Old people are walking out. The upshot is that the stories (and marketing) that you’ve used a thousand times before are still fresh and interesting to a thousand people in your market.

So let me take my own advice, and share with you some personal stories I’ve already shared in this newsletter. Here’s a menu. Maybe you will find one or two items intriguing enough to click through and read:

1. ​The time a car fell in front of me out of the sky​

2. ​The time I had an honest-to-goodness religious epiphany on a bridge​

3. ​The origin story of how I became a writer, going back to kindergarten​

4. ​The time I almost approached the woman who was most probably “The ONE” but fortunately didn’t​

5. ​The time I had an epiphany at a gym that wasn’t religious but was more insightful and long-lasting than just about anything else in my life​

6. ​The time the “license plate game” made me think that manifestation is real, and that I can do it​

7. ​The time I spent 45 minutes waiting outside my own apartment building because I forgot my keys at home and even though I had an extra set hidden somewhere in the building, I was too shy or something to ring my next-door neighbor and ask to be let in ​

8. ​The time a reader unsubscribed and wrote that I’m “simply too dumb to be helped”​

9. ​The time I gave my girlfriend-at-the-time a nice gold necklace for our anniversary, and she started crying, and not out of happiness​

10. ​The time I attacked a wall with a butter knife, severed two tendons in my right hand, and spent three months in recovery, which was only partial​

So there you go. 10 personal stories, all true, and maybe even interesting enough to be worth retelling.

But maybe you’ve been a reader of my newsletter for a while? And maybe you remember me telling some other personal story? If so, write in and let me know. I’ve almost certainly forgotten the story you remember (I struggled to come up with the list of 10 above). I’ll appreciate you reminding me.

Public service announcement

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Every few months or so, I like to promote an affiliate offer that doesn’t make me much money, but that I still promote as a kind of chirpy public service announcement.

Today it’s time to do so again.

Because yesterday, in my Daily Email House community, I wrote about an email I sent out recently, which did well for me in terms of sales. That email was based on an idea I got from marketer Travis Sago, who I’ve mentioned often in this newsletter.

After I wrote about that, I got a DM on Skool from a Daily Email House member, who works as a freelance copywriter, and who also has his own email list and a few products he sells to that list.

Here’s that DM interaction:

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FREELANCE COPYWRITER: Hey John, how are you? I keep seeing you mention Travis Sago, and I wonder… how much of an influence does he have on you? It looks like he is the brain behind a lot of campaigns you do and sales

BEJAKO: Yep, I’ve learned a ton from the dude. Highly recommended if you are looking to do more with your email list and audience

FREELANCE COPYWRITER: As somebody who’s pretty fed up with client work and wants the email based business lifestyle, that might make sense. So is his Skool page the only way to see what it’s all about? Or is there a TSL/VSL?

BEJAKO: Pretty much everything he’s doing now is inside that Skool group. He had courses before that you can still buy separately, but they are also inside Skool if you sign up for that

FREELANCE COPYWRITER: Cool. I’ll have a look

===

I figure if this guy is interested, maybe you too will be. I’m not holding my breath though.

I’ve promoted Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin Skool group a dozen times in these emails.

I promoted it before Travis made it available to affiliates, because I was in it, and because I saw it from the inside, and because it made me money.

I promoted it after after Travis set up the affiliate program last year, because I’m still in it, and I can still see it from the inside, and it’s still making me money.

Over the past year that I’ve been promoting Ronin as an affiliate, I have made about $6k in commissions.

That might sound like real money to you, and it is pretty good money for sending a dozen or so emails, but it’s also much much less than I’ve made by promoting much less valuable affiliate offers that I’m much less personally involved with and less enthusiastic about.

It’s also much much less than I’ve made by applying Travis’s teachings inside Ronin. As for that, I can directly trace about $135k in income to Ronin:

* ~35k+ from auctions, following Travis’s “24 Hour FUN Auction” course

* ~60k+ from Daily Email Habit, which I created by following step-by-step Travis’s “Passive Cash Flow Mojo” course, about creating continuity offers

* ~$40k+ from three tiny promos, which were based around ideas I got from Travis’s “$1k a day in 1 Hour a Day” training and his “Big Ticket Email Mojo” course

On top of that, I’ve made much more money indirectly thanks to the ideas and people inside Ronin:

Copy hacks I’ve seen Travis and nobody else use (like the email I mentioned at the start)…

… affiliate offers I’ve promoted from other Ronin members…

… changes I’ve made to the way I create my own offers, which I’ve picked up both from Travis’s trainings and by looking at what he does.

So eat your vegetables.

Brush your teeth.

Don’t smoke.

And sign up to Royalty Ronin, and then start applying the ideas inside, one by one.

I figure that just like other public service announcement, most people will shrug this one off.

But maybe you won’t, at least if you too are fed up with client work and are looking for a way out. If so, I have believed for years and continue to believe this is the best deal on the Internet:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S.. Travis offers a free 7-day trial. If you sign up for Ronin and make it past the first 7 days, write me and let me know. I’ve got some bonuses with your name on them.

Price increase case study: “fucking swimming in sales over here!!!!”

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Last month, I ran the Price Increase Promo Challenge. One of the people who took me up on it was Chris Howes, who runs Creative Strings Academy, an online music school.

Over the past few days, Chris ran his price increase promo for a course he delivered last year and sold for $30. This morning, Chris wrote me with the results:

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JB- I’m fucking swimming in sales over here!!!!!

63 sales of the $30 product based on PIP (“get it before it goes up to $67”) Remember I originally sold 74 of them at the launch in December. That’s almost as many as I sold the first time. So thats $1900.

Tons of the original 74 buyers bought the new Pentatonic Patterns PDF and Web App. And lots of the new buyers also bought the new thing at checkout as upsell.

We did about $1500 on that product. Which i will split with my developer and he will be super happy, because that is a good payday for the few hrs of work he put in, and now it’s launched evergreen.

And then I had sales of other upsells on the checkout pages as well…. which I didn’t even remember to add until the last minute.

I want to try to sell everyone who bought something on joining the membership tmrw or this week, because every new member gets a free private lesson with me, which what could be a better way to follow through and implement?

So I probably earned about $3,000 – thrilled to tell my wife that – and I want to use the sequence I created as the new opening welcome sequence for people into my list, and/or start running ads and promotions to the funnel somehow. because I think I’m onto something that resonates with my audience.

So, yeah, thanks John. You kicked my ass in a good way.

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So much good stuff in what Chris writes above. Specifically:

1. A higher priced asset he can use to sell his other offers more easily in the future…

2. A proven funnel he can run more traffic to (welcome sequence or maybe even cold traffic)…

3. 67 new buyers who make for new leads for his continuity offer or coaching if he wants to make that available, possibly leading to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars more…

4. Higher overall perceived value of his own expertise and products (yes, people do judge a book by its cover as well as its price)…

5. Something nice to tell his wife…

… plus $3k for himself and about $750k for his developer. That’s not Pablo Escobar cocaine money, but getting paid $3k to also get a bunch of new leads and some new assets in your business sounds like a good deal to me.

All in all, that’s 6 benefits of running a promo, or more specifically, a price increase promo for an offer that sold pretty well once upon a time.

The Price Increase Promo Challenge is over. I have no plans to run it ever again. But if you have a list, and an offer, and if you would like my help making more money from your list and offer, hit reply, and maybe we can work something out.