The Golden Triangle of Success

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In software development, a field in which I spent the salad days of my life, there’s a meme known as the Iron Triangle. It’s about how software is developed, and it says:

“Fast, cheap, good — pick two”​​

Yesterday, I fielded interest in a new offer, “Work alongside me to launch or build up your list via paid traffic.”

In a nutshell, I’m about to start building up a new list via paid traffic. And if you like, you can work alongside me to launch or build up your own list… follow the same process I’m following… plus get my feedback and input on your ad copy and lead magnets etc.

I got a good number of people expressing interest in that.

But inevitably, I also had a few people write in, saying they are not sure if they have the money.

To which I thought up a kind of Golden Triangle of Success, similar but different to the Iron Triangle above. The Golden Triangle says:

“Time, effort, money — pick two”

This is similar to the Iron Triangle — because you pick any two for guaranteed success. One will not do.

But it’s also different to the Iron Triangle because this is about requirements on inputs, rather than constraints on outputs.

​​In other words, pick two — or three. You can have all three corners of the Golden Triangle.

But what if you don’t?

What if you don’t have the money corner, specifically?

No shame in that. Was a time when I was in the same situation. You can get up and out of it with enough effort and time.

On the other hand, if you’re simply not sure whether you have the money to invest in an asset like an email list, then the Golden Triangle of Success might give you a different way to look at your situation.

In any case, if you’re interested in the offer I made yesterday, to work alongside me to build up your list, write in and let me know. I want to hear your situation and get your feedback as I decide on the final form of how this will work.

Work alongside me to launch or build up your list?

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I’ve launched a new email list. I’m planning to grow it via paid traffic, starting in the next few weeks.

I’m not a media buying expert. But I did my research, and I did find a media buying expert, someone who specifically builds up email lists via paid traffic. I will be following his process to grow my list.

So my questions to you:

Do you have a list?

Do you want to grow it?

Are you open to using paid traffic to grow it? ($10-$15 a day is fine, that’s what I’ll be starting with.)

Would you like to work alongside me to launch or build up your list… follow the same process I’m following… plus get my feedback and input on your ad copy and lead magnets etc.?

If so, hit reply and let me know.

From the archives: DON’T VOTE FOR A NEGRO

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An angry Seth Taft stood up in front of the crowd and held up a tear sheet from a newspaper.

The year was 1967. Taft was the grandson of former U.S. President William Howard Taft, and was running for mayor of Cleveland. He held up the tear sheet to show a full page ad that had recently run in local papers. In large, bold letters, the headline read:

“DON’T VOTE FOR A NEGRO”

That ad had been paid for by Taft’s opponent in the mayoral race, Carl Stokes.

The odd thing was that Stokes was black and Taft was white.

And yet, here was Taft, the front-runner and shoein for the office in predominately white Cleveland, angry and complaining about how unfair this ad was. And it was the folks behind Stokes’s campaign who had paid for an ad seemingly telling you not to vote for their guy.

The long and short of it is that Stokes won that election. In the process, he became the first black mayor of an American city.

​​It’s impossible to say whether this ad won Stokes the election. Nonetheless, the ad is a brilliant example of effective messaging, and of a general principle that holds as true in political propaganda as it does in other influence disciplines, including sales and copywriting.

What’s the general principle? And more importantly, how might you apply it in your business?

For that, take a look at link below. It’s a post I wrote a couple years ago, inspired by this ad.

​​In case you’re looking for a slight edge in your business… or in case you have a significant disadvantage relative to your competition… this post might give you some good ideas:

https://bejakovic.com/dont-listen-to-me-im-just-some-guy/

The most likely solution to all your problems

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At the risk of sounding like an idiot, let me pay off today’s subject line by telling you about my olive tree:

I have a small olive tree on my balcony. It arrived as a present for my birthday two years ago.

(Btw, if you ever want to get me a present I’ll love, a plant is a good bet.)

Right now, my olive tree is thriving. It’s got lots of healthy leaves. Small shoots are popping out everywhere. There’s even one green olive that’s maturing, which I’m planning to cure when it’s fully ripe.

But earlier this year, my olive tree was only causing me worry.

Each day, I went out onto the balcony to inspect it. Leaf after leaf was turning yellow and falling off. No new shoots were visible anywhere. At this pace, my olive would soon become barren and die.

I stood there each day, inspecting my olive tree and worrying.

Was it some kind of fungal infection? Had the soil become depleted? Was it bad feng shui?

It was only after weeks or maybe months of this that it occurred to me that the olive tree might be parched for water.

I mean, it’s sitting on my balcony, exposed to the blasting Barcelona sun, for many hours a day, day after day. Maybe a cup or two of water, twice a week, just wasn’t enough for all the heat?

That’s why I said I risked sounding like an idiot.

I told you how healthy and thriving my olive tree is today. Watering it every day is the only change I made from then to now.

Watering a plant is the most obvious thing to do to keep it alive and healthy. And yet, I thought of every other rare and novel explanation first, while my olive tree turned yellow and withered.

Now that I’ve risked sounding like an idiot, let me risk sounding like your mother:

Maybe don’t have an olive tree. But maybe there’s another area of life that’s struggling, withering, or causing you worry. Maybe it’s family, or your health, or your business.

A rare and novel explanation might really lie behind your problems.

But more likely, there’s a common, obvious explanation to it all.

You can’t keep going the way you’ve been going, inspecting and worrying. Most likely, you just gotta water more regularly – or do whatever the equivalent is for the problem you’re seeing.

But enough gardening wisdom. On to sales:

Maybe you have a business. Maybe you’re working too hard, or you’re not making consistent sales, not as many as you’d like.

What’s the real reason?

Maybe you need to optimize your ads… or increase the conversion rate on your landing pages… or innovate and come up with totally new products, new funnels, new sources of traffic.

Maybe.

Or maybe just gotta get your existing customers to pay you more frequently. Maybe you just gotta email them more, instead of allowing them to wither away. And if you want something to make your emailing easier and faster:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Do you want to play the Questions game?

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Have you ever heard of Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead?

Did you read the play? Or did they make you watch the movie, like they made me, in high school English class?

Do you remember the Questions game that R+K play?

Was it more like badminton? Or more like tennis?

What were the rules? I mean, what else was forbidden, besides lobbing a statement over the net?

Why were repetitive questions not allowed? What counted as out-of-bounds “rhetoric”? And how long was an invalid hesitation?

Most importantly, why am I telling you all this?

Do you think it might have something to do with persuasion and sales and marketing?

Would you be surprised if I told you it did?

Have you heard me talk recently about sales trainer David Sandler?

Have you heard of Sandler’s “Silver Dollar” game? Can you see how it’s basically the same game as the one that R+K played?

And can you think of at least a few good reasons why a hard-nosed salesman like Sandler would encourage his students to spend time fooling around like this?

Do I have you confused? Would an example help? Why not click below then, and see if this clip makes things clearer?

The very first con artist

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On July 8, 1849, The New York Daily Herald published a fateful Sunday issue.

It started rather unpatriotically, with a front page full of news from across the Atlantic.

The French had just invaded Italy and were attacking Rome.

But the “effeminate,” “emasculate,”” and “degenerate” Italians, “upon whom it is the fashion to heap every stigma,” managed to repel the attack of the mighty French.

Further down the page, there was a revolution quashed in Paris.

The Berlin correspondent reported on military action against an uprising in Prussia.

In Ireland, things were quiet, and the Dublin correspondent simply wrote, “I have not any news of importance to communicate.”

With the grand European news covered, the Herald moved to smaller, more local matters.

First, there was an attack by Spanish pirates. Then a steamboat accident. Then theater news (“more dull than ever”).

Turning to page two, the Herald advised its readers of the arrival of the steamship Tennessee to town. Then it tallied up the progress of the cholera epidemic (67 new cases, 22 deaths). Next came sporting news (“the great trotting contest” at the Union Course race track).

And then, finally, deep in the middle of page 2, after several notices of curious deaths (an Irish woman had suffered “death by intemperance”), readers got to the “Police Intelligence” section.

That’s where our story starts. Because it was there that a small, insignificant, 351-word article appeared under the headline,

“Arrest of the Confidence Man”

This tiny article was the first known use of the term “confidence man” in English, which later gave us such terms as con man, con artist, and con game.

The Herald article told of a certain William Thompson, a “graduate of the college of Sing Sing.” Thompson had made a habit of stealing watches from wealthy New Yorkers, on the street, in broad daylight.

What was newsworthy was that Thompson didn’t steal through threats and violence, or through stealth and speed.

​​Instead, he stole in full view of his marks, calmly, with a big smile on his face, using just words.

Thompson’s con involved approaching a stranger on the street and starting a conversation. Then, after a few moments, Thompson would ask if the stranger had the confidence to lend him his watch for a day.

The crazy thing is it worked.

Contrary to all logic and reason, many marks did as Thompson asked. Thompson walked away, laughing, with the stranger’s watch in his pocket. One gold lever watch stolen in this way was worth $110 in 1849 money — about $4,300 today.

The story is so bizarre that it doesn’t quite sound real.

​​Sure, 1849 New York was a very different place from today. But strangers were still strangers, and valuables were still valuables.

Why would Thompson’s marks be so gullible? Why would they just do what they were asked to do? Why would they give their confidence to a complete stranger on the street after just a few moments of talking?

I’m hoping you can help me figure this mystery out.

​​I’m asking you because, if you’re interested in direct marketing and copywriting, I imagine you’re smart and well-read.

​​If you have any clues, hints, or ideas for me, write in and let me know. It will help me prepare a new book I’m working on. Thanks in advance.

Announcing: Done-for-you promo strategy (and implementation)

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Last week, I was working on the promo strategy for a direct response business that:

1. Has one core offer, at $4k and $12k tiers

2. Sends daily emails

3. Makes north of $150k per month.

So far, so good. ​​But then it gets less good:

1. Every day, they promote this one same offer to their list, and there’s nothing about the offer that changes or disappears, so there’s no incentive to act now

2. The list is saturated with the one offer, and even though 33k people get the emails, a negligible part of that $150k per month actually comes via email

3. People on the list stop reading after a while since all the emails take the form of, “Hey look at how well this client is doing, buy now.”

The promo strategy I came up with should help with all that.

​​Basically, instead of sending daily emails to promote the same tired offer, using email copy that the list has been trained to ignore…

… the idea is to come up with a time-limited, exciting, one-off offer… a credible reason why that offer is only being made now… and emails that people will actually read and act on.

We’ll see how well it works. But I’m optimistic.

While working on this promo strategy, I had a true Obvious Adams moment.

I like designing these promo strategies. Plus it’s definitely valuable for the businesses who run these kinds of promos.

Of course, results depend on the size of the list is, the relationship with the list, and what’s being sold.

But I’ve seen a promo go out to a list of 5k people, selling a $1k offer, and bring back $35k in sales over 4-5 days.

I’ve seen a promo to 6k people, selling a $6k offer, and bring in $18k over a week.

Hell, even when I’ve run promos to my own tiny list, the one you’re reading now, and sell offers for a few hundred bucks, I typically bring in $12k-$16k in sales in 3-4 days.

So I had a thought. If I like coming up with the strategies for these promos… and if they are valuable… why don’t I offer them to the people on my list?

Let me try it now. If you:

1. Have an email list, and get at least 1,000 opens when you send an email…

2. Have an offer that you have successfully sold before for $500 or more…

… then my offer is to design a promo strategy for you. Basically, I’ll tell you what to sell… when to sell it… and how to sell it, in order to make a bunch of sales over a limited period of a few days, via email.

I’ll tell you how to repackage and reposition what you already have, so you don’t have to create whole new products… I’ll give you the outlines of email copy to get your readers’ emotional pendulum swinging… and I’ll sprinkle in some human psychology to get people on your list to act now.

And then what?

Well, if you write your own copy for your own business, you can take this promo strategy and turn it into a promo within a few hours. I’ll gladly coach you along the way to make sure it turns out well.

Or…

If you have a copywriter working for you, you can hand this strategy to your copywriter, crack the whip, and have the copywriter do it all for you. Again, I will gladly coach your copywriter directly to give you the best chance the promo is a success.

Or…

​If you neither write your own copy nor have a copywriter, I can get a skilled and hungry copywriter for you, working on commission only.

And who knows, maybe I myself will offer to do the entire promo for you, also on commission only, if your situation sounds particularly promising (kind of like business I described up at the top).

As you can imagine, I will not be doing hundreds of these promo strategies — they take time, and I got plenty of other obligations. But I’m willing to do a couple over the next few weeks.

​​If you are interested, then it makes sense to act now. Hit reply, tell me who you are in case I don’t know you, and we can take it from there.

If your open rates are excellent but your sales suck

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Yesterday, I wrote an email about a magical, far-off place called Affiliate World. I even invited you to meet me there.

​​To which, I got a reply from James “Get Paid Write” Carran, whose newsletter I am a reader of. James wrote:

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I’m obviously not in the right crowd because I spent this entire email thinking affiliate world was a thing you were making up for the email until I got to the end and realised it was a conference 😂

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James is right — i didn’t explain Affiliate World at all.

I didn’t mention it was a conference, or that it was in Budapest until halfway through the email, or anything about the dates. I figured there was no point — either people are already going and they know, or there’s no way I will persuade them to go with this one email.

Lazy?

Maybe.

Self-defeating?

Maybe.

But I remember hearing something about this a long time ago in an interview with marketer Travis Sago.

Travis a kind of nice-guy Ben Settle. Like Ben, Travis is an expert email copywriter and direct marketer. Like Ben, he has a cult-like following. And like Ben, he has made millions with his own online businesses and has helped others make millions too. One curious thing:

Travis says he writes his email subject lines like he has to pay for each open.

Rather than trying to get everyone to open, and hoping to somehow persuade or convince or explain to them why it’s in their interest to take the next step before they click away… Travis uses each email to select from the audience a tiny pocket of highly qualified people.

There’s a broader approach here – efficiency as a business principle. It’s how Travis has been able to build up a multimillion business selling little $39 ebooks… and how he was later able to build up a second multi million business, selling $5k and $10k and $25k programs and masterminds.

I don’t practice Travis’s subject line approach with this newsletter, not every day. But maybe it’s something for you to think about on this Sunday, particularly if your open rates are excellent but your sales suck.

And in case you’d like to know what to write once people open your emails, so your emails not only get opened, not only get read, but also make sales, you might like:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

You, me, Affiliate World?

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Are you going to Affiliate World? If you are, let me know. I need the encouragement.

I’ve been reading about sales trainer David Sandler’s “traps for success.”

For example, when Sandler used to cold call on prospects at their offices, he would park his car in a downtown garage, knowing he only had enough money on him to pay for either lunch or parking.

He liked lunch, and so he spent his money during the day.

That would mean he’d have to make some sales calls, and close at least one, and get at least a few dollars of deposit, if he wanted to get his car out of the garage and drive home at the end of the day.

That’s why I’m asking if you’re going to Affiliate World.

I already know some people who are going. I’ve thought about it myself.

Last year, I went to two live marketing-related events. After each was done, I was juiced and I told myself I should do this more often. Plus this year Affiliate World’s happening in Budapest. I love Budapest — I lived there for 11 years.

At the same time, thinking about being herded onto a plane… and staying in some dungeon-like Airbnb… and paying hundreds of dollars for the privilege of feeling guilty if I don’t talk to a bunch of strangers… all that’s making me hesitate.

So I’ve set a trap for myself. I’ve told myself I will go to Affiliate World if at least five people I know will also be there.

That’s why I’m writing you. Will you be there?

Let me know. We can meet, talk marketing, or not talk marketing — after all, there are many other interesting things to talk about.

And maybe I can even show you around. Or not show you around — after all, maybe you truly enjoy talking to a bunch of strangers, and it sounds like Affiliate World will be a very stimulating place.

Stop prospects leaving against medical advice

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By the time the doctor had walked into the room, the patient was already half-dressed. He had ripped the IV from his arm, packed his backpack, and was making for the door.

“I have stuff to do,” he said. “Call me when you know.”

The patient had come in a few days earlier, feverish and sweaty. He had been admitted, and he was waiting ever since for biopsy results, because there was a good chance the lump in his throat was lymphoma.

What to say to him? What to do to keep him from bolting out the door?

Think about that for a minute.

It might be relevant even if you’re not a doctor, but if you run a business — as long as you deal with troubled customers or clients, provide highly specialized treatment, and ask for a lot of money and trust in return.

So you got your answer?

Good. First, let me point out what the doctor didn’t do:

* He didn’t command. “THOU SHALT NOT LEAVE.” That would be futile and simply untrue.

* He didn’t persuade. “10 jaw-dropping reasons why leaving hospital treatment today will shorten your life! (page 14)”

* He didn’t cajole. “Please please please don’t do this. How about we give you a 10% coupon for your next purchase of medical services?”

That’s not to say that any of those approaches is bad in itself. They all have their place. It’s just not in a hospital room, and maybe not in your business.

So what did the doctor do to get the patient to calm down… go back to his room… and agree to stay until he had gotten a proper diagnosis and possibly treatment?

You can read all about it here, from an amazed resident who witnessed the scene:

https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/23/teaching-doctors-the-art-of-negotiation/