10 of my email ideas you are free to use

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I’ve spent the past hour preparing and attempting to write this email. Here are some of the ideas I approached and then discarded:

1. The strange, 100-year-old, menage-a-trois history that inspired Wonder Woman

2. How even classic comic books like Superman had woke politics behind them

3. A demonstration of an idea I heard during a Dan Kennedy seminar, that the opening of your writing should set the emotional tenor even if everything else is discarded

4. An email in which I pretend to promote the Brent Charleton offer that’s currently being promoted by Ian Stanley, Dan Ferrari, and Justin Goff, but then I come clean that I am in fact not promoting it (there was a point there, really)

5. Something like in the movie Fight Club, where they splice in a frame from a porn movie, but where I would do something similar but in an email? (I have no idea how)

6. Running a lottery within the actual email, with money bets and money prizes (I realized this is probably illegal)

7. Kicking off a P.T. Barnum-like hoax

8. Telling a personal story about myself and purposefully holding back key information

9. Writing up an email using the FREE framework I devised during my Age of Insight training (FREE is my alternative to the AIDA framework)

10. Thinking up some way to illustrate the following quote by legendary music producer Rick Rubin, who said, “Never judge an idea based on the description of the idea, show it to me”

I played around with all 10 of these ideas. Somehow, they didn’t come together. Maybe they will in the future. But even if they don’t, that’s fine, because at least I have my email for today.

The point I want to make to you today is something I read in John Cleese’s book Creativity.

​​Cleese, as you might know, was one of the members of comedy sketch troupe Monty Python. Later he had one of the most successful British sitcoms of all time, Fawlty Towers. He also made some very funny movies, including A Fish Called Wanda.

All that’s to say, Cleese is a creative guy. And in his book Creativity, about creativity, Cleese writes:

“You can’t have a new idea until you’ve gotten rid of an old one.”

That might seem obvious, but maybe seeing my discarded ideas above will make it stick in your head better. And the next time you are struggling to come up with one good idea, maybe will remember to quickly discard 10 bad ideas first, so you don’t end up taking an hour+ to write an email like I just did.

Anyways, all this was really just a build up to a little promotional plug I am about to make.

It’s for my Most Valuable Email course. What might not be obvious is that each of those 10 discarded ideas above was my unsuccessful attempt to put the Most Valuable Email trick in action.

It normally doesn’t take that long. But even if it does, it’s almost always worth it, at least in my experience.

In any case, if you would like to find out Most Valuable Email trick, and even start putting it in action (you can use any of my 10 ideas above if they work for you), here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Become a snowflake newsletter owner

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I’ll tell you what a snowflake newsletter is in a moment. But let me set it up first, with something surprising that happened to me last night:

I got in a taxi last night. I’m in Croatia, and my driver was local, and very white.

“Good evening,” he said. “Where are we going?” In just those few words, it was obvious he was from the coast town of Split, one of the strongholds of Croatian national identity.

I told the man where to drive. As he took off, he put on some music — that was the surprise.

It was some kind of solo stringed instrument. The only way my western ears could describe it was “oriental.” After a few moments, I leaned forward and asked the driver what music he was playing.

“It’s Persian,” he said. “If you’d prefer, I can put on some jazz.”

I’m visiting family for a few days and jumping around town all day long. I’ve taken a cab probably 15 times in the past 5 days. Each cab ride I’ve taken has featured an entirely different kind of soundtrack:

Romantic 1960s crooners from Yugoslavia… James Brown humping and groaning… Croatian folk music with little mandolins and bass fiddles… generic 2023 pop music… techno.

Last December, a guy unsubscribed from my list. I often check the “unsubscribe reason,” hoping to find something good. This time I was rewarded. The guy wrote as he unsubscribed:

“I’m getting too many emails overall… I get 50+ per day so I’m only going to stay on the lists that I want to read daily”

Too many emails today, right? Too crowded? Too late to get in?

I’ll make the exact opposite claim. Right now is the best time to get in.

Previously, I’ve called this snowflake positioning.

The classic marketing book Positioning is all about how great it is to be unique, how great to be first. But you don’t need to be either, not globally. You just need to be unique and first to a small number of people. And that’s very doable.

The fact is, there’s an unimaginable tonnage of humans in the world today. They are all easy to reach. What’s more, all of them have slightly quirky and unique tastes, even if, for example, they all fall into the broad category of taxi drivers. Or direct marketers. Or online business owners.

Here’s what I’ve found:

With a little bit of luck, and simply by showing up today, tomorrow, and the day after, some of the 8+ billion people in the world will join my newsletter. And of those, some will become customers, for a long time, worth hundreds of dollars, or maybe thousands of dollars, or maybe even tens of thousands of dollars. That’s started adding up to a nice sum of money for me each month.

The same can be true for you. Assuming you can muster a little bit of luck, and you can manage to show up today, tomorrow, and the day after.

The sooner you get started, the sooner you can turn this into a nice living. That’s why I say right now is the best time to get in.

Anyways, since you are on my email list, there’s a good chance you are interested in marketing and copywriting topics.

Maybe you’d also like to write about those topics, and not just read about them. In that case, let me remind you of my Most Valuable Email training.

I only recommend you get Most Valuable Email if you are writing, or want to write, about marketing and copywriting.

By the way, I wouldn’t necessarily suggest you write to an audience of copywriters, but that’s a topic for another day.

Still, if you do want to write about marketing and copywriting for an audience of marketers, business owners, or maybe curious taxi drivers — then this course can show you one type of email that has been most valuable to me.

Most Valuable Emails have given me all kinds of hard benefits — including sales and list growth and valuable endorsements. But the greatest benefits of writing these Most Valuable Emails have been soft — the fact that they make me better each time I write them, and that they make it fun and easy for me to stay motivated today, tomorrow, and the day after.

My Most Valuable Email is available today, and will be available tomorrow, and the day after. ​​But you’ll get most value out of it if you get it today, and if you start applying it today.

In case you’d like to get started:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

How to increase your average open rate by 1.95%

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My average daily open rate for the last week of February was 33.89%. My average daily open rate for the last week of March was 35.84%. That’s a staggering increase of 1.95%.

Well, it’s not really staggering. It’s not really anything.

Open rates don’t tell you much, and what they do tell you is often bad. I’ve written before how for one large list I was mailing with daily offers, I found a mild inverse relationship between open rates and sales — on average, each extra 1% of opens cost us $100 in sales.

But my sales are up as well. Like I wrote a few days ago, this past March was a record month for me. I made plenty of sales in that last week of March, many more than in the last week of February. I won’t say how much more, but it’s enough to go to Disneyland with.

What gives?

I can tell you my impressions. The jump in both open rates and sales very clearly came after March 6, when I ran an ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter. But — about that.

The staggering increase in open rates might be due to new subscribers who came via that ad. I don’t know, and ActiveCampaign gives me no easy way to figure it out.

But I do know that the bulk of new sales I saw in the whole of March compared to the whole of February did not come from new subscribers who came via the ad. The bulk came from my existing subscribers.

Many of those sales came from people buying new offers I had made in March, such as Insight Exposed and Copy Zone. That’s normal.

But one thing that struck me is how many existing subscribers, some of whom have been on my list for months or even years, decided this March to buy offers like Copy Riddles and Most Valuable Email, which I have offered dozens of times before. These readers successfully resisted all my previous pitches, but they found themselves curious and willing to buy now.

It wasn’t just one such person. It was lots. I asked myself what made the difference.

My best answer is this:

There’s a lot that goes into the success of email marketing beyond the actual email funnel and copy. At least if you’re doing something like I’m doing, which is a long-running, personal, relationship-based email newsletter.

I’ll leave you with that for today. And I’ll just remind you of my coaching program for email marketing and copywriting.

I have to include the email copywriting in the coaching program, because it’s what almost everybody wants to learn and believes is most important.

But in my experience, email copy is rarely the thing that really makes the biggest impact in the results of your emails. By results I mean sales, as well as soft stuff like retention, engagement, and influence.

Anyways, if you are interested in my coaching program, you’ll also be interested to know this program is only open to two kinds of people:

1. Business owners who have an email list and want to use email to both build a relationship with their customers and to sell their products

2. Copywriters who manage a client’s email list, and who have a profit-share agreement for that work

If you fit into one of the two categories above and you’re interested in my coaching program, write me an email and say so. Also tell me who you are and what your current situation is, including which category above you fit into. We can then talk in more detail, and see if my coaching program might be a fit for you.

Take “selling your own knowledge” off its pedestal

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Last Friday, while I was selling my Most Valuable Postcard #2, I got a message from a new buyer, Joseph Robertson. Joseph is a marketer and copywriter who, for more than a decade now, has also been publishing Extracted, a magazine for coffee fanatics.

Joseph’s message was very thoughtful. I am reprinting it in full below because it might be useful to a few people, especially to copywriters working with clients:

===

Thanks for this opportunity. My first purchase from you. Impressive work.

Several realizations for me…

I’ve come to the point in my personal copywriting-as-career journey where I finally feel like I know myself and what I’m doing, to the point where I don’t feel moved to understand the secret… I’m not searching for a new way to do something, or a new answer, but rather looking for insightful perspectives to augment/enhance my own understanding and work.

And seeing your work has given me the odd realization that there is indeed great value in productizing one’s own understanding of fundamentals, if that presentation helps bring valuable new perspective/ideas to someone else.

I say odd because I think until this point I put “selling my own knowledge” on a pedestal, and just settled into good consistent client work (I haven’t needed a new client in a long time). But that client work has given me an enormous amount of context for developing my way of doing and understanding.

Before you announced this new offer, I’d been thinking deeply and incorporating a new understanding/perspective on structural tension. What you share here fits right in with that very well, naturally, but in a way and with a perspective I don’t think I’d come across on my own. Maybe in time (i’ve been finding the longer I let myself sit with an unknown or a question, the more MY interpretation of the understanding emerges, which is quite valuable).

Anyway. Just felt like I ought to share and express my thanks for your work.

===

Here are my two added shekels:

If you’re a copywriter working with clients, but you don’t yet have your own email list, start one today.

If you have your own list but you haven’t sold anything to it, do like Joseph says above. Productize your own knowledge, and sell that to your list.

There’s little new under the sun. But if you present proven ideas in a way that manages to reach someone, that they resonate with, that they finally benefit from even if they might have heard the idea 1001 times before, then there’s real value in that.

And beyond the money:

I’ve personally found that whenever I sit down to put together a course or a training, I do so because I feel I know that subject fairly well. But by the end of the process, I realize how confused or shallow my previous understanding was, and how much cool stuff I figured out simply by forcing myself to put the course together.

All that’s to say, if you do package up and sell your own knowledge, the benefit can often be way beyond the actual money people might send you.

But of course, the money. Always the money. I gotta get back to work:

Today, I’m still promoting my coaching program on email marketing and copywriting. I include offer creation in that.

In fact, I previously called this coaching program Income at Will, because that’s the ultimate pleasure island that I want this coaching program to take people. But after I wrote an email a few weeks ago about taking out the poetry from what you’re doing, I decided to be more blunt and and simply call this “coaching on email marketing and copywriting.”

The goal of my coaching program is to help you sell more and more easily via email, and who knows, maybe even deepen your understanding of things you thought you knew well.

This coaching program is only right for two kinds of people:

1. Business owners who have an email list and want to use email to both build a relationship with their customers and to sell their products (or their productized knowledge)

2. Copywriters who manage a client’s email list, and who have a profit-share agreement for that work

If you fit into one of the two categories above and you’re interested in my coaching program, write me an email and say so. Also tell me who you are and what your current situation is, including which category above you fit into. We can then talk in more detail, and see if my coaching program might be a fit for you.

A mystery about people who willingly live in hell

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A few months ago, I was reading a New Yorker article about foreign nationals — Americans, Frenchmen, Kiwis — who volunteered to fight in Ukraine.

I found the article fascinating. I mean, ask yourself:

What makes someone willing to go halfway around the world, into a war zone, to live in a basement and crawl through mud and huddle in icy trenches, as constant explosions blow out his eardrums and traumatize his nervous system?

What makes a person willing to expose himself to getting shot at and wounded and possibly killed? And what makes him willing to shoot and wound and possibly kill others, who have never done any harm to him or his kind?

Most incredibly, what makes a person do all this voluntarily, without any promise of reward or even any real chance at glory, and without the usual government coaxing or propaganda or impressment?

“Maybe,” you say, “these foreign fighters are fighting for freedom, for justice, for the right thing. Maybe they feel they are doing their duty, as soldiers and as human beings.”

No doubt.

​But taking a page from Frank Bettger’s book, let me ask you one further:

In addition to doing the right thing, what other reason might these foreign fighters have to willingly put themselves in what most people would consider a living hell?

Take a moment to think about that. And when you’re done, read about it from the horse’s mouth, or rather, from the Turtle’s mouth. Here’s a bit from the New Yorker article, about a New Zealander fighting in Ukraine, code name Turtle:

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In New Zealand, he’d been “planning out the rest of my life with a girl.” Before coming to Ukraine, he’d ended the relationship, quit his job, and sold his house and car. “In hindsight, it was very selfish,” he acknowledged. Although he may have suggested to his friends and relatives that Russian atrocities — in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha and elsewhere — had instilled in him a sense of obligation, such moral posturing had been disingenuous. “It was just an excuse to be in this environment again,” Turtle said.

===

Turtle had spent a large and formative part of his life fighting in war zones — he was first sent to Afghanistan in 2002, when he was 17.

Today, a generation later, he’s left his house, his car, his job, and Mrs. Turtle back in the Shire, and he’s decided to trade all that in for an environment he is more familiar with — an army unit in Mordor.

​​“In the end, it’s just that I love this shit,” Turtle said. “And maybe I can’t escape that — maybe that’s the way it’s always gonna be.”

All that’s to say:

Never underestimate how powerful the pull of the familiar, the known, the status quo is on people, even if that status quo is hell on earth.

And that’s it. That’s my possibly sobering psychological insight for you for today. Think about how it might apply to you and the people you deal with regularly, and maybe you can get some value out of it.

As for me, the time has come for my once-in-a-blood-moon pitch for my coaching program on email marketing and copywriting.

It might seem tacky to put a sales pitch at the end of an email about extreme self-sacrifice, or extreme self-immolation. I do it because extreme cases uncover the everyday cases. In any case, here’s my pitch.

I’ve only let in two kinds of people into my coaching program so far:

1. Business owners who want to use email to build a stronger, longer-lasting relationship with their prospects and customers, in order to sell more and to sell more easily

2. Copywriters who have a profit-share agreement with a client to manage an email list, allowing a large degree of control and an upside when things go well

There are multiple reasons why I restrict my coaching program to only those two groups of people. If you’re curious, I’ll tell you one reason, which is that my coaching program is expensive. I only want the kinds of people to join who can quickly get much more out of this coaching than what they pay me.

So if you fit one of the two categories above, and if you’re interested in my coaching program, then hit reply, tell me about yourself, and we can talk in more detail.

And in case you’re wondering whether a coaching program is something you possibly need:

I can tell you that personally, in most areas of life where I’ve had success, I didn’t have and didn’t need any kind of coach. Instead, I either figured it out myself, or I followed a book or a course to the letter, and got results that way.

On the other hand, there have been a few areas where I hired a coach, and even paid that coach lots and lots of money.

As I’ve written before, some of the value I got from coaching was genuine technical feedback. Some of the value was added confidence, via getting an experienced second pair of eyes to look over what I was doing.

But the majority of the value I got from expensive coaching — I would say 75% — came from having to justify the price to myself. From finally being forced to abandon the status quo, and to do things I should have been doing already, but found excuses not to do.

Maybe you say that’s stupid or illogical. All I can say is that this get-out-of-the-status-quo motivation made coaching absolutely worth it to me, and made it pay for itself many times over.

So do you need coaching?

Only you can decide if you’re stuck in the status quo, and if you find that unacceptable. If you decide the answer is yes, then like I said, write me an email, and we can talk in more detail to see whether my coaching program and you could be a good fit.

I’ll start off this email by projecting out some praise and admiration I’ve gotten in the past

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Right about a year ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “Send me your praise and admiration.” Best thing I ever did.

​​Here are a few of the lavishly praising and admiring responses I got to that email. First, from David Patrick, senior copywriter at Launch Potato:

“If John is behind anything, then I’m sure it’s going to be good. In fact, he may very well be the best thing to happen to America… at least when it comes to persuasion and influence! No, really!”

Second, from “The Eco-Copywriter,” Thomas Crouse, who went absolutely nuts and over the top in his flattery of me and the work I do:

“My inbox is bombarded with emails every day. But when I see one from John, I stop and read it.”

And finally, here’s one from Liza Schermann, the lead copywriter at Scandinavian Biolabs:

“John Bejakovic and persuasion. You can’t beat that. He made me like cats. Even though I used to hate them and they used to hate me. So he’s a great person to find out about a new product that’s about persuading stubborn prospects. Or cats.”

The reason I’m sharing such lavish praise and admiration with you is because I’m still reading a magic book I mentioned two weeks ago.

​​The book is called “Leading With Your Head: Psychological and Directional Keys to the Amplification of the Magic Effect.” It’s basically a guidebook for stage magicians about how to organize their tricks and their shows to maximize the magic, the fun, the show for the audience.

Here’s a relevant bit from Leading With Your Head:

“If we don’t draw attention to the magical occurrences, the effects may be weakened, or lost. The answer lies in analyzing your performance pieces to know when you need to direct attention to the magic. All other times you should be projecting out and relating to your audience, so they remember you.”

I hope that with all the projecting out and relating I’ve done so far, you will remember me tomorrow. Because now the time has come for me to draw your attention, and in fact direct it, to a bit of sales magic. Specifically, to my Most Valuable Postcard #2, which I am offering for the first and only time ever at a 50% launch discount, until 12 midnight PST tonight.

I started this launch two days ago with a message I got from copywriter Kay Hng Quek.

​​Kay went ahead and bought MVP #2 and wrote me about it yesterday. His message is below. Please read it carefully, particularly the parts about how MVP #2 “blew his mind” and how MVP #1 and MVP #2 are “probably the best $100” he has ever spent on marketing training:

===

Read it immediately, and how you tied everything together at the end just blew my mind. Obviously this demands a second or third read. Obviously I will learn so much more from that.

Ngl, I would have loved MVP #3, but I’m grateful I got to read at least MVP #1 and #2. Probably the best $100 I’ve ever spent on marketing training…

===

Again, the deadline to get Most Valuable Postcard #2 for 50% off the regular price is tonight at 12 midnight PST. But the only way to get this offer is to be on my email list before the deadline strikes. If you’d like to that, click here and fill out the form that appears.

If you want people to remember you

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My grandma is 92 years old. Yesterday I was talking to her. She got to saying how she is “counting down the days.”

​​Everybody of her generation who lived in her building — a 17-story brutalist skyscraper built in the 1960s — has already died.

“The last two died just recently,” she said. ​​”There was Marija, who was 94, and then there was that guy—” here she turned to my mother “—what was that guy’s name, the guy who liked fried chicken?”

I found this both cruel and hilarious. You live your whole life, even a very long life, and this is how people remember you — “the guy who liked fried chicken.”

It’s not because my grandmother’s memory is failing. At 92, the woman is still razor-sharp and has a much better memory than I ever had.

It’s simply how how mental imprint happens.

Unless there’s something notable, sound bite-worthy, legendary about you, and unless you repeat it often enough to make it stick in people’s heads, then people will pick something random to remember you by — if they remember you at all.

Maybe you don’t want to be remembered. Nothing wrong with that.

But if you are driven to have people remember you, and if you want to make it good, then take matters into your own hands.

A/B test different sound bites about yourself. When you hit upon one seems to resonate, that people feed back to you, then repeat it from here to eternity. Either that, or risk becoming “the guy who liked fried chicken.”

And on that note, let me remind you what I already said yesterday:

I’m now launching my Most Valuable Postcard #2. I’m selling it until tomorrow night at a 50% discount.

Most Valuable Postcard #2 covers a fundamental marketing topic. In fact, it’s a topic that I claim is the essence of marketing and copywriting.

Last night, Jeffrey Thomas from Goldmine.Marketing wrote me to say (some parts redacted):

===

Finished reading #2 tonight.

And it was great.

I’ll read it again tomorrow.

Earlier today, before seeing this offer, I thought about [here Jeffrey named “the best copywriting guide ever written” according to a reclusive, bizarre, and yet highly successful financial copywriter]—wild to see it appear in this Postcard!

#2 reminds me that [here Jeffrey spelled out the counterintuitive idea at the end of Most Valuable Postcard #2, which a lot of marketers and copywriters struggle with, but which is true nonetheless].

Definitely some new tools to use. Much appreciated John.

===

I redacted some parts of Jeffrey’s message above. For one thing, I want to keep those specifics behind the paywall. For another thing, I don’t think you really mind. Do you?

Anyways, Most Valuable Postcard #2 is available now, but only to people who are signed up to my email list. Maybe you don’t want to get on my email list. Nothing wrong with that. But if you do, here’s where to go.

Announcing: Most Valuable Postcard #2

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This Monday, I got two probing questions from copywriter Kay Hng Quek:

===

1) From Copy Zone — “Sometimes that meant following somebody else’s A-Z system. That’s how I got good at meeting and talking to girls — after 30 years of being shy and pretty useless in that department.”

Ha, was this Rules Of The Game?

2) MVP #1 was so game-changing for me that I’ve been salivating at the fantasy of being sold card #2. Not so much a question then, but just an indication of demand.

===

The answer to Kay’s first question is no, it was not the Rules Of The Game.

The answer to Kay’s second question, or indication of demand, is this:

As you might know, last year I ran a subscription offer, limited to just 20 people, called Most Valuable Postcard. It lasted all of two months.

Each month, I sent a postcard from a new place with a short greeting and a URL. The URL took you to a secret website; there you would find my in-depth treatment of one fundamental marketing or copywriting topic for that month.

Subscribers loved the Most Valuable Postcard.

I hated it.

I hated walking around in the summer sun trying to find nice-looking postcards. I hated writing the postcards by hand, and I hated licking the stamps by tongue.

I hated the pressure of finishing up the actual content each month and making it great before the first postcards started to arrive.

I hated the fact that the postcards didn’t arrive reliably and that I had to resend many of them.

So I killed the Most Valuable Postcard off. Subscribers sighed and said they saw it coming.

But the core concept of the Most Valuable Postcard is something I find too valuable to let go. So I decided to write more Most Valuable Postcards, on no fixed schedule, and put them inside the members-only area of my site. While there are no physical postcard any more, the website content is the same format as before.

To start with, this past January I re-released Most Valuable Postcard #1: Nota Rápida. I got feedback on that like that “so game-changing” from Kay above.

Now I’m re-releasing Most Valuable Postcard #2: Ferrari Monster, again in the same format.

As you can guess, it’s a deep-dive into a fundamental topic. In fact, I make the case it’s about the essence of copywriting and marketing.

That’s a big claim. To back it up, I can say it took me three weeks of research — including a book about Hollywood marketing, a bunch of John Forde’s promos for Agora, and a science paper about strip clubs — to produce this 5-page postcard.

You can now get Most Valuable Postcard #2, and for $50 off, but only if you sign up to my email newsletter first. This is an offer only for people on the “inside.” To get there yourself, click here and follow the instructions.

A record month

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Up until today, my best-ever month in terms of income was November 2020. At that time, I was chest-deep in copywriting client work, plus I was getting a sizeable profit share on two big email lists I was managing.

As this email goes out, 28 days into March 2023, I’m about $200 over what I made in November 2020. And there are still a few days to go this month.

I sat down this morning and made a list of possible explanations for this new record in income.

Was it inflation?

Some part, yes. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, inflation has risen like smoke between then and now, 16%. But I still have one more new offer to make to my list this month. With it, I might have a record month in inflation-adjusted terms also.

Was it client work?

I’ve largely escaped from client work over the past couple years, and that’s why it’s taken me so long to get to a new record month. If I was chest-deep in client work in 2020, I’m ankle deep in it now. I have one client — easy work, good money, and exposure to what’s happening in the industry. It’s nice to have but not a major part of my total income.

Was it sales I made to new subscribers from the classified ad I ran early this month?

So far I’ve made $4k in sales to new subscribers who came from that $1k ad, a 3x return. That’s a nice result and definitely good to have. But again, it’s not a major part of my total income this month.

So what was it then?

Well, I will just deny any rumors you may have heard:

I did not walk through Barcelona’s Gothic district late one night this past December, and I did not come upon a crossroads, where a man in a fedora was leaning against a door and smoking a cigarette.

Furthermore, I did not engage in conversation or debate or deal-making with this man, and I was not as a result offered any occult or supernatural knowledge regarding persuasion or influence, nor did I strike a fearful bargain with said man, up to and including the sale of my soul or that of any firstborn child I might one day have.

No, none of that. If I do have any secret, it’s not supernatural or occult.

I won’t lie and say my big secret, if there is one, is out there for all to see, and available simply by reverse engineering.

But as Tony Robbins likes to say, success leaves clues. And secrets leave footprints, especially on the written page.

And with that, I’d like to recommend to you my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. It’s based on this very idea — success leaves clues, so why not collect them and put them into quick and easy little Kindle book. As one highly critical (4-star) reviewer wrote:

===

excellent book

Short and very pertinent. Loaded with the names of hugely successful giants of the copywriting world and the titles of their successful books. I read the book on Kindle and highlighted many great bits of advice and the names of the great writers sharing advice. If you write ad copy for a living or hope to do so, buy this book.

===

You’re now at a crossroads. If you decide to take the path that leads to reading this book, here’s where you can buy it:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

66 1/2 minutes of getting your money’s worth

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At the start of the evening, the mustached gentlemen at the Boston Athletic Association held on to their top hats and leaned forward in their seats, their eyes wide open, all of them focused on the same point at the front of the room.

It’s not every day that you see a living man voluntarily handcuffed, wrapped in chains, placed inside a coffin, and then sealed inside like a corpse.

It was novel and dramatic.

But after a few minutes of intense staring at the unmoving coffin, the audience’s attention started to drift. The members of the athletic club began lighting up fine cigars, talking about sports, the news, and business, chuckling and chattering and catching up.

And then, 66 1/2 minutes after the show started, the coffin crashed open.

The living corpse inside sat up and then stood up, panting, sweat running down his temples, his hair in a mess, his frock coat rumpled. He held the handcuffs in one hand and the chains in the other — he was free.

The gentlemen in the audience broke into applause and cheers. Harry Houdini had done it again. Another amazing and improbable escape.

So far, so familiar. But here’s what gets me:

66 1/2 minutes of sitting and watching a coffin. Many of Houdini’s sold-out shows were like this. They were long — often many hours’ long — and for much of it there was nothing to see, because Houdini performed his handcuff and manacle and chain escapes in a closed cabinet or behind a curtain or inside a coffin.

66 1/2 minutes of nothing happening on stage. What was going on with the audience during all that time?

Was it just a pre-TikTok era, and were audiences happy to sit and zone out for an hour or three, like a cat staring at a blank wall?

Or did people just enjoy being close to danger and death, and was that palpable even if it couldn’t be seen?

I’m sure there was a bit of both to it.

But what gets me in the above story is how the gentlemen of the athletic club started lighting up cigars and having friendly chats about sports, business, and the news.

Maybe that was really what they had come for.

Maybe Houdini’s spectacular escape was really just an occasion to mark out the rest of the audience’s lives. Maybe it was just an excuse to get out of the house, to do what they like to do anyhow — which is to chat and chuckle and gossip — but to do it in a slightly novel and exciting setting.

There’s a good chance you aren’t sold on this point yet. That’s okay. I have more to say about it to try and persuade you. And if you do get persuaded, I have some novel and exciting advice for how to apply this to copywriting and marketing, even today, in the TikTok era, without engaging in daring feats that risk danger and death.

But more about that in a couple days’ time.

For today, I just have a very simple offer for you. It’s my little Kindle book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

​​I used to refer to this as my “10 Commandments book.” I’ll have to stop that since I’m working on a second 10 Commandments book, and I have to distinguish between the two.

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