Dude X’s tactical tip for cold traffic funnels

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Today, I got a tip for ya that applies to cold traffic and warm traffic alike.

I’m in the community of this dude, let’s call him Dude X, who is an expert of running low-ticket ad funnels.

Today Dude X wrote about a student of his who was running an low-ticket course to cold traffic… and it wasn’t selling good.

What’s worse, the sales the student made didn’t ascend in any way (in other words, the buyers who bought the low-ticket course didn’t buy anything more).

And this in spite of the fact that the student’s course was a really solid course, with tons of info, templates, tutorials, etc. It was something she could legitimately sell for $500… but she was selling it for $20, and struggling.

Why??? Here’s what Dude X wrote:

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Everyone already has tons of information. They don’t need more.

What they need is a quick win. Something they can do. Something they can finish. Something that gets them a result.

So going back to this student.

When we changed her offer from a strategic offer to a tactical offer, everything shifted.

A strategic offer tries to teach everything. The whole picture. The full system. All the pieces.

A tactical offer helps people do one thing fast and get a result.

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So that’s my tip for you. Sell an opportunity to get a quick and easy result. And since this is a newsletter all about implementation, I asked myself, how do I put this to use?

A few days ago, I floated the idea for a new offer I called Daily Emails 101.

Basically, my idea was to sell this as a low-ticket offer to cold traffic.

And even though I never properly defined what this offer would be… I suspected already that it’s too vague, that it promises too much and is likely to deliver too little in terms of actual results, and to do so to the wrong kinds of people.

After reading the thing above from Dude X, I thought to myself, what’s a small specific step that would get a quick win for the kinds of people I want on my email list?

Immediately an idea popped into my mind:

A 36-hour email promo that pulls in between $2-$6 per newsletter subscriber, and…

…requires little or more likely NO additional delivery (no coaching calls, no cohort groups, no WhatsApp access, no new products to create or obligations to fulfill), and…

… sells an old-hat product that you’re not selling much of any more…

… and that’s fun for your list and fun for you.

The fact is, I already have a system to do exactly this.

I’ve proven it myself on a few occasions.

But I would like to get some more case studies for it, and quickly.

So I’ve got an offer for you:

Are you interested in running a 36-hour promo to your list, pulling in between $2-$6 for each person on your list, selling stuff you already have, and having fun in the process?

And would you like to get my help? For free?

If you would, hit reply, and let’s talk.

What’s up with my hiring

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Last week I wrote an email saying that I’m hiring an assistant. I got a buncha replies to that, some encouraging, others frustrating.

I wrote back to everyone to say I’m working my way through the replies, and that I will be in touch if I think there’s a possible fit there.

I’ve had a few people proactively follow up with me since. “Do you have an update regarding my application?”

The update is that on Friday I hired somebody. I’m also interviewing a second person to hire on Monday. I figure, now that I’ve decided on hiring, why not go big?

The guy I hired yesterday, marketer and computer programmer GC Tsalamagkakis, is somebody I’ve known for a good while.

He has been active in my Daily Email House community for over a year. He was one of the top bidders in my “I endorse YOU” auction. We’ve talked on multiple occasions previously. I know he’s worked with and gotten results for other people I know and respect.

GC wrote me flat out saying that he’s not applying to be my assistant, but that maybe he can help me automate some of the stuff I’m doing or want to do?

We talked and defined an easy test project.

GC wanted to do it for free.

I told him I appreciate the sentiment but I insist on paying him, both for his sake and for mine.

He quoted me a price.

I thought it was too low. So I decided to pay him 4x what he had asked me.

Do you think that makes me a good guy? Or a creep who’s trying to virtue signal by writing about it here?

You can think what you like, but I can tell you I’m neither very good nor am I trying to signal whatever goodness I have here.

This is simply me working myself mentally into this hiring game.

A couple days ago, I mentioned a discussion I’d listened to between Frank Kern and Dean Jackson, about sticking to what you’re irreplaceable at, and hiring out for everything else. Said Frank:

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There’s three ways to get rich. You can invent something. You can inherit something. Or you could invest. And I think all business people are ultimately investors.

That’s all we do. So if you think about that, and you think about the hiring of a “who,” it’s not an expense, but a means to multiply capital.

I pay my “who” that does the automation stuff close to 300 grand a year.

And people are like, “My God, you could get it so much cheaper.”

And I say, “Well I might-could, but assuming I’m getting about a 20% annual return on my investment in a ‘who,’ would I rather get 20% of 50 grand, or 300?”

===

That 20% return is pretty much how the math will work out for the test task that GC did for me.

He’s automated some stuff for me that was previously spread out across a couple software subscriptions.

As a result, I will be able to shut those subscriptions down, and save enough over the coming year to make back what I paid GC, and make about a 20% return on top of that.

There is a bigger point here, and it applies to you also. I’ve heard it stated in different ways:

“Turn costs into a profit center.”

“Find a way to make it work for you.”

Or, like Frank Kern says above, “Think of it like an investment.”

This applies if you’re hiring, yes. But it also applies if you’re buying courses, paying for subscriptions, running ads, or simply spending your money and time. All these could simply be costs. Or, with a change of perspective and bit of determination, they could be opportunities to multiply capital. It’s your call.

Come with me

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A couple weeks ago, I got a message from copywriter Theo Seeds about my new 10 Commandments book (“thought it was excellent”).

Theo shared a real-life sales story related to one of the commandments in the book, Commandment IX:

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I have a story you might find interesting about “committing to the bit.” When I was 18 I spent a summer selling pest control door to door in New Jersey for a company called Aptive. When I first got there, one of the VP’s of Sales of the company, Kyle Neilsen, was in Jersey doing trainings for the salespeople who had been there a few weeks already.

Here’s one thing he said. “I love when I see a house with anthills in the yard. What I do is I knock on the door, and then as soon as they answer, I say ‘lemme show you something,’ make a ‘come with me’ motion with my hand, and then turn around and start walking towards the anthills. Either they follow me outside and I make the sale, or they don’t follow me outside and I just keep walking towards the next house.”

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Persuasion wizard Dean Jackson calls this filtering for “cooperative and friendly” prospects. It’s one of the five stars of Dean’s “five star prospects” classification.

About those five-star prospects, Dean says:

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Nothing you do will turn someone into one if they’re not already. You can’t create them. You can only DISCOVER them. The only difference is… some prospects are ready right away while others need more time to show their “true feathers.” And that’s where your record-keeping helps.

Once you get into this mindset, this understanding that you can’t turn someone into a 5-star prospect… That gives you freedom and takes away all the stress. You don’t have to spend all your energy convincing someone in the hope they convert anymore. All you need to do is patiently educate and motivate them regularly…

… and wait till they become ready to take the next step.

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If what Dean says makes sense to you, I have something to show you. Come with me:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Question for info product creators

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Have you ever created an info product that sold well to your own list?

Would you like to transform that product into a product that sells well to affiliates’ lists also, mine among them?

If so, hit reply, and let’s talk.

How business owners can stop chasing every shiny object like a dog chasing soap bubbles

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I have a new plan. I’m trying to get in shape. I’m walking walk two hours a day as part of my plan. I’m listening to podcasts and courses to keep myself occupied while I walk.

I want to share a good idea with you that I just heard while walking around Barcelona in the rain, getting in shape, and getting wise at the same time.

The idea came up in a discussion between Dean Jackson and Frank Kern.

Both Dean and Frank are successful, influential, long-tenured Internet marketers who have made, I’m guessing, tens of millions of dollars for themselves and prolly hundreds of millions for clients and partners.

The discussion I listened to today was about focusing on what you’re irreplaceable at, and getting others to do the rest. Familiar enough stuff.

(It’s the “who not how” distinction, which Dean originated, and which his partner Dan Sullivan then turned into a best-selling book.)

At some point, Frank Kern threw out the following, less familiar thought experiment.

Imagine, says Frank, that you are a typical small business owner who has gotten to a certain level of success by working hard, and who is trying to get to the next level by working even harder.

The classic “10 million irons in the fire.”

And then imagine, in Frank’s words, that:

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… you are personally enjoined — legal term there — you are personally enjoined from doing any of this stuff yourself, except coming up with ideas.

Which means now you have to pay for the “who.”

What that would bring — and I know the listener is probably like, “okay don’t tell me I have to do this, this is horrible” — what that would bring is incredible clarity and purpose in the execution of the ideas.

If you had to pay to execute on every idea, you would immediately get yourself out of the “I’ve got 10 million irons in the fire” thing. Because you’re paying for it, right? So it’s like, well crap, if I’m paying all that…

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Maybe I found this insightful because I’m actually in the process of hiring an assistant, and maybe I’ll even end up hiring two. Always insightful hearing what you want to believe.

In any case, if you’re running your own business, particularly if you’re a “solopreneur,” one-man band, one-woman show, this might be a worthwhile thought experiment to put to yourself the next time you come across a hot new opportunity you cannot wait to jump on.

“What if I were enjoined to not do any of this myself, and I could only pay somebody to implement this for me?”

If your answer is a shudder, then consider whether this hot new opportunity, which you don’t find worth paying money to implement, is worth paying for in a different, much scarcer currency, namely your own time and energy.

On the other hand, if you find that you are okay hiring, then you’ve got options. You can still do it yourself. Or you can hire. Or you can even hire two people.

Anyways, I gotta go make popcorn and drink a beer. That is not part of my getting in shape plan. But it is important.

Meanwhile, if you want to hear Dean and Frank’s full discussion — recommended if you are more busy and less productive than you like — here’s where to go:

https://www.morecheeselesswhiskers.com/podcast/147

I finally get a nice review

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For the past 10 months or so, I’ve been running ads on Amazon for my new 10 Commandments book.

Over the past month or so, it seems like Amazon is finally running out of people who are passionately interested in the connections between con men and pick up artists and Hollywood screenwriters.

To wit:

My sales have gone down… my cost of sale has gone up… and for what seemed like a stretch of months, all I got were carping reviews from disgruntled readers, who I guess should not have been reading the book in the first place.

Fortunately, with the coming of spring, it seems my luck is changing.

A few days ago, I got a nice 5-star review by a hypnotist and copywriter, Manuel Herrera Carillo. Manuel’s review is long but I will reprint it in full, for one because it strokes my ego, for another because it may convince you to give my book an open-minded read. Says Manuel:

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I am a hypnotist and also copywriter. Sometimes the mind thinks that it cannot be impressed or amazed anymore, and a book like this tells you otherwise.

We live in an age of cognitive calluses. We scroll. We skim. We assume we have seen every trick. The brain folds its arms like a bored aristocrat. Then along comes John Bejakovic with a lantern and a grin, and suddenly the room rearranges itself.

This is not a book about scams.

It is a book about gravity.

The gravity of attention.

The gravity of desire.

The gravity that pulls a thought from maybe into yes.

Bejakovic gathers an unlikely council: con men, pickup artists, magicians, salesmen, propagandists, stand up comedians, Oscar winning screenwriters. On paper, they look like strangers forced to share a train compartment. In practice, they are all fluent in the same ancient language: influence.

The ten commandments are not moral instructions. They are psychological pressure points. Each chapter peels back another layer of the theater curtain and shows you the machinery. Not in a clinical tone, not with academic frost, but with stories. And stories are the original hypnosis.

As a hypnotist, I recognized the rhythm immediately. Pattern interrupt. Authority. Framing. Tension. Release. The subtle dance between certainty and suggestion. He does not describe persuasion as manipulation in a dark alley. He describes it as choreography. If you understand timing, you can lead. If you understand expectation, you can bend it.

As a copywriter, I found something even more unsettling.

The principles are transferable.

The same mechanics that allow a magician to misdirect a crowd allow a headline to seize a wandering eye. An so and so and so on.

Combine this principles with AI and you obtain a nuclear bomb of influence.

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I don’t know how to what Manuel suggests, to combine the principles in my book with AI, in order to obtain a nuclear bomb of influence.

But maybe you can tell me, if you know more about AI than I do, and if you’ve read my book?

And if you know more about AI than me but you haven’t read my book:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Secret offer knowledge that’s too valuable to trumpet loudly

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I’ve been going through Dan Kennedy’s Opportunity Concepts seminar recordings.

There are two great, truly great, Dan Kennedy seminars.

One is Influential Writing, in which Dan explains how to create a cult of personality in your writing. Basically, it’s what everybody with a personal daily email newsletter is doing or should be doing.

The other great Dan Kennedy seminar is Opportunity Concepts. It tackles the other side, not the copy but the offer.

Opportunity Concepts teaches you how to repackage, reinvent, recreate what you offer as an opportunity — something so new, so distracting, and so sexy that people want it based on its own merits, even if they don’t know you, even if it sounds preposterous, even if it’s expensive.

So today I’m going through Dan Kennedy’s Opportunity Concepts, maybe for the fifth time ever.

The seminar sold for $10k when Dan put it on live back in 2011.

The recordings sold for $1,500 after that, but are no longer available anywhere, including eBay or Dan Kennedy’s site.

(Don’t ask me how I got ’em, but I got ’em a long time ago, for free, though legally.)

So I’m going through Dan Kennedy’s Opportunity Concepts. And I decide on a whim to google “Opportunity Concepts.” There’s not much out there. but…

… there is a page on the Dan Kennedy’s website, saying that Opportunity Concepts has been turned into a book called Selling Opportunity.

The only way to get Selling Opportunity is to sign up to the Diamond Level of Dan Kennedy’s membership/newsletter.

The Diamond Level costs $297/month.

Much better than either $10,000 or $1,500, and really a drop in the bucket considering the value of this info.

But then, on one last hunch, I decide to go to Amazon.

I search for “Selling Opportunity.”

And there it is.

A recording of Dan Kennedy’s Opportunity Concepts, sold as an audiobook published by Nightingale-Conant… for $15.

I bought it immediately, even though I already have it.

I skipped around through it, just to see if it really is the Opportunity Concepts training.

It is.

Some parts are missing (a couple guest presentations, for example).

But most of it is there.

If you like, you can get Opportunity Concepts, reinvented as Selling Opportunity, below.

I won’t trumpet it any more. You either know or you don’t know what this is worth. If you don’t, that’s okay. If you do:

​https://bejakovic.com/opportunity-concepts

Two kinds of starving crowd

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Around age 15, a short time after I had learned to read, I started going through the books of Henry Miller because his books were 1) banned upon publication in the U.S. and 2) had sex in them, and those two things are all the endorsement a 15-year-old boy needs.

Anyways, in one Henry Miller book, I forget which, Henry Miller, who was a kind of joyous social parasite, furiously writes about some cousins of his, who (it being the Great Depression) are starving.

The part that made Miller furious was his cousins’ patiently accepting their fate and subsisting on a leaf of cabbage a day, because, from I can remember, they are too proud or too feckless to ask for help in their starvation.

Henry Miller, who was living in Paris at the time, and was surviving on borrowed food, drinking borrowed wine, and sleeping in borrowed beds, couldn’t understand this.

Whenever he was starving, he would simply beat down his friends’ and enemies’ doors and beg and scream and complain until they fed him.

You’ve probably heard of direct marketing legend Gary Halbert. Halbert used to give talks in which he’d play the “hot dog stand” game with his audience.

“You and I have competing hot dog stands,” Halbert would say. “I’ll give you every advantage you want. I’ll just ask for one thing. Take whatever you want, give me this one thing, and my hot dog stand will whoop yours.”

Halbert’s one thing was a “starving crowd.”

Except, I’d like to suggest to you today there are two kinds of starving crowd.

There’s the “Henry Miller” starving crowd, people who cannot and will not accept their starvation, and who demand that the problem be fixed, and now.

And then there’s the “Cabbage Cousins” starving crowd.

Whether through pride, weakness resulting from starvation, or simply the fact that there’s a pound of bacon stashed somewhere in their house, which they secretly reach for late at night, the “Cabbage Cousins” starving crow accepts what to everybody else looks like unbearable starvation.

And if you wanna play the “hot dog stand” game with me, I’ll give you as big of a starving crowd as you like, provided that it’s the “Cabbage Cousins” kind.

Just give me a few Henry Millers instead, and I bet you I’ll push more hot dogs than you.

(You know what I mean. Don’t give me Henry Miller the broke social parasite. But do give me people who have some money, and a problem, and have shown that they are intent on getting that problem solved, and now.)

Anyways, I’m not sure if this was illuminating. But it is a distinction I had to draw for myself, and I figured it might be useful to you as well.

Maybe you’re wondering how you can know that somebody is intent on getting a problem solved, so you can distinguish the Henry Millers from the Cabbage Cousins in real life.

Fortunately, Gary Halbert has written up the answer for you. In case you’re curious:

https://thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters/direct_marketing_to_a_starving_crowd.htm

Is your list too small for list swaps?

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For several decades now, I’ve been recommending list swaps as a way to grow your email list.

(List swap = you promote somebody else to your list, in exchange for them promoting you to theirs.)

The #1 objection I hear is:

“My list is too small to make it worth anybody’s while.”

How small is too small?

4 people?

100 people?

200 people?

I was recently on a call with a list owner who has a list of 1,500 entrepreneurs. He said he’s worried his list is too small to do list swaps!

That dude asked for my advice about approaching people for list swaps. What I told him is:

1. A fantastic lead magnet and solid emails will go a long way.

Right now, I’m doing a list swap with somebody who has a list of 150 people… because he’s willing to custom create a lead magnet I know my audience will get value from. Plus his emails are solid.

2. You can always offer to make things right.

If somebody’s list is bigger than yours, you can offer to promote them multiple times, now and then again in 6 months or in a year etc. (In the end, that’s the deal I ended up striking with the guy in point 1.)

3. Money can plug the gap. You can always offer to both promote the other person AND to pay them something to make the exchange more equitable.

So?

Are you convinced now?

Are you gonna rush out and start doing list swaps?

I hope so.

But if not, I gotta tell you my dark-psychology conclusion here:

I don’t think list size is really what’s holding people back from doing list swaps.

Rather, I think it’s the same old culprit that holds back pretty much everybody, pretty much all the time:

Fear of rejection.

Putting yourself out there… and having somebody tell you no or ignore you… and feeling so small and worthless because of it.

If that’s your situation, then I’d suggest, in the words of business coach Rich Schefren, that you put your business goals ahead of your personal development goals.

It would be great to not care about being rejected, or to just do stuff in spite of this fear.

But while you work on that, it can make sense to look for alternate routes to achieve your business goals.

I’d like to point you to an opportunity to do so right now.

Maliha Mannan, who runs the Side Blogger and who is a member of my Daily Email House community, has a list of 9,000 online creators and business owners and people who want to become such.

Maliha is auctioning off a classified ad spot in every Sunday edition of her newsletter… FOR THE REST OF THIS YEAR.

Bidding starts at $2.

More info here:

https://www.skool.com/anthill-club-6065/your-official-invitation-to-my-basementbackyard-party

I’m hiring an assistant

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At the start of this month, on Feb 1, I got on the train and choo-chooed my way from Barcelona down to Valencia.

My motivation was that 1) I like Valencia and 2) for a few days only, Jordan Parker and his wife Diana would be there.

I’d gotten connected to Jordan some months earlier, through channels I can no longer remember.

Jordan and Diana — as far as I can explain it — are a kind of back-end operations and scaling team for creators. They’ve worked with a small but select list of clients, including creators you are sure to know (just check Jordan’s site, parkerlabs.co).

At the end of our time together, Jordan and Diana asked if I have any team members?

No, I said. I don’t wanna hire or manage anybody.

Ever since I quit my office job 12 years ago and started doing stuff for myself, not managing anybody has been a nonnegotiable tenet of what I do and what I want to do.

Jordan and Diana nodded, in a way that I felt was forgiving, but that seemed to suggest that I will learn my lesson in good time.

Maybe I’m just oversensitive. Maybe they didn’t mean anything like that. In any case, it stuck in my head.

When I got back to Barcelona, I started keeping a list of things I could outsource to an assistant.

I told myself I will hire somebody if I can get the list up to 20 items.

Well, just yesterday, I got up to 20. So I’m hiring an assistant. And the first place I will look is here, inside my email list.

Because an email list is not just a way of making sales or getting clients. It’s also a way of solving problems, answering questions cannot get a good answer to, finding partners, getting cool stuff for free, and yes, even hiring people.

First off, let me say who this job is not a good fit for:

If you think of yourself as either a copywriter or online creator, if you have ambitions of being either a copywriter or online creator, if you’ve done copywriting (or online creation?) in the past and found that it’s something you’re good at, chances are excellent you are a terrible fit for this job.

In this case, I suggest you do not apply, even if you might want to take the job simply because you would like to work with me, or because you think you might learn something.

The reason is that, if you are anything like me by temperament or want to do what I do, then you probably get bored quickly, need new projects and stimulation all the time, are not renowned for your diligence and attention to detail.

(Unfun fact: The morning of my trip to Valencia, I wrote a demanding email to my Airbnb host asking when I would get the promised checkin instructions. It turned out I had booked an apartment for March 1, not February 1.)

On the other hand, if you are present, diligent, happy, and get your kicks out of completing tasks rather than being constantly driven to jump to the next thing, then this job I’m offering might be for you.

What’s actually the job to be done?

Well, if you join Bejako Enterprises, your primary responsibilities will include helping me grow my Monetization Mastermind group.

There will be a mix of online research (read: snooping on people), sending and replying to emails using a pretty templated approach, getting people inside the group, and updating some internal documents with their data, etc.

There will be other tasks too (fiddling with my cart software, email software, Skool, all according to processes I will lay out and am doing myself now).

But those will be less frequent.

The stuff with helping me grow my Monetization Mastermind group, in all its repetitive, chirpy, detail-oriented glory, is what you will mainly be engaged in to start, should you apply for and win this position.

What about pay? What about hours? What about vacation time, dental insurance, and team retreats?

I don’t know. I’m winging it here, as I do for most everything. That’s why I need you.

If you are reading this email, if you suspect, based on what I’ve written above, that you might be a fit for this job, then hit reply. Tell me things about you to give me a clear idea that you might be a fit, and why.

If you do that, we can talk in more detail, and we can see if we can come up with a deal that works for both of us.