The real secret to how I survive the biggest mistake you are making the fastest way

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Yesterday evening, I got an odd email from a reader. The subject line read:

“About your email subject lines”

There was nothing in the body of the email. There was just an attached file, “7 Tested and Proven Email Subject Lines that Get Your Emails Opened.” Among them:

1. How to survive _____
2. The biggest mistake _____ make
3. The fastest way to ______

I have this Chateau Heartiste policy of keeping my replies to readers no longer than what the reader wrote me. And since this reader didn’t even include a hello, I couldn’t, according to my policy, reply to ask him why he was sending me this guide to subject lines.

Was he displeased with my subject lines in general?

​​Was he impressed with my subject line yesterday? ​​Did he think it fit one of these molds in some way?

​​I guess I’ll never know.

But since this reader did send me tested and proven subject line ideas, I squeezed a bunch of them into my subject line today.

After all, why not? I don’t think it will make a molehill of difference. Here’s a story on that matter:

Last year, I wrote an email with the subject line, “More real than real.” That email was about some slightly esoteric stuff. I purposefully didn’t want a DR-style subject line for it, one that might attract the wrong kind of attention.

A bunch of people wrote in response to that email to tell me how much they liked the story and the lesson I was sharing.

I also got a response from a smart and successful marketer. He warned me that he almost missed my email, which he thought was valuable once he read it, because my subject line didn’t catch his eye at all. He even rewrote my subject line to show me how it’s done.

And then, the next week, he wrote in with a similar message, again pointing out that my subject line is suboptimal and that he almost missed another valuable email from me. As far as I can tell, he continues to read my emails to this day.

I am not pointing fingers or making fun of anybody.​ I’m just pointing a finger at something obvious:

A lot of standard copywriting wisdom, which was extracted from cold-traffic tests, isn’t particularly relevant to warm daily emails, which people mainly open because they’ve learned that you have something fun or interesting to say. In warm emails, the “headline” is really your name, and not your subject line.

Maybe you say I can be cavalier about this, because I still don’t sell regularly in this email newsletter, and I certainly don’t A/B test my subject lines here.

Fine.

But I have been in situations where I was actively selling in email, and where I was actively testing. I’ve managed two 70,000-person email lists, which were made up of buyers, and which produced millions of dollars of sales, thanks to emails I wrote. And yes, thanks to subject lines I wrote.

And you know what?

I once ran a little test to find out how our email open rates influenced our sales.

​​Result?

Experts were shocked. Literally. I mean, I, an email marketing expert, was shocked.

And that’s why I want to warn you about the biggest mistake that email marketers make when it comes to subject lines. And that’s to follow “Tested and proven subject lines that get your emails OPENED.” If you want to read the real secret of why this is a big problem, here’s the fastest way to do that:

https://bejakovic.com/why-ecommerce-list-owners-should-beware-high-open-rates/

I just remembered Cialdini’s best way to teach anybody anything

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I’ve just awakened from a hypnotic trance.

I spent the last 16 minutes watching a video of a fridge repairman from Alabama disassembling a failed fridge compressor.

As my hypnotic trance cleared, I began to marvel at this mystery.

After all, I don’t have a fridge compressor to fix. And I’m not looking for DIY advice.

In fact, I have zero interest in fridges or handymanism. I wasn’t familiar with 95% of the technical terms the fridge guy was using. I really could gain nothing practical or pleasurable from his 16-minute video.

So why did I watch it, with rapt attention, from beginning to end?

Perhaps, you say, I was just looking to waste time instead of writing this email.

I certainly do like to waste time instead of working. But why not waste time doing something I like, like reading the New Yorker, or watching some Bill Burr on YouTube?

No, it wasn’t that.

But perhaps, you say again, I just enjoy feeling smug and right.

After all, the dead fridge compressor was from 2009. And the fridge repair guy specializes in maintaining long-running, old fridges that go back to the 1940s. So maybe I was just looking for confirmation of my belief that old is good and new is worthless.

Maybe. But if that’s the case, why did I have to watch the video, and all 16 minutes of it? I mean, the video’s title gave me all I really needed to feel smug:

“Declining quality of consumer-grade products – 2009 fridge compressor autopsy…”

So no, it can’t be that.

But perhaps I just wanted to share something cool with a friend.

Even though I have no interest in handymanism, I do have a friend who is into it. I wanted to forward him this video, and maybe, you say, I just wanted to make sure it was worthwhile.

But that doesn’t hold water either. After all, this video popped up on a news aggregator I frequent, where it got 2-3x the usual number of upvotes. That’s a lot of tacit endorsement of quality. And I could tell within just the first minute or two that my friend might find this video interesting, and that I should send him the link.

So why did I myself watch the entire thing?

In trying to figure out the answer to this puzzle, I jumped back to a critical point in the video at minute 5:54.

The fridge guy has just tested whether the compressor failed because of electrical failure. No, it turns out, it wasn’t electrical.

So he decides to cut open the locked-up compressor and see what’s going on inside. As soon as he cuts the compressor open, the motor moves freely, and is no longer locked up.

The fridge guy is in wonder.

“I don’t understand at all,” he says. He decides to try to power the compressor up again. “My guess is it still won’t start.”

“Aha!” I said. “I get it now!”

Because I realized what was going on. I realized why I had been sucked into this video so hypnotically.

It was the structure of the way the fridge guy was doing his compressor autopsy.

He was using the exact same structure I read about once. A very smart and influential professor of persuasion spelled out this structure in a book, and he said it’s the best way to present any new information and teach anyone anything.

I don’t know if the fridge repair guy had been secretly reading the work of this professor of persuasion.

But I do know that if you’re trying to teach anybody anything, whether in person, in your courses, or just in your marketing, then this structure is super valuable.

It makes it so people actually want to consume your material. They will even want to consume it all the way to the end (just look at me and that 16-minute fridge video).

This structure also makes it so the info you are teaching sticks in people’s heads. That way, they are more likely to use it, profit from it, and become grateful students and customers for life.

And this structure even makes it so people experience an “Aha moment,” just like I did. When that happens, people feel compelled to share their enthusiasm with others, just like I am doing now with you right now.

You might be curious about this structure and who this professor of persuasion is.

Well, I will tell you the guy’s name is Robert Cialdini. He is famous for writing the book Influence. But the structure I’m talking about is not described in Influence.

Instead, it’s described in another of Cialdini’s books, Pre-Suasion.

Now, if you read Daniel Throssell’s emails, you might know that Daniel advises people to skip Pre-Suasion. He even calls it the worst copywriting book he has ever read.

I don’t agree.

Because in Chapter 6 of Pre-Suasion, Cialdini spells out the exact structure I’ve been telling you about. Plus he gives you an example from his own teaching.

This is some hard-core how-to. ​And if you ever want to get information into people’s heads, and make it stick there, for their benefit as well as your own, you might find this how-to information very valuable.

In case you want it:

https://bejakovic.com/presuasion

How I might repurpose this email

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I don’t watch a lot of movies that have come out in the past 30 years, but when I do watch ’em, I like the ones that are low-brow.

For example, I loved Knocked Up.

Knocked Up is a Judd Apatow comedy in which a bunch of aimless bros are working to launch fleshofthestars.com. That’s a website where you can go look up the exact timestamp when different Hollywood stars appear naked in a movie. Presumably, so you can go and see your favorite actress’s nipples for a fraction of a second.

Knocked Up came out in 2007. Boy, how the world has changed in just those 15 years.

For example, this morning I found out that something like the reverse of fleshofthestars.com exists today.

It’s called Unconsenting Media. It’s a website that allows you to look up which movies feature which type of sexual assault. Presumably, so you can avoid watching the movie and being traumatized or re-traumatized.

And it’s not just for humans and sex.

Another modern site, Does The Dog Die, tracks movies in which, as you might guess, the dog dies. Enough people find such movies traumatic that Does The Dog Die gets an estimated 414,000+ visitors each month in an attempt to avoid dog-dying movies.

And now, you’re probably looking at me through the screen expectantly.

“Ok that’s kind of curious,” you’re probably saying. “So what exactly is your point with the above?”

To tell you the whole truth and a few things besides the truth, there is no point. That’s because I already had a fixed idea in mind today, a valuable point I wanted to share with you. And it’s something completely unrelated:

Reuse work you do.

It’s hard to get rich if you are creating one-off custom work, unless you are Pablo Picasso.

Likewise, it’s hard to get productive if, say, you spend hours researching and then writing an email, which is consumed in just a minute or two by your readers, and then you throw it away and start all over the next day.

But the trouble is, it usually takes me a lot of time and effort just to present a valuable idea in an appealing and surprising way.

​​Sometimes, like today, I fail at even that. Sometimes I can’t connect the fun/new/interesting thing I want to tell you, with the valuable point I want to make.

So if on top of that, I add in the requirement to create something which I can reuse… well, I often get completely locked up before I even write anything.

The good news is, the two parts of “info” and “tainment” don’t really need to be tightly linked.

And more good news:

​Content doesn’t have to created with reuse in mind… in order to be reusable. So, you could say that my point today is really:

Do work you can reuse, and reuse work you have done.

That’s what I did with my 10 Commandments book a couple years ago. Some of the book was repurposed content I had written already for this newsletter, with the book in mind.

But some of the book was entirely new. Still, I repurposed it later for this newsletter. For example, I reused Commandment III within a daily email a few days ago. To which a reader named Phil Butler wrote in to say:

===

Hey John,

I bought and read your book last night.

It’s a great read, and this commandment was by far my favourite. Although I’ve heard it a million times before, it didn’t click properly until I read your IOU analogy.

Thanks a ton…

Best $4 I’ve spent in ages.

===

The fact is, I’ve used and reused the content from this book so much that, if you have the time and energy, you can search around my newsletter archive on my website, and you will be able to piece together almost all my 10 Commandments book.

Or, if you have $4.99, you can find the whole collection packaged up beautifully for you at the link below. Some people say it’s a great read. In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

I’ve decided to let Adam Neumann act as my personal advisor on all personal branding and positioning matters

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A few weeks ago, a friend clued me into an amusingly shocking fact:

Adam Neumann is back.

You might remember Neumann as the former CEO of WeWork. ​​Handsome, charismatic, and prophet-like, Neumann built a $40-billion company, only to have it all crash down as the WeWork IPO failed. ​​In the wake of that, news reports exposed WeWork’s flimsy business model and the cult-like culture that fluffed it up for investors.

After Neumann was forced out as CEO, he was disgraced in the media as a grifter, hype artist, and woo-woo crackpot whose delusional self-belief infected others. “Serves you right for getting so big so fast,” cackled the little men at the Wall Street Journal and Vanity Fair, “you’ll never work in this town again!”

Well, like I said, Neumann is back. Is it really any surprise?

He now has a new company, something to do with climate and crypto. He has raised $70 million for it already.

Will this new MacGuffin turn into another multi-billion-dollar venture?

Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. One thing is for sure:

Adam Neumann does some very important things very right.

For example:

Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson once said that Neumann reminded him of Jobs. Some time later, Neumann claimed that Isaacson might write his biography. (Isaacson apparently never considered writing such a book.)

Another example:

Jamie Dimon, the billionaire CEO of JP Morgan Chase, lead a round of investment into WeWork. As a result, Neumann called Dimon his own “personal banker” and said Dimon might leave JPMorgan to run Neumann’s family investment office one day. (Dimon apparently never had any plans to leave JPMorgan.)

You might think these are examples of braggartly and grasping status-building. But I think it goes much deeper than that. I will have more to say about it, and probably soon.

For now, I’d like to announce that I’ve decided to allow Adam Neumann to act as my personal advisor on all matters personal branding and positioning. I respect Adam’s skills and instincts within this sphere. And I always look to surround myself with the best advisors, associates, and underlings. Adam is definitely fit to be among my inner circle.

It might take a bit of time for word to reach Adam that I have decided to let him become a trusted advisor to me.

In the meantime, I will continue to offer you the chance to transform your own business through my consulting service.

Once Adam joins my team, I might raise my consulting rate to $100k/hr and a 20% stake of your business. Or I might just drop the consulting and focus on my own more lucrative projects. We will see what input Adam has to give me on the matter.

For now though, you have the opportunity to have me help you elevate your offer, wow your clients and customers, and even position yourself as a prophet in your industry. In case you want a piece of the action:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

Rejection stings, but this might help

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“You have to love yourself first. How else can you expect anyone else to love you?”

I knew a girl once who shared that bit of wisdom with me. I was young and naive and it sounded reasonable.

But then I lived a bit more. There were times when — not only did I not love myself — I didn’t remotely like myself.

And yet, other people loved me. My mom and my dad, of course. Friends. Girlfriends. They didn’t know or didn’t care whether I found myself unlovable — they loved me.

Message received, loud and clear. So I concluded the following:

When somebody loves you, it says much more about them than about you. It says they are able and ready to love. All we know about you (not you specifically, you know what I mean) is that you are an adequate target for their love.

Anyways, that’s a bit of personal philosophy I wanted to share with you. I’m not trying to depress you, by the way. Quite the opposite.

Because I believe it works the same the other way around. If somebody does not love you… well, it says more about them than it says about you.

But this newsletter is about marketing and copywriting. So let me tie it up:

I bring this up in case you’re hustling, in business for yourself, or trying to flush customers or clients out of their hiding places. If that’s you, then you know (or soon will) that rejection is part of the game. Leads dismiss you. Clients leave you. Clients ignore you.

And?​​

It doesn’t say much about you. Not as long as you’re at least adequate. And if you’re not, that’s usually easy to fix.
​​
I’ve been rejected thousands of times, personally and in business. It stings almost every time. But little logical reminders, like the one above, can help.

Can help what?

They can help you go out there and get rejected again. They can help you keep working. Which is how you find success eventually — and even self-acceptance, if you haven’t got it now.

Anyways, on to JV opportunities:

​​Over the past couple days, I have been making a call for people who might be a good fit for my “cash buyers’ list​​”.

I’ve had a healthy number of people respond so far. Which makes me think there might still be more people out there who could be a good fit for this offer.

S​o if you haven’t taken me up on this invitation yet, and you want to know more about it, read on here:

​https://bejakovic.com/an-email-business-worth-0-52-billion-yes-billion/​​

60% of the time, flattery works every time… but what about the other 40%?

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Last night, as I sometimes do, I started reading a book. The opening scene was very instructive, and I want to share it with you:

Myriel, a lowly French priest with a shadowy past, is waiting in the lobby of a great cardinal.

​​The time is 1804, and Napoleon has just been crowned emperor.

As the priest is waiting, Napoleon himself suddenly enters and starts to cross the lobby.

The priest stares at Napoleon. ​​Napoleon, a little peeved at being stared at, snaps and asks the priest what he’s on about. The priest responds:

“Sire, you are looking at a good man, and I am looking at a great man. Each of us can profit by it.”

That evening, Napoleon asks the cardinal what the priest’s name is. A few days later, to everyone’s surprise, the lowly priest is promoted to bishop.

Now as you probably know, flattery will get you everywhere. In fact studies show that 60% of the time, flattery works every time.

But what about those missing 40%?

Why is it that sometimes you stand up on your tippy-toes, look adoringly at a person you admire, shout at them how great you think they are… and they just frown, mutter an uncomfortable thanks, and hurry out the room?

Well, in my opinion, what’s missing in those cases is the other part of the lowly priest’s message above.

​​In many situations, it’s not enough to flatter the other person as being great. You also have to paint yourself as somebody good, somebody deserving.

Most people enjoy being flattered. But many people don’t like displays of servility.

So if you claim, or even better show, that you are somebody worthwhile, this does two things.

One, it keeps you from looking servile.

Two, it makes the flattery more meaningful — since it’s coming from somebody good and deserving.

That’s my bit of advice to you if you ever want to connect with people, particularly those who might be somehow higher up or further along than you are.

And now, on to something entirely unrelated:

Yesterday I wrote about my “cash buyers’ list”. That’s a term I got from the real estate investing industry. But to get on my own cash buyers’ list, you don’t need any real estate, you don’t need any cash, and you don’t need to buy anything.

That’s not to say I’m promiscuous about adding people to my cash buyer’s list. In fact, I am very very selective about who I allow onto this list.

If you didn’t read my email yesterday, and you’re curious what I’m on about, you can read more below, including how and why you might want to get onto my cash buyers’ list:

https://bejakovic.com/an-email-business-worth-0-52-billion-yes-billion/​​

An email business worth $0.52 billion (yes, billion)

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Never give away your best stuff for free, right?

Instead, use your free emails to sell high-priced products and subscriptions, right?

That’s certainly one way to run an email-based business. And it’s proven to work well for many people.

But is it the only way?

Let’s reach into the archives of this very newsletter, to a breaking story I wrote about two years ago.

Back then, I reported that the Morning Brew, a daily email newsletter without any backend offers, had sold a controlling stake for $75 million.

That’s not too shabby for a project that was started in a college dorm, by just one dude, some five years earlier.

Today I’ve got some similar, but even more greedy news for you.

It’s about Axios.

Axios is basically a collection of email newsletters on topics like politics, the economy, and technology. For example, I’ve been subscribed to their “Axios World” newsletter for a couple years.

Axios was launched in 2017 by three ex-Politico journalists.

And get this:

Axios, an email-based business that was started five years ago, just got sold for $525 million.

$525 million.

From my back-of-the-envelope math, that’s $25 million more than a half billion dollars. For a bunch of email newsletters. At a moment when everybody seems to be panicking about a recession.

So yes. Never give away your best stuff for free in your emails… not unless… you want a pool filled with gold coins in which you can go swimming like Scrooge McDuck.

Now of course, you can make the claim that Axios is much more than just a bunch of email newsletters.

You can make the claim that it’s a business like any other, with VC funding, a team of employees, and extensive advertiser relationships.

That’s absolutely true.

And it brings me to my offer for today.

It’s also something from the archives of this very newsletter, also from two years ago. Back then, I called this offer my “cash buyers list.”

It works like this:

I have certain skills at a high level, mainly around copywriting and content creation. I also have a simmering, lingering desire to start an email-based equivalent of a magazine, newspaper, or morning talk show that could grow grow into something cool and valuable in a few years’ time.

But I can’t do all that myself. Nor do I want to.

So if you have 1) money to invest or 2) complementary skills to mine, then I’d like to talk to you.

I’m not promising anything and I don’t have any project kicking off right now. But if the idea of something Axios-like or Morning Brew-like gets you excited… and you have something to contribute besides enthusiasm and an “eagerness to learn”… then write me an email and let me know what you can contribute.

If it turns out to be a fit in some way, and I manage to put the other pieces in place… then who knows where you and I and our email-based business might be in five years’ time.

On writing badly

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“Don’t fight such a current if it feels right. Trust your material if it’s taking you into terrain you didn’t intend to enter but where the vibrations are good. Adjust your style accordingly and proceed to whatever destination you reach. Don’t become a prisoner of a preconceived plan. Writing is no respecter of blueprints.”

I’m re-reading William Zinsser’s book On Writing Well. I don’t like this book. I have several reasons why, but one is that I don’t like the style.

The passage above is one example. It comes from a chapter on “unity.” That’s what Zinsser calls being consistent with your pronouns, your tense, and your mood. But…

It seems no one told William Zinsser about being consistent with your imagery. So in the passage above, the reader is first floating on a body of water (current). Then he’s on hard land (terrain) or perhaps a volcano (vibrations). Suddenly, he seems to be in trouble with the law (a prisoner) and finally he’s building a house (blueprints).

My point is that a lot of the “rules” of writing well, even by supposed authorities like Zinsser, don’t mean much. A good writer can break these rules. So can a mediocre writer.

My advice, in case you want it, is to not worry about the rules of “good” writing. Instead, spend your energy on looking for something new or unique to say. And if you don’t know where to find such stuff, then start with what’s already been written by others — “On Writing Well” — and turn it on its head.

At least that’s what I do. Each day, I write a few hundred words like this. My goal is to say something new or unique about writing, persuasion, and marketing.

I’ve got an email newsletter where I publish these daily essays. In case the vibrations are good and you want to reach the destination of being subscribed to this newsletter, then click here and float down the current it leads you to.

Bejako goes back to school for a push

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I went back to school today. For the first time in 10+ years, I sat in class, behind a desk. With a bunch of other little idiots next to me, I listened to a smiling teacher as he pointed to his chest and said, “Me llamo Rubén. ¿Cómo te llamas?”

This went on for the better part of four hours, from 9am until 1pm.

For four precious hours, we went through the elementary particles of the Spanish language, presented at a snail’s pace. For four hours, I practiced saying the same damn things a million times to various Italians, Germans, and Greeks who were in the class with me.

You might have your doubts that this is an effective way to learn a language.

I have reasons to believe it will be useful.

And in any case, I’ll only do it for this week. This time investment (and during my most productive hours!) is not sustainable for longer than that. But I figure it’s worth doing at the start to kick things off.

And this brings me to one of the most valuable ideas that has shaped how I have run my career.

For example, I got going as a freelance copywriter by charging $5 for a 7-part email sequence.

Do you think that’s a shockingly low rate? Do you think I allowed myself to be exploited?

Who cares. I did it for a week and then I increased my rates a bit. And then a week later, I increased my rates a bit more. And then a bit more still.

Point being, it’s easy to fix and improve things once you get them going. But in most cases, the getting going is the hard part.

This isn’t my idea or observation, by the way. This is something I was fortunate enough to read a long time ago in an essay by somebody very rich, very successful, and very smart. Here’s what he said:

A lot of would-be founders believe that startups either take off or don’t. You build something, make it available, and if you’ve made a better mousetrap, people beat a path to your door as promised. Or they don’t, in which case the market must not exist.

Actually startups take off because the founders make them take off. There may be a handful that just grew by themselves, but usually it takes some sort of push to get them going. A good metaphor would be the cranks that car engines had before they got electric starters. Once the engine was going, it would keep going, but there was a separate and laborious process to get it going.

The guy who wrote that is Paul Graham, a multimillionaire computer programmer who started the early-stage investing firm Y Combinator (Airbnb, Coinbase, Stripe).

Graham said that one of the most common pieces of advice they give Y Combinator is to Do Things That Don’t Scale.

Now at this point, I had a valuable caution to give my newsletter readers about Graham’s bit of advice. But I’m not including that on this public archived post. I often reserve the most valuable and important ideas for my newsletter readers. I have to reward them somehow. If you’d like to join them, and start getting my daily emails, you can sign up here.

How to force insight

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I woke up very early this morning while it was still dark. I have some personal stuff on my mind, maybe that’s why.

Rather than rolling around in bed or sitting down in front of the computer, I got dressed and I walked down to the beach. And on my way back, I saw…

1. A blind jogger? It was a couple, a man and a woman, jogging towards me. They were jogging very close to each other, almost hip-to-hip. As they got near, I realized they were holding a short length of rope between them. The man had a sun hat on, pulled down over his eyes. He was more speed-walking than jogging, and he seemed intently focused on the rope.

2. Two Dutch guys stumbling home. One was tall, very drunk, and constantly talking. The other was short, a little less drunk, and trying to get his bearings on which way to go. And then, the tall, talkative one aggressively stomped his foot on the ground and scared a bunch of pigeons which flew at my head.

3. Another couple, dressed all in black. As they passed me, the man looked at me. And perhaps because I also wear all black, he smiled and nodded.

Ben Settle once shared a metaphor which has stuck in my head:

The cookie jar of ideas. It represents all the valuable knowledge in your industry.

As you get going in your industry, you take, take, take from the cookie jar for a long time. Eventually it’s time to add something back in.

But how do you do it? How do you create new cookies out of thin air? How do you come up with new insights for others to use? Do you have to be a genius or to have supernatural inspiration?

I’m sure that would help. But if you’re short on genius or inspiration, you can do what I do:

Simply describe what you see.

If it catches your eye, actually take notes and spell out what’s going on.

Do it over and over.

​​And once you have a bunch of detailed and interesting observations, then put your head in your hands, and stare at your observations for a while. Out of thin air, a cookie will suddenly appear.

And now for something entirely unrelated:

I would like to remind you of my consulting offer, and specifically my Email Marketing Audit.

I could try to tie this offer up to my cookie jar message above. I could try to tell you something like, “This observe-and-abstract method is how I have gained the many email marketing insights yadda yadda…”

But the fact is, one thing I genuinely have learned by observing successful email marketers is that it’s often better not to tie up your content with your sales at all… rather than to do it in a ham-handed or cheese-fisted way.

So no, this promotional add-on has nothing to do with the cookie jar.

Instead, if you want more info on my Email Marketing Audit, for no other reason than because you think it might benefit you and your business, you can find that here:

https://bejakovic.com/audit