How to create positioning that your more established competition will eat itself alive for

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Around 10:20pm, a tiny dot appeared in the skies above Le Bourget Aerodrome in Paris, France.

A crowd of thousands of people, happy and slightly drunk, waiting at the airport, started to cheer and push forward. Men took off their hats and waved them in the air. Women, a little more dignified, kept their hats on.

The dot grew larger. It was now visibly a gray and white monoplane.

At 10:22pm on May 21 1927, exactly 95 years ago, the plane landed. The drunk and happy crowd ran out onto the tarmac and immediately surrounded it on all sides.

Out of the plane, a slim, worn-looking young man staggered out and raised his hand in greeting. After 55 hours of non-stop flying, across more than 3,600 miles, he had finally done it.

An incredible feat. Celebrated around the globe.

Worthy of being remembered even a century later.

Charles Lindbergh, the Lone Eagle, had become the third man to fly nonstop across the Atlantic.

Yes, third.

What? That’s not how you know the story? You know Lindbergh as the 25-year old flier who gained instant worldwide fame by becoming the first man to fly nonstop across the Atlantic?

I’m here to tell you it wasn’t so. In June 1919, two British fliers, John Alcock and Arthur Brown, made the first nonstop transatlantic flight. They flew from Newfoundland to Ireland.

Sure, Lindbergh’s flight from New York to Paris was longer, almost double the length. And he was flying solo.

But on the other hand, Alcock and Brown did it eight years earlier, with much wonkier technology — planes were developing fast in those days. So perhaps their feat was braver and more impressive than Lindbergh’s.

It’s kind of a puzzle, isn’t it?

Why did Charles Lindbergh become an instantaneous celebrity by flying across the Atlantic? And why has nobody ever told you, until I told you today, that two other guys flew across the Atlantic almost a decade earlier?

I’ll give you one good reason:

Spectacle.

Lindbergh was flying to win a much talked-about prize of $25,000, worth over $415,000 in today’s money, put up by a French-American businessman, and left unclaimed for over 8 years.

Days before the famous transatlantic flight, Lindbergh flew from San Diego to New York, setting a record for the fastest transcontinental crossing, and building up anticipation and interest.

Also, 1927 was a mostly peaceful and stable year in Europe and the U.S. Newspapers were hungry for a story, and young Lindy was a good-looking kid.

And then, there were all the idle and drunk crowds in New York, the idle and drunk crowds in Paris, the American ambassador to France putting in an appearance, and a collection of the best French aviators at the time, circling the Paris skies in anticipation of Lindbergh’s arrival.

Poor Alcock and Brown didn’t have any of those advantages. And that’s why nobody ever celebrates them today.

So my point is:

If you want people to remember you, get yourself some spectacle.

Think big. Create anticipation. Enlist slightly drunken crowds to stand around and cheer as you do whatever it is that you do.

It can turn you into worldwide celebrity, a daredevil star, someone who is talked about for years or decades or even a century later.

Or if your ambitions are smaller, and mainly focus on making money and having a business, it will give you positioning. The kind of positioning that others in your industry, who were there long before you — working hard, risking it all, for not much acclaim — will eat themselves alive for.

For more positioning ideas and advice, you might like my spectacular email newsletter.

Make money opening emails from your favorite marketing influencers!

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A couple days ago, I got an email about an event called “How To Make Money Sharing Videos”.

Just to be very very clear: I am not promoting this event, and I am not in any way encouraging you to join it.

But I have to admit it did get me intrigued.

How exactly do you make money by sharing videos?

Maybe you can guess. If not, I’ll tell you the answer in just a sec. But first, let me tell you a curious little story this reminded me of.

Last year, after listening to Dan Kennedy talk about opportunity marketing in his Opportunity Concepts seminar, I started being on the lookout for all things business opportunity.

And so I came across an intriguing ad, which ran repeatedly in bizopp magazines and tabloid newspapers in the early 90s. The headline ran:

Get Paid To Watch Your Favorite TV Shows!
Profits Up To 10,000.00 A Day Possible!

“Yeah yeah yeah,” I panted with my tongue hanging out, “how do I get paid? I like Seinfeld for example, how much can I make with that? I want to know! Or what about Peep Show? Does that pay even better?”

The ad doesn’t say. You had to mail in a “Get Paid Application Form” plus $21.95 to find out.

And depending on which week’s Weekly World News you were reading, you had to mail in your check to different-named businesses in:

Colorado City, AZ (Nov 6, 1990)
Bellingham, WA (Sep 24, 1991)
New York, NY (Nov 19, 1991)
…

In other words, it’s very likely that this offer was a scam. A new fly-by-night mailing address each month… a bunch of angry and ashamed new customers… and then on to the next place before anyone could catch whoever was behind this bizopp.

Sorry to break it to you, but this probably means you cannot get paid, as the ad promised, to “sit back, relax, and watch television.”

Still, the marketing and persuasion idea back of this scheme is sound. You can use it even if you are running a more legit business.

For example, that “sharing videos” thing is really about affiliate marketing. The videos you would be sharing are webinars for affiliate offers.

Of course, that’s not what the very top of the sales funnel sells you.

Instead, it sells you something more simple, more easy, more familiar. Something you are already doing and probably enjoying.

It’s only once your interest and greed are aroused, once you click through, opt in, watch the webinar, do you find out the cold, hard truth.

So what about making money by opening emails? The promise in my subject line?

The cold hard truth is, open those emails, read them, apply any good and free ideas you come across. Or even pay for some good ideas that those emails advertise, and then apply those.

Do this consistently, and you’re sure to make money in time.

Maybe that’s not what you were hoping to hear.

Maybe you’re disappointed and hurt to hear that, while it’s certainly possible to make good money online, it will take some work, some time, some effort and maybe even creativity on your part. It will never be fully automated, and there’s no secret shortcut to get around that.

If you find that truth repulsive, then my newsletter is not for you.

But if like me, you are a panting, hanging-tongue bizopp seeker at heart… but in time you learned to control yourself and even put in some work… then stick around. I might have some good ideas to share with you.

Also, you might like my Most Valuable Postcard.

This offer is not open right now — I got all the subscribers I wanted during the launch two days ago. But there is a waiting list.

So if you’d like to get on the waiting list, and be the first to find out when I reopen MVP for subscribers, then sign up to my newsletter. And when you get my welcome email, hit reply, and let me know to add you to the MVP waiting list.

 

Yet another paranormal Bejako email

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“And the copy writer does not create the desire of millions of women all over America to lose weight; but he can channel that desire onto a particular product, and make its owner a millionaire.”
— Gene Schwartz, Breakthrough Advertising

This past January, I sent out an email in which I told the story of how I magically “manifested” a lost license plate from my car.

The point of that email was that, in spite of being a very skeptical and critical person at times, I am also incredibly attracted to the possibility of real magic.

That’s why I often engage in wishful-magical thinking.

​​And that’s why I’ve repeatedly had “magical” things happen in my life.

Today, I want to give you an update on that — some theory of what real magic is. You might find this theory personally inspiring, or you might even find it useful in your own marketing.

The theory comes from an article I read today, titled When Magic Was Real. The article was written by the very interesting Alexander Macris on his Contemplations on the Tree of Woe Substack channel.

In the article, Macris cites the results of a parapsychology experiment:

60 people were split into four groups. Each group was either given chocolate blessed by a priest or ordinary, zero-blessing chocolate.

In addition, each group was told (truly or falsely) that their chocolate was either blessed or unblessed.

In other words, each of the four groups had a different combination of (belief in blessedness) x (actual blessedness) of the chocolate they were eating.

The experiment ran for a week. Participants were tested for effects on their mood.

So what do you think happened?

Did actual blessing create real benefits?

Or did belief in the blessing — aka the placebo effect — create real benefits?

Or was there no effect at all?

It turns out there was an effect. But the result might surprise you:

The only group that had a significant improvement in mood was the group that 1) got the truly blessed chocolate and that 2) was told that the chocolate was blessed.

Yes, this experiment might be bogus. But if like me, you are attracted to the possibility of miracles and magic, then just run with it for a moment.

Based on this experiment, Macris puts forward his theory:

“Magic is the product of belief x belief. It’s the product of my belief that I’ve blessed chocolate and your belief that you’ve eaten chocolate I blessed. And these beliefs must both be positive. If I don’t believe, it won’t work, even if you are a true believer. If you don’t believe, it won’t work, even if I’m a true believer. Belief x zero is zero.”

True? Who knows. But if it is true, I figure it has a couple consequences:

First, you gotta believe, and you gotta surround yourself with other gullible, uncritical people who are willing to believe without bothering to look closely at the evidence.

Your combined success, including the number of real miracles you experience, depends on it.

Second, rather than trying to persuade the people in your audience that your 28-day flat-belly challenge is really transformative, it might be better to make them believe in magic, in possibility, in miracles.

In other words, the ancient marketing dogma that it’s impossible or impractical to create desire is short-sighted, at least if you are trying to create real results for your customers — and to create customers who love to buy from you over and over.

So instead of just channeling existing desire onto your product, like Gene Schwartz says above, it might be better to focus on making your audience more inspired and motivated and hopeful in general.

Maybe you have your doubts. That’s fine. Don’t make up your mind now. Let the idea marinate there for a while.

​​Maybe you too will come to believe in believing. Our joint success hinges on it.

Anyways, on a mainly unrelated point:

Yesterday, I had the launch of my Most Valuable Postcard.

I magically got what I wanted, my first 20 subscribers, spread out across 11 countries.

I then closed down the order page, because 20 subscribers is all I wanted to start.

But I had people try to sign up afterwards (no-go) and even ask whether I have a waiting list.

Well I do now.

I’m not sure when or if will reopen the Most Valuable Postcard to new subscribers. But if I do, it will be a limited number of spots again.

So if you want to get a chance to be the first to sign up, then get on my regular mailing list here. And when you get my welcome email, hit reply and let me know you’d like to be added to the MVP waiting list as well.

The World’s Most Valuable Postcard

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I have an offer to make you today. But first, let me give you a quick personal update:

I arrived to Barcelona yesterday for my fourth time here. As every other time, the city looks spectacular.

This morning I went out for a walk. I passed the giant, black, leaning monolith that is the Museum of Natural Sciences. I walked down ultra-wide promenade streets. I saw a mix of people — on electric scooters, human-powered bikes, or just stumbling along on foot, barely awake, trying to stick to a straight line. Apparently 7am is very early here.

I went to the beach and I saw workers setting up a stage for a music festival… a barefoot woman walking her dog in the sand… and an old couple, tossing a large ball at each other in some kind of aggressive exercise. As I headed back to my apartment, little kids with oversized backpacks started to appear everywhere.

Now let me ask you:

Could you see any of that in your mind right now?

As you might have heard, a picture is worth a thousand and one words.

I don’t know if that’s an exact exchange rate. But it’s definitely true that, if you’re looking to persuade or influence, you should use all your skill to create a vision in your prospect’s mind. As one of the greatest copywriters of the 20th century, Robert Collier, put it:

“Thousands of sales have been lost, millions of dollars worth of business have failed to materialize, solely because so few letter-writers have that knack of visualizing a proposition — of painting it in words so the reader can see it as they see it.”

Of course, rather than painting a picture in words, you can literally give somebody a real picture and cut out a lot of the work you and they have to do. They will see exactly the image you want them to see, instead of having to translate your words into mental images.

And with that, let me get to my offer:

Instead of me constantly sending you word postcards in email format, would you like it if I sent you a real postcard? With a real picture on the front? From Barcelona? Or from somewhere else?

Like I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been moving around for the past two years. I’ve lived in Thessaloniki, Greece… in Medellin, Colombia… today I’m in Barcelona, tomorrow who knows. You could get a postcard from me from any of my future destinations.

You might wonder what I’m on with this postcard stuff, or if I’m being serious.

I’m being absolutely serious. And as for what I’m talking about:

A few months ago, I had an idea for a new offer. It’s stuck with me and it’s became more insistent. Today it’s time to try it out.

I call this offer the Word’s Most Valuable Postcard. For the full details, along with word pictures that might convince you or dissuade you from taking me up on this offer, take a look here:

https://mostvaluablepostcard.com/

My big takeaway from yesterday’s Daniel Throssell presentation

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I’m at the airport as I write this, sitting in a dangerously comfortable armchair, staring out the big windows onto the tarmac, and waiting to fly from Sofia, Bulgaria to Barcelona, Spain.

This is the latest leg of a crisscrossing world journey I started almost two years ago. During that time, I have moved some two dozen times, staying mainly in Airbnbs though occasionally also with friends and family.

If you’re wondering why I’m gushing all this atypical and overly personal information at you, it’s because yesterday I held my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

In the aftermath of this presentation, I noticed I got as much positive feedback about the actual content I shared as about random personal things people spotted about me. The Firefox extensions I use… the labels in my Gmail account… my own charming face (apparently I look like actor Mike Connors).

The presentation seems to have been a success. Exactly 430 people registered for it, and by my very precise estimate, somewhere between 0 to 430 people attended live (I was too focused on what I had to say to actually check how many people were on the Zoom call).

The three techniques I was so focused on sharing during this presentation, the three techniques I identified in Daniel’s copy, are what you might consider “secrets.”

In other words, they are stuff you probably hadn’t heard or thought about before. They are meant to make you say, “Ohh, that’s clever” when you hear them.

These three techniques made certain of Daniel’s emails stand out to me. In that way, they are undoubtedly valuable.

But marketing “secrets” like this are rarely as valuable as the fundamental stuff you probably hear all the time, and have probably been hearing for years, but for one reason or another you refuse to accept, or refuse to do.

Such as the idea that personal reveals create trust, build a sense of liking, and set the foundations for a long-running relationship.

That’s probably plenty obvious to you if you are a regular reader of Daniel’s emails.

Perhaps you have incorporated revealing personal stuff in your own marketing, and you’ve reaped the benefits thereof.

Or perhaps like me, you dislike the idea of talking about yourself in any way.

In which case, all I can say is, it’s worth pushing yourself, and experimenting with how to make personal reveals in your marketing while still keeping your sense of integrity.

Because personal reveals definitely have benefits. Like I said above, they seem to be as impactful, and probably more so, as the info you actually share and the benefits you provide your audience.

That’s my big takeaway from yesterday’s presentation.

Does it resonate with you in any way?

No? You want more secrets?

In that case, you definitely won’t like the offer I will make in my email tomorrow.

To be honest with you, I actually hoped to put this offer it into today’s email. But I’m very sleep deprived, and it took me shamefully long to write the preceding 507 words. And in just a few minutes, boarding is starting.

So the only offer I have for you today is my workhorse, The 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. It might have slipped by you if you joined my list only recently.

It doesn’t really have any secrets, but it does have a lot of really fundamental advice, some of which might be trasnformative for you. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

“… and I am also of the opinion that Epstein didn’t kill himself”

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Let warn you straight out, if you are a conspiracy lover, that this email is not about Jeffrey Epstein.

​​Instead it is about that meme, from a year or two thousand years ago, of tagging “… and Epstein didn’t kill himself” onto any conversation.

For the past six months, every single day, I’ve been reading Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, a collection of biographies of famous Greeks and Romans. It’s part of my attempt to force a change of perspective on myself.

And it’s been working. It’s fun and fascinating to see how some quirks and problems we think are unique to our own time existed a couple thousand years ago in other complex societies.

So in ancient Greece, there was a powerful and influential man named Alkibiades, who seems to have been the ancient version of Trump.

​​Alkibiades cut off his own dog’s tail to get people horrified and outraged. “Good,” he said, “at least they aren’t talking about the really bad stuff.”

And in ancient Rome, there was Marcus Cato, a politician and general. Cato was a war monger, and late in his life, he constantly tried to get the Romans to attack the city of Carthage in North Africa.

Whenever Cato got up to speak in the Senate, on any topic, internal or external, before sitting back down, he would always sneak in, “… and I am also of the opinion that Carthage must be destroyed.” Mic drop.

Cato did get his way in the end. The Romans became convinced that Carthage was a threat, and they launched the third and final war on the Carthaginians.

​​They leveled the city of Carthage, enslaved its population, and destroyed Carthaginian culture and empire forever.

Was it all Cato’s doing?

No, of course not. But Cato’s insistent nagging probably did contribute.

​​I imagine it started ringing in the heads of other influential Romans, who began to feel that “Carthage must be destroyed” was their own thought and not just something they’ve been hearing over and over from a persistent and cranky old man.

So here’s my point:

In this newsletter, I talk a lot about proof, persuasion, infotainment, building vision, concrete facts, and specificity. It’s all good advice, and it has the added benefit of sounding sexy.

But that sexy and beautiful bamboo pavilion is built on plain but powerful concrete foundations that are rarely talked about.

The fact is, a plain old claim, repeated over and over, a propos of nothing, will in time wear people down, get them curious, and even make them believe. Even if you do nothing else. And if on top of that you add in some proof or a story or some surprising and stimulating facts, all the better.

So there you go. My advice for you for today. Just append, “… and I am also of the opinion that my offer is amazing” to the end of each of your marketing messages.

Speaking of which:

As this email goes out, I will be starting my “Analysis of Daniel Throssell” presentation.

And I am also of the opinion you should have already signed up to attend this amazing presentation live.

But in case you didn’t, you still have a bit of time. You can either join live, or you can at least get the recording when it’s over.

I’ll be disassembling the optin once the presentation ends later tonight. For now it’s still active, and all you gotta do is click on the link below and fill out the form on the next page:

https://bejakovic.com/daniel-throssell-presentation

How to increase your chances of winning acclaim and validation from the very highest levels of the direct response industry

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Last week, Joe Schriefer, formerly the copy chief at Agora Financial, now the owner of his own business, wrote me to say:

Hey John,

Just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy reading your emails. I think you’re one of the best email writers out there!

Finally! Acclaim and validation from the highest levels of the direct response industry! The world is waking up the tremendous value in each of my—

But hold on, I said to myself.

I looked at Joe’s message again. Yes, he says he has been enjoying reading my emails. That’s very nice of him to say, and it suggests he’s been reading for a while, and has liked more than one of my emails. But my ego was on alert. Come on, why did Joe have to write exactly when he did?

The fact is, Joe sent me the message above in response to an email I sent out last week, about Gerry Rafferty and my obsessive love for the song Baker Street.

But in that email, I very consciously made the effort not to write the way I would normally write.

I mentioned yesterday that a couple weeks ago, I agreed with Daniel Throssell to do an analysis of his email copywriting style.

I identified three techniques that Daniel uses regularly, which aren’t standard copywriting practice, and which aren’t in Daniel’s Email Copywriting Compendium.

The night before I wrote that Baker Street email, I had finished writing up the results of my analysis for Daniel.

And when it was time to write my own email, I said, what the hell, why don’t I try using these techniques myself?

Result: I got about double the responses I normally get to an email I send out, and among them the message from Joe.

Coincidence?

Possibly.

The result of 3+ years of non-stop daily emailing, with an effort each day to tell you something fun and new, while working hard on improving my writing?

Possibly.

The hypnotic effect of Daniel’s secret copywriting techniques?

Possibly.

Thing is, it’s not easy to generate favorable coincidences on demand.

​​And 3+ years of daily work requires, well, 3+ years of daily work.

So if you want to increase your chances of boosting your email engagement… and maybe even winning yourself some acclaim and validation from the very highest levels of the direct response industry… then I figure you got two options today:

Option 1 is to dig up that Baker Street email I sent and analyze what I did.

This kind of critical analysis of marketing is good practice. After all, the best marketing — and by this I mean not just my spectacularly valuable emails, but other stuff, too — is out there for free, ready for you to dissect and profit from.

Option 2 is to click the link below and sign up on the next page. That will get you into the presentation I will hold tomorrow, where I will tell you exactly what those three techniques are.

I will also give you examples from Daniel’s copy, and I will spell out how you too can start using these techniques today. I’ll even point out how I used them myself in that Baker Street email.

If you can’t make the presentation live, sign up at the link below and I’ll send you the recording when it’s out.

But if you do attend live, I will give you a surprise gift that won’t be part of the recording.

Either way, if you do want to see this presentation, go here:

https://bejakovic.com/daniel-throssell-presentation

A critical look at Daniel Throssell, part II

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Last autumn, I wrote an email with the subject line, “A critical look at Daniel Throssell.”

It was about how I experienced, first-hand, the crazy levels of engagement that Daniel gets with his emails.

In that email, I also said I’m reading Daniel’s newsletter every day to try to decode exactly how he does it.

My original plan was to do this formally. To sit down, look at a bunch of Daniel’s emails, take notes. To read critically, not just as a consumer of marketing, but as a marketer, trying to squeeze out what exactly Daniel is doing, and how I might start doing the same.

That formal sit-down never happened. Well, not until a couple weeks ago, after Daniel wrote me to say:

I had this kinda weird idea to pay you to do an analysis of my storytelling and email style. You know I highly rate your marketing analysis skills above almost anyone out there.

I’m curious to see if you would identify anything I’m doing that I haven’t even consciously realised myself that I was doing. Nothing super formal, just spending a few hours writing down any random thoughts/notes/analysis you have about how you perceive I tell my stories and use them to achieve my goals.

Would you be interested in that?

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you might know I rarely miss an opportunity to turn down a paying gig. It happened this time too.

I told Daniel that no, I wouldn’t want to do this, not for money, because I really don’t know what I would end up delivering. It’s not like I’d be writing a sales letter, with a clear and defined thing I could hand over at the end.

But I did tell him I’d do it for free, if I could make a little presentation out of it, and if he would also promote it to his list.

Daniel agreed.

So I sat down. I looked at a bunch of his emails. I scratched my forehead and I took a bunch of notes. Result:

Some of what I spotted Daniel doing is straightforward copywriting, just done really well.

Some of it is ideas he teaches in his Email Copywriting Compendium.

And then, some of it is stuff I hadn’t thought about before.

Specifically, I noticed three techniques Daniel uses regularly.

These three techniques aren’t in his Email Copywriting Compendium… they aren’t standard copywriting advice… and yet, they made certain of Daniel’s emails have the most impact on me and stick in my mind the most.

If you like, I’ll tell you what those three techniques are.

I’ll also give you examples from Daniel’s copy, and spell out exactly how you too can use these techniques, starting today, to make your emails more fun, more unique, and more effective.

Like I said, this will be part of a presentation I will put on. The presentation will happen live, next Monday, May 16 at 8pm CET.

You can register for this presentation below. Just click the link at the end and fill out the form on the next page, and I’ll send you a email with the Zoom meeting info and a calendar invite.

If you cannot attend this presentation live, you can still register because I will send out a recording BUT—

If you can at all attend live, I encourage you to do so. That’s because I’ll give you a surprise gift on the call, something I think you will like. This surprise gift won’t be a part of the recording.

So if email is how you make money… or if you’re a fan of Daniel’s style… or if you just have ears to hear and eyes to see that what he’s doing with his newsletter is wildly effective… then here’s your ticket:

https://bejakovic.com/daniel-throssell-presentation

A shocking demonstration of influence or just a bit of misdirection?

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Last night, I watched The Heist, a Derren Brown special that ran on the BBC in 2006.

I wrote about Brown a few days ago. He’s a stage mentalist and magician, and TV debunker of psychics, faith healers etc.

The premise of The Heist is simple:

Can Brown take a group of middle managers who show up for a self-improvement seminar… and within a few weeks, turn them into criminals willing to steal £100,000 at gunpoint?

The short answer is, yes he can.

How exactly does Brown do it? Well, if you watch The Heist, it seems to be a matter of:

1) Carefully choosing the right marks
2) Classical conditioning
3) NLP and hypnosis
4) Making use of deference to authority
5) Commitment and consistency

The show starts out in a countryside castle. Brown delivers a training there to a group of 13 people who responded to a newspaper ad.

Brown was already a TV celeb at this point, and the ad promised that, in the training, chosen participants would learn some of his cool techniques.

During the training, Brown teaches the attendees some useful stuff, such as his memory tricks. But he also programs them using his hypnosis and NLP skills. And he encourages them to commit a petty crime — to steal some candy from the corner store.

Most of the attendees end up complying. They walk into the store, and more or less awkwardly, they walk out with a Snickers or a Kit Kat tucked in their pants or jacket sleeve.

Over the coming weeks, Brown focuses on the most promising prospects. He gives them more tasks and training, which are really more compliance tests and criminal suggestion in disguise.

In the end, Brown picks four of the original 13 — three men and one woman. He massages them more with suggestion and mind tricks, amping up their aggression, planting the seeds of a daring and serious crime.

The climax of the show is covert footage of each of four final would-be criminals. One by one, they walk down the same London street, toward a bank security guard (actually an actor).

Three of the four end up pulling out a fake gun and robbing (or thinking they are robbing) the security guard.

Only the fourth guy nervously walks on, twitching his head and gritting his teeth, but leaving his toy gun unused.

So that’s the story you get if you watch The Heist.

But what’s the reality? Well, who the hell knows.

Because I’m not telling you about Brown’s Heist as an example of the power of influence techniques, or NLP, or good list selection, all of which I’ve written about plenty in this newsletter.

Instead, I’m telling you about The Heist as an example of sleight-of-hand and misdirection.

Brown says there was no trickery and no fooling the viewer involved in The Heist. And I believe the participants in The Heist were real, and not actors. I also have no doubt they believed they were doing something real when they pulled the toy gun on the bank security guard.

Even so, I think The Heist contains some clever editing to make you come away with the story above… as opposed to a significantly different story.

Maybe if you watch The Heist yourself, you will spot the crucial bits that I think are missing, and you can learn something about misdirection.

Or who knows, maybe I’m totally wrong.

Maybe The Heist really is demonstration what it takes to convert a few ordinary law-abiding citizens into serious criminals. If so, it’s worth watching for inspiration and self-programming value alone.

(Not to be a criminal, you goose. But just to realize the true power of these influence techniques we use all the time in copywriting and marketing.)

In any case, if you are curious, or suggestible, then take a look at the entire Heist special below. And before you click to watch it, if you want to get more influence and persuasion ideas like this, sign up to my newsletter.

Opportunity doesn’t come in a sales letter

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A couple weeks ago, I sent out an email about my history making a living, for a few months at least, by writing and selling $2.99 books on Kindle. To which a reader wrote in and asked:

Every day, I get inundated with ads about ‘building passive income with kindle ebooks.’

​Is this one of those overblown opportunities that resembles a once pristine reef teeming with life that’s now been trampled into oblivion?

​Curious to hear your thoughts, as you’ve actually been in that space.

My answer is something marketer Rich Schefren likes to say, which is that opportunity doesn’t come in a sales letter.

The implied or overt promise for any make-money thing is to get rich in just 78 days or less, and then retire if you want to, so you can start worrying about how to spend all that free time you’ve suddenly saddled yourself with.

It makes sense to sell this promise to people because that’s what we all respond to. But it’s not something you want to buy yourself.

That’s not to say that Kindle publishing has become a dead and fossilized reef, with only a few pale and hungry blobfish still swimming around and trying to eek out a bit of nourishment from it.

It doesn’t even mean that it’s not worth paying for a course to guide you through the technical work of picking a niche, writing up and formatting your first book, getting the cover done, etc.

That information can easily be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars to you, if it saves you time that you would have spent to figure out the same stuff.

Or it​ can be worth infinitely more — if it makes the difference between you getting overwhelmed and giving up on a project and sticking with it and ultimately having success with it.

My bigger point is that if you decide to buy a book, course, membership, mastermind, coaching program, whatever, be mindful of what you’re buying… and figure out how to make that thing pay for itself.

​​Apply the ideas you’re getting exposed to. Work harder. Do things you wouldn’t have normally done.

​​It might not be as sexy and colorful as a pristine reef teeming with life… but it’s a guaranteed opportunity to succeed, in just 78 days, or a few months more.

But back to Rich Schefren. I have a offer for you today:

Last year, I regularly promoted Rich’s Steal Our Winners. That’s where Rich interviews a handful of successful marketers each month, and gets them to share a tactic or idea that is working for them right now. You can think of it as a bunch of opportunities, but not in a sales letter.

Steal Our Winners used to be an attractive offer and an easy sale to make — you could try it out for just $1 for the first month.

But then they changed the offer. The $1 trial disappeared, and was replaced by a lifetime-only subscription. So I stopped promoting Steal Our Winners.

But now, the $1 trial is back. So I’m promoting it again, because I still think Steal Our Winners is a valuable source of new marketing ideas.

The only issue is that the layout of the Steal Our Winners site has changed, and for the worse. It’s been redesigned to become more confusing, more YouTube-like, and less monthly newsletter-like. I personally find that annoying, but maybe it won’t be an issue for you, particularly if you didn’t get used to the old site.

In any case, if you are curious to find out more about Steal Our Winners, or even to try it out for $1, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/sow