How living next to train tracks can transform your copywriting skills

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A few days ago, I came across a trending science article with the headline:

“These cancer cells wake up when people sleep”

From what my zero-biology-classes-in-college brain could understand, researchers have made an important new discovery.

Cancer cells in one part of the body are most likely to spread to other parts of the body — a dangerous process called metastasis — while we sleep.

In other words, sleep — usually a good thing – suddenly becomes threatening and dangerous if you have cancer.

I guess this is big news in the science community and might lead to new ways to stop cancer from metastasizing.

But I’m not part of the science community. I’m part of the direct response copywriting community.

And so I mused that, were I in the business of selling important new health information, like Boardroom used to do, I might sell this breakthrough research with a provocative headline:

“How living next to train tracks can stop cancer”

The reason I thought this immediately was because the above science story reminded me of what I think is the greatest bullet of all time:

“How a pickpocket can cure your back pain”

That bullet was written by A-list copywriter David Deutsch in control package for Boardroom, back in the 2000s. David’s brilliant bullet has a clever underlying structure, which I modeled for my would-be headline/bullet above.

Perhaps you can parse exactly what I did with my bullet above. Or perhaps you know the story behind David’s bullet and therefore don’t need to parse what I did.

But if not, you can find the background of David’s bullet, including a breakdown of his clever technique, in Round 10A of my Copy Riddles program.

But let me put it this way:

Living next to train tracks can transform your copywriting skills.

Because enrollment for Copy Riddles closes later today, at 12 midnight PST.

If you haven’t signed up yet, and if you’re sleeping fitfully when the deadline hits, you will miss the enrollment window, and you will have to wait who-knows-how-long to enroll and find out the secret (and more importantly, the copywriting lesson) behind David’s bullet.

So trains rumbling outside your window might actually be a good thing in this case.

On the other hand, if you got no rumbling trains to count on, then you can always sign up now, while you’re still awake and while your mind is fresh and on it. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

How I’m manipulating you again by telling you the truth

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Came a curious question yesterday, in response to my email with the subject line, “How I manipulated you, and how I might do it again.” Reader Jan wrote:

Hi John,

I’ve been reading your emails for a while now and I really enjoy them.

I’d love to know what’s your stance on actively mentioning downsides and what a certain offer is NOT/whom it’s NOT for in order to disqualify the wrong buyers.

This email sounds like you’re not really a fan of it, which surprises me a bit. Maybe I misunderstood something about it.

I would appreciate it a lot if you could clarify that.

At first I found myself flummoxed.

After all, this question came in response to an email in which I actively gave a potential buyer reasons why my Copy Riddles program might not be right for him.

But then my slow, tortoise-like brain struggled forward a few inches. And I remembered the “disqualification” I gave to the potential buyer in yesterday’s email.

I said that Copy Riddles is not for anyone who’s not willing to “poke, prod, jolt, shock, creep out, and unsettle people.” Because my claim is that copywriting is about:

1) Stripping out details that don’t help your case (ie. not telling the whole truth), and

2) Using reliable ways to get people more amped up than they would be normally.

So is this in flagrant conflict with the practice of actively mentioning downsides or disqualifying the wrong buyers?

Maybe. Or maybe it’s more subtle than that.

Now, I hate to do what I’m about to do to you.

But get ready for a bit of hard teaching, because I don’t know how else to deal with this question right now.

During my Most Valuable Email presentation last week, I talked about what I call frontloading. I used a Ben Settle email to illustrate:

And it contains the exact same methods I used to land high-paying clients who could have easily afforded to hire better and more seasoned writers. But, using my sneaky ways, they not only hired me… they hired only me (often multiple times, plus referring me to their friends), without doing the usual client-copywriter dance around price, without jumping through hoops to sell myself, and without even showing them my portfolio, in most cases.

I used this info during good and bad economic times.

In fact, I got more high paying clients during the bad times (2008-2010) than the good times.

I cannot guarantee you will have the same results.

And the methodology doesn’t work overnight.

But, that’s how it worked out in my case, and this book shows you what I did.

Frontloading is when you make a powerful, extreme promise. Then you qualify your promise. But the big, extreme, initial promise still keeps ringing in your prospect’s head.

Ben is a past master at this, as you can see in the snippet above.

Sure, he actively mentions some downsides to make his offers sound legit. But he does it after he’s thourougly amped up his readers with an irresistible promise, which might sound too good to be true — were it not for those downsides.

And by the way:

I’m not in any way criticizing Ben. All I’m saying is, he’s a serious student of direct response copywriting… and he knows what works.

And what works is what I tried to explain, perhaps clumsily, in my email yesterday:

1. Controlling your reader’s attention, and

2. Arousing his emotions in an almost unnatural way

Of course, you can do this to rope in people who are a bad fit for your offers. That’s dumb if you ask me.

You can also do it to turn good prospects into buyers. That’s smart, and it’s what Ben does every day.

And now:

I have an amazing offer for you… a new way to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe.

Some of the smartest and most successful marketers of all time, Ben Settle among them, have endorsed the approach that this offer is built on.

But the thing is, my offer does cost money.

And it’s gonna require work. Every weekday. For 8 weeks straight.

And it might even make your head hurt a bit once or twice.

But if none of those downsides turn you off, you might be a good prospect for my offer. It’s called Copy Riddles. To take me up on it:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

The one piece of influential writing which molded me above all others

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The one piece of influential writing which molded me above all others – above all the Ben Settle emails, all the Dan Kennedy books, all the Dan Lok Facebook ads — is an old issue of the Gary Halbert newsletter, titled:

The Difference Between Winners and Losers.

I read this issue in the first few weeks after I discovered copywriting, years before I actually became a freelance copywriter.

And I’ll make a dramatic claim:

I don’t know if I would have ever started as a copywriter without this Winners/Losers issue. Without the basic idea I got from it.

One thing I know for sure is that whenever I come back to the core idea from this Winners/Losers issue, big things, transformative things, often happen.

Maybe I’ve made you curious. So here’s the gist, in Gary’s own words:

Non-alcoholics can never truly understand alcoholism. Straight people can never understand what it is to be gay. Gays can’t hope to thoroughly comprehend what it is to be straight. And…

Spectators Can Never Understand
What It Is To Be A Player!

In that newsletter, Gary gave a quick, cheap, and easy exercise that anyone could do to 1000x their chances of becoming rich. It just involved putting out a classified ad and fielding all the calls that would come in.

​​Just follow the simple instructions, and ultimate success is 1000x more likely.

“But most of you are not going to follow these simple instructions,” Gary said. “I know that already from past experience.”

“I won’t be like those people,” I told Gary, who was already dead. “I will do what you tell me, and I will become a success!”

Of course, as you can probably guess, I never did follow Gary’s instructions and I never did put out the classified ad. But the idea, along with a bit of shame, stuck with me.

And that’s how I achieved what I have achieved. Because on occasion, I remember Gary’s Difference Between Winners and Losers.

And rather than saying, “Yeah that’s good advice” or “Pff I’ve heard that before,” I shut up for a minute and actually follow the step-by-step instructions that some smart and successful person has laid out for me.

Because like Gary said, knowing something intellectually is not good enough. You have to do it, apply it, experience it yourself to have a chance of becoming a player.

Perhaps keep that in mind, as I switch to an almost entirely unrelated topic:

My Copy Riddles program is now open for enrollment, until this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

“Pff I know all about that,” I hear you say. “You haven’t stopped talking about your Copy Riddles program for a century and a half.”

Well, maybe this is the moment when you finally hear me. For two reasons:

First, because Copy Riddles was actually born when I finally followed another bit of Gary’s step-by-step advice. This was advice I had known intellectually for years, but that I had never put into practice. And when I finally did put it into practice, big, transformative things happened.

And second:

B​ecause Copy Riddles is built around the idea that you gotta experience things yourself.

Spectators can never understand what it is to be a player… and copy readers can never understand what it is to be a copywriter.

​​That’s why I built and organized Copy Riddles as a series of practical exercises, simple but powerful, that you do every day to implant copywriting skills into your head — and to actually get the experience of creating effective copy.

But maybe that’s all a little vague for you.

Fortunately, I have written up a quite extensive and exclusive report, with all the details of how Copy Riddles works. In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

The most powerful appeal for making the sale, according to the great Robert Collier

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I did my best to be snarky last night. I announced that Copy Riddles is now open again, and I invited criticism and trollish responses to the many promotional emails I would be sending.

What I got instead was a bunch of messages like the following, from reader and past Copy Riddles alum Nathan Eshman:

Love this course John!!! I literally use what I learned in it every day.

Is it still open for those who’ve done it in the past to join in again?

If so, can you put me on the receiving list please?

Sigh. This is not the thoughtless trolling or nasty criticism I was expecting. But you gotta work with what you got.

The background is this:

Nathan first signed up for Copy Riddles last year. He’s now taking advantage of the fact that if you join Copy Riddles once, you get lifetime membership. In other words, you can rejoin Copy Riddles for any future run for free.

This offer is open to anybody who has gone through Copy Riddles before. If that’s you, and you’d like to join for this run, just hit reply, let me know, and I will add you.

And if that’s not you, and you haven’t been through Copy Riddles yet, then I can tell you a valuable direct response lesson I first learned from the great Robert Collier, author of the Robert Collier Letter Book and that New Thought mishmash, the Secret of the Ages.

In analyzing a bunch of sales letters he had sent out, Collier found out that the most powerful appeal for making the sale is to say, “The price is going up.”

That’s also a reason to sign up for Copy Riddles now, rather than later.

Because each time I have run Copy Riddles, I’ve increased the price significantly.

It’s very possible I will do so again the next time I run this program.

But if you join now, then like Nathan, you don’t have to worry about any future higher price. You get into future runs for free, free, free.

Of course, I don’t want you to make up your mind about joining Copy Riddles based only on price.

Read the sales letter. See if this training makes sense for you. Decide if you will do what it takes to get value from it.

And if you conclude that the answer is yes, then do the simple math of comparing less with more, and use that to guide you. Here’s where to get started:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Ben Settle emergency emails in support of Copy Riddles?

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Last night, I sent out an email vaguely threatening you with a bunch of upcoming emails to promote my Copy Riddles program, which is now open for enrollment until this Sunday at 12 midnight PST.

After I sent that email out, I slumped in my chair and hung my head.

“Great, now what?” I said. “Where am I gonna get all those emails? Who’s gonna write all that stuff I threatened them with?”

Beyond the one half-finished Copy Riddles email I had written during my Most Valuable Email presentation, I had nothing.

But then a desperate idea hit me. “I have that useless diploma from the Oregon School of Manifestation… why don’t I apply what they taught me?”

So I closed my eyes, put my fingers to my temples, and started to massage slowly, while sending out vibrations of easily-written emails into the universe.

YOU’VE GOT MAIL, my AOL account suddenly said.

Well, not really. I don’t use AOL. But I did get an email, just a few minutes after I wished for some easy help.

The email came from Ben Settle, and the subject line read:

“Advice to a new Agora copywriter”

This email of Ben’s is full of uncharacteristically detailed and forthcoming advice. If you’re on Ben’s list, it might be interesting to read. I will highlight just one bit, because it serves my purposes here.

A new Agora copywriter wrote in to ask Ben’s opinion on a bunch of stuff, including that bullets aren’t at all important any more.

To which Ben responded:

“Bullets still work, never stopped working, and will always work — When written correct everything ‘comes’ from the bullets, including non-bullet copy or ads where there are no bullets.”

Now I’d like to think Ben wrote this specifically at this moment, just to help me out with promoting Copy Riddles.

After all, the first basic premise behind Copy Riddles is that once you own the skill of writing bullets, you own the essence of intriguing, irresistible copywriting, no matter what format you write in.

The fundamental ideas inside Copy Riddles apply whether you are writing bullets… headlines… subject lines… body copy of sales letters and VSLs… ads… or emails.

In fact, I think Copy Riddles ideas transfer directly if you are writing sales emails, and not just in subject lines. I’ve even made the claim before that sales emails are basically the modern version of “expanded” bullets.

So that’s the first premise behind Copy Riddles.

The second premise is that you go further and faster by doing and experiencing… than by reading/listening/watching and then forgetting.

That’s why Copy Riddles is built around a unique, effective, and, I modestly think, clever mechanism. The mechanism gets those bullets lodged into your head, not just as a bunch of how-to information, but as a skill that you own.

But don’t take it from me. Since we are speaking of new Agora copywriters, a junior Agora copywriter named Harry Thomas went through Copy Riddles during the last run. And he had this to say:

“Honestly, John’s course is brilliant. While the content is bullets-centred, everything inside can be applied to other aspects of copy. Whenever I’m choosing endo subject lines or writing Taboola ads, I’ll write them out in bullet form first, then pick the best ones to use. And this might sound weird, but I can almost feel myself improving in real-time with John’s exercises.”

To get more details on my Copy Riddles exercises or to join while the joining’s good:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Copy Riddles now open for yes-men, yes-women, and others

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“I don’t want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth, even if it costs them their jobs.”
— Samuel Goldwyn

Today, I am reopening my Copy Riddles program for only the second time this year.

If you don’t know what Copy Riddles is about, you can read about it at the link at the end of this email.

Or you can just sit tight.

Because over the coming days, I will send you many emails, explaining what Copy Riddles is and why you might want to join.

I will start today, and I will only end on Sunday night at midnight PST, when the doors to the Copy Riddles theater will close again, to lock out any stragglers. The actual show will begin next Monday.

Now, in the parts of the direct response Internet that I haunt, it is customary to announce a heavy promotional campaign like this by saying something like:

“If you don’t like it, unsubscribe. Or just ignore my many emails until the storm passes. Or if you’re smart, follow along quietly, even if you have no intent to buy, because these emails make me a lot of money, and you might learn a thing or two.”

Predictably, sending out a message like this results in fewer spam complaints, a tighter bond with your list, and better behaved subscribers, who in time begin to border on yes-men, saying, “Yeah yeah, tell those people off in case they can’t appreciate effective marketing.”

But I don’t want any yes-men around me. Or yes-women.

I want everybody to tell me the truth, even if it costs them their spot on my email list.

So if any of my emails over the coming days rubs you the wrong way… or if you think I’m selling too hard, or I’m name-dropping too much, or I’m not giving sufficient value in my emails… or if the total tonnage of my promotional material just begins to annoy you by its weight… then make sure to write in and let me know.

I promise to read each suggestion and complaint, and to respond, perhaps even publicly.

So with that announcement done, let’s get this campaign started. Here’s the Copy Riddles promotional trailer, I mean, the text sales page, for your viewing and marketing pleasure:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Teach a man to fish, and he will pay you for framed photos of the lunkers you have caught

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Over the past days and months, I keep mentioning an old talk given by IM guru Jeff Walker. At one point in the talk, Jeff says something that sounds perverse:

“Teach a man to fish… and he will ask you for a fish sandwich.”

This only sounds perverse until you realize Jeff is speaking from experience.

Specifically, he’s talking about all the business owners who bought his Product Launch Formula, realized it would take too much work to implement, but also realized the value it would bring to their businesses. These many business owners came back to Jeff and said, “Can’t you just do this for me, Jeff? I’ll pay you.”

Also over the past days and months, I’ve seen a lot of discussion in my inbox about the problem of moving the free line. Giving away your best stuff for free, instead of charging for it.

And I can imagine there really is a problem. That is, if you just sit there, wishin’ and hopin’ for people to pay you for more of what you just gave them for free.

After all, who wants to pay for the same thing that they just got for free?

On the other hand, like Jeff says, people might be ready to pay for something very much like what you just gave them, only stuck in between two slices of white bread.

That’s what Jeff did, and he did it the smart way.

First, he sold his audience a fishing guide, called The Product Launch Formula. And then he sold it to them again, repositioned as a fish-sandwich-making franchise, which he called Product Launch Manager.

I also did it. But I did it in an unsmart way. I only sold my thing once, instead of three times.

Specifically, I showed people how to fish, in different ponds, rivers, and seas, and I did this for free.

Then I made a video presentation about the best fishing strategy I have personally found. I gave that away for free as well.

Then I made a framed collection of the most impressive lunkers I’ve personally caught using that strategy, and I put that up for sale.

In case my fish metaphor is running away with me, let me bring this back into the marketing plane:

I’m talking about my Most Valuable Email presentation, which I gave last Wednesday. That free presentation was based on a bunch of emails I have sent to my list over the past few years.

At the end of that presentation, I sold a swipe file of some of my best emails, which I had written using my Most Valuable Email strategy.

A surprising number of people took me up on this offer.

That’s because I turned those emails into something new and (additionally) valuable, by doing the work of collecting all those emails… by bundling them together… and by adding in relevant explanations, some red and yellow highlighting to point out the MVE strategy in action, as well as any fun or interesting context.

So there you go:

Beware moving the free line.

Or don’t. And simply make an attractive new offer.

Speaking of which:

If you registered to watch my Most Valuable Email presentation, then I sent you a recording. You have until end of day today, Pacific time, to watch it and take me up on the offer at the end.

I will be taking both down both the presentation and the offer at 12 midnight PST tonight.

​​Based on the positive responses I’ve gotten to the presentation, and the surprising number of people who took me up on the Most Valuable Email Swipes offer, I’ve decided to bundle this up as an attractive new offer and sell it down the line.

And if you didn’t register for the MVE presentation, then you will have to wait for that attractive new rerelease. Nobody gets into this particular aquarium after the doors close.

And of course, I still have to end this email today with an offer.

If you want to catch more fish, I mean, make more sales, in the ponds and streams of your email list, then I might be able to help. You can start the process by filling out the form below. Just don’t ask me for a fish sandwich. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

The Psycho rules you MUST have for a stronger business and more successful customers

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Last night, as lights dimmed around the city and the streets got quiet and a lonely owl started hooting somewhere in the distance, I settled into bed and started watching…

Psycho!

(​​The trailer.)

This was a 6-minute promo movie, made by Alfred Hitchcock, to drum up anticipation for the real Psycho movie.

The Psycho trailer features Hitchcock himself, showing off the Psycho set as if it were a real crime scene.

​​With cheery music playing, Hitchcock walks around the set, hints at the murders that happened in different rooms, and occasionally pouts and frowns at camera as if to say, “You there, in the second row, what odd thing are you doing?”

At the end of it all, Hitchcock walks into the motel, to the bathroom.

“Well they cleaned all this up now,” he says. “Big difference. You should have seen the blood. The whole place was… well, it’s too horrible to describe.”

In spite of this, Hitchcock continues his cheery tour. He points out the toilet — an important clue — and then the shower. The camera zooms in as he reaches for the shower curtain, pulls it back swiftly, and—

A screaming woman’s face flashes and the famous Psycho slasher music cuts into your ears.

The closing credits appear, and then a notice:

“PSYCHO: The picture you MUST see from the beginning… or not at all! For no one will be seated after the start.”

“What?” I asked my laptop. No one allowed in late? Is this for real?”

It turns out yes.

Hitchcock made a rule for the release of Psycho. Nobody would be allowed into the theater, any theater, anywhere around country, after the movie had started.

Studio honchos were worried that this arbitrary rule would hurt ticket sales.

But you, my dear marketing psycho, probably know better.

What do you think happened?

Did people hear they won’t be allowed in late, and decide to stay away?

Did a few people who did come late, and who got turned away, and who fumed about it… did these people sour everybody else from seeing the movie?

Of course not.

Lines formed around the block, in cities around the US, made up of people waiting to see Psycho, at the appointed time.

Of course, these people were not there only because of this “No late admission” rule.

But I’m 100% sure this rule contributed to the fact that Pyscho broke box-office records in its opening weekend, and has become such a keystone of pop culture since.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

People loooove draconian rules and restrictions, particularly in a take-it-or-leave it setting.

Sure, some people get turned away. Either because they know in advance they can’t make it to the theater in time, or more likely, because they dawdle.

But some people will be intrigued who wouldn’t care otherwise. And more important, many people will treat the person setting the rules with a new level of respect and deference.

Ben Settle recently wrote an email about his Psycho rule not to allow people who unsubscribe from his Email Players newsletter to re-subscribe down the line. Ben wrote:

“I’ve tested, tweaked, experimented with, and practiced this policy for nearly 10 years. And I have found, without exception, the harsher I am with this policy, the stronger my business gets with far more successful customers. On the other hand, the more lenient I am with this policy, the weaker my business gets with far more weak-minded customers. It’s such an integral part of what makes my business model work, that it’s ‘part’ of my marketing now, just like clean parks are ‘part’ of Disneyland’s customer service.”

So there you go. If you want a stronger business and more successful customers, stop allowing anyone into your theater after the lights dim.

Or stop allowing them back in, if they ever leave for a pee break.

Or come up with yer own Psycho rules. Ones that match your personality, your preferences, and your business objectives.

“Here it comes,” some oddball in the second row is saying, while rubbing his hands together. “Here come Bejako’s rules. He always likes to write about an interesting marketing and business idea, and then implement it in the same email.”

True. I do like to implement good ideas as soon as I write about them.

But another thing I like to do is to take a really important idea, and sit on it for a while, and then implement it in future emails, and throughout my business.

This particular idea, about Psycho rules, is big enough and important enough to warrant more time and space than I want to take for a single email.

But keep an eye out, if you have an eye to spare, and maybe will see me pulling back the shower curtain some time soon, and with scary slasher music suddenly playing, startling my list with one of my new Pyscho rules.

Meanwhile, if you want my advice, insights, and guidance (no copywriting) when it comes to your existing email marketing funnels, you can contact me using the form below.

No arbitrary rules or hoops to jump through — yet.

​​Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

Social justice for blockheads, the hardhearted, and the congenitally lazy

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This morning I spent a few minutes performing a routine medical procedure to get my blood pressure up. In other words, I read an article that popped up on a news aggregator, from some site I had never heard of, called Stakedy. The headline of the article ran:

“Social justice for the bald man”

The article was a quick series of arguments backed with proof. Baldness causes social stigma and pain for bald men, who spend billions of dollars trying to repair their wounded self-images. Of the top 100 most beautiful actors in the world, exactly zero are bald. Baldness is a genetically caused medical condition. For all these reasons, discrimination against the bald should not be allowed in a progressive society.

The article concluded with the following:

“Do we need laws to fine people for such discrimination? Do we need quotas for bald men on movie sets? Do we need to demonize women who won’t date a bald man for fear that she will have a bald child? What we need are some bald social justice warriors.”

As I finished the article, I both grinned and I frowned.

I grinned because I looked forward to the furious comments, both pro and con, that were sure to follow in the comments section of that news aggregator site.

I frowned because in spite of myself, I took a side. I started preparing my own serious and impassioned arguments and getting ready to enter the fight, at least in my head.

Sure enough, in the comments, there was plenty of dismantling, dismay, disappointment, and disgust.

“What’s next? Social justice for the short and for the shortsighted?” “You can’t save everyone…” “I’ve been bald since 1989 and I think…”

And then there was the top comment. It quietly said:

“Stakedy is auto-generated by AI. (It’s hard to figure out how, it’s some crazy blockchainy thing.) The fact that people don’t recognize that and try to argue the merit of the article here makes me scared.”

So what to say?

I could get back on my favorite hobby horse, and say that “good enough” AI is coming, or is in fact here.

Some people insist that copywriters and marketers will be spared if they are smart enough, if they are empathetic enough, or if they are simply willing to work hard enough. Who knows, maybe these people will be proved right.

​​Or maybe they will be proved wrong. Maybe we will all soon be campaigning for social justice for our particular stigmatized and endangered groups…

But you know, that’s just my hobby horse. And you can’t ride too far on one of those.

So instead, let me saddle up a big and serious Clydesdale for you:

Humans have these predictable, robot-like emotional buttons that can be pressed.

One button for attention.. another for affinity… a third for acquisitiveness.

These buttons are so predictable and so easy to press that now even a machine can do it.

So shouldn’t you be doing more of this pressing, in your own marketing and copy, in some smart and empathetic way?

I’ll leave that question hanging in the air.

And I’ll just say that, if you want my help performing this routine medical procedure on your audience, now, while there’s still time, before we’re both out of a job, you can contact me here:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

It was all my fault, and always has been

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A few nights ago, I was lying in my plush bed, smoking a cigar and tossing grapes into my mouth one by one.

Life was good.

I had just sent out my email about the prestigious Dig.This.Zoom event. It was only a matter of time now.

A bit of movement in the corner of my bedroom caught my eye. It was my laptop, open to my Gmail inbox. A new email had arrived. I could just make out the subject line:

“Your form, ‘John Bejakovic consult request’, has a new response”

“Sooner than I expected,” I smirked, “but I’m not surprised.”

In that email about the Dig.This.Zoom event, I had successfully associated myself with heavyweight marketers Aaron Winter and Dan Ferrari. I ended that email with my consulting offer.

Clearly, I thought, some smart business owner, who owns a profitable niche business I would never have even dreamed about, and who reads my daily newsletter religiously, realized he could make much more money with my advice and guidance.

That business owner is now reaching out to offer to pay me in advance… if only he can get a bit of time on my calendar, and the opportunity to have my highly trained eyes locked critically on his email funnels, until I find small changes that can lead to big improvements.

I slid out of bed lazily and made my way to my laptop.

I imagined myself a few months down the line, getting an email from said business owner. The email would say:

“John I was skeptical when we first did the consult. But we made the changes you suggested. And now we’re making 11x what we were before from the same email funnel. I’m over the moon! I’m sure you don’t need yet another glowing testimonial. But if you ever want to use this publicly to let the world know how incredible you are, please go ahead. It would be an honor for me.”

“Well okay, if it would be an honor for you,” I said to my empty bedroom as I clicked the Google Forms link. “Let’s see who the lucky business owner is today. I wonder what mysterious and surprising line of work he is in.”

My ugly Google form opened up. My mouth hung open. My face sank.

There it was. My newest consulting request. The successful business owner from that surprising new niche I had been fantasizing about. The request read, in its entirety,

“I am a Nigerian direct response copywriter. I want to learn from you.”

I wasn’t sure what bothered me more. The fact that my fantasy had been popped, and that this was the polar opposite of the ideal consulting lead I was dreaming about. Or perhaps it was just the utter lack of effort involved in this “consulting request.”

“Learn from me? Learn what? How to write self-deprecating emails like this one? How to make ugly Google Forms? How to approach people in a way that shows you are serious about working with them and respectful of their time?”

I wasn’t sure how I could possibly respond to this request in a sensible way that didn’t waste more of my time. And then I realized I should just do it in a daily email to my list.

I also remembered a bit of philosophy I’ve long held near to my heart:

It’s always your fault.

That might not sound like the healthiest way to go through life. But it’s served me well.

If things ever go in the completely wrong direction, away from where I want to be, then like David Byrne, I always ask myself, “Well, how did I get here?”

Because pianos don’t just fall out of the sky and land on your head. You have to walk under them first, as they are hanging by a fraying rope. You have to stand around, spinning aimlessly from side to side, while that rope gets more and more frayed. And you have to make sure you never look up until finally the rope snaps.

So dear Nigerian direct response copywriter, if you are reading, don’t feel like I am picking on you.

It was my fault for not being sufficiently clear who my consulting offer was for, and what it was about.

If you’d like to learn from me — I assume how to write copy, but who knows — then my suggestion would be to wait another week.

That’s when I will reopen my Copy Riddles program.

​​Copy Riddles is a way to learn copywriting from me, in a very compact and affordable package. Much more affordable than the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars it would take if you want to get the equivalent knowledge from me in a series of one-on-one consults.

But perhaps you are not that Nigerian direct response copywriter looking to learn from me.

And perhaps now you have a clearer idea of my consulting offer is about. And perhaps you even think it might be smart for you, and for your business.

​​If so, fill out the ugly Google Forms form below. No need to go overboard. But give me more detail about you and your business than just saying, “I want to learn from you.”

https://bejakovic.com/consulting