Announcing: My new 183-day challenge

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I woke up this morning to an email inviting me to promote a “6-figure challenge” challenge.

From what I understand, the challenge is for an audience of experts to build their own 6-figure challenge funnel.

I have never participated in an online challenge. I do not ever plan on participating in an online challenge. And so, simply as a matter of only promoting dogfood that my own dog has happily eaten in the past, I won’t be promoting this offer.

But this did bring to mind another challenge I read about just last night. You might want to take a deep breath — because it’s the challenge of voluntary poverty. Bear with me for a moment while I tell you about it.

I read about this challenge in a book by “the father of American psychology,” William James. A hundred years ago, James had this to say:

Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise any one who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition.

Maybe this sounds to you like another classic self-defeating Bejako gambit, promoting the challenge of voluntary poverty to an audience of copywriters, marketers, and business owners. But hold on. James goes on to explain:

It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases.

Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman.

What James is saying is that in many cases — maybe in most cases — there is a tradeoff between the desire for wealth and the desire for freedom and independence.

​​And freedom and independence — that’s something I bet you care about.

I’m going by my own feelings here. I’ve always cared more about freedom than money. And in fact, I originally got interested in copywriting not because of the promise of sales letters that would pay me millions of dollars in royalties. I got interested because copywriting meant I wouldn’t have to keep sitting in somebody else’s office, day after day, from dark in the morning until dark in the afternoon.

There’s a fair chance you’re like me, and that you also care about being free and independent.

And so, starting today, I would like to announce my 183-day Voluntary Poverty Challenge. ​​For the low, low price of $5,000, you can join my challenge and have my team of certified poverty coaches reorganize your life along lines recommended by William Jam—

Yeah right. My point is simply that there are often tradeoffs among our most fundamental motivating forces. ​​And also, that it’s possible to sell even something hard and mean — voluntary poverty — by appealing to deeper psychological drivers like the desire for freedom.

But really, I have a 183-day challenge for you. Join my email newsletter, and look out for my email each day, waiting for the day when I will fail and not write anything. It hasn’t happened for the past several thousand days, but maybe it will happen in the next 183 days. And then you can gloat. If you’d like to join this exciting challenge, click here to get started.

Today is a possible keyframe moment in your life

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About two months ago, I reconnected with an ex-girlfriend I had not talked to for over 5 years, pretty much since the day we broke up.

She seems to be thriving now. Maybe because of that, she wrote me a short email this summer to wish me a happy birthday. We exchanged a few more short emails and she suggested we get on a call and catch up. So we did.

It was an oddly pleasant and chirpy call that lasted over an hour.

I’ll tell you one detail from the call that stands out in my mind.

It turns out that in those five years, my ex started her own law office.

“I didn’t want to do it,” she said, “even though it was always the plan. Actually, in a funny way you were responsible for why I did finally do it.”

The “funny way” was this:

Back when we were together, my ex and I used to play-plan, and talk about sharing an office together one day. She could have one room, where she could write serious real estate contracts, and I could have the other room, where I could write serious dog toothbrush advertorials. We could share the coffee machine and the secretary.

It was a nice idea in my mind, and I guess in her mind as well. Because, as she told me during that oddly pleasant and chirpy call, it was this memory that made her finally decide to get the office and to start her own law practice.

All this popped up in my head today when I learned of a new word, watashiato:

“Watashiato: n. Curiosity about the impact you’ve had on the lives of the people you know, wondering which of your harmless actions or long-forgotten words might have altered the plot of their stories in ways you’ll never get to see.”

Watashiato, the word, comes from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. That’s just a blog by some guy, who’s inventing new words for feelings and experiences most of us have, but cannot put a finger, or tongue, to.

And that’s it. That’s all I’ll share with you today. That new word, plus The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, plus the quick personal story.

I did have more to say about this, including talking about keyframe moments.

But I saved that for people who are signed up for my email newsletter, and who get these emails live, instead of getting these emails archived on my website. In case you would like to join them, click here and possibly enter into a strange new area of your life.

The strategy of hypocrisy and scoundreldom

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Mark Ford once shared the following personal story in his newsletter, which has rattled around in my head for years:

AJ is one of the most brilliant marketing minds on the planet. We became acquainted almost 40 years ago when my boss at the time got into a joint venture with him.

The deal made both of them a lot of money, but it ended badly when they argued about dividing the spoils. AJ’s behavior after that was reprehensible. I was so disturbed by it that once, at an industry event, I actually challenged him to a duel. He declined.

Years later, we reconnected. I was still angry with him – but before I had a chance to bring it up, he said, very casually, “But of course I’m a hypocrite and a scoundrel.”

The moment he said that, I forgave him.

Maybe it’s the gossip in me, but I’ve always wondered who this brilliant marketing mind is in reality.

I have my own theory.

Maybe you do too, or maybe you know the true back story. In any case, the following two points stand:

1. The direct marketing world attracts many morally bankrupt characters, some of whom are very smart and very effective at what they do.

2. You can’t really tell much from the outside. The whole thing about marketing is presenting an attractive facade to the world, including of your own self.

And by the way, playing consumer advocate, which is kind of what I’m doing with this email, is just another way of dressing up that attractive facade.

Having said that, I would now like to sell you on signing up for my daily email newsletter.

You might rightly wonder why, having primed you to be guarded and suspicious, you should listen to anything I have to tell you now.

The fact is, people can be very good at presenting an attractive facade to the world — for a while. But it becomes hard to do it week after week, month after month, year after year. That’s why daily emails are one way to get a peek behind that facade, and see who is morally bankrupt, and who has some money in the moral bank.

And besides, you might get some good ideas about copywriting or marketing or persuasion from my daily emails.

Whatever the case, if you’d like to sign up, click here and fill out the form that appears.

Free info on free reports

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Copy Riddles member Andrew Townley takes advantage of the Copy Oracle privilege to ask:

I was listening to a Dan Kennedy program today that got me thinking about all those direct mail “free reports.” I was wondering if you had a source of any guidance on how to build one. I remember Parris describing the process somewhere on a podcast or something, but I can’t find it now.

The background, as you might know, is this:

A-list copywriters like Dan Kennedy and Parris Lampropoulos are experts at selling newsletters. Newsletters are a direct marketing staple because they are great for the publisher. Money comes in like clockwork, on your own schedule, without any added selling of your vague and broad and cheap-to-produce subscription offer.

For those same reasons, newsletters are a suspect deal for the subscriber. Many potential subscribers instinctively feel repulsed at the thought of paying good money, every month, for a “cat in the bag” piece of content, whether they are eager to consume it or not.

Enter free reports. Free reports are one effective strategy that guys like Dan and Parris use to overcome the resistance of skeptical newsletter buyers. The recipe is simple:

1. Go through your past content (newsletter or really anything else)
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2. Find the sexiest stuff. It can either be a single bit of info, or a small number of related items you bundle together.

​3. Put that sexy stuff in its own little package.

​4. Give that package a sexy and mysterious new name.

​5. Repeat as many times as your stamina will allow. I believe one Boardroom promo offered 99 free reports along with a newsletter subscription.

When you think about it, this is really just the same work that a copywriter would do normally. Look at what he has to sell… figure out the sexiest parts of that… highlight it in the sales material, and of course, make it sound as sexy and as mysterious as possible.

And now for the pitch that probably won’t convince you:

I write a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and persuasion.

But like I said, that probably won’t convince you to sign up.

So let me take my own advice, and offer you a free report when you sign up:

“Become a Repositioning Specialist”

This report shows you how to start a profitable repositioning business, with your own home as headquarters. In case, you want this report, follow these steps:

  1. Click here and sign up to my free daily email newsletter
  2. When you get my welcome email, hit reply and tell me you want the free report

A new way to acquire copywriting skills while reducing emissions by over 80%

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Today I have a new pasta recipe for you:

Boil the water, throw in the pasta, cook as usual for two minutes. Then turn off the stove. Put a lid on your pasta and keep it in the hot-but-no-longer boiling water until the usual cooking time.

It’s called passive cooking and apparently it works just as well as your usual “stove’s on” way of cooking pasta, while reducing emissions by 80%.

Whatever. I’m just sharing this recipe with you because 1) it’s trending on the Internet, and I’m a trendy guy and 2) because I went to the page that explained this pasta cooking recipe and saw something interesting.

The passive cooking page is on the Barilla site. Barilla is a brand of pasta. And yet, on that page of the Barilla site, it says the following:

DOES IT WORK ONLY WITH PASTA BARILLA?

Of course not! We chose to study the process, adapt it to our classic product range and provide all the information to adopt this method. But helping the planet goes beyond our brand. So, with a few tweaks, you can try Passive Cooking even if you choose products from other brands.

This is interesting — and smart. It goes back to something I heard once from A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos.

Parris said how many sales letters go from problem => my offer and why it’s just what you need!

“How convenient,” says the reader after reading this. “All this time, while you were pretending to be talking about me and my problem, you were just leading me by the nose until you could start hawking your stupid brand of tortiglioni.”

A much better way to do it, says Parris, is to go from problem => broad category of solution => why your specific solution is a great or really the best choice within that category.

“It works with any brand of pasta! Of course, you might have to tweak a few things, do a bit of light multivariate calculus, and risk a beating from your hungry spouse — but really, any brand will work! Or of course you can just go with Barilla because we’ve done all the work for you.”

Which brings me to my Copy Riddles program:

IS COPY RIDDLES THE ONLY WAY TO TRANSFORM YOUR COPYWRITING SKILLS?

Of course not! I chose to study actual, million-dollar copy of A-list copywriters, present it to you in fun bite-sized pieces, and provide you all the information so you can practice each A-list copywriting technique yourself.

But effective copywriting goes beyond Copy Riddles. So, with a few tweaks, along with a few thousand hours of effort and a few tens of thousands of dollars of investment in books, courses, and coaching, you can try to acquire the same copywriting skills in different ways also.

Or you can just get Copy Riddles.

In case the pot’s boiling, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

How to predict the future without being smart or highly educated

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I’m spending this weekend in the mountains, in a pretty ski village which is mostly dead because the ski season hasn’t started yet.

Along with me in the house are three smart, highly educated, grown-ass women who spent a fair part of the weekend discussing and also watching a Netflix show called Dynasty.

Now I’m old enough to remember that Dynasty was a 1980s soap opera.

The Netflix version is a remake from 5 years ago. It’s glossy, cheesy, and oversexed. Here’s a bit of dialogue from the season 1 trailer, when a brawny black chauffeur picks up a white bombshell socialite from her private jet:

BBC: How was Denver?
WBS: I miss the heat.
BBC: Trust me, it wasn’t as hot without you here. Straight to the manor?
WBS: [smirks] I’m open to a detour.

Like I said, the women I’m with this weekend find no shame in watching TV shows like this.

That’s a change.

As James Altucher pointed out on a recent episode of his podcast, there was a time, not long after that initial Dynasty came out, when watching TV was considered shameful among smart, highly-educated, grown-ass people. Some quotes from that not-so-distant past:

“My kids will never watch TV”

“TV rots your brain and destroys your community”

“We would all be better off if television got worse, not better.”

But that’s all gone now. Among the people I know, there are few who don’t spend a good part of the week watching some TV — and feeling no shame about it. I bet it’s similar with the people around you.

Which begs the question, which things that we are so scared and horrified of today will make a shame-free comeback in a few years’ time?

James Altucher thinks it might be social media. Maybe we will still be heavily using social media in 20 years’ time, in spite of all the current hand-wringing about the IQ loss and attention-fracking and shallowness that Instagram and TikTok cause.

Whatever. James Altucher is a smart and highly educated guy, and his predictions are based on a lot of thinking and research. Too complicated.

Here’s a simpler, more general way to predict the future:

Don’t count on moral outrage or good intentions to create change. Only new technology — considered broadly — will change people’s behavior.

And speaking of new technology:

Have you heard of email? I’ve only recently found out about it and I’m very excited by the possibilities. So much so that I’ve started writing a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and influence. A few thousand people have signed up to get daily emails from me and they seem to be enjoying it very much. In case you’d like to join them, click here and follow the very non-technical instructions.

Fear and loathing inside the happiest place on Earth

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Imagine the surreal scene:

Dozens or maybe hundreds of police officers, linked hand-in-hand like eight-year-olds on a school trip, guarding the exit of the happiest place on Earth to keep people from escaping the happiness inside.

Maybe you heard the news from the last week. Some person somewhere in Shanghai tested positive for corona virus.

As a result, the entire city went into high corona alert.

A part of it was that Disneyland Shanghai lifted its drawbridge, dropped the heavy portcullis, and manned its walls to prevent any breach in the walls.

Except of course, all these measures were not to keep barbarian invaders from breaking into the Magical Kingdom.

Instead, these measures to keep peaceable Disneyland visitors from escaping to the outside.

Now think about how weird this really is:

Disneyland. The happiest place on Earth.

​​People plan a trip there for months, and pay a lot of money to be let in.

​​Also, from what I read in the news, once the gates of Disneyland Shanghai slammed shut, the rides inside the theme park kept running. To make it an even sweeter deal, Disneyland offered its prisoners free food.

And yet it didn’t matter.

Thousands of panicked visitors pressed towards the exit, trying to make their way out, becoming angry and indignant when they found out they were locked inside.

Now I’m sure different reasons possible why people wanted to get out of Disneyland.

Fear of corona… work and family obligation… getting sick of hearing “It’s a small world” playing over and over…

But there’s something else also.

Reactance.

That’s the word to describe that even the most attractive, desirable things become instantly repulsive if they contain an element of compulsion. If it’s not our free choice, but imposed on us from outside, whether by force or by manipulation.

Fear and loathing inside Disneyland is just a dramatic example of reactance. But reactance happens all the time — whenever people try to order you, force you, or of course, try to sell you something.

How do you deal with this?

I will have much more to say about that soon, and share various ways to pre-empt and side-step reactance before it even has a chance to form. If you’re interested in hearing more about that, sign up to my daily email newsletter and to be the first to find out.

Using Stefan Georgi in your copy

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“It might take some figuring out to do it to where people aren’t pissed at you and you do it right, but I think this could actually be a home run thing that just absolutely CRUSHES it.”
— Stefan Georgi

So now let me ask you:

What is it?

What is Stefan talking about in the quote above?

I’ll give you a hint:

It’s a little gimmick, which Stefan advises you to use to start off your ad and VSL copy. It ties into that all-powerful driver of action, curiosity. And additionally, it creates a feeling of insight.

No? you don’t know the gimmick Stefan has in mind? Let me give you one more hint:

It starts with the letter R…

Then I…

Then D…

Then another D…

All right, fine — it’s riddles. In a recent video, “Using riddles in your copy,” Stefan advises using riddles in your ads and VSLs.

Why riddles?

Because riddles — “How many months have 28 days?” — consistently go viral on social media.

And what Stefan and many other smart marketers like to do is to camouflage their sneaky sales pitch and make it look like something — a riddle, for example — which you might want to consume for your own ends, and not for theirs.

And now, let me throw off my cloak and hold up my wizard staff, and with a blinding light shining from behind me, admit in my deep and resonant voice that this is exactly what I’ve done with this email.

Because the underlying idea Stefan is recommending — people enjoy riddles, so give ’em riddles — is at the core of my Copy Riddles program.

My goal was to make Copy Riddles fun. So I covered up the teaching, the learning, and the transformation bit in what I call copy riddles, hence the name of the program. ​​Did it work? Here’s what copywriter Cindy Suzuki, who joined Copy Riddles a few days ago, thinks about it:

Hi John,

I am having a blast with copy riddles so far. It feels like a game. I love it when learning is actually fun. Was on the fence until the last day, and I’m so glad I bought it 🙂

Cindy

If you like fun and games, and maybe some sales, then don’t join Copy Riddles. But see if you can sign up for my email newsletter. You can get started on that puzzle right here.

Money don’t love Spruce Goose

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On a beautiful day exactly 75 years ago, Howard Hughes smiled for the camera, hung up the in-cockpit telephone, and took hold of the controls.

He was piloting the largest “flying boat” ever built.

I’m talking about the Hughes H-4 Hercules, aka the Spruce Goose.

In spite of the nickname, The Goose was mostly birch.

That didn’t stop it from being enormously expensive for the time. And with good reason. As Hughes put it:

“It is over five stories tall with a wingspan longer than a football field. That’s more than a city block. Now, I put the sweat of my life into this thing. I have my reputation all rolled up in it and I have stated several times that if it’s a failure, I’ll probably leave this country and never come back. And I mean it.”

Well, I guess Hughes didn’t mean it all that seriously. Because he didn’t leave the country, even though, by all practical measures, the Goose turned out to be a colossal failure.

After all, once Hughes lifted The Goose above the sparkling waters off Long Beach, CA, it flew for less than a minute, for less than a mile.

That was its one and only flight.

And even this one lousy flight came well after the end of World War II, even though The Goose was designed to be a war transport plane, and even though the whole point of building The Goose out of spruce (or birch) was the wartime restriction on materials such as aluminum.

So yeah, the Spruce Goose remains the best illustration of a massive, drawn-out, and ultimately useless project.

The point being, don’t be like this. Don’t roll “the sweat of your life”, your name and reputation, and possibly your country of residence into one drawn-out project which won’t get a chance for even a test flight until years from now.

Because money don’t love Spruce Goose.

Money loves speed.

I’ve tried to track down who coined that saying, but I don’t have a definitive answer. I’ve heard Dan Kennedy say it often. Joe Vitale has got a book by that title. But I bet it goes back a century or more, in some slightly different phrasing, with the same basic idea. Maybe you can enlighten me.

Anyways, let me take my own advice, and wrap up this post:

My email newsletter is now available for you to join. In case you’d like a chance to get copywriting, marketing, and persuasion ideas into your head — so you can start getting that money that speed promises — here’s where to go.

The best possible contest you could ever run to create demand and sales for your products, without cheapening, but in fact while heightening the perceived value of your offer

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Today, I want to share with you a marketing technique so powerful, so daring, so all-around incredible that I wish I had the circumstances and the courage to implement it myself right now.

Alas, I do not. But perhaps you are luckier and braver than I am, and so perhaps you will profit. Let me set it up with this true story:

Before P.T. Barnum got into the circus business, he made his living promoting rare and unusual talents. One of these was Jenny Lind, a Swedish opera singer who had won great fame in Europe.

Barnum decided to bring Lind to America.

Only problem was, Americans didn’t care.

Barnum started a big newspaper publicity campaign to build up desire for Lind. Once newspaper-reading Americans started to be intrigued by the “Swedish Nightingale”, selling tickets became no problem. But Barnum didn’t stop there.

Once excitement to hear Lind sing had grown to fever pitch, Barnum organized a spectacular event, a contest. And that’s the marketing technique I want to tell you about.

Barnum started selling tickets to the first Jenny Lind concert by auction.

And of course, he didn’t stop there either.

Instead, he went to a certain Genin, a hat maker in New York, and advised him to bid whatever it took to win the first auctioned ticket. Secretly, he then went to a certain Dr. Brandreth, a maker of a patent medicine. He told the same to Brandreth, to bid whatever it took to win.

“The higher the price,” Barnum told both men separately, “the greater renown it will give you all over the country within twenty-four hours.”

Brandreth did not do as he was told. He only bid as high as $200 — a princely sum at the time, equivalent to $7,700 today. But he lost the first Jenny Lind ticket. He had this to say later:

“I had better have paid $5,000 than to have missed securing the first Jenny Lind ticket. Such a splendid chance for notoriety will never offer itself again.”

On the other hand, Genin did as Barnum told him to do. He kept bidding and got the ticket for $225. And instantly, he became a nationwide topic of interest.

People all around the country suddenly started asking, “Who is this Genin who paid such money for a ticket?”

Men started taking off their hats and checking the labels inside, hoping that they too might have a real Genin hat. A man in Iowa who did find himself in possession of a ragged and beat-up old “real Genin”, which wasn’t worth 2 cents, auctioned it off for more than $360 in today’s money.

And Genin in New York started selling 10,000 extra hats a year on the back of that initial $225 investment — and became a very rich man.

As for Barnum and Lind, well, as you can guess, their tour became a yuge success. Barnum toured the country with Lind for several years, making tens of millions of dollars (in today’s money) for both Lind and for himself. Eventually, Lind decided to return to Europe and Barnum took his energy and his talents to other pursuits.

So there you go.

A blueprint for the best possible contest you could ever run to create demand and sales for your products, without cheapening, but in fact while heightening the perceived value of your offer.

If you do ever implement this scheme and profit handsomely from it, don’t send me a free ticket to your show — that would be against the whole spirit of the thing. Just write me and say thank you, and I will pass on your thanks to P.T. Barnum.

By the way, I really hate to give this idea away. But, like I said, I have neither the circumstances nor the courage to implement it myself right now.

All I can do is tell you to sign up for my daily email newsletter.

It’s available today for free.

If, like Genin the hatter, you would like to pay a princely sum for it and in that way distinguish yourself, you will have to wait until I start charging for my emails.

On the other hand, if you simply want the entertainment and education inside my newsletter, you can get that opportunity here.