Most Valuable Email… for copywriters

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I’d like to tell you about a type of content, specifically a type of daily email, that has been most valuable for me.

This type of daily email is my go-to whenever I want to stimulate and engage my readers, including the many grizzled, wary, and sophisticated marketers and copywriters on my list.

In this way, this type of email has helped me sell stuff… grow my email list organically… get amazing job referrals… and sometimes even get interesting and cool stuff for free.

This type of email has also been most valuable to me because it builds up immediate and unquestionable authority.

It makes it clear I know what I’m talking about, even if I don’t harp on about the great results I’ve had for clients or the testimonials or endorsements I’ve gotten.

And finally:

This type of email is most valuable because it’s the type of email I personally find most enjoyable to write.

Going back to this type of email over and over has helped me stick with daily emailing for the long term, while making me exponentially better at the actual work of copywriting.

If you’ve been reading my daily emails for a while, you can probably guess the type of email I’m talking about.

But if you cannot guess, or if you would simply like to hear me go into this topic in more detail and tell you how you too can write this type of email yourself, I will do that in a free presentation I’m calling The Most Valuable Email.

You can register for the Most Valuable presentation below. But first a warning:

This type of email has been most valuable to me personally. I can imagine it being equally most valuable for for any other copywriter.

If you are not a copywriter, you might be able to adapt and use this type of email profitably in a different market, for a different type of audience. But that’s something I haven’t thought much about, and so I won’t be talking about it on this presentation.

If that doesn’t turn you off, then here are the details:

The Most Valuable Email presentation will happen live, on Zoom, on Wednesday, Jun 22, 2022, at 7pm Central European Time.

You can sign up for the presentation by clicking the link below. I will then send you a confirmation email with the Zoom link and a public calender invite — which I can never manage to make work, but will try for anyhow.

Also, there will be a recording. I will only send it to you if you express interest and register below. I won’t be sending the recording out to my list in general.

I haven’t yet decided what I will do with this Most Valuable Email training in the future. I might make it available only as a bonus for a paid offer, or I might turn it into a paid offer itself.

One thing is for sure:

I will make the recording available for one week, following the live presentation. Beyond that, I make no guarantees.

So if you want to join me live for this Most Valuable Email training, or if you want to watch the recording during this guaranteed 7-day replay window, sign up to my email newsletter before next Wednesday. You will then get an email from me with the registration details for this presentation.

The six-word email, with examples

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I’m sitting on the couch as I write this, next to the open balcony doors, in my underwear, eyes bleary, hair looking like a lawnmower went over it, in a press to write a personal and yet valuable email to you before.

Before what?

Before it’s time for me to rush out of the house and go pick up my rental car and then drive up the coast for the day. The idea is to give myself a chance to burn in the sun, on a beautiful beach I will visit for the first time in my life.

But what to write about?

Fortunately, I wrote down a concept for today’s email almost two weeks ago:

“The six-word email, with examples”

That concept is based on an idea from Hollywood.

​​Your story should fit into six words, say Hollywood screenwriting . Here are a few examples from Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work, a series from Scott Myers’s Go Into The Story blog:

1. Human Spy on an Alien Planet

2. Loner cop. New partner. Police dog.

3. Infatuated boy. Dream girl. Find condom.

“Fine,” I said to myself when I read this idea. “Let me put it into action and try it out.”

So ​​I made a list of 10 possible email ideas, each just six words. And then, over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been slowly sending them out. Example:

1. Emails without offer: stupid. Hence, consulting.

2. Results of my “rape” subject line.

3. What’s working on Substack right now?

And of course today’s email is another example of the six-word email.

Because it’s not that the email has to actually be six words itself. But rather, the core idea should be simple and easy to express, in just six words.

In some of my example emails above, I ran on too long and covered up the core message with too many words.

I won’t make that mistake today.

So let me just say, if you think you have no time to write daily emails, then do what I did.

Make a list of 10 six-word email concepts. Flesh them out a bit in an interesting and insightful way, and then send them out.

And if you say you don’t know how to come up with interesting six-word email concepts… or a way to quickly and easily flesh them out in an interesting and insightful way, then you might like:

A free presentation I will be putting on in the next week. It’s called the Most Valuable Email.

The details of this presentation will come tomorrow. If you’d like to read those details when they come out, or even sign up for my Most Valuable Email presentation, you can do that by getting onto my email newsletter. Sign up for it here.

Drop your phone in the toilet, grab a cup of coffee, and read this whole email word for word

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About two weeks ago, I got a surprise:

Dan Kennedy started sending me emails.

I’m not 100% how this happened. In the past, I’ve signed up for email newsletters on various DK websites.

​​As I’ve written before, I’m a big Dan Kennedy fan and I had high hopes.

But it always turned out the emails were not written by Dan. They were just random pitches for various DK stuff. Each time, I eventually ended up unsubscribing.

And yet, two weeks ago, I suddenly started getting emails from Dan again. And they are great.

I don’t think these new emails are actually written by Dan either, not now, not as emails. It’s probably just old Dan content, repurposed for the email format by some marketing monkey working under Russell Brunson, who has bought up Dan’s entire business.

Still, it’s great stuff, full of humor and valuable ideas. For example, here’s one bit from a recent DK email which caught my eye:

One of the great litmus tests of a newsletter is when yours arrives, are people so excited about it that they drop whatever they’re doing, take their phone and lock it in the trunk of their car, get a cup of coffee, then eagerly sit down to go through it? At least a quick skim to see what’s there and then say, “Tonight, when I have more time, I’m gonna read the whole thing word for word.” Is that how they react?

This caught my eye because last month, I launched my Most Valuable Postcard.

​​MVP is not a newsletter — really, it’s an un-newsletter. It covers tried-and-proven marketing principles rather than new techniques and tactics.

I was wondering how people would react to this approach, and to the format of the postcard. Well, initial reactions are starting to filter in.

One MVP subscriber, who shall remain unnamed, said that in the excitement of receiving her postcard, she ended up dropping her phone into the toilet (the phone survived).

​​Sure, a house is not a home, and a toilet is not a trunk. But it may be even better.

And as for reading the whole postcard word for word, MVP subscriber Jakub Červenka just wrote me to say:

Hey John,

Just wanted to let you know I just got your postcard. I am only half-way through your horror stories, but I am already sure you over-delivered on value.

And I have a feeling that your postcard newsletter thingie is case-in-point study in putting in work up front for your prospects.

I don’t have yet enough money / business big enough to be able to afford you, but you making this whole thing so personal, I cannot think of anyone I’d rather work with once I am launching my funnel in English market..

But in the meantime, I am pre-sold already on any copywriting course you may sell in future.

And my mind is already spinning trying to come up with ways I could use what I am learning from you into my business.

Thank you for inspiration, it is awesome!

Jakub has only read half the postcard so far. That’s hardly word-for-word reading… but as far a testimonial for MVP, I don’t think I could ask for anything better.

Still, I’m still not sure what to do with this project.

Like Jakub says, it’s very personal… but also very unscalable.

If I ever reopen this offer to new subscribers, I might tweak the format, and I will certainly increase the price.

But if that doesn’t turn you away, and you want the chance to lock your phone in your trunk or at least fumble it into the toilet when you get a postcard in the mail from me, you can sign up for my (free) daily email newsletter, so you can get notified if I reopen MVP again.

🧿

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Yesterday I was sitting at a restaurant on the side of the Barcelona cathedral, trying to learn to enjoy a vermouth, a popular drink here.

In front of me, a steady procession of tourists walked alongside the cathedral, some 40 yards away.

I was staring at them idly between the bittersweet sips of vermouth, when I saw him:

A pasty white man, somewhere between ages 30 and 50, with red hair, wearing Teva sandals, cargo shorts, and… a Wu-Tang t-shirt.

The fact is, the Wu-Tang symbol was what drew my eye first, even though I was sitting far away, and though the man was walking in a crowd.

​​The symbol made me instantly predisposed to like the guy and feel an affinity towards him. All the other unpromising details I noticed only later.

Just in case you don’t know the Wu-Tang Clan:

They are a hip hop group from the 90s that borrowed ideas and imagery from old kung fu movies. Their symbol is a large irregular W, split in two, with the words Wu-Tang in the middle of it.

Even if you’ve never seen the Wu-Tang symbol until now, now that I’ve told you about it, you’re likely to see it, on t-shirts and sweatshirts, as graffiti, or even as a tattoo.

Last week, I sent out an email about How To Speak by Patrick Winston. Winston was an MIT who for 40 years gave a talk on the essence of good communication, taken from his own methodical study of what works.

At one point, Winston presents the Winston star, a rather satanic symbol that encapsulates five characteristics of the most successful communication. All the five characteristics start with an “s”. And one of them, as you can probably guess, you clever sausage, is “symbol.”

And if Winston and his MIT credentials aren’t enough to convince you of the value and influential ability of symbols, then just think of every world religion, every influential brand, or hell, think of my Wu-Tang guy at the Barcelona cathedral.

And then, start thinking about how you could integrate a symbol into what you do.

I can’t give you much more advice than that. I’m not sure what makes for an effective symbol vs. an ineffective one, except the obvious things which apply to all good communication:

Your symbol should be simple. It should be distinct. ​​It should be recognizable, even from a distance of 40 yards away.

As an example, I picked a nazar, a design for an amulet to ward off the evil eye, for the symbol in my subject line today.

Oh and one more thing:

Your symbol should be repeated, over and over, everywhere, until it gets conditioned into people’s heads as the image that somehow represents your thing.

So for example, if I decided to use the nazar symbol above to represent my email audit offer (“ward off the evil lurking around your lukewarm daily emails and underperforming autoresponders…”), then I should also put the nazar on the consulting form I use to get new people to sign up.

Which is just what I’ve done.

​​In case you want to see it, or in case you have an email list and want my help warding off evil from it, you can do so here:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

A shark in blowfish’s clothing

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A few days ago, as research for the next issue of my Most Valuable Postcard, I re-watched an old presentation given by Jeff Walker.

You might know Jeff as a big-time Internet Marketing guru and the inventor of the Product Launch Formula, which has been used by tons of businesses to make tons of money online.

Here’s what got me:

Jeff’s whole aura during this presentation was very gee-shucks, how-did-I-wind-up-here-on-stage.

He had a kind of Woody Allen delivery, constantly correcting himself, backtracking, stammering, stumbling, and apologizing.

His outfit confirmed the impression. Jeff wore a ballooning blue shirt, which looked a size too large for him, and which was crimped at the chest by a microphone.

Of course, you won’t make tens of millions of dollars, which Jeff had already done by the time of this old presentation, by being a naive nincompoop.

But if you look like a naive nincompoop, it can certainly help you out, particularly if you are actually shrewd and calculating at heart. It pays to put on a oversized and poorly fitting blue shirt, and turn yourself into a harmless and goofy blowfish, when you are really a shark underneath.

Anyways, at one point, Jeff said the following about product launches using his PLF:

“I don’t just teach them, I’m pretty good at them. That’s actually self-deprecating. I’m REALLY REALLY good at them.”

This reminded me of a valuable mantra I heard from Chris Voss, the FBI negotiator who wrote the book Never Split the Difference.

“The last impression is the lasting impression,” says Chris.

You can see that in the structure of how Jeff talks about himself and his skills and success.

And if you meditate on this example a bit, you can hit upon a very clever way to sneak giant, even unbelievable claims into people’s heads.

If you’ve been through my Copy Riddles program, you might know what I’m talking about. It’s there in round 6B.

And if you haven’t been through Copy Riddles, you’ll have a chance to do so, starting in a few weeks from now, and to find out about this clever technique.

But Copy Riddles isn’t open yet. And neither is my Most Valuable Postcard. So my only offer for you is to sign up for my email newsletter, and read what I have to write about copywriting and marketing topics.

Of course, I don’t just write about them. I’m pretty good at them. That’s actually self-deprecating. I’m REALLY REALLY good at them. So in case you’d like to get on my newsletter, here’s where to sign up.

My ship is sunk

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Yesterday, I invited you to play a little game called Daily Email Battleship.

It was supposed to be a fun way to exchange recommendations for daily email newsletters.

What I didn’t realize is I was getting myself into an unfair fight.

After all, there is only one of me. And my opponents were many.

So last night, after my email went out, alarm sirens started blaring on the HMS Bejako. My sonar system, warning me of incoming torpedos, started beeping faster and faster.

A muffled explosion went off underneath my inbox, and then a second, and then a third.

I looked out towards the horizon. It was dark with opposing battleships. I readied myself for a desperate fight.

But in spite of my valiant defenses and best evasive maneuvers, in the end my flotilla was torpedoed, overwhelmed, and finally sunk by the sheer onslaught of daily email recommendations from readers.

I’m being a tad dramatic.

If you joined me for Daily Email Battleship yesterday, thanks for playing. I will get back to you in person as soon as I get from under water a little.

And I will also be checking out the many interesting recommendations I got. I will share any standouts with you in the coming days and weeks.

Still, I gotta admit I was surprised.

Because in spite of getting something like 80+ different newsletter recommendations, there were plenty of successful people and businesses, sending out interesting daily emails, which were not named by anybody who played Daily Email Battleship with me.

Some of these were email lists I have mentioned in this very newsletter.

Others are one-man bands which have been featured as testimonials in big guru emails.

Perhaps the fact that nobody mentioned any of these newsletters is chance or omission.

But more likely, it’s just an inspiring reminder about the modern world.

Most people — myself included, and perhaps you too — can’t really fathom how many human beings there are on the planet right now.

And the fact is, you can have a business today, and do very, very well, with a tiny audience of just a few thousand people, or even fewer.

A few thousand people is like an eye dropper’s worth of humans in the great ocean of humanity.

But if you can somehow collect that eye dropper’s worth of people… and if you can create something of value and interest for them… and then sell it to them, in a way that’s enjoyable enough that they even look forward your selling, day after day… then you can do very well, while staying under the radar and above the sonar of almost everybody out there.

So that’s my possibly inspiring reminder.

Here’s another:

I have an email newsletter. And if you’d like to learn some hard-won email marketing lessons I learned on board the HMS Bejako, and while serving as a sailor in various other business’s marketing navies, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

Daily email battleship

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One of the most eye-opening and mind-expanding collections of direct response insights I know of is an interview with Michael Fishman.

For context:

During Gary Bencivenga’s farewell seminar, the only person to get up on stage and present, besides the great Gary himself, was Michael Fishman.

Gary was an A-list copywriter.

Michael was an A-list list broker. (A-list list broker broker?)

In other words, while Gary’s expertise was to come up with creative words…

Michael’s expertise was to find creative lists of people to send Gary’s subtle sales letters to.

But what’s that? You say there’s not much to be creative about in choosing lists?

Well, that’s why that interview was so eye-opening and mind-expanding.

Sure, some of Michael’s work was routine. He had to keep a close eye on which lists were interested in related topics… which lists were hot… which lists were made up of recent, eager buyers, spending good money.

But sometimes, list picking was much less routine. Some of Michael’s work involved a real leap of insight and intuition.

For example:

One offer that Michael worked on is Boardroom’s Big Black Book. This was a typical Boardroom book of secrets — what never to eat on a Greyound bus, that kind of thing.

The Big Black Book​​ was many hundreds of pages long, and it was sold through a sales letter filled with fascination bullets.

And yet, get this:

Michael had the idea to promote the Big Black Book to a list of buyers of manifestation audio course, sold on TV through an infomercial.

Totally different products… totally different markets… totally different formats for marketing… totally different everything.

So why did Michael recommend this manifestation list and why did the list end up working?

That’s the crazy thing. Because this list was made up of buyers of a product called Passion, Power, and Profit.

Get it?

​​Big Black Book… Passion, Power, and Profit.

Michael had the insight that some buyers really respond to alliteration in the name of the product. That’s why the BBB offer turned out to be a good fit for the PPP list.

Like I said, eye-opening and mind-expanding.

This brings me to my offer to you for today:

It’s a little game that you and I can play. I call the game Daily Email Battleship.

This is how you play:

Sign up to my email newsletter. When you get my welcome email, hit reply and write me the names of all the daily emails newsletters you are subscribed to.

I’m not talking about just copywriting and marketing. Anything. Magic, manifestation, or medicine. Any topic or person or business is okay, as long as they email, more or less daily.

And then:

1. If you tell me a newsletter I also subscribe to, it’s a direct hit. I will tell you that. So if you write me to say, “I am on Ben Settle’s list,” I will write back and say, “Great, so am I.”

2. But if you tell me a daily email newsletter I don’t subscribe to… I will counter. And I will tell you a newsletter I subscribe to, which you don’t subscribe to.

3. And if I can’t do that, because you are subscribed to more novel and interesting daily email newsletters than I am, then you win.

And as your prize, I will tell you why I am collecting these email newsletters, and what this has to do with the Michael Fishman story above.

This information might be valuable to you. Or it might just feed your curiosity.

In any case, if you’d like to play, the opening shot is yours.

Don’t start your sales letters like this

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“This was not a guy you wanted to mess with before lunch. He was large and threatening… Half his face was covered with a kind of breathing apparatus… He spoke in a strange, mechanical voice. And to make it all the worse, he was as cool as a gherkin and seemed prepared for any eventuality. That’s why his minions followed him blindly, and even his allies feared him. Who was this dangerous man? All we know is his name. He was called Bane.”

So begins Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises.

​​With the above spoken-word monologue, the narrator introduces the main villain, Bane.

It’s only after this intro that we get into the rest of the movie, where Bane and Batman work out their relationship problems in sewers and on rooftops.

Maybe you’re puzzled. Don’t be. You’re not going crazy. This of course is not how The Dark Knight really starts.

The real movie starts in a plane, where Bane pretends to be a hostage. Except of course he’s not. ​​His minions come in a bigger plane, use a crane to lift up the first plane, blow a hole in the tail section. Whatever. You’ve probably seen the movie. And even if you haven’t, the point is simply this:

Hollywood blockbusters do not start with a narrator talking you into the story. Instead, they start with a dramatic scene, which introduces the characters and sets the mood.

There’s a valuable lesson in there. Here’s why I bring it up:

A lot of copy I see starts in the narrator style above. “I have a problem. It’s really bad. I’ve tried all the solutions but nothing is working. It is making my life miserable.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not picking on anybody. I used to write like this myself until I learned better. Even now, it’s still easy for me to slip into this narrator style. And at least I’m talking about the problem.

The trouble is that many people who make good direct response prospect won’t respond to this copy. They have either seen too many such ads and they won’t get sucked in… or they don’t (yet) identify with the problem you are calling out — and they won’t get sucked in.

The solution comes straight out of Hollywood. Don’t talk. Don’t tell. Instead show. Start your sales letter — or advertorial or whatever — with a dramatic scene. “This happened and then there was an explosion, and I winced in pain.” By the way, there’s got to be pain. Or at least anxiety, anger, or envy. We’re talking direct response copywriting, after all.

Want more copywriting lessons? Or just more fake Hollywood intros? Sign up for my daily email newsletter.

About that time Israeli jets bombed a US Navy ship

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“We’re under attack, send help!” is probably what Captain William L. McGonagle yelled over the radio.

McGonagle commanded the Navy spy ship USS Liberty, stationed in the Mediterranean sea, in international waters off the coast of Egypt.

Four Israeli jets had just fired rockets and dropped napalm bombs on the Liberty.

In that initial attack, nine US navy men died. 60 were wounded, McGonagle among them.

Then Israel dispatched a second attack, made up of high-speed torpedo boats.

These boats fired torpedoes on the Liberty, and strafed the lifeboats that the Liberty had launched.

McGonagle succeeded in evading all but one of the torpedoes, which damaged the Liberty heavily. He also finally made contact with the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga.

The Saratoga dispatched 12 US jets to defend the Liberty. But when word of this reached Washington, US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered the jets to retreat. It was never made clear why.

All in all, in the combined air and torpedo-boat Israeli attacks, which lasted for two hours, 34 Americans servicemen died and 171 were wounded.

Shocking, right? I’d never heard about this incident until today. I found it surprising and new. I thought you might find it surprising and new as well.

The truth is, today I had no ideas for a story to open up this email with.

I also had no valuable takeaway to give you.

I didn’t even know what offer to make.

So really I had nothing, zero, in all three main dimensions of your standard copywriter’s daily email.

The good news is I figured out a takeaway eventually.

Takeaway: You gotta have an occasion for your copy. In other words, your sales copy has to answer the question, why now?

I first heard this idea from A-list copywriter Dan Ferrari. An occasion is standard in financial copy. But it’s a very powerful idea that works in other markets just as well.

For example, Dan once wrote a sales letter in the health space that tripled response over the control. In large part, he did it by using an occasion to frame the promotion.

So that’s the valuable takeaway today, have an occasion.

What about the offer? I also figured that out:

My 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters Book.

I just told you Commandment IV.

And really, if you comb through my emails over the past few years, you will also find all the other nine commandments, in more or less disguised form.

But if you would like to read them all, undisguised, in a quick and fun package, for just a few dollars, you can get a copy of the entire 10 Commandments book here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

So that takes care of the marketing takeaway and the offer.

And clearly, I also figured out a surprising story to open up with.

I did that by reading a bit about what happened on today’s date in history. Because the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty happened on today’s date, June 8th, exactly 55 years ago. That’s why I’m telling you this story today.

This “on today’s date” is not something that will work as an occasion for a long-running sales letter. But it’s a good fallback for daily emails like this one.

So let me wrap up this email and the story of the Liberty:

Israel apologized later, paid a $6.5 million restitution, and said it had mistaken the Liberty for an Egyptian warship.

But many American officials and military personnel, including those who served on the Liberty, believe the Israeli attack was intentional.

One theory is that the Liberty was attacked because it was a spy ship. It would have intercepted and discovered Israel’s secret plans for the controversial invasion of the Golan Heights, which happened the next day, on June 9th.

I might use the occasion of that Golan Heights invasion to write another email tomorrow.

But for today, I gotta make you my offer. I won’t even make you scroll up for it. In case haven’t yet got a copy of my 10 Commandments book, you can do so here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

How to hypnotize people even if you’ve never done it before

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Are you sitting down? Good.

Let me try something I haven’t tried before.

I’m going to count down from 3. And when I get to 1, I will snap my fingers and give you a suggestion.

Ready?

3…

2…

1…

[snaps fingers]

*SLEEP*

.

.

.

.

.

.​​​​

What?

You’re still reading? Not asleep? Hm. Let me check my manual and see where I went wrong.

[Flips through book. Aha!]

Confession:
​​
I’ve been reading Derren Brown’s book Tricks of the Mind. Brown is a UK TV personality whose toolkit combines a lot of topics that interest me.

Comedy… magic… showmanship… classic influence techniques… NLP… and of course, the magical and mystical art of…

Hypnosis.

Brown says he started hypnosis in college. He would hypnotize his friends and then give them a post-hypnotic suggestion.

​​That way, when he saw them next and snapped his fingers and told them to sleep, they would pass out instantly, as though they’d been punched on the jaw by Mike Tyson.

And it worked. People would collapse on command.

But then a funny thing happened. Brown had a friend visit.

The two of them had talked about hypnosis before. But Brown remembered wrong, and he thought he had also hypnotized his friend before, even though he hadn’t.

So this second time, Brown snapped his fingers, and told his friend to sleep, expecting the post-hypnotic suggestion to kick in.

And sure enough, the friend collapsed and went to sleep.

In other words, hypnosis worked… even though there was no hypnosis. Or as Brown put it:

“I realized that day that hypnosis works not because of a carefully worded magical script from a self-help book, but because the subject believes the process is effective.”

Maybe that’s why my email induction above didn’t put you to sleep.

It wasn’t my fault. Rather, it was your fault. You didn’t believe it would work.

Of course, if it’s all the subject’s doing, then what is the good of a hypnotist?

Well, the hypnotist creates a setting, an environment, an experience, which allows the subject to believe. There are lots of ways and techniques to do this, and that’s what the skill and expertise and extensive training of the hypnotist are really all about.

But don’t despair at the words “extensive training.” There is one thing you can do right now to hypnotize people, even if you’ve never done it before. In Brown’s words:

“Bear in mind that you are not really inducing a special state, although you will talk as if you are. Instead, you are utilizing the subject’s expectations and beliefs. So if you appear unconvinced at the start that he will be a good subject, the chances are that he won’t respond well. You must be confident, unflustered, and act as if you’ve done it a hundred times before, even if you haven’t.”

Aha! So maybe it wasn’t your fault after all. Maybe it was that sentence I squeezed in at the start, “Let me try something I haven’t tried before.” It violates Brown’s rule about being confident, unflustered, and appearing experienced.

Yesterday, I told you a story about my friend Sam.

Sam confidently used the nonsense phrase “I’m from Los Angeles” to hypnotize a guy into renting us a sailboat.

That situation ended in shipwreck an hour later, because Sam and I had never sailed before.

But there are many situations in life, in which you are be perfectly skilled, able, or deserving.

But you still lack confidence.

And in spite of all your preparing and striving and wishing, confidence won’t come.

So that’s the point of my email today.

Whenever you don’t have internal confidence, then find something external, a mechanism, a process, a person, to believe in.

That’s why hypnosis works. That’s why I told you the story of Sam and me. That’s why I told you about Derren Brown.

Now that you have these stories in your head, you will be able to summon them up on command, along with a surge of confidence, just with the [snaps fingers] snap of your fingers.

I’m sure of it.

In fact, I’m sure that in the next 24 hours, you will have an opportunity to turn on your confidence to 100. When that opportunity comes, do it. And then write me and tell me all about it.

You just got a valuable treatment with the magical and mystical art of hypnosis.

Now, on to the magical and mystical art of making money.

Specifically, my email newsletter.

That’s where I share persuasion and marketing ideas that business owners can use to make more money… based on the hundreds of businesses I’ve already worked with… the thousands of sales emails I’ve personally written… and the millions of dollars of products and services those emails have sold in total.

If “more money for your business” makes your ears perk up, then you can sign up for my newsletter here.