For your swipe file: The first Franklin Mint sales letter I’m sharing with you

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The Franklin Mint, one of the most successful and profitable direct response companies of all time, has just created its first blockbuster.

Well, not really just. It was more like in 1970. But the following point still stands:

You, as a current reader of the John Bejakovic Letter, are the first to be informed of this Franklin Mint blockbuster.

All right, again, not really the first, but the first this year, probably. Bear with me, okay, because…

Sales letters by the Franklin Mint have always been very popular with collectors. And it is interesting to note that many of these sales letters hide tremendously valuable direct response tactics and ideas.

​​The limited first runs of these sales letters, within just the first few weeks, brought in $1 million and more — even though they were short, often just a few pages each, and were not written by big-name copywriters.

Take for example the first Franklin Mint sales letter I want to share with you. ​It brought in 18,321 orders at $100 each, for a total of $1,8321,000 in sales.

​​Remarkably, it did so with just one page of copy — nine short paragraphs comprising 394 words.

​​And yet these few words featured subtle psychology. And they contain the first instance, in my experience, of a remarkable persuasion technique I would like you to see.

There will undoubtedly be a great demand for this sales letter from seasoned sales letter collectors and professional swipe file sellers.

​​But since this letter came out in 1970, it is hard to obtain, and cannot be found in any Google Docs folder or any website specializing in copywriting.

Consequently, the prestigious swipe files that contain this sales letter will be very limited in number.

Furthermore, I am only sharing this sales letter with established readers of my newsletter — and I’m only doing it for the next 24 hours, until Tuesday, Mar 8 2022, at 8:52pm CET.

Therefore, if you would like to add this sales letter to your own collection, please be sure you sign up to my newsletter within the next 24 hours. You can do so here. Once you get my welcome email, hit reply, and I will send you the Franklin Mint sales letter.

Not getting things done: The art of stress-free productivity

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A few days ago, I had the cool idea to create a referral program for this newsletter, something like the Morning Brew has.

So if you refer one person, maybe you get an “Insights & More” sticker… for three referrals you get a fridge magnet… for five, you get a coffee mug, because nothing motivates action like a free coffee mug.

I found this idea addictingly attractive, much like the idea of having enough money in the bank to live off interest alone.

So I started to fantasize:

“All I really have to do is get one person to refer me to four others… and then two of those four to refer me to eight others… and then four of those eight…”

Pretty soon, I figured, my list would exceed the total number of atoms in the known universe.

But in spite of this geometric growth potential, I won’t be implementing this referral program now, and probably not ever.

I’ll tell you why. Maybe it will help you to get more value out of your time, and save yourself the stress and frustration of going down blind alleys.

I recently started a 4/4 value/time system for new ideas.

I rate each idea on a 1-4 scale for its possible value. 1 is no value or doubtful. 2 is certain but small. 3 is large value. 4 is “should have done it already.”

And similar for time. 1 is “ongoing project without clear scope or timeliness.” 2 is weeks or months to complete. 3 is hours or days. 4 is “can do it now.”

So every idea that springs out of my head now gets evaluated on these 1-4 scales.

The referral program got a 1/2. The value is doubtful. The time to implement it would probably be on the order of weeks.

So no to the referral program, but that’s ok. I’ve got lots of other ideas, including some that warrant a 4/4.

The bigger point being, you have to be willing to let things not get done.

The fact is, and I’ve seen this in my own life, it’s possible to achieve transformations very quickly.

But in order to do that, you have to focus on the one or two things that really make a difference. The way you get the energy and time to do those things regularly is to kill off cool but distracting ideas.

So there you go.

Use my 4/4 system. Or come up with your own. But figure out which things you can leave undone today, and most likely, forever.

And then watch as your success starts to bubble and mushroom to unseen levels… like money in the bank that compounds faster than you can take it out.

And if you need more ideas to help with your productivity:

You might like my daily email newsletter. I write about marketing, copywriting, and personal development. You can sign up for it here.

Glorious past and a glorious future — but the present…

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After I finished high school, I worked in a bookstore for a year.

One night, while I was working the register, I noticed we had these chocolate-covered coffee beans for sale.

I grabbed a bag, ripped it open, and threw one of these suckers into my mouth.

Of course, it was sweet and smooth chocolate on the outside. But when I bit through it, I got to the bitter, chalky coffee bean in the middle.

It left a bad taste in my mouth.

Ok, no problem. I just had another chocolate-covered coffee bean — and the bad taste was instantly fixed.

The sweet chocolate on the outside took care of the bitterness left lingering from earlier.

But then again, I was left with that charcoal-like coffee bean in the middle.

The rest of the evening was a blur. When I came to, hours later, I noticed a half dozen empty bags of chocolate-covered coffee beans all around me. I was sweating, scratching my face, glancing furiously at customers who avoided making eye contact with me.

I hadn’t thought about this scene for years but for some reason it connected to a quote I read recently. It comes from Eric Hoffer who wrote:

“There is no more potent dwarfing of the present than by viewing it as a mere link between a glorious past and a glorious future.”

Hoffer was writing about how leaders of mass movements get people to make big sacrifices. We were great once, these leaders say, and we will great again one day. Whatever is happening right now is nothing in the cosmic scale of history.

This attitude is effective at the mass movement level because it is effective at the individual level. At least for the right profile of person.

For example, I personally had a big realization over the past year.

​​I realized I spend a lot of time daydreaming about how glorious life will be after I just achieve a few more things. And I wince when I think back on the times when I was more productive, successful, or happy than I am right now.

The fact is, that’s how I feel much of the time, regardless of what’s going on in my life externally.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you that it’s not worthwhile working to achieve anything.

​​The fact is, working towards a goal is one of the sure-fire ways I’ve found to feel positive in life.

But what I am telling you is:

You’ve gotta learn to enjoy the present now, as much as you can. This includes the process of working to achieve anything.

Otherwise, you might come to, years later, with a half dozen completed projects all around you… and find yourself sweating, scratching your face, and thinking furiously of the next fix that can take the bad taste out of your mouth.

And now for business:

If you are working to achieve anything, you might find you need good marketing and writing ideas to help your project become a success. In that case, you might like my newsletter, because these are topics I write about on most days. You can sign up here.

Copywriting defense into offense

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“This is my job, Eddy.”

“You think so? Hm. See, I don’t think so. I think it’s your problem.”

A few emails ago, I referred to the movie The Color of Money. I want to do it again today because there’s a scene that illustrates a powerful copywriting technique — or really, more of an attitude that can turn your copy from a loser to a winner.

It’s right there in that bit of dialogue up top.

In case you haven’t been reading my emails carefully — shame, shame — here’s what this dialogue is about.

Fast Eddie Felson is a former pool shark. He comes across a young and very talented pool shark, Vincent Lauria. Eddie tries to convince Vincent to go on the road together and make a lot of money.

But Vincent isn’t convinced. He has a steady thing going, working at the local Toys R Us. That’s his job.

You already know what Eddie says to Vincent to convince him.

But consider what Eddie doesn’t say.

He doesn’t say, “Oh, come on, Vincent! Please come with me? Please?”

He also doesn’t say, “Can’t you just take unpaid leave for a few weeks? The job will still be here waiting for you.”

Which brings me to that attitude I talked about. ​It’s something I learned from copywriter Dan Ferrari.

​​Dan likes to say there are moments in sales copy to turn defense into offense. To take something that’s basically a problem, a risk, a liability… and to turn it into an asset.

That’s what Fast Eddie did in that scene above. Steady pay and decent work at Toys R Us? That’s not your job. That’s your problem.

But maybe that short clip doesn’t really illustrate how to use this in copy. So let me leave you an with example from one of Dan’s sales letters.

The sales letter sold an anti-aging supplement.

​​The problem was that most people who took this supplement had vague and weak results to report – “I feel better overall.”

​​That’s something you, as the copywriter, could be defensive about. But here’s how Dan goes on the offense with it:

Practically everyone over the age of 50 describes the rejuvenation they experience the same way: “I feel better overall.”

It sounds vague…

Yet if you’re getting older, you know EXACTLY what they mean.

It’s that top-to-bottom, all-over feeling of being in your prime again… and not headed downhill fast.

Of being healthy from head to toe, inside and out.

Of having a body that works wonderfully… instead of struggling to “get by.”

Coldblooded psychopath persuasion

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The detective sat at the corner of the table, looking the suspect in the face.

The suspect sighed. “What are my options?” he asked.

“Well,” the detective said, “I don’t think you want the coldblooded psychopath option. I might be wrong. Because I’ve met guys who enjoyed the notoriety. Who got off on having that label. I don’t see that in you. If I saw that in you I wouldn’t be back here, talking to you.”

The suspect sighed again. He gave a sad little smile and nodded.

“But maybe I’m wrong,” the detective continued. “Maybe you got me fooled. I don’t know.”

At this, the suspect locked up. He stared at the floor. He didn’t say anything for a while.

“Russell,” the detective said, “what are we gonna do?”

The suspect took a breath. He looked at the detective directly and said, “Call me Russ, please.”

That’s the climax from the 10-hour interrogation of Russell Williams.

Williams was a colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces, and an army pilot who had flown Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh, and the Prime Minister of Canada.

But away from his picture-perfect military career, Williams had a very, very dark side.

Between 2007 and 2010, he started breaking into homes — 82 in all.

During the early breakins, he would photograph himself wearing women’s underwear and then sneak out. In time, this escalated to sexual assault. And then, it escalated further, to rapes and two murders.

The police had some evidence to tie Williams to one of the crime scenes. They had him come in for questioning.

Over the course of the interrogation, Williams started to realize he was in serious trouble. But really, all the police had on him was circumstantial evidence. He could have called for a lawyer, and who knows how the case would have gone.

And then came that exchange up top. It was the climax of the investigation.

Very soon after that exchange, Williams agreed to tell the police where he had hidden the body of Jessica Lloyd, his final victim. This effectively sealed the case, and led to Williams’s full confession.

It might seem gruesome to look for persuasion tactics in murder investigations. But such is life. Because the same stuff that works to influence a coldblooded psychopath works in general too.

Let me point out what happened in that climactic exchange above:

The detective first paid Williams a compliment (“I don’t see that in you”). Williams smiled and nodded at the compliment.

But then the detective snatched the compliment away (“But maybe I’m wrong”). Williams felt that loss.

If, like me, you know anything about the world of pick up artists, you might recognize this technique. Pick up artists call it the push-pull.

Copywriters use it too. Here’s an example from the start of a Dan Kennedy sales letter:

“Truth is, most people give lip-service to ambition, but secretly are not all that eager or determined. This is only for those very, very serious and determined to create excellent income and steady flow of good clients, for a real freelance business. If you’re content making just a few hundred dollars a month on the side, an occasional assignment now and then, really just having a nice money hobby, there’s nothing wrong with that – but you can stop reading this now.”

Again, it might seem gruesome to compare sales copy to a rape and murder investigation. And maybe I’m just trying to justify my morbid and scattershot interests.

But the truth is, there are powerful persuasion lessons all around.

If you made it to the end of this post, then I imagine you’re probably curious enough and clear-sighted enough to see that.

But maybe I’m wrong. In that case, you can stop reading now. And definitely don’t sign up for my daily email newsletter.

Otherwise, go here to get your spot.

Dumb “accomplishment purchases”

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Two days ago, I found myself in a hypnotic daze, fumbling around on a domain-buying website.

I was 100% ready to put down $5,899 to buy a 14-year-old domain.

The back story is that a couple years ago, I had an idea for an info business. I even had a great name in mind.

But back then, the .com domain was taken. For that and a few more reasons, my drive to start up that business gradually got weaker… and weaker… and then slipped into a coma.

But then, a few days ago, against all odds, my drive for that business awoke from the coma and jumped out of bed. And the first thing it had me do was see if the domain had become available.

It had!

It was there, ready to be bought, for the low, low price of $5,899, or 24 monthly payments of just $245.79.

I clicked on the “Buy Now” button.

The page asked me to create an account. So I did. I tried to log in.

No soap.

“Click the verification link in the email we just sent you,” it said.

I checked my inbox. Nothing.

I checked it again. Still nothing.

“Fine,” I said, “I’ll do it later tonight.” And I started looking over my notes and plans from two years ago about this business idea.

“Hmm,” I said to myself.

I spent more time reading notes and making plans.

This wasn’t going to be easy, I remembered.

By the time the evening rolled around, my interest in this info business — and that $5,899 domain — had snuck back into bed and fell into a deep sleep.

As of today, it seems to be back in a coma.

I’m sharing this with you as a precautionary tale that might save you some grief.

Because from what I’ve seen in my 6+ years of working as a direct response copywriter… most people in the DR world are by nature opportunity seekers.

That includes me.

And as an opportunity seeker, I often, in a hypnotic daze, mistake spending money with accomplishment.

Like I said, maybe that’s you too. If so, remember my domain-buying story, and the following coma of my drive to build the actual business.

This isn’t just about saving yourself thousands or tens of thousands of dollars… though there’s a good chance that remembering this story can do that.

But more important, it’s about saving your drive and self-respect. Because every failed “accomplishment purchase” saps those virtues a little bit.

The fact is, good opportunities are out there.

But inevitably, it takes some work to make them work. And the fewer dumb “accomplishment purchases” you’ve made before, the easier it will be to do that necessary work.

Anyways, here’s an easy opportunity that costs little money and requires even less work.

I have an email newsletter. It’s free to sign up and even more free to read. In case you want to grab a spot, here’s where to go.

The #1 rule for independent thinking

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One day not so long ago, I was taking a short six-hour break to poke around the Internet, when I saw a trending article that made me chuckle. The title read:

“25 Anti-Mimetic Tactics for Living a Counter-Cultural Life”

I chuckled because the term mimetic — how humans imitate each other — exploded in popularity in the second half of last year. The source of the explosion was the book Wanting, which was published last June and soon after became a bestseller. Suddenly, mimetic was everywhere.

And that to me was the funny bit.

Mimetic the term is itself mimetic. And so that article about anti-mimetic strategies is a little like writing,

“An Independent Thinker’s Guide to Independent Thinking for Other Independent Thinkers”

I bring this up because of a fundamental belief I have, which I want to share with you. Maybe it will resonate with you, and maybe it will even be valuable to you in some way. My belief is this:

If an idea is worthwhile, it will still be worthwhile in a year from now.

On the other hand, if an idea seems worthwhile today, there’s a good chance it won’t seem so in a year.

This leads to a simple rule:

Only give your attention to the many ideas that have survived for at least a year. Articles, books, scientific theories, comic strips, cocktail recipes, Saturday Night Live skits, terms and phrases.

And yes. I understand the contradictory nature of sharing this idea with you in a disposable daily email. The only thing I can say is that I’ve never shied away from contradicting myself.

Anyways, Wanting, the book, was published on June 1, 2021. I still haven’t read it — and I won’t, at least until its one-year anniversary. That’s what I recommend to you as well.

But maybe you’re looking for something to read.

Maybe even something that’s been around for more than a year.

In that case, I can further recommend a little book I wrote and published some 18 months ago.

It collects 10 ideas — some of them a few years old, some a few decades, one almost a century — from 10 of history’s most successful and most influential direct marketers and copywriters.

To find out more or to grab a copy:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Glorious opportunity to get rich quick

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People were pushing each other on the curb and trying to get a glimpse of the window.

“What does it say?”

“It sounds like a real live stock.”

“I’m gonna invest, that’s for sure.”

In 1920, a bank manager named I. Webster Baker posted a giant ad in the window of the Guardian Savings & Trust Co. of Cleveland, Ohio.

The ad was clearly a joke.

It was so outlandish and ridiculous that no sane person could think it was real.

But just to be sure, Baker posted a sign, written in large letters, under his ad. The sign read:

“Some gullible people will try to buy this stock. It is a foolish joke, of course, but no more foolish than many ‘wildcat’ schemes being promoted to-day. Investigate before investing. Don’t hand your money over to any unknown glib-tongued salesman.”

And yet…

Passersby stopped on the street to read the ad.

Some saw the sign below the ad and moved on, chuckling to themselves.

But others took their place. A crowd started to form. A gold rush feeling was crackling in the air.

People started pushing into the bank.

“Say, where can I get more information on that California Ranching stock that’s being advertised in the window?”

“Oh that stock isn’t anything,” said the bank assistant with a twinkle in her eye. “We have other, better stocks you might like to invest in.”

“But I don’t want other stocks! I want that one in the window.”

Such is the power of gullibility, or if you’re feeling less kind, of human greed.

Serious men, business men, doctors, lawyers, stock brokers, all responded to the California Ranching Company ad.

​​They did so both when the ad appeared in the window of the Guardian Savings & Trust Co., and on numerous other occasions, when the ad popped up in small-town newspapers across the U.S.

These men wanted a chance, as one investor said, “to turn an honest nickel into an honest dollar overnight.”

The gruesome nature of the advertised business, and the impossible promise of 100%, non-stop profit, didn’t keep these men from rushing in with cash in hand, and yelling, “HERE, take my money!”

At the Cleveland bank, what they got is disappointment. What they got in the case of the newspaper ads were scams that made their money disappear.

Maybe you’d like to see the original ad.

​​Maybe you’re curious about the business of the California Ranching Company.

​​Or maybe you’d like to study how this ad did its thing, so you can apply some of the same ideas to a less gruesome, more realistic business.

You can find the ad below. But before you read it, make sure you invest in a free subscription to my email newsletter, while opportunity knocks at your door.

How to be seen as a more credible source of solutions and advice

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Today, YouTube served me with up a recent interview that PBS did with Garry Kasparov.

Kasparov was World Chess Champion for 20 years and then an opposition leader in Russia.

“Unfortunately,” the interviewer said in his opening move to Kasparov, “you turned out to be right. Back in 2015, you wrote a book called ‘Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped.'”

The interviewer took a breath after reading out that title. He went on:

“Now that we see what he’s doing, what should our response be?”

Given Kasparov’s book, this might seem like a reasonable question to ask.

And that’s just the point I want to make to you today. There’s something important hiding inside that question.

In the words of Mark Ford and John Forde from Great Leads… the fact that you understand what’s wrong can help make you seem like a more credible source for solutions, too.

The fact is, just because Kasparov wrote a book critical of Putin gives him no special insight on how to stop the raging war in Ukraine. The two are about as related as knowing that “heavy turbulence makes for unpleasant flights” and knowing how to land a jumbo jet.

And yet, it doesn’t matter. The human instinct to jump from one to the other. Because when we’ve got trouble, it’s natural to look outside ourselves for the solution. And at those times, we are willing to accept a lot of things as qualifications and authority.

The takeaway for you is clear:

Don’t build a better mousetrap.

Instead, write a book. Educate your prospect about the dangerous breeding habits and expansionary intent of the eastern harvest mouse. “The eastern harvest mouse is coming,” your book should say. “And it must be stopped.”

Ok, let’s get to the business end of this post:

If you want more advice on building credibility with your audience, you might get value from my email newsletter. That’s where I regularly write about reasons that credibility fails. You can sign up for it here.

Update on that Super Bowl ad

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Last week, I wrote about the “best” ad from Super Bowl 2022. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a bit of recap:

The whole ad was a QR code bouncing around for a minute, like an old-school Windows screensaver.

If you scanned the QR code, it took you to a page to sign up for a Coinbase account.

The ad drew a lot of response. So much so that the landing page crashed.

But in spite of the big response, it’s unlikely that Coinbase recouped the $13 million it cost to run this ad.

So that’s the recap. And now for the update:

A few days ago, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, wrote a Twitter thread talking about the making of this ad.

It was mostly about how cool and creative his team is, and how he likes to pat them on the back, and how he also enjoys having his own back patted.

But the thing that really caught my eye was— “and of course the production budget was tiny, less then $100k.”

Hmm. A tiny budget, less than $100k, for a QR code bouncing around on the screen… something you could get done for on Fiverr for $30?

This brought to mind something copywriter Dan Ferrari wrote a few years ago. Dan was writing about big changes in the DR world. This bit has stuck with me ever since:

Because I’m not sure you’re aware, but there’s still a HUGE world outside of the digital players I’ve been talking about so far.

They’re now entering our world as well.

Specifically, I mean big direct response TV spenders and “brand” companies.

Why? Because their channels are drying up. Everything is moving digital.

I recently met with one of the top execs for a HUGE direct response TV company.

They make even the $200M per year financial publishers look small.

Guess what they’re doing?

Moving online. TV doesn’t work nearly as well for them anymore.

So watch as companies with products and businesses that don’t really fall into our little world of internet direct response start to require the services of people that know how traffic, copy, and funnels work online, at mega-scale.

Just to be clear:

I’m not suggesting you try to sell direct marketing to clueless brand businesses. If their idea of good advertising is a glossy page in a magazine, showing a man in a rowboat, in the middle of a lake, with the company logo hiding somewhere in the corner… well, you won’t change their mind.

But like Dan says, we might be in the early days of a giant opportunity.

So if you are enterprising, now might be the time. The time to take standard DM insights… and sell them to a virgin direct advertisers like Coinbase. The production budget? A mere trifle — $100k or $300k or maybe just a mil.

But perhaps you don’t know enough about how traffic, copy, and funnels work online.

In that case, sign up to my email newsletter — because these are all things I write about regularly.