My Most Valuable Email, $1088-prize contest continues. More on that below. But first, a true personal story:
I hated high school. More than anything, I hated English class.
I hated it so much that I refused to read the books we were to read or write the papers we were to write.
I remember Mr. Sherman, my 11th-grade art teacher, calling my mom late one evening.
He told her I wouldn’t be able to go on tomorrow’s field trip to Washington DC. The fact was, I was currently failing English class, and there was a law about taking badly behaving inmates out of prison.
The reason I managed to not fail English completely was that I went to a pretty progressive school. English class wasn’t just about taking tests and writing papers. It would sometimes involve creative assignments — you know, to make school fun.
For example, in 12th grade, we had to read Beowful. Of course I didn’t.
Fortunately, to prove we had read Beowful and thought about it deeply, we had to do one of those creative assignments. In other words, we were free to do anything and present it to the class, as long as it had to do with Beowulf.
My turn came. I walked up to the front of the class and popped in a tape to a little portable stereo. (Yes, this was a long time ago.) I pressed play.
First, a bit of music came on. As that faded out, my voice came on, trying to sound as smooth and hip as a radio DJ:
“Good evening and thanks for tuning in to another episode of late-night early-English classics. Tonight, we have sections seven through nineteen of the greatest epic poem ever written in the English language. You know it and I know it — of course, I’m talking about Beowful. And as always, we have our local old-English expert, professor Bjorn Bejakoffson of St. James University, to read this masterpiece for us in the original. Take it away professor Bejakoffson…
… and at this point, I transitioned into my best impression of the Swedish Chef from the Muppets.
I used to be good at mimicking the accents of other languages. But here, I was really just making up gibberish and making it sound like what I imagined old English sounded like.
In that 12th-grade English class, in part because I was always so unprepared, I had developed a reputation as the class clown.
My classmates were all eager to see what I had done for this creative assignment. As soon as the stupid Swedish Chef routine came on, everybody started laughing.
I stood there at the front of the class, beaming with cleverness as the tape played.
But then I spotted the English teacher. He was standing in the back, shaking his head, and scribbling down something in his notes. As I found out later, it was a C- for me.
I dredged up this story from my failing memory because of the Most Valuable Email contest I launched yesterday. There was just one condition to enter this contest:
“Write me an email and tell me which of my Most Valuable Emails has been most useful or interesting to you, and why.”
I’ve gotten a bunch of entries so far.
Many of them warmed my cold heart.
But I also got a few entries from people who clearly do not know what my Most Valuable Email trick is. Instead, they were just picking emails at random, including ones that don’t use the Most Valuable Email trick, and flattering me in hopes that they will guess right and have a shot at a prize.
I’m telling you this for two reasons:
1. Because, while I keep using the Most Valuable Email trick over and over, it remains subtle and surprising to people. Even people who regularly read my emails often can’t guess what it is.
2. Because I have somehow grown up and become like those dreaded teachers I hated so much in high school. And when I see someone trying to fake or buffoon their way through this contest, I just shake my head and scribble down in my notes: C-.
If you’d like to participate in this contest, you can find the prizes, rules, and deadline below.
And if you want to have a decent shot of winning any of the prizes, it will help to know what the Most Valuable Email trick is, and to make reference to it when you submit your entry. To help you do that, here’s where you can find the actual Most Valuable Email training:
https://bejakovic.com/mve/
And here’s more details about the contest, from yesterday’s email:
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First prize — $297.
Second prize — $200.
And three third prizes — a $197 ticket to my upcoming Water Into Wine workshop, on repackaging your offers for more sales.
If you’re interested, here are the rules for this competition:
1. Entries must be submitted in the form of an email from 50 to 150 words. Simply tell me which of my Most Valuable Emails has been the most useful or insightful or entertaining for you, and why. You don’t have to be clever, fancy, or unique in what you say — simply tell me what comes to mind.
2. The deadline for this competition is this Wednesday, June 19th, at 8:31pm CET. I’ll announce the prizes the day after, on Thursday, June 20th. The competition is open to anyone on my list, whether or not you have bought my Most Valuable Email training.
3. You can submit as many entries as you like, and I will consider all of them. But you can only win one prize.
4. What I want primarily is to find out how my readers have been using my Most Valuable Email trick to benefit themselves, as well as how this trick has made certain of my emails more sticky and available in their minds.
Like I say on the sales page for Most Valuable Email, if I had to choose just one type of email to write each day, I’d choose Most Valuable Emails. That’s why I want to hear about the real-world effects these emails have had on my readers.
5. The decision about which competition entry wins which prize will be made by me, based on my personal reaction and surprise. As one MVE buyer wrote me after going through the course:
“I’m looking back at your old emails with new eyes. You know that moment people get epiphanies and the entire world looks different? I’m feeling that way about your writing now. You’ve helped me unlock something I didn’t know existed. So incredible.”
