Time to wrap up my 2020 “NYE Party”

by

The time has come to bring my NYE Party, which kicked off earlier this week, to a close. This ain’t no usual NYE Party though.

In my world, “NYE” stands for “No-Guilt Year of Efficiency.”

With this goal in mind for for 2026, I’m promoting Igor Kheifets’s 8020 Productivity training.

Igor’s training shows you the productivity system Igor himself used to go from working 80+ hour weeks and getting paid roughly the wage of a bagger at a Whole Foods…. to working 20 hours a week and making $4.3 million last year.

I’m also offering several bonuses, totaling $300 in real-world, previously-sold-for value, if you decide to get Igor’s training before the party comes to an end.

That will happen tonight at 12 midnight PST. I will stop the music, turn on all the lights, and gently escort any stragglers to the door.

If you want to find out the full details of this offer, while the party is still live, and possibly make a real breakthrough for yourself in 2026:

https://bejakovic.com/2026nye

My recent productivity change and newfound free time

by

I got up late today, showered, and went out for a walk and a coffee by the marina. After a few freezing and grey days, today is beautiful, sunny, and warm in Barcelona.

Sometime during the morning I also had breakfast, during which I listened to Andy Roddick’s tennis podcast.

Around 1pm, once I finish this email, I will go to the pool and swim for an hour (part of my new dedication, a few months old now, to getting an hour of exercise every day).

Pool done, I will pack and head to the airport for an unexpected and frankly unwelcome emergency trip back home to Croatia.

Point being:

I’ve had and will have lots of non-working time today, both for personal and for necessary reasons.

But I don’t feel guilty about the free time because I did something meaningful to move my goals forward today. And no, it’s not this email.

Instead, I followed a practical recommendation, packaged up and sold to me via an insightful analogy, which I heard from Igor Kheifets recently.

This practical recommendation is something I’ve been implementing every day since I heard it, and it has had the effect of changing my own behavior and improving my productivity this month, since I started using it.

This practical change allowed me to get more done, have more free time, and feel good rather than guilty when I’m not working.

(You might reasonably think I shouldn’t feel guilty if I have more free time when I’m getting more done as well. But I can tell you from personal experience, it’s easy to feel the need to fill up newfound free time with some sort of busywork, in order to keep the forms to which I am accustomed. Igor’s practical recommendation and analogy are helping me with that.)

Like I’ve been saying the past few days, today at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/ 9am PST, only about 4 hours from now, Igor will do a live call to talk about his productivity system in detail.

Igor’s productivity system has allowed him to go from working 12 hours a day to working 4 hours a day… from making $130k a year to making $4.3 million a year… from having zero free time to having time for family, friends, video games, vacations, pilot lessons, Netflix, composing songs, and writing kids comic books.

This is the last email will send about this free call before it happens.

I will also give you a little inducement to attend today’s call or at least watch the replay. If you do, you’ll find out what Igor’s insightful analogy was, what his practical recommendation is which I’ve taken up, and the particular something I did today based on these (and no, it’s not writing this email).

If you wanna sign up to join Igor’s call live or to get the replay:

https://bejakovic.com/igorlive

Tactical info vs. info that gets results

by

I saw an email today from an email marketer who was complaining about products that only contain stories and big ideas. He proudly contrasted himself to that, by saying how his courses contain really awesome tactical info.

I mean, what’s not to like?

Customers love getting tactical info because such info can be made to feel new and have a wow factor when they open up the box.

Plus tactical info is easy to sell, and at a markup, because it can be positioned in sexy and secretive ways with clever copywriting (I have an entire course on how to do that, called Copy Riddles, in case you’re interested).

The one thing that tactics won’t do, at least not for most of the people buying, is get you results, particularly for the long term.

For results, tried, true, and often very boring and familiar fundamentals are needed, which are much harder to sell. In the words of A-list copywriter Mark Ford, who pretty much invented the selling of secrets at direct marketing publisher Agora:

“There is an inverse relationship between the value of knowledge and what people are willing to pay for it. The most important things in life you’ve probably heard a hundred times before, but you’re not paying attention. When you’re in the right place and you hear it, you have that ‘aha’ moment and everything changes.”

These days I’m talking about Igor Kheifets’s productivity system, which allows Igor to go from working 12 hours a day to working 4 hours a day… from making $130k a year to making $4.3 million a year… from having zero free time to having time for family, friends, video games, vacations, pilot lessons, Netflix, composing songs, and writing kids comic books.

Igor’s system is based on fundamentals and proven principles — probably stuff you’ve heard before in some way or another — applied very thoroughly, as evidenced by Igor’s own results.

Even so, some forward-looking people, who are after results rather than the latest tactics, have already taken me up on this offer. One of them was guitar teacher René Kerkdyk, who wrote me right after going through Igor’s training:

===

Having read Tim Ferris’ 4 Hour Workweek and internalizing the 80/20 mindset in my student years, I thought that this can get more than the $297 out of me.

And I’m not disappointed. “You are always just one good decision away from being on track.” is a great quote I’ll be using in my teaching business from now on.

If over the next 10 years this sentence helps just one student stay one month longer I have a ROI > 1.

Also I have tons of ideas of spelling out the 80/20 of guitar learning. That means email fodder and at least one future issue for my print newsletter.

And I haven’t even opened any of the bonuses.

===

Igor is doing a free call tomorrow at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST to go over his productivity system in more detail.

Maybe if you attend, you will hear something new?

Or maybe you will hear something you’ve heard before, which will finally click for you, and allow you to have your own breakthrough in 2026?

Like I said, tomorrow’s call is free. And yet it might produce some real results for you, whether or not you decide to take Igor up on his full, fundamentals-based productivity system.

If you’d like to reserve your spot for the free call tomorrow:

https://bejakovic.com/igorlive

Tomorrow: Free call on the productivity system that works

by

Tomorrow, Thursday Jan 8, at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST, Igor Kheifets and I will get on a live call to go over the productivity system that allowed Igor to:

Go from working 12-hour days, 7 days a week, and making $130k a year (effective hourly wage: $29/hour)…

… to working 4-hour days, 5 days a week, and making $4.3 million a year (effective hourly wage: $4,479/hour)…

… while having enough time and energy for his family, friends, and his FIFA, Call of Duty, and Netflix addictions.

You’re invited to join us for this call.

If you’re working more than you would like, making less than you had hoped, and are feeling stressed and even a bit guilty about it all… then come hear Igor’s own experience, discover new ideas so you can work less and make more, and get inspired for 2026.

Here’s where to reserve your spot:

​https://bejakovic.com/igorlive

Dan Kennedy’s “toaster theory” for your next offer

by

Last night, as my 2026 “NYE party” kicked into gear, I was standing around, a drink in my hand, party hat on my head, yelling over the music and the party blowers to make myself heard, so I could explain to a group of partygoers about Dan Kennedy’s “toaster theory.”

I forget where I first heard this theory, and a bit of digging hasn’t been able to unearth the source.

But in a nutshell, marketer Dan Kennedy once said that whatever offer you create, it needs to be as easy to use as a toaster. Basically push-button. Put the untoasted bread in, push the button, wait a minute, up pops the toast.

For some reason, perhaps because I am simple creature, that image of a toaster has stuck in my head a lot better than a bunch of other explanations of how to make a sexy and user-friendly offer.

Of course, sometimes you can’t live up to this ideal because even in the real world, not everything can be made as easy to use as a real toaster. But you can always take steps to make your offer more toaster-like, and sometimes, you can get surprisingly close to perfect toasterhood.

Case in point:

Back in 2023, I created a course called Insight Exposed. It was about my home-brewed system for keeping journals, taking notes, and coming up with surprising, insightful, valuable ideas.

This system has been immensely valuable to me personally, and has allowed me to get a lot more done in a lot less time.

Anyways, after I finished the course, I had that Dan Kennedy toaster idea rattling in my head. I asked myself, “How could I create a toasterized version of this course? Something that people could use right away, and get results from right away, and that’s as simple to use as pressing a button?”

The result was Insight-Exposed-In-A-Box, which gives you my entire notetaking and journaling setup in just a few moments, at the push of a button or two, just like pressing down a toaster.

Anyways, that was the story I started telling or rather yelling last night, as the party was heating up, as streamers flew through the air, as drinks flowed.

My 2026 “NYE Party” is still going on at the page below.

That’s because this is not a New Year’s Eve party (after all, it’s Jan 6 today). The “NYE” in my “NYE Party” is something entirely different.

Yes, this “NYE Party” has fun elements like disco balls and fireworks at midnight. But it’s also got a serious promise:

Make more in 20 hrs/week in 2026 than you did in 40+ hrs/week in 2025…

… without thinking about work 24/7, or feeling guilty when you’re not working.

At the core of delivering this promise is a masterclass about productivity by expert Call of Duty player Igor Kheifets, who, when not playing video games or doing sports with his kids, runs a $4.3 milllion-a-year info publishing business built on the back of his email list.

Igor works just 20 hours a week for those $4.3 million, and he takes 6-8 vacations a year. In other words, he might have a thing or two to tell you about how to get more done with less time any effort.

Also as part of this “NYE Party,” I’m throwing in a productivity-minded bonus, a free copy of Insight-Exposed-In-A-Box, which I just told you about, and which I previously sold for $200.

(Of course, if you want the full explanation and detail of the Insight Exposed, I’m including that as well.)

In any case, the “NYE Party” goes on, and will go on as long as the police don’t stop us, the electrical company doesn’t turn off the power, and the people inside keep having fun. If you’d like to join us:

https://bejakovic.com/2026nye

Announcing: 2026 NYE Party

by

Maybe you’ve noticed?

It’s 2026.

Maybe you’ve also noticed, New Year’s Eve has passed. (Anyhow, that was New Year’s Eve 2025.)

And yet here I am, running an event I’m calling the 2026 NYE Party.

The “NYE” in this case is special.

Yes, there will be streamers, a disco ball, and fireworks at midnight.

But among all the partying there’s also an opportunity to:

Make more in 20 hrs/week in 2026 than you did in 40+ hrs/week in 2025…

… without thinking about work 24/7, or feeling guilty when you’re not working.

The party has already kicked off. You are invited. I hope you’ll attend? Here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/2026nye

I’m jealous of this lead gen funnel

by

Last August, I promoted Igor Kheifets’s $3.99 book, Click Send Earn, as an affiliate.

$3.99? As an affiliate?

Yes. Because Igor pays out a $30 affiliate commission for each $3.99 sale.

The result was I sent two emails, and made Igor 69 sales, while making a little short of $2100 in commissions for myself.

Igor has got a super smart lead gen funnel here, and the offer he makes — $3.99 sale, $30 CPA — has gotten a buncha other list owners besides me interested in promoting.

Maliha Mannan of the Side Blogger promoted, as did Csaba Borzasi, as did Lawrence Bernstein of Ad Money Machine, with a promo that did so well last October that he is reprising it right now, just three months later.

The reason Igor can offer to pay all these folks $30 for each $3.99 sale is that he has a half dozen order form bumps and a long list of upsells once people buy the book.

Igor knows what a new customer in this funnel is worth to him, and I suspect it’s over $30. Of course, each new customer becomes worth much more when they get on Igor’s email list and are getting exposed to Igor’s back-end offers, many of them high-ticket, which Igor knows to convert.

I am frankly jealous of Igor for this funnel. I would love to have affiliates jostling and clamoring to promote either of my two books, or the new book I’m planning to publish this year.

But who’s got time and energy enough to create and dial in all these order bumps… and upsells… and copy… and funnels… and back-end offers?

Igor does, apparently.

And he does it while working 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, and having a family, and two kids, and writing and publishing comic books, and playing video games, and watching Netflix.

It wasn’t always like this.

Igor used to work 70+ hour weeks on his biz. He was grinding and hustling and making $130k a year. That might sound like a dream to you except it really wasn’t, considering how much he was working, and how little he was able to enjoy it. Plus he was making literally 3% of the $4.3 million he makes a year now.

Today, Igor works much less, gets much more done, makes much more money, and enjoys his free time without thinking about working or feeling guilty for not working.

I’m telling you this because this past November, Igor did a masterclass covering his system for getting more done in less time. He documented the exact productivity system that took him from A to B, from overworked and underpaid to having lots of free time and making a lot of money and publishing comic books.

I’ve been through Igor’s masterclass. I’m taking ideas from it. I’m applying them to what I do.

And starting tomorrow, since it’s the fresh start of a New Year, I will be promoting this system to you as well.

Of course, there will be a special deal.

Of course, there will be bonuses.

Of course, there will be a bit of a party theme, it being only a few days after New Year’s Eve. But party theme or not, the promise here is serious:

Work less, get more done, and feel zero guilt when you’re not working.

If that’s something that makes your subtle body tingle, then read my email tomorrow.

What Hysterical Hulks can teach you about procrastination

by

See if you can spot the pattern:

1. On Feb 8 2006, a woman in a village at the northern reaches of Canada was watching her son and his friends play hockey.

This being close to the polar circle, a polar bear appeared, which was later found to weigh 320kg aka 507lbs.

The woman jumped in front of the bear to allow the kids to get away. She tried scaring the beast but that didn’t do much, and so the two of them got into a life-and-death wrestling match.

The bear seemed to be getting the upper hand, but the woman was holding her own.

Meanwhile the kids ran and got help from a local hunter. The hunter got his shotgun and “neutralized” the bear.

The woman got away with only light injuries. She was later awarded Canada’s Medal For Bravery and got a Gold Star for her bear-handling skills.

2. In 2012, a 22-year-old woman lifted a BMW off her father, who had been working under the car when the jack collapsed. The BMW weighed over 1500kg.

3. Back in the 1990s, a man pulled over on the highway when he saw a wrecked car with a man trapped inside. He ripped off the metal doors off with his bare hands to get the other guy out.

These a just a few examples of what is known as “hysterical strength.”

Hysterical strength can’t be reproduced in the lab, and doesn’t happen all that often in the wild either. But it does happen.

Michael Regnier, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington, was the door-ripping Hulk in anecdote 3 above.

Based on his own experiences (the door ripping, and as a competitive weight lifter, and as professor of bioengineering) Regnier claims that most people can lift six or seven times their body weight, though most of us struggle to deadlift even a small fraction of that at the gym.

What changes in situations of hysterical strength?

It’s not adrenaline pumping through the body. Adrenaline supports better muscle use, yes, but it doesn’t increase the tetanic force, meaning how much a muscle can contract.

Rather, it’s believed hysterical strength is all down to the brain.

Our brains normally restrict maximum muscle exertion to maybe 60% of actual muscle capacity. Elite athletes can through training get that to around 80%. Hysterical Hulks apparently get pretty close to 100% of what their body is capable of for a few dramatic moments.

The brain hinders us like this to keep us safe.

The brain has many ways to keep us from going down dangerous and uncertain paths, even ones that we could survive or in theory even thrive in.

In my own brain, this connected to something I read long ago, which has had a big impact on me over the years. Cal Newport, the author of books like Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You, once had an interesting theory about procrastination. He wrote:

“The evolutionary perspective on procrastination, by contrast, says we delay because our frontal lobe doesn’t see a convincing plan behind our aspiration. The solution, therefore, is not to muster the courage to blindly charge ahead, but to instead accept what our brain is telling us: our plans need more hard work invested before they’re ready.”

Yes, there are tactical ways to beat small-scale procrastination, to “blindly charge ahead,” and I will be talking about those in the coming days and teasing what’s worked for me personally.

But what Newport is advising above has been my best way of dealing with serious, long-term procrastination on any sizeable project that I knew needed doing.

And it’s my advice to you tonight.

If you find yourself procrastinating… get yourself a new plan you can believe in.

How do you do that? I will have more on that tomorrow.

The most ironic, hypocritical, and ridiculous business model of all time?

by

Here’s a fun 3-act parable for you:

ACT 1: A guy starts a business to help you cancel subscriptions to services you don’t use any more. Think AOL, or the home security at you old house, or getting milk delivered to your doorstep.

ACT 2: The guy gets a bunch of users interested in the service he is offering, but he struggles to make money with it. He tries charging a one-time fee. He tries doing affiliate deals. He briefly considers selling user data. All of it is no-go.

ACT 3: Wrestling against the irony of it all, the seeming hypocrisy, the sheer ridiculousness, he finally decides to change his business model and starts to charge… a monthly subscription. For a service that helps you cancel subscriptions.

EPILOGUE:

The guy’s company takes off. I mean, takes OFF.

Several years later, it is sold for over $1B.

ONE BILLION SHINING AND CRINKLING DOLLARS.

(True story, by the way. Look it up. The guy’s name is Haroon Mokhtarzada and the company was called TrueBill.)

Lots of lessons in this little parable I think.

I want to highlight just one today, because it is the core of the entire direct marketing business. It’s this:

Sell people more of what they have already bought, preferably earlier this month.

Seems crazy at first, but the best prospect for a tennis racket is someone who has bought a bunch of tennis rackets already, maybe even yesterday.

Same is true for books… supplements… courses… sneakers… coaching… and apparently, subscription services.

Which gets me to wondering.

It’s January 2nd. I mean, just the second day of the year.

What significant purchases have you made already this year? Write in and let me know. I’m… curious.

Did I live up to my 2025 “themes”?

by

Each January 1, I write an email reviewing my (usually failed) goals of the past year, and setting several new goals for the year to come, which I will then… well, let’s take it one step at a time.

Rewind back to January 1 2025. I wrote then that I’m kind of over goal setting, but for the sake of an interesting email, I chose 3 goals, or rather “themes,” for 2025:

#1. Recurring income (it’s clear enough what that means)

#2. Less of me (meaning, getting better at making offers that don’t rely entirely on my personal authority and charm to sell)

#3. Tech (developing software tools that I could sell or give away or use myself)

How did I do?

On the tech front, absolutely nothing. If anything, I’ve become even more of a Luddite than I was a year ago.

Once upon a time, I worked as a software engineer, but I’ve realized dabbling in programming and software development a waste of my time now. Instead, if a good opportunity comes along, I will partner with people who want to fiddle around with code.

As for my other two themes, I actually did pretty good.

I had a good chunk of my income this year in the form of recurring income (both via payment plans on high-ticket offers, and via continuity products like Daily Email Habit).

As for “less of me,” I’ve learned a lot and implemented a good amount about making offers that are attractive even to people who don’t really know me and love me via these emails. Ironically, I think the success of my “I endorse YOU” auction, with the $31k winning bid, was proof of that.

Now fast forward back to the future, specifically, to today. What about the coming year, 2026?

Over the past days and weeks, no clear theme or two or three for 2026 came to my mind. So this morning, I sat down and made a list of 10 things I want to get done with my Bejako Business in 2026. Here they are:

1. Publish a new book

2. Make $1M in auction revenue (selling my stuff and others’ stuff, to my audience and to other audiences)

3. Develop a series of high ticket offers that actually sell, like [censored] etc.

4. Stick to a monthly schedule of 1) newsletter ad or list swap, 2) in-house offer, 3) zero-delivery offer

5. Keep building up Monetization Mastermind (my invite-only group of list owners who want to partner up on various deals)

6. Keep experimenting with Daily Email House

7. Grow the list to 8k

8. Build up my status more

9. Partner with more people

10. Keep uncovering new bubbles of people and connecting them to each other

That’s a lot. Some of it is pretty reachable, or at least has fuzzy enough criteria of success to sound like it.

Some of it is ambitious, or even very ambitious.

Is it all possible to do it all, or a large part?

I believe it is. I’ll tell you how:

Double up and triple up. In other words, make everything do double or triple work, and feed into other things that I want to do.

For example, the new book I want to publish is directly connected to the high-ticket offer I am currently working on. The two will feed off each other.

Having a new book, as well as a high-ticket offer that sells well (inshallah), will be status-boosting.

And all this can feed into more auctions and partners and connections… and and so on.

You might say this sounds like the best-case scenario, and not like the worst- or even likely-case scenario.

I agree. So how to improve my chances?

How to actually double up and triple up, consistently, throughout the year, as I keep working on different projects, and as life starts getting in the way, and I as a person change?

My answer to this, which is the one point of today’s email, finally, which can be relevant to you, is:

More planning and research and preparation.

Specifically, I heard somebody smart and successful recommend recently to schedule “regular thinking time,” and to treat it like a non-negotiable meeting with yourself.

So if there is a theme to my 2026, “thinking time” is it.

And as for whether I will reach my 10 goals… or fail on most or on all counts… stay tuned, and maybe you will have the opportunity to nod and smirk in case you see me struggling… or nod and smile if you see me succeed.

Also, I got an offer for you today:

On the one hand, I believe “thinking time” is best done alone.

On the other hand, it’s inevitably true that other people can help keep us accountable in ways that we cannot keep ourselves (well, most of us, Daniel Throssell is an exception).

Maybe more importantly, other people can immediately spot and point out blind spots in our own thinking that we might never spot.

So here’s my offer to you:

Would some kind of organized and shared “thinking time” be useful to you?

I’m imagining it as a regularly scheduled call with myself and other people, where we can all share what we’re working on and how we’re thinking about proceeding.

But it doesn’t have to be like that, and maybe you have better ideas.

In any case, if organized, structured, regular, and shared “thinking time” might be useful to you, write in and let me know to say so, and what it could help you with, and how you imagine it looking.

Thanks in advance.