The (yes, THE) secret of storytelling

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A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos likes to tell the story of how he became a copywriter. I’ve heard him tell this story multiple times, mostly online, and once in real life as well.

I forget the details of how it all goes, but there’s one detail that I never forget.

At one point, Parris was working at a real estate office, and the office manager at the time, in a fit of fury and impotence, punched his hand through a window.

And now comes the bit I always remember, which I’ve heard Parris repeat every time I’ve heard him tell this story:

There was a thin trail of blood on the floor, from the broken window to the elevator, as the manager walked out of the office, never to return again.

And that, in a snapshot, is THE secret of storytelling.

In a few more words, from an article I read about Irving Thalberg, a movie producer who was called the “Boy Wonder” of Hollywood, and who invented and popularized many Hollywood tropes that we now take for granted as elements of effective storytelling:

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The real reason for the enduring Thalberg myth has less to do with any of this than with that perennial idea, which fascinated [F. Scott Fitzgerald, who worked as a Hollywood screenwriter in the 1930s, and who wrote a novel with a fictionalized Thalberg as protagonist] as it does us, that there are secrets of storytelling, to which a few are privy.

Yet good Hollywood films have more or less a single story. Raise the stakes, place insuperable obstacles before the protagonist, have the protagonist somehow surmount them while becoming braver and better. What works for Dorothy works for Rocky. In truth, we may follow stories, but we respond to themes; the story is just the tonality in which those themes are played. […]

No one can recall the ins and outs of Salozzo’s drug scheme in “The Godfather,” but we remember Pacino’s face in closeup: we come for the story, stay for the sublimations.

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I don’t really know what the guy behind this article is talking about when he talks about “themes” and “sublimations.”

I do know that few stories are memorable… that the structure of storytelling, hyped up as it is, is often irrelevant… and that what actually makes a story work is not the rags-to-riches, or riches-to-rags, or hero quest skeleton underneath… but a few dramatic and memorable snapshots:

The “kiss of death” that Michael Corleone gives his brother Fredo in the Godfather II; Rocky running up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the thin trail of blood from the broken window to the elevator.

So if it’s not the structure but the memorable snapshot that is the secret of storytelling… then how do you come up with memorable snapshots?

I hate to break it to you, but if that were a knowable secret, then every Hollywood movie would be a forever-beloved blockbuster. Which is clearly not the case.

The best you can do is to come up with the best snapshots you can, and then to test them out on your audience. See if the audience oohs and aahs, if they feed you back the same snapshot days and weeks and months later, and if they come back for more. Then double down on what works, and discard the rest.

And since I gotta sell you something, let me tie this into the topic of writing daily emails, because daily emails make for a particularly easy and fertile way to test out new ideas and ways of presenting those ideas to an audience.

I’ve written books and created courses that people buy and enjoy and then come back for more of. One secret of how I make such info products is that I repurpose my daily emails, or rather, the emails that worked — ideas and snapshots that I field-tested on my audience, and that I got positive feedback on.

If you want to start writing daily emails of your own, and if you want a field-tested guide for how to do that well:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Amazon or your own funnel for selling your book?

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A reader named Dan (not sure he wants me to share his last name) asks:

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Hi John

I bought both your books on my wife Hilary’s Amazon account and rated them 5 stars! Really enjoyed them.

I have just finished writing my second marketing book but avoid Amazon as I want to sell them through my funnel. Do you find there’s enough organic sales through Amazon to build your list?

Very best wishes

Dan (in London)

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I’ve only been selling my books via Amazon and it’s been doing all right for me, 10-15 sales a day on average. But only a fraction of those, maybe one or two a day, turn into subscribers to this newsletter, in part because I hide the optin at the end of the book.

Ideally, I’d be selling my books both via Amazon and via my own funnels. I haven’t done this because of the work involved in building out and managing a funnel that would make selling off Amazon, say via Facebook ads, feasible.

But… maybe we can split the work?

Specifically, I had the following idea:

I could sell my book via ads and my own funnel. And then, as an upsell, to break even with ad costs, I could sell a bundle of other related books from other authors. After all, a book buyer is a book buyer, and a book buyer who bought, say, a book about persuasion or self improvement will buy more such books.

I’m telling you this for two reasons:

1. I am honestly hoping that you will go and create this funnel instead of me, and put your own book (about say, marketing) as the front-end offer, and collect all the email addresses of buyers who come in.

I will gladly contribute either of my 10 Commandments books to be sold in the upsell bundle, and expect no royalties in turn, or even the email addresses you collect.

I will just be happy to get my book into more hands, and hopefully to get some of the owners of those hands to sign up to my list via the optin I have at the back of the book.

2. If you have your own book on a marketing or persuasion topic, but you refuse to do me the kindness of creating a cold traffic funnel and including my book in your upsell flow, then let me know, and maybe I will do the work that you cold heartedly refuse to do.

In other words, maybe I will get that cold traffic funnel created, and put my book as the front-end offer, and sell your book in a bundle as an upsell.

No guarantees. But if you have an interesting and well-written book, and you’re intrigued by the proposition, hit reply, and let’s talk.

And if you haven’t yet read my new 10 Commandments book, about con men and stage magicians and pickup artists and (gulp) copywriters, then you can find that charmer here:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Why my landing page says very little about me

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A new reader, who signed up to my list yesterday, asks why he should listen to me:

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Hey John, why does your landing page say very little about yourself. What makes you different from other copywriters atleast tell me how much money you have generated for your clients.

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Fair question. Here’s a fair answer:

First off, if I ever identified as a copywriter, I don’t any more. it’s been three years since I last had a client hire me to write for them. I don’t expect that to change soon.

As for money, I made some for clients back when I had them. Not enough money to buy Greenland… just enough to brag a bit.

But that was long enough ago that putting it front and center on my site would make me feel a little like Al Bundy, reminiscing about his glory days as a high school quarterback.

In short, I don’t list past client results on my optin page — or the endorsements I’ve gotten for this newsletter, or the money I personaly make via these emails, or my religious or sexual affiliation — because I don’t wanna, and also because it would be misleading.

None of those things is really what this newsletter is about.

The only consistency in this newsletter, the only thing you can expect, is ideas I discover and find interesting, which I then curate and polish to make sure they are relevant and interesting to you as well.

Well, there is one added step I take sometimes, beyond just writing about interesting and relevant ideas.

I call this extra step the Most Valuable Email trick.

The Most Valuable Email trick does set me apart from most other people who write daily emails, including in the copywriting and marketing worlds.

I have some authority and standing now in that space. But the Most Valuable Email trick worked for me even when I was brand new, and nobody knew me, and I had even less to brag about than I have now.

If you wanna find out more about the Most Valuable Email trick, or even have me pull back the curtain and teach you how I do it, you can do so at the sales page below.

I wrote this sales page back in 2022.

It features as much authority flexing as you’re likely to find anywhere on my site.

If you wanna get a few external reasons why you might want to read my emails, you can find them there.

Or if you want to understand the internal reason that makes many of my emails more interesting than what you might read elsewhere, and how you can do the same, in less than an hour from now, then:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Free training on client acquisition by half-cow-selling copywriter

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Even in the small world of “dudes who write daily emails about writing daily emails,” you can sometimes miss good people.

And so it was that, a few weeks ago, while putting together a group of people who have email lists and sell stuff related to email marketing and copywriting and course creation, it was for the first time ever that I heard of a guy named Alin Dragu.

I’m telling you this because in the weeks that followed, Alin and I agreed to do a “list swap.” That’s a lurid term for a clean idea. Basically, Alin and I agreed to let our respective lists know the other guy exists, and to coax our readers into joining the other’s list as well.

Alin has a long-form optin page that does a thorough job boosting his status and making the case for why you might want to hear from him daily. In a few words, Alin’s got:

– Endorsements for his daily emails from people like Daniel Throssell and Brian Kurtz

– The title of Vice President of a $2.8M Advertising Agency

– A testimonial from a copywriting client who sold a half cow (yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like) thanks to Alin’s email copy

… and if authority is not enough, Alin also has a legit and exclusive bribe bundle to entice you to sign up to his list, good for only the next 48 hours, just because you happen to be a diligent reader of my newsletter.

The core piece of this is a video training called “Warm-Ish Client Acquisition,” in which Alin lays out a (coldish) outreach strategy that led to two copywriting retainers worth $6k. Alin previously only made this training available inside a $300 product, but it’s yours free.

Also, Alin’s bribe bundle contains a copy of his book, Meaningful Marketing, and Copywriting Catalyst, a collection of copywriting tips.

And it’s all free. Did I mention that? FREE.

But only if you act before the deadline, which, tick-tock, is waiting like the crocodile in Peter Pan to bite the arm off the careless and the tardy.

To get Alin’s bribes and to sign up to the man’s list in time:

https://alindragu.com/john/

Double-checking the windows of sales escape

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A true story, I mean, analogy:

A couple weeks ago, I was walking around town when a freak thunderstorm set in. I was only about a couple hundred yards from my apartment, but there was no braving this.

First, hurricane winds picked up, then a torrential downpour, finally large hailstones started beating down.

Along with a few dozen other people, I huddled in the metro station tunnel while the gods wore out their fury.

“Good thing I closed all the windows at home,” I chuckled to myself, as ominous music swelled in the background.

I got home and sure enough—

In the middle of the living room, a ficus ginseng plant, which banker and email-writing career coach Tom Grundy had sent me last year, was lying toppled over on the floor. Soil from the plant was all over the room.

“How did this happen?” I asked, possibly out loud. I walked around the apartment and came across a large puddle. One of the bedrooms was entirely flooded, including the mattress, which had soaked through.

It turns out that the window in that room was shut, but it wasn’t shut tightly enough. The furious wind blew it open, and then the rain and hail flew in, flooding the room, soaking through the mattress, and knocking over the plant in the living room and tossing the soil everywhere.

(The plant survived, by the way. It’s looking at me right now.)

I’m about to try to spin this story of emergency and disaster into a copywriting lesson, if you can handle one of those.

Last night, I hosted one of the Q&A calls for Copy Riddles, as part of the last-ever live cohort I will run of that program.

Several skilled copywriters and marketers submitted their bullets for the weekly CR bullet contest, including the following:

“How you could double your child’s IQ with this doctor-recommended breakfast switch. Page 17”

It’s a great bullet. It’s got a big promise I imagine most parents would respond to… a simple and intriguing mechanism… and proof in that phrase “doctor-recommended.”

There’s only one niggling thing, and it’s that, to my mind at least, the reader could read this and say, “Oh, great to know such a doctor-recommended breakfast switch exists! I’ll ask my pediatrician about it the next time I take the little monster in to see him.”

In other words, there’s a small, minor, minuscule chance, however unlikely, that the reader can be sold entirely on the promise of this bullet… and still won’t buy.

And that’s my analogy for you.

“You gotta close off all the windows and doors of escape for your sale” — maybe you’ve heard that advice before.

I know I did, but it didn’t really sink in for a long time.

In any case, knowing it is not enough, because really you have to know your audience as well, and keep learning about them, and keep shutting off all their paths to escape, including new ones that pop up.

Otherwise, even a seemingly shut window (bear with me here) can blow open unexpectedly, and then you have the sales equivalent of a mess in the living room and water all over the place and a mattress that’s been soaked through.

In other words, you have a lost sale, with good work put in and nothing to show for it. So it makes sense to double-check and triple-check the windows and doors of sales escape, using everything you know already and are learning about your skeptical, guarded, and inert prospects.

All right, analogy over. As for my offer:

While this is the last-ever live cohort for Copy Riddles, this program remains alive as an evergreen training.

Several of the people currently going through it have been through it three or more times already, on their own.

I also have it from a reputable source that Copy Riddles, even without the Q&A calls, is the best way to gain the money-making skill of writing sales bullets, short of being one of Parris Lampropoulos’s copy cubs. (I heard this from Vasilis Apostolou, formerly a copywriter at Agora, and now one of Parris’s copy cubs.)

If you’d like to find out more about Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

All these years, I thought I just liked living up high with a view of water

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I’m reading a book called Yoga And The Search For The True Self — don’t ask — and last night I came across a passage that said:

“Anthropologists have shown that the favorite territory of human beings is high ground above water.”

“How did you know?” I said to the book. A couple facts:

#1 When reading another book (Psycho-Cybernetics), I tried imagining a kind of ideal refuge. I imagined a house on a hillside, overlooking a lake in the valley below.

#2 I currently live on the 9th floor, with a bit of a view of the sea (I wish I had more).

Upon reading that my unique personal fantasies and preferences are the same as those of the rest of mankind, I felt a little bit like Dave Chappelle when he walked into a Mississippi diner and found out what everyone there already knew, that “blacks and chickens are quite fond of one other.” Says Dave:

“All these years, I thought I liked chicken because it was delicious. Turns out, I’m genetically predisposed to liking chicken. I got no say in the matter.”

A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga once said, “As a marketer you only have one power, and that’s to anticipate what people are going to think.”

We all have unique experiences and reactions, in the sense that we and only we experience them.

The strange thing, or maybe not so strange, is that other people have experiences and reactions that are very similar to ours. And if you take the time to learn and prepare and anticipate those, then, as Gary says, that becomes power.

This is the core idea of my new 10 Commandments book, published earlier this year in May.

I checked just this morning and it seems my book has gotten its first 3-star rating. Unfortunately, it’s just a 3-star rating and no written review I could lampoon.

All the written reviews I have gotten so far are 5-star and say things about this book like, “life changing,” “practical,” “packed with curious ideas,” “really fun,” “playful but legit,” “highly entertaining,” “the sharpest material I’ve come across on the subject,” “funny, weird, and most of all valuable.”

If you’d like to find out more about the unique reactions of others, and how you can anticipate those:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Am I just trying to provoke unsubscribes?

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In reply to my email yesterday, marketer and long-time customer Fred Beyer writes:

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Step 1: Tell your audience there are Mavericks who are worth serving and Gooses who are not (I refrained from using the plural geese ’cause we’re referencing a nickname here after all).

Step 2: Ask your audience which one they are, so you can ignore them appropriately according to your own suggestion in the email.

From Simple Money Emails: “What people do remember is the emotional stimulation”, and here you’re letting a large part of your subscribers know they are less desirable than the rest.

Are you just trying to provoke unsubscribes here? 😂

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My primary goal yesterday was what I wrote in the email, to find out who on my list has their own email list that’s growing at a healthy clip.

At the same time, Fred raises a good point. It’s one I thought about yesterday as I wrote the email.

I decided that yes, I’m ok if a bunch of people I don’t have any plans on working with unsubscribe from my list.

It’s not about them being “undesirable” in some global, eugenic sense. It’s simply who I want to focus on working with, and who I don’t want to focus on.

Ironically, it didn’t end up happening. I’ve had just 2 unsubscribes so far from yesterday’s email.

This I think is a lesson in itself, and probably an interesting data point around the topic of natural authority.

But that’s a topic for another place, another time.

For today, if you are wondering about the reference that Fred makes, to Simple Money Emails, it’s my course on how to write simple, daily emails, like this one, which both bring in sales today, and keep readers — the ones you want — reading tomorrow as well.

For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

“Maverick” vs. “Goose” segments of your niche

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Yesterday, I sent a handraiser email asking readers if, assuming they have an email list, they get on average 30 or more new subs each week. I got two kinds of replies. See if you can spot the pattern:

#1. No

#2. No!

#3. I do not. But that would be awesome. even 3 a week would be good for me

#4. Nope. 😕

#5. Hell no

#6. I wish LOL

#7. yea

#8. Yes!

#9. Yes, I do… I use linkedin/Facebook and Instagram organic to drive leads.

#10. I get about 100-150 a week and about 30-35 unsubs per week (daily emails)

#11. I get that a day.

#12. Daily

I appreciate everyone who replied. And as thanks for that, let me share a distinction I make, which might be useful to you, called the “Maverick” vs. “Goose” segments.

I first made this distinction last year, when looking at three successful coaching clients I’ve had, each of whom was writing daily emails as a major part of their business.

I looked for commonalities.

One commonality I found was that each of these clients focused on the “Maverick” segment of their audience.

If you have ever seen Top Gun, you know that the movie is about Maverick, played by Tom Cruise. Maverick is the cool, good-looking, talented fighter pilot who inevitably gets the girl and the glory by the end of the movie.

And then there’s Goose, played by Anthony Edwards. Goose is Maverick’s likeable, goofy-looking sidekick, who never gets to fly the plane and who is ritually sacrificed halfway through the movie.

So the question becomes, who do you want to build a business around? Maverick or Goose?

I looked at those 3 coaching students I’d had, each of whom was doing very well. I saw all three focused on the Maverick segment of their niche. Specifically:

* In the “basketball” niche: On high school coaches, rather than high school players

* In the “fitness” niche: On 44-year-olds, rather than 24-year-olds

* In the “marketing” niche: On people who want time, rather than people who want money

My point being:

Yes, some niches are more promising than others to start. You’re more likely to find players with money subscribing to an investing newsletter than replying to a debt relief ad.

But within each niche, regardless of how initially promising or unpromising, there are also the Maverick and Goose segments.

If you’ve already got an audience, or if one is building up for you as we speak, it makes sense to find a binary question you can ask people to classify them as either Maverick or Goose, and then to focus your efforts on working with the Maverick segment, at least based on what I’ve seen.

And on that note, if you haven’t yet replied to my handraiser yesterday:

If you have an email list, do you on average get 30 or more new subscribers every week?

If you do, let me know. I mainly want to know who you are and what you do. I don’t have any particular agenda, though I do have a half dozen possible ways you could help me or I could help you.

Question

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If you have an email list, do you on average get 30 or more new subscribers every week?

“Play whatever you have”

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The fact is, I don’t wanna be writing this email. In fact I’d rather be doing one of about a dozen other things.

Maybe it’s because, somewhere along the line in the 2,500+ previous daily editions of this newsletter, I used up all the good topic ideas I had, and I don’t really have a hot new one for today.

Maybe it’s because, by my standards, it’s very late in the day for me to be writing.

Or maybe it’s because I spent too long walking in the sun earlier today without drinking any water, and right now my eyes feel heavy and my head is throbbing.

And you know what?

Well, let me tell you what, in the words of one Tristan de Montebello, who was at one point a world champion public speaker (yes, a championship for public speaking exists), and has since started an online business that has trained thousands of people in public speaking. Says Tristan:

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Play whatever you have.

If you show up and you don’t wanna be there, they should feel that you don’t wanna be there. Play the fact you don’t wanna be there, but play it with confidence.

What’s interesting about this idea is that it works in prepared speaking as well as in all of the other areas you’re going to be in.

What people tend to do is they will show up, in any environment, and they will start leaking.

They start leaking all of their insecurities. If they were hoping they would feel confident, and they show up and they don’t… a word comes out of their mouth wrong, they start fumbling, something happens that was not supposed to happen… everything internally is going to break down.

But what if instead you could keep those insecurities inside, plug the leaks, stay in character, and play whatever it is that you are experiencing, use that energy, in a confident way?

We call it staying in character. It kind of looks like conviction.

And what it does, it sends the message to your audience that they’re okay and you’re okay.

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When I heard this a couple days ago as I listened to an interview with Tristan while massaging the elliptical at the gym, my ears perked up, for two reasons.

One reason is that this strategy, which Tristan calls “playing whatever you have,” is a topic I had planned on including in my new 10 Commandments book. I’ve found it to be a common element between the work of standup comedians, pickup artists, and hypnotists.

The topic didn’t make the cut because, well, there was space for only 10 Commandments, and I had others that I felt were stronger fit for the book.

Reason two my ears perked up was Tristan’s final sentence, about making your audience feel okay. That’s something that did make it into my book, because it’s probably the most important persuasion lesson out there, and that’s why it goes into Commandment I.

Anyways, if you’re interested in figuring out how to “stay in character” and “play whatever you have”:

Tristan’s online business for teaching people public speaking is called Ultraspeaking. They offer 30-day cohorts for getting you better with public speaking.

I’m thinking of signing up for the next one, although the $997 does make me wince. If I do sign up, I’ll have more to say about it. Meanwhile, if you want to speak better to groups, and you have $997 to spend, you can look up Ultraspeaking and see if it’s for you.

On the other hand, if you want others to treat you better, and happily go where you’d like them to go, and do what you’d like them to do, the Kindle version of my book is just $4.99, and is waiting to make you feel okay at the following link:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments