The absolute cheapest köttbullar in a 30-mile radius

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Back in 1958, Ingvar Kamprad had a bold idea.

He was opening a furniture store — and he decided to tack on a cafe as well.

The reasoning was straightforward:

Customers with full bellies might buy more furniture.

This furniture store + cafe business became quite the success. It’s called IKEA (the “IK” in the name being Kamprad’s initials) and it does about $40 billion in sales each year.

The IKEA restaurant alone does about $2 billion. But that’s not what the company cares about.

In fact, the guiding principle of the IKEA restaurant is to offer the absolute lowest price on a food item within a 30-mile radius.

IKEA doesn’t mind if it loses money here — because its köttbullar (AKA Swedish meatballs) are known as the “best sofa seller.”

Makes sense.

People wouldn’t stay in the store as long if they get nervous or hungry…

On the other hand, if they come expressly for the Swedish meatballs or cheap hot dogs (30% of IKEA customers come just for the food), they might wind up buying some throw pillows or stuffed rats or even a new lamp.

And the point of all of this is NOT that you should offer a loss leader.

Instead, it’s a simple lesson about copywriting.

In writing copy, as when selling furniture, you need a hook.

A hook is a way of sucking people in, so you can buy yourself time to do a proper selling job.

This is important when you’ve got a huge offer — thousands of separate products — like IKEA does.

But it’s just as important when you’ve got a single product, say a supplement, with multiple ingredients or benefits.

Or when your audience doesn’t know your brand as well as they know Ingvar Kamprad’s Furniture + Meatball Emporium.

So how do you write a good hook?

The basic principle is there in the story of the IKEA restaurant. If it’s not yet clear to you, don’t worry. You’ll be able to get more info on it if you take me up on the following free offer:

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Killing your babies for you

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I’m not talking about killing your actual children, you beast. Instead, consider the following:

“Writing is rewriting.”

That’s from William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well, a popular guide to writing decent non-fiction.

I’m reading this book right now, and it makes it seem that Zinsser was a man who suffered deeply while writing.

He didn’t put much stock into his first drafts. Instead, he considered writing to be a labor of rearranging, clarifying, and tightening.

And of course, cutting out the flab. Which brings me to today’s second quote:

“2nd Draft = 1st Draft – 10%.”

This second bit of writing wisdom is from Stephen King.

That’s the guy who wrote Cujo and about 99 other massive best-sellers.

So when Stephen gives writing advice, it makes sense to listen. But which 10% to cut out?

For that we get to the final quote of the day, and that’s to “kill your babies.”

This phrase is apparently stock journalism slang. It goes back, in one form or another, through William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway, all the way back to a series of lectures given in 1914 by one Arthur Quiller-Couch:

“If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.”

There is an exception, however, to all this advice:

Don’t do excessive editing or trimming of your daily emails.

In part, this is for yourself. Excessive rewriting of your daily emails will weigh you down, take too long, and sap you of energy for writing tomorrow.

But there’s another equally good reason.

Rewriting your emails will take away quirks that make you sound more conversational.

Which will eliminate much of the human-level interest why people respond to daily emails in the first place.

It’s a balancing act.

You want your emails to be spontaneous.

As well as on point.

Of course, if this is not a balancing act you feel confident about… Then you might like my upcoming book, which you can get for free here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

My growing respect for the beat-up Irish clown

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A few weeks back, MMA fighter Conor McGregor announced he would retire.

At one point, McGregor was the UFC lightweight champion. Right now, he’s best known for trash-talking, street brawls, and taking any opportunity to promote his own brand of Irish whiskey.

For me personally, he’s an easy guy to hate.

How could you not?

McGregor talked a lot shit prior to his last fight. He then got his ass kicked convincingly over four rounds, and had to tap out. This didn’t keep him from talking shit — and he still keeps it up, even now that he is supposedly (but unconvincingly) retired.

​​To top it all off, he looks and acts like a clown — albeit a dangerous, aggressive clown.

That’s how I felt. Until recently.

Recently, as I watched various clips of Conor McGregor prior to his last fight, I got a strange impression.

I realized that in spite of all the boasting, here was a man who realized full-well that he would go into the cage and probably get beat up, and beat up badly.

He was willing to get punched and kicked and strangled by one of the most dangerous men on the planet.

And he was willing to make a fool of himself before and after the physical beatdown.

And for what?

For long-term success, that’s what. McGregor reportedly earned $100 million last year — only a few million of which came from his fight money. The rest came from endorsements, and increasingly, from his own business ventures.

Like that whiskey company, which is now selling more bottles than Jameson.

And that was my strange impression — that McGregor’s provocative fight persona is all done with an eye to the future. And it’s working for him.

Because of this, he reminds me of another sports figure who went on to have big success in business (and further).

I’m thinking of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And so I wasn’t surprised to find that McGregor and Schwarzenegger hold each other in very high regard.

But anyhow, what’s the point of all this?

It’s simply to recommend a bit of Conor McGregor’s attitude.

Of course, you don’t have to allow yourself to literally get brutalized in pursuit of massive amounts of money.

But figuratively? Maybe learn to take a punch. And allow yourself to get laughed at, to be mocked, and to be humiliated.

After all, you’ve got a plan. And you will be a success one day, while everybody else will still be cackling at their keyboards and behind their TV’s.

At least that’s how I look at it. And if you want more of my thinking on the psychology behind success in marketing, you can find it here:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

The trouble with living in the most beautiful apartment

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I spent the past few days visiting friends in Budapest. And this time, I rented an apartment with a VIEW.

The apartment is on the fifth floor of a narrow and classical building. One side of it looks to the Danube, about 20 meters away. The Chain Bridge, the central and perhaps most iconic of Budapest’s bridges, stretches across both bedroom windows and lights up the apartment at night.

The other side of the apartment has a large terrace, which is directly beneath the Castle District of Budapest. During the day, the terrace has a pleasant view of the green Castle hill. At night, the impressive Buda Castle dominates the hill and provides all-evening entertainment if you simply want to sit on the terrace and stare at it.

Now, I used to live in Budapest for over 10 years before moving away about a year ago.

So during this visit a friend asked me whether I would ever consider moving back.

And I started to say, “Well, if I had an apartment like this to live in full-time…”

But then I stopped myself.

You see, the actual apartment I live in full-time is also beautiful. When I moved into it a year ago, it would surprise me each time I walked through the door.

However, over the course of the past year, I’ve stopped noticing how beautiful my apartment is. It now takes a conscious effort to appreciate it at all.

So I realized that, even if I lived in this beautiful Budapest apartment with THE VIEW, soon enough, I wouldn’t notice how great it is any more.

And as it is with real estate, so it is with copy.

People will soon get habituated to your marketing message. And when they do, you will lose them. That’s because, unlike with real estate, your prospects will never make any kind of conscious effort to appreciate what you are doing.

This applies to parts of an individual sales message (ie. a sales letter). And it applies equally to ongoing communications (ie. daily emails to your prospects).

In other words, if you keep communicating with the same people over and over, you will need to keep coming up with fresh ideas to keep them stimulated and engaged.

If you’re looking for some help in coming up with such fresh ideas, you can get my suggestions in the following free book:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

List segmentation advice from Jojo the idiot circus boy

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A while back, I got hired to write a doomed sequence of emails.

This was for a kit to help with fermenting your own vegetables at home.

The client who was selling these fermenting kits had done a survey of his customers. He found that some of them cared about the health benefits of fermented foods. Others cared about the tradition of fermenting (eg, “My grandma used to make dill pickles”).

And so I got hired me to write a bunch of emails for the two segments. One focusing on the health benefits of fermented foods, and the other on the tradition of fermenting.

I did as the client asked.

And the resulting emails bombed.

No sales.

So what went wrong?

My feeling is it was like the famous scene from the movie Tommy Boy.

You know, the one where Chris Farley plays Tommy Callahan, a fat party animal who tries to become a successful salesman.

After failing over and over to close even one sale, Tommy Boy takes a good honest look at himself.

“I’m like Jojo the idiot circus boy with a pretty new pet,” Tommy says while holding a muffin.

The muffin represents the sale.

“Oh my pretty little pet… I love you,” Tommy says to the muffin.

And he strokes the muffin.

And he massages it.

Harder.

And harder.

Until he rips the poor muffin apart, while screaming, “I KILLED IT, I KILLED MY SALE!”

And that’s basically what happened with these fermentation emails.

The people on this list had signed up for fermentation recipes. And here they were, getting email after email about autoimmune health and the history of sauerkraut.

In other words, the emails were trying too hard to be clever.

And in doing that, they scared and repulsed the customers, who really just needed a simpler, more direct sales message.

At least that’s the conclusion I drew from this fiasco. Along with the fact that segmenting your list, while it might sound sexy, can backfire unless you know what you’re doing.

Anyways, maybe you’ll find this info useful.

And if you want help with your sales copy, then put on your little coat, twirl around until it rips apart, and take a look at the following offer:

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How to exploit your customers’ compulsion to gamble

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Gambling is much like sex.

It seems to be a fundamental human compulsion.

And it doesn’t require any justification other than its inherent excitement.

The thing is, sex is well-exploited in marketing. Gambling, I haven’t seen as much.

But it can be done.

Here’s one example, from marketing and copywriting legend Joe Sugarman.

In his “HOT” magazine ad, Joe was promoting a membership club called Consumers Hero. Members of the club would get the opportunity to buy refurbished goods at a steep discount.

Most of the stuff wasn’t too impressive — clock radios, microwaves, electric can openers.

But occasionally, Consumers Hero had a really great deal — like a TV for only $39.95 — which was only available in small numbers.

In this case, a segment of Consumers Hero members would be selected in a kind of lottery. These chosen members would be the only ones who got the mailing inviting them to buy the great deal.

My guess is that if anybody got a mailing saying “YOU’VE BEEN CHOSEN TO BUY THIS TV AT A GREAT DISCOUNT,” they would be much more likely to actually buy, just by virtue of knowing they’d “won” the opportunity.

Which is all well and good — if your product inherently allows you to turn it into a lottery.

But what if you’re not in that position?

Fear not. Playing on your customers’ compulsion to gamble can still increase sales.

Here’s another Joe Sugarman story:

Joe once wrote an ad promoting a computer. He ran it around the time of the SuperBowl.

The ad basically said, if the Bears win the SuperBowl, you get this computer at 50% off. If they lose, the price stays as it is. And here’s the outcome, in Joe’s own words:

“There was a lineup of people — we had a retail store — there was a literally a lineup of people all the way around the block waiting to pick up their computer that they were getting for 50% off. The funny part about it was that we were making a nice profit on that as well.”

And there you have it.

Even if you’re not selling collectibles or trading cards or something that has a lottery aspect to it, you can still use gambling simply as a way to run a sale. The fact that the sale might actually not happen will only drive up interest.

The reason why that happens is another topic, for another time.

For now, if you need help writing those ads that announce a lottery-like sale, you might like to take a chance on the following offer:

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The positioning lesson of the involuntary Nazi salute

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A few days ago, I rewatched Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

It’s dark and dry comedy set during the Cold War. Much of it happens in the War Room at the Pentagon.

The President and all his advisors are there, trying to prevent an accidentally triggered nuclear disaster that will wipe all life off the surface of the planet.

Among the President’s advisors, there is Dr. Strangelove himself. He’s a wheelchair-bound former Nazi scientist who now works for the US government.

Dr. Strangelove is loyal to his new American overlords.

He tries to serve them well.

But there are things he cannot control.

Like his prosthetic right arm, which fights with him during the entire movie. And in the final climactic scene, while Strangelove is proposing a plan to preserve the United States, his mechanical arm springs up into a Nazi salute of its own will. It even tries to strangle the good doctor when he forces it to stop saluting.

Now, I’m sure this mechanical arm can be a metaphor for many things.

But the one that struck me was simply one of the main rules of positioning, straight out of the original book by Al Ries and Jack Trout. And that rule is:

“If you want to be successful in love or in business, you must appreciate the importance of getting into the mind first.”

In other words, the first cut is the deepest.

That’s true in political ideology…

In actual romance​…

And, as Ries and Trout say, in business as well.

Once you successfully occupy a good position in your customers’ minds, you are probably in for life (unless you really get careless). Even if your customers try to defect…

They own arm will (figuratively) spring up and choke them back into place.

That’s an enviable place to be in. ​​

So how do you get into your prospects’ minds first, so you can create this kind of loyalty?

Well, there are several, equally important ingredients.

And I’m afraid I can only help with one of them, and that’s good sales copy.

If that’s what you’re looking for, then here’s a good way to avoid a real crisis:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

8 tired but effective sales cliches

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A word of warning:

You don’t wanna use too many cliches in your sales copy. (They’ll roll right off, like water off a duck’s back.)

But there are exceptions.

Some phrases are just so powerful that it doesn’t seem to matter how much they’ve been overused.

Here’s a collection of a few such cliches, taken from a couple of winning magalogs written by one of the most successful copywriters working today, Parris Lampropoulos:

1. “But that’s not all”

Once you’ve wowed your readers with an amazing benefit, you don’t want to let them sit and ruminate on it. You gotta keep ’em reading. And that’s what this phrase will do. (Its more proleish cousin, “But wait! There’s more…” might be a little too much these days.)

2. “A whopping 34%”

Is 34% good? Or not? Don’t let the reader wonder or draw his own conclusion. Whop him over the head with the statistic so he knows what the point is.

3. “The truth about X”

This isn’t a cliche that’s used by civilians, but copywriters and Internet marketers use it, and use it a lot. Because it works. People love secrets, and they want to be in on the know.

4. “What they found amazed them”

Back in 1942, when Victor Schwab wrote How to Write a Good Advertisement, he noted that the word “amazing” had long been overused, but it still seemed to have some pulling power. And so it continues, 80 years later.

5. “If you’re sick and tired of X”

I’m sick and tired of people using this phrase. But it’s so compact, and it gets the point across so effectively that it will probably never die.

6. “We’re putting our money where our mouth is”

Where else would you put it?

7. “We’ll refund every penny you paid”

I’m not sure this qualifies as a cliche. But it certainly seems to be a common trope in advertisements. It works because it’s specific and it paints a picture.

8. “The most amazing breakthrough in X ever”

Yep, making the most amazing promise in the history of advertising still works. However, be warned. This appeared in the close of the sales letter, not in the beginning.

And there you have it.

Eight amazingly easy ways to write just like one of the greatest copywriters of all time.

Of course, you might need some meat to connect these cliches if you do decide to use them.

And in case that’s not your core competency, or you’re really looking to improve ROI, you might find a  win-win solution in the following offer:

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An open letter to those bombarded by information

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Here’s a pop quiz for you. What do…

Michelle Obama…

Dave Chappelle…

And Spike Lee…

All have in common?

Take a moment and get past your first gut reaction. No? Nothing else comes to mind? Here’s the answer then:

All three of these cultural figures have publicly complained about being “bombarded with information.”

Of course, it’s not just the three of them.

This information bombardment thing has become a big cultural cliche, and thousands of people are out there right now, on Facebook and Twitter, repeating the same line.

Which ​probably means this idea of being bombarded with information — if if ever was true — is not very accurate any more.

​​In that case, it’s ripe for being replaced by a different, more useful point of view. And just in time, here’s A-list copywriter Richard Armstrong on the matter:

“It makes no more sense to say we are bombarded with information than to say a fish is bombarded with water.”

In Richard’s point of view, we are NOT bombarded with information.

Instead, we’re swimming in it.

We’re living in it.

And to a large extent, we are actually made of it.

The fact is, we’re all adapting very quickly to the increasing quantities of information around us.

Most of us realize on some level that all sources of information — newspapers, personal blogs, online forums, Facebook ads — are biased and are trying to sell us something (even if it’s just a point of view).

The thing is, it doesn’t seem to matter too much.

That’s because we are not independent fortresses trying to protect ourselves from information grenades…

Instead, we are spongy organisms that soak up information all the time, based on what we find tasty.

I’ll stop with this post here, because I am worried it’s getting too abstract.

But this philosophical discussion does have very practical applications. And if you want to know what those are, and how you can use them to communicate more swimmingly with your audience, you might like my upcoming book:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/

Making money is even easier than achieving nuclear fusion

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How’s this for overachievement?

Little Jackson Oswalt daylights as a normal 12-year-old from Tennessee.

He lives with his parents, goes to school (I presume), and works hard on keeping his moppy hair out of his face.

After hours, however, this pre-adolescent is a bonafide nuclear scientist.

No joke.

The kid converted a playroom in his parents’ home into his own little laboratory.

And using parts off eBay and open source plans from some nuclear scientist website…

He actually seems to have built a working nuclear reactor.

If this is confirmed by the nuclear powers-that-be, Jackson will go down in the record books as the youngest person to ever achieve nuclear fusion.

I bring this story up to illustrate how easy it’s become to do formerly difficult things.

I mean, I’m sure this kid is smart.

But 10 or 20 years ago, the knowledge and parts he needed to build his own working nuclear reactor simply weren’t available publicly.

And 50 years ago, it took teams of the world’s most able scientists — who had access to the most ridiculous resources — to do what this kid did in his playroom.

Of course, this also applies if you’re running a business today.

Many tasks that used to be impossible or unreachably expensive are now free or trivially cheap.

Having your own website.

Making payments online.

Sending additional advertising to your customers at no cost.

Sourcing and delivering your products.

In other words, it’s a great time if you have a business. Much of the technical and ugly stuff has been taken care of for you.

What’s left is the need to build relationships with your customers, and to persuade people to do what you want.

This stuff can be difficult.

Fortunately, not as difficult as achieving nuclear fusion.

Hell, even I can do it. And if you want some of the insights I’ve gained by helping big direct response businesses build relationships and persuade customers, you might like the following:

https://bejakovic.com/profitable-health-emails/