How to heal the partisan divide one dollar at a time

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Here’s a provocative but revealing little quiz for ya:

For every $1 spent by the US government in 2022, how many cents went to military spending?

(I’m asking about 2022 because it’s the most recent year for which I could find data.)

Think about that for a moment, and come up with yer best guess.

I’ll tell you the answer in a second but really, the specifics are not all that interesting. What is interesting is that, if you’re American and maybe even if you’re not, your answer can expose you as being either Democrat or Republican, left or right.

The right answer by the way is 14.2 cents.

Like I said, that’s not all that interesting. What’s more interesting:

Dems tend to guess US military spending is higher than Republicans guess.

Ok, maybe that’s not tremendously interesting either. Maybe that’s predictable.

So let me try again. Here’s the really interesting part:

If you don’t just ask people to guess, but instead you pay them to guess right, or you pay them to simply say, “Dang I don’t know,” then suddenly party bias shrinks by 80%.

In other words, put some live chips on the table, and suddenly, people’s beliefs change.

We know this because a professor at Northwestern, John Bullock, did the experiment. He found the result confirmed over a large number of participants and a large number of questions, involving topics like race, unemployment, and military deaths.

Curious, no? What’s going on?

I can’t say for sure, but I can imagine two options:

1. Maybe there’s extra thinking going on when money’s on the table. Maybe people take a moment to say, “Gee my gut says this, but let me take an extra second or two to think it over, since there’s real consequences to expressing my opinion.”

2. Maybe there’s extra thinking going on when money’s not on the table. Maybe people “know” the real answer, or at least their best guess at the real answer. But when there’s no consequences to guessing wrong, maybe people like to engage in some “extra thinking” — posturing or group identification — and that comes out as a more partisan guess.

Either way, the conclusion is, money gets you closer to the truth.

Of course, I’m really talking about business, not politics.

Prospects lie, or they embellish, or they just don’t think very hard about what you’re asking them. Not until there’s money on the table — their own money, which they just took out of their pocket, and which they are now considering sliding across the table to you.

​​Or maybe they won’t slide it across? Maybe they’ll just put it back in their pocket? Which brings me to a second little quiz:

Are you launching a new offer?

If you are, you can just put it out there, and see if the market buys. No doubt that will give you feedback. But it won’t be very detailed or granular feedback. It won’t tell you what, if anything, you can do to make more sales.

There might be a better way. If you’re launching a new offer, then hit reply. Tell me what your offer is. And I can tell you about this better way.

A newsletter I’ve been fascinated by for years

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Last week, I awarded the Best Daily Email Awards, and the first of those went to Josh Spector of the For The Interested newsletter.

I’ve been fascinated by Josh’s FTI for years. In fact, I wrote about it last year under the subject line, “The opportunity of the two-sentence newsletter.”

Every day but Sunday, Josh sends a daily email that typically clocks in at under 50 words. That makes each day’s email easy to read, I’m assuming easy to write, and yet indisputably profitable.

(Josh monetizes his newsletter by promoting his own offers and by running classified ads. I don’t know the inside of Josh’s info publishing and coaching business, and how much that’s making. But the classified ads alone bring in close to $10k each month.)

I’m telling you about this because it puts the lie to the idea that effective daily emails have to be hundreds of words long, or have to take hundreds of minutes of your life to write each week.

And by the way, Josh’s emails cover topics like marketing and creativity and online businesses. But his ultra-brief daily email model could be replicated as-is in other niches like health, parenting, or investing.

If you’re curious to see how all of this works, and maybe even get hooked on Josh’s daily emails, the link is below. I’ve been a reader for years. If you’d like to give FTI a try yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/fti

The final bit of Jim Camp gossip

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This past Tuesday, I wrote a behind-the-curtain email about negotiation coach Jim Camp.

​​Camp is widely respected and cited as a negotiation authority. His ideas are quoted in books and on TV and by dudes like me.

But if you dig a bit, it seems most of Camp’s advice about negotiation was swiped, often verbatim, from sales trainer David Sandler.

Problem:

The claim that Camp swiped Sandler’s ideas is based on textual analysis, by looking at Camp’s book side by side with Sandler’s book. It could be just one hell of a coincidence, or maybe there’s some kind of other explanation than plagiarism.

Solution:

I got a reply to my email on Tuesday from a reader named Ron, with some first-hand experience. ​​I’m reprinting it here in full because it’s juicy, and because there’s an interesting bit of human psychology hiding on the surface of it.

​​Take it away Ron:

===

Thank you John, I’ve tried to tell the same stories to the IM crowd for years and no one seemed to notice.

For a backstory, I took his Camp Negotiation coaching program back in 2009 and it was pretty silly, just a guided text followed by a quiz website (basically rereading the book to you), and my “advisor” was Jim’s oldest son.

At the end of the course, ironically, the module was “no closing” and it was on how closing sales was so 1950’s and you should just ask what do we do next and the prospect should tell you they’re in.

Well after finishing the course, his son called me to show me their new software (which was just a clunky CRM and with little negotiating tips pop-ups to remind you of the techniques) and after the demo, he tried to get me to buy it and I said no thanks.

He goes all weird and tells how I’m going to miss out on all these profitable deals and blah blah blah, and he’s getting pretty aggressive. I chuckled and said “so, no closing right?” He got all butthurt and hung up.

Anyways, I later found out Jim Camp was a franchisee for Sandler (the sales training business was sold city to city as a franchise model) and when his contract was up, Jim just rewrote the book and made up his own terms and sold his programs that way.

===

So there you go. That’s the gossip. I can’t confirm or deny the franchisee part of it. All I can say is it makes sense to me personally. And with that, I’ll leave off this Sandler/Camp drama.

But what about that interesting bit of psychology I promised you? It’s there in Ron’s first sentence:

“I’ve tried to tell the same stories to the IM crowd for years and no one seemed to notice.”

This is a curious human quirk that I’ve noticed a few times before.

For example, back in the 1970s, a man named Uri Geller seemed to be blessed with the supernatural powers of telekineses and telepathy. Geller was making the rounds of TV talk shows, bending spoons and reading the insides of sealed envelopes.

Audiences watched with their mouths agape, certain that Geller was living proof that there’s more to life than we see, and that there are enormous untapped powers latent in all of us.

Then Geller was exposed as a fraud by a magician named James Randi.

Randi replicated Geller’s act completely. He also worked with TV producers of the Tonight Show to devise a scenario where Geller couldn’t do of his supposed telekinesis or telepathy.

Geller came on the show, unaware of what was going on. And for 20 awkward minutes, while Johhny Carson patiently smoked his cigarette and waited, Geller tried and failed to do his usual routine.

And the result?

Nothing. Geller’s fame, and people’s belief in his supernatural powers, remained untarnished.

You can draw your own conclusions from this, in particular about how it relates to marketing and money-making and persuasion.

I’ve drawn my own conclusions. And the most important and valuable one is the one I wrote about in the inaugural issue of my Most Valuable Postcard, two years ago. If you’d like to find out what that is:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp1/

The next big business opportunity

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Yesterday I talked to my friend Will, who recently started writing a newsletter for a prediction market.

Prediction market?

You know… go online, and stake a little bit of money on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election, or the chance of war between Israel and Iran.

​​If your prediction comes true, you get paid, just like if you had bet on red and that’s how the roulette table ended up.

Will and I were spitballing content ideas for the newsletter. I told him to interview the “super forecasters,” the guys making the most right bets on the marketplace.

Turns out Will had already done that. He said that one of the top guys on the platform was making $70k per month forecasting the future.

So here’s my own forecast:

We will see a successful business opportunity offer in the next 6 months, featuring a “super forecaster” as a guru, telling you how to collect up to $2,333 each day, from the comfort of your own couch, by watching CNN and Fox News.

I realize I am perhaps influencing the future, and helping make it happen, by giving away this idea and sending it out to thousands of readers of this newsletter, many of who are marketers and offer owners.

But I really do think this has a unique shot to be successful.

Many business opportunities out there are clouded by the fundamental unfamiliarity of the core thing.

Commodities trading? VR content creation? Direct response copywriting?

“I don’t know… maybe it’s legit and maybe there’s even good money to be made there, but it sounds complicated. I don’t really get it.”

Compare that to real estate… or vending machines… or yelling at the TV.

Everybody can understand that. That’s why real estate and vending machines are bizops that have been around for a century or longer… and that’s why I think that future forecasting has legs as well.

Perhaps you’re wondering why I’m giving this idea away instead of running after it myself, since I think it’s so hot. It’s a fair question. My answer is long and distinguished, so I’ll save it for another email.

Meanwhile, if you are reading this newsletter, I can only assume you have already been pre-sold on the business opportunity that is copywriting, or at least on owning fundamental copywriting skills, whether you use them for your own business or for a client.

And so I have a little bizop brochure I’d like to show you. Here’s the top of the brochure, a quote by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos, who only works on 2-3 projects each year, but still makes millions:

“So do what Gary says. You [will possess one of the greatest skills you can have as a copywriter]. And you’ll make lots of money.”

If you want to read the rest of this brochure, and understand what Parris is saying will make you lots of money, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Jim Camp, A-list copywriter

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Right now I’m reading a book titled You Can’t Teach a Kid To Ride a Bike at a Seminar.

The book was written by David Sandler, a 20th-century sales trainer.

I wrote an email about Sandler last year because of his connection to famed negotiation coach Jim Camp. That email ran with the subject line, “Jim Camp, plagiarist.”

Camp must have studied under Sandler, because the ideas inside “You Can’t Teach a Kid” and Camp’s book “Start With No” are as close to identical as two brown, “L”-sized, farm-fresh eggs. (For reference, Sandler died in 1995, Camp published Start With No in 2002.)

If you ask me, Camp did three things right.

First, he took Sandler’s system out of the world of sales — water filters, life insurance, and whirring hard drives — and he applied it, word-for-word, to the world of billion-dollar negotiation in corporate boardrooms.

In other words, Camp took Sandler’s valuable but provincial knowledge and brought it to a bigger, more prestigious arena, not encumbered by the slumdog baggage that’s attached to the word “sales.”

Second, Camp co-opted what Sandler taught and made it his own. He turned the Sandler Sales System into the Camp Negotiation System, without ever mentioning or crediting Sandler except once, in the middle of a list of 20 other mentors, in an appendix to his “Start With No” book.

You might think this is despicable, and in a way it is, but it’s also a necessary part of the positioning of the guru at the top of the mountain.

And then there’s a third thing that Camp did right.

It’s completely in the presentation, the messaging of his book and of his Camp Negotiation System.

You can see this messaging change in the title Start With No. It’s also present on almost every page of the book.

This messaging change is what built up the mystery of Jim Camp, and it’s why Camp’s book has sold so well and spread so far, and why so many sales folks and marketers and copywriters know Camp today, and why so few know Sandler.

Now ask yourself:

If you knew what change Camp made, and if you could apply it to turn your message from unknown to bestselling, from slumdog salesman to mysterious and yet celebrated negotiation guru…

… what could that be worth to you?

I don’t know. But you do know, and maybe the truth is it would be worth a lot — thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more.

I’m asking you this question because you can find this messaging change, the technique that Camp used to make himself and his system fascinating, in my Copy Riddles program.

It’s there in round 15.

If you own Copy Riddles and it’s not 100% clear to you how Camp applied the technique in that round to his messaging, write me and I will clarify it.

And if you don’t own Copy Riddles, you can find out more about it at the link below.

I can tell you upfront, at $997, Copy Riddles is an expensive program.

But maybe in your case will be worth much more than I’m asking for it. Here’s that link:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

My missing Olympic gold medal

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I have never won an Olympic gold medal. Frankly, the world doesn’t care, and neither do I. But contrast that to yesterday’s events in Paris:

Novak Djokovic, a 37-year old tennis player, who has won every other major tennis tournament multiple times but never the Olympics, finally won an Olympic gold medal.

The odd thing:

Unlike other tennis tournaments, the Olympics doesn’t pay any money, and it doesn’t carry any ranking points on the pro tour.

And yet, yesterday, after this purely symbolic win, Djokovic said it was the “biggest success in his career.”

The mass mind seems to agree, or at least the tiny portion of it that 1) follows tennis at all and 2) doesn’t hate Djokovic beyond repair.

Following the match, millions of people on the Internet were discussing Djokovic’s crowning achievement… every major newspaper has written the story up… and TV stations around the world are showing highlights, including Djokovic’s emotional reaction after the win.

Again, I would like to contrast this to my own tennis career.

I have not won a single tennis tournament, even at the most local and recreational club level, in spite of 30+ years of on-again, off-again tennis dabbling.

And if I were to announce today that I still do not have an Olympic gold medal in my trophy closet — which is 100% true, in the same way that I do not have a Wimbledon trophy or the platter from the Banja Luka Challenger — then the most likely reaction will be the sound of a dog barking somewhere in the distance, or maybe the white noise of a ceiling fan blowing overhead.

In other words, nobody cares that I haven’t won this year’s Olympic gold medal in tennis. Nobody cares that I will most probably never win it. Like I said, even I don’t care.

But it’s kind of curious when you think about it.

Why would a missing gold medal be a blot on Djokovic’s incredibly successful tennis career to date… but not a blot on mine?

Ponder on that for a moment, while I artfully pull out the the following quote:

“Someone who knows the state capitals of 17 of 50 states may be proud of her knowledge. But someone who knows 47 may be more likely to think of herself not knowing 3 capitals.”

It’s the same psychology — 3 missing state capitals, 1 missing Olympic medal.

And since this is a newsletter about effective communication, let me get to the point:

It’s also the same psychology if you are trying to get people curious and invested in reading more of your message, so you have a chance to guide them to where you want.

You can find all this discussed in full detail in chapter 2 of the book below. You can also find step-by-step instructions for using this information to make your message intriguing and fascinating, even if it’s dry and boring now.

All inside chapter 2 of the book below, which is one of my favorite books about effective communication.

If I ever create my AIDA School, with a curriculum all about persuasion and influence, this book will be part of the required reading for semester 1.

But you can get a head start, today, right now. In case you’re curious, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/gold

Mercilessly teasing my own mother

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A few weeks ago, I was back home visiting family. Before we started lunch one day, my mother sat me down at the kitchen table. She crossed her arms, and she said:

“Well? Are you going to tell me? I hope you don’t expect me to read that book to find out. So? What is the highest paid quality on earth?”

The story is that my mother has recently taken to reading this newsletter. And the day before the lunch, I had sent out an email about “the highest paid quality on earth.”

I teased that highest paid quality mercilessly in my email. At the end of the email, I still didn’t reveal it. I simply linked to a book where I promised you could find out what the quality is.

(By the way, why tease like this, including your own mother? Good question. I’ll talk about that another time.)

Meanwhile, I got a message from a reader, Howard Shaw. Howard’s a Partner at Chester Toys, a UK toy wholesaler that’s been in business for 60 years.

Howard actually did order and did read the book I linked to at the end of that email.

As a result, he did find out what that most highly paid quality is. But there were consequences.

To tell me about those consequences, Howard sent me a photo of the book lying on his couch. And he wrote under the picture:

===

A book I was introduced to recently and that I enthusiastically recommend.

The point of this email? I am not sure.

Although I am currently looking to embrace some situations with enthusiasm, and searching out business options that I may have previously dismissed.

One of these came my way Thursday, and by Friday afternoon had meant a new client and a deposit already in the bank.

So I thank you for taking the time to re-introduce me to my enthusiasm.

===

If you’re a particularly perceptive reader, you may have picked up from Howard’s message what the highest paid quality on earth is.

But does it really matter?

Did you have your mind blown as a result?

Or more likely, are kind of… disappointed?

And yet:

There’s Howard’s story. There’s new client where there was no client before. There’s the new money in the bank where there was less money before.

All of which brings me to the most life-changing idea I’ve been exposed to since I started learning about marketing. It’s this:

“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.”

I write more about that idea, and the A-list copywriter who said it, in my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Is this the first time you’re hearing about that book? It might be worth a look then.

Have you heard me talk about this book before? It might be worth a look then.

Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Why I sent you an empty email yesterday

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This morning, I woke up to an inbox full of messages that read:

“Hmm??”

“Huh??”

“Wha—??”

“I’m sure others are writing to tell you the same, but hngh??”

“Why?? Why?? WHY?? I need do know”

The story is that I sent out an email last night with the subject line, “Why is Alec Baldwin telling me to Always Be Closing?”

That email went out with no body copy, but only with the placeholder text that reads “Text goes here.”

Two things about this strange event:

#1. It was unintentional, and I blame ActiveCampaign for it, as I do for many other things.

I wrote my email, put it into ActiveCampaign, and scheduled it. For some reason, ActiveCampaign didn’t save the body copy.

This has happened a few times already. Each time before, I caught it at the last minute by noticing something’s off in the tiny preview window at the end. Last night I didn’t.

#2. I am amazed by how little I am bothered by this event. Maybe it’s because it’s genuinely a tech muckup out of my control, and not something that I feel responsible for. Or maybe I have just been sending emails long enough that I have built up a pachydermous outer layer that protects me from the slings and arrows and “huh??”s of the world.

So my brief inspirational message to you:

If you are afraid of writing something and publishing it because you think you might muck it up, and everyone will know, then do it anyhow, because 1) you will muck it up, 2) everyone will know, and 3) eventually you won’t be bothered by it.

Also, if you’d like to know why Alec Baldwin is telling me to Always Be Closing, here’s that message, with the body copy included this time:

https://bejakovic.com/why-is-alec-baldwin-telling-me-to-always-be-closing/

Why is Alec Baldwin telling me to Always Be Closing?

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You probably know the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, or at least you know the famous “Always Be Closing” scene.

​​But just in case, lemme quickly run through it:

Picture a small, regional office for a team of door-to-door salesmen.

Most of the guys in the office are losers — they are not selling anything, and are making no money.

One rainy evening, a new, different face is waiting there in the office. He has come from the rich and distant headquarters of the company.

The new face is played by a cocky and polished Alec Baldwin, with slicked back hair and a silk suit, looking handsome and deadly.

Baldwin has a Rolex on his wrist. And, as he tells the loser salesmen, he drives an $80,000 BMW, and he makes $900k a year.

Over the course of about five minutes, Baldwin delivers a menacing pep talk to the struggling salesmen.

“ABC,” he tells them. “Always. Be. Closing.”

The gist of Baldwin’s speech is, “Start selling, or you’re fired.” This sets up the necessary chain of reactions that leads to the climax of the movie.

Fine. You probably knew all this. Or if you didn’t, now you do.

But there’s one tiny bit that I omitted in my summary above, and that you may have missed if you ever watched this scene for real.

Because everything I told you, it’s a little bit, I don’t know, too pat?

Why does this slicked-back, cocky salesmen, who makes all this money and who lives in Manhattan, why does he drive down to the suburbs to talk to these losers, and why does he do it exactly tonight, on this stormy night, so that the rest of the movie can develop just as it should?

This is the kind of question that the people in the audience might never ask out loud. But somewhere in their brains, the question is there. And if it’s not answered — well, that’s a problem.

David Mamet, the guy who wrote Glengarry Glen Ross, knew this.

And so he took care of it.

As Baldwin is in the middle of his ABC speech, one of the loser salesman chuckles. And when Baldwin turns his deadly gaze on the guy, we get the following line:

“You’re such a hero. You’re so rich. How come you’re coming down here to waste your time with such a bunch of bums?”

Baldwin’s answer, when it comes, in between more insults to the other salesmen, is not much of an answer at all. The bosses asked him to come, he says, and he did it as a favor to them.

And that’s my point for you for today.

Effective screenwriting — and effective door-to-door sales, and effective copywriting, and pretty much any kind of effective communication — requires suspension of disbelief in your audience, if you have any hope of getting them to go where you want them to go.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that suspension of disbelief is often easier to achieve than you might ever believe.

Why?

Because while it’s instinctive for us to ask why… it’s also instinctive for us to be satisfied as soon as any kind of answer is provided, and to stop any further questions, at least on that one question.

Of course, it’s not always enough to say, “Because…” and then to give some kind of milquetoast reason.

Sometimes you need more powerful tricks to suspend disbelief in your audience.

And if you want those tricks, you can find them in my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Why?

Because in Commandment I, I write about an A-List Copywriter who was a grandmaster of suppressing disbelief. And I tell you how he did it. If you’d like to find out:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Quick, hide, Flor is coming!!

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It’s past 1pm as I write this, which means I am under pressure. I have to finish this email, and then hide a few important knick-knacks where Flor won’t find them.

Flor is my new cleaning woman.

Every Thursday, she arrives at 2pm, or a little before.

And then, over the course of a few hours, while I vacate the house, she mops the floors… cleans the bathrooms… dusts the shelves… polishes any glass surfaces… scours the sinks… rearranges the contents of my fridge and kitchen cupboards… throws out anything she doesn’t like or understand or approve of… and folds and hides any clothes I may have foolishly left out, in a place where I won’t find them for days.

Flor’s been coming for a few weeks now. When she started coming, a friend asked me, “Will you judge her? Will you evaluate how well she’s cleaning your apartment?”

Good God no. The thought never even occurred to me.

I was living in filth before. Well, not filth filth, but filth enough, by my standards.

I had been cleaning my large apartment unwillingly, rarely, partially. I wished somebody would come and clean it for me, all the way, and every week.

And then Flor came into my life.

Now, my sinks are clean — enough. My floor is clean — enough. My shower is clean — enough.

And I’m very satisfied. I gladly pay her whatever wage she asks for. I get out of her way. I take the time to put back the things she’s rearranged for me, or I even let her have her own way. And when I do spot something less than perfectly clean — and it does happen — then I just shrug my shoulders, smile, and say, “Oh Flor!”

Maybe you’re wondering where I’m going with this. Here:

Yesterday, I wrote about this email I sent last autumn, the Bejako Baggins email, which resonated with a lot of people.

In that email, a deliverability wizard made me the offer to fix all my deliverability problems for me, for free.

And yet, I ended up nitpicking and complaining and dragging the poor guy along, and in the end I sent him away with nothing to show for his efforts.

The point of that email was that even if you have the best offer and the most perfect marketing, you will fail if you are selling to people who don’t really have the problem you are solving, or who don’t really care to solve that problem.

My message today is the inverse of that.

Be like Flor.

Or at least, be somebody who serves those who have a problem that they want solved, now. Those who are not nitpicking and shopping around and comparing your offer to every other offer under the sun, because they have the time, luxury, and headspace to do so.

Be like Flor… and the selling will be easier… the price more elastic… and the delivery more pleasant.

And now:

I have no offer to promote to you.

​​Because honestly, none of my courses fit the criteria I just told you above. None of them is really about a problem that needs to be solved, now.

I’m working on fixing that.

Meanwhile, maybe you can help me. Or maybe I can help you.

D​o you have a problem that you would pay to have solved? In particular, something with regard to making more sales, or freeing up your time, or working with better customers or clients?

If you do, hit reply and let’s talk. Maybe I can be your Flor for you, and quickly clean up the mess you’re living in, and rearrange your shelves and fridge, in a way you will cheerfully accept and pay for.