Angel Heart cold outreach

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Last night, I rewatched a dark but fascinating movie called Angel Heart:

Mickey Rourke plays private detective Harry Angel, who is on a missing persons case.

Throughout the movie, in order to unearth the next clue, track down his guy, and collect his unfortunate bounty, Harry Angel pretends to be:

– A researcher from the National Institutes of Health, when getting records from a hospital…

– A journalist writing an article, when talking to Toots Suite, a blues guitar player…

– A client coming to have his future told by a spirit medium…

– A customer at a hoodoo supplies store, looking to buy some High John De Conqueror root.

Harry Angel lies. He doesn’t work at the NIH, and no amount of squinting will make that fact true.

You don’t have to lie. But you can still reposition or repackage who you are and what you do, with integrity, right now, in a matter of seconds, to make it more likely people will hear you out. Without lying, you can get the benefit of what Harry Angel does to move his case forward.

Really, it’s the same thing I talked about in my email yesterday — ask what your prospects are looking to buy, instead of how you can sell what you have.

Because this doesn’t only apply if you want to get people to buy your PDFs or coaching or copywriting services or whatever.

It applies equally well if you’re simply trying to open up conversations with people, which can yield valuable information or lead to a valuable relationship or partnership down the line. In other words, cold outreach.

In entirely related news:

If you take the idea above ^^^^ and generalize it a bit, it applies just as well to get people to open up your newsletter emails, read them, and have their mind gradually or suddenly opened to the possibility of giving you some money.

And if you want specific step-by-step instructions on how exactly you can do this today:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Is Dan Kennedy secretly reading my emails?

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One week ago, last Friday to be exact, I wrote an email about the “quiet eye,” in which I said:

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One problem I’ve seen over and over is that people ask themselves the question, “How can I sell what I have?”

Instead of asking yourself, “How can I sell what I have,” ask yourself, “What do they want to buy?” Keep that question trained in your mind for longer than is natural. Do some research. Don’t jump ahead to what you’d like to happen, which is for people to buy what you are selling.

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Then this past Wednesday, just two days ago, marketing legend Dan Kennedy wrote an email about constructing offers, in which he said:

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Too many business owners focus on their product first. They think, “I’ve got all these thermoses, how do I sell them?” But the truth is, you should never start with the product. You start with the customer. Who’s most likely to buy your thermos? What are their desires, their needs, their pain points?

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Dan Kennedy, the marketing master who has influenced generations of marketers both online and offline… saying the same thing as I said a few days earlier… using much the same rhetoric?

Could it be that Dan, who famously has no cell phone and a “no Internet” policy in his home, secretly gets his assistant in Phoenix to print out and fax him my emails each week… so he can read them in his Disney-memorabilia-filled basement with a few days’ delay, and be inspired and reminded of great marketing and persuasion ideas?

I’ll let you decide.

But I can tell you something like this has happened to me a few times already.

People I learned from and think of as authorities in the field — people like Dan — end up writing the same thing as I do, a short time after I write about it in an email, sometimes using much the same language.

That’s an inevitable consequence of producing an abundance of ideas by writing daily.

All that’s to say, if you don’t yet write, start.

And if you do write occasionally, then start writing more often.

Keep it up, and you will soon be writing words that others, even legends in the field, will be repeating and discussing next week and next month and next year, whether they actively copied you or not.

And of course, along the way, there’s other benefits to writing. Like building a devoted audience. And making sales, too.

And speaking of sales, you might be interested in my Simple Money Emails program.

It will show you how to write daily emails that make sales.

I’ll give away a part of the secret, because it’s not much of a secret at all. Simple Money Emails teaches you to write emails that 1) say something interesting at the start and 2) that transition into an offer.

You probably could have guessed that much.

What you might not guess is the central, most valuable idea inside Simple Money Emails, one which I repeat over and over throughout the program — a kind of litmus test for choosing which “something interesting” to open up the email with and which ones to discard.

This litmus test is actually something I learned from Dan Kennedy, and I credit him for it inside Simple Money Emails.

Because even though Dan doesn’t read or write emails (with the possible exception of my own), he long ago mastered the kind of story- and news- and pop culture-based sales messaging that works well in emails.

If you’d like to master it too, the following guide can help you get there:

​https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Spend all your time trying to sell out games

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Yesterday I watched a movie, Local Hero, which finished around 9:17pm my time, some 32 minutes after my daily email went out.

In those 32 minutes, I had 21 sales of the offer I introduced yesterday — “give me $10, and I’ll make you a ‘beta-tester’ for my new book.”

Since I only wanted 20 such beta-testers, I closed the shopping cart, and I updated the checkout link to point to a page that said “Thanks but this offer is now sold out.”

You might think it’s not much of an accomplishment to sell out 20 spots (actually 21) at $10 each.

And true, it’s not a lot of money.

But it’s very important anyhow. Not just for my own morale, but for public perception.

And on that note, I would like to share with you a quote from sports marketer Jon Spoelstra.

Spoelstra worked with some of the losingest and least popular sports franchises out there.

In spite of the lousy sports records of these teams, Spoelstra repeatedly managed to turn the teams into cash-cows. Here’s how:

“At the Nets, we spent all of our energies in trying to sell out games. This started with the games that people most likely would want to go to — the games with the marquee players on the opposing teams. You might think it was easy. It wasn’t. If we hadn’t committed all of our resources and manpower to selling out our best games, we wouldn’t have. A funny thing happened on our way to sellouts. Our attendance picked up in the other games where we weren’t even trying.”

I was planning to promote my beta-tester offer today to make sure this offer sold out, just like Spoelstra advises.

But since the offer sold out with just one email last night, that plan’s out.

So let me remind you of my most popular program, Most Valuable Email.

I can tell you that today’s email does not use the Most Valuable Email trick, which is what this program teaches you to perform in less than an hour.

And yet, the Most Valuable Email trick in a way underlies this entire newsletter, whether I use it in a particular email or not.

I can imagine that doesn’t make much sense without knowing what the Most Valuable Trick is. In case you’d like to find out, and better yet, to profit by using this trick yourself:

​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​

Looking for 20 beta-testers to pay an unthinkable amount for my new book

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I’m looking for 20 beta-testers for a pre-publication “email draft” of my new book.

The background:

Yesterday, I made my plans for this coming month. My goal #1 in October is to finish writing my new book, titled The 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Hypnotists, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Propagandists, and Stage Magicians.

I already have the first 3 commandments/chapters of this new book largely done.

Still, getting the remaining 7 written by the end of this month is ambitious, considering I’ve been working on this book for more than a year now.

In my favor, most of that time has gone to research and outlining. I’ve only been writing for the past few months, on and off. But still — I realized yesterday there’s a good chance that I won’t make it by the end of this month, not unless I change my approach.

I got to thankin’…

I’m good at writing emails, much better than at writing book chapters. Maybe there’s an opportunity there?

And so I thought up a new offer to 1) help me get this book done on time, and 2) entertain and maybe reward a small number of dedicated readers of this newsletter.

So here’s my offer to you:

If you like, you can join a small group of beta-testers for my new book. The price to get inside this exclusive and elite club is an unthinkable $10. That $10 will get you:

1. An extra email with extra content from me, each day this month, starting this Sunday, October 6, and ending Wednesday, October 30, with content that’s intended for the new book.

2. A chance to influence the final content in the book. I hope you you will hit reply when I send you these content emails and share your thoughts. If all goes well, I will have more content at the end of this month than I will need for the book. I will decide what to keep and what to toss based on your feedback.

3. An acknowledgement in the book when I do publish it, because you were there at the start, and because you helped me get it done.

4. A free paperback copy once I publish the book. My current 10 Commandments book sells for $9.99, plus shipping. This new 10 Commandments book will also be priced at $9.99, plus shipping. But join me for this beta tester group, I’ll send you a paperback copy for free when it’s published, and I’ll also cover the shipping.

If you’d like to join, you can do so at the link below. But before you do, a few caveats:

I encourage you to only join if you’re a dedicated reader of these emails… if you’re already interested in getting my new book when it comes out… and if you will have the time to read yet another email over the coming month, and maybe even to hit reply to tell me what you think of what I wrote.

Again, these “new book” emails will start this Sunday. The deadline to sign up for them is this Friday at 8:31pm CET (I want a couple days buffer), though there’s a fair chance I will turn off this offer sooner than that, maybe as soon as tomorrow morning.

If you know you want in right now, here’s where to go:

​https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments​

Last notice: “ONE-TIME Inflation-BUSTING Sale”

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Today is the last day to get a copy of Lawrence Bernstein’s “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes,” which normally sells for $97, for just $7.

Lawrence has been good enough to make this deal available to you, because you happen to be a subscriber of this newsletter.

And… to fight against inflation?

Well maybe. But today’s subject line is one I wrote because I’m a regular subscriber of Lawrence’s Ad Money Machine monthly subscription. Lawrence recently wrote about a successful renewal letter that used that “Inflation-BUSTING” headline, so I’m trying it out today.

If you’d like to get a sense for extensive direct marketing knowledge, expertise, and archive that Lawrence brings to what he does, without signing up for a Lawrence’s monthly subscription offer, then “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes” is a great way to get started.

It can teach you a lot about writing sexy leads, angles, and hooks for your sales letters, emails, advertorials, ads, and pretty much any other piece of copy you might have to write.

To get this guide before the price goes back up to $97, the link is below. The deadline is less than 3 hours from now, and I won’t be writing any more emails about it.

Final word about “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes”:

I’m not an affiliate for this offer. I don’t get paid whether you buy it or not. I can tell you I did buy this offer myself, for my own purposes, several weeks ago, before I ever had any plans on promoting it to you.

If you’d like to grab it also, before the price shoots up 13-fold in just a few short hours:

​​https://bejakovic.com/fascinations​​

Your FREE Copy Riddle

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My Copy Riddles program is based on a simple idea:

1. Take a look at a bit of dry, factual text

2. Write a sexy, intriguing fascination or headline to sell your reader on that text

3. Compare what you wrote to what an A-list copywriter wrote to sell that same bit of boring text, in a sales letter that brought in hundreds of thousands of sales and millions of dollars

Would you like to try this right now? If so, here’s your free Copy Riddle:

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Auto Dealer Rip-Off

Car-purchase padding: A prep fee of $100 or more (whatever the dealership thinks it can get away with). The cost of preparing your car for delivery is already included in the manufacturer’s sticker price.

Source: Consumer Guide To Successful Car Shopping by Peter Sessler, TAB Books, Blue Ridge Summit, PA.

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If you’d like to get better writing sales copy, follow the steps above. I mean, follow steps 1 and 2:

Read the text above carefully… then do your best to write a sexy, intriguing headline or fascination to sell a reader on that text.

And if you want to also follow step 3 — if you want to see how an A-list copywriter spun this dry and boring text into something fascinating that went out to millions of people, and convinced many of them to send in cash or check or credit card info as a result — you can find that inside a guide called “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes.”

Specifically, you can find it on page 26, right under the sub-headline that reads, “Over 2 million copies sold… and no wonder!”

(Hey, I promised you a free Copy Riddle. I said nothing about a free answer to the Copy Riddle.)

The good news is, while “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes” normally sells for $97, it is now available to you for the next few hours, because you happen to be a reader of this newsletter, for only $7.

You can read the full story about this offer on the page I’ve linked to below.

Final word about “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes”:

I’m not an affiliate for this offer. I don’t get paid whether you buy it or not. I can tell you I did buy this offer myself, for my own purposes, several weeks ago, before I ever had any plans on promoting it to you.

If you’d like to grab it also, before the price shoots up 13-fold in just a few short hours:

​https://bejakovic.com/fascinations​

The only marketing subscription I pay for each month

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I don’t pay for any copywriting newsletter, print or digital.

I don’t pay for any marketing mastermind.

I don’t pay for any monthly coaching, community, or support built around an industry guru or expert.

Nothing wrong if you pay for any of these. I’ve paid for all of them in the past. But it’s been at least a couple years since I paid for any kind of marketing info subscription each month.

Well, except one.

I pay for it now.

I’ve been doing so for a little over a year.

I keep paying for it each month because I find it 1) interesting and 2) valuable. And because I find it interesting and valuable, I find time most days to at least give a quick glance to the latest daily edition, and often I have a thorough sit-down read.

This marketing info subscription is Lawrence Bernstein’s Ad Money Machine.

As you might know, Lawrence a direct marketing expert who’s been in the game for a few decades.

Lawrence also happens to have a passion for research and archiving and detail. And his Ad Money Machine basically gives you interesting and valuable ads, ranging over the past 100+ years of direct marketing… plus Lawrence’s expert commentary on the why and how and who and who else behind each ad.

It’s as good of a source for marketing insight and inspiration as I’ve been able to find.

Ad Money Machine costs $97/month. You can go sign up for it now. But maybe, probably, you’re not ready to “go steady” with Lawrence based on just my quick and surface description of what he offers.

So I’d like to suggest a “coffee date.”

Lawrence has put together a guide called “How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes.” It gives you a perfect flavor for what Lawrence does – a collection of fascinating and effective ads from the past, all tied together with a common theme, along with Lawrence’s commentary and analysis, which you can’t find anywhere else on the Internet.

“How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes” normally sells for $97, the same as a month of Lawrence’s Ad Money Machine subscription.

But for the next day or so (the clock’s ticking), Lawrence is making this guide available to you, just because you happen to be a reader of this newsletter, for only $7.

Final word:

I’m not an affiliate for this offer. I don’t get paid whether you buy it or not. I can tell you I did buy this offer myself, for my own purposes, several weeks ago, before I ever had any plans on promoting it to you.

If you’d like to find out more about it, while Lawrence’s sizable discount is still live:

​https://bejakovic.com/fascinations​

For people who could write great sales letter leads, hooks, and angles (today!)

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… if only they could fight their way through the maze of copywriting books, courses, frameworks, templates, customer research, contradictory advice, newsletters and blogs and posts by experts, gurus, and charlatans…

I’d like to present a merciful guide to leads, hooks, and angles that actually pull, based on the strength of the copy alone, called:

“How To Turn Fascinations Into Fortunes”

The backstory behind this guide:

Well actually, you can read the backstory below.

In brief, it involves the mystery copywriter who built up a $125-million company… a personalized gift in the mail, which brought back a thank-you note and a check for $2,000… and an offer that normally sells for $97, but which is available to you for the next two days, because you happen to be a reader of this newsletter, for only $7.

A warning about the following page:

It’s a sales page.

A warning about that warning:

Don’t dismiss the following page just because it’s a sales page. It’s well-worth reading, whether you decide to buy the offer or not.

That’s because this sales page is both interesting, at least if you have any interest in copywriting and direct marketing… and because it’s valuable, if you write copy or hope to ever write copy, for your own business or for clients, and you want to have that copy produce results.

A final word about the following page and the offer that’s on it:

I’m not an affiliate for this offer. I don’t get paid whether you buy it or not. I can tell you i did buy this offer myself, for my own purposes, several weeks ago, before I ever had any plans on promoting it to you.

And the reason I’m promoting it to you now, without getting paid, is because I think it’s both interesting and valauble, just like the following page, which is live for the next 48 hours and ticking:

https://bejakovic.com/fascinations

I’m not OK — you’re not OK

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Here’s a story I’ve been told but don’t remember:

When I was little, maybe around 2 or 3, I was in the dining room with my grandfather, who I loved better than life itself.

I started dragging a large chair around the dining room.

My grandfather told me to stop, I guess because the dragging was making noise and because the chair could topple and flatten 3-year-old Bejako.

But I didn’t stop. I kept dragging the chair around.

My grandfather again told me to stop.

I still didn’t.

So my grandfather gave me a light swat on the hand, not enough to hurt me, but enough to get my attention.

It worked. I let go of the chair. I started wailing instead. And in my childish fear and confusion, I turned to the only natural place of comfort, and that was back to my grandfather. I ran to him and hugged him and wailed away. My grandfather said later he felt so guilty that he wished for his hand, the one he had swatted me with, to dry up and fall off.

I’m reading a book now called, I’m OK — You’re OK. I’m reading it because:

I’ve learned the most about email marketing and copywriting from Ben Settle…

Ben frequently recommends a book called Start With No, by negotiation coach Jim Camp, which I’ve read a half dozen times…

Start With No is largely a rehash of ideas in a book called You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar, by sales trainer Dave Sandler, which I read for the first time earlier this year…

Sandler’s book and sales system are a mix of classic sales techniques, his own personal experimentation, and ideas coming from transactional analysis, specifically as described in the book I’m OK — You’re OK, by psychiatrist Thomas Harris.

(There’s value in working backwards like that.)

Here’s a passage in I’m OK — You’re OK that stuck out to me:

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The predominant by-product of the frustrating, civilizing process is negative feelings. On the basis of these feelings the little person early concludes, “I’m not OK.” We call this comprehensive self-estimate the NOT OK, or the NOT OK Child. This permanent recording is the residue of having been a child. Any child. Even the child of kind, loving, well-meaning parents. It is the situation of childhood and not the intention of the parents which produces the problem.

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Like I said, this stuck out to me. Because some people had happy, stable childhoods. But even those people have a reservoir of childhood memories that make them feel not OK today. And maybe those people wonder what the hell is wrong with them. Says Harris, nothing. That’s life.

On the other hand, other people had genuinely troubled or traumatizing childhoods. They might suspect their childhood left them somehow uniquely warped and deformed, and the fact they feel not OK today proves it. But that logic is wrong, says Harris, because again, we are all not OK.

“I’m not OK — You’re not OK” is not a very inspiring message. Fortunately, the above passage is not how the book ends. In fact it only comes in chapter two. After all, the book is titled I’m OK — You’re OK.

If you’d like to know how to get out of the impulsive, frustrating, and maybe painful web of childhood memories and patterns, at least according to Thomas Harris, you can check out I’m OK — You’re OK below, and maybe learn a thing or two about sales and negotiation and copywriting in the process:

​https://bejakovic.com/ok​

How to offer discounts without discounting your offer

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I once went to buy a pair of RayBan sunglasses. When I went to pay, the woman at the counter leaned in conspiratorially.

“Would you like to buy this cleaning kit for your new sunglasses?” she asked.

Before I had a chance to tell her that in fact I work in direct marketing, and that she should try her useless upsell on somebody else, she continued:

“The cleaning kit is only 9.95 euro, but we have a special promotion, where if you buy it you get a 20% discount on anything in the store. That’s a 50 euro savings on your sunglasses.”

What happened next is what I believe they call “cognitive dissonance”:

The twin angels of Refusing To Be Upsold and of A Perfectly Rational Argument vied for supremacy of my soul.

After a brief but fierce struggle, the Angel of A Perfectly Rational Argument won out.

“Uhh… I guess I’ll take the cleaning kit?” I said, still trying to figure out how I was being scammed, and how this made any sense for the sunglasses store.

I never really did figure it out, except to think that maybe it allowed them to discount their sunglasses and make people feel like they were getting a bargain… without actually discounting their sunglasses.

I though of this this morning when, in my usual rounds of snooping on other marketers, I checked out Ryan Lee’s current offer.

I don’t really understand what exactly Ryan is selling — he’s helping people publish a “micro book,” whatever that is.

I do know that the cost for his 2-week “Micro Book Accelerator” is $895. Included in the price are a number of bonuses, one being a book cover designed by Ryan’s personal crack designer (“a $999 value”).

So far, so normal.

But then you get down to the bottom of the sales page, where the checkout links are.

There’s a full pay option for $895…

There’s a 3-pay for $319 per month…

And then there’s an option to “join and get the full MBX experience (only without the cover design) for a BIG discount (almost $600).”

I have no doubt that most people who join are joining Ryan’s full experience, cover included.

But I thought this last option was interesting:

A way to discount the offer… by not discounting the offer. By respecting the people who buy the full package, and by making everyone else a different offer, and a credible reason why that new offer is significantly discounted (that’s what connected this in my mind to the sunglasses story above).

Maybe you say this is just a downsell. Maybe. But I’ve never seen it done like this, and to me at least, it was new.

Anyways, since I very much like to take interesting ideas and apply them in this newsletter, I decided to put this one to work as well.

So if you like, you can now sign up to get my Simple Money Emails training (minus the swipe file and the bonus 7 Deadly Email Sins and Quick and Dirty Emails trainings) at a significant “Perfectly Rational Argument” discount from the usual $197 price.

This new offer is only $77, $120 off the price that the complete Simple Money Emails program sells for.

Since this is an experiment, and kinda makes me uncomfortable, I am restricting it to only the first 20 people who take me up on it. And one way or another, I will close down this offer this Saturday at 8:31pm CET.

If you want the “Perfectly Rational Argument” discount, here’s where to take me up on this new offer while it’s still live:

https://bejakovic.com/sme77/