What I would do if I won $500 million tomorrow

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A friend of mine recently interviewed at a high-tech company, one that start with N and ends with A and sells AI chips.

He had contacts inside the company who were coaching him on the interview process. Along with the gamut of technical questions, these contacts told him to prepare for some unusual life riddles, such as:

“If you somehow won $500 million tomorrow, what would you do with your life?”

… the right answer apparently being, “I would still work at a high-tech company, preferably one that start with N and ends with A and sells AI chips.”

I asked myself what I would do if I suddenly had 500 million.

I guess if I’ve learned one thing about myself over my life it’s that, regardless of what significant changes occur, including places to live, income levels, or accomplishments achieved, I quickly feel the same.

I used to think that’s a bad thing. Now I just take it as a fact of life, like having a nose.

And so, outside of maybe some initial splurge spending (maybe a pinball machine?), I imagine I’d keep living pretty much as I already do, and doing what I already do.

One thing I’m sure would not change is that I’d keep writing in some form, because I enjoy it.

It’s quite possible I’d keep writing about the same stuff I write about now, because it’s the stuff that interests me personally, and that I think about even when I am not officially “working.”

It’s even possible I’d keep writing this daily email as is, because I already have a significant audience, and I enjoy the validation, feedback, and even impact that I can have when people read and consider what I write.

“Good for you,” I hear you saying. “If big corporations ever start hiring daily email writers, you will be well qualified with your answer.”

Fair enough. Perhaps you don’t feel the same about writing.

Perhaps writing doesn’t come naturally. Perhaps it’s not something you think about during the day. Perhaps it’s something you only are considering because it could be useful for your business, maybe as a stepping stone to your own $500 million Avalon.

That’s fine. In fact, that’s a good thing.

Whether writing is something you truly crave or not, it can be tremendously useful for your business.

And if writing is something you find a bit enjoyable, but also a bit of a chore, then I’ve created a service to make that chore faster and easier and maybe even more fun to complete each day.

For more information on that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Split-brain spending

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“You want my eternal admiration?” my friend Marci asked me. “Go talk to that girl.”

He pointed out a tall blonde, with very upright posture and a confident “don’t mess with me” walk, who was dressed in an expensive-looking and fashionable outfit. She had just turned the corner from Passeig de Gracia, Spain’s most expensive shopping street, full of luxury brand stores, to a less glamorous side street.

Don’t you worry.

This is not an email about pickup. Rather, it’s an email about a strange shopping behavior, which has gotten the name “split-brain spending.”

Split-brain spending involves buying most things discount so you can splurge on luxury items.

For example, the fashionable, attractive, intimidating blonde I saw yesterday took a few more steps and went inside an Aldi, a discount supermarket that’s something like Kmart in the US, if you remember those before they went bankrupt.

I didn’t follow her in there, and so I didn’t find out whether she shops in Aldi regularly in order to afford an occasional $1,500 Louis Vuitton bag or $400 Prada sunglasses or $700 Hermes silk scarf.

But apparently, it’s a common-enough phenomenon.

The Wall Street Journal wrote up an article about it back in 2023.

At that time, inflation was a relatively new experience for most folks.

People were getting stressed and exhausted by it, and they vented by “revenge spending” on luxury things like clothes or international travel or maybe a fancy leather couch.

That’s why between 2020 and 2023, the luxury market outstripped overall retail sales, with 70% growth for luxury, compared to overall retail’s modest 25% growth.

I checked this morning, and it seems the luxury market constricted in 2024 for the first time in 15 years.

Even so, the bigger point still stands, and it stands in all economic seasons.

People will buy to treat and spoil themselves, even if they are conscious of spending normally, or even if they don’t have all that much money overall.

“Economists call this an attempt to reclaim agency over their finances,” says that WSJ article.

So my point for today is to give your customers that opportunity, even if you normally sell budget offers or give away stuff for free. Add in some high-ticket “spoil and splurge” items that tap into split-brain spending, and allow your customers to buy a feeling of control over their lives.

In my email yesterday, I asked what offers you might have bought for $200 or over, which really delivered value in your life, beyond simply being fun to consume or exciting to buy.

I got a number of replies to that, mainly about courses. But I also got a message from a reader named Robert (not sure he wants me to share his last name). Robert wrote about a $300 hair drier his wife bought, and he said:

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This may not be the answer you’re hoping for because I don’t know if you’d be able to promote it. But it delivered and amazed my wife.

She used to break a sweat drying her hair because she had so much. I wasn’t lucky enough to catch it on sale, but it’s been worth every penny. She told her sister, and her sis bought two (one for each home).

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Maybe I’m out of touch, but I would never imagine a $300 hair dryer before Robert sent it in. And yet I think it supports the idea in this email well.

Or maybe like Robert says, it’s just a product that solves a legit problem for a specific segment, and is worth every penny for that reason.

On that note, let me repeat my offer from yesterday:

I’m always on the lookout for great products to promote. The problem is, lots of stuff looks great on the outside. But does it actually deliver results? That’s where I’m hoping you can help me.

What’s a product or a service that you paid $200 or more for over the past year, which really delivered?

It could be an info product, a physical product, a service, or something you paid to have done for you. And by “really delivered,” I’m not talking about being fun and diverting, but of giving you real value in your real life.

If you’re game, hit reply and let me know of stuff you’ve paid for that was a good investment.

In turn, I’ll reply to you and tell you three offers I’ve bought over the past year or so, all of which cost around $1k, all of which delivered real value to me, and all of which happened to be sold via infotainment.

Do we have a deal? If so, hit reply, and fire away.

How much is infotainment worth?

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How much is infotainment worth? I mean, how much do stories and pop culture analogies and outrage in your marketing sell, above and beyond what you could sell by appealing to personal interest alone?

I don’t know. As far as I know, nobody has ever tried to quantify it.

But I do know of an analogous situation, one that has been quantified. Check it:

Back in 1946, baseball club owner Bill Veeck was the first to introduce fireworks at a baseball game. The baseball establishment was outraged. “It cheapens this great and noble sport,” they said.

Veeck was undeterred. Eventually, other team owners came around, and today, fireworks are a standard addition to many major league games.

Of course, the change in attitude came down to money.

As Veeck argued and found to be true, fireworks at a baseball game pay for themselves many times over, primarily in the form of keeping fans at the stadium longer and selling more hotdogs and beer. When combined with a home-team win, the results are multiplicative. Here are the stats:

1. Lose game, no fireworks: X

2. Lose game, fireworks: 1.4X

3. Win game, no fireworks: 2X

4. Win game, fireworks: 3X

In my mind, this is analogous to selling with or without infotainment.

In this analogy, fireworks are the fun, infotainment, insight.

As for “winning the game,” that maps to your customers actually profiting from the product or the service that you sell.

And “extra money made via concessions” maps to how much more money your one-time customers are willing to spend with you in the future.

Do the baseball numbers above map perfectly to selling?

Again, I don’t know. I would be surprised if they mapped perfectly, But I do suspect they are indicative.

The fact is, infotainment has value in terms of customer loyalty and future willingness to buy. But it has far less value than a product that delivers real results. You can be unlikable or dull, and people will still buy from you, over and over, if they get value from what you sell.

Of course, if you both have a great offer that actually produces results… and you add in your stories and analogies and outrage… then you can look forward to really amazing profits, ones that insulate you from the ups and down of the market and the claws of the competition.

Now I got a favor to ask you, or rather, a deal to make with you:

I’m always on the lookout for great products to promote. The problem is, lots of stuff looks great on the outside. But does it actually deliver results? That’s where I’m hoping you can help me.

What’s a product or a service that you paid $200 or more for over the past year, which really delivered?

It could be an info product, a service, or something you paid to have done for you. And by “really delivered,” I’m not talking about being fun and diverting, but of giving you real value in your real life.

If you’re game, hit reply and let me know of stuff you’ve paid for that was a good investment.

In turn, I’ll reply to you and tell you three offers I’ve bought over the past year or so, all of which cost around $1k, all of which delivered real value to me, and all of which happened to be sold via infotainment.

Do we have a deal? If so, hit reply, and fire away.

How to get informed (it’s not the news)

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Perhaps you’ve seen the trending anti-news article that’s gone viralish over the past week.

It deals with news versus reality, specifically, deaths as reported in the news versus the deaths people actually die from.

The article compared data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to news reports of deaths in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the news website of Fox News.

Some of the results:

First, there wasn’t much difference between the three news outlets, in spite of different political leanings.

Second, there was a big gap between which deaths get written about and which deaths actually happen.

On the over-represented side, murders were 43 times more reported than their share of deaths. Terrorism deaths got 18,000 times more coverage than their share of actual deaths.

On the under-represented side, deaths from things like stroke and heart disease were underreported in the news by a factor of 9 and 10, respectively.

I personally don’t watch or read the news, and this kind of stuff allows me to be smug. “You see,” I imagine telling some imaginary debate partner, “I haven’t been missing anything.”

The fact is, the news doesn’t represent reality, meaning stuff that happens out there. The only reality it represents is what biases exist in the human mind, across time and across space and culture:

Our cravings for novelty… for low probability, high-impact events… for negative rather than positive outcomes… for individual dramatic stories rather than statistics encompassing millions of data points.

But though I personally ignore the news and even like to be smug about it, it’s not just cynical and self-serving news outlets that do this to us.

We do the same thing to ourselves, all the time, because of habit but also because of our inborn neurology. We focus on the negative… the low-probability… the high-impact… and we weave stories about such things that often have little to do with the reality of of our existence.

This all sounds kinda depressing, and I don’t want you leaving my email that way.

So let me share a resource I’ve shared multiple times over the past year and a half.

It lays out a simple process that has allowed me to see reality more clearly and to challenge stories my brain likes to tell itself.

This process worked for me when I first read about it and tried it a year and a half ago. It’s working for me still.

Maybe most importantly, following this process opened up some sort of a gateway in my mind that’s allowed related ideas and practices to flow in, which have made me more happy and resilient these days than I have felt my whole adult life.

In case you want to get informed about reality:

https://bejakovic.com/stillworking

What to do when people won’t buy money at a discount

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Last year, I read a book called Ice To The Eskimos by sports marketer Jon Spoelstra. I highly recommend it, because of stories like this one:

Back in the 1990s, Spoelstra gave a talk to a bunch of basketball team owners in Spain.

Says Spoelstra, at that time, pro sports teams outside the US lacked one big thing the Americans had: marketing. The owners of such non-US teams thought that if fans wanted to come, they would come. If the fans didn’t wanna come, they wouldn’t.

Spoelstra knew better. And to make his point, he ran a little stunt during that talk to the Spanish basketball team owners.

He took out a hundred peseta bill. “Who here will give me a 10 peseta coin for this 100 peseta bill?”

The team owners murmured and looked around the room. Maybe the translator had fumbled something? Or the American was crazy?

Spoelstra repeated his offer. “Who will give me a 10 peseta coin for this 100 peseta bill?”

More murmuring. Finally one of the team owners pulled out a coin and held it up. Spolestra jumped on the coin, and gave the team owner the bill in exchange.

“Do you have another 10 peseta coin?” Spoelstra asked.

The team owner shrugged and pulled one out. Spoelstra gave him another 100 peseta bill.

They repeated the deal a few more times.

“When will you stop giving me 10 peseta coins for 100 peseta bills?” Spoelstra asked the team owner.

The team owner smirked. “Only when you run out of 100 peseta bills.”

That was Spoelstra’s point about marketing. You hire a ticket salesperson… he makes you 100 pesetas… and only keeps 10 for himself. It’s a good deal, and one you should keep making as long as you can.

“Fine fine,” I hear you saying. “Thanks for the bland insight. Do you have anything more, or are we done here?”

I do have one more thing to share with you. One year later, the organization that had hired Spoelstra to give that presentation sent him a report about the attendance figures for each team.

The team owners who still refused to hire a ticket salesperson saw the same attendance numbers as before.

The team owners who took Spoelstra’s advice and hired a ticket salesperson all had attendance increases of 50% or more.

But here’s the bit that thrilled my novelty-seeking heart:

The team owner who actually traded with Spoelstra and got a 100 peseta bill for each 10 peseta coin, didn’t end up hiring one ticket salesperson… or two… but three ticket salespeople.

I don’t know his final attendance numbers, but Spoelstra says that over the coming year, that team owner had more attendance growth and revenue growth than anyone in the room. At the end of the year, the team owner ended up sending Spoelstra a framed 100 peseta bill with an engraving that said, “I didn’t stop. Thank you.”

Maybe that “I didn’t stop” was all due to the personality of that team owner.

After all, he was active while others were passive, daring while others were hesitant, even in a controlled and safe environment of Spoelstra’s presentation. Maybe he was just a risk-taker and a leader, where others weren’t.

Maybe.

But maybe it was also due to something else. Maybe it was due to the actual physical and emotional experience that team owner had of handing over a 10 peseta coin and getting 100 pesetas in return, over and over.

That kind of real and direct experience, and the resulting neurological imprinting, even if it’s done in a joke and play context, can have wide-ranging effects.

That’s something to keep in mind if you are trying to create change in your audience, or in yourself.

And on an entirely related note, I’d like to remind you of my Most Valuable Email training.

You are likely to get benefit from this training if you simply buy it and read it. But you are likely to get 16x the value if you put it into action, however hesitatingly and jokingly at first. And same goes for your own audience.

For more info on Most Valuable Email:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

The bluebird who paid a $10k bill plus travel expenses

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Recently, I had the idea to take a bunch of my previous emails on the topic of pricing and positioning, and to write a book titled “Charge More,” or something like that.

The basic idea being, charge more for what you offer.

But like “Just Do It,” “Charge More” is one of those bits of good advice that people nod their heads to in agreement, but rarely actually follow.

So rather than just repeating “Charge More” for 150 pages to no effect, I figured I would take a bunch of emails I’ve written, with distinctions and stories, to both inspire people to raise their prices, and to give them tips on how to do so in various situations.

And now that I’ve given you that intro, it seems a good time to share a story by sales trainer Dave Sandler, which I read in Sandler’s book You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar. The story goes like this:

Sandler once gave a talk at a business convention, outlining his own homebrewed system for raising salesmen’s self-esteem.

Next day, Sandler flew back from the convention to his home in Baltimore.

At the time, all of Sandler’s business was local to Baltimore. He wasn’t expecting anything to come from the convention.

But the next morning, Sandler got a call from an excited business owner from Indiana, halfway around the country.

The business owner was there at convention. He said he took Sandler’s ideas back to his salespeople. He was flabbergasted at the initial results. He wanted Sandler to come out immediately and give his salespeople the full training.

While this guy talking, Sandler thought to himself, “Well! here’s a bluebird.” It’s like the guy had just flown in through an open window and landed on Sandler’s desk.

At the time, Sandler’s fee for a 2-day seminar in Baltimore was $2,500 dollars (this was in the early 1970s). He was simply waiting for the excited business owner to exhaust himself with talking, and then he’d ask for $2,500 plus travel expenses.

But the business owner kept talking, all about how much money he had spent on traditional sales training… and how happy he had been to hear Sandler speak on this topic, because Sandler was right, and others didn’t get it…

“I do have to spend the night at a hotel and away from home to teach this seminar,” Sandler thought. “Better ask for another $500 and make it an even $3k. I’ll do it once the guy stops talking.”

… but the business owner still kept on, all about the books and tapes and trainings he had purchased for his sales staff, and how none of it had worked… and how much it’s been hurting his business… and how it’s been driving him up the wall and he didn’t know what to do until now…

“I do also have to get on a plane for this,” Sandler thought. “Plus I’ll have to give up some selling time. I’ll tell him the price is $3,500, as soon as he slows down.”

… but the biz owner kept talking and talking, venting and venting, revealing and revealing. Sandler says it felt like the guy talked for an hour, even though it was probably only a few minutes.

Finally the business owner talked himself out. “By the way,” he said, “how much is this going to cost me?”

“$10,000,” Sandler said, “plus travel expenses.”

“Well that’s no problem,” the business owner replied. “How soon can you get here?”

I think there are lots of lessons in this little story. Let me just share one, right at the top, about how Sandler got a warm inbound lead, a bluebird who landed on his desk, ready to to buy without any sales call or persuasion or objection overcoming.

Sandler did it by flying across the country and getting up on stage and giving a talk.

That’s an effective way of getting warm inbound leads, if you’re willing to fly around and get up on stage and give speeches to crowds.

But the same psychology applies whenever you have a platform to speak from, even if that platform is entirely virtual, and even if speaking is really writing, like what you’re reading now.

The key is simply to build a mini-monopoly, a situation in which people in your audience have grown to trust you and to have a relationship with you and to want to work with you specifically, even if you have supposed “competition.”

All that’s to say, if you don’t consistently write daily emails yet, it pays to start. And if you want my help doing so:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Anti-proof #1A

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Yesterday, I wrote an email wondering about a strange social proof conundrum:

Why do endorsements and testimonials sometimes act as powerful proof elements… while at other times they act as a red flag that signals the offer itself is unproven and iffy?

I didn’t have an answer I was convinced by, beyond shrugging my shoulders and saying, “because readers can basically sniff out if you’re coming from a position of power or not.”

I got a number of replies to yesterday’s email, from readers who both disagree with me and agree with me. For example, reader John McDermott thinks it all comes down to gut feelings:

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It obviously depends on the audience to a certain extent, but I think people make buying decisions largely from ‘gut feelings.’ That is, whether the offer invokes their defenses on some ‘spidey senses’ level. Or not.

Just as a salesman shouldn’t actually wear blue suede shoes, an ad shouldn’t show any ‘tells’ that the audience will perceive.

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On the other hand, a reader named Devd thinks it’s about structuring your copy in the right way:

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I think towards the end of the book, Gene Schwartz talked about something related to this in Breakthrough Advertising.

Like being the mind reader, and amply supplying the copy with claim-proof and other stuff as required.

And not blabbering about just proof or claims alone for too long, and having the right thinking process to switch as needed based on the thought process of your prospect after reading each line you write.

That’d probably help avoid the copy feeling too needy, I guess.

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A mysterious French copywriter or marketer, who keeps buying my offers under different names but goes by “Bro in Arms” in his emails, thinks it might not have anything to do with social proof at all:

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Or maybe it’s just a great product.

And like Elon Musk says in his biography, great products sell themselves through word of mouth.

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On the other hand, marketer Sean McCool, whose Persuasion by the Pint podcast I appeared on last Friday, thinks it’s the framing of the endorsement that matters:

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I think the speaker in the letter matters. If a “publisher” is talking about the guru and then shares testimonials about the guru in the letter, that is much more powerful and accepted than if the guru is the voice in the letter.

Thats why so many Agora promos use a publisher.

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And Maliha Mannan, who writes dailyish emails and sells courses over at The Side Blogger, offers an insider’s perspective:

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I have a hard time believing in testimonials, but I know I’m an outlier.

In most cases, as a buyer, a testimonial only works on me, regardless of whether it’s a testimonial about the person making the offer or the offer itself, when I have already developed a positive view of the seller. In that case, a testimonial of the offer itself comes off stronger than that of the person (because I already like the person?)…

On the other hand, as a seller of offers, I usually work with what I have. Since I’m pretty bad at asking for testimonials, most of what I have are things people have said in the passing, and most of these tend to be comments about me.

For example, “I like how you teach,” is an email after someone has taken a course. But it’s not exactly about the course itself.

On a more curious note, I get the best testimonials from fellow info-entrepreneurs. Maybe because we understand what it means to have a really good testimonial, we tend to give out the best testimonials ourselves.

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So? Are we any closer to unraveling this mystery?

I personally still don’t have an answer that convinces me. But perhaps some of the above comments gave you a good idea, maybe even one you can run with in your own marketing.

In any case, it was important to share these reader perspectives. That’s because daily emails should feel as much as possible as a dinner party, rather than as a sermon or a university lecture.

Since I end all my emails by promoting something, let me now point you to my Daily Email Habit service, which helps you write daily emails that feel like a dinner party, while at the same time getting people at the party to pay the tab at the end of the night.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have a good number of “fellow info-entrepreneurs” as subscribers to Daily Email Habit. I’ve got testimonials on the sales page from some of them, saying things like:

#1. “Fourth day in DEH. Turned the Elvis bullet into an email. Got a sale to my £170 course. So I’d say the investment has paid for itself.”

#2. “Within 5 minutes of getting your first ‘prompt’ in my inbox, I was cranking out my first email. Zero resistance.”

#3. “10 minutes going from sheer panic about what to write to a finished email building my expertise and selling my stuff.”

#4. “Exactly what I needed to get me thinking about my list.”

#5. “My best Black Friday yet… your service contributed to this result.”

If you’d like to find out more about Daily Email Habit, and see if it might make sales for you too:

https://bejakovic.com/deh/

Anti-proof #1

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A couple days ago, I wrote an email about an unused form of proof, namely testimonials and endorsements for the person selling, rather than for the product being sold.

I first spotted that in the super successful infomercial for the George Foreman Grill. Half the testimonials in the infomercial are for the grill itself. But the rest are for George Foreman himself, like this:

“If George is behind anything, that will be the best thing for America. George would never advertise nothing that’s not good for America.”

After I wrote that email, I got message from copywriter GC Tsalamagkakis, who wrote:

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I’ve seen a lot of people doing it. And I’m sure it works.

But it would have to be executed in a natural way.

Looking at my own reaction (and I may very well be the only one), when I just see those 2 types of testimonials mixed together, it makes me think that the person is desperate to add more social proof and will use any remotely-related testimonials they can find.

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GC’s comment made me think. He’s definitely not the only one to feel like this.

I have myself seen sales pages where only a few lukewarm testimonials are for the offer itself (“quite an acceptable sandwich”)… while the rest of the sales page is padded with other testimonials either for other products by same person (“amazing French fries!”), or just endorsements for the person selling (“the greatest fast-food visionary of our generation”).

On sales pages like this, extra endorsements don’t help much and can even hurt.

I know I have personally felt that such extra endorsements act as a kind of anti-proof element, as a red herring that’s more likely to put questions into my head than lull me into buying.

I asked myself what makes the difference. Why do “seller endorsements” work in the George Foreman infomercial… and don’t work on many sales pages?

I don’t have a clear answer. My best guess is that in one place the extra testimonials are coming from a position of strength, and in the other they are coming from a position of weakness, and that’s something we humans are good at sniffing out.

Maybe you have a better answer. If you do, I hope you will hit reply and enlighten me.

And if you want one more example to help you make you delve inside this profound mystery, I can point you to an effective sales page that features seller endorsements along with product testimonials.

The sales page in question is one for my Most Valuable Email course, and I say it’s effective because I’ve sold many, many copies of this course via this sales page.

The endorsements on this sales page, for me as someone who writes daily emails, come from people like Joe Schriefer of Agora Financial, Bill Mueller of Story Sales Machine, and Daniel Throssell of the Australia Throssells.

On the other hand, there are also a dozen product testimonials, which I’ve picked from a larger batch of positive customer feedback.

I’ve chosen to feature those specific testimonials either because they are particularly enthusiastic (“amazing,” “incredible,” and “more importantly, writing an MVE is fun”) or because the copywriter or marketer benefited from applying the MVE trick in their own or their client’s emails. A sample:

“My inbox is flooded with applause”

“The highest-converting single-email campaign sent to the non-buyers of all time”

“… made me make 5 times more the investment in MVE”

If you wanna see how I integrate both kinds of testimonials into my MVE sales page, take a look below. Just be careful that you don’t get sucked into buying the course itself. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Do I have an affiliate relationship with all these big names?

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A couple days ago, I opened the most recent Exploding Topics newsletter, which tracks topics and brands that are surging online.

The top Exploding Topic was Scandinavian Biolabs, “a hair growth startup” that raised $5M in funding last year.

“Hello,” I said, “this sounds familiar.”

I had a sense that I know the head copywriter at Scandinavian Biolabs. I suspected it might be one Liza Schermann, the original Crazy Email Lady, who also acted as a cohost of the Age of Insight and Influential Emails trainings I ran several years ago.

I forwarded the Exploding Topics email to Liza to confirm this is indeed the place where she works. Liza wrote back:

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Haha look at that, I’m back at work and growth is skyrocketing! That’s the place indeed. I remember the celebration party for that $5M funding vividly.

I was just typing a reply when you forwarded it so I might as well do it here.

Did you have an affiliate or some kind of other partnership with Chris Orzechowski? Or did you just promote his workshop because you found it interesting? I was wondering that every time you promoted a big name.

Anyway, it seems like it’s been an eventful year in Bejako Land business-wise with lots of different offers (at least from what I could keep up with). I’m looking forward to your annual summary email if you’re planning to send one!

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In answer to Liza’s question:

Yes, I promoted Chris Orzechowski’s training (“5 steps to a million-dollar list”) as an affiliate.

I also promoted Derek Johanson’s CopyHour and Email Delivered Courses as an affiliate.

I promoted Thom Benny’s 1-Person Advertorial Agency as an affiliate.

I promoted Justin Blackman’s Different On Purpose as an affiliate.

I promoted Igor Kheifets’s Click Send Earn as an affiliate.

I promoted Kennedy’s “$27k to $544k” training as an affiliate.

And in a couple weeks from now, when I promote Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery, I will do so as an affiliate.

I have in the past promoted people’s things simply because I thought they were cool and valuable, without getting paid.

I still do that sometimes.

But if I can promote something I think is cool and valuable AND get paid for it at the same time, well, I like to have my cake and lick it too.

The fact is, I have been feeling burned out this year about creating new offers.

I have created a lot of courses, trainings, reports, and even books over the 6+ years of running this newsletter.

Some have stuck around and become evergreen offers (Copy Riddles, Most Valuable Email, my new 10 Commandments book). Others were exotic one-time events (like the Age of Insight and Influential Emails workshops).

One thing’s for sure:

Even when I’m in full offer-creation mode, the appetite of my audience for cool and valuable new solutions to existing problems is much much bigger than what I can personally satisfy.

That’s one reason I’ve been building up a little invite-only group of list and offer owners.

I’ve been quietly pitching this group to people as a place to connect and partner and share ideas.

It’s proven to be that — it’s led to list swaps, podcast appearances, and affiliate promos, and not just involving me, either.

It so happens that Chris, Derek, Thom, Justin, Igor, Kennedy, and Gasper are all in my little invite-only group.

Maybe this group could be a good fit for you too?

If you’re interested, write in and let me know who you are and what you do.

A list is a mandatory requirement, as is the fact that you are writing that list regularly, and that you’ve made money from your list.

If have your own proven offers, that’s definitely a bonus.

Beyond that, I’m curious to hear who you are and what you do. If it’s a fit with the group, I’ll know it when I see it.

If more sales from your list with less work sounds sexy to you, write in and let’s talk.

Two Hungarian con men go after my mom

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True story, one that happened two days ago, and that I heard from my mom on the phone last night:

My mom lives in a brutalist high-rise building in Zagreb, Croatia.

She goes outside the building two days ago to throw out the trash.

A car pulls up. There are two guys inside. They roll down the window and start speaking to my mom as she is throwing out the trash.

They explain they are Hungarian. And indeed, they are speaking Croatian with the CHAR-acteristic HUN-garian ACC-ent.

“Are you retired?” one of the guys asks.

My mom says yes.

“Great,” he says. “In that case we have a gift for you.” He hands my mom a brochure. It shows fancy sets of kitchenware.

As my mom is looking over the brochure, the other guy gets out and opens up the trunk of the car. “Come take a look” he says.

It’s like a treasure chest in there. There are silver-plated pots, pans, cutlery, knives, all in opened boxes.

The Hungarians explain they were just showing off their wares at a trade show at the big fairgrounds across the street.

“Now we are going to the airport,” they say. But before they go, the boss has tasked them with giving away the samples before they fly out, and to give them away to retired people.

“Would you like?” they ask. “It’s our gift to you. The only condition is you cannot sell these expensive pots and pans, but just use them yourself. By the way, the boxes are heavy. We can take them to the elevator for you.”

My mom is wary. But it looks like treasure.

And here the con men get ahead of themselves. “It’s all free,” they repeat. Just as a token, as something they can show to their boss to prove they have given the stuff away as promised to someone retired, all they ask for in exchange is any bit of old gold. An earring, a small gold chain.

My mom says she has no gold. (I happen to know this is a lie. She has some gold earrings.)

The con men say how one woman in the neighborhood has just given them some gold teeth from her dead husband. They take out a little medicine bottle and actually show the gold teeth.

“I don’t have any gold,” my mom repeats, “and I don’t need the pots and pans.”

“Everything is ok,” the guys insist. “This is a wonderful present!”

“Why not give it to somebody else?” my mom asks.

“We don’t have time,” the con men say. “We have to get to the airport. If you don’t have any gold, do yo you have any new euro? Just one green one? Just so we can prove to our boss that we’ve given the samples away?”

My mom says she’s not interested. She turns and leaves. One of the Hungarians curses under his breath. And the two drive off.

When I talked to my mom, she was mystified by this encounter. “I don’t understand the logic of this offer,” she said.

I don’t either. I don’t know whether these guys were really looking to trade pots and pans for gold… or if they were just looking to rob people of gold without giving over anything… or if they were using this “wonderful present” as a kind of in to get into people’s houses and to properly rob them, way beyond just an old necklace or some gold teeth.

Clearly, this con is a little ham-fisted, and it didn’t work.

But a lot of the elements of a successful con are there. You can find them with a careful reading of the story above, and if you are enterprising, you can apply them to a successful and legitimate business. In the words of David Maurerer, author of The Big Con, the authoritative record of the golden age of con men:

“If confidence men operate outside the law, it must be remembered that they are not much further outside than many of our pillars of society who go under names less sinister. They only carry to an ultimate and very logical conclusion certain trends which are often inherent in various forms of legitimate business.”

Maybe you find this idea shocking or repulsive.

If so, the best I can tell you is to stop reading now. Because I agree with Mauerer. I think there’s a lot to be learned from con men, without crossing over into the illegal or immoral territory in which they operate. A lot that can be applied, profitably, to various forms of legitimate business.

In fact, that’s one of the core ideas behind my new 10 Commandments book, which deals with the commonalities to be found among con men… pickup artists… door-to-door salesmen… copywriters… hypnotists… stage magicians…. and more.

For 10 logical conclusions extracted from all these disciplines:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments