Nobody’s perfect: I give 4 stars to this new reviewer of my book

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Jerry: Osgood, I’m gonna level with you. We can’t get married at all.

Osgood: Why not?

Jerry: Well, in the first place, I’m not a natural blonde.

Osgood: Doesn’t matter.

Jerry: I smoke! I smoke all the time!

Osgood: I don’t care.

Jerry: Well, I have a terrible past. For three years now, I’ve been living with a saxophone player.

Osgood: I forgive you.

Jerry: [tragically] I can never have children!

Osgood: We can adopt some.

Jerry: But you don’t understand, Osgood! Ohh… [Jerry pulls off his wig] I’m a man!

Osgood: [shrugs] Well, nobody’s perfect.

Those are the closing lines of the greatest comedy of all time, as ranked by American Film Institute, namely, Some Like It Hot.

These lines came to mind because last night I checked the Amazon page for my new 10 Commandments book.

I published the book back in May, and though reviews were slow to come at first, I have amassed 46 reviews so far. Well, 46 ratings, from 1 to 5 stars, most of which don’t actually have any kind of review text beyond the number of stars.

So far, while I’ve gotten a couple 4-star ratings and even a 3-star, all the actual thoughtful reviews with written words were accompanied by 5 star ratings as well.

Until last night.

I now have a new text-based review, only 4 stars, which says:

“Book is 5 stars really but nothings perfect… This book seriously is a must read as you will understand at a deeper level human nature…”

What to say?

I give this reviewer 4 stars. I would give him or her 5 stars for the nice things said about my book… but nobody’s perfect.

In any case, if you STILL haven’t yet read my “must-read” book that will help you “understand at a deeper level human nature” — and you know who you are, and I know you are reading — then here’s where to find the number one comedy… and pickup… and con game… and hypnosis… and sales etc. book, as rated by the BFI, the Bejako Fund of Infotainment:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

My final call for ChatGPT Mastery and my $297 bonus

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Today is the final day I will be promoting Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery. Gasper’s promo goes on until the end of this week, but if you want the $297 bonus I’m offering (more info on that below), you will have to act today.

This, by the way, is an idea I picked up from email marketer Daniel Throssell.

Back in his famous or notorious 2021 Black Friday campaign, Daniel was promoting a bundle of products that were also being promoted by a bunch of other list owners.

Daniel did a lot of clever and effective things with that Black Friday campaign, but a particular one was that he didn’t abide by the deadline of the promo.

Instead, he cut his promo short. Because why not?

Daniel made just as many sales as he would have had he dragged his promo out, and probably more, by taking sales away from other affiliates. He made his job easier and the promo more exciting. And did a favor to his audience, by concentrating his selling, and by being able to move on to the next useful and exciting offer to promote.

You too can do the same.

The info marketing world is ultimately a world of turning air into money, cloud-like ideas into real-world results. There are practically no rules that you cannot bend or change.

You can set a different deadline… or use a different sales page… or not use a sales page at all, and close people in one-on-one conversations… or offer bonuses… or change the offer altogether…

It’s something to keep in mind if you are just getting started with info marketing, and to keep doubly in mind if you are already seeing success with it.

And now, if you want it before it disappears for ever, here are a few details about ChatGPT Mastery and the $297 Love/Hate AI bonus I am bundling with it:

#1. ChatGPT Mastery is a cohort course — it kicks off and ends on a specific date — that helps you actually integrate and benefit from AI.

The idea being, things in the AI space are changing so fast that anything that came out even a few months ago is likely to be out of date.

And rather than saying “Oh let me spend a few dozen hours every quarter researching the latest advice on how to actually use this stuff” — because you won’t, just like I won’t – you can just get somebody else to do the work of cutting a path for you through the quickly regenerating AI jungle.

#2. I myself have gone through through ChatGPT Mastery, from A-Z, all 30 days, earlier this year.

I didn’t pay for it because I was offered to get in for free.

I did go through it first and foremost for my own selfish interests — I feel a constant sense of guilt over not using AI enough in what I do — and only then with a secondary goal of promoting it if I benefited from it enough. So here I am.

#3. Gasper, the guy behind ChatGPT Mastery, is an ex-Boston Consulting Group guy and from what I can tell, one of those hardworking and productive consulting types, the kind I look upon with a mixture of wonder and green envy.

But to hear Gasper tell it, he quit his consulting job to have more freedom, started creating info products online like everybody else, realized he had just bought himself another 70 hr/week job, and then had the idea to automate as much of it as he could with AI.

He’s largely succeeded — he now spends his mornings eating croissants and sipping coffee while strolling around his new home in Mimizan, France, because most of his work of content creation and social media and even his trip planning have been automated in large part or in full.

#4. Before I went through the 30 days of ChatGPT Mastery, I had already been using ChatGPT daily for a couple years. Inevitably, that means a good part of what Gasper teaches was familiar to me.

Other stuff he teaches was simply not relevant (I won’t be using ChatGPT to write my daily emails, thank you, though I might use it to help if I start working with partners). The way I still benefited from ChatGPT Mastery was:

– By having my mind opened to using ChatGPT for things for things I hadn’t thought of before (just one example: I did a “dopamine reset” protocol over 4 weeks, which was frankly wonderful, and which ChatGPT designed for me, and which I got the idea for while doing ChatGPT Mastery)

– By seeing Gasper’s very structured, consulting-minded approach to automating various aspects of his business, and being inspired to port some of that to my own specific situation

– With several valuable meta-prompts that I continue to use, such as the prompt for generating custom GPTs

#5. The way you could benefit from ChatGPT Mastery is likely to be highly specific to what you do and who you are.

The program focuses on a different use case every day. Some days will be more relevant to you than others. Some of the topics include competitor analysis, market intel based on customer calls or testimonials, and of course the usual stuff like content and idea generation, plus hobuncha more.

If you do any of the specific things that Gasper covers, and if you do them on at least an occasional basis, then odds are you will get a great return on both the time and money and that ChatGPT Mastery requires of you, before the 30 days are out.

Beyond that, ChatGPT Mastery can open your mind to what’s possible, give you confidence and a bunch of examples to get you spotting what could be automated in what you do, plus the techniques for how to do it.

#6. The time required for ChatGPT Mastery is about 15-20 minutes per day for 30 days. The money required is an upfront payment of $297.

I can imagine that one or the other of these is not easy for you to eke out in the current moment.

All I can say is that it’s an investment that’s likely to pay you back many times over, in terms of both time and money. And the sooner you make that investment, the greater and quicker the returns will come.

#7. To make sure ChatGPT Mastery is effectively free for you on day 0, I am also adding in a bonus with an equivalent real-world value. It’s a training called Age of Insight, which I sold for $297 when I gave it live a couple years ago.

Age of Insight has nothing to do with AI. Instead, it’s complementary, hence the Love/Hate AI name of this promo:

If Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery helps you eliminate the parts of your work that you hate, Age of Insight will help you be better at things you love to do, at least if you’re anything like me — things like influencing and impacting people, often with written words alone.

The deadline to get Age of Insight along with ChatGPT Mastery is this Thursday at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to find out the full details about ChatGPT Mastery, or to get it now and get Age of Insight for free:

​https://bejakovic.com/gasper​

P.S. If you decide to get ChatGPT Mastery, then forward me your receipt, and I will get you access to Age of Insight.

P.P.S. If you bought ChatGPT Mastery when I promoted it before, then this bonus is for you too. So is the deadline. Write me before Thursday at 12 midnight PST to say you want the bonus, and I’ll get it to you.

It took me two minutes to take control of a valuable email list

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“So you just would like to use our email list, and go from there?”

“Yep, pretty much.”

“Ok. Awesome. Awesome. Let’s do it. I don’t see why not.”

Yesterday I got on a call with a business owner. He runs $700 worth of Facebook ads per day, and has been for past two years, to get qualified prospects onto sales calls.

He does no followup after that and doesn’t send any emails.

I made him an offer of “lemme see if I can make sales for you on commission only via email.”

He said yes after the first two minutes of the call. By the end of the 15-minute call, he had already created an account for me in his GHL and given me access to his entire email list.

My point today is something I have heard for years, but that I didn’t really experience directly until yesterday:

Good partners are resourceful, quick to act, and ready to share access to underused assets. And they are out there.

I don’t know what this has to do with my current promotion, the Love/Hate AI event, based around Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery. The only connection is that I myself might soon be using Gasper’s advice around AI for a lot more than just research.

In any case, if you would like to know more about ChatGPT Mastery and my current and soon-disappearing bonus to go with it, here are the details:

#1. ChatGPT Mastery is a cohort course — it kicks off and ends on a specific date — that helps you actually integrate and benefit from AI.

The idea being, things in the AI space are changing so fast that anything that came out even a few months ago is likely to be out of date.

And rather than saying “Oh let me spend a few dozen hours every quarter researching the latest advice on how to actually use this stuff” — because you won’t, just like I won’t – you can just get somebody else to do the work of cutting a path for you through the quickly regenerating AI jungle.

#2. I myself have gone through through ChatGPT Mastery, from A-Z, all 30 days, earlier this year.

I didn’t pay for it because I was offered to get in for free.

I did go through it first and foremost for my own selfish interests — I feel a constant sense of guilt over not using AI enough in what I do — and only then with a secondary goal of promoting it if I benefited from it enough. So here I am.

#3. Gasper, the guy behind ChatGPT Mastery, is an ex-Boston Consulting Group guy and from what I can tell, one of those hardworking and productive consulting types, the kind I look upon with a mixture of wonder and green envy.

But to hear Gasper tell it, he quit his consulting job to have more freedom, started creating info products online like everybody else, realized he had just bought himself another 70 hr/week job, and then had the idea to automate as much of it as he could with AI.

He’s largely succeeded — he now spends his mornings eating croissants and sipping coffee while strolling around his new home in Mimizan, France, because most of his work of content creation and social media and even his trip planning have been automated in large part or in full.

#4. Before I went through the 30 days of ChatGPT Mastery, I had already been using ChatGPT daily for a couple years. Inevitably, that means a good part of what Gasper teaches was familiar to me.

Other stuff he teaches was simply not relevant (I won’t be using ChatGPT to write my daily emails, thank you, though I might use it to help if I start working with partners). The way I still benefited from ChatGPT Mastery was:

– By having my mind opened to using ChatGPT for things for things I hadn’t thought of before (just one example: I did a “dopamine reset” protocol over 4 weeks, which was frankly wonderful, and which ChatGPT designed for me, and which I got the idea for while doing ChatGPT Mastery)

– By seeing Gasper’s very structured, consulting-minded approach to automating various aspects of his business, and being inspired to port some of that to my own specific situation

– With several valuable meta-prompts that I continue to use, such as the prompt for generating custom GPTs

#5. The way you could benefit from ChatGPT Mastery is likely to be highly specific to what you do and who you are.

The program focuses on a different use case every day. Some days will be more relevant to you than others. Some of the topics include competitor analysis, market intel based on customer calls or testimonials, and of course the usual stuff like content and idea generation, plus hobuncha more.

If you do any of the specific things that Gasper covers, and if you do them on at least an occasional basis, then odds are you will get a great return on both the time and money and that ChatGPT Mastery requires of you, before the 30 days are out.

Beyond that, ChatGPT Mastery can open your mind to what’s possible, give you confidence and a bunch of examples to get you spotting what could be automated in what you do, plus the techniques for how to do it.

#6. The time required for ChatGPT Mastery is about 15-20 minutes per day for 30 days. The money required is an upfront payment of $297.

I can imagine that one or the other of these is not easy for you to eke out in the current moment.

All I can say is that it’s an investment that’s likely to pay you back many times over, in terms of both time and money. And the sooner you make that investment, the greater and quicker the returns will come.

#7. To make sure ChatGPT Mastery is effectively free for you on day 0, I am also adding in a bonus with an equivalent real-world value. It’s a training called Age of Insight, which I sold for $297 when I gave it live a couple years ago.

Age of Insight has nothing to do with AI. Instead, it’s complementary, hence the Love/Hate AI name of this promo:

If Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery helps you eliminate the parts of your work that you hate, Age of Insight will help you be better at things you love to do, at least if you’re anything like me — things like influencing and impacting people, often with written words alone.

The deadline to get Age of Insight along with ChatGPT Mastery is this Thursday at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to find out the full details about ChatGPT Mastery, or to get it now and get Age of Insight for free:

https://bejakovic.com/gasper

P.S. If you decide to get ChatGPT Mastery, then forward me your receipt, and I will get you access to Age of Insight.

P.P.S. If you bought ChatGPT Mastery when I promoted it before, then this bonus is for you too. So is the deadline. Write me before Thursday at 12 midnight PST to say you want the bonus, and I’ll get it to you.

Announcing: My Love/Hate AI event

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Starting today, and ending Thursday at 12 midnight PST, I’m promoting Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery.

ChatGPT Mastery is a 30-day, email-delivered course that teaches you how to use AI to eliminate the work tasks you hate.

In my email yesterday, I wrote about a study that looked at AI use in a business setting.

That study found that telling people to “be more productive” using AI didn’t translate into any effect. On the other hand, telling people to use AI to “eliminate the parts of your job you hate” produced great results.

The fact is, I don’t use AI for much outside of research, as a replacement for awful Google search and for sifting through fluffy, overstuffed, and often irrelevant web content (it’s saved me hundreds of hours there).

But that’s because I have managed to build up my little online business, if that’s what you can call this email newsletter, into a collection of activities I’m either okay doing, or that I even love doing (such as, for example, writing this email).

I have been able to do this because 1) I write exclusively about things that interest me personally, such as influence and psychology and 2) because I apply those ideas in my writing in a way that lights up my readers’ brains, at least some of the time, and gives them a feeling of insight, of something new learned about themselves and their place in the world.

This feeling — because insight is a feeling — makes it dramatically more likely readers to buy when I have an offer that’s right for them, and keeps them coming back to read more. And that translates into a business that’s easy and fun to run.

But back to Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery.

It sells for $297.

If one small idea inside ChatGPT Mastery saves you just one hour of hateful work a month, ChatGPT Mastery easily pays for itself in the next month or two alone. After that, it turns into an investment that keeps paying you time and freedom dividends, without you having to lift a finger.

But to make sure ChatGPT is effectively free for you on day 0, as soon as you click the “buy now” button, I will also add in a bonus with an equivalent real-world value.

It’s a training I’ve given live to a group of a few dozen marketers and copywriters, and only sold once before, for $297, the same price that Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery sells for.

This training is called Age of Insight, and it’s about the influence and psychology that go with the feeling of insight, which you can create with written words alone.

This is a topic I have been interested in for a long time. I have written about it many times in these emails. But I never pulled together everything I know, everything I saw smart marketers like Rich Schefren, and Travis Sago, and Stefan Georgi doing, into one cohesive system, until I gave the Age of Insight training.

You might wonder how Age of Insight is related to AI.

It’s not.

In fact, it’s quite opposite and possibly complementary to it. Hence the name of this little promo, the Love/Hate AI event.

I love writing about the topic of insight, and I love applying insight techniques in what I write.

Maybe you will feel the same after you go through this training.

Even if not, being able to create that feeling of insight is supremely valuable, and that’s not just me saying it (those multimillionaire marketers I listed above have all said it in one way or another.)

But enough hard selling.

If you are considering ChatGPT Mastery, to take away the parts of your job that you hate, and if you’d like my Age of Insight training as an equivalent-value free bonus, then here’s Gasper’s sales page with the full info:

https://bejakovic.com/gasper

P.S. If you decide to buy via this affiliate link, then forward me your receipt, and I will get you access to Age of Insight.

P.P.S. If you bought ChatGPT Mastery when I promoted it before, then this bonus is for you too. So is the deadline. Write me before Thursday at 12 midnight PST to say you want the bonus, and it shall be done.

Where AI really shines (you’re guaranteed to love it)

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I was listening to a podcast recently on a topic I thought I would never ever listen to:

“Asking for a friend… which jobs are safe from AI?”

The reason I thought I would never ever listen to this is that I’m sure nobody knows anything when it comes to the real impact of AI, and so I figured the entire podcast would be bunk.

Fortunately, I went against my sureness. I listened anyways, and I was enlightened.

According to the podcast, the answer to “Which jobs are safe from AI” is:

1. Nobody knows

2. That doesn’t mean we cannot look closer and think about this issue in more detail and maybe draw some new and useful distinctions

For example:

One thing I heard in this podcast was about an internal company study.

Some company, presumably a law firm, took two separate offices and the paralegals working within those offices.

In one office, they instructed the paralegals to “use AI to become more productive.”

In the other office, they instructed the paralegals to “use AI to do the parts of your job that you hate.”

Result:

The first office, the “more productive” office, really got nothing out of AI.

The second office, the “parts of your job that you hate” office, flourished. They beavered away until they got AI to replace many things they hated doing. As a result, the paralegal role in that office changed into something more like junior attorney work.

These workers were by definition happier, by eliminating things from their work that they hate and spending more time doing things they are neutral on or even enjoy.

That’s why I say if you use AI where it really shines — to do the things you hate — you are guaranteed to love it.

On that note:

Starting tomorrow, and ending this Thursday, I will be promoting Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery, a 30-day, email-delivered course that teaches you how to use AI to eliminate the parts of your job that you hate.

I will have a bonus as part of this promo, which has nothing to do with AI, but which in my mind is complementary to Gasper’s offer, in ways that I will talk about starting tomorrow.

This bonus is equal in real-world value to the price that Gasper is asking for ChatGPT Mastery. (Of course, if you bought ChatGPT Mastery the first time I promoted it, earlier this year, you will also be able to get this bonus.)

I am also thinking to create one or two more bonuses for this promotion.

I have my own ideas on bonuses to create, but often, the best ideas come from my readers and customers.

So if you are considering getting ChatGPT Mastery, or have already gotten it, then hit reply.

Tell me about problems in your life, tell me about things you hate doing but have to do, or simply tell me what I know that you have always wanted to know.

No promises, except I promise that I will read and consider all replies for the bonuses I create as part of my promo this week.

Disconnect at my first FC Barcelona match

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Yesterday, for the first time ever, and after three years of living in Barcelona, I, a total non-fan, went to my first football game ever. And it was super exciting.

FC Barcelona, one of the most dominant and richest teams in the world, was playing Girona FC, a total underdog and second-to-last in the league standings.

The reality of the match:

Barcelona scored early. Girona equalized with a bicycle kick shot. There was lots of attacking and chances on both sides. And then, in the last minute of extra time, Barcelona scored the winning goal.

Honestly, it was the best possible way to see a real live football game for the first time ever.

But what really got me is the feeling of disconnect.

This match happened at the small Barcelona Olympic stadium, where FC Barcelona is playing while their main stadium is being refurbished.

There was almost no advertising anywhere, no flashing jumbotrons, no announcements, no fireworks.

There were lots of empty bleachers because this old Olympic stadium is not really good for watching football, plus apparently some fans are simply boycotting the games since this place is not the real “home” of Barcelona.

As a result, the entire atmosphere felt like watching a local under-17 practice more than some super consequential world-class match… featuring supremely skilled athletes chosen from millions who tried very hard to be worthy of appearing on this same stage… with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line in terms of possible sponsorships, injuries, transfers, etc.

It also felt weird to know that every consequential and inconsequential moment I was witnessing was being streamed all around the world, and that countless photos, reels, writeups, analyses, and stats from this event would appear billions of times on phones and laptops and TVs in the coming days.

I’m not sure what happens when something real, like a bunch of dudes running after a ball on a grassy pitch on Montjuic one afternoon, passes into the symbolic realm, like articles and photos and stories that can live forever.

But something happens.

It’s a very strange and powerful thing, something so strange and powerful that we usually like to shrug it off because the truth of it makes us uncomfortable and forces us to face things about ourselves that we’d rather ignore.

I realize this is all getting a little vague and philosophical.

Rather than waffling on more, I will simply point you to an email I wrote a long time ago.

This old deals with this topic, and in fact talks about a sociological theory that has to do specifically with this. But it’s not just theory. This old email also gives you a practical takeaway for your marketing and writing and branding, if those are the kinds of things you engage in.

By the way, after I wrote this email years ago, I got the following kinds of replies from readers:

“Glorious”

“This is a profound message John. Just a message of appreciation.”

“Daaaamn good!!!”

“The greatest crime you commit is not selling something in your emails. You have the best marketing insights of ANY list I’m on…”

That last comment came from “Australia’s best copywriter,” Daniel Throssell. In case you’re curious what Daniel and my other readers liked so well, and how you can use it in what you do today, here’s the email in question:

https://bejakovic.com/more-real-than-real/

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:

===

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).

===

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