Sloppy agree & amplify

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I’m reading a frustrating/fascinating article about Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin has been writing various blogs for close to 20 years, in which — so says the article — he advocates for shutting down the American experiment in democracy, and a return to monarchy.

You might think, so what, another Internet kook.

The difference is that Yarvin has the ear of the rich and powerful.

He’s apparently buddy-buddy with Vice President J.D. Vance, and, according to the article, he has become a kind of Machiavelli for Silicon Valley billionaires Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel.

And that’s where the trouble, or rather the sloppiness, starts.

Says the article, after Thiel wrote his book Zero to One and went on a publicity blitz, he reached out to Yarvin for advice. How to handle the inevitable question he would get from journalists, about getting more women into tech?

(Thiel apparently thinks this is a misguided question, and that the numbers of women in tech are fine as is.)

Here’s Yarvin’s advice, from the article:

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Yarvin suggested that Thiel deploy a pickup-artist tactic called “agree and amplify” — that is, ask a journalist, who probably had no solution in mind, what she would do to tackle the problem. “The purpose here is not to get the interlocutor to sleep with you, but to get her to fear this issue and run away from it — and ditto for future interviewers,” he wrote.

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I’m not sure who’s to blame for this nonsense — Yarvin, or the author of the article I’m reading, or both. But this is 100% not what agree & amplify is. It doesn’t even make sense when you think about the name:

Agree & amplify = First you agree, and then you amplify, or exaggerate, to make the whole thing absurd. For example:

JOURNALIST: Don’t you agree we need more women in tech?

THIEL: I absolutely do. I also think we need more women in coal mines, in slaughter houses, and on oil rigs, all of which are places of employment where women are vastly underrepresented.

I suspect Yarvin still hasn’t read my 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, etc. But it seems he needs to. He’s getting his commandments confused, and he’s giving out bad advice as a result.

Agree & amplify, and the strange psychology of why and when it works, is Commandment VI.

I have another commandment, Commandment VIII, about what Yarvin recommended to Thiel, to take the journalist’s question and reverse it.

Thing is, reversing a question is unlikely to have the effect Yarvin predicted, but the technique can be used to get people to work with you instead of against you, and to sell themselves on your plan, as if they came up with it on their own.

If you’d like more (properly researched and fact-checked) detail on all this, or you simply want to learn some powerful communication techniques that straddle the world of pickup artists, political propagandists, con men, and other savory and unsavory types:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

10 hacks for writing daily emails

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I’ve been writing daily sales emails, first for clients and then for myself, since 2017. In that time, I estimate I’ve written 3,000+ such emails. I have learned a thing or a thousand in the process. Here’s 10 of ’em, selected for impact and ease of use:

1. Write a 1-2-3 outline. Point 1 is your opening. Point 2 is your takeaway. Point 3 is your offer. Each point should be a few words to a sentence max. If you cannot express what you want to say in 3 points and each point in max a few words, your email will turn out a mess with startling probability.

2. Repurpose the headlines of long-running but little-known sales letters as your subject lines. One of my most successful (notorious) ones:

“Start a profitable repositioning business… with your own home as headquarters”

3. If you are ever in a horrible crunch for time or brainpower, you can always write a super basic email using the following format:

– Where you are right now

– How you are feeling

– Why you are short of time/brainpower to write a better email

– Why you’re writing an email nonetheless (and make this into a net positive for you reader)

– A link to your offer

An email like this can be just 150-250 words. It’s something you can do in 5 minutes or less, even if you’re brain-dead at the time.

4. Reuse content you’ve already written in other emails (eg. my point 3 above), or in your courses, books, blog posts, comments on Facebook, comments on Reddit, letters to your grandma.

5. The #1 most powerful editing tool is the delete key. If something isn’t quite working, take it out instead of trying to fix it.

6. If you have written a cliche, either take it out or “lampshade” it — exaggerate it and draw even more attention to it.

7. If you have written something your reader already knows, either take it out or acknowledge your reader already knows it, and explain why you are still talking about it.

8. Writing ungrammatical gets people to pay more attention, to notice and remember you more, and maybe even to be amused. It sometimes also draws replies from very intelligent people, replies which can be profitably put to work in future emails.

9. Just about anything can be a daily email topic. If it doesn’t look like it, it’s because you’re not looking close enough. Look closer.

10. It’s helpful to restrict yourself in terms of topic, style, core idea you want to get across, etc. It saves time and makes your emails more impactful and surprising day after day. For help with that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

New money from old courses

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Do you have an old course that’s not selling much any more?

Or do you know somebody else’s great course from a ways back?

If so, here’s my deal for you:

1. Hit reply.

2. Tell me what the course is.

3. In turn, I’ll share with you a resource about how to make new money from this old course, without paying for ads, or running a promo, or recruiting affiliates, or becoming an affiliate yourself.

Scientists shocked to discover AI does what it’s supposed to

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I’m signed up to get the weekly newsletter of Nature, the big science journal. The deal is, I give them my email address, and each week they send me a summary of the most interesting science breakthroughs.

But here’s what they sent me yesterday, reporting on new research from MIT:

“The brains of people using the artificial-intelligence bot ChatGPT to write an essay are less engaged than those without access to online tools.”

At the risk of sounding crude, no shit, Sherlock. Isn’t that the whole point? In the words of a smart dead guy, Alfred North Whitehead:

“It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy‑books and eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.”

The MIT research is only newsworthy because we all respond to anxiety-stirring and fear-mongering. If it’s not second-hand smoke, then it’s parabens in the water, or now, ChatGPT. “It’s coming for your brain!”

But let me turn this email around to be constructive instead of destructive:

I use ChatGPT daily. My brain is very little engaged while it’s happening. And I don’t think any kind of a problem.

At the same time, I also force myself each day to perform a kind of mental cavalry charge, specifically, to write an email like this.

There’s value in such a daily routine from an outside standpoint. I think people can sense that I write these emails, for real, flaws and flops included, live every day.

There’s also value from an inside standpoint. Writing a new and fresh email each day keeps what little brain I have sharp, active, and engaged.

All that’s to say, if you are worried that your brain is going to mush, or even if you aren’t, then start writing, regularly, and your brain will get fit right quick.

And if you put what you’ve written into an email like this one, and send it out to the world, then there’s extra value to that, even if it’s just you reading at the start.

If you want some guidance and help with that, take a look at my Daily Email Habit service.

A key idea behind Daily Email Habit is that there’s value in writing, even if AI could do it for you.

Daily Email Habit helps you get that value by sending you a new email prompt or “puzzle” each day, and narrowing the scope of what to write about.

If you think of a daily email as a cavalry charge, then Daily Email Habit gives you the direction to charge in, so you and your mental horse don’t stay locked in place due to indecision, and so you don’t half-heartedly trot here and there and back again, tiring out the poor beast without getting anywhere.

For more information on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Why Parker Worth has got me beat in email marketing

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Back in January, I got a message from Parker Worth that said:

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I just did a list swap with Chris Orzy.

Was wondering if you’d be down to trade lead magnets?

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In case you don’t know Parker, he is “just a guy with a neck tattoo,” as per his Twitter bio.

In reality, Parker is a bit more than that. He’s got an online audience of over 70,000 people spread across Twitter and LinkedIn and his email list, and he’s built a 6-figure business on the back of it, teaching people how to write online. And most impressive:

Parker has done it all starting in 2023, in under 2 years.

I replied to Parker to say yes to his offer of a list swap and… five months later, here we are, finally getting it done.

What to say? Parker lives in Brazil. I live in Spain. I guess we’ve absorbed the wrong things from the local cultures.

Anyway, the reason why I introduced Parker by talking about how short he’s been in the game, and yet how well he’s doing, is that nobody gets results like this without being systematic and strategic about it.

I know whereof I speak, because I myself am anything but systematic and strategic.

I like novelty. I like to improvise. I like to prove to myself I can do something and then move on to the next thing. It’s the only way I can live long-term, but it’s got its downsides. For example:

The first 2 years of this newsletter, from 2018 to 2020, in the same time that Parker built up an audience of 80k people and sold $250k worth of stuff, I managed to build up an audience of 100 people, and I earned precisely 0 dollars from the 100+ emails I had written to that mega-list.

That’s ok. It worked out for me in the end.

But my point is that maybe Parker has something worthwhile to teach you (did I just manage a pun), specifically, how to be more strategic and systematic when it comes to email marketing.

Enter Parker’s 3-Minute Email Template.

Parker wrote an email once that made him money. So he ended up reusing it over and over. It has made him tens of thousands of dollars since.

He has given this email to others. It has made them tens of thousands of dollars as well.

Parker has turned his email into a template, along with couple real-life examples, and has recorded a video explaining the psychology of why it works, if you really wanna go that deep.

He’s giving it all away if you sign up to his list below.

Yes, sign up for the profitable email template.

But really, sign up to Parker’s list for a different perspective than you might get in my own emails, one that can make you more strategic and systematic about what you do, so you can get to success with your newsletter or email list more quickly than I did with mine.

Here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/parker

100x return

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All week long, I’ve been promoting Shaina Keren’s Get A Raise course. As I’ve been saying over and over, if you work a 9-5, this course offers the best and clearest ROI of anything I have ever bought, sold, or even seen.

But what does “best and clearest ROI” actually mean?

Lemme give you example.

I got on a call with Shaina before agreeing to promote her course. I asked her for some success stories.

She shared a few with me, which I’ve already written about in an earlier email, involving people she coached to significant salary raises, following the same process she lays out inside Get A Raise.

And then, a couple days after that call, Shaina wrote me with a followup:

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Got another great testimonial from a client today who followed up on a call to update me (verbally) – last year in coaching I helped her move from a Creative Director position at a small agency earning $72k to an internal role with the same title at a large RE firm earning $135k. She then took the Get a Raise course and used it to make an ask up to $150k at her annual review this year!

===

Yes, there was a big jump in salary from switching roles, but that’s not what I wanna focus on.

Rather, even after switching to a new role, Shaina’s client got a salary increase of an extra $15k, in the first year, by following Shaina’s course.

Get a Raise normally sells for $197.

Until tonight at 12 midnight, there’s also a blue-light Bejako special, so you can get get $50 off usual price, and so the course is just $147.

At that price, the $15k in extra salary that the creative director above got is a 100x ROI to going through this quick and easy course, and then following simple process that Shaina lays out.

What kind of an ROI can you get?

I can’t say, but I bet it’s better than from any other info product you can buy right now, at least if you work at 9-5.

In any case, the deadline for this opportunity is tonight, Thursday, at 12 midnight PST. if you wanna take advantage of it:

1. Head on over to ​https://bejakovic.com/raise​ and get Shaina’s course. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

3. Go through the 1 hour or so of training, then apply it in the next few days or weeks, and profit, hopefully to the tune of tens of thousands of new dollars in salary.

Abe Lincoln’s historic mistake at Gettysburg

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Today is the last day to get Shaina Keren’s course Get A Raise, at a special Bejako-only $50 discount.

If you work at a 9-5, I believe this course has the clearest and surest ROI of any course I have sold, bought, or even seen.

If you’re interested in taking advantage of this opportunity before it disappears, the full details on how to claim it are at the bottom of this email.

And now, with that important announcement out of the way, let me tell you that I have recently taken to memorizing stuff by heart.

First came a few famous poems by Williams Blake and Shakespeare.

After that, I memorized Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which I’d never even read before, even though it’s one of the most famous speeches of all time, and certainly the most famous by an American president.

Thing is, I found something frankly wrong inside the Gettysburg Address, which I wanted to share with you. After the famous “Four score and seven years ago” opening, Lincoln says the following:

“The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they [the soldiers who fought and died at Gettysburg] did here.”

I don’t know whether this is just humility or a lack of historical perspective.

But the fact is that the world greatly noted and has long remembered what Lincoln said at Gettysburg.

On the other hand, the world has largely forgotten what the soldiers did at Gettysburg. Was it a big battle? A small battle? Who won? Was it pivotal in the war or just a waste of human life?

And if you don’t agree with me, then think of the dozens of other major Civil War battles that didn’t have their own address by Lincoln. Unless you’re a Civil War buff, odds are you cannot name any of them.

Same goes for the thousands of major battles that have raged throughout history — completely nameless and forgotten, if they didn’t have a Lincoln or a Caesar or a Thucydides to write or speak about them.

My point is that Lincoln, in that statement that “the world can never forget what they did here,” fell into the usual trap of thinking that the act is ultimately what matters, rather than the presentation, the transferable image, the meme of the thing.

What I’m telling you is, if you build it, they will NOT come — not unless you do a good job telling the story of it. That’s true in history. It’s true in business. And it’s true equally in your own personal career.

Which brings me back to Shaina’s course. Because maybe you’re working at your job and you’re thinking, “I shouldn’t have to ask for a raise. They should just give me one based on how hard I work and the value I bring here. And certainly they will figure it out, in time. My boss will little note nor much appreciate my asking directly for more money, but he can never forget what I do at this company.”

If that’s what you’re secretly thinking, I’d like to tell you that history is not on your side. And if you want to take fate into your own hands, and make sure your boss notes and remembers what you do, and pays you accordingly, then here’s my suggestion:

1. Head on over to ​https://bejakovic.com/raise​ and get Shaina’s course. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

3. Go through the 1 hour or so of training, then apply it in the next few days or weeks, and profit, hopefully to the tune of tens of thousands of new dollars in salary.

The deadline for this offer is today, Thursday, June 26, at 12 midnight PST. After that, this special discount, of the people, by the people, for the people, shall perish from the earth.

Last call for Get A Raise

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This is the last email I will send to promote Shaina Keren’s course Get A Raise. The promise behind this course is straightforward and is right there in the title.

The background, in case you missed it, is that Shaina is a highly paid career coach and consultant.

She has helped lots of clients get major raises for the work they were already doing, from $15k on the low end all the way up to $250k on the high end.

Now here’s an unrelated fact:

When the 1,037-page book Gone With The Wind was published, some ankle-biter wrote, “Well, people may not like it very much but nobody can deny that it gives a lot of reading for your money.”

Shaina’s course doesn’t give you a lot of reading for your money.

It’s short — you can go through it in an under an hour.

It’s also stress-minimal. It’s easy to put into action, without causing you sweaty, sleepless nights as you anticipate the salary conversation you’re supposed to have with your boss. None of that. Just put together a doc, the way Shaina advises, and deliver it to your boss along with a 55-word script, which Shaina gives you.

How much can this be worth to you? I can’t say for sure. But as I’ve been saying all week, I believe Shaina’s course offerst the surest and biggest ROI of any course have bought, sold, or even seen.

And if you act by 12 midnight PST tonight, you can get $50 off the usual price, so you can get still more value for your money. If you’d like to do so:

1. Head on over to ​https://bejakovic.com/raise​ and get Shaina’s course. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

3. Go through the 1 hour or so of training, then apply it in the next few days or weeks, and profit, hopefully to the tune of tens of thousands of new dollars in salary.

The case against Get A Raise

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This week, I’m promoting Shaina Keren’s course Get A Raise. It’s only relevant to you if you’re actually working a 9-5 job and are getting paid a salary.

If you’re a business owner, a freelancer, or are simply retired and living on Tim Ferris’s palm-tree-and-hammock island and are reading this only because you’re bored out of your mind from not working, then clearly this course is not for you.

Still with me?

Good. I will assume you are working a 9-5.

In that case, as I’ve been saying all week, Shaina’s Get A Raise is the clearest and surest ROI of any course I have sold, bought, or even seen.

Shaina has gotten people salary increases from $60k to $250k, and pretty much everybody — or literally everybody — Shaina has coached on this has gotten a significant raise.

I got on a call with Shaina before agreeing to promote her course. I asked her how she got such consistent and large salary increases for her clients.

And… the dark secret came out. Shaina explained:

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I would vet people, and if I thought you could get a raise, and where your desk is positioned, what the dynamics are in the workforce, I was very confident. I don’t think I ever worked with anyone who didn’t get it. I turned a lot of people away and I said, “You don’t deserve a raise, or where you’re working you do deserve it, but you’re simply not gonna get it.”

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Aha. So it’s a case of selection bias. I followed up to ask more specifically about the kinds of people she turned away. She explained:

– any government job — there are rules and they would rather fire you than break them

– medical industry or similar, with non-negotiable pay grades

– if you work for a very small business, which simply doesn’t have the budget

So if you have a job where your salary is literally non-negotiable — because you work in a highly regulated industry or field — or if there’s not enough money in the entire business to pay you what you deserve, then this course cannot help you, and you shouldn’t buy it.

Otherwise, buy this course. Apply it. And write me to tell me about the many thousands of extra dollars you are getting paid as a result.

Except, hold on.

If you are a careful reader, you might have spotted that Shaina also said she turned away people who did not deserve a raise. In other words, Shaina turned away people who were doing work that job simply wasn’t worth paying more for, even if there was money and opportunity in the business to do so.

If that’s you, you should still buy this course. Apply it. And write me to tell me about the many thousands of extra dollars you are getting paid as a result.

The only difference is, you won’t be able to apply this course by the end of this week.

If you don’t deserve a raise today, it will take up to six months for you to put together a list of convincing reasons — like Shaina teaches in the course — that you can then show off to your boss, and that you can use to legitimately ask for a raise, typically worth tens of thousands of dollars.

I won’t push much more. Again, I think this course is a complete no-brainer if you work a 9-5, when you compare what you can get out of it to what you have to put in.

Shaina’s coaching, the one that got people salary increases of $60k to $250k, cost $1,500, and it was a steal at that price.

Shaina had enough of doing those coaching calls, and she created the Get A Raise course with the same templates, scripts, and process she used in the coaching.

Get A Raise normally sells for $197. But because you’re a reader of this newsletter, you can get it for $50 off before tomorrow, so it’s just $147. At that price, it’s likely to be 1/100th of what you can stand to make with this info in the next year.

Plus, the course is quick to go through (less than an hour), and painless to apply, at least if you deserve a raise.

(If you don’t yet deserve a raise, again, it will take some work to start deserving a raise. I won’t sugarcoat it. But time is passing anyhow.)

In any case, the deadline for this offer is tomorrow, Thursday, June 26, at 12 midnight PST. If wanna take advantage of the current discount, here’s what to do:

1. Head on over to ​https://bejakovic.com/raise​. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

If you got questions or doubts, write me and I will address them either in private or, if appropriate, under the bright lights of this newsletter.

But as I wrote yesterday, I’ve never sold, bought, or even seen a course that offers such clear and direct ROI.

If you’re working a 9-5 job, and if you believe you’re not worth firing, then you are likely being underpaid, and Shaina’s course can help fix that.

A quick and permanent fix to lots of seemingly insurmountable problems

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Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I heard an enlightening Jay Abraham story:

Jay was advising a client who was in deep trouble. The client had tried everything — “Everything!” — and was still about to go bankrupt.

After a half day of frustrating consultation — “I already tried that,” the client kept saying — Jay finally just threw up his hands, told the client to double his prices, and stormed out.

The client first thought Jay was an idiot and a jerk. Then, he had a beer with his colleagues, and thought a bit. He decided to double his prices exactly as Jay had advised. Suddenly, everything clicked and his business was saved.

Point being, pricing can be the quick and permanent fix to lots of seemingly insurmountable problems, which can otherwise suck up years of life and blood and effort, with nothing to show for it.

That applies to you if you’re a business owner, the way Jay Abraham’s client was. It also applies to you if you’re working for someone else.

And if that’s the case:

This week, until Thursday, I’m promoting Shaina Keren’s neat, elegant, and effective course Get A Raise.

Get A Raise is for you if you’re working for someone else, and you’re frustrated, and you think your only way out is to get a new job, or to quit your job and strike out on your own, or to go into a completely new career etc.

I’m not telling you not to do any of those things — you’re smart and grown up, and you can make your own decisions. All I am telling you is that there is another option as well, which is simply to “raise your prices” in the form of getting paid significantly more for what you already do, right where you are.

I’ve been out of the employee world for a good while, as evidenced by my telling the above story of Jay Abraham’s business client to sell Shaina’s course for people who work 9-5.

I’m promoting Shaina’s course nonetheless because I was so impressed by the results her clients got:

* An accountant, who was getting paid $50k, who went on to be paid $110k

* A secretary who was in reality the brains behind the entire company, who went from a $90k salary to a $150k salary

* A salesperson who had gradually taken on a kind of operator role, and who went from a salary of $250k to $500k

The best part is that Shaina’s process is new (at least to me, and I once wrote a book about salary negotiation) and it’s stress-minimal. Just prepare a single document the way Shaina tells you to prepare, and deliver it to your boss, along with a 55-word scripted explanation. No haggling, intimidating, or being intimidated necessary.

Shaina’s Get A Raise course is based on her $1,500 one-on-one coaching program. It contains the same information, without the handholding.

The course normally sells for $197, a fraction of what the coaching sells for. But right now, as a special deal for you and you alone, because you happen to be a reader of this newsletter, you can also get an extra $50 off the regular price.

That means the current deal on Get A Raise is just $147, 1/10th of Shaina’s coaching, which itself was 1/10th (or even less) of the salary increases that people who apply this process typically get.

This offer is good until this Thursday, June 26, at 12 midnight PST. If you wanna get it:

1. Head on over to https://bejakovic.com/raise. There’s no sales page for this baby, just an order form with a few testimonials (eg, “I still can’t believe I get to keep the job I love and feel well compensated.”)

2. Put in the code BEJAKOVIC50 at checkout. Make sure the price drops from $197 to $147 before you buy.

If you got questions or doubts, write me and I will address them either in private or, if appropriate, under the bright lights of this newsletter.

But as I wrote yesterday, I’ve never sold, bought, or even seen a course that offers such clear and direct ROI.

If you’re working a 9-5 job, and if you believe you’re not worth firing, then you are likely being underpaid, and Shaina’s course can help fix that.