Why all my emails have a Zanzibar address

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A reader writes in to ask:

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John–just noticed you’re based in Zanzibar City. How is it over there? Have been curious.

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I get this question maybe once a month on average. Some people note the mandatory address listed at the bottom of each of these emails, which says I live at “101 Desert Kite Drive” in Zanzibar City, in Tanzania.

The fact is, I’ve never been to Zanzibar or Tanzania.

So why is the address there? The story goes something like this:

During covid I was traveling the world.

Since there were lots of restrictions and lockdowns, I launched a newsletter called Masks On A Plane, about where it was open and attractive to travel.

Tanzania at the time was one of a few open locations. Since you have to put in some kind of physical address for an email newsletter, I used a made-up address in Zanzibar City at the bottom of each Masks On A Plane issue.

I eventually shut that newsletter down, but the address became a kind of running inside joke, including now in this newsletter.

Ok, so what? Well, get ready, for I’m about to share a truth that I live my life by, which might be useful to you too:

I’ve done a lot of traveling in my life. I typically dread it before it happens, and I find it stressful while it’s happening. I still do it, a lot, for the same reasons that I read a lot, not because I love reading, but because I think it’s important.

Specifically:

I have this theory that mindset <<< action <<< environment.

In other words, if you want to change how your life is, right now, the hardest way to go about it is to change how you think and feel, sitting where you are now, with gritted teeth, trying to be all grateful and creative and accepting.

A much better way to change how your life is, right now, is to go do something different than what you’re doing now. Go wash the dishes, or get up and stretch and squat, or go make a castle out of a deck of playing cards.

And the bestest way to change how your life is right now?

Go somewhere else. Go outside your house, your neighborhood, your solar system. A new environment is sure to change how your life is right now, completely.

But is changing your life a good thing?

Definitely not all the time, at least for me. I got completely burned out on travel following my covid-era peregrinations, living out of a backpack, a new town every month or so, over and over for two and half years.

It took me a long time after that, sitting in one place, to even consider taking another trip unless absolutely necessary.

But I’m back to traveling. Again, not because I enjoy it so much, but because I feel it’s so important — for a change of perspective, to learn something new, or simply for the blessed relief of arriving back home and having everything feel easy.

And now, on to business:

You might wonder, if I don’t really like traveling, and if I don’t really like reading, then what do I like?

I personally do like writing. Writing is something I look forward to.

Maybe you feel the same.

Or maybe… you don’t. Maybe you feel about writing the way I feel about traveling, as a “should,” a responsibility rather than something to look forward to.

If that’s the case, you might get value out of my Daily Email Habit. You can think of it as a kind of guided tour of the most attractive and valuable locations in daily email land.

With Daily Email Habit, you still get to do and experience everything yourself, but a lot of the care, work, and thought that normally goes into writing a daily email has been taken care of for you.

In case you’re interested in finding out more:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

Trump whale research intelligence

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This past November, right after Trump won the election, the WSJ ran a story about a “Trump whale” — a mysterious trader, known only as Theo, who had made a series of very large bets on the Polymarket prediction market.

Theo had bet $30 million of his own money that 1) Trump would win the election, that 2) he would win the popular vote, and that 3) he would sweep the “blue wall” of swing states.

Against the predictions of all pollsters, and against even the betting odds on Polymarket, all three things came to pass, and Theo collected $50 million as a payday.

The WSJ managed to get in contact with Theo. He explained some of his reasoning for why he was confident enough to put down $30 million of his own money on bets against what both experts and the wisdom of the crowd were saying.

That’s how I learned the following:

The normal way to poll people is to ask them, “Who you gonna vote for?” That produces certain results, which as this past election and previous elections have shown, can be significantly off from reality.

But a less normal way to poll people is to ask them, “Who your neighbor gonna vote for?” For whatever psychological reason, this tends to produce poll results that are significantly different than the normal way to poll.

Theo looked at a couple of these “neighbor” polls done in September alongside normal polls. The neighbor polls were all suggesting that support for Trump was several percentage points higher than everybody was saying.

This became one of the data points that gave this guy the confidence to make his ballsy bets, and the info to bet right and win $50 mil.

I’m telling you this for two reasons.

Reason one is if you’re trying to get info out of your readers, it might make sense not to ask them, “What do you want,” but to ask, “What do you think other people would want?” I tried it while initially working out the right pricing for Daily Email Habit, and it gave me useful info.

Reason two is simply that this neighbor polling thing is just another example of how much our own self-centered thinking tends to color how we see the world and how we behave.

I’m telling you this specifically in case you are ever plagued by thoughts like, “Nobody would want to read what I write,” or, “Nobody would want to pay money for this offer I have.”

The sticking point there is the old, I Me Mine.

If you find yourself ever thinking thoughts like — convincing yourself that you can predict what other people think, when it comes to what you are doing or could be doing — then take a lesson from the Trump whale:

The next time you are sure that you know what other people think, take yourself out of the equation. Ask yourself, “Would there be people who would want to read or buy this… if my neighbor were offering it?”

Do this, and you might win bigly.

And btw, today’s email was based on my daily puzzle that went out via Daily Email Habit. If you enjoyed today’s email, maybe you’d enjoy writing emails following daily email habit? Or maybe your neighbor would? Here’s more info in either case:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Contrast positioning for your high-priced offers

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A couple years ago, I read a screenplay by William Goldman for a pirate movie that never got made.

It was very instructive.

The screenplay opens up with a big gruff sailor on board an 18th-century trading vessel. The big gruff sailor is a strong and normally brave man.

But right now, the sailor appears unsure of himself. That’s because he sees a deserted, aimless ship on the horizon.

Could it be pirates?

“It might have been the plague,” the sailor mutters. “Sudden plague could have taken them all.” He looks away from the deserted ship nervously, and looks to his captain.

The captain, on the other hand, says nothing.

Unlike the big gruff sailor, the captain is not scared of ghost ships, and he’s not scared of whatever evil secrets they hide, pirates included.

The captain keeps his eyes trained on the deserted, nearing hulk, ready for whatever it may bring.

And then there’s the switch.

Because on board of the deserted ship that’s getting closer and closer, a figure appears.

The figure is large. It’s black. And it seems to be… on fire?

The figure starts to growl in an inhuman voice that carries over the waves:

“Death or surrender… surrender or die… the Devil bids you choose…”

The normally calm and collected captain, who is so much braver and cooler than the big, gruff sailor, turns pale. He turns and immediately signals to have the white flag hoisted.

Because the captain knows.

That’s not just any pirate ship that’s nearing.

And that’s not just any pirate.

That’s Blackbeard.

I’m telling you this because Goldman’s storytelling strategy applies as well if you sell online. It’s good for building up the main character of a movie… or for building up value for your high-priced offers.

In a few more words:

If you want to make Blackbeard — or your offer — sound important, unique, immense, you can jump straight in, and pile on the adjectives, promises, and threats.

That’s what a lot of business owners do.

At best, it works if you grit your teeth and keep piling on the adjectives, promises, and threats, and if you don’t charge all that much.

At worst, it doesn’t work at all, even when you start dropping the price.

A much better strategy is to do what Goldman did above.

Build up one thing, such as the big gruff sailor… use that to build up a second thing, such as the cool collected captain… and then finally use all that built-up power and contrast to immediately communicate the importance, uniqueness, and immensity of your third thing, say, Blackbeard.

That’s my perceived value tip for you for today, at least if you sell stuff online.

My offer for you today is my important, unique, and immense Daily Email Habit service. It can be useful and hard-working on board your own trading vessel. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The client-catching benefits of having your own offers

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I got a testimonial to crow about and then a possibly valuable lesson for ya.

First the testimonial. Says Brett Freeman, a copywriter out of the UK who recently signed up for my Daily Email Habit service:

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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 🙂

===

Pretty nice! I’m happy to feature Brett’s little case study, and put it up on the sales page. But of course, it’s really up to Brett’s previous work, with just a bit of extra catalyst that I added via Daily Email Habit.

I talked to Brett a while back (gasp, on Zoom, one to one, just because I wanted to hear who he is and what he’s up to.)

He told me he’s a copywriter, primarily working with fitness brands. He has a PT background himself, and he launched a few offers for fitness folks. (I’m guessing that’s where the £170 sale came from.)

Which leads me to the possibly valuable lesson I wanna give ya.

I once watched an hour-long YouTube video of a guy making cold calls to rustle up leads.

He was selling sales training to local business owners.

The very first call on the video was pretty impressive.

Within a couple minutes, the sales trainer cold-called a local business owner… introduced himself… had a bit of a chat about the business owner’s problems… and then scheduled a time to come into the local business owner’s office and have a proper meeting — with the clear and stated goal of selling something if it works out.

The thing that stuck out to me was how the cold caller introduced himself and opened the conversation, right after the line connected.

He didn’t say, “Hey Bill, I’m a salesman with an offer that might be a good fit for your business.”

He also didn’t say, “Hey Bill, WHO DO YOU HAVE IN YOUR CORNER to help you get the most out of your sales team, with NO RISK to you?”

Instead, he said, “Hey Bill, I’m a business owner here in Towson as well. I’m guessing you’ve never heard of me?”

The online, non-cold-calling version of that is exactly what Brett is doing.

Having your own list and your own offers allows you to genuinely say, “I’m also a business owner” — because you are.

All that’s to say, if you’re a client-chasing copywriter and you don’t have some kind of an offer, you’re missing out on positioning that can help you get exactly what you’re after. The magical thing is you don’t even have to make any sales of your offer for it to still have a positive effect. The sooner you start working on this, the easier your life will get.

And if you are a copywriter like Brett, who is smartly selling your own offers to your own list, however small, then I can only end by inviting you to check out my Daily Email Habit service.

Brett signed up for it, even though he knows how to write emails, as insurance.

If you’d like something similar, or for more info on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Reinforcement training

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I thought I was saved:

Age 20, I was lurking around the university library like all normal college freshmen do on a Saturday afternoon.

I flipped over a book that somebody had left on a table. It turned out to be an instructional manual for cognitive behavioral therapists.

As night started to fall, I read it. It blew my mind.

I recognized all the distorted patterns of thinking that the book described, which lead to anxiety and depression. I knew them all from my own head. Now I had labels to identify them, and techniques to challenge and redirect them in the future.

For a day or two after, I walked around on a cloud, feeling my life was transformed. I had finally found a way out of the gloom that had formed around me in my teenage years.

Except it didn’t last.

Within a couple days, the CBT stuff had largely slipped from my mind. So it was back to catastrophizing, and black-and-white thinking, and overgeneralization.

Apparently, I’m not unique in this. A few days ago, I was reading an article about the promise of AI for treating mental illness. The article mentioned CBT, and how effective and popular it still is — IF. From the article:

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When [Alison Darcy, a psychologist at Stanford] was in graduate school, she treated dozens of hospitalized patients using C.B.T.; many experienced striking improvements but relapsed after they left the hospital. C.B.T. is “best done in small quantities over and over and over again,” she told me.

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I’m telling you this because in my still-catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, and overgeneralizing head, this connected to another thing I was reading a few days ago.

This other thing was a book by sales trainer David Sandler.

Sandler had came up with this amazing and low-stress sales system. He wrote it up in his book. He taught it to beaten down, despondent salesmen during live seminars.

The salesmen went out of the seminar walking on clouds, certain they had been saved from ever again being bullied by prospects or ashamed of selling.

Except it didn’t last.

That’s why Sandler’s book is called You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar. From that book:

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Of course, people want instantaneous impact change. They want to see positive, enduring changes immediately. But our experience is that that kind of change is going to be sustainable over time only if you create a solid ongoing reinforcement program to back up the learning.

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Maybe this is true of all really effective but unnatural systems.

You hear such a system described. It makes sense. You get energized, follow through for a couple days.

Eventually though, you revert back to the mean.

The solution: small doses, over time, with regular reinforcement.

Yes, I know this is the exact opposite of what typical direct response offers promise (Gene Schwartz’s publishing company was called Instant Improvement).

But this reinforcement learning approach has its appeals as well:

It’s easy to get started with something when you know it only requires small doses, rather than a drastic change.

And with reinforcement training, it’s easier to get committed to starting today, rather than starting later AKA never. That’s because since change will take time, and reinforcement, rather than a one time big bang that you can get with the flick of a credit card, every minute that you delay ends up costing you down the line. Best start today.

It holds for CBT… for sales training… and for the effective but unnatural habit that is writing a daily email for your business.

For CBT reinforcement, you now have AI apps to talk to you and offer to correct your distorted thinking day in and day out.

For sales training, you have David Sandler’s President Club, which reinforces his sales system during weekly meetups for a modest $12,000 a year.

And as for daily emails, you have my Daily Email Habit service, which nudges you to write a daily email every day, and gives you a puzzle to mull over, and even some hints to make sure what you write is effective.

Daily Email Habit doesn’t use AI, and it doesn’t quite cost $12,000 a year, at least yet. If you’d like more information on it, today, when it’s best to get started:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

Faster typing = better writing?

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A few days ago, recently released Greek soldier GC Tsalamagkakis, who used to write code for CERN (the particle accelerator people) and now writes copy for ecom brands, posted an interesting question in my little Daily Email House community:

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A lot of times I find myself ready to write my daily email but not starting.

I have all these ideas in my head, I know how I wanna start and I have a brief idea on what it will look like on the middle and end.

But I don’t start immediately. Sometimes I catch myself thinking “I have to type aaaaall that now? It will take so much time 😒“

Or I might write a part of the email in a way that is more brief but also worse.

Now, it might be because I’m lazy or it might be because caffeine can hit me like a truck sometimes and thoughts are zooming too fast.

But either way, I believe that the faster I can type, the less friction will be between the thought and its materialization.

Have you ever thought about it?

What do you think?

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I never thought about typing speed — maybe because I’m a mediocre typist.

But I do agree with the underlying thought. I find it’s really important to write down ideas quickly. It’s a race against my own short-term memory to capture something that can turn out to be effective or useful before it disappears.

Over the years, I’ve hit upon a number of tricks to write down stuff quick, in spite of my mediocre typing speed:

1. absence of punctuation

2. absence of capitalization

– tricking myself with the “hyphen” trick, using a bunch of hyphens at the start of each line to make it feel like notes instead of proper sentences, so i just write it down instead of agonize over it

4. shorthand w/ lotsa abbrevs

5. placeholders for [sections that i’ll figure out later]

6. using abc in place of names i don’t know and xyz for figures that i’ll have to look up

7. stupid ideas that i will delete later

8. no editing if i make mistakes, i meant even if i make mistakes but whatever

9. phonetic spelling that’s good enuff

10. headings that i write down before i start writing to sketch out the general trend of what i want to say such as:

GC QUESTION

MY STRATEGIES FOR WRITING IDEAS DOWN FAST

OFFER

Speaking of offer:

My offer today would be Daily Email House, the lively community where the GC posted his question, and a number of other daily email writing marketers and business owners chimed in with their thoughts.

However, The House is not yet available as a “front-end” offer, but only as an upsell for those who sign up for my Daily Email Habit service.

Currently, I’m offering people a week’s trial on Daily Email house on me, but again, only if you sign up for Daily Email Habit.

For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

… we are the children

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I’ve been waiting all year for this.

Well, specifically, I’ve been waiting since April last year.

That’s when I made a note in my journal that I should write an email about the song We Are The World.

Today is January 28, the day that We Are The World was originally recorded, back in 1986. That makes today a particularly good day to talk about it.

You’ve probably heard We Are The World. Maybe you were even around when it came out.

Basically, We Are The World was a bunch of the biggest U.S. pop stars of the time, singing a simple, heartwarming/sappy, highly repetitive song to raise funds for famine relief.

Each of the pop stars sang just a line or two of the total song — a basic melody, over a background of generic pop instrumentation.

But even if you don’t watch the video, it’s remarkable how quickly you can recognize who’s singing, just by the tone of their voices, within a second or two:

Cindy Lauper — shrill and colorful

Ray Charles — smooth and swinging

Stevie Wonder — clearly from another dimension

Michael Jackson — childish and vulnerable

Bruce Springsteen — muscular and tormented

Bob Dylan — nasal and intellectual

Do you think it’s an accident that the world’s biggest pop stars, then and now, are recognizable by the tone of their voice within about a second and a half?

The last one on my list above, Bob Dylan, is a particularly good example.

Early in his career, Dylan had a much more conventional, clear, melodic way of singing.

At some point, he figured out that exaggerating his natural tendencies, or even inventing a completely new voice, gave him distinctness, memorability, immediate recognizability. The critics, who panned him for it, be damned.

Do you think there might be a valuable opportunity for you there as well? At least if you have a presence online, or want to have a presence online?

If you do, here’s a tip based on what I’ve found to be true:

You don’t have to “decide” on your unique and distinct tone and voice today. In fact, it’s almost impossible to do so.

But you can experiment with it from day to day. Introduce little quirks… make little tweaks… or go whole hog and make a big change and see if it sticks.

Do this regularly, and pretty soon, you will settle into something that both feels natural to you, and which is unique and distinct enough to win you attention even in today’s crowded marketplace.

And that’s my soft segue into my offer today, which is the same offer I’ve been promoting for a while now:

Daily Email Habit.

Daily Email Habit helps you start and stick with consistently writing daily emails so you can make sales, influence readers, and yes, even develop your own unique voice in time.

You don’t NEED Daily Email Habit to write daily emails.

But it can save you time and headache, and make it more likely you will stick with the process long-term. If that’s something you think could be valuable to you, then—

There comes a time…

When we heed a certain call…

Ok, I won’t get all sappy on you and start singing about the children. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Zero-resistance daily emails for your own business

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Last week, I got a message from Nick Bandy, who used to be the lead copywriter at an ad agency named Klicker, and who has since last year worked as a freelance marketing strategist. Nick wrote:

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I’ve known for months that I NEED to start sending emails daily, or at least very frequently. Heard it more times than I can count from Ben Settle, Daniel Throssell, and every other email marketer.

I know HOW to write daily emails. I write the same style of emails for my clients. Yet every time I think about writing them for my business?

Meh. Next month.

I don’t even remember how I found your product (probably stumbled on your site after seeing your name mentioned by Daniel Throssell), but I’m really glad I did.

Literally within 5 minutes of getting your first “prompt” in my inbox, I was cranking out my first email. Zero resistance. It flowed freely from my fingertips like Manekin Pis spraying proudly in the wind.

===

Maybe you’re in a similar situation to Nick. Maybe you know HOW to write daily emails… you’ve done it for clients… you’re sure you need to do it for yourself… and yet maybe it’s still not happening?

If so, I figure you have some options.

Option one is to let more time pass. Maybe something will eventually change.

Another option is to try out my Daily Email Habit service, the way Nick did.

A month’s subscription is a whopping $30, effectively $1 per daily prompt puzzle.

It might be just the thing you need to start writing daily emails for yourself, with zero resistance.

Time is passing either way. if you’d like to saddle up on the daily email horse, before tomorrow sneaks up on you:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Figure it out

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A while back, a dude wrote me to say:

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Hello John,

I am interested in joining your Daily Email Habit, but I have a question.

Do you teach us how to set up the newsletter?

The reason why I am interested in DEH is because I want to build the habit of writing daily emails. So I don’t need anything complicated.

I just want to know how to set everything up and get started.

===

Back when I initially conceived Daily Email Habit, I thought of providing some kind of quick-start guide to the tech necessary to send emails.

I decided against it. I realized didn’t want people who couldn’t figure this on their own to sign up for Daily Email Habit.

Not because I have anything against them personally, or think badly of them.

I just realized that anyone who is already blocked at this first slight hurdle is unlikely to deal well with the hundred and one other hurdles, obstacles, and problems that come up in the process of running, writing, and profiting from an email newsletter. And so I’d rather not take their money.

(To his credit, the dude who wrote me the above did figure out the tech on his own, and did sign up for Daily Email Habit after that.)

There’s a bigger point here:

12+ years ago, I read Joe Sugarman saying that he looks at problems as opportunities. It blew my mind at the time. Since I’m slow on the uptake, it’s still something I haven’t internalized fully.

But how else could it be?

A problem forms a moat that keeps everyone from doing it, whatever “it” may be.

If you figure out a solution, you’re insulated from the competition of billions of other people who might jump in otherwise.

On the other hand, if you choose to sell your solution, you’re almost guaranteed a market, because none of us is as unique as we like to believe.

A problem is by definition an obstacle, and if you remove it, it makes for a freer flow of energy, desire, and value, which money is one avatar of.

Working to solve a problem is energizing, and moves you to action. It also builds a mindset of self-reliance and resourcefulness.

Before you solve your problem, it makes for an opportunity to connect with others by asking for advice, sharing frustrations and setbacks that result in connection and credibility.

After you do succeed in solving your problem, it gives you instant authority and wizard-like status with those who come after you, and an attractive charismatic character to those around you. After all, you appear to be lucky, success comes easy to you, and everything works in your favor.

And maybe biggest of all, solving problems gives you a change of perspective. It forces you to think, get out of your groove, change up a familiar way of working.

And when you do hit upon a solution, it’s likely to be one that generalizes, and that you can reuse for future obstacles or problems, creating a kind of virtuous upward spiral.

All that’s to say, problems really are opportunities. (Thanks, Joe.)

As for the problem of setting up the technology to send daily emails, I’ll only say I use ​Convert Kit​. It’s very newbie friendly (perhaps too much so). That’s all the tech advice I have to give.

And if you solve your tech problems, and then are faced with the problem of what to send your list, that’s what Daily Email Habit is about.

I purposely made it in a middle ground between complete and paralyzing freedom at one extreme… and a templated, paint-by-numbers approach at the other.

There’s already AI — or freelance copywriters — if you want your emails written for you.

Daily Email Habit is there to focus your mind each day in the right direction, and get you in the habit of solving little problems — puzzles as I call them — which build up your brain, your skill, your authority, and your assets. If you’d like to get started today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Don’t think of Greenland

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Back in 2019, Internet personality James Altucher ran a crowdfunding campaign to raise $100,000,000 to buy Greenland. He felt Greenland was too important not to be bought.

Altucher is a smart guy. He did his research to back up his claim.

His primary reason for wanting to buy Greenland?

Rare earth minerals, like yttrium, scandium, neodymium, which are used in modern-day technologies such as LED screens, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. Rare earth minerals today almost exclusively come via China, which puts the U.S. in an awkward and dangerously dependent position.

But don’t think of China, and don’t think of Greenland.

Because I read a story this morning in the Wall Street Journal, about how the U.S. is trying to feed its growing mineral hunger — by farming.

Apparently, certain plants are “hyperaccumulators,” and pull out lots of minerals from the ground.

The U.S. has millions of acres of barren, mineral-rich soil.

The minerals in this soil are not of high-enough concentration to deserve being refined by traditional means. But they can be farmed into plants, which can then be incinerated to produce a cost-effective new source of minerals.

If it all works out, farming might become a viable new source of rare minerals for the U.S. economy.

So don’t think of Greenland.

But do think how this story offers a simple, classic, and memorable example of what business and innovation are all about:

An abundant and cheap resource (land in this case)… a new or better process (hyperaccumulating plants)… and a rare and valuable end product (rare minerals).

Also, do think of how this might apply to you and your business.

Because what resource is more abundant and cheap than ideas, gossip, and news stories?

And yet, with a simple enough process, these cheap resources can be turned into rare and valuable end products — sales copy, or marketing content, or even highly priced courses, books, and training.

What is that simple enough process?

Daily emails, exactly like the one you’re reading now.

My email today happens to be based on today’s Daily Email Habit puzzle.

If you’d like to engage in your own “hyperaccumulation” process, and use daily emails to convert cheap and abundant resources into rare and valuable assets, then consider checking out Daily Email Habit today, before tomorrow’s puzzle appears and then disappears.

And whatever you do, don’t think of Greenland.

Here’s the link to take things into your own hands:

https://bejakovic.com/deh