Potentially harmful testimonial

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This morning, my floating guardian angel, Fred Beyer, wrote me a new message.

Over the years, Fred has repeatedly appeared out of the ether and pointed out harmful glitches and technical muckups in my marketing that were costing me thousands of dollars in lost sales.

But this morning, Fred wasn’t pointing out a technical issue. Instead he sent me a warning about my copy, specifically about a potentially harmful testimonial for my Copy Riddles program. He wrote:

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There’s a testimonial on your sales page that mentions the initial $300 you charged for Copy Riddles.

“Probably the best 300 bucks I’ve ever spent”

I’ve come across this before myself and I’ve always felt kind of cheated when I found out the training was now significantly more expensive.

There’s an inner voice that goes: “Sure it was worth 300, but is it worth 1000?”

Obviously You’re the expert.

I just wanted to share, in case this little testimonial drowned in the hubbub of running your biz.

===

Fred raises a good point.

That “best 300 bucks ever” is a kind of anti-anchoring. It goes against the smart marketing practice of pegging your price to a drastically higher sum, and then lopping off zeros to your prospect’s relief and joy.

Perhaps the thing to do would be to take that “300 bucks” testimonial down.

But I never miss an opportunity to flirt with sales prevention. So rather than take that testimonial down, I will actually highlight it. Here’s the full version, which came from Robert Smith, who runs his own CRO agency. Robert wrote:

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I’ve spent close to 150k on copy courses and mentors.

John Bejakovic’s Bullet Copy course is probably the best 300 bucks I’ve ever spent.

One word: “source”. He shows you source material — pre twist — and then re-twists it, so you know how the twist works.

Just send him an email and ask him to enroll you in it.

If, after lesson one, you don’t immediately say, “this is the best 300 bucks I’ve ever spent”, then send an email to rob@robertsmithmedia.com and I’ll send you a refund (then, write your name down in my book of “copywriters I’ll never hire.”)

===

Robert went through Copy Riddles back in 2021. And yes, the course has gone up in price since.

I first sold Copy Riddles at a low price and I gradually pushed the price up — this made it psychologically easier to sell something of my own.

In the meantime, my own status has grown, the endorsements for Copy Riddles have poured in, and today I can and do sell this course for $1,000.

But that’s about me me me. What about you you you? How is it possibly fair to you that I’m charging $1,000 for Copy Riddles today, when I charged just $300 for it a couple years ago?

First of all, $1,000 is still a fair price and then some.

If you actually go through this course and apply what it teaches in a real marketing endeavor, then the info inside can be worth tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars to you over your career.

You might think that’s exaggeration. But it’s just the nature of copywriting and marketing. Good selling skills, multiplied over a large enough audience, can create a lot of wealth, and quickly.

Second, a high, achievable, but uncomfortable price actually makes it more likely you will profit from the course.

I don’t believe the old chestnut, “If they pay, they pay attention.” I know many people who pay, and still never do anything with what they paid for.

But I do believe that if you pay a lot of money, and that makes nervous, you will push yourself out of your comfort zone and find ways to justify the uncomfortable price to yourself.

If you ask me for proof, I can give you myself as an example.

Some five years ago, I joined the coaching group of A-list copywriter Dan Ferrari. Over the course of about six months, I paid Dan multiple tens of thousands of dollars for this coaching.

This wasn’t money I could easily spare. In fact, I was eating away my savings, because I was paying Dan more than I was making. Each month, when it was time to make a new multi-thousand payment to Dan, I literally had cold sweat on my forehead and electric shocks down my spine.

I’ve written before about my experiences with this coaching:

Dan gave me valuable and practical marketing and copywriting ideas. But the real value was the price I was paying him. It made me so uncomfortable that I worked much harder to apply the ideas Dan gave me, to hustle and make do, simply because I had to.

Result:

In the month after I was done with Dan’s coaching, the floodgates opened. I started making the kind of money I had never made with copywriting before. Within the first two months at this new level, I had fully paid off the tens of thousands of dollars I had paid to Dan.

So to answer the question that was rumbling in Fred’s mind, and that may be rumbling in yours…

“Sure it was worth 300, but is it worth 1000?”

The answer is, it really depends.

Copy Riddles consists of 20 rounds. Each round covers a key copywriting concept.

If you don’t bother to go through all of the rounds, or if you don’t bother to apply them anywhere where they can possibly make you money, then Copy Riddles won’t be worth $1,000 to you, or any fraction of that.

On the other hand, if you go through each of these 20 rounds earnestly… if you do the daily exercises I give you… and if you apply the lessons in your own business or in your clients’ businesses, there’s no doubt in my mind that it will be worth $1,000 to you, and much, much, much more.

So Robert’s possibly harmful testimonial stays up. In case you’d like to see it in its native environment, or get started with Copy Riddles right now, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Would you bet on it?

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A few weeks back, I was talking to a successful copywriter, and he mentioned a stupid job he had just finished.

The client was a moron, the product a disaster, and there was little to no hope any of it would sell.

But the copywriter got paid well to write the sales letter. And he did it, and since he’s a good copywriter, he did a good job with the copy. Then he got his money and he moved on.

I used to have that same attitude.

But I don’t any more. Because I found in time that working on hopeless projects is not good long-term policy — not emotionally, not financially, not careerly.

Today, I’d like to give you a different perspective.

These days, when a new opportunity comes my way, I ask myself, “Would I do this if I were getting paid on commission only? Would I bet on it?”

It doesn’t mean that I actually only do stuff on commission. That’s often not practical, and it’s sometimes not even desirable, for me or for the other party.

But if I wouldn’t accept this opportunity if I were getting paid only based on results, if I’m not confident enough that it will be a success that I would bet on it myself, then I don’t do it at all.

I’ve applied this to client work… I’ve applied it to coaching that I’ve been doing over the past year… I will start to apply it to courses and trainings I’m thinking of creating.

Again, it doesn’t mean offering courses for free and hoping to somehow get paid later.

But it’s a valuable thought experiment. If I could somehow track what extra money this imagined course would bring in my students’ lives… and if I knew I could get, say 5% or 10% of that extra money… would that pay me enough?

Often, the answer is no. Even if I could make a super-thorough and valuable course.

Because if that course only attracts people who will never go through it… or who will go through it but never implement it… or who will implement it but who are not in a position to ever profit from it… then the total extra value created out of all of that is a big beefy zero. And 10% of zero is zero.

On the other hand, sometimes I would bet on it.

And if there’s one of my existing courses that I would bet on, that I would sell for only a percentage of future results, if such a thing were feasible, it’s Copy Riddles.

I’d bet on Copy Riddles because some of the previous people who have gone through this training have written in to tell me the results they ascribe to this course.

Some of those results are private because those people asked me not to share them. But some are public, and you can find them on the final page of the Copy Riddles sales letter. If you’d like to see that:

https://bejakovic.com/cr-3/

Matrix Denier rejoins my list and is promptly fired

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A couple days ago, I wrote an email in which I used the Matrix as a pop culture illustration. To which I got a reply from a guy who said, yea that’s great and all but “what if your reader hasn’t seen the movie and therefore doesn’t have a clue what the h*ll you’re talking about?”

A reasonable question… but something about the tone of it — it’s amazing how that comes through — made my terrier ears perk up.

I looked up this Matrix Denier to see if I’d had any previous email interactions with him.

And oh boy. Here’s the sorry story:

Two years ago, I ran a launch for my Copy Riddles program.

The Matrix Denier was signed up to my list at the time.

​​He replied on the last day of the launch to tell me that I name-drop famous copywriters a lot… that he wouldn’t be buying my course because my emails aren’t good enough to impress him… and that, rather than create my own offers, I should go back and study the work of people like Andre Chaperon and Ben Settle.

I shrugged, and I used this reply for a new email that I sent out to my list to promote my Copy Riddles course.

The Matrix Denier didn’t like this, and he wrote me in an offended and hurt tone to say so. Which I again turned into an email, and sent it out to my list as part of a sequence of emails about the different types of denial we all engage in.

This was the straw that broke the Denier’s back. He unsubscribed from my list, and as the reason why, he fired this farewell shot:

===​​

“You’re simply too dumb to be helped. I tried twice & you can’t tell the difference between a troll & someone with advice. Good luck. You’ll need it.”

===
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Like I said, now he’s back on my list. Well, he was, until yesterday, when I unsubscribed him. No sense in wasting perfectly good Matrix analogies on someone who would rather complain than go see a movie I specifically recommended as great marketing fodder.

The point of this being that a couple years have passed.

I’m still writing… my status in the industry has grown… and so has the number of people who recommend me and point new readers to my newsletter.

Meanwhile, I don’t know what the Matrix Denier has gained in those two years. Going by the tone of his replies, and by the fact he even took the time to write me, just so he could complain and say “But what about me?” makes me think he hasn’t gone far from where he was two years ago.

In other words, you might as well get going now.

Time passes unstoppably. It’s a trite observation, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Whatever it is that you’re doing or want to do, if you start now, and start accumulating a bit of something valuable every day — whether of skills or money or subscribers — then you can be in much better position in a couple of years, while those around you are left standing still.

And on that note, my Copy Riddles was and remains a great program, the best thing I sell. If you’d like to find out more about it or use it to start accumulating your copywriting skills, starting today:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

I tried to cover up my failures, but a loyal reader caught me

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In reply to my January 1st email, which had little to say about New Year’s resolutions, goals, or themes, I got a reply from long-time reader, occasional co-hostess of my live trainings, and infamous Crazy Email Lady, Liza Schermann. Liza wrote:

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What happened to your annual New Year’s email where you look back at the old year and set goals for the new one? I always look forward to reading it, especially this year.

===

As Liza says, the past four years, on January 1, I always sent some kind of email about how my past year has been, what I managed to accomplish, what I am planning for the next year — all fit inside the latest personal development hack I’d fallen in love with.

But this year, I quietly decided to skip it.

The fact is, I had three themes for the past year.

A theme is like a vague and fuzzy goal, a general direction to move in rather than a destination to arrive to and a time to arrive there by.

Themes worked well for me in years past.

​​But in 2023, even with fuzzy themes in place of hard goals, I found that I had only made any meaningful progress in one half of one of my three themes. And that’s in spite of regularly revisiting those themes, and putting in thought and work into pushing each of them forward.

One half of one out of three is not something I particularly wanted to crow about. And I was sure nobody would notice, until Liza called me out on it.

Now, here’s a bunch of personal stuff that you may or may not want to read. It explains how I got to where I am, and what I’m thinking for the future.

I started as a freelance copywriter in 2015.

I worked for years with the aim of building up my skills, creating a name for myself in the industry, and making the kind of money that AWAI sales letters promise you.

And the crazy thing is, I got there. It took me about five years.

Then I decided that really, I don’t like to work with copywriting clients. Wouldn’t it be great if I could just do something on my own like create courses or do coaching and consulting?

And I managed to do that as well. It took me about two years.

Last year, back in March 2023, I had my best-ever month in terms of income.

Over the course of the entire calendar year of 2023, I also had my second-best-ever year in terms of income, only following 2020, when I was neck-deep in client work, and when obscene amounts of money were flowing in to me via commissions and royalties.

But last year, I had practically no client work. I was free to do what I want, when I want, with who I want, and I still made good money.

And yet, in spite of my apparent success in reaching my goal of independence…

… a few months ago, around September or so, I found myself working for much of the day, every day, and not getting a lot of work done.

It wasn’t because I was overwhelmed with the heavy burdens of the online solopreneur.

All I really had to do was to write a daily email, do a bit of research and work for my health newsletter, and do something to actually make money — put together some sort of new training, or course, or promotion.

And yet, the work stretched from morning to night, and projects barely inched forward.

To make it worse, it felt like things had been that way forever, and would go on forever.

I believe the technical term for this condition is boredom, or maybe aimlessness, or sloth.

Perhaps it was initiated by my actually achieving what I was working towards for so long.

I tried to fight it via willpower, and that’s how I ended up working pretty much the whole day, without getting much done.

And then, some time in late November, I was listening to Dan Kennedy’s Opportunity Concepts, where Dan talks about the hidden psychology of the people he sells to. Says Dan:

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Most small business owners are doing enough not to go out of business. That’s where their level of ambition has settled.

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I realized that’s exactly where I am. I also realized that it was the cause of my feeling of malaise, my struggle to move things forward in spite of working.

And I realized the fix for it, which is simply — ambition.

Because it’s more fun and enjoyable to have ambition, rather than to do just enough to not go out of business.

So in case you’re curious, that’s my theme for 2024. Ambition.

I invite you to keep reading my future emails to see how exactly this will play out over 2024, and then in a year’s time I can have another recap.

For now, I can tell you that things have already started moving. New offers, new partnerships, new sources of income — and most importantly, a new feeling of being motivated and optimistic.

This email is getting overly long. The only reason I allowed myself to write this much and this intimate is because 1) it helps me sort out my thoughts and 2) as business coach Rich Schefren likes to say, what’s most personal is most general. ​​So maybe you’ve found some worthwhile ideas in what I just wrote.

A few weeks ago, I said I would create a page on my site where I collect all my current offers for sale. I’ve done that.

In the future, I might even create a Dean Jackson-style “super signature” where I link to this in every email.

But for now, if you’re wondering what I have for sale, and why you might want it, and how it can help you in 2024, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/showroom/

Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more

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A few days ago, I got a question from a reader:

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Hi John,

What are the differences between “most valuable email” and simple money emails”? Thanks!

===

Now get ready for the big bland takeaway from this email, which will probably be as familiar to you as the taxes you have to pay:

Facts and figures rarely persuade, and often they don’t even inform.

For example, I could have replied to my reader’s question above by telling him the facts and figures of my two courses — the prices, the main promises, the intended audiences.

But that stuff is literally in the half page of deck copy on the sales pages for the two courses. This reader knows about those sales pages and clearly doesn’t want to read them, or maybe has even read them, but the facts and figures failed to mean much.

So what to do? Because this is hardly one reader asking about my specific courses. This is how most of us act and think and feel most of the time about most things.

Certainly, if you have customers or prospects, this is how most of them are. They will not read the well-researched facts and figures you send their way, or maybe they will even read, but those facts and figures won’t mean much.

One powerful strategy when facts and figures fail is to stop being so damn linear, logical, and thorough, and to instead make your point in an associative, intuitive, non-linear way.

In other words, instead of facts and figures, give people a metaphor. Let me give you an example:

I recently rewatched the first Matrix movie. To my mind, that movie is the richest source of powerful metaphors that’s come out in pop culture over the past 30 years (and longer, probably going back to the original Star Wars movie). It’s well worth rewatching from time to time so you have it close at hand when writing your marketing material.

But back to my reader’s question and the difference between Simple Money Emails and Most Valuable Email.

My best answer is that Simple Money Emails is like the kung fu, the use of semiautomatic weapons, the piloting of the fighter helicopter that Neo and Trinity and Morpheus can own in an instant with the push of a button thanks to their loading program.

These are powerful and practical skills, which look incredibly cool to the uninitiated, but which ultimately anybody can do and profit from very quickly — in the Matrix, to fight and destroy; with Simple Money Emails, to write quick and easy messages that make money and keep readers reading.

On the other hand, Most Valuable Email is like the little bald-headed monk-child at the Oracle’s house in the Matrix, the one who tells Neo that there is no spoon.

Really, at the core of MVE is a similarly simple but profound idea.

It’s not an idea that is meant for everyone, but only for a small group of pre-selected people.

However, if you can accept this idea and make it your own, you can start to bend reality — including both your readers’ reality, and your own.

This makes it so you ultimately don’t need to rely on the email copywriting equivalents of kung fu or semiautomatic weapons or even fighter helicopters, because the ultimate results happen simply via “inner work” of a sort, by just absorbing and repeating the mantra that there is no spoon.

Now, if you are interested in either of these two courses, I bet you still have questions even after this metaphor. But I imagine you might have a better sense which of the two courses is really right for you.

If you’re looking for practical, result-oriented, quickly acquired skills, then it will be Simple Money Emails.

If you’re looking for mastery and a long-term practice that will take you to places you cannot imagine yet, then it will be Most Valuable Email.

You can get your remaining questions answered on the sales pages for the two courses. In the slightly pompous words of Morpheus:
​​
“I can only show you the door. You’re the one who has to walk through it.”

The beginning and the end of copywriting

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Today being January 1st, I find it an excellent opportunity to wish you a happy New Year and to point out the surprising significance of January.

As I learned when I was still young and very stupid, January is named after the Roman god Janus, the two-faced deity of doors, gates, and more broadly, beginnings and endings.

I say I was still very stupid when I first learned this, because my reaction was, “A god of doors? How lame. What’s next? A god of faucets?”

It was only later, after I read a book or two, that I found out just how fundamental the idea of a door — an entry point, an exit point — really is to the human mind.

Because all human perception, down at the most basic neurological level, is based on difference, contrast.

Right now, bunches of your neurons are frantically working to determine where they can draw a line, and call everything before it one thing, everything after it another, and convince you these are somehow meaningfully separate, and discard the many other details that don’t fit into that picture of the world.

Without this Januarial work of drawing lines and creating doors to come up with discrete concepts, we couldn’t really have any higher-level thinking.

That’s why it makes sense that January, the month of doors, comes before, say March, named after the Roman god of war, Mars.

“That’s truly fascinating,” I hear you saying. “I had no idea of the depth of your classical learning or your smattering of popsci neuroscience. But what does this have to do with marketing or making money or really anything else I might actually care about on January 1st?”

Everything. It has everything to do with it.

This basic observation, of the outsized importance of beginnings and endings, repeats itself at every level of the sales job.

At the level of entire sales campaigns, where the opening of the campaign and the closing of the campaign bring in almost all the sales…

At the level of individual sales letters, where the headline and lead on the one end, and the offer and close at the other end, represent 80%-95% of the effectiveness or sales pull of that letter…

At the level of individual sales claims or promises, such as the following:

“The simple 12-word-sentence that will make you the #1 candidate more often than you would ever believe.”

That’s a bullet written by A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga, considered by many to be the greatest of the greats because he won so often against other A-list copywriters.

You might think Gary’s bullet is just a simple, direct response promise. But there’s a surprising amount of subtle psychology that goes into this bullet, with a particular emphasis on what Gary chooses to put first in this bullet, and what to put last.

I won’t explain that subtle psychology here, but I will tell you the following:

Wouldn’t it be nice to start this New Year acquiring a new skill, a truly valuable skill, a skill that few others possess?

Wouldn’t it be nice to acquire one of the greatest skills you can have as a copywriter, whether you write for clients or for your own business?

Wouldn’t it be nice to acquire a skill that ultimately all effective copy comes from?

You probably know what I’m talking about.

But if you’d like to make 100% sure, or if you’d actually like to use this January 1st to get yourself this skill and the associated bump in fortune that this skill can bring, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Hell has no fury like a wizard scorned

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My email yesterday about a needy blackbird drew a bunch of amused replies from people who enjoyed the story.

But it also resulted in an unsubscribe rate of 3x the usual.

That’s okay. In fact, it was kind of the point of the email.

However, among all those quiet unsubscribes, there was one that was more vocal. That more vocal unsubscriber reported my email yesterday as spam.

Spam = unsolicited and unwanted email sent out to an indiscriminate recipient list

That’s not something I do. I make sure my emails are solicited and wanted (the headline of my optin page says “Prepare to decide”). I certainly don’t want to waste my time or effort or email marketing tokens writing to an indiscriminate recipient list.

So I got curious who this spam-reporter was, and how he possibly got on my list.

I put in his email address into Gmail and what popped up was this:

===

That’s fucking hilarious… Great Email

Cheers

===

… which was a reply he sent me to an email I wrote in the character of Bejako Baggins, about a deliverability wizard who approached me out of the cold, only for me to guide him back to the door.

The fact is, the spam-reporter above was the actual deliverability wizard from that story. He had opted in to my list a few days before that email and had written me a flattering message about my emails, along with concern that they weren’t getting through to him quickly enough.

All that’s to say, in the words of William Congreve, heaven has no rage, nor hell a fury, like a wizard scorned.

Because wizards — and men and elves and hobbits also — get outraged and furious when they don’t get what they want. When they feel ignored or dismissed.

But what to do?

You can’t go through life doing what everybody else wants of you all the time.

That means you will inevitably face some rage and fury, and have to learn to shrug it off. It’s not always about you. Many times, it’s just about people not getting what they want.

Anyways, this being the last day of the year, I will link to that Bejako Baggins email. Multiple people have written me to say it was my most entertaining email of the year.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll work to beat it.

But if you want a quick and fantastical story for New Year’s Eve:

https://bejakovic.com/you-dont-want-to-sell-to-a-hobbit-like-me/

Dating and business advice to a needy blackbird

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A few days ago, I was minding my own business, washing the dishes. The weather was warm so I opened the window.

Just as I was in the middle of scrubbing the salad bowl, a little blackbird landed on my windowsill.

“CHEEP,” said the blackbird.

“Oh hello there,” I said. “How do you do?”

The blackbird paced for a moment and then sat down on the windowsill. He seemed to be getting comfortable, which made me frown and pause my dishwashing. And then the blackbird spoke:

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Interesting that you ask that. Very interesting.

Something I am really struggling with at the moment is securing a mate.

I can’t get a mate for my familybuilding services. Even when I catch the eye of female blackbirds, they seem to smell my neediness from a mile away even if I don’t reveal it intentionally.

I wanted to ask:

How would you go about getting a mate if:

===

… and then the blackbird listed his unique mate-getting situation, which happens to be the same unique situation faced by all single blackbirds, crows, and seagulls, as well as by all individuals, whether human or avine, who are hoping to go from zero to one in any endeavor that involves selling yourself.

I’ve long ago decided that I don’t want to be in the business of taking people or birds from zero to one.

So I just nodded to the blackbird in understanding, picked him up, placed him on the outside window sill, and closed the window shut.

That said, I do have one piece of advice.

I’m only sharing it because it applies to anybody who is looking to do anything new and frightening, whether they are beginners or much more advanced.

It applies to newbie copywriters looking for their first client… to experienced copywriters looking to send their first email to their own list… to business owners looking to go into a drastically more upscale market and charge 2x or 3x or 10x of what they are charging now.

It also applies to securing a mate. In fact, this piece of advice is something I heard from the infamous pick-up coach Owen Cook, aka RSD Tyler, the villain in Neil Strauss’s book The Game.

Owen was talking about the horrifying prospect of flying up to an attractive and unfamiliar female blackbird, in the middle of a park with lots of other blackbirds around, and striking up a fun and natural interaction.

Perfectly easy if you have total belief in yourself and your worth.

Perfectly impossible if you are overwhelmed by fear and self-doubt.

So here’s Owen’s observation:

“The halfway point between fear and total belief is indifference.”

You can’t go from fear and neediness to total belief and confidence.

But you can go from fear and neediness to indifference.

One way to do it is repeat exposure in a short enough period of time.

Go and cheep at seven attractive and unfamiliar blackbirds today. Each of those interactions might go horribly, though they probably won’t.

But whatever the outcome of the interactions, by the end of the seven, you will realize you are still alive. In fact, you are perfectly fine.

Do this a few days in a row, and those innate survival mechanisms, which underlie both fear and neediness, will begin to get habituated and calm down. You will start to get indifferent. And that’s the halfway point to total belief and confidence.

In other words, if you think you have a neediness problem… what you really got is an activity problem.

That’s all the free advice from Bejako’s windowsill for today.

If you’d like to buy something from me, I can recommend my Simple Money Emails training.

​​No, Simple Money Emails won’t replace the need to actually write and send emails, whether for your own business or for a client business.

But Simple Money Emails can teach you my effective one-two system for writing emails, much like this one, that make sales, keep readers reading, and keep birds chirping. If that’s an outcome you’d like as well:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Business owner asks for a copy critique and I relent out of curiosity

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A couple days ago, I got an email from a new reader of my 10 Commandments book. He had signed up to my list to get the apocryphal 11th commandment. And he wrote me to say:

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I LOVED the book, John. But I need more help with my copywriting. I write a 1,000 word blog post every day. I have also written 6 best selling books. Can you give me some guidance?

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I wrote back to clarify exactly what kind of guidance he meant. He replied to ask if I would critique some of his existing copy.

I winced. What a bind.

Because I don’t do copy critiques any more. And yet…

This reader had bought my book, and then he wrote in to say nice things about it. Plus, he’s written 6 best-selling books himself. Plus (something not obvious from his message above), his books are about B2B sales.

So he can write, he knows sales, but he still needs help with copy?

I got curious.

I asked him to send over one piece of copy. He did — an email promoting a $1,500 training program.

I won’t repeat my copy critique here. It wouldn’t make much sense or have much meaning for you.

All I will say is that, yes, there were problems with the copy. But there were more important problems with the actual promotion of this offer, and the way the promo was structured.

The stuff that I told him is stuff you would know by osmosis if you read my emails regularly… that you would take for granted… that you couldn’t imagine any other way, simply because it’s always there in every promotion I ever run, to the point that I don’t even think of mentioning it because it’s so transparent and so obvious to me.

And yet, here was somebody who knows sales… and who knows how to write… and yet who missed this stuff completely.

That’s not to rag on this guy. I’m sure he could make a big corporate sale where I would lay an egg. And the stuff I know wouldn’t be hard to teach him.

But the point remains:

Don’t underestimate the legitimate value of what you know. If you know copywriting and direct marketing, even at a basic level, you have real and valuable skills that business owners can profit from.

In 2024, I’ll create some kind of offer to help business owners structure their own successful promotions.

But 2024 is such a long way away.

For now, the closest thing I can offer you is an email I wrote this past summer, after finishing my promo of Steve Raju’s ClientRaker training.

It’s far from a complete how-to run-a-promo offer. Plus, I already shared this email a few days ago.

And yet, if you sell stuff online, via email, you might get an idea here to guide you to making more money. Here’s the link if you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/10-lessons-from-the-clientraker-promo/

13 things mentally strong marketers do

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I will tell you about the 13 things in a second, but let me first set it up with a story:

Yesterday I listened to an interview with Amy Morin, who has created a publishing empire starting with her 2014 book 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do.

​​Morin has since written 13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do… Strong Women Don’t Do… Strong Couples Don’t Do… you get idea.

She has sold hundreds of thousands or millions of copies of her books.

And yet, she said that she never hit bestseller status in the first week after publication.

In fact, the original 13 Things book took a whole year to reach bestseller status.

How did it happen?

A year after Morin published 13 Things, Rush Limbaugh mentioned it on his radio show.

​​”Today I will talk about 13 things mentally strong people don’t do,” Limbaugh said.

But he never got around to it.

That was Monday.

(Are you starting to guess the 13 things that mentally strong marketers do???)

The next day, Limbaugh mentioned 13 Things again. “Yesterday I didn’t manage to get to it, but today I will talk about 13 things mentally strong people don’t do.”

Again the show ran long, and again Rush didn’t talk about Morin’s book or the 13 things inside it.

This went on for the whole week. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday…

(By the way, we are getting really close to the 13 things that mentally strong marketers do. Bear with me.)

Finally, on Friday, Rush managed to list Morin’s list of 13 things mentally strong people don’t do.

​​But by then, bookstores had already sold out of all copies, and 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do had become a bestseller for the first time.

Point being… should I tell you?

​​Well, I might as well, instead of saving it for another email. The 13 Things Mentally Strong Marketers Do are:

1. Tease

​1. Tease

​3. Oh, I don’t know, tease?

​4. How about teasing for a change?

​5. Tease

​6. Tease

​7. Yep, still teasing

​8. I think you now know where it’s going, and that’s teasing

​9. I’ll give you a hint — it’s not giving away the secret. It’s kind of the opposite of that. Can you guess what it is?

​10. Tease

​11. Just in case it’s not clear: Tease

​12. Tease

​13. And tease some more!

It’s not easy to tease to its fullest effect. You might get queasy along the way. You might get bored. You might give in to angry readers who tell you to stop teasing already and tell them the secret or sell them the product already.

That’s why it takes a mentally strong marketer to tease to its full power.

And now that I’ve told you that, let me quickly mention I will rerelease my Insight Exposed training, all about my unique and supremely valuable journaling and notetaking system, some time in January.

For today, all I can offer you is my Most Valuable Email.

I released that training some 15 months ago.

I’ve been teasing it mercilessly ever since in these emails.

I always think I’ve gone too far, revealed too much, or tapped out reader curiosity.

And yet people continue to buy. So I will continue to tease Most Valuable Email and what the Most Valuable Email trick might be. In case you want to scratch the itch and find out:

https://bejakovic.com/mve