Insights & More Book Club now open to new members looking for a new perspective

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Tonight being the last Thursday… of a month that’s divisible by 2… with the moon’s phase being waxing gibbous… it can only mean one thing:

It’s time for the bimonthly bonfire meeting in the middle of a dark pine forest, also known as the Insights & More Book Club call.

I’ve been running this book club since the start of the year. So far, the other Insights & More members and I have read three books:

1. A cranky philosopher’s 100-year-old prediction of how the world will evolve (prediction turned out pretty much spot on)

2. A biography of a showman, packed full of practical how-to advice

3. A cultural history that attempts to explain all the world’s civilizations as a quest for one thing, which I won’t trouble you with here

Those three books might all sound very different from each other. But in some ways, they are also quite similar. For example, they all non-fiction books, written in the past 100 years, by men.

To change that somewhat, the fourth book of the Insights & More book club will be a novel, written by a woman.

And that’s my point for you for today:

Computer genius Alan Kay famously said that a change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

The whole point of the Insights & More Book Club is to read things that can give you that change in perspective.

But the change in perspective won’t come on its own, or at least not often enough. It’s something you have to force and press and cultivate consciously.

So if you’ve been reading just nonfiction books, read some fiction. If you’ve been reading only books published since 2020, read something old. If you find you only read books by men, read something by a woman.

Or just come and join the Insights & More Book Club, and have me do the worrying work of book selection for you.

I only open the doors to the Insights & More Book Club every two months, as we finish one book and start another. It doesn’t make sense to have people join midway.

The doors are currently open. They will close this Sunday July 2, at 12 midnight PST.

In case you’re curious about this club, you will have to be on my email list first. Click here to sign up for that.

How to use LinkedIn to win friends and influence clients within three months

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Many years ago, while I was still on Upwork, I created a short-lived LinkedIn profile.

​​I thought LinkedIn could be a way to get high-quality leads for my copywriting services. So I created a profile and started aimlessly “connecting” with people who could be potential clients or contacts to help me get clients.

This lasted all about three days. I hated the experience, and it produced nothin’. I felt stupid and frankly humiliated, groping, and needy.

In a fit of rage, I deleted my LinkedIn profile, raced up to the tower of my moss-covered castle, slammed the large oaken doors behind me, and vowed that the cruel world would never see me “connecting” with anyone ever again.

And yet, ever since, I continue to hear stories of people getting clients, customers, and, yes, valuable connections through LinkedIn.

Even though I refuse to come down from the tower of my moss-covered castle, I have to admit my beastly ears always do perk up at these stories.

And so they did a few days ago, when I got an email from reader Carlo Gargiulo, who works as a copywriter at an info publishing business in Switzerland.

​​Carlo wrote me to say he has been applying some ideas I’ve shared, specifically inside my Most Valuable Email training, to writing LinkedIn posts. The results have been impressive.

Like I said, I couldn’t keep my beastly ears in place. I let out a soft growl. And I wrote back to Carlo, to ask exactly what he was doing on LinkedIn. He wrote me to say:

===

About three months ago I decided to start writing posts on LinkedIn about copywriting and direct response marketing.

I started doing this because I noticed that very few Italian copywriters were talking about copy on LinkedIn.

So, every Monday morning I publish a post.

The goal is to create some authority for myself and to get some clients among the entrepreneurs who follow my page.

For the past 2 weeks or so I have been reaping the first fruits.

There are entrepreneurs I had met in the past who have contacted me privately to ask how much it costs to consult with me and how much money I charge in exchange for writing marketing materials.

Specifically, they want posts similar to the ones I write on LinkedIn and email sequences.

The other result I have achieved is about the growth of authority in the company where I work as a copywriter.

Many colleagues started following me, and since I’m not very popular (since I’m very private), those posts were a hook to showcase my knowledge, and now I end up with a queue of people who want to talk to me about anything related to copy and direct response marketing.

As I told you, I’m very private, I lead a quiet lifestyle (books, TV series, magazines, running, walks at the lake) and I don’t like to show off.

===

Carlo’s message went on. He listed the specific marketing and copywriting ideas from the MVE swipe file, included with the MVE training, that he has been using in his LinkedIn posts.

I won’t repeat those here. ​​But I think you get the bigger point:

A way to use LinkedIn not to feel humiliated and out of place, but to get clients warmed up, reaching out, and asking to work with you… and even maybe to get a kind word or a smile of appreciation from your coworkers and colleagues.

Of course, that’s all assuming that you can write something that lights up people’s brains a bit, and that they feel interested in reading more of.

There are different ways to do that.

​​But as Carlo found, and as I found before him, using the MVE trick, and specific ideas in the MVE swipe file, is one effective way to go about it. If you’d like to get started with that today, so you can reap the benefits within a few months’ time:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/​​

The power of preparation for perplexing performances

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“Tell me Sir, was this real… or was it humbug?”

Houdini was shocked at the power of his own show. He couldn’t believe that the man standing across from him — respected, intelligent, worldly — could be asking him such a question.

“No Colonel,” Houdini said with a shake of his head. “It was hocus pocus.”

The year was 1914. The place was the Imperator, a ship on the Hamburg-New York line, sailing west across the Atlantic. Houdini was traveling on the ship as a passenger, but he agreed to perform a seance act for the large and rich ship’s company.

Houdini walked around the audience, giving out pieces of paper and envelopes, telling people to write down a question, seal it in the envelope, and then put it in a hat that Houdini passed around.

But one of the audience members was particularly distinguished and highly reputable — Colonel Teddy Roosevelt, former President of the United States, traveling back from the UK. Roosevelt had just finished promotion of his new book about an adventure trip he had taken to Brazil the year previous.

“I am sure there will be no objection if we use the Colonel’s question,” Houdini said during the seance, tentatively walking towards Roosevelt. The audience murmured assent.

Then Houdini took out two little slate tablets, which were blank. After appropriate buildup and mystery, he asked Roosevelt to place his envelope, with the question inside, between the two tablets.

“Can you please tell the audience what your question was?” Houdini asked.

“Where was I last Christmas?” Roosevelt said.

Houdini opened up the slate tablets. They were no longer blank. Instead, they now showed a colored chalk map of Brazil, with the River of Doubt highlighted, where Roosevelt had spent the Christmas prior.

The effect of this on the crowd, and on Teddy Roosevelt himself, was immense. Roosevelt jumped up, and started laughing so hard and slapping his legs until tears ran down his face.

And then, the very next day, Roosevelt buttonholed Houdini on the deck of the ship. Roosevelt asked, in a hushed voice, whether Houdini truly had connections to the spirit world.

Houdini did not. It was hocus pocus, and he was ready to admit it.

So what lay behind his spectacular performance?

I won’t tell you the exact details. Like all tricks, it’s underwhelming when you find out the truth. But I will tell you the powerful underlying principle, in a single word:

Preparation.

An immense amount of quiet background work… research… setup… as well as thinking up and making plans for all possible contingencies.

Like I wrote a few weeks ago, I’ve decided to put together a new book. Working title — and maybe final title — is “10 Commandments of Hypnotists, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Con Men, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Spirit Mediums, and Stage Magicians.”

Some of the commandments I have in mind are clever techniques. Others… well, they’re stuff like this. Research. Preparation.

Few wanna do it. Few take it seriously. But the ones who do are eventually seen as having supernatural powers, while everybody else — ah, it’s not too bad, but I could do the same.

I already have a lot of this book ready, thanks to emails like this that I’ve already written. But it’s still gonna take me a while to pull everything together and get the book published.

Meanwhile, if you want a similar book, with a similar mix of stories and often unsexy but extremely powerful ideas, take a look at my other 10 Commandments book:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

On writing just to make money

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Last Friday, I organized a mastermind call of “newsletter operators.” The topic of the call was newsletter growth.

Seven people joined. Some were complete beginners, with only a few dozen subscribers. Some were further along, with a few hundred or a few thousand subscribers. And then there was one dude, with a list of 30k subscribers.

“Zero advertising spend,” he said, and he made an “all ok” sign with his hand that also doubled as a zero.

The fact is, if you read this newsletter, there’s good chance you have heard of this guy. I certainly had heard his name before we talked on this call.

During the call, we did the usual round-robin intros, and then it was a free-for-all of questions.

At some point, the 30k guy explained his position. “I’m an unrepentant capitalist,” he said. “I write just to make money.”

He largely dominated the call. Not in a bad way. He was interested in other people’s businesses. He was giving genuine advice. Even inspiration. “You gotta decide,” he said at one point, “you wanna make money or not?”

The other attendees were nodding along, saying, “Yes yes, you’re right, thanks for the tip.” Then they clammed up.

At around the 1hr mark, the 30k guy left the call without too much ceremony. And it felt felt like a sigh of relief could be heard in the virtual Zoom room.

People relaxed. Started smiling. Speaking up again.

Now, I guess there could be a lot of stuff going on here. Maybe people were intimidated. Maybe they were just absorbing this guy’s wisdom. Or maybe…

I once heard marketing guru Dan Kennedy say something like, you have to stand for something other than just making money.

You can make money. You can make lots of money. But you have to stand for something else besides, or at least, people have to feel that way about you.

And if not?

Well, you will repel most people.

Not all. The ones who are left will be people who also only want to make money.

You can certainly sell to those people, and you can do very well. But what you will get is short-term, self-interested buyers who will switch camp as soon as they’ve gotten what they can from you.

Which ties in nicely to the topic of my Most Valuable Postcard #1.

Yesterday, I promoted my Most Valuable Postcard #2. That postcard talks about the essence of marketing and copywriting. ​​That’s an important topic, but not the most important topic I could think of. That topic I covered I covered in MVP1.

​​If you’re interested in that, and if you don’t just write to make money, you can find more info here:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp1/

Open this email to take a little trip

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This morning, I had coffee at the little harbor in the old fishing village of Volosko, on the Croatian seaside, where my dad has an apartment.

The harbor in Volosko is very small, enough for a dozen small boats. It’s surrounded by colorful buildings with wooden shutters and blooming flowers on the window sills.

Today being Sunday, it was quiet, nobody much around, just the docked boats slapping against the sea. Somewhere a mast stay was clanging against the mast.

In the middle of the small harbor, there is a breakwater, which has been converted into a terrace for a nearby cafe. I was there this morning, with my dad and his wife, sitting in the shade, sipping an espresso and watching people walking their dogs.

I’ve been staying in Volosko for the past four days. I’ve largely had an unenjoyable time. I’m not joking.

I asked myself, how?

I realized it’s because I spent the four days at my computer, at home, mostly working. My dad and his wife have been doing the same — on their screens, maybe working, maybe just wasting time.

It’s been said, if you write sales emails, make them entertaining. Take people for a ride. Because people’s everyday lives are rather dull and limited. That’s not me being condescending. I myself am as guilty of living a dull and limited life as anybody, or maybe more so, since I sit in front of the computer so much.

So when you write sales emails, show people a scene. Take them for a ride, or a little trip. ​It will be good for your readers, and good for you too — because it will force you to look up from your own screen on occasion and see the rather rich world that surrounds you.

The last time I was in Volosko was a year ago. I traveled there for business — so I could write and send my Most Valuable Postcard #2.

If you want to see more of Volosko, and of Opatija, the bigger beachhead resort town that Volosko has merged into, you can find a bunch of photos of that inside my MVP2 below.

And besides the pictures, MVP2 also has a point — the essence of copywriting and marketing, as I see it, woven into a bunch of stories. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp2/

How to relax resisting bodies and minds

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I went to the gym just now, and I tried to do something like the splits.

I sat myself down on the mat. I splayed my legs out. But instead of the necessary 180 degrees, which is what the splits call for, my legs only went about 90 degrees. “The squares, not the splits,” they said to me. “That’s all we’re doing today.”

I tried negotiating with my legs, both together and individually. “No,” they kept saying in unison. “No means no.”

But where persuasion won’t work, force will.

So I put my fists on the insides of my thighs. Instead of trying to spread my legs ever wider, I squished my legs in towards each other, against the resistance of my fists.

I kept this up for about ten seconds. I then relaxed for a moment. And I tried the splits again. Result?

Of course I didn’t manage it. But this time, instead of just 90 degrees, I got noticeably further, 98, maybe 100 degrees.

That’s a little trick I learned a long time ago from Pavel Tsatsouline’s book Relax Into Stretching.

As you, might know, Pavel’s legend is that he was formerly a fitness instructor for the Soviet Special Forces. He loves to use the word “comrade” in his training videos and to cite Soviet-era exercise science to back up weird body tricks.

Such as [imagine it with a Russian accent]: “Contract-relax stretching is documented to be at least 267% more effective than conventional relaxed stretching!”

But it’s not just the body that works this way. The mind does too.

There’s a way to bring people into hypnosis called the Dave Elman induction. A part of it is the usual, “close your eyes, relax” guidance from the hypnotist.

Except once your eyes are closed, the hypnotist tells you, ​​​”Open your eyes. Now close your eyes again and relax twice as deeply as before… Now open your eyes. And close your eyes again and relax even more deeply…”

It’s called fractionation, and it’s supposed to be a reliable technique to bring people into deeper and deeper trance.

Does it really work?​
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Test it out yourself and see. The next time you’re at the gym… or in bed as you’re trying and failing to fall asleep… or perhaps the next time you’re writing a sales email.

And now imagine click below to my Most Valuable Email sales page, and reading all the fascinating and curious things I promise in the headline…

No no, stop imagining. Come back to earth or at least back to this email.

Now imagine that fascination and curiosity building up to an almost unbearable level as you make your way down the sales page…

Seriously stop it. Stop imagining being so fascinated and curious. It’s off-putting.

Except wouldn’t it be fascinating and curious to finally find out what the Most Valuable Email trick is? Of course it would. Here’s where to go to get it:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

1-2 approach to reduce Twitter ad costs by 86%

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Adventures in paid traffic:

I’m running Twitter ads to grow my Morning Brew-like health newsletter. The same batch of ads in different ad groups, using different ways of targeting people.

Terrible results. The best I could do was targeting a bunch of keywords naturally connected to the topic of my newsletter.

New subscriber cost? $14.04. Scary.

I then went and looked at a bunch of profiles of people who signed up. Their Twitter descriptions, what they were sharing. It wasn’t health. It was investing.

So I created a new ad group, targeting investing keywords entirely unrelated to my newsletter.

New subscriber cost? $1.99.

The usual caveats apply:

The quality of any of these subscribers is not clear, since I haven’t tried selling anything to them yet beyond the optin. It’s not even clear if they will stay engaged and open my newsletter in case I sell ads in the future.

Still, if you’re running paid traffic for your newsletter, consider the above 1-2 approach. It might help you find entirely new, unexpected segments of the market that might be a good fit for what you do.

Also, if you are running paid traffic to grow your newsletter or email list, and you’ve spent $500 or more, write in and let me know. I have something you might like.

The Big Store

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I’m reading a book about con men. Ben Marks was one of them. His specialty was three-card monte, hustling cattlemen and miners and soldiers in the streets of Cheyenne.

Marks was good. He’d regularly make $5, $10, sometimes $25 by fleecing some greedy passerby on the street.

Marks made a living. But it was hardly a business. The streets of Cheyenne were too busy and too crowded and there was too much competition. Saloons offering booze. Hotels offering gambling. Brothels offering love.

So Marks hit upon a novel idea.

Why not open his own establishment? Get people to come to him? Do away with the competition?

It’s a concept that became known as the Big Store.

The Big Store became a key part of the big con. A fancy gambling club, or a brokerage house, or in Marks’s case, The Dollar Store — everything for a dollar, including some very attractive and expensive goods, displayed colorfully in the store windows.

But when a prospect stepped inside The Dollar Store, he’d see several lively monte games already in play, with Marks’s shills and “sticks” in place of real gamblers.

The new prospect forgot about the attractive merchandise.

He left The Dollar Store some time later, not having bought anything for $1. But he did leave behind a wad of cash nonetheless.

I’m not encouraging you to grift, conning, or crime of any sort. But I do tell you the above because:

1. The basic idea is usable in non-criminal ways also. Think, how can I get them to come to me? How do I do away with the competition and other distractions?

2. “Get them to come to you, instead of going to them” might sound like a simple, familiar, or even trivial idea. But it’s not one you should dismiss. Marks’s Big Store was the innovation that created the big-money confidence games that netted $75,000 or $100,000, instead of $25 hustles in back alleys and on train cars and street corners.

Do you wanna see a Big Store in action? Here’s a clip (no spoilers) from The Sting, one of my favorite films:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYjyFQS3DWM

Keep taking your marketing cues from email Beyoncés

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Beyoncé rolled into town a week ago. Her first tour in eight years. People were desperate for tickets.

It’s customary for touring artists to have an opening act or two. Get people warmed up. Give people more for their money.

But Beyoncé had no opening act. Why should she? It’s Beyoncé. She hasn’t done a show in eight years.

Everybody who managed to get a ticket to see her and to witness the light show and the costume changes and Reneigh the flying silver horse got their money’s worth. And they were grateful to get a chance to be there, just to see Beyoncé, and to hear Beyoncé sing.

Yesterday, I invited people to send me their failing emails. The solid ones that didn’t make sales. The interesting ones that nobody cared about.

One thing I saw in a third of the emails is people taking cues from the Beyoncés of the email marketing world. The equivalent of, “Beyoncé doesn’t have an opening act. So why should I?”

No reason. If your emails are getting the results you want, then keep doing what you’re doing.

But if not, it might be time to stop taking your cues from email Beyoncés, to look at the fundamentals of your copy, and to see if you’re missing anything there.

I responded to everyone who wrote me with what I thought was the biggest mistake in their emails, and I told them how I would fix it.

I will put on a training based on this, about the most common email copy mistakes I see, in my coaching students, in consulting clients, and in copywriters and business owners who have bought my courses and trainings.

Meanwhile, my offer from yesterday still stands:

Have you written a great email that made zero sales? Or did you send out something super interesting — but nobody cared?

Send me an email of yours that was a disappointment or failure. In return, I’ll point out the biggest mistake I see in that email, and I’ll tell how you can fix it in the future, quickly, easily, and profitably.

Do you make these mistakes in email copy?

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I’ve critiqued over 100 sales emails by a dozen or more business owners and professional copywriters. I’ve found 9 mistakes repeatedly keep popping up, like moles in a manicured lawn, spoiling what might otherwise be fun, engaging, money-making emails.

Many people use Reddit threads or personal stories at the start of their email that are sure to kill the sale by the end of the email.

Others try to express their personality with language that chases off good prospects.

It is astonishing how often people resort to subject line tricks that attract the exact wrong segment of their audience.

Why do most people make these mistakes in email copy?

The reason is clear. There are only a few fundamentals to writing good emails. But learning what those fundamentals and mastering them are two different things.

The fascinating thing is that, by fixing a few common mistakes, sales emails become faster and easier to write. Maybe even more fun, for you and for your reader.

Most importantly, corrected sales emails make more sales, not just today, but tomorrow and the day after.

I’ve decided to put on a training about the most common email copy mistakes I’ve seen, in my coaching students, in consulting clients, and in copywriters and business owners who have bought my courses and trainings.

If you like, you can help influence this training, and even get more benefit out of it when it’s out.

Have you written a great email that made zero sales? Or did you send out something super interesting — but nobody cared?

Send me an email of yours that was a disappointment or failure. In return, I’ll point out the biggest mistake I see in that email, and I’ll tell how you can fix it in the future, quickly, easily, and profitably.