Don’t read this before bed

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A gruesome and depressing email today. Read at your own risk:

Last night, of course right before bed, I saw a real-life clip online that I really didn’t need to see.

It showed a heartbroken mother wailing. She had just called 911 after she discovered some rotting human remains in her 19-year-old son’s closet.

The rest of the clip showed the police confronting the son.

He calmly and articulately admitted that, yes, that is a human head and a pair human hands in his closet, and yes, he did murder somebody with a knife. Asked why, he replied, “I always wanted to know what it would feel like.”

Of course, rather than closing my laptop at this point and going to drink some chamomile tea to maybe bleach this from my mind, I investigated this case further.

The murderer looks to be as close to pure evil as you can imagine. Cold, remorseless, shark-like.

He was arrested and then tried. His lawyers went with an insanity defense. It didn’t fly.

He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. The jury felt he was not insane, in the sense that he could clearly distinguish between right and wrong.

But if you see the guy confessing to the murder or talking about the details of it, it’s clear that something is not right in his head. He might not be insane in the legal sense, but he’s certainly not sane in the everyday sense.

If you would dig into the neural pathways, chemicals, bits and blobs of his brain, I bet you’d find they were different to what a normal person has. Maybe this guy was born deficient in some way, or something went wrong early in life, or wasn’t there when it should have been.

I feel like I’m digging myself into a hole with this email. It’s too late to stop now, so let me dig a bit deeper:

I don’t know if we have free will, or like I wrote a few weeks ago, “free won’t.”

But even though the murder case above is as clear of a black-and-white, good-vs-evil, open-and-shut case as you would ever not want to see right before bed, I personally still feel there’s probably much more to it for anybody who would take the trouble to look closer.

Does that mean that the guy is not guilty of murder?

Smart people, such as Stanford neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky, argue exactly this. Sapolsky says that assigning guilt doesn’t make sense when you actually look at what’s happening in the brain.

I personally don’t know.

One thing I do know is that my “shades of gray” way of looking at the world is a handicap, probably for my own happiness and certainly when it comes to influencing others. Because the more black-and-white you see things, the easier it makes it for others to identify with you, to fall in line with your views, to berserk on your behalf, as Ben Settle likes to say.

This black-and-white stuff also works if you write sales copy. (Yes, I have to somehow try to clamber out of that hole I’ve dug for myself.)

The more extreme, contrasted, polarized you make your claims, the more likely you are to draw attention to and to create desire for them.

This is something I go into much more detail in my Copy Riddles program. Copy Riddles gives you source material from info products of years past, and sales bullets from A-list copywriters who promoted those products, to drill this black-and-white stuff into your brain, such as it is.

In case you’d like to find out more, and maybe bleach this email from your mind:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Some leaked news that ties into what I’m selling

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I’m writing this opening sentence in a ham-handed attempt to intrigue you, so you read on. And I’m announcing that fact because it relates to the following leaked media news:

Netflix execs have started telling their screenwriters to announce what the character is doing. Here’s an example, from Netflix’s #1 hit movie, Irish Wish, starring Lindsey Lohan:

===

“We spent a day together,” Lohan tells her lover, James. “I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.”

“Fine,” says James. “That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.”

===

Billy Wilder it’s not.

So why are Netflix execs mandating this? Why are they breaking the basic rules of good writing? Why do they want to make screenplays intentionally heavy and plodding, repeating what’s already happened, stating the obvious, telling instead of showing?

There’s a good reason. It’s because people are watching Netflix shows in the background.

I’ve seen this first-hand. My ex-girlfriend used to “watch” Netflix shows while cooking. She’d have the headphones in and move around the kitchen, her phone propped up somewhere in the corner of the counter. She’d glance over at it only occasionally, if she was not chopping carrots or peeking inside the fridge at the moment.

If you write emails to connect with your audience, what does this mean for you?

You might think it means you have to get with the times. To make your writing shorter, punchier, more comic book-like. After all, attention spans are dropping! People are distracted! Content is superabundant! Gotta hook ’em in with memes, emojis, and ellipses!

And yet, I’ve consciously gone in the other direction with this newsletter. This ugly Times New Roman font, big blocky paragraphs, stories that require careful parsing to make sense.

I’ve done it all to encourage people to sit and actually read, instead of skimming my emails while they chop carrots. And I’ve done just fine, even well, by taking this approach.

Point being:

Netflix has 282 million subscribers worldwide. That’s a gargantuan number. But even that is only 3.45% of the world’s population.

Today, you can do things the way that you want, the way that pleases you. If you are persistent and unapologetic about it, and if you deliver value as part of what you do, you will find enough people who resonate with your way of doing things, even if the mainstream is going in the exact opposite direction.

And now I’m going to transition to the sales pitch in this email. Because my opening sentence today is not the only place where I ham-handedly announce things that I’m going to do.

I also do it daily inside my Daily Email Habit service. I do it so you can do it too, for your own audience, in your own tone and voice, and so you can stay consistent in connecting with your audience. For more info on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Announcing: Writer MBA

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Today, I’d like to skip the infotainment and get you thinking about attending a live, in-person event called Writer MBA Conference.

I’m not personally going. I’m also not an affiliate for it. I really have no stake in it other than:

Reason #1: I know a segment of my audience is made up of writers — “writer” writers, not writers who, like me, are always fishing for a sale.

Maybe you’re in this “writer” writer group. If so, this conference could be valuable to you.

Reason #2. I know the guy behind Writer MBA. His name is Russell Nohelty.

Russell is a bestselling author of fantasy books and comics. He also writes about the business of writing, and he runs Writer MBA, a membership program to help writers make more money. And that’s what’s the conference will be about.

When I say I know Russell, I mean I know he’s a good guy.

The best proof is that Russell’s been around for a couple of decades, writing, for real, and writing about the business of writing.

Other people in the writing space work with Russell. They like him. They want to keep working with him, after all these years.

That’s because Russell pretty selflessly offers to help and contribute, without asking anything in return. Example:

When I was promoting a course this past fall, about using paid ads for building up your list, Russell wrote me and suggested we get on a call.

He could share his experiences spending close to $30,000 this year on building up his Substack audience to 70,000 readers.

He suggested we record the call, and then I could give it away as a free bonus to the course I was promoting.

So we did, and I did.

I then asked Russell if anything of his I could help him promote.

He said the Writer MBA Conference, because from what I can tell, it’s his baby. He takes it seriously. He wants to make it something really different to all the other conferences out there.

So here I am, telling you about the Writer MBA Conference.

The most bare-bones details are that it’s happening live and in person, in mid-March, in New Orleans.

As for the full details of why you might want to go, or why you might want to go to this particular conference, I’ll let Russell tell you about that. If you’re a “writer” writer, and you want to meet people who can help you succeed in what you do, take a look here:

https://writermba.com/

The JV Nothing

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The first book I read in English — English not being my native language — was The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.

Maybe you know the 1984 Hollywood movie? The original book is much bigger, and much more profound.

At the core of it is a boy named Bastian Balthasar Bux, who leads a gray and dreary life.

But then one day Bastian is transported to a fantastical land called Fantastica.

He’s brought there to save Fantastica from an existential threat known only as The Nothing.

The Nothing is not a hole. It’s not black. It’s not white. It just makes people and places in Fantastica disappear. Where these people and places were, nothing is left, or more precisely, The Nothing is left.

But let me get to The Something of this email:

Last year, I went on a kick of cold emailing random business owners in a quest for JV partners.

I did this in part because I was following Travis Sago’s BEAMER training, and also because I was working as a coach in Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind, where most people were doing similar cold outreach. I wanted to see if I could do it myself.

My quest for JV partners came to exactly nothing in the end. And that’s even though I had a good offer, and I did my research on people, and though my copy was on point.

What happened? Nobody knows, and nobody ever will.

One minute, my cold outreach messages were in my gmail composer, and after I clicked send, they disappeared. The JV Nothing swallowed them up.

No information ever came back about where I went wrong — whether it was the list, or the offer, or the copy.

I’m sure somebody has good experiences to counter my bad experience with cold outreach.

But from what I’ve seen, it takes huge numbers of cold outreach messages to get any kind of a serious prospect, and even when you get somebody, they rarely turn out to be a good partner, and the relationship tends to be very flimsy.

So what to do?

In The Neverending Story, Bastian eventually saves Fantastica (and himself) via an act of total self-abnegation. He has to give up his own identity, down to every desire, every memory. It turns out to be transformative.

I’d like to propose the same if you’re trying to get JV partners, whether for a list swap, or an affiliate deal, or some sort of long-term collaboration.

Many things go into making that happen and turn out well.

But in terms of getting it at least started, I can recommend the following:

Start with people you know, and who know you.

Once you’ve worked through those, go to people you know, who don’t know you — people you’re a fan of, follower of, genuinely can say feel you know them, even though the feeling is not mutual. (Trust me, if you communicate this, it somehow comes through clearly in a message.)

And once you’ve worked through those people, go to people you make an effort to get to know, over time, either via an introduction, or by following them, reading their stuff, buying their products, writing them, helping them — without your desires or your memories of your planned JV deal in mind.

Anything to avoid the genuinely cold outreach message.

That’s my fantastical tip for you today.

My fantastical offer today has nothing to do with today’s fantastical email. Well, it does, but in a way that I’m not willing to reveal just yet.

For now, if you’d like my help in starting and sticking with a consistent daily email habit, so you can gradually expand the universe of people who know you, and who can connect you, and who you can partner with:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Free vs. low-ticket

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Comes a question from a long-time reader, Shakoor Chowdhury, about list building:

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OPINION: Free Offers are dead with how saturated and “information bloated” someone is, it’s like offering someone who is full of french fries and big macs another “free big mac”; sure he’ll take it but that’s the last you’ll see of him

+ I’ve noticed even on a GOOD DAY, with lead costs at less than 30 US cents, and 7% Link CTR, my email open rates are NEVER higher than 30%

VS: someone who buys a low ticket offer

I kind of haphazardly published my first book on amazon,

I’m not sure HOW, but this guy found it, bought it, messaged me on Telegram, followed me on instagram, and reads every single one of my emails…

any thoughts on this?

My sample size is too small to make any DEFINITIVE prediction, but it seems to me that I’ll be switching PERMANENTLY away from “free lead magnets” to low ticket PAID offers for listbuilding

===

Shakoor’s food analogy is actually a good way to think about this.

If you’re stuffed with french fries and big macs, would you accept and eat another free big mac?

You might, or you might not.

But by the same token, would you accept and eat an extra big mac if you had to pay $1.99 for it?

You might, or you might not.

On the other hand, what if you were offered free ice cream… or a free beer… or better yet, a tour of 4 local microbreweries, which normally costs $200, where you get to be educated and entertained by the brewers, and you get to sample their beers, all for free?

Again, depending on your tastes, and the kind of guy or gal you are, you might accept or you might not.

In case you’re wondering what I’m getting at:

Free and low-ticket are both as old as the art of fishing. Neither method will be going away while humans continue to fish, or for that matter, to do business.

The way I see it, it’s not about price. It’s about perceived value.

Low-priced lead magnets force the prospect to put some value on what you’re offering, because it’s baked into the offer.

But zero-cost lead magnets don’t have to have zero perceived value. Free lead magnets can have great perceived value, if you take the time and trouble to make it so.

Which brings me to another of the unsung benefits of daily emails.

Daily emails increase the perceived value of your offers.

Because anybody can print out a price tag, stick it on the side of a cardboard box, and yell once or twice about how there’s $1,000 worth of value inside.

And yes — this will have some effect. It will make the cardboard box, and whatever is inside it, more valuable than a box without a price tag. It will make it easier to give it away for free, or even to charge a few dollars for it.

BUT.

Take the time over and over to reiterate the value of the stuff in the box… to highlight the attractive things inside… to explain how they can benefit the prospect… to quantify those benefits in as many ways as you can… to bring up previous buyers and their success stories and endorsements… to repeat and justify the price… and do this day after day, repeating your message until both the desire and the credibility pile up via simple persistence…

… and the perceived value of your cardboard box, and what’s in it, doesn’t just rise to a few dollars. Or even to a thousand dollars.

The perceived value can go to many thousands of dollars, so people happily give you $1k for your cardboard box, and feel like they are getting a steal in the process.

And if you ever decide to give that box away for free… suddenly there’s a stampede.

That is what happens when you send an interesting and yet self-promotional email every day.

And on that note:

I have a service that helps you you send daily emails consistently, called Daily Email Habit. Shakoor, who wrote the question above, actually subscribes to Daily Email Habit. He had this to say about it:

===

Daily Email Habit is the best thing I ever purchased PERIOD.

It really gets past the first hurdle of “what to write”…

And I love the accountability that comes with it.

While snapchat uses “streaks” for pointless time-wasting, you actually used gamification for something awesome and beneficial

I’m starting to enjoy the habit of daily writing. And, I write more for MYSELF these days than my subscribers.

===

If you would like my help consistently writing daily emails, so you can increase the perceived value of your offers, free or paid:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Have you just launched a new offer?

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If so, great! Now it’s time to start working on your next offer. In the words of James Altucher, “Best way to market your first book? Write your next book.”

Maybe you don’t like that. Maybe you’ll like this better:

Yesterday, a reader forwarded me an email from Jon Morrow. It had the subject line, “How I made $171,000 selling a $1 book.”

First, I didn’t even click to open the email. What’s there to learn? I’m sure Jon didn’t make $171,000 by selling 171,000 copies of a $1 book.

But today, in the interest of writing this email, and being thorough with research, I opened Jon’s email. I even clicked through to the sales page linked at the bottom.

The sales page has the usual screenshots to prove income claims. And sure enough, there’s a screenshot that shows the $160k that Jon’s $1 book had generated at the time of screenshotting. The income breaks down like this:

$8,880 in book sales…

$151,476 in upsells.

Like I said, you might not like the idea of creating a new offer.

But how about 20x the income that you’ll make from your current offer? Do you like that?

That’s the power of a upsells, followup offers, a back end, whatever you want to call it.

Final bit of motivation:

When Prince initially released 1999 as a single, the song bombed. It stalled at #44 on the charts. Then Prince released Little Red Corvette, which made it the Top 10. He then re-released 1999, and it went to number 2 on the charts.

I think you get my point. So let me offer a tip to make your job easier:

You might not like the idea of creating a new offer. After all, you just launched one. I can understand.

Here’s a trick that I use. It’s to constantly drip out content to promote my existing offer… content which I can then turn around and repurpose into a new offer.

It’s one of the unsung benefits of daily emails, done right.

Plus of course, there’s the more sung benefit of daily emails, specifically:

With daily emails, you’ll sell way way more of your current offer than if you simply have it sitting there, and you’ll even sell more than if you simply promote it periodically without daily emailing.

But that’s really another email, for another time.

For today, if you’d like to start and stick with the habit of daily emailing, both to make sales this month, and to gradually build up a new offer you can launch next month, then take a look at my Daily Email habit service, which is designed to help you do exactly that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Did I live up to my 2024 “theme”?

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Every January 1st, going back four years now, I have a tradition in this newsletter:

I review my previous year and I make some plans for the coming year. Well, last year I tried to skip it, but then a long-time reader called me out on it. This year, I’ll walk the line.

My “theme” last year — theme being a kind of fuzzy goal — was ambition.

Was I ambitious in 2024? Did I live up to the year’s theme? And what was the result?

Well, in 2024 I did a bunch of stuff:

I launched a group coaching program… started a continuity offer… ran a dozen promos… put on some live trainings… had a job for the first time in I don’t know how many years (coaching in Shiv Shetti’s mastermind)… partnered with a couple people on side projects… came second in an affiliate contest for a Dan Kennedy offer that I only wrote about tongue-in-cheek… got on stage once to talk in front of a sizable crowd… appeared on a handful of podcasts… delivered a couple trainings inside other people’s private masterminds… almost finished writing my new book… launched a community… and overall had my best year in terms of income.

Sounds like I done a lot! But it sure doesn’t feel like it.

Early in 2024, I wrote down a list of a dozen+ items of what ambition means to me.

Looking back on that list now, I see I didn’t get anywhere close to achieving any of the dozen+ items.

And not only that, but stuff I did achieve back in April or August doesn’t feel like it counts for anything today. “What have you done for me lately?” some devil inside me is asking. Who knows, maybe that’s what ambition sounds like.

The natural conclusion to all this — not achieving my goals, for the third year in a row — might be to stop setting goals and to learn to be happy with what I got and what I’m doing now.

But I’m not a natural kind of guy. In fact, I’m a rather contrary kind of guy.

Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion that humans need both, goals AND acceptance, cow-like satisfaction AND ambition and yearning.

Besides, it would be kinda boring if I ended this email and simply said, Michael Corleone-like, “Dear reader, you can have my answer now. My goals for 2025 are this… nothing. Not even to make a million dollars, which I would I appreciate if you would contribute to my bank account personally.”

No, I won’t do that. Instead I got some real live themes, or goals, of whatever, for 2025:

#1. Recurring income

After 10+ years of learning and in some ways practicing direct marketing, I’ve finally accepted that most basic direct marketing truth, that recurring income is where it’s at.

At the tail end of 2024, I launched a little continuity offer, and I happily offered people long-term payment plans to get them to take me up on some of my more expensive offers.

I’ve also started keeping track of what share of my income is recurring income. In 2025, I will be looking to grow that.

#2. Less of me

In 2025, I wanna make more offers that are less about me, my results, my authority, my charming personality, and more about, “Does this sound sexy and credible?”

This isn’t about “Taking myself out of the business” or a fantasy about scaling to cold traffic.

Rather, it’s a desire for competence. Frankly, it’s fairly easy to create an offer that sells well to people who are basically buying YOU. It’s much harder to create an offer that sells based on its own merits. I just wanna get better at it. (Like I said, I’m a rather contrary kind of guy.)

#3. Tech

I’m a luddite by nature, though at some point in my life I was a good software programmer. I wrote code for a decade or more and I even enjoyed it much of the time.

I don’t wanna go back to my old career. But like I’ve been saying lately, it’s never been easier to get little tech tools created for you with the snap of your fingers.

I’ve ignored technology for a long time. But in 2025, I wanna do more of that finger-snapping for my own benefit, and who knows, maybe even build something that can be useful to others.

So there you go, my three new themes for 2025. Let’s see how I manage to live up to them in the coming year.

There’s one final January 1st tradition around here. This is the only day of the year that I remember to link to my “Store” page, which lists all of my currently available offers.

Over the 6+ years of running this daily newsletter, I’ve written and created many courses, books, and trainings.

Here are the ones that have stood the test of time and that I continue to proudly sell every day:

https://bejakovic.com/store/

2025: The year of “big” topics

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I’m subscribed to a curious newsletter, Thinking About Things. Every few days or few weeks, without rule, that newsletter sends out an interesting article from somewhere on the Internet.

A couple days ago, the guy behind Thinking About Things put out a “Best of 2024” issue. And he wrote:

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In 2024 there was a noticeable mood shift. While last year’s top articles list was dominated by articles about depression and mental health, this year’s top picks show a very different trend. Not a single article on those subjects made the cut. Instead, our readers gravitated toward the practical: personal finance, stretching, the importance of calling mom, and actionable tips for living your best life.

===

This got me wondering. Mental health in 2023… practical tips in 2024… what about 2025 then?

I got an answer for you. But first, here are a few things I think are in the water right now:

– AGI or ASI (“artificial super intelligence” — the head of AI for Google just tweeted yesterday that it’s looking more and more likely we’ll jump straight to ASI, and skip AGI)

– Serious people claiming we are already living in World War III, in case you haven’t noticed

– The Internet-wide glee over the symbolic assassination of a corporate CEO, and what it means for the future of our economic system

– Trump’s re-election, and the future of America: A new civil war, or Greenland as the 51st state?

These are “big” topics.

The world keeps getting bigger. We know more about it on the microscopic level. We know more about it on the telescopic level. And in between, every damn thing is getting immensely more complex and rich by the day.

All this complexity long ago passed human understanding, but it couldn’t kill the human desire to understand.

And that’s why my prediction for content that will win out in 2025 is content that puts limited human knowledge and understanding inside a bigger context — historical, philosophical, scientific, etc.

Yes, eventually these “big”-topic articles will grow familiar and tiresome also, like articles about depression or mental health.

But I think that people who write about “big” topics will be the attention winners in 2025, and those who don’t will be the losers, or at least the also-rans.

Let’s see in a year if I was right.

I’ll still be here, writing, inshallah, barring a 3rd World War for real, or an asteroid falling on my head.

And if you’d like to join me, and maybe write an email like this tomorrow, and get my help and motivation along the way, you can get started here — before the clock strikes 12:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Ex-reader likes playing games with me

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A guy who is no longer on my list asks about getting mentored:

===

One question that has been cooking up in my mind is that…

Do you ever coach copywriters?

You have mentioned several times that you were a protege of Dan Ferrari and that it helped hone your skills quite a bit. So I was wondering if you do anything like that at all. And no, I’m not talking about Shiv’s mastermind. I’m talking about your own thing.

If not, would you ever consider doing a paid mentorship, like an A-Z program?

Also, would you recommend copywriters to get mentored by someone to get good and ofc, get the street cred and bragging rights?

===

Reasonable questions, right?

No, I don’t think they’re reasonable questions. But I know some things you don’t know.

For example, I know this guy has long been circling the goal of becoming a copywriter, as they say, “like a cat around hot porridge.”

For going on two years now, this guy replied to my emails to express what’s been holding him back:

He hasn’t figured out his ideal client profile…

He doesn’t have sufficient expertise…

He doesn’t have enough time to find clients.

Side note:

A valuable thing I learned from Tony Robbins is that there’s power in asking the right questions.

Says Tony, “why” is not a very good question to ask. And I agree, particularly if you’re unhappy with where you’re at, and you’re asking questions like:

“Why do I find myself in this deep hole? Why have I been unable to get out for so long? Why are others not in this hole, while I am?”

Not good. All those “why” questions confirm you as a hole-dweller, and just give you a glum satisfaction that there’s nothing to be done, because it’s meant to be like this.

Says Tony, “how” is a much better question to ask. As in:

“How the hell do I get out of this hole? How might the normally impossible be temporarily possible? How can I use what I’ve got on me — clothes, hair, nails — to fashion an escape device?”

“Oh,” but you say, “isn’t that what the guy above is doing? Asking how? How he can become a successful copywriter, and if mentoring might be the way out of his deep hole?”

Again, that’s another bit of info that I have that you don’t. Because the same guy has written me before, on multiple occasions, to say how great my offers are. But, alas, he cannot afford them.

He wrote me that when I was selling info products, which almost universally are a fraction of the cost of “mentoring” or “coaching” or any kind of direct work with someone.

Asking about “mentoring” was just another game this guy was playing. “Ah, it would be so great! If only I had the money, which I don’t! I will certainly take you up on it one day, as soon as I can!”

And just so we’re 100% clear, I’m not ragging on this guy because he doesn’t have money. Money is one way to get closer to the things you want, but it’s not the only way, or even the best way.

My point is simply to be honest with yourself, as honest as you can, about what you really want… about what you’re willing to do to get there… and about what it would mean if you don’t succeed.

I’ve long said there’s no shame in starting towards a goal and then deciding it’s not for you. I do it once a week on average.

There are many more goals out there than there is time and energy. And while it can be noble to persevere, it can also be smart to cut your losses, and go do something where you’re more likely to be successful and happy.

But on to my offer:

My offer is to help you start and stick with writing daily emails.

Maybe you’re reluctant to start writing daily emails because you’re not sure if you will be able to stick with it.

It’s a reasonable concern.

My answer? Worst case, you won’t stick with it. No real harm in that. This newsletter you’re reading now, which has been going steady for 6+ years, is something like my third of fourth attempt at writing daily emails consistently.

I couldn’t stick with it every previous time. So what?

One thing I know:

Starting today, and seeing how it goes tomorrow, is infinitely better than circling the hot porridge for months or even years to come.

If you’d like to get started, and today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The “Challenge Playbook” for building a name for yourself

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Yesterday, I promised to tell you about a guy who became the most famous entertainer of his age via a series of challenges, dares, and contests.

A reader wrote in to guess who it might be. Is it Mr. Beast?

No.

I don’t know Mr. Beast from any other Mr. YouTube Star.

But I am sure the playbook I’m about to show you still works today, and maybe is what Mr. Beast used to get attention and success.

Let me get to our story. It takes place on November 22nd, many, many years ago.

A small, muscular man walked into the Gloucester, Massachusetts police station. And he asked to be chained up. In fact, he asked to be put into the most secure handcuffs the police had.

The man wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t dangerous. He hadn’t committed a crime.

Instead, this was a publicity stunt. His claim was that the police couldn’t hold him.

And sure enough, after the police cuffed him, the man got out of the cuffs, in just a few seconds’ time.

That man’s name?

Mr. Bea— no just kidding.

You’ve probably guessed it already. That man’s name was Harry Houdini.

Houdini was the biggest entertainer of his age. Even today, almost 100 years after his death, Houdini is still the famousest magician who ever lived. Most people, even if they know nothing about magic or Houdini’s stunts, at least know his name.

That time in Gloucester (the year was 1896) was the first time Houdini escaped from cuffs in a police station. But the scheme behind it was one he had used before and would use later, many times.

Houdini would challenge rivals to escape his handcuffs, and offer to pay them if they succeeded (they never could).

He’d put out ads in the newspaper, inviting strangers to come to his shows and get on stage, to cuff and chain and tie him as they pleased, and see if they could contain him (they never could).

He’d put himself in impossible situations — in a strait jacket, upside down, locked in a glass cage filled to the top with water, to see if maybe death could catch him (death did win out in the end, in 1926, via a burst appendix).

Many of Houdini’s stunts were very difficult and demanding to perform. Others were genuinely dangerous. But many were just show — planned, orchestrated, dependent on magician’s tricks to make them look daring and impossible.

The reality didn’t matter. The perception did. And the perception was that Houdini could get out of anything, escape any situation, no matter how desperate. He had demonstrated the fact dozens of times throughout his career. Incontestably. That’s why he went to the police station.

This email is getting long, and it’s about to get longer. Well, at least a bit longer.

Because I don’t want to just tell you about Harry Houdini and his “Challenge Playbook” of building a name for himself. I want you to think about how you could apply Houdini’s playbook to what you do.

After I read about Houdini, I thought about this question myself. I thought about challenges, dares, stunts for myself. Something that seemed risky, unlikely to succeed, costing me significantly if it failed.

I came up with ideas like this:

* Pay $1k for a 40-word classified ad — and make my money back on day 0

* Pay $2k and spend a week to attend a live event, totaling about $4k in real cost — and make that money back before the event is done

* Pay $10k to buy a newsletter in a niche where my good name counts for nothing, where I have no experience, and no particular affinity — and make a 100% return on my money within 3 months

… et cetera. The key is that the outcome be a yes/no achievement, an incontestable result, and something with a touch of risk and glamour — at least glamour as it is in the dollar-denominated online marketing space.

And of course, for any of this to make sense, I’d have to announce my challenge in public… draw out the uncertainty and high-stakes for as long as possible… and make a show out of my desperate and unlikely success, if it did happen.

Maybe my ideas gave you some ideas of your own.

If you do end up creating a daring stunt or challenge in your industry, let me know about it. I’d like to come and watch, and maybe I can even bring some friends to help build buzz in the audience.

But on to the sales end of this email:

You might wonder whether an email like the above is actually useful for selling.

The fact is, I don’t know.

I wrote the above because I felt like writing it, without much thinking about actually tying it into an offer.

That’s a privilege that I allow myself to indulge in sometimes, much like chocolate.

But it’s not something I encourage others to do. I encourage others to write deliberate emails, with deliberate goals — to make sales, to change beliefs in their prospects’ minds, to curate and condition their audience.

That’s what underlies the prompts I put inside my Daily Email Habit service. And in case you’re wondering, my email today and my email yesterday were not based on my own prompts.

But two days was enough of a holiday for me, so tomorrow I’ll get back to writing emails based on the Daily Email Habit prompt.

If you’d like to join me, sign up here before tomorrow’s prompt goes out at 12 midnight PST tonight:

https://bejakovic.com/deh