Creating value out of things that others would never think of

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I’m at the airport as I write this, on my way to Budapest, my former home, for a reunion with friends I had when I lived there a long time ago.

Right now, I’m sitting on a tiny stool at an airport restaurant, about to bite into a refrigerated airport sandwich, crowded on the one side by a pushy French couple and on the other by cleaning woman with a large broom.

That’s the good part of my current trip.

The bad part is that I just spent 25 minutes waiting in line for the privilege of paying 48 euro to get my boarding pass.

I’m flying low-cost, and I didn’t check in online before the three-hours deadline mandated by this low-cost airline. When I tried to check in online a few hours ago, I was told I would have to do it at the airport, and pay.

It’s annoying when this happens on a low-cost flight, and yet it is instructive.

The fact is, all kinds of things can be turned into value that normally aren’t.

It feels petty when low-cost airlines do it, but it can be done in ways that don’t feel petty, but in fact feel the opposite — generous, exciting, convenient.

Imagine you’re buying a house.

Nominally, you’re paying for the keys and the right to move in.

You can buy a “low-cost” house, which gives you the keys and the right to move in, but which doesn’t have lightbulbs, windows, or running water, and you have to pay extra for those.

Conversely, can buy a “premium” house, which gives you not just the bare keys and the right to move in, but which has been furnished by an interior designer, comes with a concierged security service, and has a fridge stocked with food from Whole Foods.

Ultimately, it’s the same business practice, the only difference is the positioning of your business as upmarket or downmarket.

Maybe you’re munching on your own refrigerated sandwich right now and mumbling, “Right right…”

… but maybe you don’t see how this idea from real estate and the airline industry can apply to what you do, specifically to creating offers that you can sell to your audience.

For that, I’d like to invite you to sign up for a trial to my perennial recommendation, the Royalty Ronin community.

Travis Sago, the guy who runs Ronin, is the best person I have ever seen at creating value out of things that others would never think of.

Right now, Travis is preparing to auction off a year of a SaaS, which he is promoting as an affiliate.

In other words, Travis will ask people how much they would pay… to have him pay their bill for a year of this software service.

How do you possibly auction off something not unique, with a known and fixed value? And how do you auction it off for 5x, 10x, 20x of what it is currently selling for on the website of the SaaS company?

For that, I invite you to sign up to Ronin, and to follow along as Travis proceeds to build up his premium offer, out of elements that might seem like air to you right now:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Father devastated by 9yo son’s lack of monetization

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Have you heard the latest news about the “devastated father who says his 9-year-old son spent $118k on YouTube ads?”

The story broke yesterday. The events apparently happened over the past month. The background:

1. Last year, the kid started a YouTube channel streaming himself playing Minecraft, called Mighty Mike Plays.

2. Ever since, Mighty Mike uploaded a bunch of videos, but he wasn’t getting any views. He complained to dad.

3. Dad had a bright idea, and guided his son through a small $20 ad campaign to get some YouTube views.

4. Dad used his company card to fund this (it’s hard to tell if the dad is a moron or a criminal, and the article I read doesn’t say).

5. A few days ago, dad got called into his boss’s office. “What is this series of charges on the company card, totaling $118k?”

6. Turns out the Mighty Mike had kept running ads on YouTube, using dad’s company card, to the tune of $118k.

7. Two days ago, Mighty Mike posted on YouTube, “I’m in big trouble.”

8. Yesterday, Mike’s dad posted a video on the Mighty Mike Plays channel, explaining how it all went down. He also says it is yet not sure if he will be able to will keep his job or if he will have to repay the money. (Like I said, it’s not clear if he’s a moron or a criminal.)

Assuming that this isn’t just all made up by AI or by clickfarming scammers in some far-off land, it’s a wild story.

The best part is that I went to check the Mighty Mike Plays channel.

It currently stands at 39k subs, meaning that Mike apparently paid about $3 per YouTube subscriber.

I also checked the channel’s videos. The the top few videos are in the 200k views range, and the rest steeply drop off.

Adding it all up, I figure that Mighty Mike’s Minecraft streams didn’t get more than 1M views in total.

I’m not sure if Mike could monetize his channel (I’m guessing not, since he’s a minor, but I don’t know YouTube).

If he could, then according to my AI monkey’s best estimates, his 1M YouTube views, resulting from his $118k ad spend, would have netted him between $2k and $5k.

My takeaway for you is simply, if you think a bigger audience will solve all your problems, it won’t.

That’s not to say that you don’t need a certain size of audience to make a certain amount of money.

But you also need ways to monetize that audience.

Earlier today, I prepared a list of 10 ways to better monetize an email list of 3k+ subscribers. This list is based on things I’ve personally done to monetize my list, and the work I’ve done with consulting clients who I’ve helped to make more money from their email list.

This list won’t be useful to you if you don’t have a list of at least 3k subscribers. If you do, and if you’d like the list, hit reply and I’ll get it to you.

Readers kick my stupid analogy to the curb

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In my email yesterday, I asked for my readers’ help for a sticky way to illustrate the distinction between a “predictable income biz” and an “uncertain cash grab biz.”

My best idea was “Rolls-Royce business” vs “DeLorean business.” I thought it was clever. The people who replied almost uniformly thought it was unclear and ineffective.

Fine. Have it your way.

Fortunately, I also got some good suggestions from readers about better analogies than the the unlucky Rolls-Royce/DeLorean thing. A few of my favorites:

A vase of cut flowers versus a potted plant that keeps blooming…

… a deli business (which just has a bunch of expenses on the first of the month) versus the water company (which has a bunch of income on the first of the month)…

… and foraging for food in the wild versus picking fruit in your orchard.

I got other kindsa help, too.

One reader (not sure he wants me to share his name), wrote in to challenge the very premise I was writing about yesterday.

He wrote me a reasoned argument why continuity offers, which provide predictable income for a business, are overrated. He focused on paid newsletters and raised the following points:

1. Paid newsletters have to keep delivering a lot of value or people will unsubscribe, defeating the point of the continuity offer

2. People are more reluctant to sign up for a subscription like a paid newsletter, and are unwilling to pay as high of a price as they might for a one-time purchase

3. It takes a good amount of work to produce a decent paid newsletter every month, and you can’t take any month off

I agree with this, particularly part 3.

Yes, some people make paid newsletters work. But many people, including myself in the past (I had a paid newsletter that I killed after 2 months), fail or give up on them because a lot of work or simply the ongoing commitment gets grating.

BUT—

Paid newsletters — or really personal access to you in whatever form — is not the only kind of recurring/subscription/continuity offer you can make.

They are certainly not the only way to have the equivalent of your own orchard you can pick a ripe peach in whenever you like… instead of having to head out into the dark forest with a little basket, in search of wild turnips and maybe a rutabaga.

But I’m not sure if this is of interest to you?

Maybe you can tell me. I’ve got a little poll below. If you like, tell me your attitudes and experience with continuity recurring offers:

#1. Recurring is a major part of what I do and the money I make each month

#2. I tried selling recurring offers but people on my list don’t want ’em

#3. I am reluctant to promote recurring offers because I don’t want to commit to delivering month after month

#4. I prefer the thrill of going to the woods to forage for roots and tubers rather than picking fruit from my orchard

If you can spare the energy to hit three keys — reply, your choice above, and send — you can tell me whether it’s worth me talking more about continuity income that requires ZERO ONGOING DELIVERY from you.

Of course, if you wanna elaborate on your answer in more words, that’s very welcome also. Thanks in advance.

help

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Maybe you can help me?

All day long, I’ve been trying to come up with a sticky way to think about the difference between:

1. A business built on predictable income, where 60% or more of your desired income each month is covered with near certainty on the first of the month, by things like continuity and subscription offers, retainers, regular work with long-term clients, or payments on payment plans, and

2. A business completely lacking predictable income, where close to 0% of your monthly income is certain in advance, and each month is a series of scores or cash grabs, whether that’s launches, promos, or one-off work with new clients.

I’ve been thinking and thinking, pondering and pondering, summer autumn winter spring.

How to present this distinction in a more succinct, immediately understandable way?

My best idea so far is an analogy to two famous makes of car.

I thought to call the first type of business, the business built on predictable income, a “Rolls-Royce business.” That’s coming the famous David Ogilvy headline:

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”

In other words, even at high speed income, there’s not a lot of noise, stress, or smoke in a Rolls-Royce business. It’s very efficient, comfortable, and even conservative. It’s likely to stick around for a long time, just like Rolls-Royce the company, which has been in business for 120+ years.

The other kind of business, completely lacking in predictable income, I though to call a “DeLorean business.”

DeLorean, you might or might not know. was an 80s sports car, which was only produced for two years. Today it’s only really known because it was used in the “Back to the Future” movies.

DeLorean was flashy with its gull-wing doors and low profile. It was also unreliable, uncomfortable, and ultimately led the company to bankruptcy. As Car and Driver magazine put it:

“Hopping, darting, and corkscrewing motions are not the stuff of confidence.”

I don’t know though.

What do you think of this analogy?

Does it carry the emotional impact I want it to have, if I’m trying to promote the stable and comfortable Rolls-Royce biz at the expense of the flashy and unstable DeLorean biz? Or are the gull-wing doors and the Back to the Future association too positive, and does a DeLorean biz sound too cool to give up?

Please hit reply and let me know what you think. Or let me know if you have a better sticky way to present the difference between a “predictable income biz” and an “uncertain cash grab biz.”

Thanks in advance.

Last call and then it’s gone

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Today is the last day to sign up for Mike Samuels’s ABP cohort. As I wrote yesterday, this is a certification program to turn you into a “scheme man” — a marketing consultant who devises new ways for companies to sell their old stuff.

Maybe you read my email yesterday, and while you enjoyed learning that the term “scheme man” has a long, illustrious history — famous copywriters like Claude Hopkins and Robert Collier were primarily scheme men — maybe you don’t see how this would actually work today. So lemme tell you.

This is the second time Mike is running the ABP cohort. The last time, one student:

1. Reached out to client he had written some ads for, 8 months prior. The outreach message took all of 20 seconds to write.

2. He then followed up with a single 5-minute Loom video, putting to work some of the behavioral psychology insights that Mike covers in ABP and applying them to the client’s business.

3. Result: A 7,500 GBP contract to help the client find more such opportunities in the business over 90 days. The plan after that is a 2500 GBP/month consulting retainer, just for providing diagnostics.

At 1297 GBP — over $1,700 — ABP is neither cheap nor expensive, considering the results it can get you.

If the price is not something you can swing right now, regardless of the results you can get, then Mike offers a 3-month payment plan as well. I’m telling you about that because of the following bit from Mike’s sales page:

===

By the time your final payment leaves your account, most people on this programme have already had their first paid client conversation. Some have already signed one.

Which means ABP has a habit of paying for itself before you’ve finished paying for it.

===

If you’re a copywriter and you wanna get paid more, and you wanna do more interesting work, then ABP might be your ticket to ride.

Again, today is the last day to sign up for the current cohort.

It’s not clear when or if Mike will run this program again. What is clear is that if he does run it again, the price will be higher, and the current bonuses, which deal with finding clients, will be gone.

If you wanna at least check out Mike’s offer, before the deadline takes the choice out of your hands:

https://bejakovic.com/scheme

Get expert training in Scheming, raise your income

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I once read a book called The Man Who Sold America and in it I came across the term “scheme man.”

Once upon a time, a scheme man was a legitimate and even highly coveted and paid profession.

Scheme men were basically marketing consultants who could devise new selling “schemes” — ideas, concepts, breakthroughs. As master direct marketer Robert Collier put it, “It’s not the copy so much as the scheme back of it.”

Claude Hopkins, often thought to be the first A-list copywriter, was the premier scheme man (he was the one discussed in that book I read).

Hopkins didn’t really use clever copywriting to turn his clients and himself into billionaires (in today’s money).

Instead, he did it by devising new selling schemes.

As an example, Hopkins’s first big marketing job was to sell “carpet sweepers.” His innovative scheme was to start offering these carpet sweepers in a dozen different fancy wood casings, rather than the single drab choice available previously.

Stupid, right? Who cares about the casing?

This was a completely impractical and unnecessary new development. And yet, it resulted in 250,000 carpet sweepers being sold in 3 weeks.

After that, some of Hopkins’s schemes involved the “world’s biggest cake” (100,000 people came to see it)… the “paid free sample” scheme for Liquozone (which took the company from bankruptcy to making $60 million in profit the next year)… and the “engraved with your name” pen that doubled response when added as a bonus to an ordinary offer.

Point being:

Become a skilled Scheme Man, then or now, and your future is settled.

If you can devise new ways for a company to sell what they’ve already got, your services will ALWAYS be in demand, and you will get paid BIG MONEY IN BIG CHUNKS. Plus, the work can be exciting and challenging and even fun.

Except how? How do you become a skilled Scheme Man, today, in 2026?

For that I’d like to point you to Mike Samuels, and his 6-week ABP cohort.

Mike’s cohort is currently open for signups. The signup window closes tomorrow. After that, you won’t be able to get in, and also the bonuses disappear, and if this program is ever opened again, the price will go up.

Like I said, Mike’s cohort program is called ABP, which stands for Action Based Psychology. I don’t think that name does justice to what Mike is offering here.

What Mike is offering is a full-on certification program for Scheme Men, though he calls them “ABP Consultants.”

Mike’s program first gets you trained on the relevant underlying psychology and translates that into specific marketing techniques, so you can own these ideas yourself and turn them into new selling schemes for specific businesses.

Mike then gives you “audits” so you don’t have to count on remembering all these ideas and schemes, but can simply refer to the audits when the time comes.

And then finally, there’s a client-getting section so you can actually turn your new Scheming skills into profits for clients and income for yourself.

Like I said, the signup for this cohort closes tomorrow. If you’re interested in the full details before this opportunity goes away:

https://bejakovic.com/scheme

Do you have a great gig right now? Beware and prepare

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Yesterday, I talked to a coaching client, someone who has a sizeable email list and a bunch of offers he’s been selling for a while.

Recently, he decided to step back from this to take a proper job. He enjoys learning something new at his new role, and he finds the work exciting, and he likes the company and the people, and there’s more money, stability, and free time than with all the stuff he has been doing by himself.

He asked if I have any advice as he transitions from his online business to this new job.

I’ll tell you what I told him:

Over the course of the past six months, I have had a number of people come to me and say, “I used to have this great gig, until yesterday.”

One was a business owner whose business partner screwed him and took everything.

Another was a freelancer whose main client’s business turned out to be shaky, so the client decided to bring the work in-house as a cost-cutting measure.

A third was a salaried employee whose employer decided to simply terminate the role, even though the guy was making the employer more money than he was getting paid, and could prove it.

All these people, and a few others, came to me after their once-great gig disappeared, with the idea to build a personal brand as a way of making money now.

So what I told my coaching client yesterday is, enjoy the new job and make the most of it. But at the same time, even the best, most certain gigs can disappear, overnight.

Businesses go out of business. Partners cheat you or simply step away. Employers get sick, die, or go bankrupt.

For all these reasons and more, it makes sense to have a backup to your great gig.

My coaching client is very lucky, because he’s already got the best backup I know, a personal brand, an audience, and a relationship with that audience.

If anything happens to his current job — the company is sold and the new owners fire everyone, or they slash everybody’s salaries while keeping the workload the same, or they hire somebody else to do the job because he’s cheaper/better/a nephew — then he can go to this list, and write an email or two, and most likely find a new client or a series of clients by the end of this week.

So my takeaway for you is, if you have a personal brand, don’t let it go.

You don’t have to email daily or create new offers or moonlight in addition to your day job. All you have to do is show up on some regular schedule (once a week is good), and let people know you are alive, and give them proof that you’re doing well, and are still worth listening to and knowing about.

And my takeaway for you if you don’t have a personal brand but you have a great gig going… is also to start now.

For one thing, your great gig can give you authority and content ideas and behind-the-scenes data to make it easy to be somebody online.

For another thing, as I’ve been saying, your great gig might not always be there, so it makes sense to beware and prepare for that possibility now.

Here’s one more thing I told my coaching client yesterday:

Just focus on the content. Don’t worry about list growth or about offers or about what form this personal brand might take in the future.

This is true for you even if you are starting a personal brand now.

There’s value in creating content online EVEN IF NOBODY’S READING. For one thing, it makes you better at what you do. For another thing, it can grow your list on its own (albeit slowly), and it becomes fodder if you do want to create offers or lead magnets or books in the future. Most important of all, it becomes a proof element if you are ever talking to someone you want to impress. Compare:

“Why should you hire me? Gee, let me try to sum up the past 12 years of my career for you in the next 45 seconds before I lose your attention…”

… to…

“Why should you hire me? I don’t know that you should. Here’s my website where I’ve written tens of thousands of words on this topic, based on my previous experience. Take a look at it and we can talk afterwards.”

So let me ask you?

Do you have a great gig right now?

Do you want to have a personal online brand, and an audience, and a great relationship with them that you can use as a backup in case your great gig ever vanishes?

Then write me and let me know.

You can’t buy anything here. But I am curious what you do, and what kind of a personal brand you want to build and how, and what questions you have about the process.

Why not just double your prices

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You may have heard the following story, because I’ve shared it before in these emails, but it’s worth repeating:

A business owner, an info marketer who sells marketing advice to martial arts schools, is in the red. He’s making a million a year, but he’s spending a million five — on ads, on employees, on fulfillment.

What to do? He has tried everything, and he’s still bleeding cash.

The business owner somehow manages to get in front of Jay Abraham, the “75 Billion Dollar Man,” a business coach who has mentored the likes of Tony Robbins and Dave Asprey and Ramit Sethi.

Over the course of a morning, Jay Abraham grills the business owner on all aspects of his operation. Jay makes one suggestion after another. But the business owner has tried it all already! It didn’t fix his problem!

Finally, after suggestion #1,001 has been shot down, Jay Abraham has had enough. “If you’re so fucking smart, you figure it out!” he says and storms out of the room. The business owner is left stunned.

A few moments pass. Jay Abraham comes back into the room, looking calmer and a bit apologetic.

“How much did you say you’re making?”

“A million a year.”

“And how much are you spending?”

“A million five.”

“How much would you want to make?”

“Two million would be great.”

“Ok,” says Jay Abraham. “That’s easy. Just double your prices.” And he walks out again.

That’s kind of the punchline of the story. Because the business owner, after shaking his head for a while and thinking what an ass Jay Abraham is, decides to actually take this advice. He doubles his prices, finds his market will tolerate them, and is suddenly and magically making a profit for the first time in forever.

The end.

So go and double your prices also! And let me know how it goes.

Maybe you are shaking your head right now, and thinking what an ass Bejako is.

Yes, “Just double your prices” can be a legit business strategy.

It can also be poor advice, for a few reasons:

1. You might need to update the offer along with the pricing. That can mean your positioning, your promise, and in some cases, your deliverables. (This was actually the case of the info publisher above, though the changes he had to make were small.)

2. You might have internal resistance to doubling your prices, and being told to do so can be useless. (Again, this was the case of the info publisher before. It took him several days to actually accept Jay Abraham’s advice as genuine. Many people never get there, because they aren’t as hard pressed as that guy was.)

3. Doubling your prices can be too little! You might be severely undercharging, and there might be people who would happily pay 5x or 10x for the same thing you’re offering now, if you would only ask.

4. Your current audience, or even your current market, might not support double your current prices, and you might need to get in front of different people first.

Which brings me to the Enterprise Clients workshop.

It shows copywriters and agency owners how to charge $15K-$100K for their current service by selling to “enterprise clients.”

Because you can put in the same effort you’re putting in now, or even less, and get paid 2x or 5x or 10x what you’re getting paid now, while working with better, nicer, more appreciative clients.

While increasing your price alone can have magic effects, you are likely to need some other things too, and this workshop will cover those.

This workshop, or actually series of workshops, is happening live on Zoom, from September 21 to 25, for an hour a day.

I’m telling you about it now, weeks in advance, because the early bird pricing is ending in a few days.

It’s only $97 if you act before the deadline. This is the last email I will personally send about this offer before then, because I have other things to talk about.

If you sell DFY services for clients, I figure it’s worth signing up for this workshop, seeing what they have to say, and then deciding whether or not it’s bullshit or whether it’s the transformation you’ve been waiting for years.

I myself bought it and signed up. So have a few of my readers after my email yesterday. Here’s what a couple of them wrote me about it:

“Bought this, looks interesting. We’re already aiming $100k+ per client, so any additional increase because of his approach will be worth a ton.”

“Now THIS offer is exactly perfect for me right now. Just about to launch an AI Agency. Couldn’t have been timed better. Got the VIP – no brainer. Thanks John!”

If you wanna charge more, work with better clients, and have a happier business:

https://bejakovic.com/enterpriseclients

How copywriters and agencies can go after enterprise clients and close them

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I just paid and signed up for a live series of workshops, happening later this month, which promises:

“We’ll Help Your Agency Charge $15K-$100K For Your Current Service In 5 Days By Selling To ‘Enterprise Clients'”

I’d never heard of the guy who’s putting this on, Alex Hartstuff, until a few days ago. I was introduced to him by copywriter and business owner Paul do Campo. As Paul put it, “Alex teaches copywriters and agencies how to go after enterprise level clients and close them.”

Sure enough.

If you go to the sales page below, where you can sign up for Alex’s workshop, you can see a wall of video testimonials from various copywriters and agency owners.

Inevitably, many of these are testimonials about how valuable and informative and inspiring the workshop is. But among those, there are also a bunch of hard, results-based case studies:

* An “email and SMS” agency owner (Adam Rehm) who went from $2.5k retainers to $10k retainers

* A LinkedIn content guy (Matthew Brown) who went from $5k deals to $18k deals

* An “AI agents” agency agent, I mean, owner (Tyler Savoy), who went from getting paid $4k per deal to getting paid $20k per deal

* A girl who runs a web development agency (Namya Hhan) who went from $5k deals to $22k deals

* A guy who runs a cold email agency (Nick Block), who went from $3k/month retainers to $30k/month retainers

Alex and his sales page have bigger success stories too. But do you really need to hear those? I think maybe not. Because if you’re doing good work but not charging $10k, $20k, $30k for it, there is probably some internal resistance there. I don’t want to pile on to that.

Instead, I’ll just tell you the following:

Alex’s workshop is happening live on Zoom, from September 21 to 25, for an hour a day.

I’m telling you about it today because I signed up just now myself, so it’s top of mind for me, and because of the early-bird pricing.

Currently, this series of 5 workshops is just $97. In five days, the price will go up from 97 dollars to 97 million dollars. Don’t quote me on that exact price increase, but the price does increase in 5 days to some higher amount. And why not just sign up now, instead of procrastinating on it and maybe letting it slip away?

If you are a copywriter… if you do email… if you create content for clients… if you build AI agents… if you do web development… if you run cold email campaigns for people… or if you are a freelancer or run an agency offering some other service…

… and if rather than working with clients for whom $3k per month is a big deal… you might rather work with clients for whom $13k per month is not a big deal and $30k per month is doable… then sign up here to have your mind expanded:

https://bejakovic.com/enterpriseclients