How to become in-demand in your niche even if you have no contacts, portfolio, or good sense

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A long while ago, in the days when elephants still roamed the Earth, I came across the following question:

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Say I wanted my copywriting niche to be SaaS, but have no contacts or portfolio, what are the steps I’ll need to take to become in-demand for my niche?

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Here are the exact steps I would suggest:

Step 1: Go to Silicon Valley.

Step 2: Get in front of somebody famous in the startup space, like Elon Musk or Marc Andreessen or Peter Thiel. ​​Get creative if you have to — stalk them at a coffee shop they are known to go to, pay to go to a conference where they will appear, or maybe just write them an email and ask if they will meet you because you’re such a big fan.

Step 3: Take a selfie of yourself next to the famous nerd in Step 2.

Step 4: Put that selfie up on your site, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on TikTok, on Tinder, along with an article like, “10 surprising copywriting lessons from my meeting with Marc Andreessen.”

Step 5: In your article, mention several times that you are a SaaS copywriter, and link to a “Free Consultation” page.

Step 6: Repeat Steps 1-5 with additional famous nerds, as needed.

Result: Almost instant status and authority, and very probably, serious demand for your services.

You might think I’m being flippant. But I’m being 100% serious.

Yesterday, I promised to tell you the big secret of peak status.

The thing is, you might not want to hear it. Or you might not want to believe it.

Because the secret is that status can be manufactured, and very quickly.

In the same way that quality is only a minor part of the influence that your content is likely to have, your resume is only a minor part of the the status you are likely to achieve. And all the other, more important stuff, can be accomplished in two weeks’ time, if you are willing to really hustle.

Maybe you get what I’m saying.

But maybe you feel exasperated. Maybe you are sure I am either 100% wrong. Or maybe you suspect I am right, but you just find it impossible to really hustle to create status for yourself.

In that case, my advice is not to hustle. Take it slowly. Better slowly than never.

My added advice is that, if you are a marketer or copywriter in search of status, then take a look at my Most Valuable Email.

Sure, MVE will show you a new way to create quality content, but that’s not why I recommend it. Instead, the real status-building value of MVE is that it can get you gradually more comfortable with all those content-adjacent status-building practices which really make the difference.

I imagine that sounds very vague and abstract. I can’t make it more specific without giving away the Most Valuable Email trick. If you’d like to find out what that trick is, and even start practicing it today, head on over here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

BIG secret about peak emailing

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Three days ago, direct response copywriter Stefan Georgi sent out an email, “Big Secret About Peak Productivity.”

I like big secrets and I cannot lie. Besides, according to Stefan’s website, the man has sold over $700 million via his sales copy. So maybe he really does have some big secret? I opened the email to find out. This was it:

And yesterday was one of my most productive days in a long-while (like I CRUSHED the day).

Alright, so why am I sharing all of this?

Because there’s a stupidly simple lesson here:

When you feel tired, burned out, or like you just don’t want to work…

Then you should take a break.

After I read this, I shrugged, smiled at my own gullibility, and closed down Stefan’s email.

​​I didn’t feel enlightened. I didn’t have an a-ha moment. I didn’t learn anything new or really even anything useful. And yet, the next time Stefan Georgi sends out an email, I will still open it and at least skim it.

And even if it’s another bland breakthrough like the one above, I will still stay on Stefan’s list, and still give him the benefit of the doubt with the email after that and then some.

So here’s my BIG secret about peak emailing:

Your status is more important than your content.

​​Sure, if your content is truly atrocious all the time, you will drive people away. I remember some years ago signing up to Dan Kennedy’s “email newsletter” which was clearly not written by Dan, and which was just an autoresponder on repeat to let you know about various GKIC subscriptions and offers and lead magnets. I opened a few of those emails, and then unsubscribed.

On the other hand, if you’ve built yourself up as somebody important and successful, like Stefan has done, then you can allow yourself a lot of slack.

​​One email in three, one email in four, five, has to deliver something — something. The rest can be “big secrets” about taking a break when you’re tired… or about the importance of hard work… or about doing the right thing. And people will still read.

Actually I have something more to say about this, the BIG secret about peak status. But I feel I’ve shared enough big secrets with you in today’s email, so I will save that big secret for tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you have no status yet, or you have status but for your own stubborn reasons you refuse to exploit it, then you might find some big secrets to help you inside my Most Valuable Email training.

Like I say on the sales page for that monster:

Most Valuable Emails never required I have any status or authority. Instead, they’ve helped me build up immediate and unquestionable authority — even when I had no standing in this industry. These emails make it 100% clear I know what I’m talking about, even when I don’t harp on about the great results I’ve had for clients or the testimonials or endorsements I’ve gotten.

So what’s the big secret of Most Valuable Emails? You can find that out here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Plan Horse brings in a surprising number of sales and a satisfying Matrix analogy

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My email yesterday about “Plan Horse” brought in more sales of Most Valuable Email than any email since the official launch of this course closed, last September. I asked myself why.

Maybe it was just the weather — hurricane winds over the Mediterranean have been blasting Barcelona for the past 14 hours. They almost carried off the potted olive tree that lives on my balcony. Maybe they also forced in extra offshore sales.

But maybe it was something in the email itself. I have an idea what that could be, and I’ll be writing about that in the future.

In any case, some of those new buyers have already gone through MVE – it only takes an hour. One of them, copywriter Anthony La Tour, wrote in this morning to say:

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Whoa…

Just finished your MVE course. 

Meta-level stuff. 

I feel like I’ve just been unplugged from the Matrix.

I’m gonna go through it a few more times.

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I never thought of the Matrix analogy for Most Valuable Email. But I like it, and I’ll be using it going forward. It’s a rich mapping, and it therefore feels satisfying. That’s something to keep in mind if you yourself use analogies to make your point. Here’s what I mean:

Like Anthony says, MVE shows you the Matrix, the underlying reality — what’s going on beneath the surface in some of my most effective emails.

But it goes beyond that.

Because in the Matrix cineverse, once you’re unplugged, you can go back inside and upload new skills into your head — and that’s how applying the Most Valuable Email trick feels to me. Like at the start of the first Matrix movie, after Neo has just been unplugged, and is now beginning his training, Tank sits him down in the jack-in chair and says:

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We’re supposed to start with these operation programs first. That’s major boring shit. Let’s do something a little more fun. How about… combat training?

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Neo sits there in the chair while the upload runs. A moment later, his eyes open wide and he gasps. “I know kung fu,” he says.

Well, uploading skills via Most valuable Email is not as push-button as the process in the Matrix. MVE takes some personal effort. And it takes more than a second or two to write one of these Most Valuable Emails.

But over time, this process uploads new skills into your head — including skills which you might have felt you could never learn to do well. At least it’s been that way for me.

If you’re willing to keep pressing the “Upload New Skill” button, then MVE might be as valuable to you. To get started with it today:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Plan Horse: Text-based opportunities

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News item one:

A few days ago, I got a text message that said, “You’re off the waitlist! You can now download Artifact.” So I did.

As you might know:

Artifact is a new service built by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, who founded Instagram before selling it to Facebook for $715 million. Their new project, Artifact, is something like TikTok, except not with video, but with text content.

News item two:

Just this morning I read that Meta, aka Mark Zuckerberg, is developing a new decentralized social network. Details are scarce, but what is known is that the new network will also be text-based.

Not-a-news item:​​

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for more than a few days, then you know I am wary of late-breaking internet opportunities. I like to get my late-breaking opportunities from books, preferably books that have been aged and cured for at least a few hundred years.

At the same time, even I find it undeniable that tectonic plates have been shifting for the past few years, with surface effects becoming visible maybe today, and for sure tomorrow.

Facebook is aging. Google search is terrible. AI now produces filler content better than 90% of professional content writers.

That’s what’s been rumbling underground for years. What will the surface effects be?

“Sovereign Man” Simon Black has this concept of a “Plan B” — a strategy for when shit hits the fan, which also benefits you if things just keep inching along as they always have.

I’d like to suggest to you a kind of inverse of Simon Black’s Plan B. We can call it Bejakovic’s “Plan Horse.”

Plan Horse is to find a new opportunity to latch onto, but in a way that you will come out ahead whether the opportunity drops dead or delivers as hoped.

Because you will eventually get to the inn if you just keep taking step after step along the highway. But you will get to the inn much faster and easier if somewhere along the way, while you’re walking, you “find yourself a horse to ride,” as Jack Ries and Al Trout put it in their book Positioning.

So keep reading this newsletter, because if I come across any interesting text-based opportunities, I might let you know about them.

Meanwhile, I continue to promote my Most Valuable Email. This course is really about taking those step-by-steps along the highway, while keeping an eye out for the galloping horse you can jump on the back of, Legolas-style.

Most Valuable Email is based on a fundamental of human communication and persuasion, one that’s been around for millennia. And yet, to many people in the Internet world, Most Valuable Email is a revelation. As freelance copywriter Van Chow said after going through MVE:

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I love this course, I bet some money to see if it still talks about boring stuff like AIDA or PAS. But I was surprised, I had never heard of this concept before.

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For a persuasion technique that will work both today and tomorrow, check out MVE here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

This offer is improper — unless you’re a grown-up

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I checked the fridge this morning and I found I was fresh out of emails ideas. So I ran down to the corner shop and grabbed the latest glossy issue of “On Today’s Date.” I brought it back home, jumped on the couch, and greedily opened it to the first page. That’s how I discovered that the most significant historical event ever to happen on March 9th was:

The first appearance of the Barbie doll. It happened on March 9, 1959, at the American International Toy Fair, in New York City.

I put my head in my hands. “Who cares about Barbie dolls?” I said. “I need email ideas!”

But after a few moments of quiet despair, I happened to glance back at that Barbie article.

And in that brief moment, in the very first paragraph, I spotted something new to me — why we’re still talking about Barbie dolls today, and why you and I and probably all the other 8 billion people on the planet have heard of Barbie.

Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel, created Barbie after watching her own daughter. Handler’s little girl kept ignoring her closetful of baby dolls. Instead, she played make-believe with paper dolls of adult women.

Handler put 2 and 3 together, and realized there was an open niche here, a unique position to be filled:

A toy doll with adult features, adult outfits, and enormous adult breasts.

Barbie was an instant hit. Mattel sold around 350,000 Barbies in the very first year of production. They sold almost $1.5 billion worth of Barbie plastic last year.

So what’s my point?

Simple. People want to be grown up, or at least play make-believe at it. If ya don’t believe me, here’s a second example:

Tobacco company Lorillard once put out a covert ad campaign targeted at kids. The ad was supposedly designed to keep kids from smoking. But the devious message in that Lorillard campaign was:

“Tobacco is whacko — if you’re a teen.”

A later statistical study found that each exposure to this ad increased the intention of middleschoolers to try cigarettes by 3%. In other words, if your kid sees this ad 30 times, his or her odds of trying a cigarette double.

You might say this only applies to kids and middle schoolers, but I don’t think so. I think it applies to all of us, just in more subtle ways.

​​In any case, enough history.

Instead, I have an offer for you, which is entirely improper — unless you’re a grown-up copywriter or marketer.

​​The offer is my Most Valuable Email course. That course will only work for you if you already have an email list, or are willing to create one, and write to it regularly. Like I said, grown-ups.

But on second thought, maybe it’s better if you don’t get Most Valuable Email even if you’re a grown up. As one marketer, Kyle Weston, wrote me after going through this course:

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I love how the course is short and to the point, yet still packs in all the powerful info we need. And then the tools you give us at the end are brilliant. The MVE Swipes pdf alone is worth way more than a measly $100. Anyone involved in marketing or copywriting at any level will want to check this out. Then again, maybe its better for me if less people know about this tactic — makes it easier for me to beat out the competition muhuhahaha!

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If that doesn’t deter you, you can get Most Valuable Email here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

I’m either a cold-traffic wizard, or a warm-traffic chucklehead

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It was the best of responses, it was the worst of responses. I’ll share the numbers with you below. But if numbers aren’t your thing, then I just want you to spot the puzzling contrast between these two sales events:

Earlier this week, I made 21 sales of my Copy Zone offer during 24 hours, to a coldish audience of about 460 people.

That’s roughly a 4.6% conversion rate, at $100 per sale.

So you can either argue that I’m a wizard at cold sales, since the standard conversion rate on cold traffic is 2%, or you can argue that this was not entirely cold traffic, since these folks came from my ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter, which ran with Daniel’s endorsement.

Still, most people who bought from me had never even heard of me minutes before they decided to send me money, and had never before heard of Copy Zone. And yet, 4.6% take rate among these people, at $100.

On the other hand, take a less inspiring example:

At the end of Influential Emails, a training I put on in late 2021, I made a 24-hour-only offer for people to pre-order Copy Zone for $50.

Result:

I had one taker out of around 50 people.

These were highly engaged, current customers who had paid $237 for this Influential Emails training. They had spent hours on the training with me, listening to me talk, and interacting with me. Most of them had also bought other other products from me.

So… that’s a 2% conversion rate, at $50, to a warm or even hot audience.

You can say this is an apples to pineapples comparison. Different sizes of audience… pre-selling versus actually selling… and maybe other intangible, untouchable, and impalpable factors.

But I believe I know exactly what the difference comes down to. And unlike in many situations, I don’t believe it’s a matter of offer, of list, of price point, of selling environment, of prestige.

Instead, it’s a rare instance where it’s really about sales copy, about copywriting technique.

I spent a couple weeks in February going for my morning walk while listening, for the third time, to a course by the “21.7 Billion Dollar Man,” Jay Abraham.

This course sums up Jay’s entire marketing and business approach, from getting more customers and clients, to getting more out of your current customers and clients, to enjoying the process more.

Jay talks about salesmanship throughout, and towards the end, he also talks about copywriting.

There’s one commandment Jay keeps repeating over and over. He then illustrates it with a fanciful example of trying to sell a $100,000 Ferrari with a custom paint job.

Jay’s commandment is not new, and it’s really not a secret. But it was ringing in my ears while I was writing the copy to sell Copy Zone a few days ago.

And it made all the difference, at least if you ask me, between a 4.6% conversion rate to coldish traffic and a 2% conversion rate to warm or even hot traffic. The commandment is simply this:

“Layers upon layers of comparable value, of contrast, of measurable ways you could see the benefit, the intrinsic value, and the worth it had to you.”

Jay uses his characteristic “tripled-up” way of making his point above. For me, the first six words are what really matter and what kept ringing in my head:

“Layers upon layers of comparable value.”

Like I say, that’s not new. It’s not a secret. And everybody should really know it, at least if they pretend to call themselves a marketer or a copywriter.

And yet, you have the fact I didn’t “know” it, not so long ago. Even after I had made millions in sales for my clients, even after I had spent tens of thousands on copywriting trainings and courses, and even after I was billed by others, who should have known better, as an A-list copywriter.

It comes down to the difference between having heard something and really knowing it. You can hear a thing once, twice, 10 times. But it doesn’t mean you really know it.

So now I have a recommendation for you. My Most Valuable Email training.

This training is valuable because of what it can do for you — endorsements and authority and even sales. In fact, by applying the Most Valuable Email trick just once at the end of January, I got a completely unnecessary and unexpected windfall of about $2,900 in sales, with zero work. But that’s a story for another time.

For now, I just want to say that the Most Valuable Email is most valuable because of what it does to you. And that’s to inch you closer to mastery, to really knowing, with each email you write using the Most Valuable email trick.

In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Well, that was a total disaster

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I was lying in bed last night by the open window, enjoying the spring breeze, listening to the radio. Suddenly, the music on the radio stopped and an urgent news announcement came on—

Two tectonic plates had just shifted somewhere off the coast of Western Australia.

As a consequence, a tsunami, a massive wave hundreds of meters high, was headed towards my little beach barrio of Poblenou, Barcelona, Spain.

I immediately jumped out of bed, threw on my Tommy Bahama shirt, and rushed to find Hector Campana, the main civil engineer in Poblenou. ​​”I have to warn Hector,” I said breathlessly, “we have to somehow survive this massive wave.”

I stormed inside Hector’s offices in an old colonial building by the waterfront. But he wasn’t there. One of his unshaven and red-eyed employees looked up at me.

​​”Hector?” he scoffed. “Go check the bar.”

“It’s a matter of life and death!” I said, and I ran to the bar on the corner.

Sure enough, Hector was there, slumped on a bench against the back wall, eyes closed, five empty bottles on the table in front of him.

I yelled at him to get up and get to work. He didn’t respond.

I grabbed him by the shoulders and tried to shake him awake. But he just slumped over even more, all the way off the bench, and down to the floor.

I took a quick look around to make sure nobody was watching, and I gave Hector a healthy kick in the ribs. This finally seemed to wake the brute up.

He opened his eyes a little, grumbled, and said in a drunken drawl:

“Engineers have detected multiple services degraded. At this time, delays in processing and intermittent errors may continue to be experienced until full resolution is declared. Mar 06 2023, 14:21 CST.”

That’s pretty much exactly how it went down last night.

​​The full story is that Daniel Throssell, somewhere off or on the coast of Western Australia, sent out an email to his list. This email had my ad inside, which I had paid Daniel $1,000 for.

As a result, a traffic wave, many hundreds of visitors high, hit my little online barrio.

But Hector Campana — aka ActiveCampaign, my email service provider — was drinking on the job, completely unable to deal with the incoming wave.

For the better part of yesterday’s afternoon, evening, and night, ActiveCampaign was passed out and unresponsive.

​​Broadcast emails took hours to go out. Autoresponder emails weren’t working at all. Neither were automations — and I had set up an automation to actually deliver the promised lead magnet to people who responded to my ad.

I spent about three hours last night fixing what I could by hand, and sending emails to people who had taken me up on the paid offer on the Thank You page.

​​During the night, ActiveCampaign gradually sobered up and emails finally started going out. Even so, I still had an hour or two of cleanup this morning.

So all in all, it was a total disaster. Really, the only salvageable thing was this:

Even though ActiveCampaign was passed out last night, it was at least registering (most) people who opted in. So as of right now, a little more than 14 hours after Daniel’s email went out, I have some 410 new subscribers thanks to my ad.

More importantly, I’ve also made 37 sales of the $100 offer I was making on the optin Thank You page.

25 of those sales came from people who were already subscribed to my list, and who opted in again via the ad to get the free bonuses I promised.

But I’ve also made 12 sales of the same $100 offer to entirely new subscribers.

Which means that — twelve times one hundred, carry the four — my ad in Daniel’s newsletter has already paid for itself. In fact, it paid for itself in just 3 hours and 9 minutes — that’s how long it took for the 10th purchase from a new subscriber to come in.

So a total disaster looked at from one angle… or looked at from another angle, an unqualified success.

Meanwhile, back in Poblenou:

Later today, I will organize an emergency Town Hall meeting to discuss the firing and possible lynching of Hector Campana.

Also later today, at 3:31pm EST to be exact, I will take down the paid offer I am currently making on that Thank You page.

While I promised Daniel that my lead magnet would only be available through the ad in his newsletter, this paid offer on the Thank You page isn’t part of that promise.

So whether you just got onto my list, or whether you’ve been on my list for a while, you can take me up on this offer. But you do have to be on my list. To get on there, click here and fill out the form that appears.

The devil sells me a coffee and gets me addicted to buying more

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I just got back home from a visit to a new and devilish coffee shop.

It opened maybe 3 weeks ago. It’s a typical “AirSpace” place, cool and yet warm, shiny in parts, subdued in others, stools for sitting, with colorful and well-designed boxes of teas, bags of coffee, and assorted overpriced cups, mugs, and water bottles for sale. ​​(One of the water bottles sells for 50 euro. I guess you put in water and it turns into gin.)

Point being, this new coffee shop has everything to predispose me to go there on occasion.

​​On occasion, but not every day — there are other good options for coffee around my house as well. But this new coffee shop, devilish place that it is, has just taken care of that as well.

The story:

Two weeks ago, I went there and ordered a pastry and two coffees. I went to pay. The girl rang me up and said, “It will be 6 euro for the coffees. The pastry is free, since it’s the first day we opened the bakery.”

“Oh that’s nice,” I beamed. I thought no more of it.

Since then, I’ve ordered a pastry on a few occasions. I had to pay for it each time.

Then there was this morning. Similar story — a couple coffees, a slice of lemon cake. But it happened again.

“The coffees are 6 euro,” the girl said. “The lemon cake is free.”

My heart almost melted. And through my tears of gratitude, I saw exactly what will happen in the future. I will be going back to this place regularly — screw the other coffee shops around, even if they served me well before.

You might think I’m telling you to give stuff away for free, to build some sort of reciprocity.

That’s a part of it, but it’s not enough. On its own, it can even be dangerous. You don’t want to train people to expect stuff for free. They will get used to it quickly, and they will start to feel entitled.

But surprise people on occasion with some stuff for free — or with any other kind of reward — and their hearts will melt.

​​Do it rarely, sporadically, unpredictably, and you literally create irrational addiction. There have been hundreds of science papers written to prove this fact, but perceptive people have known it for ages. From Cervantes’s Don Quixote:

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… beguiled by a purse with a hundred ducats that I found one day in the heart of the Sierra Morena; and the devil is always putting a bag full of doubloons before my eyes, here, there, everywhere, until I fancy at every stop I am putting my hand on it, and hugging it, and carrying it home with me, and making investments, and getting interest, and living like a prince; and so long as I think of this I make light of all the hardships I endure.

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And on that note, I would like to remind you I am giving away a purse with a hundred ducats for free tonight. Well, it’s a purse filled with info products, which are worth a hundred ducats, or maybe more.​​

I’m running an ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter. The ad will go out in Daniel’s email in a little more than an hour.

​​To get the purse full of info products, for free, you will have to be on Daniel’s list when the email with the ad goes out. Here’s the link to Daniel’s website if you want to get on there in time:

https://persuasivepage.com/

3 great reasons to sign up to Daniel Throssell’s list before tomorrow

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Last month, marketer Daniel Throssell sent out a newsletter email with the subject line, “Want to advertise to my list?” The cost to run a 50-word ad in Daniel’s newsletter was $1,000. Immediately, I wrote back and said yes.

Then Daniel did something unusual but very smart.

​​He effectively said, your money is not enough. And he set a second condition to run an ad in his newsletter, which was to come up with a unique offer that would only be available through the ad.

So that’s reason one why you might want to get on Daniel’s list before tomorrow.

​​Because I did come up with a special offer, and a free one, which I believe will be very enticing to people on Daniel’s list. But if you’re my loyal reader, and you’re not on Daniel’s list, I don’t want to give you the shaft. So I’m telling you now. To get my special free offer, get on Daniel’s list, and read his email tomorrow.

My offer will only be good for 24 hours after the ad runs. As you might know, I’m strict about deadlines and I don’t make exceptions. I’ll also be keeping my word to Daniel that the only way to get this offer is through this ad, so I won’t be letting anybody in through a side door.

So that’s reason one.
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Reason two to sign up to Daniel’s list before tomorrow is that the classified ad cost me $1,000. That’s a fair amount of money, and frankly I don’t want to pay it. So I decided to come up with a second offer to recoup my ad costs as the ad is still running.

But what kind of offer would be almost guaranteed to pull in $1,000 in 24 hours, and to a bunch of people who don’t really know me from Adam’s rat terrier?

I paced the chemical-stained floor of my laboratory all evening long, throughout the night, and into the early morning. Finally, a lightbulb went on in my head. I thought of a paid offer, one I believe will be almost irresistible to anybody who’s working as a copywriter, either freelance or in-house.

​​I put that offer on the Thank You page that follows the optin that my ad will lead to. This second offer will only be available there, on the Thank You page, only for 24 hours, never to be repeated again.

So that mystery offer on the Thank You page, that’s reason two.

​​Reason three I’ve written about before:

Daniel and I did a list swap back in 2021. With one email, Daniel drove over 10% of his list to my website. I got hundreds of new subscribers and in fact, I tripled my list from where it was before the list swap. More importantly, I got close to 100 new buyers, many of whom are still with me.

Then about a year ago, I put on a presentation where I analyzed three unusual elements of Daniel’s email copywriting style. Daniel promoted this presentation to his list. A similar thing happened. Hundreds of new subscribers for me, and lots of new sales.

And then there was that Black Friday campaign that Daniel ran a while back. I wasn’t involved in that, and good thing. Daniel outsold 15 other “expert” marketers, not individually, but in total. Add up all the sales made by all the other guys, and Daniel still sold more, with only his own list, which was maybe 1/20th the size of what all the other guys had in total.

The point being:​​

Maybe you joined Daniel’s list in the past, and decided it’s not for you. Maybe you didn’t resonate with Daniel’s personal stories, his sense of humor, or his online persona. If so, my advice is to look beyond the surface.

Because Daniel has a responsive email list beyond anything I’ve ever seen. ​​It’s not accidental. It’s strategic, and you can see the strategy in practice, for free, by getting on Daniel’s list. The sooner you do that, the more likely you are to learn something valuable.

So here’s the front door to Daniel’s strange world of entertainment and subtle influence. My advice is to open the door and go inside, and to do so before tomorrow:

https://persuasivepage.com/

Ben Settle’s strange interest in selling to distracted and damaged addicts

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Marketer Ben Settle wrote a strange email on Friday to promote his mobile-first, app-based, course-delivery platform Learnistic. One of the arguments Ben gave for why mobile apps like Learnistic are the future is this:

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Everyone’s basically Gollum now.

Stroking their Precious phone in the dark.

Looking at it, checking in on it, making sure it’s safe and pulling it out just to make sure… not able to rest or bear to be too far away from it — all while scrolling, consuming content, and wrapping their very existence around it.

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By that same logic, I’m surprised Ben is still writing and sending emails.

I mean, if he’s interested in selling to distracted and damaged addicts, which is what he seems to be saying above, then it would make more sense to get himself on TikTok, or at least back on Facebook, rather than to keep writing and sending emails, a relatively low-addiction technology.

My experience, like I wrote a few days ago, is different. I’ve found that if you treat people how you’d like them to behave, then more often than not, they actually meet your expectations. Treat your customers like capable human beings, instead of like Gollum, and you will often find them to be that way.

But really, all the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes. That applies to Ben, and it applies to me also.

The fact is, I dislike my phone, and I hate apps. So maybe everything I wrote above is just justification for that.

I held out for years before I got a cell phone, even as everybody else around me got one. I held out much longer before I got a smart phone — basically until girls I was talking to started getting suspicious, and thinking my old-school Nokia must be a burner, and that I must really be married and hiding it.

Even now, with a smart phone in my pocket, I still refuse to use or download all but the most essential apps. And as much as I’ve learned from Ben himself, and as curious as I’ve gotten several times when he teased free content through his Learnistic app only, I’ve never once been tempted by him to download Learnistic.

That’s also why I host my courses inside the members-only area of my website, using technology from caveman days. It’s also why for my own personal work — journals, notes, research — I mainly use text files on my hard drive, a pre-caveman technology.

Anyways, tonight was the end of the launch for my Insight Exposed program. I only made that program available to people who are signed up to my email list. If you’d like to get on my email list, you can sign up for free by clicking here.