Why I can no longer be a Flat Earther

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I was on a plane a few months ago, looking out a window facing west, at sunset, in a perfectly cloudless sky, with the Mediterranean sea below me, all the way to the horizon.

I’m telling you all these details because I believe each one was crucial to a once-in-a-lifetime scientific discovery:

I could clearly see the Mediterranean Sea below me, looking cool and darkened. But there was a line ahead, towards the west, past which the sea gradually became warm-colored and bright, being still lit up by the setting sun.

Like I said, this was once-in-a-lifetime scientific discovery for me. I believe it was the first time in my life I had convincing first-hand evidence that the Earth is in fact round.

For much of my life, I’ve had sympathy for Flat Earthers, the people who insist, today, in 2024, that the earth is or at least might be flat.

I don’t necessarily have the “water can’t cling to a spinning ball” kind of sympathy… or the “Antarctica is a giant ice wall to keep you from falling off and finding out the truth” kind of sympathy.

Rather, I have sympathy with what I feel the Flat Earth movement is really about. Because after I first heard that Flat Earthing is a thing, I asked myself, “How do I know these people are wrong? How can I be sure the Earth is round and not flat?”

I’ve been told that’s how it is…

I’ve also seen pictures, illustrations, and videos, supposedly from space…

I’ve even been given models of the solar system, and arguments about rotation and magnetic fields and gravity…

… but I had zero first-hand experience. At least until that flight across the Mediterranean a couple months ago. I now believe 100%, though I’m certainly not trying to push my strong faith on you, that the Earth is in fact not flat, but round.

And I STILL have sympathy with the Flat Earthers.

Yes, the world is immensely complex.

It’s inevitable that much of what we believe about it gets passed on to us unquestioned. We couldn’t function otherwise.

But there’s still value in proving some things to yourself, regularly.

Not everything — there’s too much of that. But some things.

It can give you confidence when you find proof for yourself, beyond the confidence of being given proof.

It can lead you to insights you might not have otherwise.

And possibly, every so often, more often than you might think, it can help you find extra stuff, which others have swept under the rug.

Which things you choose to question is of course up to you.

But maybe stuff that’s directly connected to your work, success, or professional competence is a good place to start.

And if making sales or writing sales copy comes into what you do, then here’s a way to get first-hand experience and proof, which nobody can take away from you:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Bounced

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Yesterday I noticed I hadn’t gotten any emails from Jacob Pegs in a while.

As you might know, Jacob runs an online business called Modern Maker, which consists of him, a set of headphones, and I guess an Internet connection.

And yet, as I write this, Jacob and his Modern Maker online business are rolling into the million-dollar revenue mark for 2024, with something like a 95%-98% profit margin.

Jacob asked me to coach him on email copywriting earlier this year, and so I did, and I got on his email list as part of that. But I haven’t been getting his emails lately. I checked. Nothing, since November 20.

I wrote to Jacob yesterday to see if he’s alive and to ask what’s up with the no emails. He replied a few minutes later:

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What that’s weird!

I’ve been emailing daily. Let me check that for you 😮 really appreciate you letting me know. WTF!

===

It turned out I had been “bounced” off his list. “Bounced,” as far as I understand, is a special mystery status for when an email cannot be delivered, for reasons that are not listed inside services like ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign.

I’ve already been bounced a few times off other newsletters. I have a custom domain (bejakovic dot com), and the email address associated with that is more flaky than your typical gmail or yahoo email address. Sometimes, I noticed weeks or months later I had stopped getting emails from somebody.

This affects me the other way around also. Last week, I got an email from marketer Fred Beyer, who wrote:

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I haven’t gotten a single email from you, since Nov 13th.

But my personal email address is still getting your emails so I KNOW you’re still broadcasting.

I had NameCheap crap out on me and shut down my domain for a few days, did your ESP auto-scrub me because of the temporary bounce?

I have bought products from you, from both of my email addresses so I’m guessing it’s kinda important that I’m a proper part of your system to receive any updates and such.

===

I checked inside ConvertKit. Sure enough, Fred had also been bounced off. I added him back — the only way was to go to my home page and sign him up by hand.

I checked the analytics for my email from last night. 4 bounced subscribers, compared to 3 unsubscribes. Now, I guess not all of those bounced subscribers will be permanently unsubscribed. But some will. Since September, I’ve had 67 subscribers permanently removed because of bounces, and these include long-term readers and customers.

What to do?

I already wrote a while back about “unwilling unsubscribes,” people who got unsubscribed in spite of swearing to me they never meant to do so.

That issue seems largely solved by a two-step unsubscribe process, which more and more email senders now provide.

But this bounced thing is both more tricky and more serious. For one, because it seems more common. For another, because it seems to disproportionately affect people with custom domains.

All that’s to say, I’m just bouncing this bounced problem at you, hoping you can bounce a solution or at least a suggestion back at me.

Is there some tech thing to be done?

Or is the only reliable way around this to have two or five ways to reach your customers and prospects? Email… plus Skool community… plus work phone number… plus SMS… plus bedroom GPS coordinates?

Please bounce back any information or suggestions you can give me. In turn I promise to collate the answers I get and share the most useful-sounding ones.

Industry gossip you shouldn’t care about but probably do

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Yesterday, I exchanged a couple emails with the “The World’s Most Obsessed Ad Archivist,” Lawrence Bernstein.

Along with a few decades and deep connections in the direct response industry, Lawrence has the distinction of being one of only a handful of people to be called out as a “valued resource” by A-list copywriter Gary Bencivenga, at the climax of Gary’s legendary Farewell Seminar.

I promoted a little offer of Lawrence’s a couple months back. Lawrence was good enough to tell me yesterday that the 150+ sales of that offer that I helped make were slightly more than he got from his own house file.

That’s gratifying to read. And considering I only have a modest-sized list, it’s proof of the effect of daily emailing done right. But wait. There’s more.

Lawrence then went on to say how this compares to big-marketer results he’s been privvy to recently:

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By contrast, and I realize this isn’t apples to apples…

There are/”were” some BIG marketers who thrived on the affiliate merry-go-round of ubiquitous as they are shallow $2K courses, usually backed up by webinar selling.

That model hasn’t had much of a pulse — at least as far as I can see — for a year or so. One of my subscribers and friends, who writes for one of the big financial outfits wrote me this last February, regarding those $2K offers:

“Been on a massive downslide ever since the FTC stepped in against Agora Financial – and in general the most recent “home-runs” have been more like inside-the-park home runs. They rarely work externally… and they’re mostly just milking house files with backend launches.

I’ve seen groups repeatedly run promo’s bringing in names at 10% of BE just because they had nothing else…

I’ve seen huge affiliate pushes for webinar launches that resulted in 750,000 names on a hotlist… and the sales were so low the affiliates payouts were ZERO…”

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Let me repeat that last number because it’s so crazy: 750,000 qualified leads… and effectively ZERO in profits.

I read something similar in an email from Shiv Shetti recently.

Shiv shared stuff he’s heard inside private masterminds, gossip about specific flashy gurus in direct marketing-related niches.

These are guys who are publicly making millions and living a Floyd Mayweather lifestyle… who are in private broke, nearing bankruptcy, or are facing revolt from the customers and clients they have managed to rope in.

Maybe you’re not in the direct response industry. Still, I’m telling you this in case you ever find yourself looking around, and seeing that everyone else is doing so much better than you are… maybe even including people who got going well after you did.

You can’t really know anybody else’s full reality. And if you’re like me, you don’t even want their reality, even if it’s not all rotten.

From what I can tell, the insecurity about how well others are doing is simply a way to focus the general human desire for ANYTHING BUT WHAT I HAVE NOW.

“People are like cats,” says Dan Kennedy, “they always want to be in the other room.”

The trouble is, this kind of “But look where everybody else is!” comparison is such a fundamental part of human nature, or at least my own, that there’s no easy, quick, and permanent fix for it.

But certain things do help. Awareness of it… inquiry about what’s really going on, and if the surrounding thoughts are true or not… focus on your own work, instead of gawking around.

And maybe the following exercise.

It’s quick, it’s easy, and it might just give you a permanent fix, at least a partial one in your business, and maybe even in how you feel about it.

If you have a couple minutes and an open mind:

https://bejakovic.com/things-worthy-of-compliment-in-12-of-my-competitors/

Why I’ve been turning away doubting subscribers

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Over the past few days, I launched my Daily Email Habit service to people who raised their hand to get on the priority list. At the end of the sales page, rather than linking to an order form, I asked people to write me to say if they are in, out, or have any questions. Most people who wrote me said they are in, like these folks:

#1. “Yes, I am in!”

#2. “No questions, I’m in!”

#3. “This looks brilliant John, I’m in. Thank you for coming up with such an exciting service!”

#4. “Count me in, please! Looking forward to it…”

#5. “I am IN. Please send me the link to join.”

#6. “Wtf dude you are such a badass. Yes I’m in.”

#7. “Yes absolutely im in. This sounds like an awesome idea”

… but some people had questions. Here’s one that came up a few times:

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I took a loooong look (plus a night to sit on it), and I want to try it out.

But I’m going to be honest with you:

I’m still debating whether I need prompts like this or random insightful articles to expand my thinking.

(for example, the recent one you shared from Sean got the creative juice flowing)

This means I can’t promise I’m in for the long term yet. I understand that the concept of any subscription is to lower the entry cost in exchange for longer loyalty (like Daniel’s AiC newsletter).

So, if this “test the water mindset” bothers you, I’m okay with putting this one off for now, too.

===

Each time I got this particular question, I’ve been telling people NOT to sign up. Why?

I read once of a study in which people evaluated the attractiveness of a core offer (a bunch of saucers and cups and plates) + a free bonus bundle (more saucers and cups and plates, some in good shape and others a little chipped).

The conclusion of the study was that people evaluated the core offer as more valuable if it were sold on its own, with no free bonuses (perceived value: $33)… than if it were sold with the free bonuses, some of which were good and some of which were chipped (perceived value: $23).

I’m not saying that people who are not sure if they want my Daily Email Habit are “chipped saucers.” I’ve known a few of them for a while, and I know they are good people. Plus, I appreciate their honesty in voicing their doubts.

I just mean to tell you a kind of psychology quirk. The human brain tends to evaluate sets of items by using the AVG function, rather than the SUM function.

That includes my own brain. Yes, maybe it’s not very smart. But the fact is:

1. I don’t need the money from an extra subscriber.

2. I particularly don’t need the money if that subscriber won’t be getting anything out of it. (I can’t say for sure that anybody who expresses doubts on signing up will not get value out of it, but to my mind, the odds jump up dramatically.)

3. There’s an impact on my will to work and my long-term sticktoitiveness if I feel that what I’m doing has some sort of meaning vs. if it’s meaningless.

Maybe that makes perfect sense to you.

Or maybe it makes you a little uncomfortable. After all, aren’t we in business? Isn’t the goal to make money? When and how do you decide to turn away good, hard money today because of something vague like “will to work and long-term sticktoitiveness” tomorrow?

All that, and more, is something I tried to address in my Most Valuable Postcard #1.

Most Valuable Postcard was my short-lived paid newsletter, some two years ago.

And Most Valuable Postcard #1 was about the most important and valuable topic I could find — the most important thing to focus on in your business, whether you sell products or your own services, according to the most successful direct marketers in history.

If you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp1/

Keeping my streak alive

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I’m on the couch as I write this, under a blanket, with my eyes closing and opening every few seconds. I’m more tired than I’ve been in years.

I picked up some kind of sickness yesterday. All night long, I was running a fever and generally feeling awful.

So I will keep today’s email short, but I wanted to send it out nonetheless.

For one thing, I know that at least a few people look forward to my emails, and write me in rare cases my emails don’t arrive on time.

For another, I am now selling a service called Daily Email Habit, so I figure I should practice what I preach.

Finally, I have an interesting article to share with you.

It’s by Sean D’Souza, an online marketer who’s been at it since before YouTube was created.

Sean runs his business in an unusual way. It’s just him and his wife Renuka. They purposely cap their annual income at $500k so they can take three month-long vacations each year, travel around without doing anything for their business during those vacation times, and see the world before returning to sheep-covered New Zealand where they live.

Sean can do this because he has an understanding of the fundamentals of persuasion and online business, on a deeper level than most other people I know of. The article I’m about to share with you is proof of that.

If you’re interested to find out why negotiation regularly fails in the real world, in spite of “negative striplines” and “yes ladders” and BATNAS, you might find this interesting:

https://www.psychotactics.com/why-negotiation-fails/

What’s happening in my business: CENSORED

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Today I had planned to write an email about changes I’m making to this little online info publishing business, and my plans for the coming months and next year.

But then I stopped and censored myself.

There was a quote echoing in my head. It said:

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One of the greatest clues I ever had was working at Mercedes-Benz. My most successful clients — STFU. They were, “Lid on it, black box.”

So many times, they would buy a very nice car — I’m talking an SL 65 — but they wouldn’t drive it to their workplace. They would just keep it for their other place, down by the beach house, hinterland property, like it wasn’t part of their public thing.

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That quote came from business coach and Internet marketer James Schramko. James has been in the industry for a few decades, and has coached big-name, multimillionaire marketers like Ryan Levesque (ASK Method), Patt Flynn (Smart Passive Income), and Kevin Rogers (Copy Chief).

James says it took discipline, but in time he’s learned to keep a “cone of silence” around what he and his clients are doing and planning. He says not sharing his best ideas is what makes him valuable to his clients, and it’s also intensely valuable to him.

Is what James is saying true? Is it right?

I don’t know. Maybe it is. I can imagine the opposite also, that giving away your best ideas is the smart way to go, because ideas are ultimately cheap, while things like relationships and reputation are really where value lies.

But the concept behind this newsletter has always been to share ideas that are first of all interesting and second possibly useful. “True” or “right” is not something I obsess over. I like to try things out and see how they fit. And so — my plans are CENSORED, at least in this email.

The past few days, as I roll out my Daily Email Habit service in private, I’ve been sharing links to content that is “not predictable” for a newsletter like mine.

The link I’m about to share is quite predictable, because it’s James Schramko’s podcast. It’s predictable both because James is part of direct response world, so it’s normal I would link to him, and because his podcast episodes cover (seemingly) standard industry topics.

But maybe something more is going on?

I don’t listen to podcasts by business gurus and I had no intent on listening to James’s podcast either.

And yet, each of James’s past 5 podcast episodes, ever since I got on his email list, got me sucked in, and ultimately gave me interesting and possibly useful ideas I didn’t have before.

Maybe it can do the same for you? If you’d like to try it out:

https://www.jamesschramko.com/list-all

An old Soviet joke from a modern Russian prison

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Here’s a Soviet joke for you:

A shy, unathletic, bookish boy is walking across a snow-covered courtyard in Moscow, past a group of kids who are playing football.

The ball rolls to the boy’s feet. He decides against habit to join in the game. He kicks the ball awkwardly, and it veers off and crashes through the window of the janitor’s apartment on the ground floor.

The janitor emerges. He’s a huge, bearded man, who has clearly been drinking. He roars and starts to chase the boy.

The boy runs for his life, thinking to himself, “Why do I need football in the cold and the snow? I should be at home, safe and comfortable, reading a book, conversing with my favorite author Ernest Hemingway.”

Meanwhile, Ernest Hemingway is in a Havana bar, drinking rum, with a salsa band playing next to him. It’s hot. Hemingway thinks to himself, “God I’m sick of this heat and rum and salsa. I should be in Paris, the center of the world, drinking Cavalos with my great friend Jean-Paul Sartre, and discussing philosophy.”

Meanwhile, Jean-Paul Sartre is in a Paris cafe, in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He’s taking part in an abstract but heated discussion that means nothing to him. “God how I’m sick of all these cigarettes and cafes and empty discussions,” thinks Sartre. I should be in Moscow, talking to my friend, the great novelist Platonov, about things that are real and mean something.

Meanwhile, back in Moscow, Platonov is running across a snow-covered courtyard. And he growls through his gritted teeth, “God I swear if I ever catch him, I’ll kill the little bastard.”

That’s from the memoirs written by Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. Navalny wrote down the Soviet joke above — “my all-time favorite joke” — while in prison in the Pokrov correctional colony.

You might know Navalny’s story. Back in 2020, he was poisoned by the Russian secret service with a nerve toxin, almost died, but somehow made it to Germany to get medical treatment.

He recovered over the course of months. During this time, he cold-called Russian secret service agents and tricked them into revealing how they had poisoned him (I wrote about the crazy story ​back in December 2020​).

In spite of the assassination attempt, Navalny decided based on his principles to return to Russia.

He was promptly arrested as soon as he landed at the Moscow airport. He was then charged with embezzlement, fraud, and extremism, and was tossed in jail.

That was back in 2022.

Navalny never made it out of jail. He died earlier this year, on February 16, at age 47, under mysterious circumstances in the “Polar Wolf” prison, which sits in Western Siberia above the polar circle. “All necessary resuscitation measures were carried out but did not yield positive results,” the prison statement read.

I’m telling you this because somehow, during all this, Navalny remained cheerful and optimistic, in spite of the fact he was in prison in Siberia, in spite of the fact he had a 19-year sentence, in spite of the fact he knew he was really in for life, one way or another.

All that’s to say, if you think that whatever you’re writing about is too serious for joking, that your audience cannot and will not stand lightheartedness, that certain topics are sacred, well, it might be worth reading some of Alexei Navalny’s posts from prison. They are fascinating, inspiring, and well-written. Plus they might give you a change of mind on some things.

In case you’re curious:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/21/alexei-navalny-patriot-memoir

A recipe for a newsletter that “VERY successful people would pay a lot of money for”

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A few days ago, I wrote an email floating the idea of a paid newsletter of business practices from other industries. Basically, giving subscribers Jay Abraham’s “industry cross-pollination” idea on a silver platter.

I said in that email I will most probably never end up creating such a newsletter. To which I got a message from marketer Frederik Beyer, who wrote:

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Industry cross pollination sounds like something VERY successful people would pay a lot of money for.

Those people don’t have time to sift through articles and such, but they DO have the assets/resources to leverage any cross-pollinating ideas you could come up with.

Are you SURE you don’t want to read whatever suits your fancy and get paid to come up with ideas for wealthy people with networks who can help you leverage your skills even MORE?

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Never say never. I certainly have no plans to do this now.

But a newsletter like this is something I’d like to see and even be happy to pay for, if it gave me new ideas for what I myself can do.

So let me give you the recipe for creating such a newsletter, in the hope that you will create it, that it will be great, ad that I can subscribe:

1. Google [“industry news” + insider].

2. Sign up to all the “[Industry] Insider” newsletters that pop up. There are dozens of them (Manufactured Housing Insider, Linux Insider, Gambling Insider, Fashion Insider).

3. Read or get AI to summarize the business practices standard in different industries, as reported by these newsletters you’ve just signed up for.

4. Pick one business practice from some industry X; expand it with a few examples and a bit of detail/context.

5. Explain how this industry practice from industry X could be relevant to a different end industry Y, the one made up of your subscribers. For personal interest, I would hope this industry Y would be “online information businesses” or something similar. But you can pick whatever end industry you want, and in fact, I imagine you can create a whole bunch of these newsletters for a whole bunch of end industries Y, Y’, Y”…

6. (Optional: pick a few other industry business practices from other industries, along with links to relevant articles online to find out more.)

7. Format all your findings as a weekly or monthly newsletter with a paid subscription. Depending on the end industry you pick, I imagine you can charge a few dozen dollars to a few hundred dollars per subscriber per month.

I had this idea yesterday because I actually subscribe to a couple such “Industry Insider” newsletters. I realized it’s a newsletter format that repeats across industries, and that gives you all the raw materials for the kind of “Industry Outsider” newsletter I was thinking of.

And if you’d like to see the best, most interesting such insider newsletter I personally subscribe to… and find out the high-tech stuff happening in the fitness and wellness industry… and maybe get inspired to create your own publishing empire helping wealthy people with networks:

https://insider.fitt.co/

The unpardonable sin in daily emails

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> be me
> get email yesterday
> feel sucked in by the subject line because it’s the same as the name of a paid training i’m thinking to create
> read email
> interesting opening, about how the author wrote something that got a whole lot of reader engagement and replies
> get to the takeaway
> “Vulnerability”
> feel face drop, groan
> close email and vow never to read another of the author’s emails again

An A-list copywriter, Robert Collier, once wrote that the unpardonable sin in nature is stagnation, standing still.

Another A-list copywriter, Jim Rutz, once wrote that the #1 sin in ad mail is being predictable.

It applies to daily emails as well. The #1, unpardonable sin in daily emails is stagnant, predictable content. That’s why a point of my personal philosophy, which may resonate with you, is to do anything but be predictable.

Right now, I’m in the middle of rolling out my new Daily Email Habit service to people who expressed interest and got on priority list.

While I do that, I have no paid offers to promote.

So let me take the next few days, while the rollout is happening, to share some unpredictable pieces of writing.

I mean “unpredictable” both because these pieces of writing contain surprising ideas presented in insightful ways… and because you wouldn’t expect to have them shared inside of a newsletter like this one, about direct marketing and online businesses.

To start with, here’s something I read two years ago that still pops up in my mind pretty much every week.

The title of it is When Magic Was Real.

The idea that sticks with me is that magic — real magic, not stage magic — is real, and is “the product of belief x belief.”

If you want to read something surprising, insightful, and maybe mind-altering:

https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/when-magic-was-real

How to prepare for a future in which people can’t think

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I was talking to a friend today. She has a kid who is 11. The kid has to go through a rigorous set of state-sanctioned exams that will determine his future education, career progression, and I suppose retirement community.

“It’s crazy!” my friend said. “Who even knows what will happen in the future?”

I have no kids and am generally clueless about what’s going on in the world. “Huh? Future? What are you talking about?”

“AI!” she said. “What will kids have to learn? How will that even look?”

I read an article by Paul Graham a couple weeks ago. I’ve written about Graham before in these emails. In a nutshell:

Graham is a kind of modern-day renaissance man — a painter, computer programmer, businessman, and investor. This last one is what he’s best known for.

Graham cofounded Y Combinator, the early-stage investing firm behind companies like Airbnb, Coinbase, Stripe, Twitch, Instacart, Reddit. Thanks to his stake in these companies, Graham is worth north of $2.5 billion.

Along with his many other activities, Graham also writes interesting online essays. He wrote a new one a few weeks ago.

In the future, predicts Graham, not many people will be able to write because AI has made it unnecessary.

Is that bad? In Graham’s words:

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Yes, it’s bad. The reason is something I mentioned earlier: writing is thinking. In fact there’s a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. You can’t make this point better than Leslie Lamport did:

“If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”

So a world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots. I know which half I want to be in, and I bet you do too.

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Is Graham right about writing?

I don’t know. I have heard said that 2,500 years ago, smart people were making the same argument AGAINST writing, saying that it weakens critical thought and makes the mind flabby.

I can only report my personal results, today, in 2024.

Writing, at least in my case, causes me to think more and make distinctions I wouldn’t make otherwise. Plus, I even find it kind of enjoyable. And there’s no doubt that thanks to writing, I’ve achieved a level of influence I could never have achieved otherwise.

I am telling you this because I’m finally ready — with two days’ delay — to start rolling out my new Daily Email Habit service.

A key idea behind Daily Email Habit is that there’s value in writing.

And so this service is designed to help you start and stick with the habit of writing a daily email. A big part of how it does this is by giving you a new constraint each day, and narrowing the scope of what to write about.

At the same time, Daily Email Habit is designed NOT to narrow the scope so much that you end up filling out a template. There’s value in writing, and it’s something you cannot get by outsourcing your daily email to a template — or to AI.

I will start rolling out Daily Email Habit tomorrow.

If you’ve already written me to express interest in this new service, there’s nothing more you need to do.

But if you haven’t written me yet, and Daily Email Habit sounds like it might be useful to you, then write me and tell me what you like about this service. I will then add you to the priority list, so have a chance to try out Daily Email Habit sooner rather than later.