Keep doing a good job

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A few weeks ago, I was at the gym on the elliptical, getting in my weekly hours of Zone 2.

I was staring out the big gym windows to distract myself. Out on the street, I saw a family of three in a miserable scene.

At the head of the pack was a mother, standing, weighed down by several heavy bags of groceries, looking exhausted.

Staggering towards her was a five-year-old boy. He was pulling his hair in a gesture that seemed to say, “I can’t do this any more.”

And a few steps behind him was his three-year-old brother, the cause of all the misery.

He was rooted in place and obviously throwing a tantrum. What killed me was that he was wearing a rainbow-colored t-shirt that said, “Keep doing a good job.”

All of which is to say, be careful of what behavior you encourage.

I had more to say on this topic. But I reserved that for people who are signed up to get my daily emails. Maybe you’d like to join them, so you can get my entire messages, including some special offers that I never make outside my newsletter. In that case, click here and fill out the form that appears.

Daniel Throssell is right

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“Whether liketh you better, said Merlin, the sword or the scabbard? Me liketh better the sword, said Arthur. Ye are more unwise, said Merlin, for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword, for while ye have the scabbard upon you ye shall never lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded, therefore keep well the scabbard always with you.”

Australia’s best copywriter, Daniel Throssell, wrote an email two days ago in response to my own email from New Year’s Day.

Daniel’s subject line read, “John Bejakovic is wrong.”

In his email, Daniel started off by saying he and I are on good terms and that he has helped me before. And he’s absolutely right.

In 2021, I had been stubbornly writing this newsletter in silence for three years. With one email to his own list, Daniel changed that. In the three days after he first promoted me, I tripled my list size, and made a bunch of money as a result.

Daniel has also promoted me since, and every time, I’ve gotten a big boost in new subscribers. I’ve written before to say how grateful I am for that, and how impressed with the influence that Daniel has over his readers.

But back to Daniel’s email from two days ago. After that “we’re good” intro, Daniel went on to the heart of it:

A five-point argument that paid newsletters are a desirable or even superior info product. That’s opposed to what I wrote in New Year’s Day email, where I said that nobody really wants a newsletter, not without lots of bribes, indoctrination, or shaming.

If you haven’t done so yet, I’ll leave you to read Daniel’s email and see if you are convinced by his arguments. I’ve heard from readers on both sides.

Some said Daniel is a magician with words and that he turned it around brilliantly. Others said they found Daniel’s arguments unpersuasive.

As for me, I will only say that, even after reading Daniel’s email, I am still not selling a paid newsletter, or planning to do so.

But Daniel is selling a paid newsletter. In fact, he wrote recently that adding this paid newsletter to his business is one of the best things he’s ever done.

And that’s why he’s absolutely right to publicly fight for his position, to make a black-and-white case of it, and even turn it into an issue of what’s noble or not.

If you want to be seen as a leader, or if you have a kingdom to protect, then Daniel’s example is well-worth studying and following.

Like King Arthur, you have to mount your horse, brandish your sword Excalibur, and lead the charge against any flying serpent that crosses your borders and into your marches, before the ugly beast has a chance to threaten your heartland.

If I were in Daniel’s position, I would have to do the same. But fortunately for me, that’s not the position I am in.

Like I’ve said before, I don’t look at what I’m doing here primarily as a business. Yes, these emails have been making me money, and sometimes good money. But this is not only project I’m working on, and it’s not the main way I’m looking to make money.

That non-dependence is like the scabbard of Excalibur for me. It means I don’t lose no blood, no matter the wounding things anybody may write about me, about the content of my emails, or about the offers I promote.

And if you value your freedom more than ten kingdoms, then this kind of non-dependence is something to keep always with you.

Moving on. I have tribute to collect from various places around the world. Meanwhile, if you would like to read more essays I’ve written, then sign up to my daily email newsletter. Click ye here and fill out the form that magically appears like Merlin out of a cloud of smoke.

The bigger point of the rising AI flood

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Yesterday, Australia’s best copywriter, Daniel Throssell, wrote an email with the subject line, “John Bejakovic is wrong.”

​​Daniel’s email was about my email two days ago, in which I said that nobody really wants a newsletter.

I would like to respond to Daniel’s email, and I will. But a promise is a promise.

And yesterday I promised that today I would continue and finish my email from yesterday, and reveal the bigger point.

My smaller point was that there’s already a ton of fluff on the Internet, and it will only get worse now that anybody can write quickly, cheaply, and convincingly thanks to AI.

You can choose to take advantage of the current moment, which is what my email yesterday was about.

But there’s also the bigger point I promised you yesterday. It’s this.

Last month, over the course of two weeks, an estimated five billion people gathered in bars and on street corners all around the world, or squeezed in on the couch at home next to their friends and family, while watching opposing groups of 11 grown men desperately chasing a rubber ball around a grassy field.

The reason why billions of people engaged in this strange ritual is the same reason why I sent a physical postcard last year as part of my Most Valuable Postcard project.

Because it’s something real.

All those people around the world, hanging out with friends, tuning in to a live football game that everybody else is watching at exactly the same time, with the result still unknown and even uncertain — that’s real.

On a much smaller scale, so was my physical, handwritten postcard.

So that’s my bigger point for you.

The world will soon be flooded by AI-generated and AI-augmented content. This content will be warm, sweet, and inviting.

​​That means the flood will stay, and it will cover and absorb all the other warm, sweet, and inviting content that’s being created by the last generation of well-meaning human influencers and personality-based content marketers.

But islands in the flood will form, created by people who want some actual real experience of human connection to complement all the time spent being plugged into the solipsistic AI heaven.

So start thinking now, about how to create something real, and how to give that to people.

At least that’s my advice if you want influence and impact in the nearly developing future, or maybe just a better society to live in.

Anyways, I had a special, time-limited, free offer today for people who are subscribed to my email newsletter. You missed that, since you are not subscribed, but are only reading an archived version of this email.

In case you’d like to keep this from happening in the future, you can sign up to my email newsletter, and get my emails as they come out, in real time. To do so, click here and fill out the form that appears.

There’s a new railroad across America, and it’s turning some copywriters into firemen

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I woke up this morning to an email from an old client:

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Hey John, happy new year!

We’re seeing a lot of growth again in [his wife’s] business… you totally nailed the voice and tone last time, wondering if you’d be interested in revisiting that engagement?

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The fact is, I didn’t totally nail the voice last time. Not even close.

I even wrote an email in this newsletter about that miserable experience, with the subject line, “My so-called life as a 32-year-old Brazilian female fitness model.”

In that email, I said it was impossible for me to really mimic somebody’s voice, at least in daily emails, at least to an audience who genuinely knows that person.

Pretending to be a 32-year-old Brazilian fitness model, I spent 15 minutes writing each email, and another 30-40 minutes massaging the emojis and Instagram inspiration buzzwords and agonizing whether something was just important! or really super important!!!

I hated the process.

But things have changed in the past two years. And if my old client thought I nailed the voice last time, he would be amazed now.

Because after I got his message, I clambered into my connection pod, plugged the metal cables into the back of my skull, and initiated a telepathic conversation with the General Networked Intelligence. I asked it:

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Rewrite the following in the tone of a peppy, enthusiastic, 32-year-old female Instagram fitness model, who loves using emojis and a few words in all caps: It’s important to be healthy and fit. But what’s equally as important is to feel good about yourself, not to compare yourself to others, to enjoy each day without worrying about living up to a standard. And that’s what I want to do for you.

===

In an instant, the Great Networked Intelligence replied with the following:

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“💪 Hey friends! Staying FIT AND HEALTHY is super important, but it’s not just about hitting the gym and eating right 🥗 It’s about FEELING GOOD IN YOUR OWN SKIN, not comparing yourself to others 🙅‍, and ENJOYING EACH DAY TO THE FULLEST 🌞 That’s what I’m all about, and that’s what I want to help you achieve 🙌 Let’s make every day POSITIVE, HEALTHY, AND HAPPY together! 🤗”

===

This is pretty close to perfect. Maybe a tiny bit over the top, but as copywriter John Carlton likes to say, better start with extreme inspirational fluff and dial it back a notch, than try to squeeze a pizza-slice emoji into an unenthusiastic and limp Instagram post.

And then, suddenly, I had a vision.

I saw a 19th-century steam locomotive, a huge and ugly engine spewing smoke and eating up the American landscape.

​​Inside that locomotive was a small, sweaty, sooty man, shoveling coal into the blazing fire that drives the great steam engine on.

But what do you call that small, sweaty, sooty man? I never knew the term. No matter. As soon as I had that thought, without speaking a word, I immediately had the response:

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A person who shovels coal on a locomotive is typically called a “fireman” or “stoker.” The fireman is responsible for maintaining the fire in the locomotive’s furnace, which generates steam to power the engine.

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So there you go. There’s a new railroad across America, and it’s turning some copywriters into firemen. Maybe some of those firemen will get very rich.

Anyways, you might wonder if I have any bigger point to this email besides that you can now quickly and cheaply imitate the voice and tone of Instagram fitness models.

I do have a bigger point. But this email is getting long, and several other steam locomotives demand my attention. So I will tell you the bigger point in my email tomorrow, in case you are interested. If you’d like to read that email when it comes out, click here to sign up for my daily email newsletter.

Threats and shaming in early-morning emails

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Two mornings ago, I found myself on the street outside my house, in the dark. There were no cabs because it was 4:30am on New Year’s morning. I took my phone out to rent a city bike as the first step of catching my 7am flight, but instead of opening the bike app, I automatically opened my email inbox.

“Hello,” I said. “This will be useful.”

It turns out I’d gotten a new email from marketer Ben Settle. The subject line read:

“Why my ‘no coming back’ policy will inevitably be the new normal”

Ben was talking about his policy of never allowing people who unsubscribe from his paid newsletter to resubscribe.

I have no doubt that Ben’s prediction is right, and that this policy will become more and more common.

After all, newsletters are the Ford Edsel of the information publishing industry.

As Agora founder Bill Bonner, who has sold billions of dollars’ worth of newsletters, supposedly said once, nobody wakes up in the middle of the night, heart racing, pajamas wet from sweat, with the sudden realization, “Good God… we’re all out of newsletters!”

Newsletters are something that the marketer dreamed up, because they provide continuity income, automatically, without the need to keep getting credit card details.

Newsletters are something the market doesn’t really want, not without a huge amount of bribes, indoctrination, and in Ben’s case, threats and shaming. From his email about his “no coming-back” policy:

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“Plus, practically speaking, if the trash lets itself out why take it back in?”

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Whatever. People will justify anything to themselves out of self-interest.

Fortunately, my self-interest isn’t aligned with selling you a newsletter, because I tried it and found I hate it, even before I had to give a single thought to retention.

The good news of that is, I don’t have to threaten you or shame you, which is something I find personally distasteful.

The bad news is, I don’t ever hear the satisfying sound of shopping-cart notifications telling me I’ve made a bunch of sales on autopilot.

Instead, I have to keep sending emails, writing sales letters, and doing my best to tempt you into buying the offers I’m selling.

That’s okay. Like I keep saying, I’m okay with working a bit, regularly, and for the long term.

And I’d rather have my freedom, both from the fixed schedule of publishing a paid newsletter, and from the psychological toll of barking at my subscribers and cracking my whip at them.

Perhaps you also value freedom over automatic shopping cart notifications. Perhaps you can understand where I am coming from. In that case, you might like to sign up to my (free) daily email newsletter.

You can try it… find it doesn’t work for you… unsubscribe… and later, if you change your mind, you can subscribe again. No threats or shaming.

To get started, click here and fill out the form.

I made a lot of mistakes in my copywriting career, for example:

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1. In my early days, I worked with OH, who loved meetings, pushing me around like his secretary, and telling me how it’s going to be, to the point where I had trouble falling asleep because I was so insulted and angry

2. In my late days, I worked with SA on a commission-only job, which involved a ton of preparation, the frustration of writing daily emails in his voice, and which paid me nothing, in spite of promises of a huge profit share from his million-name-plus email list

3. I wrote cold emails for any business that would pay me, until I figured out no amount of copywriting hacks will compensate for the fact that a generic offer targeted at uninterested leads will not sell

4. I wrote a weak lead for RealDose’s probiotics sales letter, they rightly dragged their feet on it, and it never ran

5. I started a daily email newsletter twice before, and I stopped and deleted all the archives twice before finally starting writing daily emails for good, which you are reading now

6. I spent the first six months of my professional copywriting career thinking I had learned all there is to learn about copywriting, since I had read Joe Sugarman’s Adweek book and Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters. During that time, I didn’t crack open a single copywriting book or listen to a single training, and I made a bunch of screaming mistakes as a result

7. I didn’t formally collect endorsements, testimonials, or client success case studies

8. I worked with WT, who thought the answer to every copywriting and marketing problem is to apply the AIDA formula, and who exploded in anger when I suggested otherwise, and who translated my innocent comment about not having to fit everything into AIDA into an attack on the value of his MBA education (no joke)

9. I wrote a seventh and final batch of emails for a real estate investing fund out of Chicago. They had paid me for all the previous emails, and on time. They never paid me for this final batch. To date, they are the only client who has ever shafted me for anything

10. I did not take a moment every three months to ask myself, “What have I learned to do pretty well over the past three months?” and then package up that new expertise into a presentation or a mini-course or a little report I could sell, both to make a bit of money, and to build up a lot of status

There are many more mistakes I made. No matter. I learned, quickly or eventually.

I stopped working with clients who didn’t suit me. I became obsessive about studying and improving my skills. In time, I even started thinking about how I present myself, and now just what I can do.

All of which is to say, I don’t really regret making any of the mistakes above, or any of the countless other mistakes I made in my freelance copywriting career.

Except one.

There’s one mistake I regret it because I persisted in it for so long.

I regret it because it cost me so much, both in terms of the kinds of work I missed out on, and the piles of money that blew off in the wind.

And really, I regret it because it would have been so easy to fix, had I only kept one thing in mind.

That one thing is the topic of my Most Valuable Postcard #1, which is available for purchase right now.

But I am only making this offer to people who are currently signed up to my email newsletter. To get on my newsletter, so you can take advantage of this offer, click here and fill out the form that appears.

Announcing: Son of Most Valuable Postcard

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Last year — not meaning yesterday, but actually 12 months ago — I set three themes for myself.

A theme is an idea I got from James Altucher. It’s a general direction to move in, unlike a goal, which is more like a destination to arrive at by a specific time. Themes work for me, goals don’t.

Anyways, one of my 2022 themes was “offers”. And I did well with that. By my count, I made over a dozen different offers last year to this list alone.

The most unique of those offers was my Most Valuable Postcard.

Each month, for all of two months, I sent a postcard from a new place with a short greeting and a URL. The URL took you to a secret website, where you would find my in-depth treatment of one fundamental marketing or copywriting topic for that month.

Subscribers loved the Most Valuable Postcard.

I hated it.

I hated walking around in the summer sun trying to find nice-looking postcards. I hated addressing and writing them by hand.

​​I hated the pressure of finishing up the actual content each month and making it great before the first postcards started arriving.

​​I hated the fact that the postcards didn’t arrive reliably and that I had to resend many of them.

So I killed the Most Valuable Postcard off. Subscribers sighed and said they saw it coming.

But now, the Most Valuable Postcard is back. In a way.

The core concept of the Most Valuable Postcard is something I find too valuable to let go. Like I said, it’s to take a fundamental marketing idea and go deep. As copywriter Dan Ferrari wrote a while back:

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Learning fundamentals and mastering fundamentals are two different things. Sorry to break it to you, in my experience, ~80% of copywriters NEVER reach mastery. The simple explanation is they have NO idea how much deeper they can go. That’s too bad because all it takes is a willingness to put the SCUBA gear on and explore the depths.

===

​So my plan is to go deep, write more Most Valuable Postcards, and put them inside the members-only area of my site.

There won’t be a physical postcard any more, but the website content will have the same format as before.

There also won’t be a monthly subscription, but I will sell the postcards individually, whenever I put them out.

To start, I’m selling the first Most Valuable Postcard, which so far only went out to those first 20 people who managed to sign up last summer.

But I am only selling this offer to people who are on my email list. In case you are interested in my Most Valuable Postcard, or simply want to read my emails as I write them every day, click here to sign up to my newsletter.

My highlights and lowlights of the past twelve months

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2022 has been a year of changes and upheavals for me.

I’ve lived in three countries this year, and moved around 8 apartments.

Back in February, I hit my lowest point in possibly the last two decades, or maybe longer. And yet, 2022 as a whole has been an unequivocal improvement over 2021.

I worked with more zeal this year than ever before in my life. But the most satisfaction I’ve gotten this year is by repeatedly asking myself, “What if I never achieve anything more, what if I never succeed in changing my life in any substantive way?”

Back in January, I jokingly self-diagnosed myself as having a “temporal lobe personality,” after reading the book Phantoms in the Brain.

A few days after that, I discovered I can manifest a stolen license plate simply by the use of imagination.

I’ve settled more or less permanently in Barcelona. I went back to school to study Spanish. I’ve even furnished my beautiful new apartment with some forks and spoons so I don’t have to eat canned sardines with my fingers.

Maybe you’re wondering what I’m on about. The fact is, I’ve written emails over the past 12 months about most of this stuff.

I’ve lived a strange, irregular, and changeable life over the past 12 months, and really, for much longer than that. This daily email practice has been one of the few constants. And a positive one.

Almost exactly a year ago, pickup coach Tom Torero committed suicide. Tom used to say that picking up girls is therapy. Not because you get a momentary boost of validation when sleeping with a new girl. But rather because getting to that point forces you to face all kinds of things you have going on inside of yourself, and address them.

I feel the same about writing a daily email newsletter. It’s a kind of therapy journal, though I’ve worked to make it interesting and valuable for you as well.

So since you are reading, let me say thanks. Let’s see where I am in a year from now, and where you might be, and what I can show you in the meantime to make it worth your while. In the words of David Bowie, which are really the watchword for this entire project:

“The point is to grow into the person you grow into. I haven’t a clue where I’m gonna be in a year.”

In case you want to read my emails regularly, maybe even for the whole of the next year, here’s how to get on my daily email list.

The secret to better pizza, better emails

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Back in 2020, I reported on a saucy story involving Jack Trout.

Trout is one half of the team that wrote Positioning, which I still think is one of the best and most interesting books on marketing.

Once upon a time, Trout was in meeting with John Schnatter, the “papa” in Papa John’s Pizza.

Schnatter’s chain already had 1,000 locations around the country. But I guess he wanted more, and so he was talking to Trout.

Schnatter explained how Papa John’s makes pizza. “… and then we put the tomato sauce, which we get from Dino Cortopassi…”

“Hold up,” said Trout. “I know Dino. He doesn’t sell to chains. He only sells to small mom-and-pop shops. His stuff is fresh-packed and there’s not enough for chains. You’re telling you get your sauce from Dino?”

Schnatter nodded. A call to Dino himself confirmed it.

And so was born Papa John’s positioning:

“Better ingredients, better pizza.”

Is Papa John’s Pizza truly better? I can’t say. I’ve never had it. But the company grew five-fold in the years following the positioning change, and is worth some $3 billion today.

So let’s see how many billion I can make with the following positioning statement:

Better ingredients, better emails.

My claim is that, as for pizza, so for long-term marketing.

More interesting stories and more valuable ideas make for better emails. Independent of the copywriting pyrotechnics you invest in. Independent of the rest of your public persona, which builds you up into a legend worth listening to.

Maybe the fact that you are reading my email now, or have been reading my emails for a while, is proof of that.

But you gotta pay the piper somewhere.

Better ingredients for your emails are not free — free as in just sitting there in your head, right now, ready to be used.

The good news is, better ingredient are not hard to come by, and are not expensive.

They have been collected and sorted, organized and prepared for you, in low-cost receptacles known as books.

If you read the right books, you’re likely to find lots of interesting stories and lots of valuable ideas.

I had more to say on this topic. But I reserved that for people who are signed up to my email newsletter. If you are able to read, including books, then you might like to join my email newsletter as well. Click here to do so.

Marcus Aurelius, not Marcus Mansonius

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Came the following question after I revealed my 2022 reading list yesterday:

What did you think of Roadside Picnic?

I’ll answer, but only because the underlying idea is so valuable, or at least has been so to me.

Roadside Picnic a scifi novel written by two Soviet guys in 1971. I read it because it was the inspiration for the movie Stalker, which is one of my favorite movies of all time.

Both Stalker and the original Roadside Picnic talk about The Zone, a mysterious place that obeys its own dangerous and strange rules, and that grants you your ultimate wish if you can make it to the heart of the place.

Earlier this year, I planned to create a guide to the business side of copywriting called Copy Zone, using The Zone as an organizing conceit.

I knew all I needed about The Zone from the movie, but I decided to read the book because— well, because that’s the super valuable core idea:

If you find somebody whose writing or film or stand up comedy you like and respect, then follow any allusions they make or references they use.

​​If they talk about a book or science paper or inspirational talk that was influential to them, look it up and read it, watch it, listen to it while you wait for your waffles to toast.

More generally, go to the original source, or as close to it as you can stand.

You can call this basic principle, Marcus Aurelius, not Marcus Mansonius.

Mark Manson became a big star a few years ago when he wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

He then had to write an article, Why I Am Not a Stoic, in response to many people who accused him of simply taking ideas from stoic philosophers and regurgitating them as a light summer read, complete with a curse word in the title.

Mark Manson’s fun and easy and accessible book is good for Manson. But it’s not good for you, or it’s not good enough for you. At least the way I look at it.

​​I am personally not interested in stoicism. But if I were, I would go and read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and not The Subtle Art of Using “Fuck” in Your Title.

The way I see it, there’s value in sources that are old, difficult, or unpopular. You can even call it easy value.

Rather than having to come up with a shocking hot take on the exact same news that millions or billions of other people are discussing right this afternoon, you can get a new perspective, by digging into something that was written a few decades, a few centuries, or even a few millennia in the past.

Maybe you don’t agree with me. That’s fine.

But maybe you suspect I’m on to something. In that case, you might want to get on my email list. Partly to read the articles I write, and partly to keep an eye out for references and allusions I use, so you can look up these original sources yourself, and get a valuable new perspective that few other people around you have.

In case you’re interested, click here to sign up.