Going ape for agree and amplify

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I’m working on my new 10 Commandments book and that means I’m reaching deep into my journal and processing all the research I’ve collected.

That’s how I came across a great marketing story I should have already used for an email.

This story involves famous ad man George Lois, somebody I’ve already written about in this newsletter.

Lois was a master of dramatization.

Back in 1960 or so, Lois was tasked with creating a commercial for the new Xerox 914 photocopier. The USP was Xerox’s new technology, which used plain paper for printing and made the photocopier easy to use, unlike the steam locomotives that were used until then.

Lois decided to dramatize Xerox’s ease of use by showing a little girl — his own daughter Debbie — using the Xerox 914 to make a photocopy of her doll.

Sure enough, the commercial showed Debbie skipping over to the Xerox machine and pushing two buttons. Out came a photocopy.

Overnight, Xerox became a sensation. But competitors were furious. No photocopier could be that easy to use! They filed complaints with the FCC for deceptive advertising.

When Lois was told of this, he nodded his head and said, “Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right… it was wrong of us to use a little girl to show how easy this machine is to use… we should have used a stupid ape!”

So Lois reshot the commercial, this time with a chimp in place of Debbie, and with officials from the FCC to watch as the chimp made its photocopy, all in one take.

Following this, Xerox became the biggest photocopier company, a huge tech behemoth for decades. They funded research that changed the modern tech landscape (they invented windows, the mouse, laser printers). And then they let Apple and Microsoft eat its lunch.

But! The point of this email is not Xerox’s business incompetence, but George Lois’s advertising competence.

More specifically, the point of this email is the power of agreeing and amplifying — chimp instead of girl — whenever anybody attacks or challenges or even mocks you.

And now I’d like to tell you about my Simple Money Emails training.

This training makes it so easy to write sales emails that even a little girl could do it.

I really hope somebody will challenge me on that, because I have video recordings of an ape that does it as well.

For more information:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

An incredibly powerful email hook

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Oh boy.

Yesterday’s email, about scarcity as a performance art, brought the replies pouring in.

I feel like I’m in the courtroom scene in Miracle on 34th Street, with postal workers bringing in satchels of mail for proof of how strongly people feel on this issue.

The issue, in case you missed my emails over the past couple days, is an upcoming livestream by marketers Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson.

During the livestream, which is set to happen in a couple weeks’ time, Russell will interview Dan, from Dan’s sacrosanct basement workspace. The topic will be Dan’s mind-boggling decision to shut down new subscriptions to his No B.S. print newsletter, starting March 3 of this year.

Real? Fake?

Some of my readers turned detective and wrote in with their findings.

They spotted a detail on the optin page for this upcoming livestream. An image shows Russell, with a mild look of panic on his face, holding a fax from Dan to demonstrate how real this decision is.

The fax has a headline in huge font that reads “SHUT ‘ER DOWN!!!”

Only problem is, the fax also has a small date in the upper right corner, and that date reads 10/24/2022.

Other readers acknowledged that Russell does go for fake scarcity, but defended the man. Some called him a marketing genius. Others just said he does a great job distilling marketing concepts and makes them usable quickly — and it’s up to you to decide what to do with them.

My main takeaway after this whole experience is that industry gossip is an incredible powerful email hook. If, like me, you needed any reminding of that, then let me remind you:

Industry gossip is an incredible powerful email hook.

The only problem I have with anything that’s incredibly powerful is that I bore quickly.

As I said recently on my “How I do it” presentation, I look at this newsletter first and foremost as a sandbox, a playground.

It’s kind of a miracle that it’s turned into a nice source of income and a fountain of good opportunities.

But once something stops being interesting for me, it stops being a topic for this newsletter. So I won’t be writing about this bit of industry gossip, as Dan himself might say, for the foreseeable future.

That said, my playground attitude is not an attitude I encourage anyone else to take.

So if you want to see how two professionals who take their jobs very seriously do it, then check out Dan and Russell’s current “SHUT ‘ER DOWN!!!” campaign.

I continue to promote it with an affiliate link, even though I don’t know if I’ve made any sales, and even though, given that it’s Dan Kennedy, I would promote it without getting paid, simply because I’ve learned so much from the man, and I think you can too.

If you’d like to sign up for that free upcoming livestream, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/no-bs-scarcity

Scarcity as a performance art

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I got a lot of replies to my “No B.S. scarcity” email on Saturday.

That email was about Dan Kennedy’s decision to close down signups to his No B.S. Marketing Letter. The email linked to an optin page for a livestream from Dan’s basement — hosted by Russell Brunson — in which Dan would explain his inexplicable decision to stop taking on new subscribers.

Here’s what a few people wrote me in response:

#1 “I’m enjoying how you managed to critique the probably fake scarcity while still using it on us all… 😅“

#2 “I registered for the livestream, John. I appreciate your integrity of not promoting since you hadn’t signed up. :-)”

#3 “If you tell me it’s worth it, I’ll probably subscribe too. If not, I will continue to read and reread Master Dan’s books.”

And then, there was one reader who replied to simply say:

“If Russell Brunson is involved, it’s fake.”

I followed up to ask if this reader had some previous experience with Russell. To which my reader replied:

“He embodies the worst of direct marketing and fake urgency/scarcity. But, it seems to be working so not sure where that leaves me.”

Legendary 19th-century conjurer Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin once wrote that a conjurer is an “actor playing the part of a magician.”

And legendary 21-st century marketer Dan Kennedy once wrote:

“This gets to a view of selling as a performance art. As such it is to be planned, scripted, physically choreographed, rehearsed, and ultimately performed. Most sales professionals unfortunately view the presentation as something that they should just be able to do.”

I’m not sure if this makes anybody in Dan’s audience — or in the audiences of all the marketers who are descended from him — feel better about the experience of witnessing scarcity as a performance art.

But it might clear things up, and explain where that leaves you — and that’s participating in a show.

One thing’s for sure:

Both Dan Kennedy and Russell Brunson are sales professionals of the highest caliber.

If you want to see them in action, there’s that free livestream from Dan’s basement in a few weeks’ time, explaining why Dan has decided to shut down new signups “for the foreseeable future.”

So if you’d like to learn something about effective marketing or simply watch two wonderful actors put in a great performance, you can sign up below.

And DO IT NOW — before all the free tickets have sold out and the infinite Zoom attendee limit has been exhausted and the deadline sirens start to blare. Here’s the link, which will self-destruct after you click on it:

https://bejakovic.com/no-bs-scarcity

The seedy underbelly of every industry ever

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This past Wednesday, the BBC ran an article with the headline:

“The seedy underbelly of the life coaching industry”

The article features the story of a woman named Angela Lauria, age 50. Lauria went in search of weight loss and she wound up with a life coach who charged her $100k and got her to spend thousands more on trainings by other life coaches.

We don’t actually find out what happened to Angela in the end, but presumably she did not make her $100k back via new and bigger successes in her life.

I guess the BBC published this article because life coaching is a booming industry and because it’s still relatively new.

The point, the article says, is not to discourage people from seeking a life coach’s services — because there are good life coaches. But it’s the Wild West out there.

I personally think it’s the Wild West everywhere, and always has been.

My estimate — based on having seen behind the curtain at hundreds of businesses while I was a for-hire copywriter — is that 80% of people doing any job are at best mediocre, and more likely, they are actively bad.

Only 20% of people in any industry are genuinely dedicated, skilled, and get good results on any kind of consistent basis.

So what to do? Well, if you’re looking for a life coach, the BBC article has the following good advice:

“Ask the coach how much of their business is referral, call at least three former clients and don’t buy from anyone who won’t do a call with you directly beforehand. And don’t buy from anyone who needs an answer now – scarcity and urgency is made up.”

Meanwhile, if you want to write a personal email newsletter — to distinguish yourself, to prove your credibility, to promote your products and services — then look at my Simple Money Emails program.

​​Most of the sales for that program came via referrals. And if you’d like to see what a few previous customers had to say, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

No B.S. scarcity

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Yesterday, I got hypnotized.

I knew what was happening.

I didn’t stop.

I didn’t particularly want to stop.

Instead, I pulled out my credit card and signed up for a $137/month international subscription to a print monthly newsletter.

I had considered signing up before — it’s Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Letter.

“But do I really need this?” I asked myself each time before. The answer is no.

Besides, I know what personality-based marketing newsletters are really about — and that’s selling you a personality.

And yet, last night I happily bought. Even though I knew what was happening, I justified it to myself as something I simply wanted to do.

What changed?

Very simple.

​​Dan (or somebody on his behalf, since the man doesn’t use the Internet) sent out an email with the subject line, “You’re Invited Into My Basement.”

The offer was a free, live, upcoming event broadcast from Dan’s basement, where he works. Dan would be interviewed by Russell Brunson of ClickFunnels. The reason was the following:

===

Russell is flying out to grill me on my recent decision to shut down new sign-ups to The No B.S. Letter after 30 years. And it’s sure to be quite the masterclass in and of itself—no scripts, no pre-recorded sessions, and absolutely No B.S.

===

“Huh,” I said. “No doubt this is some marketing stunt. No way is Dan actually closing signups to his newsletter.”

But I clicked through to register for the event.

And the same message popped up. “The Last Day To Join Dan Kennedy’s NO B.S. Letter Is March 3rd.”

I still don’t really know what this last-day stuff is about. I didn’t listen to Russell Brunson’s VSL or read the copy that popped up after I signed up for the free upcoming event.

Instead, I just had Dan’s voice talking to me, because I have been listening to a course of his lately…

I had his ideas floating behind my eyes, because I recently finished a book of his…

And I felt like we were just in touch today, and yesterday, and the day before, because each day he sent me an email — which I read as I nodded my head and took notes.

All that stuff was true every day before yesterday. But thanks to this “doors closing” stuff — whatever that’s about — yesterday I got entranced, pulled out my credit card, and signed up to the No B.S. Letter. Even though, in spite of Dan’s No B.S. brand, I’m pretty sure this scarcity play is almost surely B.S.

So my point for you is the hypnotic power of scarcity, once you’ve built up sufficient trust and authority.

As for me, I will probably be doing some sort of promotion soon to relieve myself of this new monthly expense.

That’s one thing I’ve learned from Dan Kennedy — never pay for anything.

Another thing I’ve learned is to have an offer at the end of everything I write.

So today I’ll leave you with the link to the “Has Dan Kennedy Gone Mad?!?” campaign.

Yes, that’s an affiliate link. I signed up ages ago to promote Dan Kennedy’s newsletter, but I could never do it in good conscience because I wasn’t signed up myself.

​​Well… until today. How things change.
​
​So if you want to suss out whether this scarcity is for real or B.S., or sign up to the No B.S. Letter before the doors supposedly close:

https://bejakovic.com/no-bs-scarcity

#1 common feedback to my coaching group last night

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Last night I hosted the first Write & Profit coaching call.

I aimed to get 5 qualified people to join this coaching program. And I got five qualified people.

We had the owner of dog-training business in the Midwest who’s had thousands of clients… a harp-playing marketing specialist who helps offline service businesses get online… a copywriter who’s gotten some big wins for coaches… a London banker who went on a hero’s journey to find satisfaction in his well-paid corporate job, and now teaches others to do the same… and a 24-year-old fitness wiz who’s already got a coaching business with hundreds of high-ticket clients.

All five are great at what they do.

All five have success stories to share, either their own or work they’ve done for others.

And yet, there was one piece of common feedback that I had to give all of them.

It probably applies to you too.

It certainly used to apply to me, and still does on some days. It’s this:

None of them was not making adequate use of their status, endorsements, case studies, and success stories.

Maybe you wince when I say that. If so, you should know that doing it adequately doesn’t have to feel tacky, like maple syrup left to dry on the counter.

You can build up your status and share success stories in a natural, even helpful way. For example, consider what I did with this email.

I told you about my coaching program. I told you I filled it how I wanted to fill it. I built up the people inside the program to highlight they are qualified and successful.

And if I could only find some way to also work in the fact that I got these 5 people to each agree to pay me multiple thousands of dollars, using a 3-page Google doc, with no sales calls, no pressure or awkwardness, no haggling over price…

… then you might ask me how? How did I do it? And more importantly, how can you do it?

It certainly isn’t a magical 3-page Google doc that makes sales like that.

Instead, it’s a constant commitment to share your own status items, case studies, success stories… and to stuff those into regular emails, that are written so that people will want to keep reading.

If you have inhibitions about doing the first, then this email you’ve read should help you with that.

As for the second:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Collapse the time

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Later today, I will host the first call of my Write & Profit coaching group.

I launched that on the back of the “How I do it” live presentation did a couple weeks ago.

I had the idea for that presentation in the middle of January, and I tacked on the group coaching offer simply because I have a policy to put an offer at the end of everything I do.

I’ve been thinking about a change I’ve made recently to how I work.

I simply started starting things faster.

I don’t put as many ideas in a todo list. I don’t ponder as much. I don’t prepare. My default has become, just do it now.

Lots of things have been happening for me over the past couple months. I believe this change in behavior is a big reason why.

Yesterday, I got an email from direct marketing coach Dan Kennedy, who expressed the same idea. Dan wrote:

===

I taught myself the habit of collapsing the time between each idea and acting on it. This has created a lot of messes and a few catastrophes but also made possible a lot more successes than occur at a normal pace.

===

So that’s my bit of advice for today. Collapse the time. Messes will happen. Maybe catastrophes, too. But overall, you will still come out way ahead of where you would have been otherwise.

Time to go.

I still have things to prepare for tonight’s coaching call. Meanwhile, since I have a policy to make an offer at the end of everything I do, consider my Simple Money Emails course. It can help you collapse the time between wishin’ and hopin’ to write daily emails and actually writing them regularly.

For more information:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Gift-box theory of marketing

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A few days ago, I bought the ticket for my second-ever Sean D’Souza meetup, this coming April, in Lisbon, Portugal.

Sean, as you might know, is an old-school online marketer who has been selling info courses about marketing since 2002.

The first meetup of his I attended, in Seville in Spain last year, was great.

I met a Hungarian who runs a dental clinic in Budapest, Hungary. We bonded over the fact that I lived in Budapest for a long time and had only good things to say about the place.

I guess he was grateful. Because in return, he told me his story and opened my eyes as to what marketing really is and how powerful it can be.

I’m about to share a part of this guy’s very clever marketing strategy for his dental clinic.

I can’t overstate how valuable and cool it is, at least if you’re into marketing.

What I’m about to write is worth reading closely, and remembering, and pondering. Here goes:

For years, the Hungarian ran a highly successful dental clinic doing dental tourism. He built the business on Google ads. Swiss or Brits came in to get their teeth fixed at a discount while enjoying a fancy hotel in Budapest.

And then, corona came. Lockdowns. Travel shut down entirely, as did most businesses.

After a few weeks, dental clinics in Hungary were allowed to reopen. But international travel to Hungary remained closed, which meant dental tourism was out. The Hungarian’s dental clinic had all these fixed costs, and no patients.

So he paced the floor of his empty clinic… he paced… and paced… and he came up with a plan.

He decided to create an entirely new dental business serving only locals. And how.

Within six weeks, he filled the entire practice… without running any ads, which had become super expensive because all the other clinics were running them… without tapping any prior customers or network… without begging masked people on the street to come in for a free cleaning… without creating content… without becoming a social media influencer… without paying other such influencers to promote him.

Pause for a moment.

Ask yourself.

How would you do the same?

How would you get dozens or hundreds of new patients, ready to pay you large sums of money, within just a few weeks, starting with nothing, except the tools of actually delivering the service, and your knowledge of human psychology?

Here’s how the Hungarian did it:

He started approaching the offices up and down the busy street where his offices sat. He would ask to speak to the CEO or to some other top exec and say:

“I have a dental clinic nearby. I’m going to write an email to promote my clinic to your employees…”

So far, so bleh. But this next part is not:

“… and I want you to send it, in your own name. It’s a pandemic outside. People are scared. Even small infections could compromise their immune system, and could prove to be deadly. So I want you to say that you, Mr. CEO, were thinking about your employees, and you reached out to us, and fought to get us to offer a special deal, a huge discount, to your employees to check if they have any dental problems. This is about healthy teeth of course, but in the present moment, it can keep your employees from getting sick or dying. You are doing it because you care.”

Pretty good, right? ​​

​​Good, but not a sure shot. ​​Mr. CEO might want to look good to his employees, but he might also have bigger, more pressing problems to deal with.

​​So the dental clinic owner continued with his pitch to Mr. CEO:

“Because of the lockdowns, your business is not operating right now. You are not making money. The fact is, when your employees come to us for their checkup, most of them are sure to have dental problems that will require further work. We will charge them a fair price for this work. And we will give you 10% of these fees to help you out, so you have cash during this hard time, while your business is frozen.”

Result?

Like I said, an entirely new business, a full clinic, highly profitable, in just 6 weeks time.

After the Hungarian told me this, I marveled for a while. And I came up with what I call gift-box theory.

Imagine a collection of beautiful gift boxes. Imagine the small lump of coal you want to sell.

Your small lump of coal might not be very attractive on its own (“I want you to promote my business to your employees”).

So you put your lump in one gift box (“be a hero to your employees”). But no need to stop there. You can then put that gift box into a second gift box (“… and make money at it too”).

Each market has its own set of beautiful gift boxes that they care about, that mean something to them, that tap into their emotional responses.

Your small lump of coal probably means nothing to your prospects. So it is your job as marketer to identify the gift boxes that your market responds to, and then to stack a combination of them in such a way that the entire experience — lump of coal inside a sequence of gift boxes — thrills your prospect.

Actually, there was more to the Hungarian’s story — more gift boxes, more smart and clever and free marketing they continued to do after this initial effort, which grew their business even larger.

But I’ve already shared too much. I wouldn’t normally write so long or share this much how-to information. But I profited from that Sean D’Souza meetup. I’m sure to profit from the next one. And so I wanted to give you something valuable as well.

That said, what I’ve just done is not a good sales email. It’s not what I recommend doing in my Simple Money Emails course. Therefore, I do not expect you to buy anything from me today. But if you want to prove me wrong, here’s more info on everything I offer right now:

https://bejakovic.com/showroom/

Exploiting stupid and gullible customers

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I live in Barcelona and for the first time in my life, that means I’m drinking bottled water at home.

The Barcelona tap water looks and tastes like it was used to wipe down a chalkboard before being pumped to your house.

I drank the tap water for the first few months after moving here. I kept asking myself, “Why am I always thirsty?”

Then some friends came to stay with me for a few weeks. They took a sip of the tap water. They refused to have a second sip. They bought bottled water instead.

I drank the bottled water while they were here. And when they left, I found I couldn’t go back to the tap.

My thirst was finally cured. But now I have a new problem. I regularly have to go and buy the water, and schlep it back home.

That’s what I did last night after my evening walk. I walked to the nearest supermarket, about 200 yards away, bought a large 6-pack of bottled water, and schlepped it home.

As I was carrying it, I was thinking about how — bear with me here, I’m getting to a point — there’s a convenience store right in my building. A guy named Malik runs it. The total distance from Malik’s convenience store to my front door is 4 yards, not 200.

And yet, I haven’t shopped at Malik’s for almost a year now. I refuse.

The question is why. I’ve actually written about this before:

===

Malik doesn’t ever ring up what you’re buying. He never gives you a receipt.

Instead, he eyeballs the stuff you’re holding in your hands — a bottle of water, two cans of beer — and tells you the total. 7 euro 65 cents. Tomorrow, the same basket of stuff might cost 6 euro 30. Or 9 euro 15.

Sometimes, Malik senses he has overcharged you. And without looking at you directly, he senses whether you feel so too. If he ever thinks he’s gone too far, he doesn’t lower the price. Instead, he throws in something extra — a single-serve cookie, a lollypop, a piece of bubble gum. Lately it’s been happening a lot.

===

At first, this behavior was curious. Then cute. Then annoying. I stopped going.

I could afford the extra euro or two. I would even gladly pay for the convenience not to have to schlep my bottled water home from a block away. But the random price increases and drops, depending on Malik’s whims and how rich I was looking that day, drove me away. They made me feel gullible and stupid.

The point here is twofold:

First, I’d like to suggest you don’t make your customers feel gullible and stupid. That might seem perfectly clear — much clearer than Barcelona’s tap water. And yet, how many businesses engage in practices that make it seem their customers must be gullible and stupid? Stuff like:

– Transparently fake reasons why (“Our warehouse manager just phoned me in a panic and…”)
– One-time-only offers that really aren’t
– Price increases and drops based on a whim or on momentary greed, rather than strategy

Malik’s store still survives without my patronage. I see him sitting there all day long, looking exhausted and unhealthy. I would gladly pay him the top price he ever charged me for the bottled water, if I only didn’t feel stupid and gullible doing so.

And that brings me to the second point of the story above. But I will talk about that tomorrow, because one point a day is my new limit.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to write daily emails that allow you to 1) build trust rather than resentment and 2) charge high prices that people happily pay, then you might like my Simple Money Emails course. For more information:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/​​

Today only: Stage Surprise Success

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Here’s a fun story about thieves:

Penn Jillette is a famous magician. He was once sitting at a Las Vegas convention for magicians, holding court.

Among the people around him was a soft-spoken young man named Apollo Robbins. Robbins had been working in Las Vegas casinos as a performance pickpocket — stealing wallets and watches for show, and then giving them back to their owners.

Penn rates pickpockets “a few notches below hypnotists on the show-biz totem pole” — and God knows stage hypnotists rank low.

Penn braced himself to be unimpressed, and he challenged Robbins to steal something.

But Robbins shrugged his shoulders. He shook his head. He doesn’t like to perform in front of other magicians, he said.

Jillette repeated his challenge.

But Robbins said no again. Penn was wearing just shorts and a sports shirt, and Robbins said this wouldn’t be much to work with.

“Come on,” Jillette said. “Steal something from me.”

Robbins smiled and said no one last time. Instead, he offered to perform a magic trick for Jillette.

By this time, a large audience had formed around the two.

Robbins told Jillette that the trick would involve tracing a circle on a piece of paper around the ring Jillette was wearing.

Jillette took off his ring. He put it down on the table on a piece of paper. He reached for a pen in his shirt pocket. He brought the pen down to the paper and clicked it to start writing.

Suddenly, his face went white. He looked up at Robbins.

“Fuck. You,” Jilllette said.

Robbins was there, standing with a small plastic cylinder between his fingers. It was the ink cartridge from Penn Jillette’s pen.

There are lots of possible morals from this story. But let me focus on just one particularly valuable one. It is this:

For the next 24 hours, until 8:31pm Tuesday, Feb 6, to be exact, I have a special offer if you buy my Most Valuable Email course.

I will tell you the particularly valuable moral from the above story, which I am calling Stage Surprise Success.

​​Stage Surprise Success will give you step-by-step instructions for creating surprise in any kind of performance, whether thieving, magicking, comedy, drama, or simply writing for impact and influence.

If you want this disappearing bonus:

1. Get a copy of my Most Valuable Email training at https://bejakovic.com/mve

2. Then reply to this email and say you want the disappearing bonus offer.

3. I will then reply with a brief writeup explaining Stage Surprise Success.

4. This disappearing bonus offer is good until tomorrow, Tuesday, February 6, at 8:31pm CET.

5. And of course, if you’ve bought MVE already, this is open to you as well. Write in and ask away, and I will send you Stage Surprise Success also. But the same deadline applies.