Personal positioning that gets $15,000/month retainers

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Last night, I interviewed Travis Speegle, who is a media buyer, and kind of in the elite of his profession.

Internet marketer Ryan Lee let slip once that Travis gets a $15,000/month retainer, just to start a new project.

I’m telling you this to set up the following quote, which you might dismiss otherwise. Travis was talking about how he moved to Puerto Rico to surf, and how that lifestyle choice influenced how he works with clients. And he said:

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The personal things, those things that we think have nothing to do with our business, are the things that make the biggest difference.

The thing that made the biggest difference in my business and where I am currently today is when I specifically decided that I was going to live my life and become a professional surfer and that I was going to treat everybody that hired me for anything as a sponsor to my surfing.

And I started telling that story. It was the best filter.

Anybody who couldn’t buy into it or was like, “That’s just stupid,” well they’re not a good client that’s not a good fit for me.

But anybody who did, super respected it, and bought into my life, my lifestyle, then I could almost do no wrong.

And things got better because it just attracted more of the people that would actually like to work with me, not just my style, or the results.

It just so happens that results come a lot easier when you work with the right people.

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Maybe you have your own takeaways from this, or objections to what Travis is saying.

I won’t try to convince you one way or another.

I’ll just tell you one thing I got from Travis’s “professional surfer” stance, and that’s the value of metaphor — of a super clear and easy-to-communicate image — both for the person who is talking and for the person who is listening.

This is just as true whether you’re pushing a product… a service… or, like in Travis’s case, yourself as a partner, expert, or leader.

But on to biz.

This week, until Sundae, I’m promoting Travis’s MyPEEPS, which gives you the core of Travis’s ~20 years of media buying and list-building experience for a one-time investment of $495 — significantly more affordable than Travis’s $15k/month retainer.

Plus, if you get MyPEEPS via my affiliate link, I will also include a bonus, which I’m offering for free, only this once, and which I would normally charge $500 or more for.

The free bonus is that I’ll ride shotgun as you build up your own list following the process in MyPEEPS, and give you my copywriting feedback and marketing input along the way.

For the full details on how this will work, or to get MyPEEPS and my free bonus as well:

​https://bejakovic.com/shotgun​

What color is your Lambo?

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Let’s play a game. But first, let me get the hardcore, XXX marketing lesson out of the way:

One of the crucial parts of an effective sales letter is where you get people to “grasp the advantage.” That’s when you get them to understand what your offer will really do for them, in their own lives, in terms that mean something to them.

In a way, it’s a matter of translation.

For example, let’s take a promise I’ve been making lately, of getting 10-15 new subscribers to your email list each day.

Sounds nice, but really, who cares?

Let’s translate what that could really mean in your own life.

Get 10-15 new subscribers per day, every day, for a year… and you would be sitting on a list of exactly 4,562 and 1/2 human beings who said they want to hear from you.

What’s that worth?

Nobody really knows. I can tell you that an individual subscriber to my own email list has been worth $0 in the months when I didn’t make any offers… all the way to $5-$10+ in months when I had exciting offers and went hard on the promotion.

I’m sure many people have much higher numbers still.

But we gotta pick something. So let’s say $1/month for every subscriber on your list. That’s a kind of rule of thumb for email marketing in general.

What could you do with an extra $4,562.5 per month?

Of course, you could do the classic things, like work less… pay down debt… save more for yourself or your family… reinvest to make still more money.

Those are all reasonable and respectable options.

But like I said at the start, let’s play a game.

What fun, unexpected, thrilling gifts to yourself could you spend and splurge $4,562.5 on each month? Just as a thought experiment?

How about this:

You could hire a personal chef to cook every meal for you and your family, day in and day out. Groceries, chopping, sauteing, cleanup, all included.

Rates for personal chefs start at around $150 a day. You might have to pay more if you live in London or LA, or if you want someone with Michelin-star experience. I don’t know, maybe just do the weekdays in that case, instead of every day?

Or take option 2:

You could get a membership at Carbone, a private club in NYC that allows you access to Carbone Privato, a members-only restaurant frequented by other members, such as Rihanna, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jay Z.

Membership at Carbone is $30,000 per year, but I’m guessing you can break it up monthly.

Even if the monthly rate ends up a bit higher in total, it would still leave you money to travel to New York and afford a steak or two at Carbone Privato each month… while you toast Leo across the room with a glass of champagne, in that way he does in The Great Gatsby.

Or of course, there’s the third and final option:

You could simply go the Tai Lopez route, and lease a Lamborghini month by month. The question is, what color? Black? Yellow? Grigio Telesto?

A Lambo Galardo lease starts at $1,700/month. At that rate, you could just get two, so you don’t have to choose between your favorite colors. And you’d still have money left over for gas.

Maybe none of these is exactly what you would want to spend $4,562.5 on each month… but maybe I gave you some ideas?

If I did, this might help you make those ideas a reality:

Until this Sunday, 12 midnight PST, I am promoting Travis Speegle’s myPEEPS list-building course. In a nutshell, Travis shows you how to build your email list using ads, so you can put in $10-15 a day and get 10-15 subscribers out.

You can find out more about Travis’s course at the link at the bottom.

For now, I’ll just say I’ve personally gone through myPEEPS, and I will be following it myself to build up a new list I’ve started.

That’s why I am also offering a “Shotgun Messenger” bonus if you buy myPEEPS through my affiliate link below.

Basically, you can build your list while I build mine, and get my marketing feedback and copywriting input along the way.

I’ll ride shotgun alongside you as you implement the program Travis lays out in myPEEPS. I’ll shoot down any dangerous or distracting ideas that pop up out of the bushes… I’ll read the map if you feel you’ve lost the way… and I’ll help you protect the valuable cargo you are transporting — meaning the money to spend on ads, but more importantly, your enthusiasm and your will to keep going.

I will deliver the “Shotgun Messenger” part of this offer over the next month via Zoom and via Skool (already live for a group of people who signed up early).

If you must have the full, dry details of how this bonus offer will work in order to decide whether or not to invest in myPEEPS, then write me, and I will get the details to you.

Or if you want to find out more about the core offer, myPEEPS, and what it could do for you, and maybe your garage:

​https://bejakovic.com/mypeeps​

[firstname], here’s what’s working in email NOW

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Hey [firstname]!

Last week, I switched my email software from ActiveCampaign to ConvertKit. It’s largely been a smooth transition. The only thing I have to gripe about is ConvertKit’s overly enthusiastic UX, which greets me like a robot cheerleader each time I send a new email, and shows me a drawing of confetti and tells me congratulations. It makes me feel a bit like an imbecil.

I have this theory that, today more than ever, we all want something that feels real.

Or at least I do, and I notice how quickly I dismiss anything that gives off subtle hints that it’s not real:

Stale weeks-long autoresponders…

Merge fields…

Or just a fake emotional tone or connection, where there clearly cannot be any, like with a piece of email software that pretends to be my friend. You know what I mean, [firstname]?

A few days ago, I talked to a very smart and enterprising young marketer named Shakoor. He asked me if I think the email business model — build an email list, send emails, make money — will ever disappear.

I’m personally bullish on the email business model. But if it does ever disappear in its current form, I figure it will be replaced by something that works in basically the same way. Relationships with other humans will keep having value, as long as anything humans do still has any value.

And on that note:

Let me remind you that tomorrow, Wednesday, at 8pm CET/2PM EST/11am PST, I will host a “fireside council” with Travis Speegle.

Travis been selling online since 1996, and has been working as media buyer for 7- and 8-figure direct response brands for a good amount of time. He has seen things come and go.

Tomorrow, Travis and I will talk about paid traffic to grow an email list.

I imagine that nothing we discuss will be stuff that’s working NOW, in the sense that it wasn’t also working yesterday and won’t also work tomorrow, or next week, or next year.

But maybe that’s exacly the kind of information you’re looking for.

If you’d like to join Travis and me on the call tomorrow, you’ll have to be on my list first. Click here to make that happen.

This Wednesday: Fireside council with a list-building wizard

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This Wednesday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I, Bejako Baggins, will sit down with one of the great list-building wizards of Middle Earth, Travis the White, aka Travis Speegle.

Who:

Travis started his first business online in 1996, during the First Age of Middle Earth. Today, Travis is the media buyer for a handful of big and profitable direct response brands. He figures has generated over 7.5+ million leads in his career.

Why:

Because recently, I went through Travis’s myPEEPS program, which lays out his process for building lists with paid traffic. I will be promoting myPEEPS this week, and I will be following it next week to start growing my own list with paid traffic.

What:

If you’re interested in growing your list… in running paid traffic more generally… or in running a successful online business for the long term, then you are invited to join Travis and me to sit down around a virtual fireside on Zoom, and listen in as I ask about:

Exciting list building quests Travis is embarking on this year

Magical spells working in paid traffic right now (hint: I expect it’s pretty much what’s worked since Isildur was king of Gondor)

Where Travis is buying traffic, and how he chooses among the options based on the monsters he has to fight

I will also open the council floor for questions, as long as they are interresting, useful to the entire council body, and not already covered inside travis’s paid program.

If you’d like to join us, you will need to be inside my hobbit hole, I mean on my list, first. Press this magical link to have a chance to get inside.

Last call for tonight’s mystery bonus

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One of the pros of working as a freelance copywriter is that, along with getting paid, you basically get a free MBA.

I knew nothing about business before I got started as a copywriter.

But offer to write a sales page for somebody… and they will take you behind the curtains of their business and tell you everything — how they get their customers… what they sell them… what they really sell them, after that first sale… how much they charge… what has worked… what hasn’t.

You can ask whatever you want, however intrusive, and the client will answer, in detail, and truthfully.

I don’t miss much about working with clients, but this ongoing business education is one thing I do miss.

Good thing is, coaching people — successful business owners, or copywriters working with successful businesses — is almost as good.

So for example:

A few months ago, one of the copywriters I coached inside Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind was writing an email promo for a business coach.

The business coach was selling a $5k program. You had to get on a sales call to get in the program.

So far, so standard.

The one unusual thing was that the business coach offered a sexy bribe just to get people onto the sales call.

Whether or not that’s a smart thing to do is a question for another time.

For now, all I’ll say is that, thanks to coaching the copywriter in charge of this promo, I actually got to look inside the sexy bribe. It was a “plug-and-play email funnel” to 1) generate passive income and 2) get more qualified leads on your email list.

I can tell you this:

* The strategy was really far from being anything NEW

* Calling it “passive income” was a bit of a stretch, or at least creative repackaging

But the truth remains, this little email “funnel” was highly valuable for this business coach and her clients.

And it also happens to be something I have used myself, on multiple occasions, for years now, to offset the cost of ads I was running to various email lists, or even to remove those costs altogether.

I will be revealing this little “funnel” in a mystery bonus that will disappear at 12 midnight PST tonight.

In case you are interested, the time to move is now. And in case you have successfully managed to avoid all my emails about this offer until now, the details are below:

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The background:

I will be building up a new list I’ve launched via paid ads, starting at $10-$15 a day, and aiming to get 10-15 subscribers for that money.

If you like, you can follow the same process I will be following (a course by an expert list builder, which costs $495), plus you can get my live copywriting feedback and marketing insight as a free bonus.

Like I wrote yesterday, I will be promoting this offer for another week.

But if you decide you want to jump in by the end of today, at 12 midnight PST, I will do two things:

1. I will put you into the Skool community as soon as I open it up on Monday

2. I’ll give you a special mystery bonus to say thanks. This special mystery bonus is about a strategy that’s not covered in the list-building blueprint I will be following… but a strategy that I’ve used in the past to offset the cost of running ads, and in some cases even eliminate it

Of course, don’t decide now if want to join me or not. Simply decide if this sounds interesting to you, and and if it does, hit reply and say so. I can get you the full details, and you can decide then, and maybe even in time for today’s mini-deadline.

Sunday morning startler

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This morning I went out for my usual walk, and as I stepped out the elevator at the bottom of my building, I felt something odd inside my shoe, right at the toe.

Probably just my sock crumpled up? Or maybe a pebble?

I sat down on the stairs to investigate.

I took off my shoe and shook it. Nothing fell out.

I looked inside. Nothing.

I reached to straighten out my sock and— GAH!! — I instinctively threw something away.

In the dim light of the building lobby, I took a closer look at what I had just touched and tossed.

It turned out to be a live gecko that had been stuck to my sock. It must have crawled into my shoe during the night and gone to sleep.

It’s no big mystery how the gecko got inside my shoe.

The Mediterranean house gecko is endemic to the Barcelona area.

I’ve often seen the little guys inching their way up the outside walls of my building.

For the record, I live on the 9th floor.

It must take a whole evening for a gecko to slowly make his way up the wall to where I live. But I guess it doesn’t matter to them. They like high places… time is passing anyhow… and so they might as well climb.

Now that I’ve opened up this fascinating topic, let me go full-gecko:

You might know the Geico Gecko slogan, “15 minutes could save you 15% on your car insurance.”

Well, I got an update for you:

“$10-$15 could get you 10-15 new subscribers on your email list.”

For the past few days, I’ve been promoting a new offer with that promise. The background:

I will be building up a new list I’ve launched via paid ads, starting at $10-$15 a day, and aiming to get 10-15 subscribers for that money.

If you like, you can follow the same process I will be following (a course by an expert list builder, which costs $495), plus you can get my copywriting feedback and marketing insight as a free bonus.

10-15 new subscribers a day is not exactly a rocket launch.

But like my shoe gecko shows, a bit of progress, repeated consistently, gets you up to high places, and sooner than you might think.

Like I wrote yesterday, I will be promoting this offer for another week.

But if you decide you want to jump in by the end of today, at 12 midnight PST, I will do two things:

1. I will put you into the Skool community as soon as I open it up on Monday

2. I’ll give you a special mystery bonus to say thanks. This special mystery bonus is about a strategy that’s not covered in the list-building blueprint I will be following… but a strategy that I’ve used in the past to offset the cost of running ads, and in one case even eliminate it

Of course, don’t decide now if want to join me or not. Simply decide if this sounds interesting to you, and and if it does, hit reply and say so. I can get you the full details, and you can decide then, and maybe even in time for today’s mini-deadline.

A favor?

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Would you do me a favor?

As you might know, for the past few days I’ve been promoting a new “work alongside me offer.”

In short, I’ve launched a new list and I’m starting to grow it by paying for ads. I’m inviting people who want to follow the same process I’m following to work alongside me and to grow their own list, while getting copywriting feedback and marketing input from me.

A part of how I will deliver this feedback and input will be via a Skool community.

Which brings me to the favor:

I will be promoting this “work alongside me” offer for another week.

But I want to open up the Skool community early, and start interacting with people and giving them feedback. The reason for this is both to take the load off that’s sure to come with a bunch of people signing up at the final deadline… and also to get a sense of where people are at, and inform the marketing I will do during this last week.

So if you’ve been interested in this offer but you have been holding off, would you let me know now?

I can then share the full details of how this “work alongside me” offer will work. And if you decide to join early, by tomorrow, Sunday, at 12 midnight PST, instead of waiting for final deadline in one week’s time, then I will do two things:

1. I will put you into the Skool community as soon as I open it up on Monday

2. I’ll give you a special mystery bonus to say thanks. This special mystery bonus is about a strategy that’s not covered in the list-building blueprint I will be following… but a strategy that I’ve used in the past to offset the cost of running ads, and in one case even eliminate it

So if you’re interested in this offer, would you let me know? I’ll be checking my inbox throughout the weekend, but maybe it’s best to do it now, while it’s fresh on your mind. Thanks in advance.

The reputation benefit of a bigger list

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My own email list — this one, about marketing and copywriting and influence — is tiny. But some of the people on my list have much bigger lists than I do.

One such person is Russell Nohelty. Russell is a bestselling author of fantasy books and comics. He also writes about the business of writing, and he runs Writer MBA, a membership program to help writers make more money.

Russell’s audience on Substack is over 70,000 people.

Last week, when I started writing about my plan to grow a new list via paid traffic, Russell reached out. He offered to share his experiences spending $30k since February to grow his audience.

Russell and I got on a call this past Monday. It was interesting and valuable throughout, but one thing in particular stuck with me, something Russell said about the reputation benefits of various list sizes. In Russell’s words:

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There were a couple of break points where everything felt different.

10,000 emails felt different than 8,000.

30,000 emails felt way different than 20,000 emails.

From my experience, talking to other people, 50,000, 80,000 — there’s different break points where people go, “Oh you’ve got 45,000 people on your list! Yes, I want to get in front of them!”

Promotions become easier. When you’re a Dream 100 guy like I am, you can reach out to almost anyone and be like, “Hey, do you wanna be in front of my 35,000, 45,000, whatever the number is, people.”

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I can imagine that somebody somewhere has just crossed his arms and frowned. “Well, I’d much rather have a small but mighty list than a stupid big list that doesn’t read or buy from me.”

Sure. It’s my policy as well with my own list. That said, you can have both a large and a mighty list — Russell does.

But here’s the sneaky thing:

All of us constantly use mental shortcuts to evaluate the people around us and the choices we have.

On the one hand, a large list is an immensely valuable asset for its own sake.

On the other hand, a large list is also an immensely valuable asset because of its reputation benefit. Because people treat you differently if you get one. Because opportunities open up which would be closed otherwise.

All that’s to say, if you got a business, and a list, but it’s not quite going how you’d like… then the solution might just be to get a bigger list. Maybe if you can make it to the next break point, like Russell says above, then your problems now might just go poof.

Which brings me back to my plan to grow a new list via paid traffic.

If you like, you can join me. You can build up your own list using the same process I will be following, and get my copywriting feedback and marketing input while we work alongside each other.

I can tell you right now that the investment for this offer is $497 to get started, plus $10-$15 a day for ads. If that doesn’t deter you, hit reply and tell me so, and I can give you more information.

$10-$15/day to stop being a newbie

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For the past couple days, I’ve been fielding responses about my new “work alongside me” offer.

In short, I’ve launched a new list and I’m starting to grow it by paying for ads. I’m inviting people who want to follow the same process I’m following to work alongside me and to grow their own list.

Inevitably, I’ve gotten a few timid hand-raises from folks who consider themselves beginners, like the following message:

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I don’t actually have a list yet. But I am scouting for products at the moment, which I would like to promote as an affiliate.

Would this offer be relevant for me as a newbie?

I am starting this side venture in the hopes of replacing my 9 to 5.

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And the answer is…

Yes yes, of course! This offer’s PERFECT for newbies!! Just give me your money now, and we can talk about it later.

A little more seriously:

I followed up with the dude above. I wanted to know what exactly “newbie” meant to him. Turns out, he has been studying marketing and copywriting for a year+, buying courses, preparing to jump in for real.

The fact is, I do think that this “work alongside me” offer would be relevant to him.

But whatever I write now will seem self-serving, just as self-serving as my “yes yes, just pay me” rant above.

So I won’t write anything now.

Instead, let me share something I wrote almost six years ago, specifically on Dec 29 2018, in an email with the subject line, “The salutary effect of paying for traffic.” That email was about my campaign at the time to grow my alternative health list via Facebook ads, and the positive effect it had on me:

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Well, paying for traffic doesn’t have the same salutary effect [as making cold calls].

But it does make me want to write emails every day to these leads.

What’s more, it makes me want to write emails that get read and get people stirred up.

In other words, I’m no longer just writing for the sake of being able to say I’ve done it. Instead, I’m writing to make sales.

That’s both because I’m spending money on traffic now (rather than counting on an indefinite stream of leads from Google)…

And it’s also because it becomes a game — can I make back the money that I will spend on ads, so I can do this all over again on a bigger scale?

The weird thing is, this kind of sales-first writing is something I’ve been able to do for a long time — as long as I was writing for clients. But it took paying for traffic to get me to do it in my own project as well.

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I’d like to suggest that paying for traffic could have the same salutary and head-clearing effect on you, even if you are a newbie.

Does that mean this “work alongside me” offer will give you a side venture that can replace your 9-5?

Nope. It will only give you one thing, and that’s a paid traffic system to build you an audience.

That done, you will still need to find or create offers to promote. And you will still need emails to send to people, whether you write them yourself or get someone else to do it.

At the same time, will you be 1,000,000x more likely to do those things and actually succeed if you start paying to build an audience… than if you just keep paying for courses and preparing to jump in for another year?

I absolutely believe you will, for reasons that I wrote about in that email from 2018:

The fact you will be paying money (even $10-$15 a day is very motivating)…

The fact you will be able to see quickly if it’s working or not…

The fact that it will feel like a game you want to win.

Of course, ultimately, it’s your call and your decision.

But if you want to experience the salutary effect of paying for traffic, and get some real experience, which you can then flip over and over on a bigger scale, then maybe you’d like to get my help along the way?

That’s what this “work alongside me” offer is about. In case you’re interested, hit reply, and I can give you more information.

The Shoshal Media Redemption

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In my 13+ years of trying to make money online, I have had precisely ZERO success in creating an audience on social media. But I do know somebody who’s had a lot of success with it.

It’s my friend Kieran Drew. Since 2021, Kieran has built up an enviable one-man business on the back of a 250,000-person audience across Twitter and LinkedIn.

A couple days ago, Kieran launched a new product, and in promoting it, he wrote:

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Because I don’t know about you, but I became an entrepreneur for freedom.

I want to spend my days doing what I love because I choose to.

But social media?

It’s a prison in disguise

You have to post every damn day and slave away in the comments. And if you stop, you fade into obscurity within weeks.

You’ve basically made an algorithm your boss.

And the crazy part?

You don’t even own your audience. You rent it. And they can rip away the keys whenever they’d like.

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Maybe, like Kieran, you’ve had success on social media.

In that case, maybe you can empathize with what he says. Maybe you’ve had your fill of constant posting and replying… and fighting off dwindling reach… and crack-like addiction to notifications.

Or…

Maybe you haven’t yet had success on social media. Maybe you’re hoping to build an audience there, and you are looking up to people like Kieran.

In that case, maybe Kieran’s message above gives you a taste of what’s waiting for you in case you get what you think you want.

But let me pay off the Shoshal Media Redemption subject line.

If social media is a kind of Shawshank Prison for Kieran, with its loss of autonomy and control… then what’s the equivalent of the little fishing village on the Pacific coast of Mexico, where you can live life on your own terms?

Like Kieran says in his new promo, it’s having your own engaged email list.

Sounds great, except… how do you build up an email list if you don’t use social?

I’d like to propose a way that doesn’t involve years of hammering through the thick wall of indifference on LinkedIn… or crawling through a mile-long sewage pipe on Twitter.

That way is to pay, specifically for ads, more specifically for engaged subscribers to grow your email list.

Sure, ads cost money. But wouldn’t you pay money to stay out — or get out — of prison?

If you’re at least open to the idea, I’d like to remind you that I have started a new list. And in the next few days, I’ll start building it up via ads.

If you like, you can join me. You can build up your own list using the same process I will be following, and get my copywriting feedback and marketing input while we work alongside each other.

I can tell you right now that the investment for this offer is $497. If that doesn’t totally deter you, hit reply and tell me so. I can get you the full details of my daring escape plan, and you can decide if you want to join me, or if Shawshank Prison doesn’t sound so bad after all.