Business Ideas

Don’t think of Greenland

by

Back in 2019, Internet personality James Altucher ran a crowdfunding campaign to raise $100,000,000 to buy Greenland. He felt Greenland was too important not to be bought.

Altucher is a smart guy. He did his research to back up his claim.

His primary reason for wanting to buy Greenland?

Rare earth minerals, like yttrium, scandium, neodymium, which are used in modern-day technologies such as LED screens, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. Rare earth minerals today almost exclusively come via China, which puts the U.S. in an awkward and dangerously dependent position.

But don’t think of China, and don’t think of Greenland.

Because I read a story this morning in the Wall Street Journal, about how the U.S. is trying to feed its growing mineral hunger — by farming.

Apparently, certain plants are “hyperaccumulators,” and pull out lots of minerals from the ground.

The U.S. has millions of acres of barren, mineral-rich soil.

The minerals in this soil are not of high-enough concentration to deserve being refined by traditional means. But they can be farmed into plants, which can then be incinerated to produce a cost-effective new source of minerals.

If it all works out, farming might become a viable new source of rare minerals for the U.S. economy.

So don’t think of Greenland.

But do think how this story offers a simple, classic, and memorable example of what business and innovation are all about:

An abundant and cheap resource (land in this case)… a new or better process (hyperaccumulating plants)… and a rare and valuable end product (rare minerals).

Also, do think of how this might apply to you and your business.

Because what resource is more abundant and cheap than ideas, gossip, and news stories?

And yet, with a simple enough process, these cheap resources can be turned into rare and valuable end products — sales copy, or marketing content, or even highly priced courses, books, and training.

What is that simple enough process?

Daily emails, exactly like the one you’re reading now.

My email today happens to be based on today’s Daily Email Habit puzzle.

If you’d like to engage in your own “hyperaccumulation” process, and use daily emails to convert cheap and abundant resources into rare and valuable assets, then consider checking out Daily Email Habit today, before tomorrow’s puzzle appears and then disappears.

And whatever you do, don’t think of Greenland.

Here’s the link to take things into your own hands:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

A rule you can take to the bank

by

“If you talk less, you’ll sell more, and that is a rule you can take to the bank.”
— David Sandler

What, you’re still reading?

Even though I’ve paid off the subject line?

Insatiable. All right…

I can tell you I’m re-reading David Sandler’s mysteriously titled book, You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar.

In case you don’t know Sandler, the man was a sales trainer, and his book is about his sales system.

Sandler was influential enough in the world of actual sales — the world of cold calling, going to prospect’s offices, sitting across the table.

But his ideas are much better known in the world of online marketing because negotiation coach Jim Camp, who influenced a million and one Internet marketers, apparently got most of his negotiation system, often verbatim, by being a Sandler franchisee.

Aaanyways…

Sandler says to talk less. To draw out your prospects to talk. To listen, and to get them to sell themselves.

It’s good advice. I tried it. It worked like magic, back when I used to get on calls with prospective copywriting clients.

It’s great advice for sales copy too.

Back when I was writing sales copy — thousands of words every week of advertorials, and VSLs, and sales emails — I made it a policy to “write as little as possible.”

That didn’t mean to have a VSL of 150 words or a half-page advertorial.

Instead it meant “getting the market to write your marketing for you,” as Travis Sago likes to say. To mirror and feed back things that people in the market already said themselves, in their own words, instead of coming up with my own arguments and language.

So that’s a tip for you. Talk and write less. You’ll sell more.

Here’s another tip. The above tip is great advice if all you’re looking to do is to sell, today.

But if you’re writing a daily email newsletter, particularly one for yourself and your business, then there’s a second purpose to your emails.

This second purpose is more wooly. Much less measurable than sales. It also happens in the vague future, rather than the clear present.

I’m talking about getting people to open your emails again tomorrow, and to give you an honest hearing. About gradually, getting people to see you as an authority, a leader, a trusted guide in all kinds of questions in their life.

Sales today are necessary and nice. But really, all the profits in email are in this long game, in the ongoing relationship, in the back end.

And that’s a rule you can take to the bank.

And now, on to my offer. If you don’t buy it today, I’ll promote it again tomorrow, and maybe I’ll convince you then.

Or maybe I’ll convince you today?

My offer is my Daily Email Habit service. It’s a new prompt/puzzle each day, delivered to your inbox, to help you write your own daily email.

The dual goals for Daily Email Habit are 1) making you sales today and 2) establishing your influence and authority, so you have an asset in your email list that only grows in value tomorrow, and the day after.

If you’d like to get started with those dual goals, and now:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Arguing with the Dalai Lama

by

One time while I was attending university in Budapest, Hungary, the Dalai Lama came and gave a talk.

He sat on stage in a comfortable armchair, smiled beatifically, and spoke for an hour in front of the packed auditorium.

Afterwards, the Dalai Lama took questions.

There was an American guy in the audience I knew well, named Brendan. Brendan was studying environmental sciences, and he was infamous for being loud and argumentative.

Brendan immediately stood up to ask the Dalai Lama a question. It had something to do with environmental policy.

The Dalai Lama nodded assent while Brendan worked his way through his long question. Once Brendan finished, the Dalai Lama started to speak softly once again, sharing his vision.

Brendan listened for a few seconds. Then he got restless. Then he stood up again.

I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he started arguing with the Dalai Lama, in front of the entire auditorium, clarifying his own question, and highlighting important points that he wanted the Dalai Lama to be aware of.

I remember my face getting hot and my arms and legs getting heavy as I sank deeper into my seat, overcome with embarrassment on Brendan’s behalf.

Except of course, that’s not what it was. Brendan wasn’t embarrassed, and he didn’t need my embarrassment on his behalf.

Instead, I was just embarrassed by imagining myself in his situation — getting up to ask my self-important question in the middle of a packed auditorium, and then interrupting to pursue my point further, of the Dalai Lama no less.

It’s a curious thing.

I’ve always hated asking questions in seminars, participating in other people’s talks, groups, and discussions, being put on the spot. Like I said, always get hot, uncomfortable, and embarrassed. Regardless of what I say or what happens next, I come out of it feeling somehow dirty or defeated.

But that part’s not the curious part. I guess that part is common enough.

The curious part is that I’ve actually gone up on stage myself, both literally and figuratively, many times. And I loved it.

I used to do competitive debating. I’ve given talks at conferences. I’ve organized my own trainings and presentations online where I had hundreds of people listening (I hope?) to what I was saying in real time.

That’s the curious part.

Yes, these “stand up and command attention” situations always had my heart beating, my face flushed, and my body preparing to flee.

But inevitably, in every case, I came out of them feeling elated rather than defeated, purified rather than dirty.

What’s the difference?

Why is my instinct to be embarrassed and quiet in other people’s groups and talks and seminars… and to be willing to get up and speak when it’s something of my own, and to even be proud of the fact afterwards?

I don’t know.

Whatever the psychology behind it, the fact remains. I wanted to share it with you.

If you think you are not the kind of person who would ever stand up and command other people’s attention, maybe it’s because you have always tried doing it (or imagining doing it) within the context of other peoples talks, agendas, groups, whatever.

Organize something on your own, with your own initiative… and suddenly that same physical arousal gets interpreted in a positive rather than a negative way.

So much for unlocking the giant within.

Now I’d just like to remind you of my Daily Email Habit service. It helps you start and stick with writing daily emails.

Because yes, an email newsletter is a form of standing up and commanding of attention.

The good news is, it’s something you do for own ends… in a way that you control… and that you benefit from.

To find out more about Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

A hard-to-swallow fact about gold and influence

by

Imagine the unlikely scenario that you are Marco Polo, the 13th-century Venetian trader. Humor me for a minute.

Say you’re Marco Polo. And you decide, against your mother’s begging and pleading, to set out and seek your fortune in a faraway, exotic land, two continents away.

You pack up your entire life’s savings — an impressive treasure chest filled with gold — and you set off on the difficult and scary journey into the unknown, over stormy seas, vast deserts, and rugged mountain passes.

Finally, you make it. You arrive to the great kingdom, China.

The next morning, you head to the marketplace.

You open up your treasure chest. You take out your gold. You proudly stack it up in front of the Chinese silk merchants.

This is it. The moment you’ve been waiting for, that you worked so hard for.

You wink at the Chinese silk merchants, and you tilt your head at the gold you’ve stacked up.

But instead of the silk merchants showing surprise and delight in their faces, unrolling bales and bales of silk for you to choose from, and bickering and fighting over you, they just stand there and stare at your gold.

“What is that?” they ask.

“It’s gold,” you reply with a tinge of irritation, “the most valuable and prized form of currency!”

The Chinese just shake their heads. “Not here,” they say. “We use silver here.” And then they start to scatter, their interest drawn elsewhere.

That’s a little allegory I heard a few days ago, in an interview with John Bodi, a pickup artist.

Bodi said he uses this allegory to explain some important facts to men. The currency that trades in Man Land, the currency that many men have been accumulating their whole lives — car, career, bicep curls at the gym — is simply not the currency that they trade over there, in that exotic and distant land, where women live.

Is that true?

It doesn’t really matter. This is not a newsletter about pickup.

I wouldn’t even have shared this allegory with you, except that the day after I heard it, I was listening to a seminar by marketing guru Dan Kennedy. And Dan said the same exact thing, minus the allegory:

“A very hard to swallow thing, but I think necessary to swallow, is that these traditional credentials, this attempt to influence by resume and qualifications, or concern about the lack thereof, is completely irrelevant to influencing people.”

Dan was not talking about pickup. He was talking about writing for influence, so you can make money while running the kind of lean and profitable business you want to run.

If you have gold, says Dan, think twice about trotting it out, because it’s not what impresses your audience. And if you don’t have gold, that’s no reason not to seek your fortune as an influence merchant.

Maybe you find this hard to swallow.

All I can say is I’m not trying to change your mind. I’m just sharing an idea that might be useful to you.

It would be a shame to set off on a journey to the Kingdom of Influence, only to find you don’t have the currency they trade there.

The only bigger shame would be not to set off on the journey at all, and to deny yourself the adventures, fame, and fortune that can result, just because you mistakenly believe you need gold to trade there, and you don’t have any on hand.

“Quit teasing Bejako,” I hear you say. “Let’s say I entertain your idea for a minute, which I’m not saying I do. So what is the currency that they trade over there?”

For that, I will only point you to my Daily Email Habit service.

Each day, it gives you daily prompts or “puzzles” to help you consistently write a daily email newsletter. But these are not random, arbitrary prompts.

Instead, I choose the strategically, for the exact purpose of building up your currency of influence online.

Qualifications are not required. Neither is a resume.

And what is needed, that you already have.

In case you’d like to find out what it is, or even start building up your influence treasure chest today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Payment plan lapsed buyer stats

by

A few days ago, a reader and customer named Alexander wrote to ask:

===

Hey John,

I bought your Copy Riddles on a payment plan, but I’ve just recently changed my banks, so I have new details for the charges. I believe I’m due to be charged again in about a week, so I’d like to change the details so you actually get the money you’re owed… Can you let me know how to do that?

Thanks mate!

===

“Well hot damn,” I said. This kind of email early in the morning definitely cheers me up.

Not that I’ve really had much cause to be worried.

The fact is, over the past six or so months, I have sold 100+ things on payment plan, whether of my own products or affiliate offers.

To date, I have had exactly one lapsed buyer.

The rest have all paid as agreed, updating their credit card numbers when they expire. A few particularly diligent souls, such as Alexander, even do it in advance.

Does this mean that all people everywhere have always been and will always be fundamentally good and decent?

Maybe. I don’t know enough people to be able to say one way or another.

But based on my amateur research into the human mind, I do know a few things:

– We all tend to mirror and adapt to the unspoken context or “frame” of an interaction

– Time is a factor in creating a frame of intimacy, trust, and respect

– So is frequency of contact

What drops out at the bottom of this funnel is that the longer you stay in touch with people… the more often you stay in touch with them… and the more you treat them with trust, respect, and intimacy, the more likely you are to get the same treatment in return.

One way to do this is what I personally do, and that’s to write daily emails like this one.

Which brings me to my offer, which helps you start and stick with writing emails for the long term, every day, or at least dailyish. For more information on this way to create the right frame with the people in your audience:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

How much things cost now

by

A couple days ago, I announced I’ll be increasing the price of my Daily Email Habit service from $20/month to $30/month. I got a reply to that announcement from copywriter and brand strategist Chavy Helfgott, who has subscribed to Daily Email Habit since day 1. She wrote:

===

Just chiming in to say that even at $30, you will be vastly undercharging.

I honestly feel that the 40+ days of daily email prompts + knowledge gained in the community, have so far have been at least as valuable for me than the $10,000 personal business coaching I paid for a few years ago.

===

I’ll get back to those numbers in a second.

But first, let me tell you that, also a couple days ago, marketer Ross O’Lochlainn, who I guess was in Dan Ferrari’s little coaching group right before me, shared how much some things cost now.

Ross was at an in-person mastermind. A couple who was also in attendance shared the details of their business.

Their business is dream interpretation.

Their current low-ticket offer is $3k. Their premium dream interpretation offer, for a small “bleeding neck” segment of their audience, sells for $35,000 a pop. (People have bought.) The couple think they could get the price up to $75k, or maybe $100k.

Says Ross, this has now replaced his previous best story of premium offerings, which was a dude who charges $10,000 to help people do handstands.

I’m not sharing this to shake my head at the greedy Martin Shkrelis of the dream interpretation and handstand industries.

I’m sharing this to open your mind and maybe mine.

The same “stuff” can be packaged up in a different way and presented inside of a different experience to sell not for 2x, 10x, or even 40x… but even 500x, like Chavy says above.

Or 333x if you sign up tomorrow.

Because today is the last day, ever, in the history of mankind, I will be offering the Charter Member price for Daily Email Habit.

Tonight at 12pm midnight, the price goes up to $30/month.

(Apparently, there is still a lot of room for the price to increase beyond that, too.)

Also, Daily Email House, the community that Chavy refers to above, goes away as a free bonus, at the chime of midnight, just like an ordinary pumpkin that magically turns into its own beautiful paid offer.

If you would like to join Daily Email Habit before these vastly underpriced privileges disappear:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

It’s hard to be broke and unmotivated

by

A fairly shameless reader from Brazil writes in to ask:

===

Hey John,

do you offer parity purchase discounts? I’m asking because I live in Brazil and $100 in the US = $244 here in Brazil as you can see in the image below:

[screenshot of the wrong data from the World Bank]

a lot of creators offer this kind of parity discount like Justin Welsh, Rob Lennon etc

[a screenshot from somewhere on the Internet]

anyway, it would be great if you offer that too. I feel I need this “accountability push” to my daily writing habit.

tks

===

I squinted hard at this message. Was this guy pulling my leg, or some of my other body parts?

The offer he’s referring to, Daily Email Habit, currently sells for $20/month.

Going by his math above, that would mean it effectively costs a Brazilian… $49/month.

This dude (who’s written me before to say he works as a data scientist) can’t afford $49/month (PPP-adjusted!)… and at the same time, he says he needs an “accountability push.”

What can I say?

It’s hard to be broke and unmotivated, wherever you’re from in the world.

That’s all the sympathy I have for this guy.

The fact is, I have no intention of offering discounts on my offers based on country of origin, color of hair, shoe size, age, height, or weight — all of which are correlated with income.

I also won’t offer discounts based on any other factor, personal or not.

But the message above did have the twinkle of opportunity to it.

It made me realize 1) I’ve been offering the introductory pricing for Daily Email Habit long enough, and 2) I haven’t done a good enough job making it clear what the value of this service is.

So I’d like to announce that, starting this Wednesday, I will increase the price of Daily Email Habit from the current Charter Member price of $20/month to a mighty $30/month.

Call it Prospective Profit Pricing.

Because it’s really not about what this service costs, but the prospect of what it can do for you. For example:

* If Daily Email Habit saves you just 5 minutes a day you would have spent thinking up what to write an email about… that’s two hours saved a month.

I don’t know what your hourly wage is, but odds are fair this translates to at least a hundred bucks every month. And if you save a bit more time, or if your wage is a bit higher, then this service becomes even more valuable.

* If Daily Email Habit helps you write a slightly more effective email on occasion, you can make a sale you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Better yet, if Daily Email Habit helps you write emails that make a stronger connection with readers, this can turn into many more sales down the line.

What’s a sale worth to you? What are many more sales worth to you? I don’t know. But it could legitimately be thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars.

* And if you’re not writing daily emails now, or you are but you might drop it, and if Daily Email Habit helps you start and stick with it for the long term, it’s uncertain what the result is going to be.

But there’s a shot, a non-negligible shot, at the kind of money, influence, and opportunities that you cannot even imagine now.

It’s been like that for me and for a good number of other people who have really kept at daily emailing for a while.

So sign up for Daily Email Habit based on those prospective profits… not on the exorbitant price I’m asking for it.

And if that’s STILL not enough for you — greedy, greedy —

I’ll also have a second reason why you might want to sign up for Daily Email Habit before the Charter Member pricing disappears.

I’ll talk about that second reason tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you want to get the jump on joining Daily Email Habit under the current introductory price (and benefit sooner from the second reason I’ll announce tomorrow), here’s where to go now:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Some leaked news that ties into what I’m selling

by

I’m writing this opening sentence in a ham-handed attempt to intrigue you, so you read on. And I’m announcing that fact because it relates to the following leaked media news:

Netflix execs have started telling their screenwriters to announce what the character is doing. Here’s an example, from Netflix’s #1 hit movie, Irish Wish, starring Lindsey Lohan:

===

“We spent a day together,” Lohan tells her lover, James. “I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.”

“Fine,” says James. “That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.”

===

Billy Wilder it’s not.

So why are Netflix execs mandating this? Why are they breaking the basic rules of good writing? Why do they want to make screenplays intentionally heavy and plodding, repeating what’s already happened, stating the obvious, telling instead of showing?

There’s a good reason. It’s because people are watching Netflix shows in the background.

I’ve seen this first-hand. My ex-girlfriend used to “watch” Netflix shows while cooking. She’d have the headphones in and move around the kitchen, her phone propped up somewhere in the corner of the counter. She’d glance over at it only occasionally, if she was not chopping carrots or peeking inside the fridge at the moment.

If you write emails to connect with your audience, what does this mean for you?

You might think it means you have to get with the times. To make your writing shorter, punchier, more comic book-like. After all, attention spans are dropping! People are distracted! Content is superabundant! Gotta hook ’em in with memes, emojis, and ellipses!

And yet, I’ve consciously gone in the other direction with this newsletter. This ugly Times New Roman font, big blocky paragraphs, stories that require careful parsing to make sense.

I’ve done it all to encourage people to sit and actually read, instead of skimming my emails while they chop carrots. And I’ve done just fine, even well, by taking this approach.

Point being:

Netflix has 282 million subscribers worldwide. That’s a gargantuan number. But even that is only 3.45% of the world’s population.

Today, you can do things the way that you want, the way that pleases you. If you are persistent and unapologetic about it, and if you deliver value as part of what you do, you will find enough people who resonate with your way of doing things, even if the mainstream is going in the exact opposite direction.

And now I’m going to transition to the sales pitch in this email. Because my opening sentence today is not the only place where I ham-handedly announce things that I’m going to do.

I also do it daily inside my Daily Email Habit service. I do it so you can do it too, for your own audience, in your own tone and voice, and so you can stay consistent in connecting with your audience. For more info on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The JV Nothing

by

The first book I read in English — English not being my native language — was The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.

Maybe you know the 1984 Hollywood movie? The original book is much bigger, and much more profound.

At the core of it is a boy named Bastian Balthasar Bux, who leads a gray and dreary life.

But then one day Bastian is transported to a fantastical land called Fantastica.

He’s brought there to save Fantastica from an existential threat known only as The Nothing.

The Nothing is not a hole. It’s not black. It’s not white. It just makes people and places in Fantastica disappear. Where these people and places were, nothing is left, or more precisely, The Nothing is left.

But let me get to The Something of this email:

Last year, I went on a kick of cold emailing random business owners in a quest for JV partners.

I did this in part because I was following Travis Sago’s BEAMER training, and also because I was working as a coach in Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind, where most people were doing similar cold outreach. I wanted to see if I could do it myself.

My quest for JV partners came to exactly nothing in the end. And that’s even though I had a good offer, and I did my research on people, and though my copy was on point.

What happened? Nobody knows, and nobody ever will.

One minute, my cold outreach messages were in my gmail composer, and after I clicked send, they disappeared. The JV Nothing swallowed them up.

No information ever came back about where I went wrong — whether it was the list, or the offer, or the copy.

I’m sure somebody has good experiences to counter my bad experience with cold outreach.

But from what I’ve seen, it takes huge numbers of cold outreach messages to get any kind of a serious prospect, and even when you get somebody, they rarely turn out to be a good partner, and the relationship tends to be very flimsy.

So what to do?

In The Neverending Story, Bastian eventually saves Fantastica (and himself) via an act of total self-abnegation. He has to give up his own identity, down to every desire, every memory. It turns out to be transformative.

I’d like to propose the same if you’re trying to get JV partners, whether for a list swap, or an affiliate deal, or some sort of long-term collaboration.

Many things go into making that happen and turn out well.

But in terms of getting it at least started, I can recommend the following:

Start with people you know, and who know you.

Once you’ve worked through those, go to people you know, who don’t know you — people you’re a fan of, follower of, genuinely can say feel you know them, even though the feeling is not mutual. (Trust me, if you communicate this, it somehow comes through clearly in a message.)

And once you’ve worked through those people, go to people you make an effort to get to know, over time, either via an introduction, or by following them, reading their stuff, buying their products, writing them, helping them — without your desires or your memories of your planned JV deal in mind.

Anything to avoid the genuinely cold outreach message.

That’s my fantastical tip for you today.

My fantastical offer today has nothing to do with today’s fantastical email. Well, it does, but in a way that I’m not willing to reveal just yet.

For now, if you’d like my help in starting and sticking with a consistent daily email habit, so you can gradually expand the universe of people who know you, and who can connect you, and who you can partner with:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

2025: The year of “big” topics

by

I’m subscribed to a curious newsletter, Thinking About Things. Every few days or few weeks, without rule, that newsletter sends out an interesting article from somewhere on the Internet.

A couple days ago, the guy behind Thinking About Things put out a “Best of 2024” issue. And he wrote:

===

In 2024 there was a noticeable mood shift. While last year’s top articles list was dominated by articles about depression and mental health, this year’s top picks show a very different trend. Not a single article on those subjects made the cut. Instead, our readers gravitated toward the practical: personal finance, stretching, the importance of calling mom, and actionable tips for living your best life.

===

This got me wondering. Mental health in 2023… practical tips in 2024… what about 2025 then?

I got an answer for you. But first, here are a few things I think are in the water right now:

– AGI or ASI (“artificial super intelligence” — the head of AI for Google just tweeted yesterday that it’s looking more and more likely we’ll jump straight to ASI, and skip AGI)

– Serious people claiming we are already living in World War III, in case you haven’t noticed

– The Internet-wide glee over the symbolic assassination of a corporate CEO, and what it means for the future of our economic system

– Trump’s re-election, and the future of America: A new civil war, or Greenland as the 51st state?

These are “big” topics.

The world keeps getting bigger. We know more about it on the microscopic level. We know more about it on the telescopic level. And in between, every damn thing is getting immensely more complex and rich by the day.

All this complexity long ago passed human understanding, but it couldn’t kill the human desire to understand.

And that’s why my prediction for content that will win out in 2025 is content that puts limited human knowledge and understanding inside a bigger context — historical, philosophical, scientific, etc.

Yes, eventually these “big”-topic articles will grow familiar and tiresome also, like articles about depression or mental health.

But I think that people who write about “big” topics will be the attention winners in 2025, and those who don’t will be the losers, or at least the also-rans.

Let’s see in a year if I was right.

I’ll still be here, writing, inshallah, barring a 3rd World War for real, or an asteroid falling on my head.

And if you’d like to join me, and maybe write an email like this tomorrow, and get my help and motivation along the way, you can get started here — before the clock strikes 12:

https://bejakovic.com/deh