Business Ideas

My overly optimistic book-writing plans

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A few days ago, I sent an email in which I collected 10 old emails I’d written with personal stories inside. A reader replied to that to say:

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I really loved reading the story about your mystical experience and how it translated into customer insights. Honestly it was one of the best emails I’ve gotten from you all year.

I’m super curious do you have more stuff like this coming up in your emails?

Also, where are you at with writing that Insight Marketing Bible?

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Huh? Insight Marketing Bible? I had to check the email in question to remind myself of what this could possibly be.

Turns out Insight Marketing Bible was my early title for a book I have been working on for the past 6 years, on the topic of creating insight in readers’ minds.

If you’ve been waiting with bated breath for that, don’t worry. It will come next year. I promise.

This year though, my overly optimistic plan is to write and publish a different book, The Art of Charging More. Just this morning, I sat down and restarted work on this new book by writing up v4 of outline. I really feel like this might be the one.

Point being, writing and finishing a book is a giant pain in the ass, at least if you’re someone like me and you care about doing a good job and telling people something new and valuable.

And yet I keep writing books, or trying to, and I keep justifying to myself that the long-term payoff is worth it. And no doubt that books open doors that nothing else can, plus they have a host of other knock on benefits, plus I guess some part of me enjoys the frustration.

Anyways.

Today, I would like to turn you onto a new report published by Kieran Drew, which shows you “4 steps to build your business through writing online.”

As you might know, Kieran is a former dentist turned online creator, who has built up a $500k/year business and an audience of over 250k people, and who’s done it all by writing.

Kieran boils down what he did and shows you in a straightforward way how you might do the same.

Except, just last week, I wrote an email in which I highlighted Kieran’s latest public earnings report, in which he honestly and transparently says he was actually in the red for the month of March.

(Kieran’s response to my email: “I feel assaulted by your hungover words.”)

The fact is, Kieran has been writing a book of his own and prioritizing it over other things like creating new products or promoting old ones.

That’s cost him short-term time and money, but it’s in the service of a greater business good to come.

In any case, Kieran is coming out of his book-writing cave, and he has been plans for the coming weeks and months. If you want to see what those plans are first-hand, or if you want to learn about writing online and profiting from your writing from somebody who’s done it quickly and at a very high level, then here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/4-steps

Meet me in Barcelona?

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Two years ago, I organized a live meetup of my readers right where I live, in Barcelona, Spain.

I imagined it might end up just me, having a coffee alone. (I count myself among my own readers.)

Surprisingly, after I sent out the email with the invite, I got a number of replies from people who wanted to attend the meetup and could actually do so.

We ended up meeting a few weeks later. There were around 8 of us from what I remember. It was a pleasant and fun experience, and I even stayed in touch and became friendly with one of the dudes who attended (hi Matthias).

And now, with the spring weather here and me entering my mating networking season, let’s see if we can make it happen all over again.

Here’s my offer to you:

Like I said, I live in Barcelona. It’s a big city, and attractive.

Maybe you live here or somewhere close.

Or maybe, Barcelona being one of Europe’s top 5 tourist destinations, you are planning a trip here some time soon.

I will organize a meetup in person, in the flesh, blood and hair and bones, some time in the next few days or weeks. If you would like to join me — if you live here or are just visiting — reply to this email, and I’ll keep you in the loop.

 

Coaching is dead

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I’m reading a book called Million Dollar Consulting, by Alan Weiss, in which Weiss makes the claim in a subhead that “Selling is dead.”

A few pages later, Weiss tells the story of how he got started as a consultant:

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When I was fired and thrust out on my own with about 250,000 independent consultants around around me in the United States, I asked myself how I could stand out. I decided to write and speak, since those are my strengths and you build on your strengths.

[Weiss decided to write an article with a contrarian take on a then-popular methodology, titled, “Quality Circles Are Dead.”]

The quality movement adherents besieged the magazine. I was so stunned, I called the editor to apologize.

“Kid,” he said, “I want you to write an article like this for us every month, and I’ll pay you $50 for each one.”

“But they hated it,” I pointed out.

“They read it,” he pointed back.

I wrote for 72 months, opposing every flavor of the month and program du jour extant. I became known as “The Contrarian.” And that name has stuck to this very day.

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I’m reading Weiss’s book because the core message of it is to stop selling your time, and to start selling the value of the outcomes you deliver.

It’s a simple enough message, and one that everybody is willing to accept with their prefrontal cortex.

But go beyond that into the other parts of the brain, and the neural activity changes.

I’ve been talking to various business owners and marketers. Almost all of them fail to sell the outcomes they provide, and instead fall into the trap of selling a 16-page PDF, or a welcome sequence, or coaching once a week, every week, for an hour over Zoom.

The trouble is, PDFs are dead. Welcome sequences are dead. And coaching is really, really dead.

Yes, I am playing along with Weiss’s contrarian thing. But I also happen to believe what Weiss says about outcomes, and specifically, that coaching really is dead.

I’ve been working with a number of people this year. Some of the outcomes I’ve promised to deliver and problems I’ve promised to solve for them:

* Build them up into a name on the Internet, and help them make $31k in the process

* Help them define a new offer that sells 3-5 times copies per month for $1k+

* Increase the money they make from their email list to $1 per subscriber per month

In all these cases, what I’m actually delivering is some Zoom calls, some support by email, some copy critiques, and a lot of listening and occasional talking.

All of that could really be bundled up and called “coaching.” But I can tell you it’s been much more enjoyable and easy to sell it not as a bunch of Zoom calls and email support and some copy critiques, but as an exciting and lucrative outcome.

Maybe you offer coaching or some other form of dead deliverable that your audience doesn’t seem to value correctly. Maybe you also have an email list. Maybe you have a problem, or things just aren’t working right, and you suspect that coaching is dead, or deliverables are dead, or email is dead.

If so, reply to this email. I don’t offer coaching, but we can talk, and maybe I have a way to solve your problem, or to help you get to an outcome that you’d be ecstatic over.

It costs you nothing to tell me about your problem. You take not the slightest risk. You cannot possibly lose anything. And you can gain much.

10 personal stories I’ve told in my emails

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A few days ago, I was on a Zoom call with a business owner who reads these emails. He said how he likes reading my newsletter because I lead such an interesting life — “all these podcasts, all these amazing books, all these movies, dates, and traveling and all that. Like, wow.”

That surprised me. I can tell you the inside view of my life. It does not appear very interesting.

In fact, maybe you’ve noticed I almost never write emails that share genuine personal stories any more. (The exception is small status-building snippets, like the one at the start of this email.)

There are two reasons why I almost never write personal story emails any more:

1. I just don’t think I lead a very interesting life, and I don’t want to subject you to trivial anecdotes, pumped up to seem like they are something fun. (Seinfeld did it way better than I ever will.)

2. I have been writing this newsletter for 8 years, and I feel I’ve told every interesting story I ever had. In other words, I’m bored by my own stories, and so I’m projecting that you will be bored by them too.

This, of course, is one of the classic blunders, which can cost you millions of dollars if you do your own marketing.

The fact is, most business owners get bored of their own marketing way sooner than their market gets bored.

It helps that the market isn’t ever fully paying attention, and that it’s also a “moving parade”:

New people are constantly coming in. Old people are walking out. The upshot is that the stories (and marketing) that you’ve used a thousand times before are still fresh and interesting to a thousand people in your market.

So let me take my own advice, and share with you some personal stories I’ve already shared in this newsletter. Here’s a menu. Maybe you will find one or two items intriguing enough to click through and read:

1. ​The time a car fell in front of me out of the sky​

2. ​The time I had an honest-to-goodness religious epiphany on a bridge​

3. ​The origin story of how I became a writer, going back to kindergarten​

4. ​The time I almost approached the woman who was most probably “The ONE” but fortunately didn’t​

5. ​The time I had an epiphany at a gym that wasn’t religious but was more insightful and long-lasting than just about anything else in my life​

6. ​The time the “license plate game” made me think that manifestation is real, and that I can do it​

7. ​The time I spent 45 minutes waiting outside my own apartment building because I forgot my keys at home and even though I had an extra set hidden somewhere in the building, I was too shy or something to ring my next-door neighbor and ask to be let in ​

8. ​The time a reader unsubscribed and wrote that I’m “simply too dumb to be helped”​

9. ​The time I gave my girlfriend-at-the-time a nice gold necklace for our anniversary, and she started crying, and not out of happiness​

10. ​The time I attacked a wall with a butter knife, severed two tendons in my right hand, and spent three months in recovery, which was only partial​

So there you go. 10 personal stories, all true, and maybe even interesting enough to be worth retelling.

But maybe you’ve been a reader of my newsletter for a while? And maybe you remember me telling some other personal story? If so, write in and let me know. I’ve almost certainly forgotten the story you remember (I struggled to come up with the list of 10 above). I’ll appreciate you reminding me.

Public service announcement

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Every few months or so, I like to promote an affiliate offer that doesn’t make me much money, but that I still promote as a kind of chirpy public service announcement.

Today it’s time to do so again.

Because yesterday, in my Daily Email House community, I wrote about an email I sent out recently, which did well for me in terms of sales. That email was based on an idea I got from marketer Travis Sago, who I’ve mentioned often in this newsletter.

After I wrote about that, I got a DM on Skool from a Daily Email House member, who works as a freelance copywriter, and who also has his own email list and a few products he sells to that list.

Here’s that DM interaction:

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FREELANCE COPYWRITER: Hey John, how are you? I keep seeing you mention Travis Sago, and I wonder… how much of an influence does he have on you? It looks like he is the brain behind a lot of campaigns you do and sales

BEJAKO: Yep, I’ve learned a ton from the dude. Highly recommended if you are looking to do more with your email list and audience

FREELANCE COPYWRITER: As somebody who’s pretty fed up with client work and wants the email based business lifestyle, that might make sense. So is his Skool page the only way to see what it’s all about? Or is there a TSL/VSL?

BEJAKO: Pretty much everything he’s doing now is inside that Skool group. He had courses before that you can still buy separately, but they are also inside Skool if you sign up for that

FREELANCE COPYWRITER: Cool. I’ll have a look

===

I figure if this guy is interested, maybe you too will be. I’m not holding my breath though.

I’ve promoted Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin Skool group a dozen times in these emails.

I promoted it before Travis made it available to affiliates, because I was in it, and because I saw it from the inside, and because it made me money.

I promoted it after after Travis set up the affiliate program last year, because I’m still in it, and I can still see it from the inside, and it’s still making me money.

Over the past year that I’ve been promoting Ronin as an affiliate, I have made about $6k in commissions.

That might sound like real money to you, and it is pretty good money for sending a dozen or so emails, but it’s also much much less than I’ve made by promoting much less valuable affiliate offers that I’m much less personally involved with and less enthusiastic about.

It’s also much much less than I’ve made by applying Travis’s teachings inside Ronin. As for that, I can directly trace about $135k in income to Ronin:

* ~35k+ from auctions, following Travis’s “24 Hour FUN Auction” course

* ~60k+ from Daily Email Habit, which I created by following step-by-step Travis’s “Passive Cash Flow Mojo” course, about creating continuity offers

* ~$40k+ from three tiny promos, which were based around ideas I got from Travis’s “$1k a day in 1 Hour a Day” training and his “Big Ticket Email Mojo” course

On top of that, I’ve made much more money indirectly thanks to the ideas and people inside Ronin:

Copy hacks I’ve seen Travis and nobody else use (like the email I mentioned at the start)…

… affiliate offers I’ve promoted from other Ronin members…

… changes I’ve made to the way I create my own offers, which I’ve picked up both from Travis’s trainings and by looking at what he does.

So eat your vegetables.

Brush your teeth.

Don’t smoke.

And sign up to Royalty Ronin, and then start applying the ideas inside, one by one.

I figure that just like other public service announcement, most people will shrug this one off.

But maybe you won’t, at least if you too are fed up with client work and are looking for a way out. If so, I have believed for years and continue to believe this is the best deal on the Internet:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S.. Travis offers a free 7-day trial. If you sign up for Ronin and make it past the first 7 days, write me and let me know. I’ve got some bonuses with your name on them.

Price increase case study: “fucking swimming in sales over here!!!!”

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Last month, I ran the Price Increase Promo Challenge. One of the people who took me up on it was Chris Howes, who runs Creative Strings Academy, an online music school.

Over the past few days, Chris ran his price increase promo for a course he delivered last year and sold for $30. This morning, Chris wrote me with the results:

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JB- I’m fucking swimming in sales over here!!!!!

63 sales of the $30 product based on PIP (“get it before it goes up to $67”) Remember I originally sold 74 of them at the launch in December. That’s almost as many as I sold the first time. So thats $1900.

Tons of the original 74 buyers bought the new Pentatonic Patterns PDF and Web App. And lots of the new buyers also bought the new thing at checkout as upsell.

We did about $1500 on that product. Which i will split with my developer and he will be super happy, because that is a good payday for the few hrs of work he put in, and now it’s launched evergreen.

And then I had sales of other upsells on the checkout pages as well…. which I didn’t even remember to add until the last minute.

I want to try to sell everyone who bought something on joining the membership tmrw or this week, because every new member gets a free private lesson with me, which what could be a better way to follow through and implement?

So I probably earned about $3,000 – thrilled to tell my wife that – and I want to use the sequence I created as the new opening welcome sequence for people into my list, and/or start running ads and promotions to the funnel somehow. because I think I’m onto something that resonates with my audience.

So, yeah, thanks John. You kicked my ass in a good way.

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So much good stuff in what Chris writes above. Specifically:

1. A higher priced asset he can use to sell his other offers more easily in the future…

2. A proven funnel he can run more traffic to (welcome sequence or maybe even cold traffic)…

3. 67 new buyers who make for new leads for his continuity offer or coaching if he wants to make that available, possibly leading to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars more…

4. Higher overall perceived value of his own expertise and products (yes, people do judge a book by its cover as well as its price)…

5. Something nice to tell his wife…

… plus $3k for himself and about $750k for his developer. That’s not Pablo Escobar cocaine money, but getting paid $3k to also get a bunch of new leads and some new assets in your business sounds like a good deal to me.

All in all, that’s 6 benefits of running a promo, or more specifically, a price increase promo for an offer that sold pretty well once upon a time.

The Price Increase Promo Challenge is over. I have no plans to run it ever again. But if you have a list, and an offer, and if you would like my help making more money from your list and offer, hit reply, and maybe we can work something out.

 

SICTFOY: Last call for Ghostbuster Sequence

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This is the last email I’m sending to promote Nick Bandy’s Ghostbuster Sequence before the price doubles.

I was gonna be clever and use as my subject line Nick’s nuclear option followup, which Nick says works “TOO well,” a 7-word message that ultimately goes back to negotiation coach Jim Camp.

Fortunately, I caught myself in time.

If you wanna find out what Jim Camp’s 7-word message is, you can try to guess what SICTFOY could possibly stand for.

Or you can simply get the entire Ghostbuster Sequence, in which case it makes sense to act immediately, so you don’t have to pay double what everybody else will be paying, starting a few hours from now.

Speaking of Jim Camp, here’s an inspirational message I heard him deliver once:

“When someone says no, that’s just no for now. It’s not over until we want it to be.”

If you wanna get Ghostbuster Sequence, and reanimate “mostly dead” or even “all dead” conversations, and get more clients and do more deals, starting with what you’ve already got, and not take silence for a “no,” or a “no” as the end, then here’s where to get your fix:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster

P.S. If you do get it before the deadline, forward me your receipt. I will personally send you a bonus of equal real-world value, my Secret of the Magi. It sells for $54 on my site right now, and tells you the biggest secret I’ve learned about opening up (not following up on) conversations that lead to business partnerships.

Flakebuster

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote an email with the subject line “Nasty followup.”

That was about a potential auction partner who was stringing me along. He kept pushing off the test for our potential auction, first to next week, then the week after that.

I sent that potential auction partner a slightly snarky message, hence the “Nasty followup” subject line.

My potential auction partner didn’t get offended at my slightly snarky message. He replied to me in a cheerful way. But once again, he told me to push off our auction test until the end of what is now last month.

At the end of last month, I followed up with him again.

At this point, he didn’t reply any more. A few days later, I followed up again. He still didn’t reply.

And then last night, I was going through Nick Bandy’s Ghostbuster Sequence v2.0, which Nick just rolled out yesterday to existing buyers.

Of course v2.0 is bigger than v1.0, but I was genuinely impressed by how cool of a product it is now.

Nick includes some sample case studies in the back. I picked out a message from one of those case studies and sent it to my mostly dead potential auction partner.

And you know what?

After two+ weeks of silence, the dude got back to me! Amazing! Exciting! Incredible! He wrote me to say:

“Hey buddy! Let’s do next month?”

… in other words, more flakiness, more maybe, more mañana.

I’m telling you this for two reasons:

1) I wanna be transparent about the realities of 1-1 follow-up.

Sometimes you send one message after months, and the deal gets immediately and magically done. Ch-ching!

Other times, like here, you get somebody who is a flake to keep stringing you along. But if it’s a partnership worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars (as this has the potential to be), it warrants at least sending some messages to push it along or to find out for sure it will never happen.

2) After I got the “Let’s do next month?” reply, I sent Nick Bandy a message. I told Nick his next offer should be about converting people who keep saying “maybe” into people who tell you a clear yes/no. Working title, “Flakebuster Sequence.”

I’m glad I wrote Nick, because he gave me a great recommendation. He suggested I send his “Stage 7” message next, which I called the “Mr. America” technique in my email earlier today.

I’ll wait a couple days and then do exactly as Nick says, and maybe even report on the results of it.

But by the time that happens, it will be too late for you, at least if you’re looking to get Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence (v2.0!) before the price doubles, today at 8pm EST.

Yes, you will still be able to buy Ghostbuster Sequence next week. But why spend more? And why wait? Mañana, mañana, mañana…

Ghostbuster Sequence is a set of copy-and-paste messages that can be worth a pirate ship’s worth of gold bullion to you, starting right now. If you wanna get the lot today before the price goes up forever, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster

P.S. If you do get it before the deadline, forward me your receipt. I will personally send you a bonus of equal real-world value, My Secret of the Magi. It sells for $54 on my site right now, and tells you the biggest secret I’ve learned about opening up (not following up on) conversations that lead to business partnerships.

Glossary of 1-1 follow up

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The past few days, I’ve been telling you about Nick Bandy’s system for reactivating leads and deals that have gone silent, called Ghostbuster Sequence.

If you open up Ghostbuster Sequence, you might find yourself confused by the unfamiliar follow-up jargon. I don’t want you to be confused. I really don’t. So let me give you a glossary that defines some of the terms you’ll see inside:

Stage 1: Conversations that have been dead for 2 weeks or more. For conversations like this, send Nick’s “Stage 1” message and proceed to Stage 2.

Stage 2: Conversations that have been dead for less than 2 weeks. In Princess Bride terms, these are “mostly dead” conversations. There’s a big difference between “mostly dead” and “all dead.”

Meme Warfare: A strategic graphical assault on your dead (or mostly dead) prospect, designed to get them to crack a smile and make it easy for them to reply.

The “Jim Camp Nuclear Option”: A 7-word message to send prospects after multiple previous followups have failed to produce a response. (Nick attributes this message to marketer Travis Sago. I happen to know it goes back to negotiation coach Jim Camp.) Says Nick, “It works TOO well.”

The “Negative Reply Pivot”: A message to send high-value prospects who explicitly tell you “NO.”

Educated assumptions: Statements to send your dead (or mostly dead) prospects that break the pattern of constant follow-up questions.

“Mr. America” technique: Nick doesn’t call it this inside his Ghostbuster Sequence. Instead, he calls it “Stage 7.”

I think my name is distinctly better. It comes from the following story from the book Mr. America, about health publisher Bernarr MacFadden:

“With his marriage to Mary officially over, Macfadden had captured headlines by taking a new bride. Johnnie Lee McKinney was a forty-four-year-old health lecturer and former interior designer when she met the seventy-nine-year-old publisher — a sturdy, vivacious blond Texas beauty molded in Macfadden’s preferred silhouette. Theirs was a whirlwind courtship. He attended one of her talks in Manhattan, then hounded her into a lunch date at the New York Athletic Club. After a wholesome meal, the two proceeded to Johnnie Lee’s apartment, where the vigorously amorous Macfadden demonstrated his usual distaste for small talk by unzipping his trousers to reveal what Johnnie Lee called ‘the most exquisite sex organ I had ever seen on a man.’ Johnnie Lee declined her date’s unspoken offer — as well as his shouted proposal to marry her immediately—” though she did end up marrying MacFadden and his exquisite sex organ within the month.

Maybe you find that story crude. Don’t worry. Nick’s take on this technique is anything but crude. In fact, Nick’s use of this technique is professional and yet effective, and can work not just at the start of a courtship, but after everything else has failed to produce a response.

Nick’s Ghostbuster Sequence goes up in price from $54 to $97 at 8pm EST tonight. If you’d like to get it before then:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster

P.S. If you do get it before the deadline, forward me your receipt. I will personally send you a bonus of equal real-world value, My Secret of the Magi. It sells for $54 on my site right now, and tells you the biggest secret I’ve learned about opening up (not following up on) conversations that lead to business partnerships.

How long will it take me to pay back Nick Bandy?

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Last December, I ran an auction in my Daily Email House community. The offer on auction was my endorsement and promotion, as much of it as needed to pay back the winner the entire winning bid.

The winning bidder in that auction turned out to be Nick Bandy.

The winning bid turned out to be $31k.

I got very lucky with Nick being the winner of the auction:

Nick already has a sizable email list. He’s got an automated way of growing that list with new subscribers every day. He writes great daily emails. He’s got a suite of info products. He’s got personal authority in the form of his day job as a fractional CMO at a reverse mortgage company. Plus he’s kind of a cool guy, who tends to spend much of the day in his bathrobe.

And yet, since December, you haven’t heard me endorsing or promoting Nick all that much.

Since December, what Nick and I have been doing together has all been behind the scenes.

In case you’ve got an email list yourself, what I’m about to say can be valuable to you:

If you wanna make good money from your list, and if that list is not tens of thousands or or hundreds of thousands of subscribers strong, it’s unlikely you will get to where you want to go without higher-priced offers, meaning at least something that sells for $500+, and preferably for $1k or more.

I told Nick that. He agreed. And so we’ve been working on one or more high-ticket offers he can sell, that match his experience, skills, and taste.

Progress has been slowed by the fact that Nick has many other lucrative and attractive things to do.

There’s his steady fractional CMO gig.

There are his personal obligations like his daily emails and Skool community.

And then there are exciting side projects like partnerships he recently finagled with a local roofing business (database of 30,000 customers and 100,000 leads)… a YouTuber with 300k subscribers… a skydiving business with a 30k+ customer list… and more.

I’m telling you all this because Nick is currently in the middle of a price increase promo for one of his offers, Ghostbuster Sequence.

If you do anything online — client work, or you have your own email list, or you have a personal brand — I recommend to you to get Ghostbuster Sequence.

Not because I have to pay Nick back $31k.

Ghostbuster Sequence sells for $54 right now. At that price, it would take a ridiculous number of sales for me to pay Nick back.

Instead, I’m recommending Ghostbuster Sequence because of its fundamental value.

Ghostbuster Sequence gives you a simple, easy, and effective system for doing followup, which is a success-multiplier habit that everybody pays lip service, to but that almost nobody teaches or gives practical recommendations on.

Following up means you can get way more out of way less — whether that’s leads, referrals, potential partnerships, etc.

Following up was instrumental in Nick’s own success, both back when he hunted for clients and today, when he’s interested in partnerships like the ones I listed above.

Nick has written down his followup system inside Ghostbuster Sequence, for you to use as-is.

Like I said, Ghostbuster Sequence currently sells for $54, but, in part due to my instigation, Nick is raising the price to $97 tomorrow, Thursday, at 10pm EST.

If you get it before then, you save yourself some money. You have a chance to put it to work sooner rather than later. Plus, you get a free bonus that sells for $54 on my site right now:

Secret of the Magi, which tells you the biggest lesson I’ve learned about how to open up cold conversations that lead to business partnerships, whether client work, or JV deals, or sponsorships.

For all that, here’s where to go, before the opportunity disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster