Communities

If you cannot persuade yourself to act however hard you try

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This morning, a private detective I know here in Barcelona sent me a screenshot of a trending social media story:

“Couple Who Met On Dating App Rob Bank On First Date”

Can this really be true? I decided to do my own sleuthing.

It turns out yes, the story is roughly true, but with an important detail that’s missing in the headline above.

The man, Christopher Castillo, age 33, and the woman, Shelby Sampson, age 40, agreed to meet for a date.

Castillo asked Sampson to pick him up in her car. Once in the car, Castillo started drinking wine, presumably red. He then asked Sampson to pull over at a bank.

Castillo was gone for a few minutes. He came back sweating, wearing sunglasses and a hat (!), and holding an antique gun and a wad of cash.

He told Sampson to drive, which she did, for a bit, until the cops pulled them over and put the date to an end.

The crucial bit is that Sampson was not charged with anything, because, so the state believes, she had absolutely no knowledge of or participation in any criminal aspect of this first date.

This missing detail is what I found most interesting in the whole story.

I’ve never robbed a bank, but I imagine it’s hard.

The stock joke is that a typical man is unwilling to pull over and ask for directions while driving. Can you imagine how much more unwilling a typical man is to pull over, walk into a bank, hold up a gun, and ask for $1,000 in cash (and five years in prison, it turns out)?

No wonder Castillo was drinking in the car. And no wonder he felt he needed somebody “in his corner,” even if that was an unwitting and unwilling non-accomplice he had met on Tinder.

I found this interesting because, while I’ve never robbed a bank, I have done other, legal, things in my life. Some of these things I found personally very difficult to do, because they challenged my own identity.

There were times when no amount of auto-suggestion, willpower, or even red wine would push me over the threshold.

There were times when the only thing that would help me act would be having somebody “in my corner,” having a feeling of a home base I could come back to, even if that was somebody I had met minutes earlier and had no special relationship with.

I imagine this is all a bit waffly without specific examples. I might give those in another email.

My point today is simply that if you have something you know you should be doing (don’t rob a bank), but you cannot persuade yourself to do it no matter how you try, then having some kind of support or community of other people to rely on, however tenuous, can make all the difference.

Ideally, this is other people in real life. Real life seems to make a big difference.

But if you cannot find people in real life to act as a home base, then people online can sometimes act as a substitute. At least that’s the promise of online communities, groups, and memberships.

I am still keen on spinning up a new online community of my own, but I haven’t yet decided which (legal) things I would like to support people in doing.

While that’s going on, I can only recommend once again a community that I myself am part of, Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin.

If you’re struggling to take the action needed to build your own audience… or to make deals with people who have an audience of their own… or to make your first $5k online… then you might find the support you need within Royalty Ronin. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Why I’ve shuttered my online community

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Yesterday, I shuttered up Daily Email House, the community I had set up back in December ’24 on the back of my Daily Email Habit service.

The concept for Daily Email House was a “members-only club for business owners and marketers who write (more or less) daily emails.”

I made it clear from the start to all members that this was an experiment.

I didn’t want to have a specific promise behind Daily Email House.

I also didn’t want to be constantly in there, stirring up discussion and sharing new content.

If the community could live without me and still be useful, great. If not, that’s okay.

Daily Email House lived on for a while and served some use. Yesterday, on the post in which I announced I will be closing down the group, a couple of the active members wrote that “signing up was the best decision I made in 2025” and that the group had a “profound effect on me and my business.”

But my laissez-faire vision for this group didn’t have legs, and that’s why Daily Email House is coming to an end.

But, groups, groups, groups…

I am still sold on the promise and opportunity of having and running a group, and it’s something I want to get good at. In fact, I will tell you a secret:

Back in 2013 or so, when I first got addicted to Internet Marketing via the Tim Ferriss gateway drug, I was lucky enough to get convinced that email is where it’s at, and will be at, for a long time to come.

It’s a hunch that’s served me well.

My secret for you is that I have the same hunch about groups/communities.

Clearly, neither email nor online communities are anything new. Plus, communities have in fact been having their moment in the sun over the past couple years.

That’s fine.

Neither email nor communities will be going anywhere any time soon, at least that’s my bet.

My bet is also that, as with email, so with communities.

Most people (such as me above) are not doing a good job with their communities.

The people who do a good job running communities will have the same advantage that, say, a business that emails its customers regularly with interesting emails and desirable offers has over a business that emails stupid coupons at holiday time with nothing else in between, except maybe a ChatGPT-generated listicle.

But I’m running off on a tangent. My real point is that I got a deal for you.

I am looking to set up a new group/community. One that will be based on solving a problem… and one in which I will be more actively involved.

I don’t know yet what that group would be about. But you can influence that, and maybe you can help create a useful and valuable resource for yourself in the process.

Here’s my deal for you:

Hit reply and tell me what problems or frustrations you have — with your email list, with your business, or with your laundry. Anything goes.

I will read all responses, I might reply to you directly, and I will certainly consider what you write me as I work on my next community. And who knows, maybe I will see you inside the resulting group, and maybe one day, you too will say it had a profound effect on you and your business.