Customer Selection

Two kinds of starving crowd

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Around age 15, a short time after I had learned to read, I started going through the books of Henry Miller because his books were 1) banned upon publication in the U.S. and 2) had sex in them, and those two things are all the endorsement a 15-year-old boy needs.

Anyways, in one Henry Miller book, I forget which, Henry Miller, who was a kind of joyous social parasite, furiously writes about some cousins of his, who (it being the Great Depression) are starving.

The part that made Miller furious was his cousins’ patiently accepting their fate and subsisting on a leaf of cabbage a day, because, from I can remember, they are too proud or too feckless to ask for help in their starvation.

Henry Miller, who was living in Paris at the time, and was surviving on borrowed food, drinking borrowed wine, and sleeping in borrowed beds, couldn’t understand this.

Whenever he was starving, he would simply beat down his friends’ and enemies’ doors and beg and scream and complain until they fed him.

You’ve probably heard of direct marketing legend Gary Halbert. Halbert used to give talks in which he’d play the “hot dog stand” game with his audience.

“You and I have competing hot dog stands,” Halbert would say. “I’ll give you every advantage you want. I’ll just ask for one thing. Take whatever you want, give me this one thing, and my hot dog stand will whoop yours.”

Halbert’s one thing was a “starving crowd.”

Except, I’d like to suggest to you today there are two kinds of starving crowd.

There’s the “Henry Miller” starving crowd, people who cannot and will not accept their starvation, and who demand that the problem be fixed, and now.

And then there’s the “Cabbage Cousins” starving crowd.

Whether through pride, weakness resulting from starvation, or simply the fact that there’s a pound of bacon stashed somewhere in their house, which they secretly reach for late at night, the “Cabbage Cousins” starving crow accepts what to everybody else looks like unbearable starvation.

And if you wanna play the “hot dog stand” game with me, I’ll give you as big of a starving crowd as you like, provided that it’s the “Cabbage Cousins” kind.

Just give me a few Henry Millers instead, and I bet you I’ll push more hot dogs than you.

(You know what I mean. Don’t give me Henry Miller the broke social parasite. But do give me people who have some money, and a problem, and have shown that they are intent on getting that problem solved, and now.)

Anyways, I’m not sure if this was illuminating. But it is a distinction I had to draw for myself, and I figured it might be useful to you as well.

Maybe you’re wondering how you can know that somebody is intent on getting a problem solved, so you can distinguish the Henry Millers from the Cabbage Cousins in real life.

Fortunately, Gary Halbert has written up the answer for you. In case you’re curious:

https://thegaryhalbertletter.com/newsletters/direct_marketing_to_a_starving_crowd.htm

2 facts about throwing good email parties

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Yesterday, I announced a new campaign inside my Daily Email House community. My goal is to get existing members to promote the group and help me grow it.

I appreciate all referrals.

At the same time, I’m not letting just anyone join.

To help me vet people, I have a few sphinx-like riddles set up at the front door.

I look at a potential new member’s profile and history on Skool.

I use my intuition to decide if he or she has something to get from and contribute to the group beyond trolling or whining.

Many I’ve allowed in. Some I have not.

Unfortunately, I only started keeping record last week of the colorful reasons why some people have found the doors to Daily Email House closed. Here are a few from the past week:

#1. In answer to “What’s your #1 goal right now?”: [entered his email address]

#2. In answer “What’s your #1 goal right now?”: “learn em”

#3. Bio: “sfd sfsfsf”

#4. In answer to “What’s your #1 goal right now?”: “邮件太多不知如何使用?” [ChatGPT translates this as “Too many emails and don’t know how to use them?” which would not pass muster even if it were written in English]

I recently read an article titled “21 Facts About Throwing Good Parties.” Fact #1:

“1) Prioritize your ease of being over any other consideration: parties are like babies, if you’re stressed while holding them they’ll get stressed too. Every other decision is downstream of your serenity: e.g. it’s better to have mediocre pizza from a happy host than fabulous hors d’oeuvres from a frazzled one.”

… and fact #20:

“20) Let me repeat that: Parties are a public service, you’re doing people a favor by throwing them. Someone might meet their new best friend or future lover at your gathering. In the short term, lovely people may feel less lonely, and that’s thanks to you. In the long term, whole new children may ultimately exist in the world because you bothered to throw a party. Throwing parties is stressful for most people, but a great kindness to the community, so genuinely pat yourself on the back for doing this.”

An online community should feel and work like something like a house party… as should an email newsletter. It should deliver value. It should be fun and the people participating — the members or readers — should feel like they can participate and express themselves more or less freely.

At the same time, you are still the one whose house it is, and you set the tone and the rules, and the #1 rule, and the #20 rule, is to make it convenient and fun for yourself first and foremost…

… and if that means not allowing people inside just because their vibe strikes you as off, then that’s ok.

So much for the long-term mindset.

If you want more practical, day-to-day advice on how to make your email list feel like an online party, you can find that inside my Daily Email Habit service.

Daily Email Habit currently sells for $30/month, which means you can get a daily email prompt and ongoing education in how to expand that prompt into a fun and valuable email for just $1/day.

In a few days, I will be jacking up the price of Daily Email Habit to Martin Shkreli levels. If you want to get in before the price increases, or better yet, if you simply want to start writing your own daily email habit today, so you can reap the benefits tomorrow:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Tired of experimenting?

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Last year, I started snooping on people.

Specifically, I started snooping on 3-4 online business owners, who have businesses that are doing well, and who I was frankly jealous of, because I wanted something similar.

I won’t tell you all the folks I snooped on, but I will tell you one was a guy named Olly Richards.

I’m not here to hype up Olly — if you wanna find out more about the guy, the Internet’s your friend.

I simply want to share a testimonial I saw on Olly’s site, or rather a video confessional, by one of Olly’s coaching students.

This coaching student runs a 6-figure online education business. In other words, he has an audience. He’s making good money. He’s unlikely to respond to typical promises made in the “creator” economy.

So why did this student decide to work with Olly, and pay Olly tens of thousands of dollars? From the video, in the student’s words:

“You can do things by experimenting and doing things yourself. You learn that way. That is one way of doing things. But in my opinion, I’ve just found it’s extremely exhausting after a certain point. I’m really tired of experimenting. Just give it to me. Just tell me what to do, tell me what not to do.”

At the time, as part of the research for my new 10 Commandments book, I was reading the book I’m OK — You’re OK by Thomas Harris. In that book, Harris writes:

“Structure hunger is an outgrowth of recognition hunger, which grew from the initial stroking hunger.”

That sounded profound to me when I read it, and seemed tightly connected with that testimonial for Olly Richards.

Now, after a year has passed, it seems less tightly connected and less profound, but it does describe the core process that people like Olly’s student go through:

1. They start out by just wanting to feel OK, ie. better about themselves and their place in the world.

2. To do that, they seek out recognition — via work, achievement, and the fruits thereof.

3. Getting recognition, and worse yet, keeping recognition, is tiring, and so people start looking for help, shortcuts, and “structure” eg. simply being told what to do.

Maybe you think I’m telling you something super obvious, and that there’s no need to flog such a poor and common horse.

Fine. In that case, let me just share a few simple takeaways:

1. People like Olly’s student, who have already achieved recognition, make for better customers than people who have not, simply by virtue of having money to spend (on your help) and resources (list, offers, team) to profit from your help quickly and effectively.

2. If you want to appeal to such people, try the “Tired of experimenting?” line, because it comes directly from the mouth of a member of that market.

3. If you yourself are personally tired of experimenting, then take a look at the community below.

It’s a place where business owners, marketers, and copywriters follow proven recipes to get more value out of their existing skills and assets, often while working dramatically less, and having a more fun time of it, than they are doing now:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Am I just trying to provoke unsubscribes?

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In reply to my email yesterday, marketer and long-time customer Fred Beyer writes:

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Step 1: Tell your audience there are Mavericks who are worth serving and Gooses who are not (I refrained from using the plural geese ’cause we’re referencing a nickname here after all).

Step 2: Ask your audience which one they are, so you can ignore them appropriately according to your own suggestion in the email.

From Simple Money Emails: “What people do remember is the emotional stimulation”, and here you’re letting a large part of your subscribers know they are less desirable than the rest.

Are you just trying to provoke unsubscribes here? 😂

===

My primary goal yesterday was what I wrote in the email, to find out who on my list has their own email list that’s growing at a healthy clip.

At the same time, Fred raises a good point. It’s one I thought about yesterday as I wrote the email.

I decided that yes, I’m ok if a bunch of people I don’t have any plans on working with unsubscribe from my list.

It’s not about them being “undesirable” in some global, eugenic sense. It’s simply who I want to focus on working with, and who I don’t want to focus on.

Ironically, it didn’t end up happening. I’ve had just 2 unsubscribes so far from yesterday’s email.

This I think is a lesson in itself, and probably an interesting data point around the topic of natural authority.

But that’s a topic for another place, another time.

For today, if you are wondering about the reference that Fred makes, to Simple Money Emails, it’s my course on how to write simple, daily emails, like this one, which both bring in sales today, and keep readers — the ones you want — reading tomorrow as well.

For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

“Maverick” vs. “Goose” segments of your niche

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Yesterday, I sent a handraiser email asking readers if, assuming they have an email list, they get on average 30 or more new subs each week. I got two kinds of replies. See if you can spot the pattern:

#1. No

#2. No!

#3. I do not. But that would be awesome. even 3 a week would be good for me

#4. Nope. 😕

#5. Hell no

#6. I wish LOL

#7. yea

#8. Yes!

#9. Yes, I do… I use linkedin/Facebook and Instagram organic to drive leads.

#10. I get about 100-150 a week and about 30-35 unsubs per week (daily emails)

#11. I get that a day.

#12. Daily

I appreciate everyone who replied. And as thanks for that, let me share a distinction I make, which might be useful to you, called the “Maverick” vs. “Goose” segments.

I first made this distinction last year, when looking at three successful coaching clients I’ve had, each of whom was writing daily emails as a major part of their business.

I looked for commonalities.

One commonality I found was that each of these clients focused on the “Maverick” segment of their audience.

If you have ever seen Top Gun, you know that the movie is about Maverick, played by Tom Cruise. Maverick is the cool, good-looking, talented fighter pilot who inevitably gets the girl and the glory by the end of the movie.

And then there’s Goose, played by Anthony Edwards. Goose is Maverick’s likeable, goofy-looking sidekick, who never gets to fly the plane and who is ritually sacrificed halfway through the movie.

So the question becomes, who do you want to build a business around? Maverick or Goose?

I looked at those 3 coaching students I’d had, each of whom was doing very well. I saw all three focused on the Maverick segment of their niche. Specifically:

* In the “basketball” niche: On high school coaches, rather than high school players

* In the “fitness” niche: On 44-year-olds, rather than 24-year-olds

* In the “marketing” niche: On people who want time, rather than people who want money

My point being:

Yes, some niches are more promising than others to start. You’re more likely to find players with money subscribing to an investing newsletter than replying to a debt relief ad.

But within each niche, regardless of how initially promising or unpromising, there are also the Maverick and Goose segments.

If you’ve already got an audience, or if one is building up for you as we speak, it makes sense to find a binary question you can ask people to classify them as either Maverick or Goose, and then to focus your efforts on working with the Maverick segment, at least based on what I’ve seen.

And on that note, if you haven’t yet replied to my handraiser yesterday:

If you have an email list, do you on average get 30 or more new subscribers every week?

If you do, let me know. I mainly want to know who you are and what you do. I don’t have any particular agenda, though I do have a half dozen possible ways you could help me or I could help you.

Fundamental theorem of sustainable, stress-free businesses

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I studied computer science in college. A very few lessons have stuck with me. For example, I still remember the “Fundamental theorem of software engineering,” which says:

“All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection.”

In computer science, that means something like, take a step away from the core problem, look at things from a higher level of abstraction, and everything will sort itself out.

Along the same lines, I would like to propose to you the fundamental theorem of stress-free, sustainable businesses, which says:

“All problems in your business can be solved by another level of indirection.”

Would an example help?

Think of the 1848 California Gold Rush.

The zeroth level of that was to take a sieve and sit by the side of the American River, sifting thousands of pounds of silt every day and maybe finding a few nuggets of gold.

As you probably know, that’s not how the real money was made.

The real money was made in selling sieves and pots and shovels to miners, not in shoveling for gold. California’s first millionaire was a man named Samuel Brannan, who opened a big store during the Gold Rush. A first level of indirection.

But you can do still better. Because if your business is selling shovels to miners, then you might be out of business when a gold rush passes. Plus, gold miners are a rowdy, desperate bunch, and selling to them means you might get pulled into a brawl or hit over the head with one of your own shovels.

That’s where the fundamental theorem comes in.

You can introduce another layer of indirection, a second level.

You can get out of the shovel-selling business, and you get into the shovel-distributing business, or the store-construction business, or the info product business targeting owners of big stores, men like Samuel Brannan, a kind of customer with greater staying power and ability to pay than the miners he sells to.

And if it turns out that you don’t like the selling to the Samuel Brannans of the world, you know what to do. Third level, fourth level, fifth level of indirection, and everything will sort itself out.

Somebody recently asked me if I have a course or a training on choosing a niche.

I don’t. I don’t imagine I will ever create one. The above is my bit of advice to help you choosing a niche.

But I do know somebody who has a lot of experience with online businesses, and who has great advice about criteria for choosing a new niche.

That person is Travis Sago. Travis has an entire training called “Niche Factors That Never Fail.”

Travis’s courses, including Passive Cash Flow Mojo, the one that contains that niches training, all sell for thousands of dollars each.

But through some glitch in the matrix, you can currently get access to all of Travis’s courses by being a part of Travis’s Royalty Ronin community. That community is not cheap either, but it’s a fraction of the price of just one of Travis’s high-ticket courses.

I can recommend Royalty Ronin, because I myself am a member.

But you don’t have to decide anything now. Because you can get a free trial to Ronin for 7 days. If you’d like to find out more about this trial offer:

http://bejakovic.com/ronin

I’m not letting people resubscribe to Daily Email Habit any more

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In reply to my email yesterday, a now ex-subscriber to my Daily Email Habit service wrote in to say:

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Hello! Which is your paid email? This one or daily email habit? The emails have been all great, and great tips, but I don’t want to get charged $30 per month (doing taxes and realizing how many subscriptions I have 😬). I’d like to unsubscribed for the paid one and not the other.

===

First, a disclaimer:

I appreciate all customers. I appreciate the trust they put in me, the interest they have in what I offer, and the money they choose to give me.

But I gotta say this particular customer’s reply made me frown. She didn’t even know which is my personal free newsletter, and which is the paid service?

I must be doing something wrong.

I’ve also had a few Charter Members unsub from Daily Email Habit over the past month, following a very successful quasi-launch I did back in January, and say things like, “I gotta save the $20/month right now, but I will be back soon!”

Again, clearly I’m doing something wrong, because I’m not getting these people to take what they signed up for seriously, to consume it, to get value from it.

I’ve already done what I know to do to make the actual Daily Email Habit service both easy to get started with, and addicting to keep going with.

I might in the future put up some kinds of restrictions on people signing up, to make sure they are actually committed.

But right now, starting today, as this email goes out, I’ve decided to institute a new policy:

I’m not letting people resubscribe to Daily Email Habit after they unsubscribe.

It’s a policy I got from Ben Settle, who uses the same for his paid print newsletter.

This policy worked on me when I signed up to Ben’s newsletter. It made me sign up much later, only when I told myself I was really ready, and it made me take the content that Ben was sharing much more seriously.

And yes, this policy also made me stay signed up to Ben’s newsletter longer than I might have, after I’d had enough.

In part it was the threat of not being able to resubscribe… and in part it was Ben’s dismissive and shaming attitude to people who do unsubscribe.

I’m trying to soften that effect here as far as possible. I have no interest in shaming anyone, or continuing to take money from people who are not getting value from what I offer.

Quite the opposite.

I want dedicated people to sign up to Daily Email Habit, to use the service and to benefit from it, and to get much more from it than what they pay me.

That’s why I invite you to take what time you need to decide if you’re ready to start your own daily email habit, and put in consistent daily work to build up your own authority… a relationship with a list who trusts you and wants to hear from you… and a business that really can run on the back of an email a day, if you so choose.

If after all this, you do sign up to my Daily Email Habit service, and you still find it’s not working for you, of you’re not using it in spite of your best intentions and my best efforts to help you, then no problem.

Again, I appreciate your interest and your trust.

But as of today, anybody who unsubs from Daily Email Habit won’t be able to resubscribe.

I expect I will have to write subsequent emails about this to really get my point across. Still, I’ve updated the Daily Email Habit sales page to clearly state the new reality.

In any case, if you’d like to get the full info on Daily Email Habit, WHICH IS A PAID SUBSCRIPTION OFFER, DISTINCT FROM THIS PARTICULAR DAILY EMAIL NEWSLETTER YOU ARE READING NOW, then you can get that at the following page.

Read through it. Take what time you need to decide if you’re really ready to get started. And then, take a bit more time before you make any rash decisions like signing up. Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Another customer I like

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Yesterday, I wrote about an ex-subscriber of my Daily Email Habit service.

Even though this guy decided to unsubscribe, he’s still the kind of customer I like, simply because he took something I was teaching and actually put it to use.

Of course, I have other customers I like too, including some who keep being subscribed to Daily Email Habit, and keep putting it to use.

A couple days ago, I heard from one such customer, business coach Steph Benedetto, who is subscribed to Daily Email habit.

I want to share Steph’s message with you both because it serves my purpose, and because it might be valuable to you. In Steph’s own words:

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I wanted to send you a little message to share an unexpected side effect of the daily emails.

Many of these daily emails are prompting me to think about things, like the one that said, “Share the coming attractions. What are you working on? What offers do you have coming up? Share them.”

When I do, I go, “Oh! I guess I have to know what I’m doing next then.” So I look and go, “Ok, this is what I’m doing… and this is what I’m doing… and this is what I’m doing.”

And it creates it through the writing.

As I’m writing about something, whatever the prompt is, and then tying it into whatever offer I have, the offers themselves are evolving and becoming clearer.

And new things are showing up. And I had no freaking idea that was available.

===

Most the Daily Email Habit puzzles are not “creative writing” prompts. Many of them are exercises that anyone with an online biz should be doing regularly, like figuring out who you want to work with… or what offers you’re putting out next… or what of business you actually want to run.

Now here’s the possibly valuable part I promised you:

You might not have the time and willpower to sit down and think about those things, and even less time and willpower to think about them regularly, over and over, as things adapt and change.

I know I don’t, not when it’s simply a todo item on my already-infinite todo list.

But like Steph says, with daily emails, you can two things at once. You can create content and make sales, on the one hand, and think about the big picture of your business and the next steps, on the other.

In other words, you can work IN the business… while at the same time working ON the business, just by taking the daily action of writing and sending a daily email.

And if you’d like to do that — to create offers, clarity, a plan — just by writing, then my Daily Email Habit might be a help for you. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The kind of customer I like

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Nine days ago, I got a message from a now ex-subscriber to my Daily Email Habit service, who wrote:

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I haven’t really been emailing since I subbed. But I don’t want to cancel cause you keep me inspired. I can say though that I took your advice on making a simple coaching call offer that 12 ppl have now bought through my LinkedIn and newsletter. Started at 90 euro for 1 hour, now I made it 130 for 45 minutes. And ppl are booking. Made just about 1000 euro so far and I’m learning a ton teaching people.

===

… and then two days ago, I saw that this guy, inspired and learning a lot though he was, unsubscribed from Daily Email Habit.

What to say? Here’s something you might not expect me to say:

I’d much rather have customers like this, who implement something I teach and then leave the fold, than ones I have to shame into staying just so they keep paying me, even though they are doing nothing with any of the info I provide.

That said, it seems a little short-sighted to me to unsubscribe for this guy in particular, since he was a Charter Member of Daily Email Habit, and as such got free access to my Daily Email House community (where the discussion about coaching call offers happened), all for $20/month.

It seems like one bit of inspiration he got via that had already paid for many months of the subscription. And in those “free” months, there’s a good chance he’d get one more idea or one more bit of inspiration, which would pay for many more months still, or maybe years.

As of last month, the Charter Member offer for Daily Email Habit has gone the way of the brontosaurus.

That means a month of Daily Email Habit “puzzles” costs $30 at the moment.

It also means the Daily Email House community is no longer a free bonus, but a paid group, only available at the moment as an upsell when you sign up to Daily Email Habit.

You might feel a bit bummed that you can no longer get the Charter Member deal. You might feel a bit better when I tell you the following:

The current offer is the best offer I will ever be making on Daily Email Habit going forward. And inevitably, there will be people who miss out on this current offer as well.

But really, whatever offer I’m making, you can be sure you stand to make 10x or 100x whatever I ask for, if only you consume and implement, at least an idea here or there.

If you’d like to get on that path today, rather than doing nothing, here’s where to get started:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Figure it out

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A while back, a dude wrote me to say:

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Hello John,

I am interested in joining your Daily Email Habit, but I have a question.

Do you teach us how to set up the newsletter?

The reason why I am interested in DEH is because I want to build the habit of writing daily emails. So I don’t need anything complicated.

I just want to know how to set everything up and get started.

===

Back when I initially conceived Daily Email Habit, I thought of providing some kind of quick-start guide to the tech necessary to send emails.

I decided against it. I realized didn’t want people who couldn’t figure this on their own to sign up for Daily Email Habit.

Not because I have anything against them personally, or think badly of them.

I just realized that anyone who is already blocked at this first slight hurdle is unlikely to deal well with the hundred and one other hurdles, obstacles, and problems that come up in the process of running, writing, and profiting from an email newsletter. And so I’d rather not take their money.

(To his credit, the dude who wrote me the above did figure out the tech on his own, and did sign up for Daily Email Habit after that.)

There’s a bigger point here:

12+ years ago, I read Joe Sugarman saying that he looks at problems as opportunities. It blew my mind at the time. Since I’m slow on the uptake, it’s still something I haven’t internalized fully.

But how else could it be?

A problem forms a moat that keeps everyone from doing it, whatever “it” may be.

If you figure out a solution, you’re insulated from the competition of billions of other people who might jump in otherwise.

On the other hand, if you choose to sell your solution, you’re almost guaranteed a market, because none of us is as unique as we like to believe.

A problem is by definition an obstacle, and if you remove it, it makes for a freer flow of energy, desire, and value, which money is one avatar of.

Working to solve a problem is energizing, and moves you to action. It also builds a mindset of self-reliance and resourcefulness.

Before you solve your problem, it makes for an opportunity to connect with others by asking for advice, sharing frustrations and setbacks that result in connection and credibility.

After you do succeed in solving your problem, it gives you instant authority and wizard-like status with those who come after you, and an attractive charismatic character to those around you. After all, you appear to be lucky, success comes easy to you, and everything works in your favor.

And maybe biggest of all, solving problems gives you a change of perspective. It forces you to think, get out of your groove, change up a familiar way of working.

And when you do hit upon a solution, it’s likely to be one that generalizes, and that you can reuse for future obstacles or problems, creating a kind of virtuous upward spiral.

All that’s to say, problems really are opportunities. (Thanks, Joe.)

As for the problem of setting up the technology to send daily emails, I’ll only say I use ​Convert Kit​. It’s very newbie friendly (perhaps too much so). That’s all the tech advice I have to give.

And if you solve your tech problems, and then are faced with the problem of what to send your list, that’s what Daily Email Habit is about.

I purposely made it in a middle ground between complete and paralyzing freedom at one extreme… and a templated, paint-by-numbers approach at the other.

There’s already AI — or freelance copywriters — if you want your emails written for you.

Daily Email Habit is there to focus your mind each day in the right direction, and get you in the habit of solving little problems — puzzles as I call them — which build up your brain, your skill, your authority, and your assets. If you’d like to get started today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh