Influential Writing

Sell the summer, not the seed

by

I’m making my way through an old issue of The New Yorker, from Mar 2023. I’m reading an article about seed and garden catalogues, which offer different strains of cabbage or beet for purchase by mail.

Fascinating, right?

Well, hold on. These seed and garden catalogues are mail-order businesses, and some have survived since the 19th century.

If you’re doing any kind of online marketing today, there’s probably something fundamental and (ahem) perennial to learn from businesses that have sold in a similar way for 100+ years.

So I pushed through the first page of the article. And I was rewarded. I read the following passage about what these seed catalogues really sell:

===

Seed and garden catalogues sell a magical, boozy, Jack-and-the-beanstalk promise: the coming of spring, the rapture of bloom, the fleshy, wet, watermelon-and-lemon tang of summer. Trade your last cow for a handful of beans to grow a beanstalk as high as the sky. They make strangely compelling reading, like a village mystery or the back of a cereal box. Also, you can buy seeds from them.

===

This is a great though unexpected illustration of something I read in Dan Kennedy’s No. B.S. Marketing of Seeds And Other Garden Supplies:

===

As a marketer, you have a choice between selling things with ham-handed, brute force, typically against resistance, or selling aspirations or emotional fulfillments with finesse, typically with little resistance.

===

Perhaps you will say that’s obvious.

Perhaps it is.

But how many businesses insist on selling seeds, or even the promise of large or fruitful plants, when in reality what their customers want is a village mystery, the coming of spring, or the tang of summer?

It’s all gotta mean something. Whatever you sell has got to go in a gift-box, and I’m not talking about cardboard or paper.

And now it’s time to sell something.

My offer to you today is my Most Valuable Email training. The seeds inside this training are a copywriting technique you can use every day to create more interesting and engaging content than you would otherwise.

But what I’m really selling is something else — a path to mastery. The feeling of growing competence with each email you write… the joy of looking and seeing patterns others don’t… the ability to transform yourself at will, from what you are right now into anything you want to be, in an instant, like Merlin in Disney’s Sword in the Stone.

For more information:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

My frustrating experience shipping alcohol overseas

by

This morning, I wired money to Daniel Throssell for his share of the Copy Riddles sales made over the past week. But I wanted to send Daniel something more than just an email notification of a wire transfer.

I know Daniel has this message in his signoff:

“Fan mail, death threats and gifts of expensive whisky can be dispatched via messenger kangaroo to:”

“All right,” I said. As a first step, I found an article, “24 Best Alcohol Delivery Services in Australia.”

I went to the website of one of those 24 best alcohol delivery services in Australia.

I added a bottle of Oban to my cart.

Five years ago, I visited the Oban distillery in Oban, Scotland. It was a rare highlight of an otherwise miserable trip, plagued by cold, food poisoning, and a terrifying ride in a van down the wrong side of the road.

Those memories flooded back as I filled out the form with Daniel’s PO Box and my billing details. I clicked the “Is this a gift?” option, and I wrote a little note to Daniel, explaining why exactly this whisky.

​​I pressed the button to get to the final order page… and… and… loading… almost there… still loading… loading…

I tried again. No.

I tried from beginning. Same thing.

I tried a different browser. It wouldn’t work.

I contacted their support. But nothing I did or they advised would get the order complete or my bottle of 14-year-old Oban on the road.

I exhaled to calm myself. I’d wasted a good 40 minutes fighting with one of the best alcohol delivery services in Australia. “It’s okay,” I told myself in a cheery tone. “I’ve learned something!” I made my way down the list.

The next among Australia’s 24 best alcohol delivery services also sold Oban. But since this was a site that specializes in “business gifts,” the bottle cost 40 dollars more.

I stared hard at the screen. I grunted. Fine.

I filled everything out once again, including the gift message about why exactly this whisky.

Only, once I’d written that message out, I got a notification that it would cost me an extra $5.95 to have the gift card with the message included. I stared in confusion at this notification, and then I got furious. “Oh no you don’t!” I roared. “That’s the straw that broke this donkey’s back!”

I closed down this second website, and I moved on to number 3 on list of the 24 best alcohol delivery services in Australia. My nerves were starting to fray.

The third site did not sell Oban at all. So much for my carefully crafted note to Daniel, explaining why exactly this whisky. But at this point I didn’t care. I was entirely fixated on shipping something brown, in a bottle, with alcohol in it, to Daniel’s PO Box.

This website did not have a “Is this a gift?” option. So not only would there be no note, but perhaps the receipt would go along with the present.

Tacky?

“Efficient!” I told myself, my teeth clenched together, my eyes darting from side to side.

I entered my credit card details, cackled as I watched the order go through, wiped the sweat off my brow, and started to finally relax. And only then did I realize the sun was starting to go down — and I still hadn’t written my daily email.

So no point or takeaway to today’s email. Who’s got time for a takeaway?

Only thing I can perhaps highlight is how dogged I was in making this purchase, in spite of obstacles put in front of me — frustration, time, effort, and even insults by that “business gifts” website.

My point is not that I’m a uniquely determined personality. My point is that this is how people normally shop for stuff they want.

If you haunt copywriting lists, you will hear expert and non-expert copywriters tell you how important it is to reduce friction… to spend time crafting your headline… how good copy matters! And it’s true, at the margins, and at scale, hundreds of sales per day, or thousands, or tens of thousands.

If you play at that level, you will have to get everything right.

But odds are good you are not playing at that level. And so you don’t have to get everything right. You just have to get basic psychology right, and apply it correctly and consistently. People will still buy.

And on that note, consider my Most Valuable Email training. It won’t teach you basic psychology directly, but it will give you a framework for getting basic psychology downloaded into your brain, day after day, by applying the Most Valuable Email trick correctly and consistently.

This might sound confusing, but I can’t explain it better without giving away stuff that I charge for in the course.

All I can tell you is that lots of people have gone through this Most Valuable Email training before, many have praised the approach, and quite a few have benefited from actually implementing it. In case you’d like to learn more:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

One big proof element

by

I read a story this morning about Tim Meeks, the inventor of the harpejji.

The harpejji is a new instrument, one of only a few new instruments invented in 21st century to actually take off. It’s a combination of a piano and an electric guitar. It sells for $6,399 a piece, and Meeks sold more than $1 million worth of them last year.

That’s where we are today. Here’s how we got to where we are:

Meeks invented the harpejji in 2007. He made videos of himself playing the thing. He showed it off at music festivals. He had a few other harpejji enthusiasts play it and hype it up for him.

Sales. Were. Meager.

And then one day, Meeks was at a trade show in Anaheim, CA. Somebody tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey, can you teach me how to play this thing?”

Meeks stared for a moment and then snapped out of his trance. “Sure,” he said. “Sure! Of course! I’d love to!”

It was Stevie Wonder who was asking.

Stevie Wonder loved the harpejji. He bought one immediately. He has since performed a bunch with it in public.

And here we are today. Point being:

One big proof element can be worth 100 small or middle-sized proof elements.

In fact, entire sales promotions, and even entire businesses, have been built on the back of one big proof element.

So if you’re smart, you will work to get yourself such a big proof element, or maybe even to bake it in to your offer when you create it.

But on to business. I have my Most Valuable Email course to sell. And odds are, you haven’t bought it yet, because only about 5.1% of my list has bought to date.

I’ve shared lots of proof elements for MVE so far:

My own results, tangible successes, and intangible benefits resulting from applying the MVE trick…

The reason why of the thing, which I hint at publicly and explain in detail inside the course…

The testimonials and endorsements and even money-making case studies from many satisfied customers.

The fact is though, none of this qualifies as the One Big Proof Element.

So let me tell you that feared negotiating coach Jim Camp used the Most Valuable Email trick on the very first page of his legendary book Start With No.

This book has formed and influenced other influential people, like email marketer Sen Settle… business coach Travis Sago… and FBI negotiator Chris Voss.

Did all these influential folks find Start With No influential because of the ideas inside?

Yes, but — the presentation was also immensely important. In fact, in the case of somebody like Camp, the presentation and the ideas were really an indistinguishable blend.

If you’re a Jim Camp fan, it will be obvious to you how Camp is using the MVE trick in Start With No once you know what this trick is.

And whether or not are a Camp fan, if you would like to have similar influence on your readers, particularly the influential ones among them, then Most Valuable Email might be your ticket. Here’s where to buy it:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

I thought “fake news” was stupid but this is not

by

A few weeks ago, I was reading an article about Ozempic, the diabetes drug that celebs are using to lose weight quick and easy. The article appeared in the New Yorker, which is not ashamed of its left-leaning proclivities.

One of the points in the article is that the main harm from obesity is negative perception both by doctors and obese people. In other words, it’s not the fat that’s the real problem.

​​To make its point, the article used the following statistics sleight-of-hand, which put a smile on my face:

===

A recent study examined subjects’ B.M.I.s in relation to their blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and insulin resistance. Nearly a third of people with a “normal” B.M.I. had unhealthy metabolic metrics, and nearly half of those who were technically overweight were metabolically healthy. About a quarter of those who were classified as obese were healthy, too.

===

A few years ago, there was a lot of fuss over fake news. I always thought that fuss was stupid. Predictably, it has passed now.

I’m not advising anyone to write fake news or to make up stuff.

But you can and in fact you must spin. You must twist facts and figures, cherry pick quotes and stories, and direct and misdirect your readers’ attention at every step.

Not only to make your point, like in that “metabolically unhealthy” quote above.

But also to give people what they want. I mean, I read the New Yorker because I find the articles interesting and horizon-expanding. But I also read it because I enjoy agreeing with the writers’ points of view, and I enjoy even more disagreeing with their point of view.

I hope I’ve managed to get you to disagree with at least some of the points I’ve made in this email.

But if I’ve just managed to make you agree, I’ll have to settle for that today. Tomorrow, I’ll work to do better.

That’s the beauty of writing a daily email. You have a chance to constantly get better at influencing your audience, and to make your case anew, and to get people to agree or disagree with you. If you want to keep agreeing or disagreeing with me, starting tomorrow, you can sign up to my daily email newsletter here.

6 weeks of Times New Roman

by

6 weeks ago, I switched over the font for my newsletter from some web-optimized sans serif font to ugly, old-school Times New Roman. So far, I’ve had two people write in and complain.

One reader said Times New Roman hurts his eyes when he reads my emails in dark mode. Another reader said my newsletter now reminds him of long, factual 2000s websites and the font change made him scroll to the end without really taking anything in.

Has Times New Roman hurt my newsletter?

Like I’ve written recently, I had a record month last month, so it doesn’t seem to have hurt sales. More softly, I keep getting thoughtful and courteous replies from readers, even if it’s sometimes just to say that they’re not fans of the new font.

And the point?

If you read emails from marketers who write daily emails, it’s common to read messages that effectively say, “Heh, it works for me, you can either like it or leave.”

So rather than ending my email with another “Heh it works for me” message, let me tell you the two reasons why I decided to change my newsletter to Times New Roman in the first place. This might be genuinely useful to you, beyond just the satisfaction of agreeing or disagreeing with my attitudes and my personal font choices.

Reason one I switched fonts was that I had a phrase by marketer Dan Kennedy echoing in my head. Dan was softly croaking into my ear, and saying how you want to create a sense of place for your audience, a door that they walk through, which separates your little and unique world from everything else outside.

You might think this is just another way to say, be unique, have a brand, different is better than better.

And sure, that’s a part of it. But a key part of what Dan is saying is that this sense of place should be consistent with the kind of influence you want to have on your audience, and that it should permeate everything you do, beyond just fonts, beyond logos, beyond color choices.

Still, this might sound vague and fluffy to you. You might wonder whether this kind of “sense of place” stuff has a role in the hard world of results-based marketing.

That’s for you to decide.

I’m just putting the idea out there for you, because it influenced me. If you really want an argument for it, then I can only refer you to the authority of Dan Kennedy himself, who helped guide and build up Guthy-Renker, the billion-dollar infomercial company, and who influenced and educated more direct marketers and copywriters than probably anybody else in history, and who was himself responsible for hundreds of direct marketing campaigns and many, many millions in direct sales.

So that’s reason one for the font change.

Reason two is that switching my font to Times New Roman was an instance of my Most Valuable Email trick in action. Yes, this little trick goes beyond just email copy, all the way to font choice, in the right context. If you’d like to make more sense of that, you can find out all about my Most Valuable Email course on the following page:

🦓

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

If you want people to remember you

by

My grandma is 92 years old. Yesterday I was talking to her. She got to saying how she is “counting down the days.”

​​Everybody of her generation who lived in her building — a 17-story brutalist skyscraper built in the 1960s — has already died.

“The last two died just recently,” she said. ​​”There was Marija, who was 94, and then there was that guy—” here she turned to my mother “—what was that guy’s name, the guy who liked fried chicken?”

I found this both cruel and hilarious. You live your whole life, even a very long life, and this is how people remember you — “the guy who liked fried chicken.”

It’s not because my grandmother’s memory is failing. At 92, the woman is still razor-sharp and has a much better memory than I ever had.

It’s simply how how mental imprint happens.

Unless there’s something notable, sound bite-worthy, legendary about you, and unless you repeat it often enough to make it stick in people’s heads, then people will pick something random to remember you by — if they remember you at all.

Maybe you don’t want to be remembered. Nothing wrong with that.

But if you are driven to have people remember you, and if you want to make it good, then take matters into your own hands.

A/B test different sound bites about yourself. When you hit upon one seems to resonate, that people feed back to you, then repeat it from here to eternity. Either that, or risk becoming “the guy who liked fried chicken.”

And on that note, let me remind you what I already said yesterday:

I’m now launching my Most Valuable Postcard #2. I’m selling it until tomorrow night at a 50% discount.

Most Valuable Postcard #2 covers a fundamental marketing topic. In fact, it’s a topic that I claim is the essence of marketing and copywriting.

Last night, Jeffrey Thomas from Goldmine.Marketing wrote me to say (some parts redacted):

===

Finished reading #2 tonight.

And it was great.

I’ll read it again tomorrow.

Earlier today, before seeing this offer, I thought about [here Jeffrey named “the best copywriting guide ever written” according to a reclusive, bizarre, and yet highly successful financial copywriter]—wild to see it appear in this Postcard!

#2 reminds me that [here Jeffrey spelled out the counterintuitive idea at the end of Most Valuable Postcard #2, which a lot of marketers and copywriters struggle with, but which is true nonetheless].

Definitely some new tools to use. Much appreciated John.

===

I redacted some parts of Jeffrey’s message above. For one thing, I want to keep those specifics behind the paywall. For another thing, I don’t think you really mind. Do you?

Anyways, Most Valuable Postcard #2 is available now, but only to people who are signed up to my email list. Maybe you don’t want to get on my email list. Nothing wrong with that. But if you do, here’s where to go.

The most radical division it is possible to make in the marketing world today

by

There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the lives of all marketers in the present moment.

There is no doubt this fact forms the most radical division it is possible to make in the marketing world today. It splits marketers into two classes of creatures: winners and losers.

I will tell you this fact. Or rather, I will illustrate it.

Yesterday, YouTube served me up a video. The video was blurry and showed a three-piece rock band. They were at some sort of daytime festival. They stood on a tiny stage with flower pots in the front and an American flag pinned to the back wall.

The band members were middle-aged. They all wore matching outfits — black dress pants and shimmering gold sport coats. They started to play a ZZ Top cover and—

The drummer. Something was clearly wrong with him.

He was grimacing. He was flailing his head. He was wrapping his arms around his head before striking the drums. He was doing the robot. He was drumming with one hand. He was doing a kind of imbecile tiny drumming.

If Chris Farley had learned to play the drums before he died of a speedball overdose, this is what it would have looked like.

This video has 51 million views on YouTube right now.

​​​A tiny stage with flowerpots in the front. Shimmering gold sport coats. A ZZ Top cover.

51 million views.

So here’s the fact of utmost importance:

If you prefer not to exaggerate, you must remain silent.

Such is the formidable fact of our times, described without any concealment of the brutality of its features.

It is, furthermore, entirely new in the history of our modern civilization. Never, in the course of its development, has anything similar happened. Never have there been other periods of history in which exaggeration has come to govern more directly than in our own.

I know well that many of my readers do not think as I do. This is most natural.

Many of those dissentient readers have never given five minutes’ thought to this complex matter. And yet they believe that they have a right to an opinion on the issue. It merely confirms the theorem.

These readers feel themselves complete and intellectually perfect. They have hermetically closed off their minds to new ideas and decided to settle down definitely amid old mental furniture.

​​How to reach such people — except through exaggeration?

The only question that remains is how to best adapt to the present moment. How to exaggerate in the most effective way possible.

I may be mistaken, but the present writer, when he puts is fingers to the keyboard to treat a subject which he has studied deeply, believes this most effective way is called Copy Riddles.

Copy Riddles brings together the greatest collection of copywriting talent ever assembled inside one program. These master persuaders are ready to reveal their secrets to you, to prepare you for the present reality, and to take you outside of yourself for a moment.

​​To start your transmigration:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Do your customers really want a relationship with you?

by

I talked about the legendary copywriter Gary Bencivenga yesterday.

​​Gary wrote sales letters that brought in millions of dollars for big publishing companies. He rarely if ever lost a split-run test, even when competing against the highest level, against other top-of-the-pile copywriters.

​​I’ve been going through Gary’s farewell seminar for the fourth time. I’m finding all kinds of nuggets of gold that I had missed before.

For example:
​​
At one point during his farewell seminar, Gary mentions in a slightly exasperated tone the idea of “relationship marketing.” And he says:

“I buy an aspirin because I have a headache, not because I want a relationship with my druggist.”

Maybe you’re ready to pick this statement apart. And I’m sure you can. I’m sure you can do a good job proving that Gary’s statement isn’t true, not most of the time, not with all people, and that it doesn’t apply to your particular situation or to the way the whole market has changed since Gary was in his heyday.

That’s fine.

​​I don’t have a dog or a cat in this fight. I’m just here to share Gary’s idea with you, and maybe give you something new to think about.​​

But if you think a bit, and realize that maybe your customers aren’t primarily interested in buying from you because you are you, because they want to imagine you’re their friend and they like your sense of humor and they feel good about obeying your commands, then what are you left with?

Well, you can always talk about your offer.

​​Or about your customers’ problems.

​​Or about convincing proof that your offer will solve your customers’ problems.

Or simply about your customer’s deep hidden desires, about his identity, and how your offer naturally reinforces that. ​​

If this is what you want to do, and you want to do it well, then you can learn to do it with my Copy Riddles program.

It teaches you to write copy by showing you how A-list copywriters have done it, starting with a dry source text, and ending with a sexy and sparkling sales letter that netted millions or tens of millions of dollars. Often, without the slightest shred of personality or relationship.

And yes, among the A-list copywriters that Copy Riddles looks at is Gary Bencivenga himself. ​​If you’d like to find out more, take a look at the page below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

It’s not throat clearing, it’s persuasion magic

by

Back in 2017, I signed up to Ben Settle’s $97/month Email Players newsletter. ​Only years later did I think to ask myself the $6,953 question:

​What did it?

​​What put me into that hypnotic trance and got me to finally pull out my credit card and pay Ben, after I’d read hundreds of previous Ben Settle emails, without taking action?

After spending an hour digging through my email archives, I found it.

​​It turned out to be an email in which Ben talked about a Dan Kennedy idea, using a bunch of Dan Kennedy examples and Dan Kennedy arguments.

Because that email ended up sucking me into Ben’s world and getting me to hand over an estimated $6,953 to Ben, I’ve studied it in detail. I’ve found many interesting things inside. Let me tell you about just one of them.

​​In spite of being a rehash of Dan Kennedy content, Ben’s email starts out like this:

===

Recently, I made a special trip to my office to retrieve all my Dan Kennedy NO BS Marketing newsletters.

The first issue I ever got was the September 2002 issue (front page has a picture of a dwarf stuck in a airplane toilet…) I’d just started learning copywriting a handful of months earlier. And, I remember the “back page” of that particular issue having a profound effect on my mindset at the time — and has through all these years, as it’s kept me healthily paranoid and uncomfortable no matter how good things get.

I just re-read it, and everything he said was true then, and is even more true now.

What was that back page about, exactly?

===

To the uninformed (as I was for many years), this opening might look like a classic example of throat clearing — of the rambling first two reels of “Lost Horizon” that should simply be burned.​​”Get to the action already!”

Of course, Ben isn’t simply rambling on or clearing his throat. He is performing a bit of persuasion magic. Specifically, he is setting the frame.

I won’t spell out what frame Ben is setting. I think it’s obvious enough.

I will just point out this setting the frame stuff applies equally to daily email as to any other communication you might be performing.

For example, here’s a frame, albeit a different frame from the one Ben was setting, in a sales bullet by A-list copywriter Jim Rutz:

* Incredible but legal: How you can easily pay Mom’s medical bills with her money and deduct them from your taxes. (page 77)

Once again, I believe the frame is obvious. But if you want a spelled-out explanation of that particular frame, you can find it in point 6 of round 20A of my Copy Riddles.

As I said yesterday, Copy Riddles might look to the uninitiated like it’s only about writing sales bullets.

But with a bit of thinking — or without it, and simply with a bit of practice — Copy Riddles is really an education in effective communication. ​​
​​
In case effective communicating is what yer after, you can find out more about Copy Riddles at the link below:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Marcus Aurelius, not Marcus Mansonius

by

Came the following question after I revealed my 2022 reading list yesterday:

What did you think of Roadside Picnic?

I’ll answer, but only because the underlying idea is so valuable, or at least has been so to me.

Roadside Picnic a scifi novel written by two Soviet guys in 1971. I read it because it was the inspiration for the movie Stalker, which is one of my favorite movies of all time.

Both Stalker and the original Roadside Picnic talk about The Zone, a mysterious place that obeys its own dangerous and strange rules, and that grants you your ultimate wish if you can make it to the heart of the place.

Earlier this year, I planned to create a guide to the business side of copywriting called Copy Zone, using The Zone as an organizing conceit.

I knew all I needed about The Zone from the movie, but I decided to read the book because— well, because that’s the super valuable core idea:

If you find somebody whose writing or film or stand up comedy you like and respect, then follow any allusions they make or references they use.

​​If they talk about a book or science paper or inspirational talk that was influential to them, look it up and read it, watch it, listen to it while you wait for your waffles to toast.

More generally, go to the original source, or as close to it as you can stand.

You can call this basic principle, Marcus Aurelius, not Marcus Mansonius.

Mark Manson became a big star a few years ago when he wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

He then had to write an article, Why I Am Not a Stoic, in response to many people who accused him of simply taking ideas from stoic philosophers and regurgitating them as a light summer read, complete with a curse word in the title.

Mark Manson’s fun and easy and accessible book is good for Manson. But it’s not good for you, or it’s not good enough for you. At least the way I look at it.

​​I am personally not interested in stoicism. But if I were, I would go and read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and not The Subtle Art of Using “Fuck” in Your Title.

The way I see it, there’s value in sources that are old, difficult, or unpopular. You can even call it easy value.

Rather than having to come up with a shocking hot take on the exact same news that millions or billions of other people are discussing right this afternoon, you can get a new perspective, by digging into something that was written a few decades, a few centuries, or even a few millennia in the past.

Maybe you don’t agree with me. That’s fine.

But maybe you suspect I’m on to something. In that case, you might want to get on my email list. Partly to read the articles I write, and partly to keep an eye out for references and allusions I use, so you can look up these original sources yourself, and get a valuable new perspective that few other people around you have.

In case you’re interested, click here to sign up.