Influential Writing

Marcus Aurelius, not Marcus Mansonius

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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.

I’ve written about this before, but you probably missed it

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This morning, I talked to a business owner who is interested in joining my email coaching program. Interested… but also wary.

“I was talking to my husband,” she told me. “And I realized, John writes good emails. But who is he? I don’t really know anything about him.”

About that:​​

I’ve been writing this email newsletter for four years. I’ve shared plenty of personal stories.

I’ve also shared plenty of specifics from my copywriting career — lessons learned, successes earned, endorsements spurned, like the one I wrote about yesterday.

And yet, people still don’t know almost anything about me. Because the problem is this:

I shared all those stories and successes and endorsements once, or twice, or maybe frice.

That ain’t enough.

So here’s my message to you. It’s a message I’ve shared before, multiple times. But you probably missed it, even if you’ve been reading my emails for a while.

You have to repeat yourself over and over and over. And if you want people to “know” you, you have to create a legend – a simplified cartoon version of your life, and you have to hammer that home, week in and week out.

“I was a blessed child born into a billionaire family… but a tragic and violent attack left me an orphan… and then one day, I fell into a cave full of bats.”

You tell that story. And then next week, you tell it all over again.

“I was made an orphan after my parents were brutally gunned down… I was lost, and all the billions I had inherited meant nothing… until one day, when I fell into a cave full of bats.”

You might wonder why I don’t take the opportunity here to talk about my own background, instead of that fantasy with the cave and the bats.

That’s because these emails are not primarily about selling, or even about building authority where you look at me as a leader in my little niche.

You might wonder what these emails are primarily about in that case. I’ve actually written about that in the past, and multiple times, but you probably missed that too.

​​No matter. I will probably write about it again one day.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there are certain messages that I cannot allow to slip through the cracks of your awareness.

​​For example, last week, while I was promoting that coaching program for which I’m interviewing prospects now, I got the following fat-fingered reply from a reader:

What annout copyriddles John? Still selling?

Of course I’m still selling. In fact, I spent a good amount of time just a couple months ago, writing and sending a sequence of two dozen emails to sell Copy Riddles.

And yet people forget, and quickly.

So if you’d like to join Copy Riddles, let me repeat you can do that at the page below. And let me repeat the following, even though I’ve said it before—

Everything I’ve just told you is actually part of a fundamental copywriting technique. It’s a technique covered in Copy Riddles Round 4, with riddles based on bullets by Clayton Makepeace, Gary Halbert, and Parris Lampropoulos.

For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Income at will

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Tonight, as this email goes out, I will be finishing up the third and final call of the Age of Insight core training.

That done, I still have a few bonuses to deliver.

But pretty soon, I will be finished with everything I promised as part of this offer.

I will have the recordings of all the trainings. With a bit of polishing and tweaking, these will turn into assets I can sell down the line.

I will also have a better and deeper relationship with the group of people who went through Age of Insight, most of whom have bought stuff from me before.

​​If these people got insights from this course, if they got good ideas, if they got value they can use to make themselves more successful, odds are good they will want to come back for more in the future.

A few days ago, Dan Kennedy wrote:

If you’re in a position that at almost any time you can come up with an offer that your customers, clients, patients, donors, followers, or fans list will like, then you have the ability to create income at will.

This position should be a big priority for people to get themselves into. Because in harsh reality, this is actually the only financial security there is. Because one way or another, what you already have can be wiped out. So the only real financial security you ever have is being in the income-at-will position and able to replace disappeared wealth.

I got started with income-at-will very hesitantly last year.

After sitting on the idea of my Copy Riddles program for a few months, I finally got up the nerve to presell it. I then delivered it over the course of a month, while creating it day-for-day.

Then came Influential Emails, also last year. I had the idea for that training one morning. By the afternoon, I had a sales page up and an email went out to drive traffic to that sales page. Again, I presold this training. I delivered it over the next few weeks, and made a nice sum of money as a result.

Next was the Most Valuable Postcard. I sat on that idea for a while, but when I did decide to do it, up went a minimalist sales page. Later that day, a few hours after my one and only email about this offer, I had filled the quota I wanted for this experiment.

Then there was the Most Valuable Email this past September. And then Age of Insight last month. And that brings me to today, and my new offer.

It’s no secret that the reason I’ve been able to create income at will has been this very email newsletter.

I have done precious little to promote myself other than writing a daily email.

I have also done precious little to sell my offers other than writing a daily email.

I’m not telling you anything new here. You probably know the value of email marketing. But the question is not whether you know it.

​​The question is whether you yourself are in that desirable position, where you can write some emails and create income at will.

Enter my new offer.

My new offer is a coaching program, focused specifically on email copy and email marketing. It will kick off in January.

The primary goal for this coaching program is not to make you into the Michelangelo of email copywriters.

The primary goal is to make this coaching program pay for itself, and for much more.

The main mechanism to do that is getting you to send out consistent, interesting, influential daily emails, which you can tack an offer onto whenever you want.

In case you’re interested, the first pre-requisite is to be on my email list. You can sign up for that here.

Stolen ideas are worth more than fine gold

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Incline thy ear unto my sayings:

Over the past day and night, I’ve had an unusual influx of new subscribers. I went to check my website analytics.

There was nothing unusual except extra traffic to a post with a weighty and smooth title:

“The 7th pillar of influence”

“Huh?” I said. I couldn’t remember ever writing this. I had no idea what it was about. But I did find the title intriguing so I looked it up. It turns out the “7th pillar of influence” is an email I wrote in very earliest days of my newsletter, back in 2018. I won’t tell you about the content of that email — you can look up the 7th pillar on my site if you like. But I will tell you about that title:

The 7th pillar of influence was a play on T.E. Lawrence’s 7 Pillars of Wisdom, his memoirs of serving in the Arab revolt. I read that book some time ago, but I never did figure out what the 7 pillars of wisdom are. I checked just now. It turns out Lawrence’s title was itself a reference — to the book of Proverbs, chapter 9, verse 1:

“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars”

Now I betcha that this Old Testement reference in Lawrence’s title is one good reason why we are still talking about his book today, one hundred years after it was written. And perhaps it’s the reason why my email from 4 years ago, archived in the chambers of death that is my website, got some surprise visits today.

James Altucher called this practice plagiarizing.

​​And what else can you call it? Stealing from another text, word for word, without giving credit. And yet, James himself has stolen in this way many times, for the following reason:

Because out of the thousands of documents written over the past 5,000 years, this document has survived. Thousands didn’t.

Religions and philosophies sprung from it. Millions worshipped it.

The text is somehow primal to our experience as humans.

So let me reveal a secret to you:

If you want to instruct or influence people, and you want to find an attractive way to package up your message, then dig through the Book of Proverbs. Find a formulation that has survived thousands of years, and stuff your message in that box.

Perhaps you think it’s foolish for me to reveal this secret. But I find that the more I scatter good ideas about, the more they increase.

On the other hand, the Book of Proverbs also promises blessings to those who sell. So let me sell you a spot on my daily email newsletter. It’s worth more than fine gold. You can pay for it by clicking here.

How a nobody can get on a podcast with an audience of millions

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I care little about the news and even less about crypto. But even I couldn’t escape the news this past week about the fraudulent FTX crypto exchange and its owner Sam Bankman-Fried.

I couldn’t escape the news because of the half dozen people I follow online — in the health, marketing, or being alive niches — all talked about it in some way.

That must mean there are hundreds of thousands of people online right now, analyzing and pontificating their best and hottest takes on FTX and SBF.

So here’s a riddle for you:

Who did James Altucher bring on his podcast yesterday to talk about FTX and fraud?

Who did James Altucher — who has an audience of millions, and who normally interviews “billionaires, best-selling authors, rappers, astronauts, athletes, comedians, actors, and the world champions in every field” — think was interesting and competent enough to comment on the current moment?

It wasn’t a world champion in any field.

It was just some no-name guy. Ok, the guy has a name. It’s Antonio Reza, but that’s not what got him on the podcast.

Reza got on the James Altucher podcast because he wrote a prescient and insightful Twitter thread a few weeks ago.

The thing is, Reza wasn’t writing about FTX and how it was bound to collapse.

Instead, he wrote about Enron, the big corporate fraud from 20 years ago, and how all frauds are really alike in key ways.

So hold on to your stomach, because here’s the recipe for how to get on a podcast with an audience of millions, even when you’re a nobody:

Write something insightful and prescient, connected to the current moment, but also from a different perspective than everybody else has.

I hear you groaning. But wait, I’m just getting started. Since I’m on a roll with giving advice, let me also tell you how you win the lottery:

First, you pick the winning numbers. Then you buy a ticket with those numbers, and then you collect when the numbers are publicly announced. Easy!

And yes. Getting an opportunity to speak in front of an audience of millions, when you yourself are a nobody, even an insightful nobody, is much like winning the lottery.

The thing is, having something insightful to say dramatically improves your chances that somebody somewhere, with an audience bigger than yours, eventually plucks you out of obscurity and says, “Wow! This guy has something really interesting to say. Let me share it with my audience!”

At least that’s how it’s been for me, on multiple occasions, in multiple niches, even when I was a total nobody. I wrote something that sounded insightful, and I got rewarded for it.

There are techniques and writing tricks to doing this. Maybe you can spot them if you read more of my writing. If you’d like to do that, click here and sign up for my daily email newsletter.

How to infect customers with the desire to do what you want

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Envy the killifish.

Normally a shy and reserved animal, the killifish is always a bit nervous. It’s always looking left and right, trying to avoid danger and trouble.

It’s not a great way to live.

But for a few days of its life, everything changes for the killifish. It’s suddenly filled with energy and passion. Its fears melt away and it finds itself enjoying the wonder and joy that was always there, surrounding it.

In its new-found optimism, the killifish swims up to surface of the water, splashes in the sun, and even turns its scaly belly to the sky for the pure pleasure of it.

And then, a seagull or some other predatory bird, spotting the shiny belly of the killifish glistening at the surface of the water, swoops down, snatches the killifish, and swallows it whole.

Turns out the killifish had actually gotten infected by the Euhaplorchis californiensis parasite.

​​The E. californiensis gets into the brain of the killifish. It messes with its serotonin and dopamine levels. In this way, it makes the normally wary fish action-oriented and fearless.

And here’s the key point:

The parasite does this not out of spite, and not out of random destructiveness.

Instead, the parasite does it because getting the killifish eaten by the seagull is crucial to completing the parasite’s own complex lifecycle (a bizarre story, one that’s worth looking up).

A couple days ago, I wrote an email about tying in your marketing emails to news items.

I wrote something about princes Harry and William, and about “unity.” Then I stumbled onwards, towards my point and sales pitch.

Honestly, that email was nonsense. It was something I did just to demonstrate the point I was talking about. I would never write an email like that if I were trying to really sell something. I wouldn’t ramble on about a random news item and then milk it for some kind of aimless point.

Because here’s something I’ve learned from the best marketers out there:

The best marketers don’t just tell vulnerable personal stories, or just share interesting news items, or just make mind-expanding analogies.

In other words, they don’t just share ideas or provide changes of perspective for the sake of being helpful, friendly, or educational.

Instead, they do everything — story, news, change of perspective — for the sake of furthering the sale.

Perhaps that’s super obvious to you. In that case, you’re smarter than I am, because it took me some time to realize. When I did realize it, it was a huge mental shift that changed both how I consume marketing and how I produce marketing.

Now, it’s popular in the marketing world to say your marketing should be all about your prospect, and not about you.

And maybe that’s true.

But what’s not true is that your marketing should be about who your prospects are, what they want to become or achieve, and how your product or service can help them get there.

Instead, here’s the key point, once again:

Your marketing should be about what you want your prospects to do, and the beliefs they need to have in order to move in the direction you want them to go.

Maybe that sounds mercenary or even parasitical.

Maybe it is. ​​

And maybe it raises the question, if what you are reading right now is marketing, then what is it I want you to do, and what do I want you to believe?

I’ll leave the question of beliefs hanging for now.

As for what I want you to do, I just have an offer, my free daily email newsletter. It’s for you to decide whether you are action-oriented enough to take me up on this offer. In case you feel that you are, here’s where to go to sign up.

My “War of the Worlds” warning for copywriters and marketers

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I’ve been studying Spanish, and so I was both pleased and displeased to find a bunch of Spanish-language NPR podcasts that cover Latin America.

Pleased, because the podcasts are obviously interesting, as I will show you in a second.

Displeased, because the podcasts are really above my level. For example…

I had to listen to the first podcast three times. And then I followed along twice more with with transcript, just to make sure I understood it.

​​I’m not sure would have done that for the Spanish learning alone, but the podcast was relevant to this newsletter.

​​In a nut, here’s the story:

On Saturday, February 12, 1949, a local radio station in Quito, Ecuador put on a “radio novella” of the War of the Worlds. “The Martians are coming!”

As you probably know, 11 years earlier, Orson Welles had put on the same in the US.

​​In spite of real-life panic and outrage that Welles’s radio drama had created, for some reason the Quito people thought it would be a good idea to do the same.

And so, a few minutes after 9pm, as a popular musical duo played on the radio, the announcer came on and said,

“We interrupt this musical evening to bring you an urgent news update. According to the information of our reporters…”

According to the information of their reporters, Martian spaceships were attacking Latacunga, a town a few hours away from Quito.

The Martians destroyed Latacunga and then started advancing. With lightning speed.

You can guess how it went from there:

As the Martians progressed towards Quito, the Quiteños listening to the radio, which included pretty much everybody on a Saturday night, became panicked.

​​Some hid in cupboards and others started running and screaming in the streets. Still others took refuge in churches, praying for some kind of divine help. A bunch of people confessed their infidelities to their husbands or wives.

So you could say the “Guerra de los Mundos” was both a big success and a huge disaster, much like the Orson Welles original.

But here’s where the story takes a twist. Because when the radionovella finished, the radio announcer came on and said,

“It was all just a show, people. There are no Martians. Calm yourself, and enjoy the rest of your night.”

The panicked and agitated Quiteños didn’t calm down. But they sure enjoyed the rest of their night.

A large mob assembled outside the Radio Quito building. As the radio employees huddled inside, the mob started throwing bricks and stones at the windows.

And, because at the time it was common to walk around the largely unlit Quito with kerosene torches, the mob started lobbing these at the building as well.

Soon the building set on fire.

The angry mob brought cans of gasoline to add fuel to the fire and make sure the entire building burned down. When firefighters came to try to put out the flames, the mob drove them away. “If you so much as pour out a drop of water,” the mob threatened, “we will kill you.”

Eventually, the police managed to disperse the mob and the firefighters put out the fire. But by then, eight radio station employees had died from smoke inhalation and from burns.

What’s more, another dozen Quiteños died from heart attacks during the transmission. At least a few people jumped to their deaths from tall buildings rather than be annihilated by the Martian rays.

The next day, the Radio Quito building was completely burned down.

Leonardo Páez, the director of Radio Quito who had written and produced the “Guerra de los mundos,” had managed to escape through a window to an adjacent building. He was now on the lam, hiding from the angry mob. Eventually, he would be forced to run away to Venezuela, never to return.

Curious story, right?

And like I say, relevant to this newsletter, which is about copywriting and marketing.

A few weeks ago, I heard a successful copywriter talk about his prospects as NPCs – non-playable characters. Basically, nonentities, without a soul, who are only there to advance your own quest.

From what I could understand, this copywriter was talking about it from perspective of,

​​”What does it do to you, as the copywriter, to interact with people in this way, and to treat others as just a means to your end?”

It may be bad for you psychologically.

And who knows. There might even be serious real-life consequences.

Like when you write a lead predicting the imminent End of America is here so you can sell stock picks… or announcing that fruits and vegetables are toxic so you can sell a greens powder… or breathlessly announcing an invasion of Obama clones, coming for your children, so you can sell a crank-powered radio…

In those cases, and even in less dramatic ones, who knows. Maybe one day an angry mob shows up outside your workplace and starts to throw kerosene torches at your windows.

But probably not, right? After all, the Internet provides us with way more insulation and security than those people at Radio Quito had.

Anyways, I don’t have a point here. I just wanted to tell you this NPR story and maybe get you thinking a bit. And also, to remind you I have a daily email newsletter. In case you’d like to sign up for it you can do that here.

The Psycho rules you MUST have for a stronger business and more successful customers

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Last night, as lights dimmed around the city and the streets got quiet and a lonely owl started hooting somewhere in the distance, I settled into bed and started watching…

Psycho!

(​​The trailer.)

This was a 6-minute promo movie, made by Alfred Hitchcock, to drum up anticipation for the real Psycho movie.

The Psycho trailer features Hitchcock himself, showing off the Psycho set as if it were a real crime scene.

​​With cheery music playing, Hitchcock walks around the set, hints at the murders that happened in different rooms, and occasionally pouts and frowns at camera as if to say, “You there, in the second row, what odd thing are you doing?”

At the end of it all, Hitchcock walks into the motel, to the bathroom.

“Well they cleaned all this up now,” he says. “Big difference. You should have seen the blood. The whole place was… well, it’s too horrible to describe.”

In spite of this, Hitchcock continues his cheery tour. He points out the toilet — an important clue — and then the shower. The camera zooms in as he reaches for the shower curtain, pulls it back swiftly, and—

A screaming woman’s face flashes and the famous Psycho slasher music cuts into your ears.

The closing credits appear, and then a notice:

“PSYCHO: The picture you MUST see from the beginning… or not at all! For no one will be seated after the start.”

“What?” I asked my laptop. No one allowed in late? Is this for real?”

It turns out yes.

Hitchcock made a rule for the release of Psycho. Nobody would be allowed into the theater, any theater, anywhere around country, after the movie had started.

Studio honchos were worried that this arbitrary rule would hurt ticket sales.

But you, my dear marketing psycho, probably know better.

What do you think happened?

Did people hear they won’t be allowed in late, and decide to stay away?

Did a few people who did come late, and who got turned away, and who fumed about it… did these people sour everybody else from seeing the movie?

Of course not.

Lines formed around the block, in cities around the US, made up of people waiting to see Psycho, at the appointed time.

Of course, these people were not there only because of this “No late admission” rule.

But I’m 100% sure this rule contributed to the fact that Pyscho broke box-office records in its opening weekend, and has become such a keystone of pop culture since.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

People loooove draconian rules and restrictions, particularly in a take-it-or-leave it setting.

Sure, some people get turned away. Either because they know in advance they can’t make it to the theater in time, or more likely, because they dawdle.

But some people will be intrigued who wouldn’t care otherwise. And more important, many people will treat the person setting the rules with a new level of respect and deference.

Ben Settle recently wrote an email about his Psycho rule not to allow people who unsubscribe from his Email Players newsletter to re-subscribe down the line. Ben wrote:

“I’ve tested, tweaked, experimented with, and practiced this policy for nearly 10 years. And I have found, without exception, the harsher I am with this policy, the stronger my business gets with far more successful customers. On the other hand, the more lenient I am with this policy, the weaker my business gets with far more weak-minded customers. It’s such an integral part of what makes my business model work, that it’s ‘part’ of my marketing now, just like clean parks are ‘part’ of Disneyland’s customer service.”

So there you go. If you want a stronger business and more successful customers, stop allowing anyone into your theater after the lights dim.

Or stop allowing them back in, if they ever leave for a pee break.

Or come up with yer own Psycho rules. Ones that match your personality, your preferences, and your business objectives.

“Here it comes,” some oddball in the second row is saying, while rubbing his hands together. “Here come Bejako’s rules. He always likes to write about an interesting marketing and business idea, and then implement it in the same email.”

True. I do like to implement good ideas as soon as I write about them.

But another thing I like to do is to take a really important idea, and sit on it for a while, and then implement it in future emails, and throughout my business.

This particular idea, about Psycho rules, is big enough and important enough to warrant more time and space than I want to take for a single email.

But keep an eye out, if you have an eye to spare, and maybe will see me pulling back the shower curtain some time soon, and with scary slasher music suddenly playing, startling my list with one of my new Pyscho rules.

Meanwhile, if you want my advice, insights, and guidance (no copywriting) when it comes to your existing email marketing funnels, you can contact me using the form below.

No arbitrary rules or hoops to jump through — yet.

​​Here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/consulting

Drop your phone in the toilet, grab a cup of coffee, and read this whole email word for word

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About two weeks ago, I got a surprise:

Dan Kennedy started sending me emails.

I’m not 100% how this happened. In the past, I’ve signed up for email newsletters on various DK websites.

​​As I’ve written before, I’m a big Dan Kennedy fan and I had high hopes.

But it always turned out the emails were not written by Dan. They were just random pitches for various DK stuff. Each time, I eventually ended up unsubscribing.

And yet, two weeks ago, I suddenly started getting emails from Dan again. And they are great.

I don’t think these new emails are actually written by Dan either, not now, not as emails. It’s probably just old Dan content, repurposed for the email format by some marketing monkey working under Russell Brunson, who has bought up Dan’s entire business.

Still, it’s great stuff, full of humor and valuable ideas. For example, here’s one bit from a recent DK email which caught my eye:

One of the great litmus tests of a newsletter is when yours arrives, are people so excited about it that they drop whatever they’re doing, take their phone and lock it in the trunk of their car, get a cup of coffee, then eagerly sit down to go through it? At least a quick skim to see what’s there and then say, “Tonight, when I have more time, I’m gonna read the whole thing word for word.” Is that how they react?

This caught my eye because last month, I launched my Most Valuable Postcard.

​​MVP is not a newsletter — really, it’s an un-newsletter. It covers tried-and-proven marketing principles rather than new techniques and tactics.

I was wondering how people would react to this approach, and to the format of the postcard. Well, initial reactions are starting to filter in.

One MVP subscriber, who shall remain unnamed, said that in the excitement of receiving her postcard, she ended up dropping her phone into the toilet (the phone survived).

​​Sure, a house is not a home, and a toilet is not a trunk. But it may be even better.

And as for reading the whole postcard word for word, MVP subscriber Jakub Červenka just wrote me to say:

Hey John,

Just wanted to let you know I just got your postcard. I am only half-way through your horror stories, but I am already sure you over-delivered on value.

And I have a feeling that your postcard newsletter thingie is case-in-point study in putting in work up front for your prospects.

I don’t have yet enough money / business big enough to be able to afford you, but you making this whole thing so personal, I cannot think of anyone I’d rather work with once I am launching my funnel in English market..

But in the meantime, I am pre-sold already on any copywriting course you may sell in future.

And my mind is already spinning trying to come up with ways I could use what I am learning from you into my business.

Thank you for inspiration, it is awesome!

Jakub has only read half the postcard so far. That’s hardly word-for-word reading… but as far a testimonial for MVP, I don’t think I could ask for anything better.

Still, I’m still not sure what to do with this project.

Like Jakub says, it’s very personal… but also very unscalable.

If I ever reopen this offer to new subscribers, I might tweak the format, and I will certainly increase the price.

But if that doesn’t turn you away, and you want the chance to lock your phone in your trunk or at least fumble it into the toilet when you get a postcard in the mail from me, you can sign up for my (free) daily email newsletter, so you can get notified if I reopen MVP again.

How to come up with email topics your list will love to read and not buy from

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I just got home from a beautiful, sunny, morning walk. Not only is it Sunday morning, but where I am right now, it’s Easter, which means the streets are blessedly empty. Just the sun, trees, birds, and occasional whining cat are out and about.

I got home filled with positive impressions and opened my laptop. YouTube asked — resume video?

Suddenly, a weight settled on my shoulders.

​​I have a habit of leaving music playing when I go out of the house. It happened this morning too, until YouTube paused it at some point. Now it was asking if I want to continue.

My finger lingered over the resume button. I could see the next song that would play. It was both appealing and repulsive:

Gerry Rafferty’s Baker Street.

I’m telling you all this as an example of a real problem I’ve noticed in my life.

​​My mind is becoming a closed garden, with songs I have known before and humor and ideas I have known before as the only plants that have a chance to take root.

I’ve listened to Baker Street, by my estimate, some 13 million times in my life. Do I need to listen to it again? No, in fact, it’s become irritating. But do I want to listen to anything else, anything new? Not really.

I don’t have a solution to this problem.

​​Perhaps you have a solution for me.

Or perhaps you don’t. Perhaps just have the same problem, and feel a little excited that at least one other person shares your problem.

Or perhaps not even that. Perhaps you don’t have this problem at all, but you just found it curious to read that somebody could experience such a deep life crisis around the topic of Baker Street.

If any of these is true, then I guess I’ve done my job.

Because when I opened up my laptop, closed down YouTube (sorry Gerry), and got to work, I made a list.

​​It was titled, “10 problems I have in my life right now.”

Making this list wasn’t depressing. In fact was a relief to get it out of my head and on to the page.

#8 was the “closed garden” problem above.

#6 was that I have no email topic for today.

​​Well, at least that problem’s solved for now.

So maybe you can do the same. If you have to come up with ideas, topics, or content, start by making an honest list of problems you have in your life. And then pick one of those problems and write about it.

​​It always does well for me when I send out an email like that.

“You mean you make lots of sales like that?” you ask.

What, have you been reading my “10 problems” list?
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​​The answer is no, if you really must know. I don’t make sales like that, but that’s because I don’t have enough offers to sell. That’s a real problem in my life. Well, at least until I turn it into a topic for another email. If you want to read that when it comes out, or if you’re interested in copywriting and marketing, sign up to my email newsletter.