One Man Businesses

The largest copywriter in the Netherlands gives me his endorsement

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Comes a message from Robin Timmers, whose website bills him as the “grootste copywriter van Nederland.”

Google informs me that, translated from Dutch, this works out to “the largest copywriter in the Netherlands.”

I guess a more elegant translation might be, “the greatest copywriter in the Netherlands.” Though as Robin told me, the tagline is meant to be ambiguous, since he stands over 2 meters tall.

Anyways, Robin writes:

===

Hey John,

Just finished MVE and am now halfway with SME.

Man … MVE is so simple, so easy-ish to implement, but such a strong concept and format.

Awesome course, awesome idea.

Same for SME.

Really simple, really powerful and easy to implement, and model with your own ideas.

I’m very happy with both courses, and can’t wait to start with Copy Riddles.

===

In case you don’t know… MVE is my course Most Valuable Email. SME is my course Simple Money Emails.

You might not know that because I haven’t promoted either course in a few months, ever since I started selling my Daily Email Habit service.

I find my enthusiasm for promoting those courses has dipped.

In part, it’s because Daily Email Habit is not just a daily prompt to write an email… but a distillation of the best ideas in both SME and MVE, as well as ideas I don’t have in either of those courses, particularly around building up status and authority.

And Daily Email Habit presents all this to you as an easy and manageable drip-drip of information, in your inbox, every day… rather than as a course, one which you may go through once or maybe not even once, which then sits behind some forgotten login or in some folder you never check.

But much more important:

Unlike those two course of mine — or any other courses, by me or anybody else — Daily Email Habit is really built around the idea of daily, practical, real-world implementation, rather than simply passive consumption of information.

Because even things that are easy-ish to implement, like Robin says the MVE trick is, tend not to get implemented, not without a lot of stubborn nudging and reminders from the outside.

That’s what Daily Email Habit is for. If you’d like to find out more about this “grootste e-mailservice”:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

A cautionary tale for course creators

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For five years, David Perell had kind of a dream online business.

Perell sold a high-ticket, cohort-based course, Write Of Passage, teaching people how to write online.

Write Of Passage sold for $4k a pop. It had 2,000+ buyers.

Like I said, a kind of dream business, at least in the little space of online course creators and such.

I mean, Perell was writing and helping people to do something positive for themselves. He was working in line with his own values and interests. And he was pulling in great money with it.

And then, last November, Perell shut it all down. In an email announcing that the current cohort of Write Of Passage would be the last one, Perell wrote:

“You need more than a great product to make a business work, and the main thing we were missing was a dependable flow of new students.”

I agree with Perell’s first conclusion. I don’t agree with the second.

You do need more than a great product to make a business work. Particularly if your product sells for a one-time fee (even if that’s $4k), and if you have a whole supporting team of coaches and facilitators and staff and whatever, and you’re running ads or paying affiliates to get those $4k sales.

But I don’t agree that the solution needs to be MORE NEW STUDENTS.

I’ve been making a 6-fig income off this newsletter for the past few years, off of just a few hundred buyers, way fewer than Perell’s 2k. I’ve even embraced this attitude formally. My goal is to make more sales from the same number of readers.

It’s a well-known direct marketing truth that all the profits are made on the back end.

It does take more than a great product to make a business work. But instead of chasing the mythical “dependable flow” of new students… you can just commit to creating a sequence of great new offers. (An offer by the way, doesn’t require creating a new product, though a new product will typically make you a new offer.)

Now about that:

As I wrote in my last email, last year, right around the time that Perell was shutting down his multimillion-dollar dream biz, I came up with a new system for myself to help me get more predictable success with new offers.

I applied this system when I had the idea for my Daily Email Habit service. It worked great.

So far, I have only shared my system with the people inside my Daily Email House community.

This month, I will make this system available a bit more widely. I’ll be sharing it with a few people on my list, if I think it can actually be useful to them.

I will make you a deal right now:

If more predictable success with new offers is something that could be useful to you, then hit reply and tell me a bit about your current offer situation. In turn, I will add you to a private announcement list, so you have the opportunity to get my system when I release it later this month.

Figure it out

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A while back, a dude wrote me to say:

===

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

Don’t think of Greenland

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Back in 2019, Internet personality James Altucher ran a crowdfunding campaign to raise $100,000,000 to buy Greenland. He felt Greenland was too important not to be bought.

Altucher is a smart guy. He did his research to back up his claim.

His primary reason for wanting to buy Greenland?

Rare earth minerals, like yttrium, scandium, neodymium, which are used in modern-day technologies such as LED screens, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. Rare earth minerals today almost exclusively come via China, which puts the U.S. in an awkward and dangerously dependent position.

But don’t think of China, and don’t think of Greenland.

Because I read a story this morning in the Wall Street Journal, about how the U.S. is trying to feed its growing mineral hunger — by farming.

Apparently, certain plants are “hyperaccumulators,” and pull out lots of minerals from the ground.

The U.S. has millions of acres of barren, mineral-rich soil.

The minerals in this soil are not of high-enough concentration to deserve being refined by traditional means. But they can be farmed into plants, which can then be incinerated to produce a cost-effective new source of minerals.

If it all works out, farming might become a viable new source of rare minerals for the U.S. economy.

So don’t think of Greenland.

But do think how this story offers a simple, classic, and memorable example of what business and innovation are all about:

An abundant and cheap resource (land in this case)… a new or better process (hyperaccumulating plants)… and a rare and valuable end product (rare minerals).

Also, do think of how this might apply to you and your business.

Because what resource is more abundant and cheap than ideas, gossip, and news stories?

And yet, with a simple enough process, these cheap resources can be turned into rare and valuable end products — sales copy, or marketing content, or even highly priced courses, books, and training.

What is that simple enough process?

Daily emails, exactly like the one you’re reading now.

My email today happens to be based on today’s Daily Email Habit puzzle.

If you’d like to engage in your own “hyperaccumulation” process, and use daily emails to convert cheap and abundant resources into rare and valuable assets, then consider checking out Daily Email Habit today, before tomorrow’s puzzle appears and then disappears.

And whatever you do, don’t think of Greenland.

Here’s the link to take things into your own hands:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

A rule you can take to the bank

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“If you talk less, you’ll sell more, and that is a rule you can take to the bank.”
— David Sandler

What, you’re still reading?

Even though I’ve paid off the subject line?

Insatiable. All right…

I can tell you I’m re-reading David Sandler’s mysteriously titled book, You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar.

In case you don’t know Sandler, the man was a sales trainer, and his book is about his sales system.

Sandler was influential enough in the world of actual sales — the world of cold calling, going to prospect’s offices, sitting across the table.

But his ideas are much better known in the world of online marketing because negotiation coach Jim Camp, who influenced a million and one Internet marketers, apparently got most of his negotiation system, often verbatim, by being a Sandler franchisee.

Aaanyways…

Sandler says to talk less. To draw out your prospects to talk. To listen, and to get them to sell themselves.

It’s good advice. I tried it. It worked like magic, back when I used to get on calls with prospective copywriting clients.

It’s great advice for sales copy too.

Back when I was writing sales copy — thousands of words every week of advertorials, and VSLs, and sales emails — I made it a policy to “write as little as possible.”

That didn’t mean to have a VSL of 150 words or a half-page advertorial.

Instead it meant “getting the market to write your marketing for you,” as Travis Sago likes to say. To mirror and feed back things that people in the market already said themselves, in their own words, instead of coming up with my own arguments and language.

So that’s a tip for you. Talk and write less. You’ll sell more.

Here’s another tip. The above tip is great advice if all you’re looking to do is to sell, today.

But if you’re writing a daily email newsletter, particularly one for yourself and your business, then there’s a second purpose to your emails.

This second purpose is more wooly. Much less measurable than sales. It also happens in the vague future, rather than the clear present.

I’m talking about getting people to open your emails again tomorrow, and to give you an honest hearing. About gradually, getting people to see you as an authority, a leader, a trusted guide in all kinds of questions in their life.

Sales today are necessary and nice. But really, all the profits in email are in this long game, in the ongoing relationship, in the back end.

And that’s a rule you can take to the bank.

And now, on to my offer. If you don’t buy it today, I’ll promote it again tomorrow, and maybe I’ll convince you then.

Or maybe I’ll convince you today?

My offer is my Daily Email Habit service. It’s a new prompt/puzzle each day, delivered to your inbox, to help you write your own daily email.

The dual goals for Daily Email Habit are 1) making you sales today and 2) establishing your influence and authority, so you have an asset in your email list that only grows in value tomorrow, and the day after.

If you’d like to get started with those dual goals, and now:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Some leaked news that ties into what I’m selling

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I’m writing this opening sentence in a ham-handed attempt to intrigue you, so you read on. And I’m announcing that fact because it relates to the following leaked media news:

Netflix execs have started telling their screenwriters to announce what the character is doing. Here’s an example, from Netflix’s #1 hit movie, Irish Wish, starring Lindsey Lohan:

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“We spent a day together,” Lohan tells her lover, James. “I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.”

“Fine,” says James. “That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.”

===

Billy Wilder it’s not.

So why are Netflix execs mandating this? Why are they breaking the basic rules of good writing? Why do they want to make screenplays intentionally heavy and plodding, repeating what’s already happened, stating the obvious, telling instead of showing?

There’s a good reason. It’s because people are watching Netflix shows in the background.

I’ve seen this first-hand. My ex-girlfriend used to “watch” Netflix shows while cooking. She’d have the headphones in and move around the kitchen, her phone propped up somewhere in the corner of the counter. She’d glance over at it only occasionally, if she was not chopping carrots or peeking inside the fridge at the moment.

If you write emails to connect with your audience, what does this mean for you?

You might think it means you have to get with the times. To make your writing shorter, punchier, more comic book-like. After all, attention spans are dropping! People are distracted! Content is superabundant! Gotta hook ’em in with memes, emojis, and ellipses!

And yet, I’ve consciously gone in the other direction with this newsletter. This ugly Times New Roman font, big blocky paragraphs, stories that require careful parsing to make sense.

I’ve done it all to encourage people to sit and actually read, instead of skimming my emails while they chop carrots. And I’ve done just fine, even well, by taking this approach.

Point being:

Netflix has 282 million subscribers worldwide. That’s a gargantuan number. But even that is only 3.45% of the world’s population.

Today, you can do things the way that you want, the way that pleases you. If you are persistent and unapologetic about it, and if you deliver value as part of what you do, you will find enough people who resonate with your way of doing things, even if the mainstream is going in the exact opposite direction.

And now I’m going to transition to the sales pitch in this email. Because my opening sentence today is not the only place where I ham-handedly announce things that I’m going to do.

I also do it daily inside my Daily Email Habit service. I do it so you can do it too, for your own audience, in your own tone and voice, and so you can stay consistent in connecting with your audience. For more info on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Writing formulaic copy month after month

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A couple weeks ago, I got on a call with a long-time reader, who works as an in-house copywriter.

This is part of an illuminating practice I’ve taken up, of actually interacting with people who read my emails and buy my courses.

Anyways, this reader, who has been working as a copywriter at the same company for four years, said the following:

===

The main problem is, each month, the offers don’t really change so I’m writing the same stuff repeatedly.

The only difference is when they have a product launch, I get to write different stuff and set up more flows.

Other than that, it’s quite routine. There’s not much growth for my skill set.

To be honest, I don’t write a lot of copy there, because the copy I write there is quite formulaic and it’s also, not much variation. I don’t get to experiment much with ideas.

===

About that:

Gary Bencivenga, widely called the world’s best living copywriter before he retired, liked to quote Al Davis, the coach for the infamously tough, mean, aggressive 1965 Oakland Raiders team.

One time, during a press conference before a game, a reporter asked Davis, “So I guess you’ll just have to take what the defense gives you?”

Davis glared. “We don’t take what the defense gives us. We take what we want.”

Gary Bencivenga, who seems to be as sweet and nice of a man as you can put a hat on, recommended Davis’s tough-guy attitude for copywriters also.

Gary didn’t just take the offer the client gave him to promote. Instead, he took what he wanted — he switched the offer altogether, or reworked it, or added to it — until it was as close to his ideal as he could get it, and many miles ahead of where it had started.

So that’s point 1.

Point 2 is that you’re not Gary Bencivenga. You don’t have his authority, and you don’t command the same deference and respect from clients. That’s normal. Gary, again, was the world’s best, and he had a reputation to match.

The situation is even trickier if you’re an in-house copywriter, working with one company full-time. In this case, the power dynamic shifts even more to your client/employer.

And maybe, when you try to “take what you want” — to rework an offer, or to experiment with copywriting ideas, or to simply do something that will stretch and increase your skills — your client/employer gives you a look and just says, “No.”

What then?

It’s up to you. But one thing you can do is say, “Fine. I’ll do my own thing.”

I’m not saying to quit your job. You can “take what you want” on your own time, with nobody controlling what you do or how you do it. It can give you new skills, experience, extra authority.

And who knows?

If you come to your client/employer next time, and cite a personal success story, instead of just pulling a good idea out of the air, maybe you’ll get a better hearing.

If not, you will still feel more fulfilled, skilled, and stimulated. And you’ll have options, because you’re building your own thing on the side, and taking what you want there.

On the call I had with the in-house copywriter I mentioned above, I heard that this is exactly what he’s doing. He’s hunting and working with freelance clients as well. Plus, he’s started his own email list, and he’s writing to it daily.

Who’s got time for all that?

I don’t know. You almost certainly don’t. Or maybe you do. And maybe, if you want some help with the last part, starting and sticking to writing a daily email, you will like my Daily Email Habit service.

Every day, Daily Email Habit prompts you to write something different.

At the end of 7 days, you already have a bunch of little experiments you wouldn’t have had before. And at the end of 30 days, you can experience a transformation.

If you’d like to experience that transformation as soon as possible, it makes sense to get started today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Coffee and guilt at 10:40am

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It’s around 10:40am as I write this, and a beautiful, sunny, warm, Barcelona December morning outside. So far today, I’ve only taken a stroll to Starbucks to buy a new coffee mug — the old one mysteriously shattered last night after I poured some hot water into it.

Now I’m sipping my coffee, from my new mug, sitting at my living room table and getting down to writing this daily email, and I feel…

… really guilty.

A popular routine for many marketers — I’m thinking of one guy in specific, but the sentiment is common — is to hype up the promise of “morning coffee + daily email and my work day is done!”

My guess is that most of the people who sell that dream in their marketing are actually working or thinking about work for much of the day… and if not, then they previously spent decades of their life working or thinking about work all day long, in order to get to where they are now.

The fact is, I have way more autonomy today than I did 10 years ago, the last time I still had a proper job. I have way more autonomy today than I had even a few years ago, when I still regularly worked with clients, had deadlines, meetings, etc.

But the more autonomy I have, the more time I spend working, or thinking about work. And if I catch myself slacking off, or getting to work super late like today, well, I feel guilty. Like a joke in Dan Kennedy’s Time Management For Entrepreneurs says:

GOOD NEWS! You are now your own boss!

BAD NEWS! You are a lousy boss with one unreliable employee!

I’m not sure who needs to hear this or why. The only thing I can tell you to reclaim some of the dream is that I wouldn’t trade the autonomy I have now for the ability I had 10 years ago, to show up to the office, hung over and useless for the day, and not feel guilty about it, because after all, they are just paying for my time.

Plus, I even like I what I do now. Yes, sometimes it takes a bit of prodding to get me to work. But then again, it takes a bit of prodding to get me to stop work also.

If you’re willing to work, and to even enjoy working, but you need some prodding like I do, then you might like my Daily Email Habit service.

Daily Email Habit will help you start and stick with writing daily emails.

No, a daily email is not a business in itself — there’s other things that need doing, and doing regularly, to make it work. What can I tell you? That’s the truth.

But if you still like the idea of writing regularly, of building something for yourself, and in sharing your own insights with the world, so the world can give you something back, then maybe check out Daily Email Habit, before the day runs out on you:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

A frustration that only grows with each email I write

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Yesterday, I wrote an email with the subject line, “Only open this if you play Wordle.” I guess that drew in some people who rarely read my emails, such as the following reader, who wrote:

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You sold… dog seat belts?

I didn’t know that was an actual product until I saw you mention it.

I’m a dog-owner – should I be concerned? 😧

Anyway, hi, I’m Anastasia.

I’m an e-com email copywriter, and I’m trying to learn how to write (hopefully great) advertorials.

So I came across your video with Chase Dimond where you discussed this concept of ‘horror advertorials.’ Do you have a swipe file with successful examples you wouldn’t mind sharing?

===

“OH YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME,” I said.

An ongoing frustration in the running of this newsletter is that, in spite of writing a fairly in-depth email each day, many of which end up repeating stuff about me, most people on my list still known very little about who I am or what I do.

It’s a frustration that only gets more common the longer I’ve been writing this newsletter and the bigger my list gets.

The fact is, I do have a swipe of “horror advertorials.”

I’ve sold it in the past for $100, and just last month, I included it as one of the bonuses to my $997 Copy Riddles program during the “White Tuesday” promo, which also included a “$2k Advertorial Consult” as another bonus.

And yet, I still get questions like the one above. What to do? After my initial childish rush of frustration, I reminded myself this is inevitable, and just a part of how the world works, particularly online.

Some people got on my list only recently. Some miss my emails in their overflowing inboxes. Some don’t get drawn into my emails because I didn’t deliver on the copy front.

Other readers skim because they’re busy or distracted… and still others open, and read diligently, and then forget — because my newsletter, immensely important though it is to me, is really only 2-3 minutes in the day of even my most devoted readers.

In all these cases, the responsibility really lies with me to do something and improve the situation. So:

Regarding my “horror advertorial” swipe file, it’s not something I’m selling at the moment, and it’s certainly not something I’m sharing, if that means giving it away for free — because I’ve had lots of good customers who have paid me good money for the same info.

At the moment, I am selling and promoting my Daily Email Habit service.

You may wonder if you really need DAILY emails. After all, you may already have a website… or ads on Facebook… or you may even send a weekly email. Surely that’s enough???

I’d like to propose to you that your prospects know much less about you than you could ever believe. Shockingly less.

Daily emails can help with that, so you make more sales today, and so you get lodged more deeply in your prospects’ minds, so you make more sales tomorrow.

And if daily emails fail to deliver? If you end up writing daily emails, and most people in your audience still don’t know who you are and what you do?

Well, that just becomes a topic of a new email.

And if you’d like to see how I and a group of other smart folks are transmuting such everyday frustrations, or reader questions, or personal insights into daily emails that both entertain and sell, you can find that inside my Daily Email Habit service. For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Not the kind of testimonial I want

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Last night, I opened up my Daily Email Habit service to my entire list.

Since then, over the past 12 hours, close to two dozen new people have signed up.

Many of those people have written me to say they are excited to get started and develop their skills.

Others, who didn’t sign up for good reasons of their own, wrote to tell me how they like the concept and design of the service.

And then, I got the following “testimonial” from a reader who neither signed up for Daily Email Habit, nor had a good reason for not signing up:

===

What a brilliant idea!

This is truly an extremely valuable offer for someone who has any sort of expertise and has his/her offers nailed down to get into the habit of daily writing.

Sadly, I have none of the above 2 things at the moment. Once I do find my ICP for whom I have sufficient expertise, this will be something I’ll definitely come to you for.

Thank you for launching such an amazing offer!

===

I didn’t reply to this. I had a sense there’s a game afoot here that I don’t want to play.

I tried to figure out what game that is, and what’s really going on in the message above, in between that compliment sandwich.

I had to translate it to myself to understand. For some reason, I thought of a little olive, looking out at a large tract of land and saying:

“What beautiful, fertile soil! This land would be perfect to support a whole orchard of olive trees, given that they have deep roots and broad branches. But alas, as you can see, I have neither. Just look at me! Do you see any roots or branches on me? No, there are none. It’s quite sad. Beautiful land though.”

There are lots of good reasons not to write daily emails, but lack of expertise is not one of them. You don’t write consistently because you have expertise… you have expertise because you write consistently.

That’s something that I believe on a deep level, and that’s why I put it right on the sales page for Daily Email, at the very start of the deck copy, right after “I’ll help you start a consistent daily email habit that…”

Like I said, there are lots of good reasons why you might not want to write daily emails. There are also lots of good reasons why you might.

If you decide to write daily emails, you most certainly don’t need my Daily Email Habit service to do it. But my service might help you stick with it… be more consistent… save time… or write better emails than you would otherwise. For more info on all that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh