One Man Businesses

How long will it take me to pay back Nick Bandy?

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Last December, I ran an auction in my Daily Email House community. The offer on auction was my endorsement and promotion, as much of it as needed to pay back the winner the entire winning bid.

The winning bidder in that auction turned out to be Nick Bandy.

The winning bid turned out to be $31k.

I got very lucky with Nick being the winner of the auction:

Nick already has a sizable email list. He’s got an automated way of growing that list with new subscribers every day. He writes great daily emails. He’s got a suite of info products. He’s got personal authority in the form of his day job as a fractional CMO at a reverse mortgage company. Plus he’s kind of a cool guy, who tends to spend much of the day in his bathrobe.

And yet, since December, you haven’t heard me endorsing or promoting Nick all that much.

Since December, what Nick and I have been doing together has all been behind the scenes.

In case you’ve got an email list yourself, what I’m about to say can be valuable to you:

If you wanna make good money from your list, and if that list is not tens of thousands or or hundreds of thousands of subscribers strong, it’s unlikely you will get to where you want to go without higher-priced offers, meaning at least something that sells for $500+, and preferably for $1k or more.

I told Nick that. He agreed. And so we’ve been working on one or more high-ticket offers he can sell, that match his experience, skills, and taste.

Progress has been slowed by the fact that Nick has many other lucrative and attractive things to do.

There’s his steady fractional CMO gig.

There are his personal obligations like his daily emails and Skool community.

And then there are exciting side projects like partnerships he recently finagled with a local roofing business (database of 30,000 customers and 100,000 leads)… a YouTuber with 300k subscribers… a skydiving business with a 30k+ customer list… and more.

I’m telling you all this because Nick is currently in the middle of a price increase promo for one of his offers, Ghostbuster Sequence.

If you do anything online — client work, or you have your own email list, or you have a personal brand — I recommend to you to get Ghostbuster Sequence.

Not because I have to pay Nick back $31k.

Ghostbuster Sequence sells for $54 right now. At that price, it would take a ridiculous number of sales for me to pay Nick back.

Instead, I’m recommending Ghostbuster Sequence because of its fundamental value.

Ghostbuster Sequence gives you a simple, easy, and effective system for doing followup, which is a success-multiplier habit that everybody pays lip service, to but that almost nobody teaches or gives practical recommendations on.

Following up means you can get way more out of way less — whether that’s leads, referrals, potential partnerships, etc.

Following up was instrumental in Nick’s own success, both back when he hunted for clients and today, when he’s interested in partnerships like the ones I listed above.

Nick has written down his followup system inside Ghostbuster Sequence, for you to use as-is.

Like I said, Ghostbuster Sequence currently sells for $54, but, in part due to my instigation, Nick is raising the price to $97 tomorrow, Thursday, at 10pm EST.

If you get it before then, you save yourself some money. You have a chance to put it to work sooner rather than later. Plus, you get a free bonus that sells for $54 on my site right now:

Secret of the Magi, which tells you the biggest lesson I’ve learned about how to open up cold conversations that lead to business partnerships, whether client work, or JV deals, or sponsorships.

For all that, here’s where to go, before the opportunity disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/ghostbuster

Knee deep in trying to create an offer

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Here are three stories of me being stuck up to the knee, and then unstuck, when creating an offer:

STORY 1, Feb 2020.

I had the idea to write a book about insight, working title, Gospel of Marketing Insight.

I collected a bunch of ideas, wrote out a bunch of note cards, organized the note cards, created an outline, started drafting chapters, gave drafts to people for feedback, got feedback.

I wasn’t really happy with what I had. I took a break. I came back to it. I started the process again.

Again, I wasn’t really happy with what I had. Again, I took a break. Again, I came back to it and started process… again.

And so on.

STORY 2, Nov 2024.

I had spent a few months going through Travis Sago’s Passive Cash Flow Mojo course from start to finish, several times, and taking notes, and reflecting, and coming up with ideas.

My goal was to come up with an idea for a continuity offer I could create.

I finally hit upon idea I liked — “a daily prompt for a daily email.” So I interviewed people. I came up with prompt categories and examples. I listed ideas for back-end offers.

“But I’m not just trying to sell a continuity offer,” I told myself.

I wanted to create something people would actually open and and read and use.

I got stuck on that last part. I had ideas, but they were vague. So I said to myself, “One of these days, I’ll sit down and flesh these ideas out, and then I’ll be ready to launch this new continuity offer.”

Days dragged on, then became weeks.

STORY 3, March 2026.

Another book idea, working title, The Art of Charging More.

I already had a bunch of content I could use in the form of emails I’d written.

Same story as book 1 above. I had an outline for the structure. Actually I had more than one outline. One step forward, two steps back. I was not really happy with what I had in any form. I decided to put the book aside because didn’t really know how to proceed.

So that was how I got stuck in three cases. Here’s how I got unstuck.

Well, maybe you can already guess.

For the past few days, I’ve been telling you about something I call Most Valuable Offer, which is basically a paid live workshop, with a publicly announced delivery date that’s coming up soon.

That’s what I did in each of the three situations above:

That unwritten book about insight? It became my Age of Insight training.

The waffling about how to make my daily prompt for a daily email both consumable and valuable became? That gave birth to my 3rd Conversion training, after which I finally did launch the daily prompt continuity offer, which is now called Daily Email Habit.

The book about pricing that I set aside? It spawned my Price Increase Promo Challenge, which I launched a few weeks ago. It might also lead to other live and paid workshops, after which I might finally be able to put together the book.

If you want to launch an info product, make it good and useful, and somehow overcome mental blocks, procrastination, perfectionism, or simply gaps in the material that you have collected, then I can personally recommend running a paid live workshop, with a deadline coming up soon.

It forces you to put out something by a given date, coming up soon…

It forces you to make your material good without trying to make it perfect…

It creates ideas and assets you can reuse, resell, or integrate into future offers…

It gives you an injection of cash…

… because while you’ve been stuck on a given offer, maybe you haven’t been making any other new offers, which translates into not making new money.

So for all those reasons and more, I recommend running a paid live workshop, with a deadline coming up soon, or, as I’ve termed it, launching a Most Valuable Offer.

And if you want to launch a Most Valuable Offer by the end of this month, April 2026, you can now get my help.

You get my experience and help in launching your new Most Valuable Offer, but just as importantly, you get a deadline, because this is happening now and not later.

For the full info:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/would-you-like-a-chocolate-chip-most-valuable-offer

Pirates, waddya gonna do

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Last week, Mercure and Svet Dimitrov, both members of my Monetization Mastermind group, ran a course launch.

The day after the launch ended, somebody who “bought” the course pirated the content and made it available for sale online.

Svet and Mercure investigated the offender!

And they found who done it!

“Now I got you, you son of a bitch!”

It turned out to be some girl in Illinois who had her credit card info stolen and who had no idea about the course.

In other words, nothing to do, nowhere to go.

I had almost the identical thing happen to me during a promo of Copy Riddles back in 2023.

The only difference was that I didn’t find Copy Riddles immediately for sale online. Instead, I found out about it when I got a chargeback a couple weeks after the promo.

Also some clueless girl from the heartland of America who had never heard of me or my Copy Riddles course.

I went to check the account associated with the name on my website, where the course is delivered. I saw a Ukrainian IP and all course pages cleanly swiped within 2 minutes after login, I’m guessing by a bot.

Waddya gonna do? I know what I did. I shrugged and put it out of my mind.

For this and many other reasons, I have long ago decided to avoid sailing where the pirates are, and to take harbor where pirates aren’t willing to follow me.

Specifically, I’ve decided to sail as little as possible on the risky, turbulent, pirate-infested Ocean Of Secrets, and to instead spend most my days cruising the safe, rich, and comfortable Sea Of Getting People Results.

That’s a metaphorical and philosophical shift, but it’s more than that. It’s also a matter of deliverables, and of the offers I’m making as well.

If you’d like an example, keep an eye out for my email tomorrow.

I will tell you about my Price Increase Challenge, which I will be launching next week, not with the goal of selling you hot and exclusive tactical info (“Raise your price exactly 18.2%!”)… but with the goal of getting you to actually run a promo to your list that boosts your positioning, and maybe even wins you a treasure chest of doubloons.

For solopreneurs making $10k+/month

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If you are a solopreneur or service provider making $10k/month or more, here’s an offer you might be interested in:

Less of YOU.

As in, you might be interested in trading in the business you’ve managed to build up so far with sweat and hustle… for a new business that can scale profitably, and that isn’t 100% tied to your energy, your availability, and your brainpower.

This offer, which goes under the name ScaleTribe, is being made by Michal Eisik.

If case you don’t know Michal, this transition is one she has made herself.

Michal started out as a busy and overdelivering freelance copywriter back in 2017.

She has since launched several courses (with hundreds of students)… a paid community… and a marketing agency… all while having not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but SIX (6!) children.

Plus as she wrote when she joined my Monetization Mastermind community, “Monday and Thursday evenings are sacred for netball.” (I had no idea what netball is. I looked it up. It turns out to be English basketball with a weird hoop.)

The reason Michal can do the course and the community and the agency is because she is smart and works hard, but also because she has formed a small but dedicated team of 5 people around her, and she has developed systems to actually get those people to deliver results that meet her standards.

(Smart and hard-working alone would not give her time enough to do a fraction of what she does, and still have time for 6 kids and twice-a-week netball.)

Michal ran the first ScaleTribe cohort last year, with 30 people — copywriters, owners of design agencies, brand experts, creative directors, and founders. Here are some of their experiences:

#1. “Before joining ScaleTribe, I was working myself to the bone, overloaded with projects, and trying to stay on top of every detail. They helped me finally hire VAs and get two digital courses up and running. Most of all, they changed the way I operate and view my business.”

#2. “ScaleTribe gave me everything I was hoping for. I’ve been able to use my time so much more efficiently by outsourcing and delegating work which doesn’t require my level of skill or knowledge.”

#3. “Being part of a group of like-minded business owners navigating similar challenges was incredibly grounding. But the biggest shift for me was in management: I gained real structure and direction.”

#4. “…actually got me to take action and refine valuable processes.”

#5. “It pushed me to finally do things I’d been thinking about for ages, things I’d watched others do but never got around to myself.”

Michal is launching ScaleTribe for the second-ever cohort next week (gulp, very soon).

It’s a big purchase and a big decision. I don’t expect you to make up your mind now or to buy based on this short email.

If you are interested, you can get more details on the following page:

https://bejakovic.com/scaletribe

… and Michal will also be hosting a webinar about ScaleTribe next Tuesday at 2pm EST, where you can get to meet her and see if you vibe with her. If you wanna register for that:

https://bejakovic.com/michalwebinar

PSA: Lock your laptop

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I’ve just came home from the Drassanes, Barcelona’s 13th-century-Gothic-shipyard-turned-maritime-museum.

I go there to work sometimes instead of sitting at home. The museum cafe attracts idle foreigners with laptops, like me, because it’s huge, old, beautiful, quiet, and free.

Until a few days ago, I was super casual with my stuff when working at the Drassanes. I’d leave my laptop, screen open, no password set, as I went to investigate the bathroom around the corner from the cafe.

I mean, it’s a museum, right? And just a bunch of other digital nomads sitting there, deep in their own worlds. Who’s gonna take my stuff?

Probably nobody.

Probably.

Even so, I’ve recently become paranoid.

My paranoia set in after I read Kieran Drew’s latest email, about the ordeal which followed after Kieran’s laptop and phone were stolen a few weeks ago, in Buenos Aires, where Kieran has been living lately (he is English).

As a result of the theft, Kieran has had his personal accounts hijacked, his money taken from his bank, and his half-finished book, which was only saved locally to his laptop, disappear in smoke.

Plus there was and is just a bunch of stress and fear… plus endless hours on the phone trying to recover what could be recovered… plus, I imagine, a feeling like you’ve been lobotomized, since all the stuff you rely on being there is simply not.

So yeah.

I finally put a password on my laptop. I’ve been keeping an eye on all those shifty nomads who pretend to work around me. And I’ll start being a little more diligent about backing things up, and security in general. In my paranoid state, I’m advising you to do the same.

And now, to the business end of this email:

Kieran, as you might know, is a guy who writes online.

Unlike many others who write online, Kieran makes a lot of money from it, over $1.4 million over the past four years.

Pretty magically, he does it by writing an email only once a week, and only about stuff that interests him (or that befalls him, like the recent theft).

Kieran has now put together a new guide about how to write online, about what you like, and make a living at it, even a very good living.

Spoiler alert:

Kieran’s guide is not filled with the newest and hottest tactical info. If you’ve seen it all before, and if you can only get aroused by the latest gimmick, you won’t find it in Kieran’s guide, or, for that matter, in Kieran’s other content.

What you will find is exactly what Kieran has done and found to work over the years, and the principled 4-step process he now teaches to others whom he has helped to succeed as well. If you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/writeonline

Justifying your existence

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Over the past couple months, I’ve been invited to join, for free, a mastermind that normally costs $50k/year.

The mastermind meets weekly on Thursdays.

I have been dutifully attending every week… until this last Thursday.

I didn’t really have anything new to crow about. I had made no progress on what I was working on the Thursday prior. I felt reluctant to go on the call and maybe have to admit that.

So I told myself I’m tired and I deserve a break, and I simply skipped the mastermind call, even though it’s a warm & welcoming environment, even though it’s filled with big-time marketers, and even though I have learned crazy things each time had I attended, and it seemed crazy to miss the opportunity to learn more.

I know this same feeling from when I had hired A-lister Dan Ferrari as a copywriting coach back in 2019-2020.

I felt pressure each week to come and show some sort of progress. It didn’t really impact what I did — I was doing my work already, and an additional weekly deadline couldn’t change that — but it definitely created extra stress for days in advance of each week’s call.

The weird thing is, I know this same feeling from the other side too.

I have in the past offered 1-1 coaching to people and charging them multiple thousands of dollars per month.

I ended up working with a few folks who already had successful email-based businesses. They were convinced that better email copy would help their business grow even more. They hired me to critique their emails regularly.

After two weeks of this, it inevitably came to pass that I had pointed out any technical issues with their emails, and they had plugged up these few copywriting holes.

But my coaching clients had hired me, liked me, and wanted ongoing feedback from me, or so I assumed. And so we kept getting on weekly hour-long calls, where I kept looking over their really very good emails, because I felt I had to justify my existence, because they had paid me.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

I don’t do copy critiques any more, and I don’t get on weekly coaching calls with people just because they paid me.

You don’t have to promise weekly 1-hour calls either… or offer 24/7 access to you over WhatsApp… or give away a year of your life to anybody just because you’re out of better ideas for what to offer.

You don’t have to justify your existence, or crack the whip to “motivate” people who are already stressed that they are not doing enough.

You can go from telling yourself you are good at what you do and you like the work, and that money is secondary… to telling yourself that you help motivated and resourceful people in your audience reach an outcome they want, and that you get paid accordingly.

Over the past couple weeks, I have been talking indirectly about repackaging your “coaching,” which you might be struggling to sell, into a $1k+ offer which is both easier to sell and deliver.

It’s time to get more direct.

Would you like to use your knowledge and skill to help people in your audience get results?

Would you like to have a $1k+ offer, which you can sell 3-5 times a month, and which you can deliver in 6 or fewer hours to start, and in less and less time with each subsequent sale?

Would you like my help in getting there?

If you would, hit reply. No pressure, and no commitment. We can simply see if it makes sense to work together, and if it does, you can make your decision then.

Become an investigative reporter with high-level salesmanship skills

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A bit of Bejako background:

I went to high school in a rich suburb of Baltimore, Maryland (we weren’t rich, but ok).

All the other kids in my class were ambitious and smart (one girl’s dad later won the Nobel Prize in chemistry). They worked hard their entire high school days. They ended up going to schools like Princeton and Stanford, and became lawyers and doctors and architects.

Meanwhile, 17-year-old Bejako had zero drive to go to college, and had no idea what kind of work he might ever want to do.

His best guess — the only option that kind of turned him on – was the idea of moving down to Annapolis, Maryland’s small, quaint, maritime capital, and becoming a reporter on some local newspaper that covered state politics.

Fast-forward to the present, and switch back to the first person:

While I never became a small-town reporter, the same lack of ambition and non-entrepreneurial nature I had in high school has stuck with me throughout life, now into middle age.

I am really not motivated by money, try as I have to change that. I’ve also never thought of myself as an entrepreneur or online business owner. And yet, that’s kind of what I’m doing now, and what’s more, I’m not really qualified to do anything else.

I’m telling you all this because a couple nights ago, I was reading a book about direct marketing. It said the following:

“Understanding your ultimate prospect has nothing to do with creativity. It requires relentless, investigative salesmanship. You need to become an investigative reporter with high-level salesmanship skills.”

“Hm,” I said to my pillow. “An investigative reporter on the salesmanship beat? That’s something I can imagine myself doing.”

And in fact, the very next day, I told myself to treat what I’m doing as investigative reporter. I started collecting data about offers I had made, successful or unsuccessful. I came up with theories about why things turned out as they did. I started trying to write up a story that makes sense that fits the data to the theory.

It’s been fun and it’s getting me to do things I should have been doing all along.

My point is not that you specifically should start treating your business as an investigative reporter.

My point is that, if “value-creating entrepreneur” or “small business owner” doesn’t really feel like a suit that fits you, there lots of other suits you can put on, including ones that you like the look of. And it will still be you inside the suit.

You gotta do certain things to see success if you have an email list and want to make money with it. Selling is one of them. Understanding your audience is another. Creating new offers is still another. But there are lots of ways to get yourself to do those things, including things that align with your own natural motivations and ambitions.

Or in the words of Internet marketer Rich Schefren, “Put your business goals of your self-development goals.” It’s much more likely you will see success if you work with your own psychology, rather than trying to change it.

So much for Monday Morning Mindset.

For some specific strategies on how to take your existing skills and interests and turn them into money, enough to pay for a house:

https://bejakovic.com/house

If nobody is taking you up on your coaching offer

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In the words of Bob Marley:

Sun is shining. The weather is sweet.

Make you want to launch a new offer that has some heat.

To the rescue. Here I am.

Over the past few months, I’ve heard a frustration from a number of readers who offer coaching. Here is a sample:

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I can’t get people to buy from my emails.

I have good engagement ( I think. I get a good amount of replies, and even more when I ask questions.)

I THINK my copy must be at least halfway decent because I have a self liquidating front end funnel on Facebook. Good take rate on upsells. People seem to like the products.

But I barely make any sales from daily emails.

Maybe 4 or 5 a month on a list of about 700.

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I followed up with this reader to ask what offers exactly he is making to his list. It turned out two kinds:

1. The upsells from his front end offer, and

2. Coaching

Like my reader says above, there’s a good take rate on his upsells when he sells his front-end offer. I can’t say for sure, but I’m guessing that most of the sales he does make on the back end come from people taking him up on those upsells as well.

Which leaves coaching…

… which nobody wants.

Now here’s my pet theory:

For the past couple of years, we were in this moment. Perhaps it was covid, or perhaps the fact that everything moved online. But everyone became a coach. And magically, coaching was selling, because… it was the moment.

But my long-running suspicion has been it will eventually get harder to sell coaching. Which is precisely what I’ve been seeing from readers like the reader above, who are offering coaching and seeing a response rate of a little over 0.

And now, I don’t mean to pry, but I do have a question for you.

Do you have the same problem? Do you offer coaching? And nobody’s buying?

To the rescue. Here I am.

I have a possible fix for you, which I’m calling the New “Wanna Get High?” Offer for coaches (a nod to Bob Marley above).

In case you’re interested, hit reply and tell me a bit about what you do, and who you do it for. In turn, I’ll tell you more about my New “Wanna Get High?” Offer, and you can then decide if it’s right for you.

To all my dog trainers, pottery instructors, and professional alpaca whisperers

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Yesterday I got a question from Liza Schermann, the original “Crazy Email Lady” and current head copywriter at surging startup Scandinavian Biolabs. Liza wanted to know:

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Why so tempting??

I promised myself never to click through to the sales page of Daily Email Habit. It’s too good an offer not to buy, but I knew I wouldn’t commit. Yesterday, I gave in and clicked against my better judgement.

Anyhow, now I’m wondering:

The example you provide on the sales page is very specific to online marketing. Are most of the prompts geared towards this crowd? Or is it a mix, and people can adjust as they see fit for their own purposes?

I happen to be in this crowd, so it makes perfect sense to me. But maybe there’s a dog trainer, a pottery instructor, or a professional alpaca whisperer on your list who’s scratching their head wondering what to do with a prompt about daily emails (or something similar).

===

I got variants of this question all week. In a nutshell:

Daily emails, like the kind Daily Email Habit gets you to write (including the sample prompt on the sales page) will work in any business or industry. The only caveat is you must be willing to put yourself (or some sort of avatar you write behind) as the face of that business.

In fact, that’s the point of daily emails, unpleasant though it may sound.

You’re ultimately selling yourself as the product, rather than whatever your “product” officially is. In the words of Dan Kennedy, a direct marketer who has managed to sell himself for millions and millions of dollars:

“The higher up in income you go, the more you’re paid for who you are, rather than what you do.”

So now the question becomes, are daily emails, the way Daily Email Habit helps you to write, a fit for you?

Only you can decide that.

Maybe you don’t like the business of selling you, even for a premium, and maybe you want your products or services to stand for themselves, at competitive market rates.

That’s a fine decision. In this case, don’t go the daily email route, because the relationship and authority you build up will only interfere with people buying from you on the strength of your product or price alone.

On the other hand, if you want to charge higher prices… or surround yourself with a moat that’s not easily crossed by marauding neighbors… or have a ready source of income whenever your business or personal life needs it… then daily emails work great.

And Daily Email Habit will help you write them, in an effective and (relatively) painless way, whether you are a dog trainer, pottery instructor, or professional alpaca whisperer.

But that doesn’t change the cruel truth:

The price for Daily Email Habit is going up tonight at 12 midnight PST, from a modest $30/month to an obscene $50/month.

If you’re considering getting in before the price increases for ever and ever, and you want the full info on DEH:

https://bejakovic.com/deh/

Others get audited for their travel and entertainment deductions… YOU deduct TWICE as much, yet get no flack from the IRS

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This week I’m promoting Jeanne Willson and Kirsten Graham’s free training on how solopreneurs can offload their bookkeeping without paying CPA prices.

Unfortunately, I know very little about the world of taxes or bookkeeping.

Fortunately, I know something about copywriting, and the world of direct marketing. That’s how I know of a sales bullet, written by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos, in a blockbuster sales letter from 1996:

“Others get audited for their travel and entertainment deductions. You deduct TWICE as much, yet get no flack from the IRS. The secret is on page 18.”

In case you’re curious about the secret to not getting audited while others do, it’s this, from page 18 of the book Parris was promoting (I’m summarizing):

Submit documentation and proof along with your tax return. The IRS officially discourages attached proof and evidence. Even so, it’s a proven recipe to reducing your chances of an audit, because while audits are triggered automatically, they are reviewed by a live human, and a human might look at your attached proof and decide your claims are legit.

This info, which supposedly comes from a well-connected IRS insider, is from the 1990s.

Is it still true today?

I cannot say. If you’re really worried about getting audited, I would refer you to Thursday’s training by Jeanne and Kirsten.

Jeanne and Kirsten will share a plan to take care of the looming cloud of a tax audit, without paying the $200-$500 per month that you would pay to your local CPA.

And yes, there will be a done-for-you service for sale at the end of Thursday’s training to make your tax worries disappear.

And yes, I will get paid something as an affiliate if you take Jeanne and Kirsten up on this offer.

But I’m not getting paid anything to plug Jeanne and Kirsten’s training on Thursday, which will be valuable and instructive on its own, whether you choose to buy the offer at the end.

If you would like to sign up for this free training, and reclaim the part of your brain that’s worried about taxes:

https://lessmathmoremoney.com/