One Man Businesses

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).

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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/

You can laugh at tax worries — if you follow this simple plan

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Next Thursday, November 6, at 2pm EST/11am PST, Jeanne Willson and Kirsten Graham will put on a free training about the sexy and exciting topic of taxes. The full title:

“How Online Business Owners Can Get Their Books Organized Before April 15, 2026 (Without Paying CPA Prices)”

I met Jeanne and Kirsten earlier this year within a small paid community I’m a member of.

The two of them partner together in several businesses that support solopreneurs, or as they put it, “business owners who need help the most.”

Jeanne and Kirsten’s training will be about how you can offload bookkeeping from your head if you are doing it yourself currently… or finally get it done if you are (gulp) not doing anything about your taxes at the moment, and are simply hoping this problem will somehow fix itself before tax day comes.

Jeanne and Kirsten will share a plan to take care of this looming cloud 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/

What I would do if I won $500 million tomorrow

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A friend of mine recently interviewed at a high-tech company, one that start with N and ends with A and sells AI chips.

He had contacts inside the company who were coaching him on the interview process. Along with the gamut of technical questions, these contacts told him to prepare for some unusual life riddles, such as:

“If you somehow won $500 million tomorrow, what would you do with your life?”

… the right answer apparently being, “I would still work at a high-tech company, preferably one that start with N and ends with A and sells AI chips.”

I asked myself what I would do if I suddenly had 500 million.

I guess if I’ve learned one thing about myself over my life it’s that, regardless of what significant changes occur, including places to live, income levels, or accomplishments achieved, I quickly feel the same.

I used to think that’s a bad thing. Now I just take it as a fact of life, like having a nose.

And so, outside of maybe some initial splurge spending (maybe a pinball machine?), I imagine I’d keep living pretty much as I already do, and doing what I already do.

One thing I’m sure would not change is that I’d keep writing in some form, because I enjoy it.

It’s quite possible I’d keep writing about the same stuff I write about now, because it’s the stuff that interests me personally, and that I think about even when I am not officially “working.”

It’s even possible I’d keep writing this daily email as is, because I already have a significant audience, and I enjoy the validation, feedback, and even impact that I can have when people read and consider what I write.

“Good for you,” I hear you saying. “If big corporations ever start hiring daily email writers, you will be well qualified with your answer.”

Fair enough. Perhaps you don’t feel the same about writing.

Perhaps writing doesn’t come naturally. Perhaps it’s not something you think about during the day. Perhaps it’s something you only are considering because it could be useful for your business, maybe as a stepping stone to your own $500 million Avalon.

That’s fine. In fact, that’s a good thing.

Whether writing is something you truly crave or not, it can be tremendously useful for your business.

And if writing is something you find a bit enjoyable, but also a bit of a chore, then I’ve created a service to make that chore faster and easier and maybe even more fun to complete each day.

For more information on that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Free training by million-dollar list owner

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This Monday, October 6, at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST, Chris Orzechowski is putting on a training called “5 Steps To A Million Dollar List.”

In case you don’t know Chris, he himself is the owner of a million-dollar list. He’s built a 7-figure list-based business selling offers around copywriting and email marketing, both to copywriters and big ecom businesses.

For the record, Chris’s list is currently under 13k people.

A few years ago, back in 2021, Chris made $996k with a list of just 6k people. Business Insider wrote up a profile of him because of this.

All that’s to say, Chris knows what he’s talking about — and the stuff he’s talking about is doable for others too.

I haven’t seen Chris’s training yet, but I know his philosophy of email marketing. It’s to email daily, sending out emails pretty much like the one you’re reading now.

Chris is gonna be kicking off an 8-week coaching program in October, guiding a group of people who wanna build the kind of profitable list business he himself has.

Monday’s “Million Dollar List” training is gonna be a kind of appetizer for that.

Chris says it will be a deep dive into list growth and monetization strategies that have worked for him.

So if you attend Chris’s training on Monday, you might learn something valuable and lucrative, maybe something you apply to your own list and your own biz starting Tuesday morning.

And if you’re interested in getting outside help and guidance in building the same kind of lean, profitable, list-based business Chris has, then Monday’s training will also be a chance to see if Chris is the guy for you.

If you’d like to attend, here’s the link to sign up:

https://bejakovic.com/mdl

Free 14-day course after making $1.4M by writing online

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My friend Kieran Drew asked me to share a free 14-day course he is about to launch, so that’s what I’m doing.

In case you don’t know Kieran, the man used to pull teeth and make gums bleed for a living. Sensing there might be something more to life, Kieran quit his 9-5 as a dentist and started writing online.

That was 4 years ago, this coming September 2nd.

Kieran likes to celebrate momentous events in his life by putting together overly generous offers. And so it is this time.

Kieran is about to launch a 14-day email course about the insights that have allowed him to make over $1.4 million over the past 4 years by writing online, first on Twitter and then via his newsletter.

And to atone for all the pulled teeth and bleeding gums, Kieran is making this course free. But you have to sign up in time, by September 2. That’s this coming Tuesday.

I won’t be writing more about Kieran’s overly generous offer. So if you’d like to get paid to write online, about stuff that interests you, and if you want to hear what wisdom Kieran can share based on his successful journey, then I suggest you sign up now, before it slips your mind and slips away forever:

https://bejakovic.com/4years

Copy Riddles customers hit jackpot with “Unannounced Bonus” scheme

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If you are a Copy Riddles customer, I sent you an email earlier today. That email talks about an unannounced bonus you can get right now. I personally paid $997 for this offer last year. But thanks to my threatening and cajoling and deal-making on your behalf, you can now get this same offer for absolutely free.

The chance to grab this unannounced bonus for free is valid until next Sunday, July 20, at 12 midnight PST. So if you haven’t yet seen that email I’ve sent you or acted on it, it might be worth doing so now.

And if you are not yet a Copy Riddles customer, I’d like to share something that can be useful if you sell your own courses or create your own offers.

I have a long-standing policy of doing right by previous customers. It has worked well for me — customers stick around, are always grateful and excited when I run a new promo to promote an offer they already bought, keep reading my emails and buying new offers.

But this “Unannounced Bonus” scheme has developed into a sales argument as well.

Because I promote my courses with special events and special new bundles of bonuses, and because I make those available to previous customers, the sooner somebody decides to buy, the more they end up benefiting in time.

For example, had you bought Copy Riddles a couple years ago, you would now also have:

* Copywriting Portfolio Secrets (which I later sold for $97)

* Horror Stories For Sales (which I later sold for $200)

* $2k Advertorial Consult (which a business owner paid me $2k for, and which lays out my entire process for writing advertorials that drove tens of millions of dollars in ecom sales)

So if you have offers of your own, it might be worth considering implementing an “Unannounced Bonus” policy like this, and then announcing it loudly, not only your customers, but also to your prospects, and using it as a sales tool.

Of course, that’s exactly what I’m doing here.

I will be running a promo for Copy Riddles over the next week. I will talk in great detail about that $997 bonus which will be available for free during the promo, plus I will give you a couple other good reasons why you might want to get Copy Riddles now rather than later.

But why might you want to get Copy Riddles at all? I mean, at $997, it’s a very, very expensive course.

My claim is that Copy Riddles allows you to own A-list copywriting skills more quickly than you would ever believe. If you want to find out how Copy Riddles does this, the mechanism behind why people say it’s “the best course I’ve ever taken, bar none” and “the most brilliant course concept I’ve ever seen,” I’ve written it all up here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

The moat of asking for help

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A few months ago got an email from copywriter Suraj Punjabi. I know Suraj from the PCM community I worked in as a coach last year.

Suraj and I exchanged a couple emails, in one of which Suraj opened up and shared some pretty personal stuff. I’m reprinting it below, with Suraj’s permission. It’s a long message but worth reading in detail if you are looking for clients, copywriting or otherwise. Says Suraj:

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I’ve been on a dry spell since April, but I finally landed a gig thankfully.

It turns out I was busy doing cold outreach that didn’t bother looking at my own data.

So in January, I did just that. Gave cold outreach a break and looked at my own data hard.

And I noticed that literally 100% of my clients for the past 5 years came from referrals through connections I made from Facebook.

I felt pretty dumb for abandoning such a proven strategy in favor of cold emailing.

So, when I went back to leveraging this strategy, I immediately started getting inbound leads.

One of them, a 9-figure powerhouse in the keto space, just became a client.

In fact, I’m starting with them TODAY.

Oh and another gig I got was working under a senior copywriter who currently has his plate full and needed help with emails.

I’ll never forget the lesson life just taught me.

Some coaches swear by cold outreach, others by Upwork, LinkedIn, or X.

They might be right in their own way.

But nothing beats looking at your own past data to see where most of your clients have come from and doubling down on that.

Of course, this is not exactly newbie stuff. You need to have solid data. And I have 5 years worth.

Since PCM until today, I have sent at least 5000 cold outreaches using different strategies.

I have done PCM, I have tried sending conversation starters…

I have tried sending personalized Looms to show them how they can get more subscribers to their list…

I have pitched low risk offers like helping them write a blog just to get my foot in the door.

I made a LinkedIn profile and paid monthly for the premium subscription.

I even went back to Upwork to compete against $10/email copywriters! 🤢🤢🤢🤢

And none of those strategies held a candle to simply reaching out to my Facebook network and asking for help.

Not saying those other strategies don’t work. Perhaps they do work for some people (I know PCM works for A LOT of people), but it didn’t work for me.

Felt like a fish being told to fly. haha.

I felt so stupid when I realized it.

But oh well.

Lesson learned.

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Two things to point out:

The first is the obvious — expert opinion doesn’t mean much compared to your own direct experience.

The second is less obvious, and it’s where Suraj says, “And none of those strategies held a candle to simply reaching out to my Facebook network and asking for help.”

Asking for help.

Most people don’t have a problem asking for the time, or for directions, or for a book to borrow.

But asking for help finding work — something that suggest genuine unokayness on your part — is something that few people are willing to do.

I never really did it when I was a freelance copywriter, and in need of work, except tentatively, with a few previous clients. (Even that rare and hesitant asking for help got me new leads.)

All that’s to say:

Asking for help works. People like feeling helpful, useful, and important.

At the same time, most people won’t ever ask for help, not in things like getting work, because it’s too threatening to the ego.

That just means that, if you can get over your own hesitations about asking for help, then you’ve just created a kind of moat around yourself and your success, which the hordes of others in your industry are not able to swim, jump, or walk across.

That’s my message for you today.

My offer to you today is my new 10 Commandments book, because this asking for help is actually Commandment I in the book.

It’s easy to read this book and think, “Oh these are interesting ideas, maybe I could use one of them in an email or a headline.”

But the fact is, each of the commandments in this book deals with the fundamentals of effective communication, and each is applicable to pretty much any problem you might be facing, whether personal or business. If you haven’t yet gotten your copy:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

How to completely dismantle your pre-talk nerves

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A couple days ago, a new Amazon review popped up for my “10 Commandments of Con Men etc” (5-stars; “Here’s why you should buy two copies…”).

That review came from Matt Cascarino, who is the chief creative officer at FARM, a marketing agency that’s had among its clients the American Cancer Society, the SPCA, New Era (the company that makes Major League Baseball’s official caps), and Kelley Blue Book.

I know Matt reads my emails and I have interacted with him before, so I wrote him an email to say thanks for the nice review. To which Matt responded with an even better testimonial:

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I just got home from a new business pitch where I worked SIX commandments into my 18 minutes of material. Specifically, “commit to the bit” completely dismantled my typical pre-talk nerves.

I genuinely enjoy presenting, but your book helped me be more methodical when mapping out my talk.

Thanks for reaching out. Your book is insanely good and worth every hour you poured into it.

And no, your mom didn’t tell me to say that.

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I’m about to give you a link to my 10 Commandments book in a bit, and if you haven’t yet read it, maybe Matt’s experience and recommendation will convince you to do so.

But before you go, here’s a tip I learned early in my email marketing career, which I didn’t realize the full power of until last year:

It’s okay to email people one-on-one.

That might seem like a particularly stupid point to make, but the fact is, having an email newsletter does something to the brain, and many people, myself included on occasion, start to think that the only way to reach out to people who have signed up to your newsletter is via broadcast emails, preferably ones that start with “Dear Friend.”

No.

You can write people on your list one-on-one, over and above broadcast emails.

Again, that might seem super obvious. What is less obvious is that I’ve used this strategy to make valuable connections with prospects right when they sign up to my list… to drive in sales that would never have happened otherwise… and to get nice extra testimonials like the one that Matt gave me (which my mom confirms she had no part of).

And now, as promised, here’s my new 10 Commandments book, to help you dismantle your pre-talk nerves, or take away the sting from objections to your offer, or hide a secret in plain sight:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments