Business Ideas

If you’d like to partner with businesses on the back end…

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a new “back end” partnership I was testing out.

A business owner, who spends $700 a day on Facebook ads to generate leads, is converting a minuscule share of these leads to clients, while doing no ongoing followup with the rest.

After 2 minutes of talking to this guy over Zoom, we made a preliminary partnership deal:

1. He’d give me control of his email list.

2. I’d see what I could do.

3. If I could do something, we’d keep working together and split the profits.

4. If I could not, I’d have spent a bit of time writing a few emails for this guy for nothing, and he’d have spent a bit of time to talk to me over Zoom, also for nothing.

After I sent out that email, I got a reply from a Spanish copywriter, who wrote:

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I’m not sure if you’ll read this email, since I assume you’ll receive a lot.

But what you mentioned today really interests me. In my country (Spain), I don’t see the practice of sending a daily email as a very common one. Often, they don’t even use email as a sales channel.

In my niche (trading and finance), I see a lot of people with large social media followers who don’t follow up via email.

And that’s a service I’d like to offer: using other email lists and earning a commission on the sales those emails generate. But the question is…

How do you know for sure how many sales the list owner is making thanks to emails?

How do you know how many of those sales come from emails?

Should we trust the list owner?

Can they somehow give you access so you can see the sales generated yourself?

Thank you. I love your writing and job!

===

Maybe I’m projecting here, but the underlying frame I see in this reader’s questions is, “Will I get screwed? Will the owner not pay me for some sales I made him? Will there be INJUSTICE, perpetrated against ME?”

That’s the wrong way to look at it.

If you ask me, the right way to look at it is, does this make good sense for me to do now, and to keep doing?

When the topic of doing work on commission comes up, people often get hung up on revshare percentages, splits, tiers, contracts, agreements, and the technology of tracking, reporting, and checking whether sales you made were correctly attributed to you or not.

Ultimately none of that matters.

What matters is, are you happy with the money that ends up coming in as a result of the investment that you made?

If that works for you, then my advice is to stop stressing about the possible injustice — that somebody somewhere failed to pay you what you are due.

Travis Sago, who runs a “back end agency” that does exactly these kind of back-end partnerships, once proposed a thought experiment.

Imagine betting $1 on a coin flip. You put in $1, and then flip a coin. If the coin comes up heads, you lose your $1. If it comes up tails, you win $100.

Travis’s point was, keep putting in your $1, and keep flipping the coin. Even if the odds aren’t exactly 50-50, soon enough, you will be more than rich.

So much for a new perspective. Now for the offer.

If you are interested in partnering with businesses on the “back end” and maximizing your chances of success at every step, then Travis has an entire course about this, called BEAMER.

That course sells for $2,900. (It’s actually what I paid for it last year.)

$2,900 is a good deal for BEAMER, because if BEAMER leads you to even one modestly successful, one-time partner deal, it will pay for its $2,900 price tag, and then some.

And maybe you’ll have more than just one modestly successful, one-time partner deal.

Maybe you can take it as far as Travis has taken it, and make a few million dollars each year, simply partnering ongoing with people who aren’t really doing much with their email lists.

Now at this point, I could simply link to the BEAMER sales page, except…

There’s also another way to get BEAMER, at 1/10th (one-tenth) the price that it sells for via Travis’s site.

Travis also gives away BEAMER as a free bonus for those who sign up to his Royalty Ronin community, and who stay signed up past the free 7-day trial.

A month of Royalty Ronin will cost you $290.

That’s not exactly $1. But to me, it’s a reasonable investment — a reasonable wager to stake — to get set up with with inside knowledge on running back-end agency from someone who’s made millions from doing so… and to see if you are happy with the money that ends up coming to you as a result of this knowledge.

If you’d like to start a “back end agency” and you want to learn from an expert who’s done it before:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

If nobody wants your profit-making offer, give it away

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Yesterday I organized a Zoom call for a few list owners.

One of these, a successful copywriter and marketer, was asking how to price, or how to persuade businesses to take him up on, his newfangled sales machine.

“Is $15k a year a good offer? The sales machine is super valuable, and has produced great results for the businesses who have used it. But it’s been a hard sell.”

I thought it was instructive that a successful copywriter and marketer was asking this question.

My answer was, if this thing produces sales so well, why not package up the results into a nice gift box, and sell that gift box instead?

In other words, instead of persuading business owners to buy a gizmo that costs $15k a year and promises to produce sales… why not persuade them to accept new money in the bank, which they can pay you a finders fee for?

In the words of marketing legend Claude Hopkins, who became the modern equivalent of a billionaire using little more than a typewriter:

“In every business expenses are kept down. I could never be worth more than any other man who could do the work I did. The big salaries were paid to salesmen, to the men who brought in orders, or to the men in the factory who reduced the costs. They showed profits, and they could command a reasonable share of those profits. I saw the difference between the profit-earning and the expense side of a business, and I resolved to graduate from the debit class. “

“Yes,” I hear someone saying in the back, “but business owners should already know that a sales gizmo isn’t really an expense, because it will help them make money. They should be smart enough to see a profit-generating solution when they see one. They should they should they should.”

Yes, they should.

But they don’t, just in the same way that the successful copywriter above should have remembered the century-old lesson that turned Claude Hopkins into a billionaire, but he didn’t.

The fact is, we have limited time and attention and energy, and doing the work of translation — of turning what we have into what we could possibly have, of what we buy into what it could do for us, of what we sell into what people really want — requires time and effort.

You can argue against this aspect of reality. Or you can work with it, and simply translate what you sell into a result that people care about, and that they can take you up on without risk.

Moving on.

I recently got a bunch of feedback from my readers, and I found that a large number of people list, as their #1 goal, getting consistent with emailing daily.

Maybe you too feel you should should should be writing consistent daily emails. But you still don’t do it.

If it’s not happening, and if it’s important to you, maybe it’s time for to take a different tack:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

How to 3x your price and have clients say it’s still too cheap

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Inside my recently resurrected Daily Email House community, I ran a poll asking folks if they have ever made an offer for $1k+.

I got a response to that from Jordan Parker, who owns Parker Labs, which from what I understand is a kind of boutique agency that provides operations support for online creators. Jordan wrote:

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I have the dumbest story on this from 2 years ago:

Decided I want to practice downsells… but in sales calls.

And I SUCK at sales calls.

(I’m too eager to solve problems and forget to, you know, sell)

So, I intentionally threw a few extra things in & offered my typical $10k offer for $30k – planning to have this cool moment where I scratch the extra features off on one side as I scratch off the price & write a lower price on the other.

Perfect plan. Perfect visual anchor for the downsell.

Except…

The person just said “yes” instantly, and I didn’t even get to try my plan.

(he actually said it’s too cheap)

Sure, $30k isn’t that much for most businesses (and my IT agency’s usual deals had at least 1 more zero), but for some reason when I was the person closing it felt like a LOT. I was pretty surprised after.

(and just mildly annoyed that I didn’t get to test my system 😅)

But if you want to up your prices, give it a shot – list a bunch of stuff and get ready to cross out some of it. Many people will want everything. Getting everything feels nice.

And you always have an out and your old price as a “backup”

===

Upsells — addons you make to your core offer — are often seen as allowing your customers to spoil themselves, or maybe a play to their inertia.

The typical example is buying a new car, when a customer ends up agreeing to the the “nitrogen-filled tires” or “key replacement insurance,” simply because they are not thinking right at the moment.

But that exploitative way is not the only way to do upsells.

There’s a good chance people need your upsells to actually get value out of your core offer.

Your prospects can sense this on their own. Or maybe, they are simply eager to solve their problem completely, and so they put themselves into your hands, since they have decided to trust you.

My point being:

Rather than asking “What’s the amount I’m most likely to get my customer to pay,” ask yourself, “What’s the amount that’s most likely to fix their problem fully?”

If you ask yourself that, and if you bundle all of the resulting upsells and downsells and crosssells into a single sale, you can 3x your price, like Jordan did above, and still have your prospect say it seems too cheap.

In other news:

When people ask to join Daily Email House, I ask them what their #1 goal is right now.

A buncha people have replied something along the lines of writing emails consistently, even daily:

#1. “Learn to write engaging and persuasive daily emails”

#2. “Get back to writing consistently”

#3.”Mail daily”

#4. “Consistency”

If writing emails better and consistently is your goal, then I have my simple Daily Email Habit to offer you.

Every day, you get a prompt to write a daily email, which is based on my own experience writing thousands of sales emails, both for clients and for myself.

Every day, you also get 2-3 “hints,” which are really a steady drip of how-to info on influential and persuasive writing.

When you combine this with any email software (​Beehiiv​ works fine) and the ongoing support inside ​Daily Email House​ (free), you have most of what you need to succeed.

One thing that’s still needed is your own commitment. Only you can provide that.

If you have it, and you want my help in getting consistent with writing daily emails:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Announcing: My new old Skool group

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About 6 weeks ago, I closed down my Skool group, at that time called Daily Email House.

I wanted to see if this group could be useful to people writing dailyish emails, and have a life of its own, as a kind of meeting point or social club, even without me at the center of it.

That concept did not work out. And so, in a moment of laziness and shortsightedness, I shut the group down.

But maybe the group could work well in some other way?

That question has been rattling around my head the past few weeks.

I reactivated the group this morning.

It turns out that since I had let the group lapse, I have lost my custom URL, which is actually a good thing.

It will allow me to change the URL and the name and even the concept of the group going forward.

I don’t know what that new concept will be yet.

The group members and I work it out as we go along.

One change so far is that I’ve decided to open this group up to other people on my list.

Another change is that I’ll give some sort of central mission to the group, where there wasn’t one before.

Again, I don’t know what that will be.

For now, as a placeholder, and a play on the group’s old name, I’ve set the group’s mission as “Use your email list to pay for a house. Or a car. Or a trip to Spain.”

But that mission is likely to change.

In fact, you can influence it, and make it useful and relevant to you.

You’re invited to join me inside this group. If you’d like to do so:

https://bejakovic.com/house

Nobody’s perfect: I give 4 stars to this new reviewer of my book

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Jerry: Osgood, I’m gonna level with you. We can’t get married at all.

Osgood: Why not?

Jerry: Well, in the first place, I’m not a natural blonde.

Osgood: Doesn’t matter.

Jerry: I smoke! I smoke all the time!

Osgood: I don’t care.

Jerry: Well, I have a terrible past. For three years now, I’ve been living with a saxophone player.

Osgood: I forgive you.

Jerry: [tragically] I can never have children!

Osgood: We can adopt some.

Jerry: But you don’t understand, Osgood! Ohh… [Jerry pulls off his wig] I’m a man!

Osgood: [shrugs] Well, nobody’s perfect.

Those are the closing lines of the greatest comedy of all time, as ranked by American Film Institute, namely, Some Like It Hot.

These lines came to mind because last night I checked the Amazon page for my new 10 Commandments book.

I published the book back in May, and though reviews were slow to come at first, I have amassed 46 reviews so far. Well, 46 ratings, from 1 to 5 stars, most of which don’t actually have any kind of review text beyond the number of stars.

So far, while I’ve gotten a couple 4-star ratings and even a 3-star, all the actual thoughtful reviews with written words were accompanied by 5 star ratings as well.

Until last night.

I now have a new text-based review, only 4 stars, which says:

“Book is 5 stars really but nothings perfect… This book seriously is a must read as you will understand at a deeper level human nature…”

What to say?

I give this reviewer 4 stars. I would give him or her 5 stars for the nice things said about my book… but nobody’s perfect.

In any case, if you STILL haven’t yet read my “must-read” book that will help you “understand at a deeper level human nature” — and you know who you are, and I know you are reading — then here’s where to find the number one comedy… and pickup… and con game… and hypnosis… and sales etc. book, as rated by the BFI, the Bejako Fund of Infotainment:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

It took me two minutes to take control of a valuable email list

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“So you just would like to use our email list, and go from there?”

“Yep, pretty much.”

“Ok. Awesome. Awesome. Let’s do it. I don’t see why not.”

Yesterday I got on a call with a business owner. He runs $700 worth of Facebook ads per day, and has been for past two years, to get qualified prospects onto sales calls.

He does no followup after that and doesn’t send any emails.

I made him an offer of “lemme see if I can make sales for you on commission only via email.”

He said yes after the first two minutes of the call. By the end of the 15-minute call, he had already created an account for me in his GHL and given me access to his entire email list.

My point today is something I have heard for years, but that I didn’t really experience directly until yesterday:

Good partners are resourceful, quick to act, and ready to share access to underused assets. And they are out there.

I don’t know what this has to do with my current promotion, the Love/Hate AI event, based around Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery. The only connection is that I myself might soon be using Gasper’s advice around AI for a lot more than just research.

In any case, if you would like to know more about ChatGPT Mastery and my current and soon-disappearing bonus to go with it, here are the details:

#1. ChatGPT Mastery is a cohort course — it kicks off and ends on a specific date — that helps you actually integrate and benefit from AI.

The idea being, things in the AI space are changing so fast that anything that came out even a few months ago is likely to be out of date.

And rather than saying “Oh let me spend a few dozen hours every quarter researching the latest advice on how to actually use this stuff” — because you won’t, just like I won’t – you can just get somebody else to do the work of cutting a path for you through the quickly regenerating AI jungle.

#2. I myself have gone through through ChatGPT Mastery, from A-Z, all 30 days, earlier this year.

I didn’t pay for it because I was offered to get in for free.

I did go through it first and foremost for my own selfish interests — I feel a constant sense of guilt over not using AI enough in what I do — and only then with a secondary goal of promoting it if I benefited from it enough. So here I am.

#3. Gasper, the guy behind ChatGPT Mastery, is an ex-Boston Consulting Group guy and from what I can tell, one of those hardworking and productive consulting types, the kind I look upon with a mixture of wonder and green envy.

But to hear Gasper tell it, he quit his consulting job to have more freedom, started creating info products online like everybody else, realized he had just bought himself another 70 hr/week job, and then had the idea to automate as much of it as he could with AI.

He’s largely succeeded — he now spends his mornings eating croissants and sipping coffee while strolling around his new home in Mimizan, France, because most of his work of content creation and social media and even his trip planning have been automated in large part or in full.

#4. Before I went through the 30 days of ChatGPT Mastery, I had already been using ChatGPT daily for a couple years. Inevitably, that means a good part of what Gasper teaches was familiar to me.

Other stuff he teaches was simply not relevant (I won’t be using ChatGPT to write my daily emails, thank you, though I might use it to help if I start working with partners). The way I still benefited from ChatGPT Mastery was:

– By having my mind opened to using ChatGPT for things for things I hadn’t thought of before (just one example: I did a “dopamine reset” protocol over 4 weeks, which was frankly wonderful, and which ChatGPT designed for me, and which I got the idea for while doing ChatGPT Mastery)

– By seeing Gasper’s very structured, consulting-minded approach to automating various aspects of his business, and being inspired to port some of that to my own specific situation

– With several valuable meta-prompts that I continue to use, such as the prompt for generating custom GPTs

#5. The way you could benefit from ChatGPT Mastery is likely to be highly specific to what you do and who you are.

The program focuses on a different use case every day. Some days will be more relevant to you than others. Some of the topics include competitor analysis, market intel based on customer calls or testimonials, and of course the usual stuff like content and idea generation, plus hobuncha more.

If you do any of the specific things that Gasper covers, and if you do them on at least an occasional basis, then odds are you will get a great return on both the time and money and that ChatGPT Mastery requires of you, before the 30 days are out.

Beyond that, ChatGPT Mastery can open your mind to what’s possible, give you confidence and a bunch of examples to get you spotting what could be automated in what you do, plus the techniques for how to do it.

#6. The time required for ChatGPT Mastery is about 15-20 minutes per day for 30 days. The money required is an upfront payment of $297.

I can imagine that one or the other of these is not easy for you to eke out in the current moment.

All I can say is that it’s an investment that’s likely to pay you back many times over, in terms of both time and money. And the sooner you make that investment, the greater and quicker the returns will come.

#7. To make sure ChatGPT Mastery is effectively free for you on day 0, I am also adding in a bonus with an equivalent real-world value. It’s a training called Age of Insight, which I sold for $297 when I gave it live a couple years ago.

Age of Insight has nothing to do with AI. Instead, it’s complementary, hence the Love/Hate AI name of this promo:

If Gasper’s ChatGPT Mastery helps you eliminate the parts of your work that you hate, Age of Insight will help you be better at things you love to do, at least if you’re anything like me — things like influencing and impacting people, often with written words alone.

The deadline to get Age of Insight along with ChatGPT Mastery is this Thursday at 12 midnight PST.

If you’d like to find out the full details about ChatGPT Mastery, or to get it now and get Age of Insight for free:

https://bejakovic.com/gasper

P.S. If you decide to get ChatGPT Mastery, then forward me your receipt, and I will get you access to Age of Insight.

P.P.S. If you bought ChatGPT Mastery when I promoted it before, then this bonus is for you too. So is the deadline. Write me before Thursday at 12 midnight PST to say you want the bonus, and I’ll get it to you.

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

Split-brain spending

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“You want my eternal admiration?” my friend Marci asked me. “Go talk to that girl.”

He pointed out a tall blonde, with very upright posture and a confident “don’t mess with me” walk, who was dressed in an expensive-looking and fashionable outfit. She had just turned the corner from Passeig de Gracia, Spain’s most expensive shopping street, full of luxury brand stores, to a less glamorous side street.

Don’t you worry.

This is not an email about pickup. Rather, it’s an email about a strange shopping behavior, which has gotten the name “split-brain spending.”

Split-brain spending involves buying most things discount so you can splurge on luxury items.

For example, the fashionable, attractive, intimidating blonde I saw yesterday took a few more steps and went inside an Aldi, a discount supermarket that’s something like Kmart in the US, if you remember those before they went bankrupt.

I didn’t follow her in there, and so I didn’t find out whether she shops in Aldi regularly in order to afford an occasional $1,500 Louis Vuitton bag or $400 Prada sunglasses or $700 Hermes silk scarf.

But apparently, it’s a common-enough phenomenon.

The Wall Street Journal wrote up an article about it back in 2023.

At that time, inflation was a relatively new experience for most folks.

People were getting stressed and exhausted by it, and they vented by “revenge spending” on luxury things like clothes or international travel or maybe a fancy leather couch.

That’s why between 2020 and 2023, the luxury market outstripped overall retail sales, with 70% growth for luxury, compared to overall retail’s modest 25% growth.

I checked this morning, and it seems the luxury market constricted in 2024 for the first time in 15 years.

Even so, the bigger point still stands, and it stands in all economic seasons.

People will buy to treat and spoil themselves, even if they are conscious of spending normally, or even if they don’t have all that much money overall.

“Economists call this an attempt to reclaim agency over their finances,” says that WSJ article.

So my point for today is to give your customers that opportunity, even if you normally sell budget offers or give away stuff for free. Add in some high-ticket “spoil and splurge” items that tap into split-brain spending, and allow your customers to buy a feeling of control over their lives.

In my email yesterday, I asked what offers you might have bought for $200 or over, which really delivered value in your life, beyond simply being fun to consume or exciting to buy.

I got a number of replies to that, mainly about courses. But I also got a message from a reader named Robert (not sure he wants me to share his last name). Robert wrote about a $300 hair drier his wife bought, and he said:

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This may not be the answer you’re hoping for because I don’t know if you’d be able to promote it. But it delivered and amazed my wife.

She used to break a sweat drying her hair because she had so much. I wasn’t lucky enough to catch it on sale, but it’s been worth every penny. She told her sister, and her sis bought two (one for each home).

===

Maybe I’m out of touch, but I would never imagine a $300 hair dryer before Robert sent it in. And yet I think it supports the idea in this email well.

Or maybe like Robert says, it’s just a product that solves a legit problem for a specific segment, and is worth every penny for that reason.

On that note, let me repeat my offer from yesterday:

I’m always on the lookout for great products to promote. The problem is, lots of stuff looks great on the outside. But does it actually deliver results? That’s where I’m hoping you can help me.

What’s a product or a service that you paid $200 or more for over the past year, which really delivered?

It could be an info product, a physical product, a service, or something you paid to have done for you. And by “really delivered,” I’m not talking about being fun and diverting, but of giving you real value in your real life.

If you’re game, hit reply and let me know of stuff you’ve paid for that was a good investment.

In turn, I’ll reply to you and tell you three offers I’ve bought over the past year or so, all of which cost around $1k, all of which delivered real value to me, and all of which happened to be sold via infotainment.

Do we have a deal? If so, hit reply, and fire away.

The bluebird who paid a $10k bill plus travel expenses

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Recently, I had the idea to take a bunch of my previous emails on the topic of pricing and positioning, and to write a book titled “Charge More,” or something like that.

The basic idea being, charge more for what you offer.

But like “Just Do It,” “Charge More” is one of those bits of good advice that people nod their heads to in agreement, but rarely actually follow.

So rather than just repeating “Charge More” for 150 pages to no effect, I figured I would take a bunch of emails I’ve written, with distinctions and stories, to both inspire people to raise their prices, and to give them tips on how to do so in various situations.

And now that I’ve given you that intro, it seems a good time to share a story by sales trainer Dave Sandler, which I read in Sandler’s book You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar. The story goes like this:

Sandler once gave a talk at a business convention, outlining his own homebrewed system for raising salesmen’s self-esteem.

Next day, Sandler flew back from the convention to his home in Baltimore.

At the time, all of Sandler’s business was local to Baltimore. He wasn’t expecting anything to come from the convention.

But the next morning, Sandler got a call from an excited business owner from Indiana, halfway around the country.

The business owner was there at convention. He said he took Sandler’s ideas back to his salespeople. He was flabbergasted at the initial results. He wanted Sandler to come out immediately and give his salespeople the full training.

While this guy talking, Sandler thought to himself, “Well! here’s a bluebird.” It’s like the guy had just flown in through an open window and landed on Sandler’s desk.

At the time, Sandler’s fee for a 2-day seminar in Baltimore was $2,500 dollars (this was in the early 1970s). He was simply waiting for the excited business owner to exhaust himself with talking, and then he’d ask for $2,500 plus travel expenses.

But the business owner kept talking, all about how much money he had spent on traditional sales training… and how happy he had been to hear Sandler speak on this topic, because Sandler was right, and others didn’t get it…

“I do have to spend the night at a hotel and away from home to teach this seminar,” Sandler thought. “Better ask for another $500 and make it an even $3k. I’ll do it once the guy stops talking.”

… but the business owner still kept on, all about the books and tapes and trainings he had purchased for his sales staff, and how none of it had worked… and how much it’s been hurting his business… and how it’s been driving him up the wall and he didn’t know what to do until now…

“I do also have to get on a plane for this,” Sandler thought. “Plus I’ll have to give up some selling time. I’ll tell him the price is $3,500, as soon as he slows down.”

… but the biz owner kept talking and talking, venting and venting, revealing and revealing. Sandler says it felt like the guy talked for an hour, even though it was probably only a few minutes.

Finally the business owner talked himself out. “By the way,” he said, “how much is this going to cost me?”

“$10,000,” Sandler said, “plus travel expenses.”

“Well that’s no problem,” the business owner replied. “How soon can you get here?”

I think there are lots of lessons in this little story. Let me just share one, right at the top, about how Sandler got a warm inbound lead, a bluebird who landed on his desk, ready to to buy without any sales call or persuasion or objection overcoming.

Sandler did it by flying across the country and getting up on stage and giving a talk.

That’s an effective way of getting warm inbound leads, if you’re willing to fly around and get up on stage and give speeches to crowds.

But the same psychology applies whenever you have a platform to speak from, even if that platform is entirely virtual, and even if speaking is really writing, like what you’re reading now.

The key is simply to build a mini-monopoly, a situation in which people in your audience have grown to trust you and to have a relationship with you and to want to work with you specifically, even if you have supposed “competition.”

All that’s to say, if you don’t consistently write daily emails yet, it pays to start. And if you want my help doing so:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Do I have an affiliate relationship with all these big names?

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A couple days ago, I opened the most recent Exploding Topics newsletter, which tracks topics and brands that are surging online.

The top Exploding Topic was Scandinavian Biolabs, “a hair growth startup” that raised $5M in funding last year.

“Hello,” I said, “this sounds familiar.”

I had a sense that I know the head copywriter at Scandinavian Biolabs. I suspected it might be one Liza Schermann, the original Crazy Email Lady, who also acted as a cohost of the Age of Insight and Influential Emails trainings I ran several years ago.

I forwarded the Exploding Topics email to Liza to confirm this is indeed the place where she works. Liza wrote back:

===

Haha look at that, I’m back at work and growth is skyrocketing! That’s the place indeed. I remember the celebration party for that $5M funding vividly.

I was just typing a reply when you forwarded it so I might as well do it here.

Did you have an affiliate or some kind of other partnership with Chris Orzechowski? Or did you just promote his workshop because you found it interesting? I was wondering that every time you promoted a big name.

Anyway, it seems like it’s been an eventful year in Bejako Land business-wise with lots of different offers (at least from what I could keep up with). I’m looking forward to your annual summary email if you’re planning to send one!

===

In answer to Liza’s question:

Yes, I promoted Chris Orzechowski’s training (“5 steps to a million-dollar list”) as an affiliate.

I also promoted Derek Johanson’s CopyHour and Email Delivered Courses as an affiliate.

I promoted Thom Benny’s 1-Person Advertorial Agency as an affiliate.

I promoted Justin Blackman’s Different On Purpose as an affiliate.

I promoted Igor Kheifets’s Click Send Earn as an affiliate.

I promoted Kennedy’s “$27k to $544k” training as an affiliate.

And in a couple weeks from now, when I promote Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery, I will do so as an affiliate.

I have in the past promoted people’s things simply because I thought they were cool and valuable, without getting paid.

I still do that sometimes.

But if I can promote something I think is cool and valuable AND get paid for it at the same time, well, I like to have my cake and lick it too.

The fact is, I have been feeling burned out this year about creating new offers.

I have created a lot of courses, trainings, reports, and even books over the 6+ years of running this newsletter.

Some have stuck around and become evergreen offers (Copy Riddles, Most Valuable Email, my new 10 Commandments book). Others were exotic one-time events (like the Age of Insight and Influential Emails workshops).

One thing’s for sure:

Even when I’m in full offer-creation mode, the appetite of my audience for cool and valuable new solutions to existing problems is much much bigger than what I can personally satisfy.

That’s one reason I’ve been building up a little invite-only group of list and offer owners.

I’ve been quietly pitching this group to people as a place to connect and partner and share ideas.

It’s proven to be that — it’s led to list swaps, podcast appearances, and affiliate promos, and not just involving me, either.

It so happens that Chris, Derek, Thom, Justin, Igor, Kennedy, and Gasper are all in my little invite-only group.

Maybe this group could be a good fit for you too?

If you’re interested, write in and let me know who you are and what you do.

A list is a mandatory requirement, as is the fact that you are writing that list regularly, and that you’ve made money from your list.

If have your own proven offers, that’s definitely a bonus.

Beyond that, I’m curious to hear who you are and what you do. If it’s a fit with the group, I’ll know it when I see it.

If more sales from your list with less work sounds sexy to you, write in and let’s talk.