Business Ideas

Leadership by “dynamic indifference”

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Yesterday, I waited to board my plane with my handwritten, 100% fake-looking boarding pass.

The boarding pass was an ordinary piece of paper that had just my name and the number of the flight on it. And that’s it — no other information on there. It was a consequence of yesterday’s IT meltdown.

At the gate, the crew first let in a few passengers who had managed to check in online and had assigned seats.

Then they realized that the majority of the remaining passengers were just like me. The remaining passengers all had stupid pieces of paper in their hands, without any assigned seats. And since the computers were all down, there was no way to assign seats in any normal way.

First, there was a bit of panic on the ground crew’s faces.

They started calling around to their superiors, consulting with each other, trying to ignore the questions and suggestions that pushy passengers were making to them.

In the end, the ground crew shrugged their shoulders.

“Ok everybody can board,” they said. “You can sit wherever you find a free seat.”

And it worked out just fine. The boarding completed was as quickly, or maybe more quickly, than with the usual “excuse me but you’re in my seat” hokey pokey.

Point being:

Let’s burn down all the computers and ticket-booking systems and rules about who sits where and who does what. Let’s abolish all the top-down mandates, because the people will self-organize just as well or better.

Anarchy!

“Uh, really?”

No, not really.

But there really might be cases where doing just what I suggested actually works.

​​And it might work for you, too, even if you don’t run an airline, but an info publishing business.

​​And as a case study, let me share with you an interesting and quick snippet of an interview. The interview is with a man named Bill Bonner who:

1. Is a famous copywriter

2. Founded and still owns Agora, a huge consortium of direct response brands that employs thousands of people

3. Is worth a few billion dollars thanks to his stake in all those publishing businesses

Here’s the thing though. You might think that a billion-dollar company requires strong and dedicated management. But that’s just the opposite of what Bonner is saying in this interview.

It turns out he has abolished not just the seating assignments inside Agora, but has even vacated the pilot’s seat, and has left it to the stewardesses and the passengers to figure out who does what, and how, including flying the plane:

“In France, for example, we tried telling people what to do — from London, no less. It was a disaster. Then, at the end of our ropes, we told the remaining French employees that they would have to figure it out for themselves. “Who will be in charge?” they wanted to know. ‘Whoever takes charge,’ we replied.”

I’m telling you this because maybe you’re like me, and you have an aversion to the idea of managing people.

Well, maybe you don’t have to manage people, or even really have any management, in order for people to work for you, and to good work for you well, and to make serious money for you.

It sounds risky, or like a pipe dream. I know. But if you’re curious to find out a bit more about Bonner’s “dynamic indifference” way of leading a business, you can read about it here:

https://www.imsrindia.com/single-post/focus-on-the-work-itself-bill-bonner-founder-and-president-of-agora

Do you have a newsletter or FB group?

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A few days ago, I read how my buddy Kieran Drew bought another newsletter to absorb, like a growing metropolis absorbs a quaint village nearby.

The owner of the other newsletter decided to go pursue some other project. He wasn’t interested in running the newsletter any more.

So Kieran paid him per subscriber who stays on after 2 weeks. They did a kind of handoff, where the new subscribers were introduced to Kieran, and given many chances to unsubscribe, and at that point they were merged into Kieran’s list.

As far as I know, the experiment is still ongoing. It’s not clear yet whether Kieran has already made his money back or whether this buy can be considered a success. (In case you’re interested in hearing how this experiment ends, it’s worth getting on Kieran’s list at kierandrew.com.)

This made me wonder.

Do you have a newsletter, a Facebook group, or a Skool group?

Is it made up of an audience of coaches, business owners, or people interested in making money online?

And, in case this group or newsletter is not something you enjoy running and managing, have you thought of trading in the login username and password to the group, or the Excel export of newsletter contacts, for a neat stack of $100 bills?

If you find yourself a little intrigued or curious right now, write me and let’s talk.

I might be interested in buying what you have.

​​And even if it’s not a fit, I might know other people who might want to buy what you have.

​​Just write me now because — well, why not? It doesn’t cost you or oblige you in any way. And it might take this off your mind sooner rather than later.

Email pitches for highly customized service businesses

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The owner of a creative agency signed up to my list a couple weeks ago, and had a question:

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Would love to learn more about what kind of materials / services you offer in regards to specifically email pitches.

[My industry] is pulling back some right now, so we are having to put a larger emphasis on outbound, which we never really had to do before.

We are services based business and everything is so customized it makes it a challenge to really blanket offers.

However, we do get pretty good responses when we do put stuff out there.

Are you able to share some of what services you offer / any preferred reading that I should check out on your website etc?

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There’s nothing on my site I would recommend for learning about cold outreach, and there are no cold outreach services I offer at the moment.

But I have been experimenting with cold emails myself, and I have been reading up and listening up on it.

It seems there are two schools of cold emailing:

#1. Carpet bombing, where the bulk of the work goes into setting up the technology for sending dozens or hundreds of automated “personal” emails each day, and feeding that with more or less qualified leads from various databases or from virtual assistants.

​​The idea here is to send out thousands of cold emails and maybe get two or three qualified responses.

#2. Social engineering, where, much like a red team in cybersecurity, you try to find a way into a specific organization by sending just the right message to just the right people.

The idea here is to send out 10 emails and maybe get 10 responses, which you then have to somehow twist and turn into suiting your purpose.

There’s been plenty written and said about the first approach to cold emailing.

There’s no doubt it works, but I’m personally not interested in it. And maybe, if you’re like the agency owner above, it’s not really an option because of the way your business is set up or what you offer.

So what about the second, social engineering approach?

It’s tricky and time intensive.

But if you’re after large accounts or valuable partner relationships, it can make sense to invest that time and to learn the tricks.

Again, this is not something I personally am teaching at the moment. But I do have something to recommend.

The worst part of this recommendation is that it’s free, which will make many people shrug and say, “Oh, I will come back to this later.”

The best part of this recommendation is that it might stop being free or disappear at any minute, particularly if people like me keep linking to it.

If you’d like to get it before it goes away, or before it gets a big price tag stuck on the side of it:

https://bejakovic.com/cold

The light at the end of the tunnel

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“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and the thing is, I love you.”

“What?”

“I love you.”

“How do you expect me to respond to this?”

“How about, you love me too?”

“How about: I’m leaving.”

That’s the start of the last scene of the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally. In case you haven’t seen it, the movie goes like this:

The first time Harry and Sally meet, they hate each other. The second time they meet, Harry doesn’t even remember who Sally is. The third time they meet, Harry and Sally become friends. Then they sleep together, and things go south and they stop being friends.

And then one New Year’s Eve, Harry finally realizes he loves Sally, and he runs to meet her, and he declares his love. And she says, “I’m leaving.”

The fact is, screenwriter Nora Ephron and director Rob Reiner both felt that movie should end like this.

​​No way should it end with Harry and Sally winding up together. That’s not how the real world works. People in those kinds of relationships don’t end up together.

That’s how the first two drafts of the movie actually went. The bitter truth.

But in the third draft, Ephron wrote this final scene, and Reiner shot it. After Sally’s “I’m leaving,” Harry delivers a speech about all the little things he loves about her, and they kiss and they wind up together, forever, in love.

And that’s how the movie was released, and it was a big, big hit.

So what’s the point?

Well, maybe it’s obvious, but you can go negative and cynical and sarcastic for the whole movie, but you gotta end on an inspiring, positive note.

​​It’s gotta make sense to people and give them a feeling of hope, at least if you want to create something that has a chance to be a big big hit, something that can appeal to a wide swath of the market.

Or in the words of screenwriter and director David Mamet:

“Children jump around at the end of the day, to expend the last of that day’s energy. The adult equivalent, when the sun goes down, is to create or witness drama — which is to say, to order the universe into a comprehensible form.”

But now I have a problem:

I’ve just pulled back the curtain. And what’s behind the curtain is not so nice. So how can I end this email on an inspiring, positive note?

Well, I can admit to you that the world is a large and complex and often unjust place. But it does have its own structure. And just by reading these emails, you’re finding out bits and pieces of that structure, and that helps you make more sense of the world you live in, and it helps you shape and influence the world for the better.

I can also tell you that the above bit, about Harry and Sally and Nora and Rob, is part of a book I’m working on, the mythical “10 Commandments of Hypnotists, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Con Men, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Propagandists, and Stage Magicians.”

I’ve been working on this book for a long time. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

In the meantime, do you know about my other 10 Commandments book, 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters?

It also collects bits and pieces of the structure of the world, and it can help you understand and shape that world for the better. In case you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Agency clients who don’t stay

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Last week, I was talking to the COO at a health clinic.

The CEO of that clinic — the doctor who heads the clinic — has written a good book, with lots of top endorsements and lots of 5-star reviews on Amazon.

But the book is hardly a best seller. I’m guessing it maybe makes a few dozen sales a month.

“You know,” I said in the voice of a precocious 9-year-old child, “you can run ads on Amazon to promote the book.” I’m smart like that, and I know lots of stuff, so I like to show it off.

“Oh yeah we tried that,” the COO said. “We hired an agency a while back to run ads on Amazon for us. But it didn’t drive that many more sales, and we were paying the agency $1k a month just to keep it going. So we stopped.”

Now, here are a few random facts, which I hope to snap together for you like nuclei colliding and fusing to release a tremendous amount of energy:

1. The core offer for this health clinic is a program that costs $50k a year

2. Rich, successful people tend to read books

3. People who read a book all the way through are prime prospects for an upsell, even a ridiculously elastic one ($5 => $50k)

You see where I’m going with this?

It’s quite feasible that, for this particular business, one good extra client a year, attracted via the help of this Amazon ads agency, would pay for the entire year’s services of the ads agency, and then some.

That would be great for the health clinic, for the Amazon ads agency, and presumably, for the patient who had decided to invest in that expensive year-long program.

And yet, it wasn’t happening.

I’m bringing this up because over the past few weeks, along with talking to health clinic COOs, I’ve also been talking to people who offer services and run agencies of different stripes.

I’ve heard a few of them complaining:

“We can’t make clients see the unique value of our services”

“The clients are never permanent, and I seem like a Chinese acrobat juggling many plates at once”

“Clients are comparing my work to much cheaper freelancers”

A part of this really can come down to having bum clients. Not much to do there, except find better clients.

But what if you have — or have had — clients like the health clinic I wrote about above? Somebody with a solid business… a good product… decent marketing… and still they couldn’t see the value in continuing to pay for your services, which should be plugging up a real gap in their business?

Well, in that case, write me and tell me about it.

I’m curious to hear your story.

And maybe we can figure out a way to prevent this from happening again… and even to profit from those clients who already got away.

The highest paid quality on earth

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Last night, I started reading a little book on door knocking.

Door knocking?

Yep, it’s a real skill. And a lucrative one. ​​​

​​​The book was written by a real estate agent who built her entire career by going up to a stranger’s door, knocking on said door, and if somebody opened, asking if they wanted to sell their home.

​​Most of the time, the people inside said no. So the real estate agent would turn around, walk down to the next house, and do it all over again.

The author of the book gives a few good reasons why a sane person might want to live their life like this. Here’s a few that might resonate with you:

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You will earn more money than most doctors, lawyers, pilots, and professors. You will have more freedom to come and go than almost any other professional, and you will have a saleable product (your business) that will continue to support you after you exit the industry.

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I love this book so far, and in particular I love what the author says is the number one quality that leads to success as a door knocker, and by extension, to success in opening up any kind of sales conversation.

Can you guess what this quality is?

I’ll give you a hint. In fact I’ll give you a few hints, and tell you what it’s not:

* Persistence. A lot of people persist in spite of not getting any results or making any sales. (Such as, ahem, myself for large stretches of writing this newsletter.)

* Intelligence. Good God no.

* Extroversion. Now we’re getting a little warmer, but in the words of Eddie Murphy, that ain’t it…

* Likeability. Sure, being seen as likeable helps open conversations. But a lot of people, myself included, tend to default to thinking that you’re either likeable or not.

​​Of course, that’s not true.

​​We each morph from moment to moment, and from environment to environment. Our likability goes up and down, because it’s not really inherent to us. It’s in other people’s heads, and not something that we have control over. So likeability ain’t it either.

I’ve now given you some hints. I told you what this magic quality is not. As to what it is?

If you’d like to know that, I’ll tell you. Or rather, I’ll point you to it.

​​This quality makes up chapter one of one of the greatest sales books of all time, where it’s called the “highest paid quality on earth.”

If you’d like to know what this quality is and why it is so valuable and how to get it, read the book.

​​Plus, read the book because no less of an authority than Gary Bencivenga, the A-list copywriter who gets the most love an adulation from other top-level copywriters and marketers, credits his great success to this book.

And by the way, you can cheat. You can find out what this quality is without reading the book.

Somehow, I suspect this will do absolutely nothing for you. But you decide. Here’s the book, with all its sales wisdom:

https://bejakovic.com/highest-paid

¡Announcing: 10 Mandamientos De Los Mejores Copywriters Del Mundo!

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Yes, I now have a book in Spanish.

Even though I’ve been living in Spain for over two years, and though I’ve been studying Spanish for longer than that, the locals still frown when they hear me speak the language. Many will even switch over to English.

No matter.

Because I now have a book in Espanish.

Spanish A-list copywriter Rafa Casas took it upon himself to take my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters, and to translate and adapt it to his native language. Result:

“Los 10 Mandamientos De Los Mejores Copywriters Del Mundo”

… which you can now buy on Amazon.

But why?

Why would you possibly want to buy a Spanish-language version of a book I published 4 years ago, in perfectly serviceable English, and promoted a hundred times since then?

I can only imagine two possible reasons:

1. Because you read Spanish much better than you read English.

It’s not impossible. I know I’ve had some readers write in to reply to my emails, and I could see that they were automatically translating my emails into Spanish via Google Translate.

That’s easy to do with emails, but with books?

Now, there’s no need to translate anything yourself. Thanks to Rafa, the treasures inside this book can be yours on demand, in Spanish.

2. Because you read English much better than you read Spanish… and you want to make your Spanish better.

Don’t laugh.

I’ve been listening to podcasts in Spanish and even reading some Spanish-language books to achieve my mediocre and faltering command of the language.

I quickly realized I should listen to and read things that interest me, or my listening and reading wouldn’t last long.

So if you’re learning Spanish, and if you’re interested in topics like influence and persuasion and direct marketing, then maybe here’s your oportunidad to practice and learn and be estimulated at the same time.

I don’t expect the above two reasons will sell a lot of copies of my new Spanish-language book.

That’s ok.

​​From what I understand, Rafa is planning a kind of promotional blitz for this book in the Spanish copywriting world.

And if you’re wondering why he would go to all the trouble, it’s because all the proceeds — all the dozens of dollars in royalties that are sure to flood in — are actually going to a local charity here.

Yes, not only do I have a book in Spanish now… but I’ve changed my cold and heartless ways, and I’ve agreed to do something that can help others also.

I honestly don’t know what’s happening to me.

In any case, if you’d like a little light entretenimiento, and maybe even some ideas útiles, then:

https://bejakovic.com/10mandamientos

Reader bans herself from buying my offers for 6 months

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Yesterday, I made available my Insight Exposed course for one day only. I made some sales of that. At $400 a ticket, it’s a nice way to write an email.

But I also got a couple responses like this:

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I enjoy all your emails… your courses are too tempting. I have banned myself from buying anything for the next 6 months… pray for me you atheist. LOL

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I have heard this message a lot recently, particularly during my Water Into Wine launch, which I conducted via email instead of via sales page. A few samples:

“I have made myself an unofficial promise to stop buying copywriting stuff at least this year”

“already doing some classes”

“I have already joined 2 other creators this month, not financially feasible for me at the moment”

What’s going on? I can imagine four explanations:

1. Maybe I’ve done a poor job making people want what I offer. After all, except in times of global ice age, people can usually find the money for the things they really want.

2. Maybe there’s a genuine change in the economy. Maybe there is an ice age forming after all?

3. Maybe it’s always been like this, and I’m only hearing about it now because I’ve made a point to listen to my customers and readers more.

4. Maybe there’s a genuine change in the mindset of the people on my list. Maybe there’s a glut of coaches, course creators, and copywriting gurus, all selling offers, all promising “I will teach you to be rich, admired, and free!” Maybe folks in this market have been stuffed, to the gills and beyond, with direct marketing info, and they need time to digest.

I’m not telling you this to complain. I’m telling you because you might be facing some similar situation with your own business, whether you’re aware of it or not.

So what to do?

If you ask me, only points 1 and 4 on the list above make any sense to act upon.

Point 4 is a big issue, too big for a Sunday email to try to tackle.

But what about point 1? About not doing a good enough job making people want what you offer?

Here I got some bad news/good news for you.

The bad news is, I have a direct marketing sandwich to offer you, even though you may be stuffed to the gills already.

The good news is, this sandwich costs $11.42 to buy and maybe an hour of your time to chew through and digest.

Not sold yet? The only other things I will say right now in defense of this sandwich:

– I didn’t make this sandwich, somebody else did, so maybe you can trust me more on the recommendation

– the man who made this sandwich has a different take to “I will teach you to be rich, admired, and free!” than most everybody out there

– there’s nobody else I’ve listened to more this year or learned from than this sandwich maker

Does that stir your digestion any? Maybe there’s a bit of room in there after all? If so, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/sandwich

3 women come to my rescue

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Yesterday, I wrote about a female reader who accused me, along with the rest of the 4 billion males on this planet, of being sexist.

I did my best — it wasn’t much — to defend myself against the accusation.

But when you’ve been charged with a serious thought crime, what you really want is some good third-party witnesses to corroborate your own defense.

Fortunately, I got a few responses from women to my email yesterday. I won’t name names here — that’s against thought court protocol — but here’s what they wrote.

​​First, from a PhD scientist and business owner:

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Bwahahahaha I noticed all 5 were men and thought – oh my, some woman is gonna write in and whine about this…

Couldn’t see that one coming *cough*

Watcha gonna do?

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Second, from a fundraising copywriter for NGOs:

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I’m a woman and I almost lost an eyeball when rolling my eyes as I was reading allaboutme’s comment.

It’s the saddest, most annoying, most passe rebuke to resort to when you’ve got nothing else to throw at a man.

It’s plain lazy.

Thanks for the good work, John.

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Third, from an MD and science fiction author:

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Pretty impressed by the link at the end. I was a bit suspicious about the sexism, but it really helps that you clarify that everyone who entered the contest was a man. More chicks should step up, I guess! XD

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errr… yeah. About that. I actually also got one reply yesterday, which just said:

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Hey John,

Just read your email and I wanted to let know I am a woman (and from India).

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Uh-oh.

This reply came in a thread of one of the Most Valuable Email contest submissions I got last week — the contest that triggered this entire sexism affair.

​​Only men ended up as winners of the contest because — so I thought — only men ended up submitting any entries.

Except apparently not.

It turns out I did get at least one submission for the MVE contest from a woman. But I didn’t recognize her as such because of her Indian name/nickname. That means two things:

1) My defense in my sexism trial has suddenly been dealt a serious, possibly fatal blow, and…

2) I might now be charged with racism to boot, or at the very least, with involuntary cultural obtuseness.

My life just got a lot more complicated.

Clearly, my slapdash self-defense won’t be enough to handle this any more.

I’ll have to call in some serious help.

The help of a master communicator.

​​Someone who hasn’t lost a legal argument in over 40 years, while fighting in dozens of big criminal and civil cases.

Perhaps you know who I mean.

Perhaps you don’t.

If so, I’m willing to tell you. But be warned. This person is too male, too pale, and too stale.

Maybe he can still teach you something though.

If you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/criminal

How copywriters can reposition so business owners chase them

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This morning, I woke up to a bunch of emails as usual. Two stood out.

One was from a business owner I had reached out to, cold, a couple weeks ago.

After that first cold email, we exchanged a few more emails.

And then this past Sunday, we got on a call and talked about working together.

On that call, I listened to him as he told me the details of his business right now and his plans for the future.

His business has doubled each year for the past four years. He would like to double it yet again. I would like to help him.

​​But as I told him on the call, there’s a roadblock in our way. Once he clears that, we could work together.

In the email in my inbox this morning, the business owner was giving me an update on that roadblock (it’s getting cleared, but slowly). He also said he’s just anted up extra money to get the roadblock cleared faster.

In case it’s not obvious what I’m getting at, it seems to me that this business owner is more eager to work with me than I am to work with him. And I’m eager to work with him — that’s why I cold emailed him in the first place.

The second email that stood out in my inbox this morning came from a copywriter. She was inquiring about my Water Into Wine workshop, happening this Thursday. She asked:

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Do you think it will work for someone like me who provides copywriting services?

I can apply what you teach in this workshop to my clients, but I wonder if it will also help my positioning as a copywriter. What are your thoughts?

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My very careful answer to this copywriter is “100% yes.”

As I wrote yesterday, during the Water Into Wine workshop, I will cover one specific repositioning formula. I’ll show how this formula can be used in three separate ways:

1. To give clear, “Oh I get it” positioning to an offer that’s currently vague or unclear

2. To give unique, attractive positioning to a product or service which is not unique or not attractive (yes, sometimes you’re stuck with those)

3. To open up new markets for an offer, where the selling might be easier and where the money might come in bigger, heavier bags

I’ll have examples of how smart marketers have used this repositioning formula in niches like bizopp, finance, weight loss, copywriting, baseball, and of course, dentistry.

I’ll also have examples of how this formula can be used to sell offers of different formats, including courses, coaching, certifications, tickets to live events, and done-for-you services.

One example I’ll include will be of repositioning copywriting services.

​​In fact, it will be an example using me and the business owner above. This repositioning formula, applied in way #3 above, is exactly what I used when I cold emailed him.

So yes, it’s possible to use this formula to reposition copywriting services.

The only question is whether you will want to apply what I tell you.

Well, that, plus whether you will actually be there on the workshop so you can hear me tell it.

The workshop is happening this Thursday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. It will also be recorded in case you cannot make it live.

The price to get in is $197.

I’m limiting the number of spots to 20.

Some have already been claimed, more will be claimed today.

I don’t have forward facing payment link for this. I want to first talk to everyone who’s interested, and make sure this workshop is a fit.

So the only way to get in is to first write me an email and express interest.

One way or another, the workshop is nearing. If you’re interested, it might make sense to hit reply right now, so we can talk and see if this workshop is a good fit for you.