Business Ideas

How to get me to refer your stuff (or vice versa)

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I’ll tell you in just a second. But first, for greater impact, let me illustrate what I have to tell you with a little anecdote from this morning:

This morning, I prepared my usual breakfast — a can of sardines and some salad from a bag — and I sat down to my usual breakfast reading.

My usual breakfast reading is the latest New Yorker. ​​Today, it happened to be an article abut the hottest restaurant in France, a €52.99/person, all-you-can-eat buffet called Les Grands Buffets.

Les Grands Buffets is in a town called Narbonne, in the south of France, less than 100km from the Spanish border, and a 2-hour drive from Barcelona, where I live.

“Interesting,” I said.

And without knowing what I was doing, I got out my phone.

I opened up the WhatsApp group I have with two friends who visited me in Barcelona two years ago. They both have some interest in the south of France. So I forwarded them the article and joked, “Maybe for the next time you visit.”

Then I thought of my ex-girlfriend.

After 9 months of cohabitation after our breakup, we finally stopped living together last month. But she’s still in Barcelona and we’re still on good terms.

Since she’s a big foodie, I also forwarded her the same article about Les Grands Buffets. (Immediately, she wrote back, “Maybe you would like to go for a road trip ?😂❤️”)

So the point I want to share with you is a simple two-step formula for getting referrals.

It’s right there in my experience from this morning, in the way I unthinkingly forwarded this New Yorker article to two sets of people. The formula:

1. Something interesting, potentially valuable, which I was willing to share

2. Specific details that made it easy to think of the right people to share it with

This is something you can do consciously, if you want to encourage me (or others) to refer you or your brand or content or offers.

Let me give you an example:

Last night, I sent out a very brief email to my list. The email asked my readers if they 1) write Facebook ads, and 2) have clients who pay them for it.

I promised my readers that if they satisfy these two conditions, I have something that might help them get paid more.

So far, I’ve had a few dozen people respond.

But… maybe you know somebody else? Somebody who fits the two criteria above? Somebody who writes Facebook ads… and who has paying clients?

If so, consider forwarding them this email. Maybe you can benefit this person, and they’ll be grateful to you.

And if somebody forwarded this email to you, and you fit the criteria above, and you’re interested in what I have, then hit reply.

4 lessons from my 9-day promo for Daily Email Fastlane

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Last night, I concluded the promo for for Daily Email Fastlane. That’s the workshop I’m hosting tonight, right now, as this email goes out.

Good news: I sold more tickets to Daily Email Fastlane than I was expecting.

Bad news: At $100 per sale, it’s still not enough to buy a Rolls-Royce.

But that’s okay. This workshop was most of all an experiment, in a few ways.

I’ve collected the data. It’s now time to analyze it.

Some of what my analysis shows is standard daily email propaganda. What I mean is, the data supports the basic idea I was plugging all week long, about the value of writing daily emails for your personal brand. For example:

#1. 87% of people who signed up for Daily Email Fastlane have bought other courses or trainings from me before. Many have been on my list for 3+ years.

Would they have stuck around and been willing to buy from me now if I failed to stay in touch with them during that time?

#2. There was also a handful of first-time buyers. Most of them have been on my list for weeks, months, or in one case, closing in on a year.

In other words, it took dozens or hundreds of daily email “touches” to close this first sale… but it wasn’t very hard to do.

In fact, I even had fun writing some of those dozens or hundreds of emails over the past weeks, months, and year.

#3. I made sales with every email I sent out during this promo. This tells me I probably could have sent out still more emails and made still more sales.

All these conclusions are probably obvious to you. And they are only really useful in case you too send daily emails, as validation, or want to start sending daily emails, as inspiration.

But I do have one extra tip for you.

It’s relevant whether or not you choose to send daily emails.

In fact, it might be more relevant if you don’t send daily emails.

This tip doesn’t come from the sales data. It comes from the replies and comments of the people who ended up signing up for the workshop.

It’s this:

Many of those who joined told me they were sold by the core idea I had for this training. The core idea was to share the common elements among 3 daily emailers I’ve coached, each of whom is uniquely successful in his own way.

The way I came up with that core idea wasn’t accidental. It wasn’t a unique moment of inspiration, either.

It was routine, and something you can do too.

It’s simply an application of my #1 strategy for creating offers of any kind, in any niche.

You can use this strategy to create offers that sell… even if you don’t have your own coaching program for authority, even if you don’t sell marketing advice, even if, like me, you don’t bother to set up a sales page.

You can find this strategy described in detail towards the end of chapter 1 of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Pick one of these 3 niches

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Less is often more when it comes to marketing education.

Example:

I’ve heard marketer Travis Sago say he was once selling a biz op training, about providing some sort of marketing service to businesses.

The first iteration of the training didn’t work out well — Travis had to spend too much time helping his students figure out what niche of businesses to go after.

After it was all over, Travis took stock.

He paced and paced the floor of his laboratory, deep into the night.

And then, in the early morning hours, he had an epiphany:

For the second iteration of the training, Travis simply took out the niche selection part.

Instead, he made niche selection a part of the marketing and application process. When you signed up for the training, you had to pick one of three niches to be in.

Result:

Much easier delivery of the training, and much better results for the students.

I bring this up because I have my Daily Email Fastlane coming up on Thursday. This is a workshop about sending daily emails for your personal brand.

It’s the first time I’m ever offering this workshop.

I have learned a lot from Travis Sago, and I plan to learn from him here as well. So I will not be covering how to pick a niche in Daily Email Fastlane.

Instead, for anyone who does not yet have a niche, but is considering writing daily emails for themselves, my advice is to pick one of these 3 niches for your daily emails:

1. Personal interest

2. Previous experience (preferably, something you got paid for)

3. Make money

You can mix and meld these. My daily emails started out as #1 (interest in persuasion, influence, and personal development)… moved into #2 (talking about copywriting and marketing, based on the work I was doing for clients)… and I’ve since introduced #3, how to get adequately rich so you can live life on your own terms. Which brings me back to Daily Email Fastlane.

The above advice about niches holds whether or not you decide to join me for Daily Email Fastlane. If you want to write daily emails and build a personal brand based on those emails, pick one of the 3 niches above.

But if you want my advice on topics that are a bit further down the daily email road, then consider actually joining me for this workshop.

I will talk about 3 daily emailers I have coached. Each of them fits primarily into one of three categories above. And each built a nice lifestyle business, with one daily email at the center of it.

The deadline to sign up for Daily Email Fastlane is this Wednesday, at 8:31pm CET. If you know you want in, and you want to make sure you don’t miss the deadline, here’s where to go now:

https://bejakovic.com/daily-email-fastlane

Announcing: Daily Email Fastlane

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Next Thursday, I’m putting on a workshop which until now did not have a proper name. I’m sure you were on pins and needles because of the uncertainty. I am writing now to set you at ease.

I’ve settled on a name. That name is Daily Email Fastlane.

Hear me out:

Over the past year or so, I’ve coached a dozen or so people who write daily emails as a central part of their business strategy.

Out of that dozen or so people, three stand out in my mind — based on the money they make, the stability of their income, and simply in how much they seem to enjoy their business and their life.

I won’t name these people. But I’ll tell you this:

These three daily emailers all move fast. They write emails fast. They spin up offers fast. They go from “good idea” to “let’s see if it works” fast.

“Yeah that’s swell for them,” you might say. “But what about me?”

Well, that’s actually why I’m calling this workshop Daily Email Fastlane.

I can’t motivate you to move any faster than you normally do. That’s up to you.

What I can do, in fact what I’ve done, is to look at what else these three daily emailers have in common, such as:

– how they write their emails and make those emails good, even when they are not feeling creative

– how they structure their offers in a way that makes those offers 17.4x more likely to succeed (that’s my inexact estimate, but it’s in the ballpark)

– how they get their leads and how they think about leads

– plus what I advised them to do to take their already successful daily email businesses and make them even more successful

So that’s why this training is called Daily Email Fastlane. ​​Not because you have to move fast. But because I’ll show you the commonalities of three very different, and yet very successful daily email business owners, so you can take what has worked for them and have it work for you.

Do this, and you will get to success with daily email for your personal brand, in the fast lane, regardless of your natural speed.

Daily Email Fastlane will happen next Thursday, May 23, at 8pm CET, 2pm EST, 11am PST. It will be recorded if you cannot make it live. Though if you can be there and I can see your handsome mug live on Zoom, that’s even better.

In case you’d like to sign up:

https://bejakovic.com/daily-email-fastlane

Even criminals need a “wow” factor

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A few weeks ago, I was listening to an interview with an FBI special agent. That’s how I found out there’s an application process for getting onto the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list. Says the FBI agent:

“Yeah, there’s an application process, because the FBI knows that this is going to be on the media. Everyone’s going to scrutinize this, so they want to make sure everything is correct. You know, there has to be a little bit of a, I wouldn’t say, a wow factor is not the right word, but a factor of saying, ‘Listen, wow, I’m really interested in this.'”

The FBI agent seems to be trying to not glamorize violent crime.

First he denies criminals who get on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list have a “wow” factor.

But right after, that’s exactly what he confirms. There has to be an element of “wow.” There has to be something to set the criminal apart and to get the public interested.

Really, when you think about it, that’s not much of a surprise.

There are millions of criminals around the U.S.

​​There are probably tens of thousands of violent, dangerous, would-be-great-to-get-into-custody-today criminals. But there’s only so much space in the news and only so much capacity for attention in the public mind.

Of course, you are not a criminal. That’s good.

But I think the lesson from the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted holds even on this side of the law.

Whatever it is that you do, you are competing against a bunch of other people.
​​Maybe millions of others.

More likely, thousands do something like you do. Even a few dozen options in a market is more than the public mind can comfortably handle.

So you need a “wow” factor. Something to set you apart and to get people interested. Because simply doing your job very well — or very violently — is usually not enough.

There are lots of ways you can create a “wow” factor for yourself.

I’ve done it for myself using what I’ve called the Most Valuable Email trick.

This trick is not stories, or pop culture illustrations, or shock and controversy.

It’s something else entirely. Something that others have used profitably before I started using the Most Valuable Email trick, and still others have used profitably since I taught it to them.

If you’d like to learn the Most Valuable Email trick yourself, you can. It takes all of an hour to learn and start applying in your own emails, so you can create a kind of “wow” factor for yourself.

If that’s something you’re interested in, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

I asked for ideas to fail, and I got ’em

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The results are in. Well, some of the results.

Yesterday, I wrote an email asking my readers for ideas. On how I could make more money. And I offered a $100 reward — if I run with the idea and it fails.

Result:

I got a small number of replies so far. Almost all the replies were thoughtful, serious ideas that could legitimately make me more money.

I’ve decided to try out an idea sent to me by Modern Maker Jacob Pegs. I’ll report on the final result of that — $100 or glory — by the end of this month.

The thing is, I would like to do more. Try out two, three, all of the ideas people sent me. All at the same time.

I’d also like to finish that book I’ve been working on for a while. Plus I’d like to go through my existing emails and package those up into even more books.

I’d like to create a couple new courses, or maybe a half dozen. I have ideas for a few workshops as well. Plus I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a community for a while.

I’d like to find new affiliate offers to promote… I’d like to come up with some sort of continuity program… I’d like to build up my list with more people with money.

And that’s just for this little info publishing business.

There’s a whole big world of money-making opportunities out there that regularly calls my attention and tempts me with the thought of cool new projects using skills and assets I already have.

All that’s to say:

I’m a moderately successful dude. And I have a moderately infinite list of possible projects to do, all of which sound cool, all of which which could make me a ton of money, all of which could be good for me in other ways.

But there are people out there who are vastly more successful than I am. And those people have vastly infinite lists of possible projects to do, all of which sound cool, all of which could make them a ton of money, all of which could be good for them in other ways.

You see the problem:

Infinite opportunities…

Finite time. Finite energy. Finite head space.

And that’s pretty much the argument for going to business owners and saying, “Hey. You. How about I just do this for you? Don’t pay me anything. Don’t stress about this at all. I’ll handle all of it. Just, if it makes money, you give me a share?”

These kinds of offers work. I know, because I’ve made them, and I’ve had them accepted.

I can vouch first hand that these offers can collect you — as the party doing the work — a lot of money.

You can go out now and start reaching out to business owners and saying “Hey. You.”

If that works, great.

But if not, then consider Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind.

Shiv’s got a whole system for how to find business owners to partner with… how to approach them… what to say to them… and how to deliver on work that makes the business owner free money, which they are then happy to share with you.

Oh, and there’s also coaches inside PCM to help you along. I’m one of those coaches.

If you’d like to find out more about PCM:

https://bejakovic.com/pcm

Four chapters more important than new customers

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Yesterday, I was flying from Girona, Spain to Zagreb, Croatia. It was not a pleasant flight. I tried to distract myself by opening up a valuable marketing book I’ve been reading:

Ice To The Eskimos, or, How To Market A Product Nobody Wants

I’ve been at this book for a couple of weeks already. I’m a very slow reader, which means I’ve just started chapter 5.

“Finally,” I said to myself as I started reading. “Now we’re getting into the sexy stuff, getting new customers!”

But that’s a classic mistake I was making.

Sure, the chapter 5 stuff sounded sexy.

But there were 4 chapters that the author thought were more important to write about before that.

The author of this book is Jon Spoelstra. Spoelstra was a sports marketer who was brought in to boost sales at the New Jersey Nets back in the 1990s.

Here was Spoelstra’s first and most important lesson:

Back in the early 90s, the New Jersey Nets were the worst team in the NBA. They had no stars. They even had no kind of home team advantage — New Jersey residents support the New York Knicks. To top it all off, there was a legitimate curse on the franchise.

The owners brought in Spoelstra to try to turn things around.

They told him to devise a strategy to lure people from Manhattan to buy Nets tickets. After all, Manhattan is so rich and so near, and so full of people hungry for entertainment.

Spoelstra refused.

He called it his Ulysses Method.

Spoelstra plugged up the owners’ ears with wax. He lashed himself to the mast of the Nets ship, so he would not be tempted to heed the siren song that leads to certain ruin, trying to woo customers from a sexy segment of the market where he just. could. not. win.

Instead, Spoelstra focused on unsexy New Jersey. Result:

The Nets went from zero sold-out games the year before Spoelstra was hired, to 35 sold-out games a few years later.

During the same time, the Nets also managed to increase revenue from local sponsorships from $400k per year to more than $7 million per year.

How Spoelstra achieved this is clever and worth knowing, and Spoelstra’s book is worth reading.

But none of it would have mattered much if not for the basic Ulysses Method.

I’m telling you this because I needed being told this myself.

When I first read Spoelstra’s chapter about the Ulysses Method, I impatiently sped through.

“Sure of course makes sense. But not really relevant to me. I am in no danger of chasing after markets where I can’t win.”

A few days passed. With a bit of space and time, I slowly realized Spoelstra’s warning applies very directly to me, and to stuff I’m trying to do now.

So I’m sharing the Ulysses Method with you now, because maybe you can use it as well.

All right, on to my offer to you for today:

If you feel you never learned the fundamentals of copywriting, and you’ve just been winging it based on what you’ve observed others doing, then my Copy Riddles program might be the fix you’re looking for.

Copy Riddles covers the A-Z of copywriting in 20 individual rounds.

Each round covers a specific copywriting topic or technique. The topics and techniques get progressively more sophisticated and rarefied as the 20 rounds go on.

But just like with Spoelstra and his Ulysses Method, the most important stuff is right there in rounds 1 and 2.

Internalize just those two rounds, or have them internalized for you, simply by following the Copy Riddles process, and you will be ahead of 95% of the people who call themselves professional copywriters, including many who make a good living at it.

For more info on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Climate change is bullshit

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If you identify as right-leaning, at least in the American sense, then there’s a good chance you already suspect climate change is bullshit.

In that case, I’m not telling you anything new.

On the other hand, if you identify as left-leaning, at least in the American sense, then you should know that “climate change” is in fact bullshit.

The term was a kind of red herring proposed back in 2002 by a Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, in a memo to the administration of President George W. Bush. Luntz wrote:

“‘Climate change’ is less frightening than ‘global warming.’ As one focus group participant noted, climate change ‘sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.’ While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.”

Luntz later distanced himself from this memo and the effects it may have had. But it was too little, too late.

The Bush administration had already taken up the fight for “climate change” at the expense of “global warming.”

​​Over the course of 2023, they started seeing results.

​​Climate change gradually became the standard way to talk about the environment — not just in Bush administration press releases, but among news media, left-leaning politicians, and ultimately the general population.

It’s now 20+ years later.

​​Yesterday was Earth Day.

Mainstream media like the BBC and CNN wrote about the occasion.

So did left-leaning media like NPR and the New York Times.

They all bewailed the fact that not enough is being done. And they all used the term “climate change.”

I have no interest in trying to change your mind one way or another about the environment. I identify as neither right- nor left-leaning, but upright, like a refrigerator.

​​My point is simply to talk about the persuasion aspect of all this, and to highlight what it means for you.
​
Because you might think the lesson here is to simply come up with a sneaky new phrase like “climate change” and snap your finger to make your customers, constituents, or even competitors play the game you want them to play.

Not at all. Here’s a story from George Lakoff, a UC Berkeley professor of linguistics and a kind of Democrat version of Frank Luntz. Lakoff wrote:

“I was once asked if I could reframe — that is, provide a winning slogan for — a global warming bill “by next Tuesday.” I laughed. Effective reframing is the changing of millions of brains to be prepared to recognize a reality. That preparation hadn’t been done.”

It’s possible to reframe the minds of thousands of your customers and even your competitors so they play your game… use your preferred language… and fume against you in a way that only serves you and reinforces what you want.

But it takes some preparation to do that.

There are lots of ways to do that preparation. I’m sure many of them are fine. But my preferred one is simple daily emails like the one you’re reading now.

If you haven’t tried writing daily emails yet, I can recommend it.

​​If you have tried writing daily emails, I can recommend keeping it up.

And if you want some guidance on how to keep it up, and what to put in your emails so you prepare all those minds to recognize a new reality, here’s my “intro to daily emailing” course:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Public appeal: What are you eyeing to buy?

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During my CopyHour promo last week, I got a message from a reader who got stung by buying too soon:

===

Man you really gotta start posting an affiliate calendar, your bonuses are always amazing… same case as High Impact Writing. I already bought it on the first round of the year and I will say it was phenomenal. would’ve been great to get it from your affiliate though

===

An affiliate calendar is a smart idea. But the fact is, as things stand, I have no major affiliate offers planned soon. Maybe you can help me with that.

Ask yourself:

Is there anything you’re thinking of buying?

Any course, mastermind, coaching program you have your eye on, you’ve been saving up for, you’re on the fence with?

If there is, write in and let me know.

If it’s an offer that makes sense to promote to my entire list, I will reach out the offer owner and ask about striking some kind of a deal.

And when I do, I will make sure you benefit.

Maybe I can wrangle a sizeable discount on your behalf.

Or maybe I’ll add on valuable bonuses — extra trainings or a community or secret info — that make the original price seem like a steal.

You win. I win. And maybe even that offer owner wins.

So think for a moment. And if something pops up in your mind, let me know.

How CopyHour changed my life (no joke)

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This week, until Thursday at 8:31pm CET, I am promoting Derek Johanson’s CopyHour program. I’ve never gone through CopyHour myself. And yet it changed my life.

By the time I found out about CopyHour, around 2017, I had already been handcopying successful ads and sales letters on my own.

That’s what CopyHour is about, and it’s a worthwhile exercise.

Maybe I can say more about hand copying ads in a future email. But not now, because that’s not how CopyHour changed my life.

Back in 2017, there was not the the glut of copywriting courses and education that there is now. So I eagerly joined the CopyHour group Facebook group to see if I could maybe learn something on the sly.

Back then, the Facebook group was where Derek delivered the trainings that go with the handcopying work. I could see Derek was legit, had experience and expertise, and had put in time and effort to make CopyHour a really great program.

For example, this group was where I first got exposed to the book Great Leads. It’s a valuable book. But more importantly, it turned on some light in my dim brain and turned me on to the idea that maybe I should find some classic books about copywriting and read those.

This led me down a deep rabbit hole of reading and research which helped make me a drastically better copywriter in time.

But that still not how CopyHour changed my life.

How CopyHour changed my life is that I got on Derek’s email list.

During the next launch of CopyHour, Derek sent a bunch of emails to promote the program. One of those emails was actually not written by him but by a copywriter named Dan Ferrari.

At the time, Dan was a star copywriter at financial publisher Motley Fool. Dan’s story is classic bizopp rags to riches — from subsisting on four teaspoon of olive oil for breakfast because that’s all he could afford, to writing a control with his second sales letter at Motley Fool and soon pulling in millions of dollars in copywriting royalties.

“Hm,” I said, “maybe I should see if this dude has his own email list.”

I found Dan’s site. I signed up to his list. And what followed was… nothing. No emails. Not for almost two years.

Long story even longer, one day in 2019, Dan finally sent out an email asking his list if anyone was in the Baltimore-Washington area at the moment. As luck would have it, I was there at the time.

That email led to me joining Dan’s small coaching group a few months later… learning directly from Dan… hitching my wagon in part to Dan’s rising star… and making, as a direct consequence of a few words of Dan’s advice inside that coaching program, some hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But let’s wrap this story up:

The program that Dan credits for taking him from the olive oil subsistence breakfast to being a control-beating star copywriter at Motely Fool is — CopyHour.

The reason I found Dan and ended up learning copywriting from him is — CopyHour.

That’s my story.

Yours, I don’t know? Maybe it can start today.

Derek has opened the doors to CopyHour today. He will close them on Sunday because CopyHour is a real-time program.

But while Derek’s doors will stay open until Sunday, I will give you a reason to act now. If you join CopyHour before this Thursday at 8:31pm CET, and you do so using my affiliate link below, I will give you the following five free bonuses:

#1. Copy Zone (price last sold at: $100). My 175-page, A-Z guide on the business side of copywriting, from getting started with no experience or portfolio, all the way to becoming an A-list copywriter. Only ever sold once before, during a flash 24-hour offer in March 2023.

#2. Most Valuable Postcard #2: Ferrari Monster (price last sold at: $100). A deep dive into a single fascinating topic — code named Ferrari Monster — which I claim is the essence of all copywriting and marketing. Get the Ferrari Monster right, and almost everything else falls into place.

#3. Copy Riddles Lite (price last sold at $99). A slice of my Copy Riddles program, proportionately priced. Try yourself against legendary A-list copywriters like Gene Schwartz, David Deutsch, and Clayton Makepeace — and in the process, implant new copywriting skills into your brain.

#4. Horror Advertorial Swipe File (price last sold at: $100). A zip file with 25 PDFs, featuring the original copy for 25 of my horror advertorials. These advertorials pulled in millions of dollars on cold Facebook and YouTube traffic, and sold everything from fake diamonds and dog seat belts, to stick-on bras and kids’ vitamins.

#5. 9 Deadly Email Sins (price last sold at: $100). 9 lessons distilled from my expensive and exclusive one-on-one coaching sessions with successful business owners and marketers.

In the past, I’ve sold each of these trainings at the prices listed. When you add all those prices up, you get a total of $499 in free bonuses. This happens to be more than CopyHour currently sells for.

That said, don’t join CopyHour just to get my free bonuses. Join because you decide that you will do the work involved in CopyHour, and that you will benefit from it.

For more info on that, take a look at Derek’s writeup of how CopyHour works:

https://bejakovic.com/copyhour