Business Ideas

Fundamental theorem of sustainable, stress-free businesses

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I studied computer science in college. A very few lessons have stuck with me. For example, I still remember the “Fundamental theorem of software engineering,” which says:

“All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection.”

In computer science, that means something like, take a step away from the core problem, look at things from a higher level of abstraction, and everything will sort itself out.

Along the same lines, I would like to propose to you the fundamental theorem of stress-free, sustainable businesses, which says:

“All problems in your business can be solved by another level of indirection.”

Would an example help?

Think of the 1848 California Gold Rush.

The zeroth level of that was to take a sieve and sit by the side of the American River, sifting thousands of pounds of silt every day and maybe finding a few nuggets of gold.

As you probably know, that’s not how the real money was made.

The real money was made in selling sieves and pots and shovels to miners, not in shoveling for gold. California’s first millionaire was a man named Samuel Brannan, who opened a big store during the Gold Rush. A first level of indirection.

But you can do still better. Because if your business is selling shovels to miners, then you might be out of business when a gold rush passes. Plus, gold miners are a rowdy, desperate bunch, and selling to them means you might get pulled into a brawl or hit over the head with one of your own shovels.

That’s where the fundamental theorem comes in.

You can introduce another layer of indirection, a second level.

You can get out of the shovel-selling business, and you get into the shovel-distributing business, or the store-construction business, or the info product business targeting owners of big stores, men like Samuel Brannan, a kind of customer with greater staying power and ability to pay than the miners he sells to.

And if it turns out that you don’t like the selling to the Samuel Brannans of the world, you know what to do. Third level, fourth level, fifth level of indirection, and everything will sort itself out.

Somebody recently asked me if I have a course or a training on choosing a niche.

I don’t. I don’t imagine I will ever create one. The above is my bit of advice to help you choosing a niche.

But I do know somebody who has a lot of experience with online businesses, and who has great advice about criteria for choosing a new niche.

That person is Travis Sago. Travis has an entire training called “Niche Factors That Never Fail.”

Travis’s courses, including Passive Cash Flow Mojo, the one that contains that niches training, all sell for thousands of dollars each.

But through some glitch in the matrix, you can currently get access to all of Travis’s courses by being a part of Travis’s Royalty Ronin community. That community is not cheap either, but it’s a fraction of the price of just one of Travis’s high-ticket courses.

I can recommend Royalty Ronin, because I myself am a member.

But you don’t have to decide anything now. Because you can get a free trial to Ronin for 7 days. If you’d like to find out more about this trial offer:

http://bejakovic.com/ronin

Announcing: 1% Writer

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Today I’d like to clue you in on a new offer called 1% Writer.

It’s not my offer.

I’m not even an affiliate.

It’s Kieran Drew’s new offer to go along with his upcoming birthday.

I asked Kieran recently if he’d be one of the people to read my new 10 Commandments book and give me feedback. He turned me down because he was busy putting this new course together.

But Kieran made me a deal, which was that he’d promote my new 10 Commandments book to his audience when I do publish it.

In turn, I said I’d gladly promote his 1% Writer to my audience.

The thing is, I haven’t seen, read, or profited from 1% Writer myself. (It’s a live cohort course, delivered by email, which will kick off next week, May 8.)

I’m still happy to promote 1% Writer to you, for the following two reasons:

Reason #1 is Kieran himself.

In case you don’t know the guy, he has a huge audience (something like 250,000 people across various platforms), and he’s made a huge amount of money in a few years’ time by selling stuff to that audience (north of $1.2 million).

Kieran’s done it all with nothing but his little typing fingers.

Clearly, he knows a thing, two, or maybe even three about how to succeed online by just writing.

What’s more, he’s directly coached a bunch of other people who have gone from zero to hero in that space, so he knows how to pass his knowledge on to others.

I’ll also say I read Kieran’s newsletter myself, when I’ve largely started to ignore most of the other people I used to follow online.

Add it all up and the sum is that I know, respect, and endorse Kieran for what he does in general.

Reason #2 I’m happy to promote 1% Writer is that it costs a whopping $33, or $1 a day. (The course lasts for 33 days, since Kieran is turning 33, and apparently there’s a mathematical connection between the two facts.)

What do you get for $33?

Says Kieran, this course has his best advice, compressed down into 33 lessons, about how to grow your audience, build authority, and turn your ideas into income.

He also says it’s the highest value-to-dollar ratio product he’s made.

I’ve happily promoted Kieran’s high-ticket courses in the past, and I’ve seen the thought and care and value he’s put into those offers.

If he says 1% Writer is the highest value-to-dollar product he’s made, I believe him. That takes nothing away from his high-ticket offers, but it does make 1% Writer an attractive offer, and one to consider seriously.

Of course, you make the final decision. To help you do that, you can find out the full details about 1% Writer, including that May 7 deadline, on the page below:

​https://1pw.kierandrew.com/

Mr. Malaprop

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About a month ago, my friend Sam forwarded me a WSJ article about a Ford executive named Mike O’Brien. Over the course of his decades-long career, O’Brien compiled a list, 2,229 items long, of his colleagues’ corporate malapropisms. A few examples:

“I don’t want to sound like a broken drum here, but…”

“Let’s not reinvent the ocean.”

“It’s no skin on our back.”

“Too many cooks in the soup.”

“We need to talk about the elephant in the closet.”

Last night, I called my mom. She’s one of the people I’ve sent an early draft of my new 10 Commandments book to. Being my mom, she’s found the book tremendous. “I’m just so impressed that you know so many facts, and can refer to all these stories, and know the names of all the directors and the screenwriters of the movies you talk about…”

I had to set my mom straight.

It’s writing. Writing.

My mom wouldn’t agree with this, but the fact is, in real life, I’m not all that smart, educated, or informed.

I say stupid stuff all the time. I don’t remember names or dates at all. I’m prone to using cliches and saying generalities. I’ve definitely slipped into worse malaprops than the ones above from O’Brien.

But in writing, it doesn’t matter. In writing, you can take a moment to think. You can look things up. You can pack your writing full of relevant facts. You can edit, so you don’t publish something that ends up stabbing you in the foot.

I don’t know if anybody needed to hear that or not.

In any case, my new 10 Commandments book, which will have a chapter about the elephant in the closet, is nearing publication.

Yesterday, I made an offer related to this book, or maybe asked for a favor. Let me repeat that once more:

Do you have an audience of your own? A newsletter, an online community, a local book club or bingo group?

What I want is for you to promote my book when it comes out. Of course, that means nothing to you and does nothing for you. I don’t know what I can offer you to make it worth your while to promote my book when it comes out, but I am open to all kinds of ideas, from straightforward to outlandish.

If you are open to it as well, at least in theory, hit reply. Let’s talk, and maybe we can figure something out that works for both of us.

The day after

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Yesterday around 1pm, I finished writing my Daily Email Habit puzzle and was about to upload it to Kit. But my Internet had stopped working. The odd thing was I checked my phone, and not just the wifi was down, but it looked like the cellular network, too.

I shrugged and went to take a nap because… I live in Spain.

I woke up twenty minutes later. The Internet was still down. I looked inside the fridge to see if there was anything interesting happening there. It was dark. Aha. The power was out.

I opened the the circuit breaker box — all the circuit breakers were fine. I opened the front door of my apartment. The hallway outside was dark except for the emergency light.

Ok. So the power is out in the entire building. There was a notice a few days ago about some utilities work being done, maybe this was it.

I decided to go to the gym, because there was nothing else to do. The elevator wasn’t working so I took the stairs. On my way down, I passed a couple with a baby who were climbing up. The woman was carrying the baby, while the guy, panting, was carrying the stroller. Lucky for them, they live on just the second floor (the building has 12).

As I stepped out into the sunshine, I saw a bunch of people standing around on the street and talking. All stores, restaurants, and banks were dark and empty. I guess the was power out everywhere in my neighborhood?

I passed by a local brunch place. The waitress was explaining to the guests, “It’s everywhere! My boyfriend in Madrid says it, there’s no connection anywhere.”

I got to the gym, which was dark, silent, and full of people. I did my workout among suppressed grunts and increasingly stifling air (the AC wasn’t working).

I heard one of the trainers explain to somebody that this power outage is happening “en toda España.” Somebody else said Portugal too. Others were saying it’s in France and Italy as well (turned out to be exaggerations).

I walked back home. Drivers were carefully stopping at every zebra and intersection because the stoplights weren’t working either.

The streets were packed with people. Neither the metros nor trams were running. The whole city seemed to be either standing on the streets or walking home because no work could be done. An alarming number of women were sitting on park benches and reading books.

Convenience stores were the only thing that was somewhat open. Each one had a queue of people waiting at the front door. The store owners were letting in people one by one to do basic shopping if they could pay in cash.

As tends to happen, the sun started to set. I went for a walk and saw firefighters in front of a pharmacy beating down the rolling security shutter. It must run on electricity. I guess the firefighters were trying to close it by force for the pharmacists, to prevent a breakin at night.

I stood on my balcony as night fell. I was looking forward to seeing the city in total darkness for once. But it wasn’t to happen.

It turned out some buildings still had electricity — the fire station next door, various hotels, an entire neighborhood off on the hillside.

Still, Avinguda Diagonal, the main artery next to my house, was almost entirely dark. So was my little street. My own apartment was even darker.

I made a salad for dinner — the only food I had left in the house that didn’t require a stove to prepare. I had to move the cutting board to the window because the counter where I normally work was so dark I was afraid I would chop off a finger tip while slicing the cherry tomatoes.

By around 9:30pm, my apartment was like a cave. There was no Internet and I had switched off my phone earlier to conserve the battery. I lay on the couch and turned on the backlight on my Kindle to read in darkness.

Around 10pm, I heard cheering and clapping outside. A neighboring block had gotten its power back. But my block and most other blocks around me were still in the dark.

I went to bed around 10:30pm, feeling exhausted. I guess following the natural light cycle does that to you.

And then, some time during the night, I’m guessing around 2am, I woke up to loud beeping. My fridge was back and it was helpfully signalling that the temperature of the freezer was dangerously high.

All that’s to say, as of this morning, everything’s normal once again, and without even an interruption in my daily email cadence.

I have to admit I was actually looking forward to the possibility of a continuing power outage, and to having a proper, unavoidable excuse to not writing my daily email today. What would that be like? I’ve been writing a daily email for years now, every day, without fail. I was excited by the prospect of change. That’s something for me to think about.

Meanwhile, I can tell you that the curious day yesterday reminded me of a curious book I’d read two years ago. In fact, this book was the first book of my year-long Insights & More Book Club, which brought together a few of my readers specifically to read books that offered a mind-bending new perspective.

The first book of the book club fit the bill.

Even though the book is 100 years old, it was written in a particularly interesting and influential style, which I think can be relevant for anyone writing online today.

It also did lead me to moment of real insight, a perspective shift, which sticks with me to this day. I mean, even to yesterday, when I was really thinking about it.

If you’re curious, you can find the book, or maybe even read it yourself, at the following convenient link:

https://bejakovic.com/masses

What matters more than results

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Last year, a dude with some personal domain email address signed up to my list.

I make a habit of doing a bit of detective work on new subscribers. This led me to a New York Times article about the dude from 2015.

At that time, said the article, he was the manager of an investment fund with $35 billion under management.

I wrote him a 1-1 email, as I do sometimes with new subscribers, to say hello, to mention the article about him I had dug up in my snooping, and to ask what a person of his profile is doing signing up to a daily email list like mine, about writing and marketing and effective communication. He replied:

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I basically do the same thing I did for the pension fund, but now for a small group of direct clients. I also run quite a bit of money for other investment advisors and their clients. I manage about $1.2 billion total – I’m a solo shop, do it all myself.

I decided a few years ago that I wanted to be out of the public eye – 20 years was enough, so I’m pretty secretive and off the grid.

My results are still among the best in the country, but I’ve learned in the retail investment world perceptions matter more than results. So I generate best in class returns mostly for myself and personal pride.

My business actually runs and grows off the image I portray to clients and prospects. I’ve learned that I’m lucky enough to have the ability to naturally make complex things simple, which people are dying for in the investment business.

I’ve developed a somewhat unique way to communicate, mostly using very focused, simple communications. Especially in the world of AI, I think this skill will matter more than most. So I’ve become a closet student of writing, copywriting, communication, etc. That’s how I can across your newsletter. I bought your book too.

===

I thought that was curious and wanted to share it with you.

Here’s a dude who, so you might imagine, lives and breathes by measurable results. I mean, either he makes his investors money, or he doesn’t. Either he outperforms the other guy, or he doesn’t.

Except, as he says, that doesn’t really matter, not as much as perception, as the image he portrays to his clients and prospects.

That’s something to keep in mind, if you yourself work in a field that’s supposedly results-based, and particularly if you work in a field that’s more fuzzy and wooly.

So how do you build up and maintain an image that clients and prospects are willing to pay for?

The message above from the investment advisor spells it out.

I can only add that he also told me he sends “clients and prospects periodic emails about the markets, my strategy, etc.”

Maybe it’s something you could profit from too? If you’d like my help on that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

It drops out the bottom of every sales funnel

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Last summer, I listened to an old sales training by a guy named Fred Herman. Says Fred:

“I believe every sale sort of funnels down this way. You need to have a product or a service. You need to have a customer, of course, to talk to. Then you need to find out what his dominant buying motive is. And then the picture he will buy will drop right out the bottom of the funnel, because people don’t buy products or services, they buy pictures of the end result of that product or service, playing a part in their life.”

This echoes something that the great Robert Collier wrote a hundred years ago in his Letter Book:

“Thousands of sales have been lost, millions of dollars worth of business have failed to materialize, solely because so few letter-writers have that knack of visualizing a proposition — of painting it in words so the reader can see it as they see it.”

And of course, if you need something a bit more modern, there’s negotiation coach Jim Camp, who summed it up in his pithy and dramatic way:

“No vision, no decision.”

“Sure sure,” you say. “Words, words, more words. I need pictures though! Isn’t that what you’re trying to sell me on?”

All right, let’s see if you can picture this:

Yesterday, I told you about Albert Lasker and Claude C. Hopkins.

Lasker, who ran the biggest and most powerful ad agency in the US, wanted Hopkins to come and work for him.

Problem was, Hopkins 1) didn’t want to be in advertising any more and 2) had made millions and didn’t need to work ever again.

Lasker asked Hopkins to meet for lunch at an upscale restaurant.

He played to Hopkins’s vanity, pulling out several pages of typewritten copy for a major new client, the best copy he had been able to get written by the best copywriters out there, which just wasn’t good enough to be submitted.

He made Hopkins an “easy yes” proposition — “just write three ads for us so we can submit it to this one client.”

Crucially — and this is really the picture-within-the-picture I want to give you — Lasker didn’t offer Hopkins any money to take the job.

After all, what’s money gonna do for Hopkins? He’s already got enough.

Instead, as the dessert arrived, Lasker told Hopkins to send his wife to the car dealer so she can pick out whatever car she likes, and Lasker would pay for it.

A bit of backstory:

1. Hopkins’s wife wanted an electric car (crazy thing is, those existed in 1907).

2. Hopkins, though a multimillionaire, was cheap and couldn’t part with the money to buy his wife the electric car. This was causing… tension at home.

You might think, what’s the difference between getting paid outright and getting paid via a free car for your wife?

In theory, no difference.

In practice, all the difference in the world.

And so it is with your prospects and customers too.

You might be promising them money.

That works some of the time. But what works all the time is to promise people what they really want. And that, like old Fred says up top, is a picture of the end result of what they are buying, playing a part in their life.

Of course, that takes some research on your part. Lasker had to do some scheming and digging to find out that Hopkins’s wife wanted an electric car and that Hopkins was too cheap to buy it for her, and that this was the most pressing problem in his life right now. But that’s what made Hopkins yield, “as all do, to Lasker’s persuasiveness.”

And that’s it. That’s all I got for you.

I have nothing to sell you today, at least nothing wonderfully expensive the way I would like.

But if you want more stories that can buy you a car, featuring Claude C. Hopkins and Albert Lasker, can find a couple in my original 10 Commandments book.

I’ve shipped off the new 10 Commandments book to several trusted readers and I am waiting, my cheeks red from holding my breath, for their feedback so I can integrate said feedback and hit publish on Amazon.

Meanwhile, if you still haven’t read the original 10 Commandments, you can find them all waiting for you here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

A persuasion riddle featuring the greatest ad man of all time

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I got a riddle for you. A persuasion riddle. It goes like this:

In 1907, Albert Lasker, President at the Lord & Thomas ad agency, badly wanted to hire Claude C. Hopkins, widely believed to be the greatest ad man of that time, and really, of any time.

Problem:

Hopkins 1) didn’t want to work and 2) didn’t need the money.

The background was that, a short while earlier, Hopkins had been publicly disgraced and privately shook up.

He had become a part owner of a patent medicine company called Liquozone. He believed in the Liquozone product — he thought it had saved his daughter’s life. He advertised it very aggressively and effectively.

Hopkins took Liquozone from bankruptcy in 1902 to making a profit of $1.8 million the next year (about $60 million in today’s money).

Over the next five years, Hopkins, who owned a 25% stake in Liquozone, made millions of dollars personally, probably over $100 million in today’s money.

And then some muckracking journalist had the gall to go and write a series of muckracking articles (“The Great American Fraud”) about how patent medicines were all bunk and how Liquozone in particular was the “same old fake” and how, according to lab tests, it was probably more harmful than helpful.

In response to those articles, a bunch of states banned Liquozone, and the federal government set up the Food and Drug Administration, to regulate health products and the claims made about them.

Again, Hopkins, who genuinely believed in Liquozone, was privately hurt. And publicly, being involved with something that was now known as a fake and a scam, he decided to retire to a village on Lake Michigan, determined not to work in advertising no more.

And yet, as Hopkins later wrote, “As far as I know, no ordinary human being has ever resisted Albert Lasker. Nothing he desired has ever been forbidden him. So I yielded, as all do, to his persuasiveness.”

So here’s the riddle:

What did Albert Lasker say or do to convince Hopkins, who didn’t want to work and who didn’t need the money, to come out of his village hiding hole and get back into copywriting?

If you dig around on the internet, or if you get Perplexity to do it for you, you can probably find the answer.

But what’s the fun in that? And what’s the value?

The fact is, if you riddle this out for yourself, you might come up with good ideas of your own.

And when I share the actual answer in my email tomorrow, it’s sure to be much more memorable and useful to you.

By the way, the answer to this riddle applies way beyond convincing A-list copywriters to come work for you. It applies to just about any kind of new business partnership you might want to start.

But more about that tomorrow.

For today, I thought about what offer makes sense to promote, given the Hopkins and Lasker story above.

I realized that once again, it’s Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin, which I was promoting extensively last month.

I’m no longer giving away bonuses just for trying out Ronin for free for a week.

I am giving away bonuses if you decide to stick with Ronin past the free trial.

But honestly, the bonuses I’m offering, nice as they are, are but a drop in the total value of what you get if you are actually inside the Ronin community, and if you simply make a point to do something with the resources inside.

If you’d like to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

More staff?

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This morning, I got a reply from a reader who wrote:

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Great insights, btw do you need more staff? Thanks

Have a good day!

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I guess it was a great pattern interrupt because it made me blank for a full five seconds.

“More staff? What… where… how much staff do I have now?”

In the past, I’ve hired people for one-off jobs, such as creating book covers or converting an email-based course into a website-based course.

But I’ve never had an employee and frankly I don’t ever want an employee.

In fact, at one point back in 2020, I wrote down 10 characteristics of the kind of business I would like to have. Number 2 on the list was:

“I don’t have to manage people. I can do it all myself or outsource parts of it that I don’t feel like doing.”

I’m telling you this while being fully aware it’s nothing to boast about, and is even rather stupid.

As every reasonable and successful person can tell you, hiring people takes the mushed peas off your plate, allows you to focus on the stuff you like to do and are good at, and makes you more money overall while leaving you more free time.

What’s not to like? I don’t know. I should have an employee. Maybe I should even have two.

But I don’t want one. I don’t want two or more either. And in the words of business coach Rich Schefren, in the end the only real option is to “put your business goals ahead of your personal development goals.”

Rich’s point is that it takes a long long while to change the person you are — like the rest of your life, and even then, you might not be all that different than you are today.

It doesn’t make sense to wait for that.

You might as well figure out how to live your life and run your business and make money with what you got, instead of telling yourself that you should have some other stuff in your pocket, or you should be a different person in your head, and then you will be ready.

What’s made it so that I’ve been able to survive in spite of refusing to hire or manage anybody is pretty simple. It’s daily emails.

In fact, my entire business now is really built on the back of writing an email to my list every day. I started writing daily emails as a way to get better at writing copy, back when I was working with clients. Then it became about potentially attracting clients. Then, after I stopped working with clients, it became about selling products.

At every step of the way, the common thing was simply writing an email each day about something that I found interesting and valuable, and (most of the time) tacking on some kind of an offer.

Not only does it pay the bills these days but it’s transformed my life — I’ve learned a ton of stuff about what I do that I would never have learned otherwise, I’ve become a better writer and marketer, and I’ve even developed a low level of star status in a very niche industry.

I don’t think I’m particularly unique in being able to do this. The main thing is to start, and to stick with it for the long term.

I’ve created something that can help you both get started, and stick with it, if that’s what you’d like to do. To find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Do you know anybody who needs referrals?

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I’ve just prepared a little report about a tweak to get referrals. It works for getting referrals for services, but it can be adapted for products, too.

If you know anybody who needs referrals, write me an email (hit reply or write me at john@bejakovic.com) and I’ll get you a copy of this report so you can give it to them.

A question I’ve been dreading

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Last week I got a question, one I’ve been dreading, from long-time reader Neil Sutton.

Neil is an architect by day and by night, he puts on his copywriting pajamas and works as a copywriter helping businesses who want architects as clients…. which I have to say is kind of brilliant. Anyways, Neil wrote:

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Hey John,

Here’s a picture of me eating a PopTart and scrolling through my Bejako emails, trying to find where I missed the email about your new 10 Commandments book launch.

[Neil included a gif here, showing a small monkey, possible a rhesus macaque, eating a pop tart and scrolling on a phone]

Did I miss it?

===

The back story is that, some time in February, I had the bright idea to publicly announce a deadline — March 24,2025 — by which I will finish and publish my new book, titled:

“10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters”

Well, the deadline came, the deadline passed, no emails went out announcing the book because the book is still not finished or published.

I failed with my self-assigned public deadline, and a few people, Neil among them, have spotted something off.

I can only tell you that just this morning, I finished the introduction to the new book, which was the last part waiting to be written. The book just has to go out to a few folks for edits + suggestions. The cover is already done.

All of which means the book will be finished and published…

Who knows when. I’ve burned myself already by setting and publicly announcing a deadline I failed to meet. I won’t be repeating that mistake again.

Two things are for sure:

One, I am working on it. And two, I will get it done.

In the meantime, if you haven’t read my original 10 Commandments book, you might find that interesting and valuable.

The original 10 commandments book was successful enuff that I decided to copy the core concept, the structure, and even the cover style for the new 10 Commandments book.

If you’re looking for ideas to help you influence others, or just to better understand your own mind, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments