Business Ideas

The legend of my upstairs neighbor

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One of my upstairs neighbors is a middle-aged, rather large golden retriever, whose name I’ve never learned.

I hear him frequently trundling across the apartment above mine, his unmanicured golden retriever claws clack-clacking on the hardwood floor.

He he as a passion for barking, often late at night, as I’m falling asleep (warding off robbers who might have climbed up to the 10th floor), or early in the morning, before I’ve really woken up (I guess to announce he is awake and ready to pee).

One time I was sitting on my balcony when a gigantic, disgusting clump of yellow golden retriever hair wafted down from the balcony above and landed at my feet.

For a few moments, I sat there staring at it, considering what to do. Eventually I just decided to just pick it up and throw it in the trash, and never speak of it again (until now).

I’ve run into this golden retriever several times in the elevator. He’s always completely ignored me. He’s never bothered to sniff my hand. There was not the slightest tail waggle. He never even looked up at me — the elevator doors were more interesting.

All that’s to say, my entire experience with this golden retriever has been negative. At no point has this dog ever done anything nice for me or towards me.

And yet, I still have sympathy for this stupid dog, and I keep hoping I’ll run into him whenever I take the elevator.

In part, this is because I’m a sucker for dogs. But in bigger part, it’s that golden retrievers have such a reputation about them — playful, loving, comfortable with and interested in all strangers.

I bring all this up because a couple days ago, I was listening to Dan Kennedy’s Influential Writing seminar.

One of the things that Dan talked about was legend.

He gave the examples of Wyatt Earp (who prolly had little skill with a gun, but developed a reputation as the fastest gun in the West) and Harry Houdini (who created such mystique around his acts that grizzled ex-president Teddy Roosevelt once asked Houdini if the stage illusions were real magic).

The value of such a legend, says Dan, is that it precedes you. Once it’s there, it doesn’t matter much what you do or don’t do. People will still perceive you and think of you through the prism of that legend.

So if you want things to get easier for you in the future, before you even arrive to where you’re going, it makes sense to think about legend, one that precedes you like the smell of galleys preceded them.

And now, I have to go. I have a flight in a couple hours, and I still have to pack and get to the airport.

On my way to the airport, I’ll take the elevator to get to the lobby of my building… and I’m hoping against hope I’ll run into the golden retriever, even though he’s never done anything for me, and maybe this time I’ll get to pet him.

In entirely related news, if you’d like my help starting and sticking with writing daily emails like this one, which get people reading and buying today, and spreading your legend tomorrow, then take a look here:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​

The largest copywriter in the Netherlands gives me his endorsement

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Comes a message from Robin Timmers, whose website bills him as the “grootste copywriter van Nederland.”

Google informs me that, translated from Dutch, this works out to “the largest copywriter in the Netherlands.”

I guess a more elegant translation might be, “the greatest copywriter in the Netherlands.” Though as Robin told me, the tagline is meant to be ambiguous, since he stands over 2 meters tall.

Anyways, Robin writes:

===

Hey John,

Just finished MVE and am now halfway with SME.

Man … MVE is so simple, so easy-ish to implement, but such a strong concept and format.

Awesome course, awesome idea.

Same for SME.

Really simple, really powerful and easy to implement, and model with your own ideas.

I’m very happy with both courses, and can’t wait to start with Copy Riddles.

===

In case you don’t know… MVE is my course Most Valuable Email. SME is my course Simple Money Emails.

You might not know that because I haven’t promoted either course in a few months, ever since I started selling my Daily Email Habit service.

I find my enthusiasm for promoting those courses has dipped.

In part, it’s because Daily Email Habit is not just a daily prompt to write an email… but a distillation of the best ideas in both SME and MVE, as well as ideas I don’t have in either of those courses, particularly around building up status and authority.

And Daily Email Habit presents all this to you as an easy and manageable drip-drip of information, in your inbox, every day… rather than as a course, one which you may go through once or maybe not even once, which then sits behind some forgotten login or in some folder you never check.

But much more important:

Unlike those two course of mine — or any other courses, by me or anybody else — Daily Email Habit is really built around the idea of daily, practical, real-world implementation, rather than simply passive consumption of information.

Because even things that are easy-ish to implement, like Robin says the MVE trick is, tend not to get implemented, not without a lot of stubborn nudging and reminders from the outside.

That’s what Daily Email Habit is for. If you’d like to find out more about this “grootste e-mailservice”:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Another customer I like

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Yesterday, I wrote about an ex-subscriber of my Daily Email Habit service.

Even though this guy decided to unsubscribe, he’s still the kind of customer I like, simply because he took something I was teaching and actually put it to use.

Of course, I have other customers I like too, including some who keep being subscribed to Daily Email Habit, and keep putting it to use.

A couple days ago, I heard from one such customer, business coach Steph Benedetto, who is subscribed to Daily Email habit.

I want to share Steph’s message with you both because it serves my purpose, and because it might be valuable to you. In Steph’s own words:

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I wanted to send you a little message to share an unexpected side effect of the daily emails.

Many of these daily emails are prompting me to think about things, like the one that said, “Share the coming attractions. What are you working on? What offers do you have coming up? Share them.”

When I do, I go, “Oh! I guess I have to know what I’m doing next then.” So I look and go, “Ok, this is what I’m doing… and this is what I’m doing… and this is what I’m doing.”

And it creates it through the writing.

As I’m writing about something, whatever the prompt is, and then tying it into whatever offer I have, the offers themselves are evolving and becoming clearer.

And new things are showing up. And I had no freaking idea that was available.

===

Most the Daily Email Habit puzzles are not “creative writing” prompts. Many of them are exercises that anyone with an online biz should be doing regularly, like figuring out who you want to work with… or what offers you’re putting out next… or what of business you actually want to run.

Now here’s the possibly valuable part I promised you:

You might not have the time and willpower to sit down and think about those things, and even less time and willpower to think about them regularly, over and over, as things adapt and change.

I know I don’t, not when it’s simply a todo item on my already-infinite todo list.

But like Steph says, with daily emails, you can two things at once. You can create content and make sales, on the one hand, and think about the big picture of your business and the next steps, on the other.

In other words, you can work IN the business… while at the same time working ON the business, just by taking the daily action of writing and sending a daily email.

And if you’d like to do that — to create offers, clarity, a plan — just by writing, then my Daily Email Habit might be a help for you. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The kind of customer I like

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Nine days ago, I got a message from a now ex-subscriber to my Daily Email Habit service, who wrote:

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I haven’t really been emailing since I subbed. But I don’t want to cancel cause you keep me inspired. I can say though that I took your advice on making a simple coaching call offer that 12 ppl have now bought through my LinkedIn and newsletter. Started at 90 euro for 1 hour, now I made it 130 for 45 minutes. And ppl are booking. Made just about 1000 euro so far and I’m learning a ton teaching people.

===

… and then two days ago, I saw that this guy, inspired and learning a lot though he was, unsubscribed from Daily Email Habit.

What to say? Here’s something you might not expect me to say:

I’d much rather have customers like this, who implement something I teach and then leave the fold, than ones I have to shame into staying just so they keep paying me, even though they are doing nothing with any of the info I provide.

That said, it seems a little short-sighted to me to unsubscribe for this guy in particular, since he was a Charter Member of Daily Email Habit, and as such got free access to my Daily Email House community (where the discussion about coaching call offers happened), all for $20/month.

It seems like one bit of inspiration he got via that had already paid for many months of the subscription. And in those “free” months, there’s a good chance he’d get one more idea or one more bit of inspiration, which would pay for many more months still, or maybe years.

As of last month, the Charter Member offer for Daily Email Habit has gone the way of the brontosaurus.

That means a month of Daily Email Habit “puzzles” costs $30 at the moment.

It also means the Daily Email House community is no longer a free bonus, but a paid group, only available at the moment as an upsell when you sign up to Daily Email Habit.

You might feel a bit bummed that you can no longer get the Charter Member deal. You might feel a bit better when I tell you the following:

The current offer is the best offer I will ever be making on Daily Email Habit going forward. And inevitably, there will be people who miss out on this current offer as well.

But really, whatever offer I’m making, you can be sure you stand to make 10x or 100x whatever I ask for, if only you consume and implement, at least an idea here or there.

If you’d like to get on that path today, rather than doing nothing, here’s where to get started:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Looking to get a little off the coaching ship?

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In response to my email yesterday, a reader and former coaching client (not sure he wants me to share his name) wrote in to say:

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Hey John,

Hope all is well.

Good news – having a daughter by end of the month 😊

This sets an exciting challenge for me to dive further into low ticket product sales, ascension, repeat customers rather than clients.

So I can get a little off the coaching ship and buy back time.

===

The good news is if you are a coach, and you actually have clients you work with, then you are one lucky skunk.

That’s because coaches have personal contact with their best customers/clients, and the chance to really listen and ask a ton of questions — even very probing stuff.

A coach can get insights into what sucks for his or her prospects now… what they are really after… what they’ve tried before that didn’t work… what possible solutions would be unacceptable to them on religious, political, or dietary grounds.

All this info can go into the meat mincer, out of which comes a beautiful and shiny new offer-sausage that people actually want to buy.

That’s the high-level picture. I have much more to say about the specifics. But about that:

As I’ve been writing in my past couple emails, last year I came up with a new system for myself to help me get more predictable success with new offers.

I applied this system when I had the idea for my Daily Email Habit service. It worked great.

So far, I have only shared my system with the people inside my Daily Email House community.

This month, I will make this system available a bit more widely. I’ll be sharing it with a few people on my list, if I think it can actually be useful to them.

I will make you a deal right now:

If you’re looking to get a little off the coaching ship, then hit reply and tell me a bit about who you are and what you do. In turn, I will add you to a private announcement list, so you have the opportunity to get my system when I release it later this month.

A cautionary tale for course creators

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For five years, David Perell had kind of a dream online business.

Perell sold a high-ticket, cohort-based course, Write Of Passage, teaching people how to write online.

Write Of Passage sold for $4k a pop. It had 2,000+ buyers.

Like I said, a kind of dream business, at least in the little space of online course creators and such.

I mean, Perell was writing and helping people to do something positive for themselves. He was working in line with his own values and interests. And he was pulling in great money with it.

And then, last November, Perell shut it all down. In an email announcing that the current cohort of Write Of Passage would be the last one, Perell wrote:

“You need more than a great product to make a business work, and the main thing we were missing was a dependable flow of new students.”

I agree with Perell’s first conclusion. I don’t agree with the second.

You do need more than a great product to make a business work. Particularly if your product sells for a one-time fee (even if that’s $4k), and if you have a whole supporting team of coaches and facilitators and staff and whatever, and you’re running ads or paying affiliates to get those $4k sales.

But I don’t agree that the solution needs to be MORE NEW STUDENTS.

I’ve been making a 6-fig income off this newsletter for the past few years, off of just a few hundred buyers, way fewer than Perell’s 2k. I’ve even embraced this attitude formally. My goal is to make more sales from the same number of readers.

It’s a well-known direct marketing truth that all the profits are made on the back end.

It does take more than a great product to make a business work. But instead of chasing the mythical “dependable flow” of new students… you can just commit to creating a sequence of great new offers. (An offer by the way, doesn’t require creating a new product, though a new product will typically make you a new offer.)

Now about that:

As I wrote in my last email, last year, right around the time that Perell was shutting down his multimillion-dollar dream biz, I came up with a new system for myself to help me get more predictable success with new offers.

I applied this system when I had the idea for my Daily Email Habit service. It worked great.

So far, I have only shared my system with the people inside my Daily Email House community.

This month, I will make this system available a bit more widely. I’ll be sharing it with a few people on my list, if I think it can actually be useful to them.

I will make you a deal right now:

If more predictable success with new offers is something that could be useful to you, then hit reply and tell me a bit about your current offer situation. In turn, I will add you to a private announcement list, so you have the opportunity to get my system when I release it later this month.

More predictable success with new offers

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My first info product was called Salary Negotiation Blueprint. I created in 2012 after reading Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters.

Gary says something like, pick a problem, read a 3-4 good books on it, summarize the books, create your own super-dense guide packed with the best info, and then sell that at a premium.

So that’s what I did.

I picked salary negotiation because I was in an IT office job at the time, and the topic was a bit of a taboo to me, and personally fascinating.

It took me a few months to identify the right books, read them, summarize my notes, write my own little guide, and create a sales letter (maybe my first).

And once I launched The Salary Negotiation Blueprint on Clickbank, the result was…

Nothing.

Zero sales.

I later lowered the price. Nothing. I tried moving the Salary Negotiation Blueprint to Amazon Kindle. It didn’t sell there either. At some point I even ran ads to it via Adwords. Still nobody would buy the damn thing.

I recently checked the Google Drive folder where I kept all the work for this project.

There’s a spreadsheet of possible newsletter topics, a backlog of tasks to complete, and a subfolder of possible bonus ideas. Plus a half-dozen other files, probably totaling thousands of words of preparation, analysis, and plans,

In other words, I did all this work, spent all this time, created all sorts of busy work. The result was a very useful, well written, information-packed guide that nobody in the universe would pay me even a bit of money for.

I’m telling you this because it’s not the only time it’s happened to me.

The same thing has happened many times since — probably dozens of times.

Fortunately, I’ve also had a few random successes along the way, which kept me going, and some of which made me good money.

But last year, I finally got a bit fed up with having a “few random successes.”

So I developed a system.

This system is based on stuff that had done instinctively but inconsistently before… stuff I had learned from other good business owners and marketers… and on common sense which I too uncommonly applied.

I put my system to use when creating my Daily Email Habit service. It worked out really well.

That’s why I am now forcing myself to keep using this system for each new offer I think of creating, though the temptation remains strong to simply wing it once more, and have the thrill and rush of instant activity, followed by the dump and crash that comes when results roll in, or rather, don’t.

So far, I have only shared my system with the people inside my Daily Email House community.

This month, I will make this system available a bit more widely. I’ll be sharing it with a few people on my list, if I think it can actually be useful to them.

I will make you a deal right now:

If more predictable success with new offers is something that could be useful to you, then hit reply and tell me a bit about your current offer situation. In turn, I will add you to a private announcement list, so you have the opportunity to get my system when I release it later this month.

Want to write a book?

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Last fall, marketer Sean Anthony launched a new offer that really took off.

For the few years prior, Sean was on the “sell coaching via Google Docs about how to sell coaching via Google Docs” bandwagon.

But now he had something new. He started selling “book writing” as a hot new bizniss opportunity. He called it the “1 Hour Book.”

I’m no longer on Sean’s email list, but it seems like this new bizopp was a big seller for him, because he went all in on it for a few months.

From what I could understand, the 1 Hour Book concept was 1) find client, 2) interview client on the phone for an hour, and 3) use that to produce a book for client.

I don’t know whether Sean’s customers were getting clients with this offer, or whether the clients were getting books that actually did anything good for them.

All I know is that books have unmatched impact and power. For example:

Last year, I read a book titled How To Make A Few Billion Dollars.

The book was written by Brad Jacobs, who had founded and then built up 5 separate billion-dollar businesses.

5!

In 5 different industries!

The curious thing is, in spite of Jacobs’s incredible track record, I had never heard of the man, not until he wrote his book and went around on podcasts to promote it.

This morning, I was walking around the beach near my house and thinking how many billionaires I could name.

I could definitely name 5. I couldn’t name 10.

And yet, there are 815 or so billionaires in the U.S. alone.

These are people who have all the money in the world. They have enormous power too. They might have even incredible insights, knowledge, and perspectives that few others have.

And yet, who knows them?

My point is not to bemoan the hard life of the anonymous American billionaire.

My point is simply to give you a kind of extreme counterargument, if you think that your own accomplishments, expertise, and credentials are enough to get you known and appreciated.

It doesn’t work for billionaires. The billionaires who do want to get known find they have to teach what they know… or entertain an audience… or frankly make a spectacle of themselves.

You might think this is where I tell you to write daily emails, because that’s your shot at teaching, entertaining, and making a spectacle of yourself.

But no!

I’m telling you to write daily emails because you can reuse much or all of your daily email collection to write a book. And an interesting, worthwhile book, a book you won’t simply get by waffling for an hour on the phone and having somebody transcribe and edit that for you.

Plus, as you go do along and write those daily emails, which can then turn into an interesting and worthwhile book, you can build up an audience that will snap up your book when it comes out… and will likely give it 5-star reviews because they already like you and what you write… and will probably even recommend your book to others.

So if you want to write a book, my immodest and self-interested suggestion to you is to start writing daily emails.

And if you want my help with doing that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Trump whale research intelligence

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This past November, right after Trump won the election, the WSJ ran a story about a “Trump whale” — a mysterious trader, known only as Theo, who had made a series of very large bets on the Polymarket prediction market.

Theo had bet $30 million of his own money that 1) Trump would win the election, that 2) he would win the popular vote, and that 3) he would sweep the “blue wall” of swing states.

Against the predictions of all pollsters, and against even the betting odds on Polymarket, all three things came to pass, and Theo collected $50 million as a payday.

The WSJ managed to get in contact with Theo. He explained some of his reasoning for why he was confident enough to put down $30 million of his own money on bets against what both experts and the wisdom of the crowd were saying.

That’s how I learned the following:

The normal way to poll people is to ask them, “Who you gonna vote for?” That produces certain results, which as this past election and previous elections have shown, can be significantly off from reality.

But a less normal way to poll people is to ask them, “Who your neighbor gonna vote for?” For whatever psychological reason, this tends to produce poll results that are significantly different than the normal way to poll.

Theo looked at a couple of these “neighbor” polls done in September alongside normal polls. The neighbor polls were all suggesting that support for Trump was several percentage points higher than everybody was saying.

This became one of the data points that gave this guy the confidence to make his ballsy bets, and the info to bet right and win $50 mil.

I’m telling you this for two reasons.

Reason one is if you’re trying to get info out of your readers, it might make sense not to ask them, “What do you want,” but to ask, “What do you think other people would want?” I tried it while initially working out the right pricing for Daily Email Habit, and it gave me useful info.

Reason two is simply that this neighbor polling thing is just another example of how much our own self-centered thinking tends to color how we see the world and how we behave.

I’m telling you this specifically in case you are ever plagued by thoughts like, “Nobody would want to read what I write,” or, “Nobody would want to pay money for this offer I have.”

The sticking point there is the old, I Me Mine.

If you find yourself ever thinking thoughts like — convincing yourself that you can predict what other people think, when it comes to what you are doing or could be doing — then take a lesson from the Trump whale:

The next time you are sure that you know what other people think, take yourself out of the equation. Ask yourself, “Would there be people who would want to read or buy this… if my neighbor were offering it?”

Do this, and you might win bigly.

And btw, today’s email was based on my daily puzzle that went out via Daily Email Habit. If you enjoyed today’s email, maybe you’d enjoy writing emails following daily email habit? Or maybe your neighbor would? Here’s more info in either case:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Contrast positioning for your high-priced offers

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A couple years ago, I read a screenplay by William Goldman for a pirate movie that never got made.

It was very instructive.

The screenplay opens up with a big gruff sailor on board an 18th-century trading vessel. The big gruff sailor is a strong and normally brave man.

But right now, the sailor appears unsure of himself. That’s because he sees a deserted, aimless ship on the horizon.

Could it be pirates?

“It might have been the plague,” the sailor mutters. “Sudden plague could have taken them all.” He looks away from the deserted ship nervously, and looks to his captain.

The captain, on the other hand, says nothing.

Unlike the big gruff sailor, the captain is not scared of ghost ships, and he’s not scared of whatever evil secrets they hide, pirates included.

The captain keeps his eyes trained on the deserted, nearing hulk, ready for whatever it may bring.

And then there’s the switch.

Because on board of the deserted ship that’s getting closer and closer, a figure appears.

The figure is large. It’s black. And it seems to be… on fire?

The figure starts to growl in an inhuman voice that carries over the waves:

“Death or surrender… surrender or die… the Devil bids you choose…”

The normally calm and collected captain, who is so much braver and cooler than the big, gruff sailor, turns pale. He turns and immediately signals to have the white flag hoisted.

Because the captain knows.

That’s not just any pirate ship that’s nearing.

And that’s not just any pirate.

That’s Blackbeard.

I’m telling you this because Goldman’s storytelling strategy applies as well if you sell online. It’s good for building up the main character of a movie… or for building up value for your high-priced offers.

In a few more words:

If you want to make Blackbeard — or your offer — sound important, unique, immense, you can jump straight in, and pile on the adjectives, promises, and threats.

That’s what a lot of business owners do.

At best, it works if you grit your teeth and keep piling on the adjectives, promises, and threats, and if you don’t charge all that much.

At worst, it doesn’t work at all, even when you start dropping the price.

A much better strategy is to do what Goldman did above.

Build up one thing, such as the big gruff sailor… use that to build up a second thing, such as the cool collected captain… and then finally use all that built-up power and contrast to immediately communicate the importance, uniqueness, and immensity of your third thing, say, Blackbeard.

That’s my perceived value tip for you for today, at least if you sell stuff online.

My offer for you today is my important, unique, and immense Daily Email Habit service. It can be useful and hard-working on board your own trading vessel. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh