Business Ideas

1 mosquito summer lover ~ 3-4 books

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Yesterday, I was at the gym in my home town of Zagreb, Croatia — and for a brief moment, I was amused.

The gym is the daily break in my monk-like life, where I make a bit of contact with the outside world and find out what’s going on.

And so it was yesterday. The radio was blasting. In between the parade of 80s hits — Duran Duran, Guns N’ Roses — a newswoman came on the radio with the following announcement:

“NEWSFLASH: The city of Zagreb will be importing 100,000 mosquitos this summer. From Italy. All males. And all sterile.”

Apparently this is the best idea the local authorities have to control the rampant mosquito population in this crowded, marshy city.

And it’s not such a crazy idea:

The males mate several times throughout the season. The females mate only once. If a female happens to mate with a sterile male, she will still lay her evil mosquito eggs, but those won’t develop into buzzing, bloodsucking, sleep-destroying future monsters. Checkmate, mosquito bitches.

I remember a similar story some twenty years ago, after Neil Strauss published his book The Game.

The Game brought the secret world of pick up artists out of dark and sticky Internet bulletin boards and exposed it to the light of the mainstream.

I remember the outrage that many women expressed upon finding out that there’s a population of men who are gaming the signals of social status and sexual attractiveness.

And who can blame these women?

If you invest in something, and invest big, you want to make sure that investment will be fertile.

That applies to mates, human and mosquito… to business partners… to clients… to employers… to employees… and to teachers your learn from.

Maybe you see where I’m going with this.

I personally believe books are the best teachers in the world. Unfortunately, as James Altucher once calculated, we each have at most 1,000 books left to us for the rest of our lives.

Some of us, like me, read very slowly, and our number is significantly less than 1,000. That translates to 3-4 books each summer.

So you better make sure that each of those 3-4 interactions counts, and each of those learning opportunities is fertile, rather than sterile.

Which brings me to my Insights & More Book Club. The doors are currently open. They will close tomorrow at 12 midnight PST.

The promise of the Insights & More Book Club is top-quality books, filled with surprising ideas. As for all the other details, well, you will have to sign up to my daily email newsletter to find those out. You can do so here.

On writing just to make money

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Last Friday, I organized a mastermind call of “newsletter operators.” The topic of the call was newsletter growth.

Seven people joined. Some were complete beginners, with only a few dozen subscribers. Some were further along, with a few hundred or a few thousand subscribers. And then there was one dude, with a list of 30k subscribers.

“Zero advertising spend,” he said, and he made an “all ok” sign with his hand that also doubled as a zero.

The fact is, if you read this newsletter, there’s good chance you have heard of this guy. I certainly had heard his name before we talked on this call.

During the call, we did the usual round-robin intros, and then it was a free-for-all of questions.

At some point, the 30k guy explained his position. “I’m an unrepentant capitalist,” he said. “I write just to make money.”

He largely dominated the call. Not in a bad way. He was interested in other people’s businesses. He was giving genuine advice. Even inspiration. “You gotta decide,” he said at one point, “you wanna make money or not?”

The other attendees were nodding along, saying, “Yes yes, you’re right, thanks for the tip.” Then they clammed up.

At around the 1hr mark, the 30k guy left the call without too much ceremony. And it felt felt like a sigh of relief could be heard in the virtual Zoom room.

People relaxed. Started smiling. Speaking up again.

Now, I guess there could be a lot of stuff going on here. Maybe people were intimidated. Maybe they were just absorbing this guy’s wisdom. Or maybe…

I once heard marketing guru Dan Kennedy say something like, you have to stand for something other than just making money.

You can make money. You can make lots of money. But you have to stand for something else besides, or at least, people have to feel that way about you.

And if not?

Well, you will repel most people.

Not all. The ones who are left will be people who also only want to make money.

You can certainly sell to those people, and you can do very well. But what you will get is short-term, self-interested buyers who will switch camp as soon as they’ve gotten what they can from you.

Which ties in nicely to the topic of my Most Valuable Postcard #1.

Yesterday, I promoted my Most Valuable Postcard #2. That postcard talks about the essence of marketing and copywriting. ​​That’s an important topic, but not the most important topic I could think of. That topic I covered I covered in MVP1.

​​If you’re interested in that, and if you don’t just write to make money, you can find more info here:

https://bejakovic.com/mvp1/

Mysteries of the mind

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Yesterday I started listening to a four-and-a-half hour long presentation titled, Best Life Ever. I did it because the guy speaking, Jim Rohn, has been billed, by no less an authority than genius marketer and influence expert Dan Kennedy, as being a master storyteller.

Dan says that Jim Rohn built his long and very successful career on zero practical content, great stories only.

So that’s what I expected to find. Fantastic fluff. Zero real substance.

And yet I was surprised. In the first twenty minutes, I already found the content genuinely insightful. I felt that Dan was underselling it. Take for example the following. With a smile, Rohn says:

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The day the Christian Church was started, a magnificent sermon was preached. A great presentation. And if you’re a student at all of good communication, it was one of the classic presentations of all time.

And this sermon, this presentation, was given to a multitude. Meaning a lot of people. But it was interesting.

The record says, when the sermon was finished, there was a variety of reaction to the same sermon. Isn’t that fascinating? I find that fascinating.

It said some that heard this presentation were perplexed.

Now I read the presentation. It sounded pretty straightforward to me. Why would somebody be perplexed with a good, sincere, straightforward presentation?

Best answer I’ve got: They are the perplexed. What other explanation is there? It doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

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Rohn’s point is that there are some mysteries of the mind.

Why are some people inspired to take action? Why do others never take action? Why are some people perplexed? Why do others mock and laugh?

You can try to figure it out. So did Rohn, once upon a time.

“I don’t do that any more,” he says in his talk. “I’ve got peace of mind now. I can sleep like a baby. Not trying to straighten any of this out any more.” It’s just mysteries of the mind.

Did you find that insightful?

I did. But maybe I’m just very easy to dupe into feeling like I’ve had an epiphany. Doesn’t matter who’s preaching.

Or who knows. Maybe Rohn is such a good storytellers that even in those first 20 minutes, he managed to prime me for being easily influenced.

In case you’re a student at all of good communication, this guy was one of the classic presenters of all time. To see why, watch a few minutes of the following:

 

Why the girl-and-python show is a great place to negotiate

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Here’s an intriguing (and for writers, a most instructive) scene from one of the greatest films in Hollywood history:

“Christ what a trip. The whole time I’m thinking, what if somebody knows what I got in here? Can you imagine that? Two million dollars on the seat next to me in that plane? Mikey, what the hell’s going on anyway? I’m totally in the dark.”

Mikey picks up the suitcase and carries it off. “The family’s making an investment in Havana. This is a little gift for the President.”

Maybe you recognize this scene. It’s from The Godfather, part 2. ​​Fredo Corleone, the oldest surviving son of the Godfather, is talking to his younger brother Michael, who now heads the Corleone crime family.

Michael recently survived an assassination attempt. He knows his business partner Heyman Roth and Roth’s henchman Johnny Ola were behind it. What he doesn’t know is who inside his own circle betrayed him and collaborated with Roth.

Fredo puts his hands in his pockets as he watches the suitcase disappear.

“Havana’s great!” he says. “My kind of town. Anybody I know in Havana?”

Michael pours himself a glass of water. “Oh… Heyman Roth? Johnny Ola?”

Fredo stares for a bit, trying to pull out a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. Finally he manages to get the cigarettes out. He looks away.

​​”No. Never met them.”

A couple weeks ago, I wrote an email about negotiation coach Jim Camp. Camp helped negotiate many billion-dollar deals, but he became famous thanks to his contrarian, oracle-like sayings.

One thing Camp said is that he likes to negotiate in the bathroom. That might sounds contrarian, but it’s not. It’s very literal, and backed by basic human psychology.

For an example, fast forward a bit, to Havana.

​​Fredo isn’t smart or strong enough to run the Corleone family, but he’s a fun guy. He knows all the cool spots. He takes Michael and a few U.S. Senators and judges to a girl-and-python act.

“Watch,” says Fredo, as he pours out glasses of rum. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

A young woman is brought out on stage. She is tied to a kind of ceremonial pillar. Then a man in a silk robe is brought out. Two assistants pull off his silk robe to leave him standing naked in front of the audience.

The guys with Fredo — except Michael, who’s checking his watch — gasp and then start chuckling.

“That thing’s gotta be a fake. Hey Freddie! Freddie! How’d you even find this place?”

Fredo doesn’t take his eyes off the stage. “Johnny Ola told me about this place. He brought me here. I didn’t believe him, but seeing is believing. Old man Roth would never come here, but old Johnny knows these places like the back of his hand.”

Michael doesn’t move. He doesn’t say anything. But he looks like somebody just punched him in the gut. And he turns around, and gives a signal to his man who is standing at the door.

So there you go. The reason to negotiate in the bathroom, or during the girl-and-python act. It’s because barriers come down. Jim Camp explains: “As they go to the bathroom, you ask them a question. They’ll answer. They smile, and they answer the question. It’s a great time to do research.”

I wrote about that in my email couple weeks ago. But then I asked myself, what’s really going on? Is this just a negotiation trick?

Eventually, it dawned on me. It’s not a trick. It’s a bit of very basic human psychology.

Our brain likes to think in discrete events, snapshots, scenes, like a movie. This much is obvious. What’s less obvious and more interesting are the consequences. From a New Yorker article on the topic:

“Walking into a room, you might forget why you came in; this happens, researchers say, because passing through the doorway brings one mental scene to a close and opens another.”

Like I said, a bit of fundamental human psychology.

You can now shrug your shoulders and say, “So what?” That would be a Fredo-like thing to do.

Or you can be more like Michael Corleone, and think about how to adapt, how to use this bit of psychology for your own ends.

That’s what Jim Camp did. That’s what successful magicians do. And successful writers, too. In fact, it’s what I’ve tried to do in this very email.

Let me end there, and point you to an offer you can certainly refuse. It’s my Most Valuable Email training, a kind of man-and-keyboard act. In case you’re a person who likes to take advantage of fundamental human psychology:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

My new, Morning Brew-like newsletter gets an F

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A few days ago, I mentioned a guy named Scott Oldford, who is buying up other people’s newsletters. Yesterday, Oldford tweeted a long thread about what makes a newsletter worth buying.

I got my popcorn ready and I sat down to read.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve started a new, Morning Brew-like newsletter in the health space.

I told myself from the start to make it sellable. Not because I want to necessarily sell it. But simply because if it’s sellable, it’s more likely to be the kind of business that’s viable for the long term, and that I’d like to be involved in.

I stuffed my mouth full of popcorn and started reading down Oldford’s list. And though it’s still early days for my newsletter, I started feeling pretty good about myself.

Diverse traffic sources: check.

High engagement: check.

Not a personal brand: check.

Diverse monetization strategies: getting there. Like I said, it’s still early days, but monetization is something I know how to do.

​​But then, I got to this part of Oldford’s thread:

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5. You need everything inside of your media brand segmented and process driven & it shouldn’t require you whatsoever.

If I see a business and the founder is running everything— it’s not valuable.

If I see it and the founder is working 5hr/week— it is.

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I stopped chewing my popcorn and I swallowed hard. Fact is, I’m working way more than 5 hours a week on this thing. And I’m doing everything myself.

The biggest time suck is simply the research — keeping on top of all the news stories, tweets, podcasts, blog posts, YouTube videos, and science papers relevant to my newsletter.

​​Like I’ve written before, better ingredients, better emails. If you want to write an interesting newsletter, you have to have interesting things to write about. And that takes time.

So here’s where I hope you can help me:

I might in the end simply have to hire somebody trustworthy and competent to do all this research for me. ​But I’m holding out hope that there’s a technological solution to this problem. Some combination of automated polling of all these resources… machine transcription… AI-based parsing of what’s interesting or not.

​​Something that can reduce this research work by 50%, 80%, maybe 95%.

Something that can take this aspect of my newsletter from an F to maybe a C. Or who knows, a B or even an A.

Maybe it’s a pipe dream. Maybe not.

If you have any info here — whether you yourself have skills and experience to create something like this, or you know someone who does, or you have somewhere to point me to — write in and let me know.

​​All I can promise in return is my gratitude. But who knows — maybe there’s a business in here as well, because there are a million and one newsletters like mine, and I imagine most face this same problem.

“The one thing all my mentors have in common”

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This past Sunday, Novak Djokovic won the French Open and his 23 Grand Slam title — a big deal in the tennis world.

​​On Monday, in an off moment, I decided to check if there were any interesting news or interviews with Djokovic following the French Open.

I automatically headed to the r/tennis subreddit on Reddit. But in place of the usual page with tennis links and videos, I was hit with a blank page and the following notice:

“r/tennis is joining the Reddit blackout from June 12th to 14th, to protest the planned API changes that will kill 3rd party apps”

Perhaps you’ve heard:

Reddit the company, which is basically thousands of different news boards, is experiencing a kind of strike. Special Reddit users — mods — who control the different news boards are protesting Reddit’s proposed policy changes. As a result, they’ve basically made the site unusable for hundreds of millions of users.

I haven’t been following the drama. But apparently, as of yesterday, Reddit’s CEO said he plans to go ahead with the policy changes. To which many mods decided to extend the strike from 2-3 days, as originally planned, to indefinite.

All this reminded me of email conversation I recently had with Glenn Osborn.
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​Glenn is a curious creature. Once upon a time, Glenn attended 15 of Jay Abraham’s $15k marketing seminars by bartering his way in.

​​He also went to one of Gary Halbert’s copywriting seminars in Key West, and watched Gary go up on stage with that “Clients Suck” hat.

​​These days, Glenn writes an email newsletter called “Billionaire Idea Testing Club” about influence tricks he spots from people like Taylor Swift and James Patterson and J.K. Rowling.

For reasons of his own, Glenn likes to reply to my emails on occasion and send me valuable ideas. A few weeks ago, Glenn wrote me with some things he had learned directly and indirectly from Clayton Makepeace and Gary Halbert and Jay Abraham.

​​Good stuff. But then, in a PS, Glenn added the following:

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P.S. -For Consulting Clients I Do ALL THE Work F-O-R them – MYSELF and thru staffers.

CONTROL is the one thing all my Mentors Have in Common. If You Don’t CONTROL what you do You Cannot Make Munny.

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That last idea definitely stood out to me.

There are so many ways to be successful in any field. And contradicting strategies will often produce equally good results.

But a very few things are non-negotiable. You could call those the rules of the system. Perhaps CONTROL is one of them.

At this point I would normally refer you to Glenn’s newsletter in case you want to read it yourself. ​​But as Glenn himself says, “My ARCHIVE Is By-Referral-Only – Too ADVANCED to Toss Strangers into.”

If you are determined, then a bit of Googling, based on what I’ve told you above, will lead you to Glenn’s optin page and his unusual but valuable newsletter.

And in case you yourself want to want to write an unusual but valuable newsletter, the following can help:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Do you make this mistake on your optin page?

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Readers do the darnedest things:

I sent out an email last night and I asked if the point I was making was clear. One of the first people to reply was one of my most loyal readers, who has bought several of my courses and given me testimonials on multiple occasions.

He wrote a thoughtful response, told me a little personal story, said my point was clear, and thanked me for the work I do.

I also went to check my unsubscribes from the same email. I saw that this same loyal reader had unsubscribed.

A few days ago, I got an email from a second loyal reader, with the subject line, “Unsubbed… again 😂”.

It turns out he had been unsubscribed for some reason, for the third time. And once you unsubscribe, ActiveCampaign won’t let you resubscribe. The only way back is to write me directly and ask.

I’ve been surprised over the past few months by some of the specific people who have unsubscribed from my emails.

Many had bought courses from me, many had bought trainings, many regularly responded to my emails. Perhaps they genuinely got sick of me — it’s certainly possible, and I know it happens to me. But perhaps it’s some technical glitch. ActiveCampaign does have plenty of those.

So if you have been unwittingly unsubscribed and you are not getting my emails any more and you are not reading this right now, please let me know so I can investigate and maybe fix the issue.

And if you haven’t been unsubscribed and are still getting my emails and are reading, then all I can do is remind you that one is the most dangerous number in business.

People usually say that about one traffic source… or one offer… or one client… or one merchant account. But more than any of those, it applies to only one way to reach your existing audience.

​​If you rely only on one channel, and anything ever happens to that channel, it’s kind of like getting a penny stuck in your windpipe.

I still have the email addresses of all the people who have ever unsubscribed. I guess I could email them again to ask if they really meant to unsubscribe. I do believe that might technically be a crime. Or who knows, maybe I’ll get on TikTok or start collecting physical mailing addresses on my optin page. Gotta have a second reliable way to reach people.

I wrote to the loyal reader who unsubscribed last night. I asked him if he meant to unsubscribe or not. He replied:

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What???

I would never cross myself off your list.

Your emails are my favorite. My daily appointment.

I don’t know why this happened, but if I don’t get your email tomorrow I will panic.

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Again, if you’re not reading this right now, let me know so I can add you back to my list today and prevent a panic tomorrow.

But if you are reading, then thanks. And you might be interested in the following, to help you write emails that people consider their daily appointment:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

My #1 takeaway from a $3k conference

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I went to a $3k copywriting conference 4 weeks ago. Since then, my impressions have settled.

What’s left? What ideas did I really get from the high-powered speakers at this conference?

What’s left today is the same as what struck me while I was still sitting in the freezing-cold conference room.

All the speakers kept repeating the word “simple.” Simple business model. Simple deliverables. Simple promises.

But here’s what I realized while listening to all these speakers:

Getting to simple isn’t simple. It takes time and thought and work to figure out what’s essential. It takes discipline and more work to eliminate what’s not essential. And there’s layers to it, so once you’ve made things simple once, you will probably realize that it’s still not really there, and there’s more that you can do.

Mark Ford wrote a post yesterday about how he loves to teach. And he wrote about physicist Richard Feynman, who believed that teaching is the best way to understand anything.

It’s easy to think you understand something, Feynman believed, until you try to explain it simply. And an audience gives you real feedback. Was it simple? Do they understand? Or are they lost?

If they’re lost, it’s because you lost them somewhere along the way.

Writing is a great way to make things simple. And writing to an audience is even better. Then tomorrow, you can do it all again, at a new level of understanding. Does that make sense? Write in and tell me, because it will help me figure things out also.

Dentists vs. copywriters: Who wins the better customer battle?

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Here’s a new perspective I found insightful, about who you sell to. Maybe it can save you some headache and even failure:

A few days ago, I was talking to a newsletter strategy consultant. He was telling me about his own newsletter, and the paid advertising he is planning for getting paid subscribers to it.

I won’t name this guy — I’m not sure he would want me to — and I won’t reveal the kinds of people he will be targeting with his ads — not so relevant to others but maybe very valuable to him.

So what’s left?

What’s left is the people he will not be targeting with his ads. And this I believe is relevant whatever your actual business is.

The newsletter expert said he will not be targeting independent newsletter creators. Why? Because, as he told me, they are “a little short term and flaky.”

How could it really be any other way?

If somebody has no employees, no office, no expensive and custom equipment, no contracts to fulfill, and in general no obligations, what’s keeping them going if things ever get bad? The answer is nothing.

That’s why it’s in general better to sell to, say, dentists, who are tethered by a million hooks to their businesses, than to, say, copywriters, who can decide from today to tomorrow to close their laptops and go work as a park ranger or to maybe roast coffee for a living.

That’s not to say you can’t make money selling to people who are a little short-term and flaky. But it exposes you to more risk, and it limits what you can sell and for how much.

That’s something to keep in mind whether you sell to other businesses (hopefully, chained and burdened dentists) or direct to consumers (hopefully, people with an unavoidable problem or an all-consuming obsession).

Last point:

​​I found an interesting new newsletter recently.

This newsletter gives the perspective of somebody who manages to profit from short-term and flaky independent newsletter creators. That somebody is Scott Oldford, who has been buying up independent newsletters and then investing in them and scaling them up. Scott writes about his adventures here:

https://investing.scottoldford.com/

Easy way to go from a bit of a failure to a big-time success

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I have an offer for you at the end of today’s email. But first, I have a sexy marketing story that might make you want that offer. The story goes like this:

Back in the early 2000s, a guy named Andrew Wood ran an info publishing business, teaching marketing to karate schools. Wood knew what he was talking about, because he had previously created and then sold a chain of 400 karate schools.

Wood’s info publishing business was pulling in good money, around $30k each month. The trouble was, Wood’s expenses — business, car, wife — totaled $40k each month. In other words, he was losing blood like a harpooned whale.

So in a moment of desperation, Wood got in touch with Jay Abraham. The two met.

Over the course of a morning, Jay Abraham grilled Wood all about his business. After each question, Abraham came up with suggestions. And Wood replied he was already doing that — or he had tried it before but it didn’t work.

As the meeting wore on, Jay Abraham grew more and more frustrated. Eventually, he stood up from the table.

“You’re so fucking smart,” Abraham said, “figure it out for yourself.” And he walked out.

Wood sat there stunned. But before he had a chance to do anything, Jay Abraham came back and apologized. And he asked Wood to run through the numbers one more time.

“What are you taking in each month?”

“$30k.”

“How much are you spending?”

“$40k.”

“And how much do you want to make?”

“$60k would be great.”

“Okay,” Jay Abraham said. “That’s easy. Just double your prices! Find something you can add to the program to increase the value and double the price.”

And with that, Jay Abraham said goodbye.

Silence. Do you think Andrew Wood sat there thinking, “What a great insight!”

Of course not. He thought it was a total lack of advice. But on his way home, he stopped for a beer. A few of his employees joined. After the third beer, they started kicking around the “just double your prices” idea.

A couple weeks later, Wood stood on stage in front of his two hundred customers. And he announced a new monthly program.

It would cost $200, twice as much as what they were already paying. The contents were not much more than what they were already getting.

Result?

Wood says that in three months, he went from taking in $30k a month to $100k a month. More importantly, he went from losing $10k each month to making a profit of $60k. By Christmas, he was entirely debt-free and owned his first Ferrari.

So that’s the sexy story. Now here’s the offer:

A couple weeks ago I sent out an email asking who would be interested in a training about increasing your prices.

​​I got a fair number of yeses in response to that email, but not enough to make me want to put that training on. Lately been saying no to middling opportunities and putting my effort only in near sure shots.

At the same time, your first Ferrari — or whatever the equivalent moonshot proof of success might be in your own mind. That’s what can happen if you double your prices.

​​And yet people don’t double their prices.

Why? And what can you specifically do about it?

That’s what I want to address on this training. And if it’s something you’d be interested in hearing about and profiting from, then hit reply, and let me know. If it enough people say yes, then I’ll put this training on.