Business Ideas

You gotta buy this

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You gotta buy this new thing I’m selling.

Why? Because other people are buying.

The fact is, making up your mind about a purchase is hard stuff. It takes time and attention and a lot of information, much of which we are not privy to.

So when you see other people buying something — like a long queue outside of an ice cream shop — it makes sense to pause and ask yourself, what’s so special about this ice cream, and should I get a scoop?

Yesterday, I started promoting my new Cold Outreach Fastlane offer. The condition to get that exciting offer for free is to invest in a ticket for Parker Worth’s Cold Gold live training, which happens next week, and to write me with your proof of purchase before tonight, Thursday, at 11:59pm PST.

I woke up this morning and saw a buncha submitted proofs of purchase:

“Forwarding my confirmation/receipt for the ColdGold webinar that I purchased through your link to receive your Cold Outreach Fastlane…looking forward to it!”

“Hi John, Please see below for the: Cold Outreach Fastlane Any questions or if I am missing something please let me know”

“purchased parker’s product through your link”

“I’m not gonna lie, I bought Parker’s course solely to get your bonus… See my receipt below!”

“Hey John, purchased using your link. Let me know if anything else is needed!”

“Bought Parker’s webinar through your link. Here is the receipt below”

“Here you go, my good sir”

“Hi John, here is my receipt.”

When I said up top you gotta buy this, the truth is, that was a bit of subject-line hyperbole.

You don’t gotta buy this. You don’t gotta do anything. You can make up your own mind.

I’m telling you that other people are buying just to make you pause and ask yourself, what’s so special about this Cold Outreach Fastlane ice cream, and should I get a scoop?

I don’t want you making this buying decision simply based on what other people are doing. But if you want more info on my new ice cream flavor, which is available only until end of day today:

https://bejakovic.com/announcing-cold-outreach-fastlane/

Announcing: Cold Outreach Fastlane

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10 days ago, I asked people on my list if they’ve tried using cold outreach to get clients. I got two (2) kinds of responses.

One kind was, “Cold outreach sucks, it never worked for me, I hate it.”

The other was, “Cold outreach is working great for me, it’s my main way of getting clients.”

Over the past week, I interviewed 4 of the people in the “working great” camp on the topic of how they get clients and make money via cold outreach. Among them:

#1. A super young copywriter, without much previous experience, from a non-English-speaking country, who started doing cold outreach two months ago, and who has since gotten two ongoing clients in the US and UK, one for creative strategy and the other for email marketing…

#2. A business owner who makes $12k-$18k in profit every month by sending out a 3-word email to prospects who don’t know him from Adam’s housecat…

#3. An experienced copywriter who used to hire a cold outreach agency, and who has now taken things into her own hands, and is getting on 1-2 calls with dream clients every week on average with her “mind-numbingly simple” cold outreach…

4. A marketing consultant with a unique and very impressive take on cold outreach (I was impressed) that has been a steady source of $20k-$500k client relationships since he left his previous in-house position and started working for himself.

And then, just this morning, I also interviewed one more guy.

This dude is getting better results from cold outreach, with less effort, than all the above people combined.

But right away, this dude told me he is “slightly terrified of becoming The Cold Outreach Guy™. I use it, but I’m more the convo guy really 😂 Outreach gets you through the front door. I’m much more interested in what happens once someone answers and there’s an actual human being on the other side.”

So that’s what we talked about on the interview:

How to make deals/offers people are willing to say yes to… how to move the conversation along when people actually express tentative interest to your initial outreach… and where people who are new to this flub it up.

I have packaged up all 4+1 of these interviews (4 on cold outreach, one on having convos and moving things along) into an offer I am calling Cold Outreach Fastlane.

Because, the way I see it, there are two reasons people fail with cold outreach:

1. Their cold outreach system sucks (eg. “Hello Sir, may I send a quote?), or

2. They lack belief that their system (which might be perfectly legit) works, and so they give up too soon.

Cold Outreach Fastlane fixes both of these problems.

It tells you 4 different cold outreach systems that are working right now (well 5, but let’s keep that a secret between you and me), plus you get to see the lovely faces and hear the inspiring case studies of the people for whom those systems are working right now.

You know what that does for you?

It tells you what to do, and more importantly and valuably, it gives you belief that you too can succeed, so you don’t get frustrated at your lack of certainty along the way and give up too soon.

Cold Outreach Fastlane: If you are doing cold outreach today, or considering starting it tomorrow, it will get you to where you want to go faster and more smoothly.

And now the price.

Cold Outreach Fastlane is now available to you for the shocking and frankly outrageous price of free.

Well, you have to make an investment. But then you get Cold Outreach Fastlane for free.

What you have to invest in is a ticket to Parker Worth’s upcoming training, Cold Gold.

Parker and his business partner have been running a cold email agency for a while. They are getting results for their clients, including and up to the storied “the outreach was working so well that we asked Parker to stop because we had trouble talking to all the qualified leads.”

On Cold Gold, Parker is gonna give you the details of the cold email system he himself uses to get leads for his agency clients, so you can do use it too if you like. Consider it one more cold outreach system + success case study, a bonus to what I’ve prepared for you inside Cold Outreach Fastlane.

If you wanna take me up on Cold Outreach Fastlane, here’s what to do:

1. Go to this page: https://bejakovic.com/coldgold

2. Invest $99 for a ticket to Parker’s upcoming Cold Gold training

3. Forward me your confirmation email BEFORE tomorrow, Thursday, at 11:59pm PST, and I will get you access to Cold Outreach Fastlane. (NB: the cart for Parker’s training will remain open for the rest of this week. But my offer for Cold Outreach Fastlane is only good until end of day tomorrow. It can make sense to act now if you want it.)

Announcing: DFY daily emails on comission only

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If you have a running business… if you also have an audience or database of previous customers, clients, or leads… and if you want to bolt on a new profit center to your business, with no work or upfront cost to you… then read on.

Fact 1: Lots of biz owners have proven products or services they sell, as well as a big list of previous customers, clients, or prospects. And yet, they are not sending out daily emails to link their offers and their audience, and to make sales and provide stability for their business.

Consider the following conversation I recently had.

Me (to my entire list): Do you have an email list of 5,000+ subscribers?

Biz owner (replying to my broadcast email): Yes

Me (replying directly to the biz owner, after 2 mins of research): Very cool! I see you’ve got the full offer stack, from courses to DFY. How often do you email these folks?

Biz owner: 👉🏼👈🏼 Umm… my last email… at january 🤦🏽‍♀️

Me: That sounds… criminal. If you’ve got offers and a list, what’s keeping you from mailing your offers out regularly?

Biz owner: Most people on my list subscribed to my Substack to receive “content” (which I haven’t produced in recent months—I’ve been completely swamped with work), and others are clients I never told I’d be emailing. I guess I’m afraid of being a nuisance.

Me: I see. So even if you had time, would you want to email these folks with offers that could lead to sales?

Biz owner: Yes, for sure

Fact 2: You might be in the same situation, or something similar to it.

I don’t know what your exact situation is. But if you have proven offers, and if you have an email list of at least 5,000 people, like the person above, and if you’re not sending daily emails but would want to, then…

Fact 3: I can help.

I can put you in touch with an email copywriter to write daily emails for you, to make you look good in front of your audience or database, and to make sales for you.

Also, this copywriter works on commission only. He only gets paid from the sales he makes for you, after the money has landed in your Stripe or PayPal.

No, I am not this copywriter. It is somebody in my audience.

It’s somebody who has the experience and skill to make you money and make you look good, and who also has a direct line to me for help, support, and consultation.

(Why a direct line to me is valuable is because I’ve written thousands of sales emails, managed the email marketing for many 7- and 8-figure businesses, and made businesses literally millions via daily emailing.)

So what do you think? Dumb idea? Let me know if you’re not too disgusted by my proposal, and we can talk more.

The lazy man’s way to copywriting clients

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The past couple days, I’ve been promoting Vasilis Apostolou’s new offer, Million Dollar Hook Machine. People have been buying. What’s more surprising, people have been spontaneously writing to tell me they’ve been buying.

Here’s one such message from yesterday:

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I was hesitant for a total of like 5 seconds. Emailed Vasilis whether it would teach me the actual thinking and writing process behind these sizzling gold plated hooks. He replied back with a very detailed answer and I was sold instantly. Great guy!

I was hoping if you could write an email about 10 ways you would use this offer to make money. I dig those emails and in the context of this promo, I think they would do super well.

Again. Thanks for making this offer and for having a friend like Vasilis.

===

10 ways? 10??? My readers… are insatiable. But ok.

I would use Million Dollar Hook Machine to make money by writing 1) Facebook ads 2) native ads 3) TikTok ads 4) solo ads in newsletters 5) …

… you don’t need 10 ways. You need one that works.

The core promise of Million Dollar Hook Machine is it helps you be faster and to get better results when coming up with ads and sales letters and emails that actually make sales.

If you already have clients, that’s how you make money with Million Dollar Hook Machine — by completing more projects with less effort, and by getting results that get clients to hire you again, and better yet, to hire you again and additionally pay you a fraction of the good results you’ve gotten for them.

But what if you don’t have clients right now?

I’m suspecting that’s what’s really lurking in my reader’s request above.

If I wanted to get copywriting clients right now, and I also didn’t have my email list (start one, by the way, if you haven’t, it’s kind of valuable), I’d swallow my pride and go talk to clients who had hired me years ago and who I haven’t talked to since.

I’d try to warm up those conversations, see what they’re up to now and if there’s something there I can help with.

That, particularly the way I’ve presented it, is an unsexy process, but it’s also in my opinion the highest-probability option for getting client work NOW or at least PRETTY SOON.

How do you warm up a conversation that’s been cold for many years?

I’ll tell you one way I’ve found to be unbeatable in terms of its effectiveness, and that’s to come bearing a gift, one that’s relevant and valuable to the person I am giving it to.

One particularly valuable gift I could bring, one gift direct response business owners are always happy to accept, is ideas for new hooks/angles/leads, whether for their current ads, their current sales letters, or the positioning of their current offers.

Problem: ideas for new hooks take work, and I’m lazy.

Solution: Vasilis’s Million Dollar Hook Machine.

And by the way, if writing to a past client with new hook ideas doesn’t get you hired immediately, you can continue to bear gifts in the form of more hook ideas, week after week.

I’ve done this before. I’ve simply made it a point to stay in touch with particularly valuable clients. Like a stray cat that has been repeatedly fed, I kept gratefully dragging gifts to the clients’ doorstep. Inevitably, within a few such doorstep gifts, those clients suggested we work together again, even without me asking.

I imagine the same process, simply delivering value in the form of new hook ideas, would also work with clients you haven’t spoken to in a long while.

And though I’ve never ever had any success getting clients from completely cold outreach, I imagine this same process would work there too, even if you reach out to somebody who isn’t a previous client, but just somebody you actually want to work with.

(The reason completely cold outreach to prospective clients never ever worked for me is that I was never persistent or aggressive enough with it. The reason I was never persistent or aggressive enough with it is that it takes work, and like I said, I’m lazy. But Vasilis’s Million Dollar Hook Machine takes care of that, or at least helps greatly.)

Vasilis is currently running the launch for Million Dollar Hook Machine. The launch ends tomorrow.

Since this is first time he has ever released this, Vasilis is also offering a bunch of valuable bonuses, which can both help you use Million Dollar Hook Machine to get clients if you don’t have clients now, and which can help you deliver results to those clients once you get them.

For the full details on Million Dollar Hook Machine, before the deadline takes the choice out of your hands:

https://bejakovic.com/mdhm

What good will that do you?

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A new subscriber wrote in yesterday to ask:

===

How would you start over if you’d lost everything right now? Including your friends and connections that you acquired over the years, only you, your knowledge and your skill.

===

I paused at this, because I had recently been thinking about the same question, for my own reasons.

For a moment, I considered writing up my thoughts, and sharing them in an email. But then I asked myself, why?

What good will it do you to know what I would do if I lost everything but MY knowledge, MY skill, and MY good looks?

The fact is, my knowledge (of stuff like marketing principles and tactics) and my skill (in things like copywriting) took years to develop.

The same is true of my mindset, if by that we mean my ability to choose projects… to drive them to the end even when I’m feeling uncertain and dispirited… to tweak my approach and try again when I lay an egg… and to recognize when it’s time to cut my losses and move on.

Because of all this, it would be useless for me to tell you what I would do, unless you have my knowledge and skills and mindset.

(It would also be close to useless if you do have my knowledge and skills and mindset, because in that case you’re prolly not thinking of getting rid of everything you’ve got and starting from zero.)

Here are a few things I think are worth doing in general:

– Selling

– Writing

– Having an audience and maintaining a good relationship with that audience

If you do all three of these on a decent level — not “world class” level, not “so good they can’t ignore you,” simply decent — you will have work and money, as long as work and money are to be had.

Now please just give me a second. Let me go to my closet and dig it out… ah yes, here it is. My favorite hobby horse:

Daily emails.

The fact is, writing a daily email will, bit by bit, get you better at selling, at writing, and in time, even if you do absolutely nothing else, it will build up a small but dedicated audience for you (that’s how it happened for me at least).

Where daily emails will eventually take you, nobody knows. But I’m willing to bet it will be a good destination, better than where you’re at now. Plus, you might even enjoy the journey along the way.

If you want help starting and sticking with the habit of writing daily emails:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

10 things people have copied from me

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1. My “Hello my name is” optin page. (A copywriter I know recently set up a new list and wrote to tell me about it, along with, “I swiped your landing page”)

2. “Announcing” as the subject line to kick off every promo or new offer

3. “Down payment + the rest contingent on success” pricing plans

4. Turning my own current project into a mid-ticket cohort I can sell (I did it with my project of implementing the 1-Person Advertorial Agency program back in May, several people have followed me since)

5. The Most Valuable Email trick (ok, I created a course on that, so little wonder)

6. Using the “Can you do me a favor?” strategy in emails

7. “Bejakovic’s crooked line” (a specific storytelling technique I used in advertorials, which Sam Bradbury-Butler used in his own advertorials and then integrated in his 1-Person Advertorial Agency program, while naming it after me)

8. My personal journaling and notetaking system (ok, I created a course on that too, called Insight Exposed, so little wonder again)

9. “Magic box” CTAs (if you don’t know what those are, then reply and ask)

10. My opening line of copy in emails where the subject line and the body don’t match (you gotta create a bridge)

There’s more, too. I’m possibly the most ripped-off daily emailer south of the Seine and north of the Nile.

Am I bitter about this? You bet your sweet—

No, I’m not bitter. The fact is, few if any of the above ideas are actually mine.

My optin page copy is taken from William Goldman’s Princess Bride. The “announcing” subject line I got from Sean D’Souza who got it from Vic Schwab. The “down payment + rest contingent on success” I picked up from Jeff Walker.

And so on.

All these 10 things people have copied from me I have copied from others as well, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Frankly, there is nothing new under the sun.

Yes, it can be fun to buy and sell secrets and secret opportunities, and that’s part of the game of direct response, both for the customers and the merchants.

At the same time, good ideas are cheap and abundant. You have to apply them, and keep applying them, and not get too distracted by the shiny and the new, in order to achieve success.

The good news is, if you apply and keep applying, success comes. It might take a while, but it comes.

Perhaps you KNOW the value of writing daily emails. Perhaps you even KNOW how to write daily emails.

But in case you’re not actually writing daily emails regularly, and applying that knowledge, I have a service that can help motivate you, keep you accountable, and make your job easier.

For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Budapest, Hopkins, cold outreach

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Three mildly connected things for you today, to pick and choose from as you like:

#1. Budapest

I’m just finishing my visit to my former home town, Budapest, where I spent 11 years of my life. I reconnected with friends I’ve known for decades. The weather was perfect. The city was more beautiful than ever. All in all it was a great trip.

One thing that stood out during this trip:

Hungary, of which Budapest is the capital and by far the biggest town, had a big change of government earlier this year. The political party that had ruled for 16 years, and that had become infamous for corruption and undemocratic consolidation of power, finally lost the elections.

Ever since, foreign investment that had been frozen and kept out of the country has started flowing back in… Hungarians who had moved abroad, because they found the local situation hopeless, have been moving back… and the locals here just look optimistic and happy (ok, as happy as Hungarians can ever look).

This brings me to…

#2. Claude Hopkins

Claude Hopkins, author of Scientific Advertising, which is a sort of Bible in the field of direct advertising, once wrote:

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“People are like sheep. They cannot judge values, nor can you and I. We judge things largely by others’ impressions, by popular favor. We go with the crowd. So the most effective thing I have ever found in advertising is the trend of the crowd. That is a factor not to be overlooked. People follow styles and preferences. We rarely decide for ourselves, because we don’t know the facts. But when we see the crowds taking any certain direction, we are much inclined to go with them.”

===

Hopkins was talking about advertising, about picking and choosing products to sell and copy to run based on the trend of the crowd. Sure. But the idea applies more broadly.

The most effective thing in business, and maybe in life, is the trend of the crowd.

Yes, it’s possible to get rich and be happy during depressions and wars.

But a much more effective way to get rich and be happy is to work in industries and live in places that are going through periods of growth or rebirth of expansion. I thought of this during this trip to Budapest.

I hadn’t seriously considered moving back here ever since I had moved away almost 8 years ago. I’ve been thinking about it for the past few days, because of the trend of the crowd. I feel like this will be a place of excitement and growth over the coming years.

#3. Cold outreach

Yesterday I sent out an email to my list, asking folks if they’ve tried getting clients via cold outreach.

I got two classes of responses. Class 1:

1A. “Yes, I hate it. I hired an agency multiple times and every time I hated it.”

1B. “So far, 17 days in, 70 prospects approached, 0 clients, countless menty b’s.”

1C. “No, and wouldn’t ;)”

Then there’s class 2:

2A. “That is my primary method for getting clients.”

2B. “Yes, John. Works very well for me. No fancy cold email stack. Just a 3-liner email with a very relevant problem that they’d wanna get rid of. Brings me every month $12K to $18K!”

2C. “I’m using cold outreach to get clients, and I’m doing very well with it. Personally, one of the best methods, especially if we are talking about cold email outreach.”

Quite the difference between Class 1 and Class 2.

I started a discussion about this in my Daily Email House community.

If cold outreach is not something you hate or are fundamentally opposed to, you can join in the discussion below.

It’s an opportunity to share your experiences, and maybe learn from the experiences of some people who have been very successful with cold outreach. Here’s the link:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/cold-outreach

Why yes, that would be a dumb idea

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I got an email yesterday from someone I don’t know, with the subject line, “Copy Riddles.”

Copy Riddles is the name of my highest-ticket info product.

Ok, attention engaged. I opened the email to read:

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John,

A daily newsletter peers call the most underrated list in copywriting, built up around Copy Riddles, is a base worth working with.

My hunch is there’s a five figure opportunity in readers who’ve never been pointed at Copy Riddles outside of a launch window.

I fund and run that kind of campaign myself. I do the work, you spend nothing upfront, and I only earn a share of what converts.

Would it be a dumb idea to grab 15 minutes and see if there’s a test worth running there?

===

Why yes, that would be a dumb idea, and a waste of a perfectly good 15 minutes.

Ignore for the moment the strange English in this cold email, which makes me doubt this person can write in a way that would get people to buy.

The reason it would be a dumb idea is that I already regularly promote Copy Riddles “outside of a launch window,” and I have been for years.

I do it both inside one-off daily emails like this one, and during promos where I create a special offer around Copy Riddles, attach it to a deadline, and make a bit of a spectacle to reap all the demand that my daily emails may have sown.

Two minutes of research could have told my cold emailer all that.

Oh well. This guy’s dumb idea did serve two purposes:

1. To allow me to remind you to keep promoting your products regularly via daily emails, so you can create demand, and to run regular promos, so you can cash in on that demand, and

2. To allow me to point you to my Copy Riddles program, which is the best thing I sell.

For more information on Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Why I won’t promote your paid community

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Yesterday, I promoted Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin, a paid community. A reader who also has a paid community wrote in to ask:

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Ronin is $111/mo. Mine is [a similar price]. If I invite you to be a lifetime member and provided you like what I’ve built inside, would you consider promoting it?

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I appreciate the offer, and the answer is, I would not consider promoting this dude’s paid community, or really, anybody else’s paid community.

The fact is, it’s close to impossible to promote somebody else’s paid community with any success. Because of this, the promise of money isn’t much of a promise at all. I only keep promoting Travis’s thing because I’m a true believer, because I’m in the community myself and get a lot out of it.

If I did promote somebody else’s paid community primarily because I was hoping to get paid, I would do it the way Travis is preparing to auction off a recurring affiliate offer now inside Royalty Ronin.

Travis will be offering people a “Hero Package,” which provides a sexy outcome and overcomes all or most of the objections people might have when they are promised that outcome.

He’s gonna sell that Hero Package, rather than the continuity offer. He will make the continuity offer simply the condition for getting what people really want.

Of course, this model is well-known.

The magic is the way that Travis puts together his Hero Packages so that people are willing to pay 5x, 10x, 20x of whatever the underlying subscription might cost.

If you would like to observe Travis in action as he does this, and learn something you can use to promote recurring offers, whether your own or from affiliates:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Creating value out of things that others would never think of

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I’m at the airport as I write this, on my way to Budapest, my former home, for a reunion with friends I had when I lived there a long time ago.

Right now, I’m sitting on a tiny stool at an airport restaurant, about to bite into a refrigerated airport sandwich, crowded on the one side by a pushy French couple and on the other by cleaning woman with a large broom.

That’s the good part of my current trip.

The bad part is that I just spent 25 minutes waiting in line for the privilege of paying 48 euro to get my boarding pass.

I’m flying low-cost, and I didn’t check in online before the three-hours deadline mandated by this low-cost airline. When I tried to check in online a few hours ago, I was told I would have to do it at the airport, and pay.

It’s annoying when this happens on a low-cost flight, and yet it is instructive.

The fact is, all kinds of things can be turned into value that normally aren’t.

It feels petty when low-cost airlines do it, but it can be done in ways that don’t feel petty, but in fact feel the opposite — generous, exciting, convenient.

Imagine you’re buying a house.

Nominally, you’re paying for the keys and the right to move in.

You can buy a “low-cost” house, which gives you the keys and the right to move in, but which doesn’t have lightbulbs, windows, or running water, and you have to pay extra for those.

Conversely, can buy a “premium” house, which gives you not just the bare keys and the right to move in, but which has been furnished by an interior designer, comes with a concierged security service, and has a fridge stocked with food from Whole Foods.

Ultimately, it’s the same business practice, the only difference is the positioning of your business as upmarket or downmarket.

Maybe you’re munching on your own refrigerated sandwich right now and mumbling, “Right right…”

… but maybe you don’t see how this idea from real estate and the airline industry can apply to what you do, specifically to creating offers that you can sell to your audience.

For that, I’d like to invite you to sign up for a trial to my perennial recommendation, the Royalty Ronin community.

Travis Sago, the guy who runs Ronin, is the best person I have ever seen at creating value out of things that others would never think of.

Right now, Travis is preparing to auction off a year of a SaaS, which he is promoting as an affiliate.

In other words, Travis will ask people how much they would pay… to have him pay their bill for a year of this software service.

How do you possibly auction off something not unique, with a known and fixed value? And how do you auction it off for 5x, 10x, 20x of what it is currently selling for on the website of the SaaS company?

For that, I invite you to sign up to Ronin, and to follow along as Travis proceeds to build up his premium offer, out of elements that might seem like air to you right now:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin