Business Ideas

Back to the Boardroom era?

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Last autumn, I was writing a few sales emails for an SEO agency. So I spent an hour on Google, trying to find stories of people who had been penalized, by Google, for doing shady SEO stuff.

And after an hour, I had little to nothing to show for it.

Not because such stories don’t exist or because people haven’t written about them online.

But because people’s actual stories have been crowded out by billions of SEO-optimized listicles with titles like “10 Google Penalties That May Be Affecting Your Site” and “The Complete list of Google Penalties and How to Recover.” ​​And then there’s worthless Medium, which showed up at no. 2 for a Google search on “Google penalty stories”:

The most insightful stories about Google Penalty – Medium
Read stories about Google Penalty on Medium. Discover smart, unique perspectives on Google Penalty and the topics that matter most to you like SEO, …

Page after page of Google results like this gave me no actual, credible, human info. And I guess it’s not just me that it’s happening to.

A recent article in the New Yorker talked about the growing mass realization that Google search sucks. Partly because Google as a company has decided to go fully evil. Partly because we have all started to rely so much on Google… that the Internet has warped itself to appeal to Google’s tastes and preferences.

The result is page after page of horrible, inhuman fluff, broken up perfectly with H1 and H2 headings, made up of regurgitated and repurposed low-quality information or even flat-out lies.

Which is something you can either be frustrated about…

Or if you’re like me, you might decide to see it as a business opportunity.

The tech nerds on Hacker News can try to come up with a new search engine to beat Google.

But this is a newsletter about marketing. So let me tell you it smells to me like we might be headed back to the days of Boardroom.

The past 15 or so years, coinciding with rise to monopoly of Google, have also seen a rise of personality-based marketing businesses.

Coaches, gurus, and experts of various stripes have been selling information at high prices — not based on the quality or quantity of the info — but based on their own perceived authority, trustworthiness, and the relationship they have built with their audience.

That was the only way you really could charge for information online.

The days of Boardroom — charging $39 for a book of tax-saving or health or consumer tips — without a face you could trust and a guru you could feel is your friend… why pay for that?

After all, it seemed that Google made that kind of information available for free.

Except again, we’re now in an age where there’s so much information, and so much bad information, all available for free, that there might be an opportunity to simply start a business curating good information and selling it online.

So if you’re looking for a side project, new business, or a way to help millions of people navigate their lives better, consider reviving Boardroom.

Bring together valuable, trustworthy information. Charge for it. Build a list. And then do it all over again.

You probably won’t ever be able to charge thousands of dollars for a single book or five-hour video course, the way you can if you are selling based on personality.

​​But you will be able to reach a much bigger pool of people — which creates valuable opportunities of its own.

Or you can watch me do it. I’m planning to take my own advice. I will write up the results in my email newsletter. You can sign up to join it here.

Cheap, easy, and definitely worth it

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A few days ago, I sent out a George Foreman-themed email asking for testimonials. Either for my newsletter and products… or for me personally.

I got back some good responses. Just what I was hoping for. For example, copywriter David Patrick wrote me to say:

“If John is behind anything, then I’m sure it’s going to be good. In fact, he may very well be the best thing to happen to America… at least when it comes to persuasion and influence! No, really!”

Others wrote in to say that I’m not only the best thing for America, but “maybe even the world”… that I am a “vital resource”… and one person, who shall remain unnamed, wrote in all seriousness with:

“John Bejakovic and persuasion. You can’t beat that. He made me like cats. Even though I used to hate them and they used to hate me. So he’s a great person to find out about a new product that’s about persuading stubborn prospects. Or cats.”

I also got less flamboyant, perhaps more useful testimonials. I will drip those out in good time, in upcoming emails and sales pages.

For today, I just want to point out something obvious that you might already know, but that I had to learn. In fact, I didn’t learn it until only a couple years ago, when I was writing a VSL for a get-rich-in-real-estate guru.

In one of his content videos, this real estate guru talked about his “buyers list” — the list of people you can flip a house to.

But a buyers list is so much more than that, the guru said.

​​He then rattled off all the connections, employees, business opportunities, sources of funding, and personal relationships that resulted from his list, and from the personal emails he would send to them on occasion.

“Huh, interesting,” I said, a dim light slowly flickering to life in my head.

​​Time passed. I stared into space.

​​The light flickered a little brighter. “Ohh… yeah… I get it now!”

Because it’s not just a “buyers list” that can do all that. It’s the same with any email list, when it’s built right and managed right.

The fact is, my newsletter list has given me — often without me even asking — business partners… JV partners… copywriting clients… consulting clients… free products… insider tips and valuable ideas I wouldn’t know about otherwise… job offers… podcast appearances… mastermind appearances… and many, many new relationships with people, some of whom even became my friends, mostly online, but in real life as well.

Like I said, I had to have somebody point this out to me. That a list is a relationship, and that it’s good for a lot more than just a certain kind of one-way traffic.

Maybe you’re amazed I could be so dense.

But I am far from a natural when it comes to promotion or marketing or business. And yet it doesn’t matter.

You can find a spot for yourself, and be successful in time, even if you’re not a natural showman, salesman, or “scheme” man.

Lots of people have walked the road before you. Many of them are willing to point out, sometimes even for free, just where you should put your feet to take the next step to success.

Such as for example, starting and running your own email list. It’s cheap. Easy to do. And it’s definitely worth it.

If you want to see, how I do it, sign up to my list. You might learn something about copywriting and marketing and business along the way. Here’s where to get started.

Who wants to be a billionaire?

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The oldest rum brand in the world, and also the oldest living business in Barbados, is Mount Gay Rum.

The Mount Gay distillery, sitting in the middle of wind-blown sugar-cane fields, dates back to 1703. For hundreds of years now, Mount Gay Rum has been a favorite of the pirates, sailors, and tax evaders who landed in Barbados.

When you look at the oldest businesses in other countries around the world, the picture is similar:

Ireland – Sean’s Bar, founded in the year 900

China – Ma Yu Ching’s Bucket Chicken House, founded in 1153

Ukraine – Drohobych Salt Mine, founded in 1250

Looking at businesses that are still running after a few hundred years or more, you will find lots of small breweries… small inns… small mints… small mills… small mines… and an occasional bell foundry thrown in.

Which led author Ted Gioia, who wrote about this topic recently, to conclude:

“You might assume that the best corporate survival strategy is to get bigger and bigger, but empirical evidence tells a completely different story. These long-term survivors are far more likely to be small, focused companies that do one thing very well, rather than ambitious growth-oriented megacorporations.”

Is Gioia right? I don’t know. But it resonated with me. And so I want to warn you:

A business owner recently tried to motivate me into working with him. “This could be a billion dollar company,” he said, “and you can be a part of it!”

I didn’t say so at the time, but I shuddered at the thought of being part of a billion-dollar company.

Who wants to be a billionaire? My idea of being rich is having more money at the end of each month than I had at the beginning — without scrimping, scrounging, or worrying along the way.

I know that when I don’t work, I get depressed. So I’m more interested in enjoying what I do, and being able to stick with it for the long term, than in making a lot of money and cashing out.

So now that you know that, it’s time to make a decision to avoid my email newsletter or not.

​​You might be wasting your time by signing up to my newsletter. What’s worse, you might be exposed to dangerous ideas that steer you away from your primary goal, in case that goal is to get very rich.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for enjoyable work, for the long term, and if you’re ok focusing on one thing and doing that very well, then it might make sense to sign up.

Who knows?

Maybe I can give you good ideas so you can run a business that you enjoy.

​​Or maybe, even so you can build a little legacy. So a hundred years from now, your great-great-grandkids are still running the direct response brewery you start today… while pointing proudly to your picture on the wall.

If you’re interested here’s how to sign up.

Update on that Super Bowl ad

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Last week, I wrote about the “best” ad from Super Bowl 2022. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a bit of recap:

The whole ad was a QR code bouncing around for a minute, like an old-school Windows screensaver.

If you scanned the QR code, it took you to a page to sign up for a Coinbase account.

The ad drew a lot of response. So much so that the landing page crashed.

But in spite of the big response, it’s unlikely that Coinbase recouped the $13 million it cost to run this ad.

So that’s the recap. And now for the update:

A few days ago, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, wrote a Twitter thread talking about the making of this ad.

It was mostly about how cool and creative his team is, and how he likes to pat them on the back, and how he also enjoys having his own back patted.

But the thing that really caught my eye was— “and of course the production budget was tiny, less then $100k.”

Hmm. A tiny budget, less than $100k, for a QR code bouncing around on the screen… something you could get done for on Fiverr for $30?

This brought to mind something copywriter Dan Ferrari wrote a few years ago. Dan was writing about big changes in the DR world. This bit has stuck with me ever since:

Because I’m not sure you’re aware, but there’s still a HUGE world outside of the digital players I’ve been talking about so far.

They’re now entering our world as well.

Specifically, I mean big direct response TV spenders and “brand” companies.

Why? Because their channels are drying up. Everything is moving digital.

I recently met with one of the top execs for a HUGE direct response TV company.

They make even the $200M per year financial publishers look small.

Guess what they’re doing?

Moving online. TV doesn’t work nearly as well for them anymore.

So watch as companies with products and businesses that don’t really fall into our little world of internet direct response start to require the services of people that know how traffic, copy, and funnels work online, at mega-scale.

Just to be clear:

I’m not suggesting you try to sell direct marketing to clueless brand businesses. If their idea of good advertising is a glossy page in a magazine, showing a man in a rowboat, in the middle of a lake, with the company logo hiding somewhere in the corner… well, you won’t change their mind.

But like Dan says, we might be in the early days of a giant opportunity.

So if you are enterprising, now might be the time. The time to take standard DM insights… and sell them to a virgin direct advertisers like Coinbase. The production budget? A mere trifle — $100k or $300k or maybe just a mil.

But perhaps you don’t know enough about how traffic, copy, and funnels work online.

In that case, sign up to my email newsletter — because these are all things I write about regularly.

Reddit vs. Hacker News: How to get better customers, clients, readers, and business partners

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Paul Graham is a computer programmer, writer, and early-stage tech investor.

His startup fund, Y Combinator, helped start a bunch of famous companies, like Airbnb, Dropbox, DoorDash, Instacart, Zapier, and Reddit.

The total valuation of all Y Combinator companies is now over $400 billion. Y Combinator owns 7% of that, or roughly $30 billion.

Really, the only reason I know this is because I’ve been a regular reader of Hacker News for the past 14+ years.

Hacker News is a news board. Graham started it in 2006 as a way of sharing interesting ideas and getting connected to tech talent. Today, Hacker News gets over five million readers each month.

I’ve been thinking about creating something similar, just with a different focus. So I was curious to read Graham’s 2009 article, What I Learned From Hacker News, about the early experience of creating and running HN.

This bit stood out to me:

But what happened to Reddit won’t inevitably happen to HN. There are several local maxima. There can be places that are free for alls and places that are more thoughtful, just as there are in the real world; and people will behave differently depending on which they’re in, just as they do in the real world.

I’ve observed this in the wild. I’ve seen people cross-posting on Reddit and Hacker News who actually took the trouble to write two versions, a flame for Reddit and a more subdued version for HN.

Maybe this only stood out to me because something I’ve thought and written about before.

Your content, marketing, and offers select a certain type of audience. That much is obvious.

What is less obvious is that your content and marketing and offers also change people. Because none of us is only one type of person all the time.

So if you want an audience that’s smarter, that’s more respectful, that’s more thoughtful and less scatterbrained, then make it clear that’s what you expect. And lead by example.

This can be transformative in your everyday dealings with clients, customers, readers, and prospects. And who knows. It might even become the foundation on which you build a future online community.

If you found this interesting, you might like my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.

“If you got an area of excellence… then rich can be arranged”

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The Color of Money is green and it’s also the title of an 1986 Martin Scorsese film about pool hustlers. The movie contains a valuable truth about business, so let me quickly spell it out.

The Color of Money has two main characters:

An old pool shark, named Fast Eddie Felson, played by Paul Newman, and…

A young pool shark, named Vincent Lauria, played by a 24-year-old Tom Cruise.

In the beginning of the movie, Fast Eddie tries to recruit Vincent and so he says:

“If you got an area of excellence… if you’re the best at something, anything… then rich can be arranged.”

Vincent knows he’s the best at pool. He likes the idea of being rich. So he agrees to team up with Eddie.

It’s only later, once the two are already on the road, driving around in Eddie’s big white Cadillac and cleaning out dirty poolhalls around the Midwest, that Eddie tells Vincent the whole truth and nothing but the truth:

“Pool excellence is not about excellent pool. It’s about becoming something.”

Becoming what exactly?

Well, a businessman. In pool, it means being a flake… tanking on occasion… hustling the other guy and sometimes even the audience.

Maybe your business is not pool. And maybe you really dislike the idea of tanking on purpose or hustling anybody.

Fine.

So just take this as a reminder that excellence in whatever you do is about working on your business as well as in it.

And also:

If your business happens to be freelance copywriting, then take this as a reminder that my copy Zone Offer is now in the oven and is baking at 475°F.

I want to make sure the final result — all about the business of copywriting, as opposed to the craft — is fully baked before I put it on the table. More info on that soon — sign up here if you want to get notified.

A reader tries to disturb me but ends up turning me on

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Last night, in response to my “Don’t vote for just some guy” email, a reader wrote in:

Hi John! 🙂
What is your sexual preference? Gay or straight?
Sorry if this question disturbs you!

I don’t know if I would call it a sexual preference, but I will tell you what really turns me on:

It’s when Internet strangers take the time to write and try to get a rise out of me. Because it means I’m doing something right.

The way I look at it is:

Your online persona is like a sales bullet.

You have to reveal enough to get people involved, like the guy above. But you have to withhold enough to keep people wanting more.

Now if you’ve been reading my emails for a short while, you might say I rarely share anything about my life, and so I fail hard on the first part of this equation.

The fact is, I’ve been writing these emails, every day, for over three years.

​​During that time, I’ve shared a lot of personal stories, including some about my colorful-if-patchy dating, sex, and relationship history.

And I guess that’s really the point raised by the come-hither question above. The point being:

If you want people to know anything about you online, you have to repeat yourself to no end.

New people join your list. Then they skip some of your emails. Or they don’t skip, but they don’t listen. Or, in the words of Fast Eddie Felson, they listen, but they don’t hear.

So if there is anything you want to make sure people online know about you… you have to say it often, and then repeat it, even when it starts to get nauseating for you personally.

Fortunately, I don’t rely on my email newsletter as my only or really my primary source of income (you can sign up for the newsletter here if you like).

That’s why I don’t have to keep repeating my stories, or reveal personal stuff, past the point where I myself find it amusing. (Maybe there’s a lesson in there too.)

But there are a few things I want to make sure you know about me.

Such as, for example, the rare and choice items I have for sale.

Like my 10 Commandments of A-list Copywriters book. No, it doesn’t have anything about my sexual past… but it does have a few personal stories to help illustrate the valuable lessons I learned from some of the world’s best copywriters.

This book is cheap, especially considering the value that’s inside.

It’s available on Amazon.

It’s called the 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters.

Did I mention it’s available on Amazon and that it’s cheap and yet valuable? The link to it is here:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Gary Halbert’s ghost determines the hand-in-cap odds

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In my email yesterday, I offered you a wager if you wrote in and picked the winner of this year’s SuperBowl.

The betting office is closed now.

But if you wrote me in the past 24 hours, and if it turns out you picked right, you’ll get my upcoming Copy Zone offer for 50% off.

As things stand right now, the Bengals are the clear favorite, with 17/10 odds. That’s according to all the picks I got from people on my list.

But maybe it’s not yet time to run out and put real money down on Cincinnati. Because the most persuasive handicapping analysis I got came from copywriter Thomas Crouse:

“I know nothing about football, so I will bet on the Bengals purely on the basis that tigers are superior to sheep.”

This simple comment set me off on a search for the strange origins of the word handicap.

It turns out it comes from an old trading and betting game, called hand-in-cap. Here’s how that worked:

Imagine for example, that you and I each own a football helmet. You own a Bengals helmet… I own a Rams helmet.

We want to trade. But you think your Bengals helmet is worth more.

“Come on,” you say, “look at those amazing stripes!”

Fine. But how much more?

“Let’s not haggle like lettuce-peddlers. We’ll get somebody else to decide.”

So you get out your A-List Copywriters-edition Ouija board. And, holding hands, together we summon the great ghost of Gary Halbert.

Gary will be the umpire who determines the odds — how much more the Bengals helmet is worth than the Rams.

In a flash of light, Gary appears from the after-world, wearing flip flops, a torn t-shirt, and a red baseball cap that says, “CLIENTS SUCK.”

He looks over your football helmet and mine. He strokes his beard.

“It’s a damn tough one,” Gary says. “I was born and bred in Ohio. And so I have a soft spot, I mean real soft, quite mushy, for the Bengals. But then I made Los Angeles my adopted home. And I gotta say the Rams are looking good this year.”

He thinks some more.

“So let’s just say the odds are $70. The Bengals helmet is worth the Rams helmet plus seventy bucks.”

At this point, Gary takes off his CLIENTS SUCK cap.

You and I each put $5 of forfeit money in the cap. And we each also put our right hand in the cap.

The rules are this:

If you agree with the odds, you pull out your hand from the cap, palm open.

If you don’t agree with the odds, you pull out your hand from the cap, with a closed fist.

The same for me. Result:

If we we both agree, the trade happens. We exchange football helmets. I give you an extra $70. Gary pockets the $10 worth of forfeit money as reward for umpiring, and he flies off to copywriter heaven.

If we both disagree, the trade doesn’t happen. And Gary still pockets the $10 worth of forfeit money.

And finally, if one of us agrees but the other doesn’t, the trade also doesn’t happen.

Except in this case, the $10 of forfeit money goes to whoever agreed to the trade… and poor Gary goes back to copywriter heaven empty-handed. (Really, it’s okay. He can write a new sales letter tonight and make a million dollars by tomorrow morning.)

So that’s hand-in-cap.

People played it for hundreds of years.

The term then got transferred to horse racing — an impartial umpire chose the odds between different horses — and sports betting in general.

​​Eventually, it morphed into the modern word (disability, disadvantage) we know today.

I’m telling you all this because 1) I like etymologies and 2) I’ve long been fascinated by how a few simple, well-chosen rules can produce complex, interesting, and valuable behaviors.

Like hand-in-cap.

The rules are simple. And yet they make it so you and I and Gary each have a stake in working towards, and agreeing to, a fair trade.

That same idea can be applied much more generally.

You might want to manage a few people who work for your business… or create a thriving online community… or just mold a group of your customers into a tightly-knit, devoted “herd.”

So my advice to you is to start by thinking of a few simple rules to drive the behaviors that you want.

That, and sign up for my email list. Sure it’s a wager. But maybe you can win some valuable insights.

Let’s see if I can make you watch the SuperBowl

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A few days ago, I was listening to an old episode of the James Altucher podcast, and I learned this curious fact:

A person who bets any amount of money on a game is 11x more likely to watch the game.

I’m not sure if this means that you can get people to watch a game, just by getting them to bet. But I’m willing to find out.

Because there’s an old marketing idea that I’ve long thought is super clever.

As far as I know, nobody today in the DM world is using it, at least not online. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you can correct me.

Here’s the idea. It comes from direct marketing legend Joe Sugarman, the guy who made BluBlocker sunglasses into a $300M brand.

Joe once wrote an ad promoting a computer. He ran it around the time of the SuperBowl.

The ad basically said, if the Bears win the SuperBowl, you get this computer at 50% off. If they lose, the price stays as it is. And here’s the outcome, in Joe’s own words:

“There was a lineup of people — we had a retail store — there was a literally a lineup of people all the way around the block waiting to pick up their computer that they were getting for 50% off. The funny part about it was that we were making a nice profit on that as well.”

Like I said, I’m willing to test this idea out.

So I just checked. The Superbowl is in 8 days.

And I happen to be working on a new offer. It’s called Copy Zone. It’s about succeeding in the business part of copywriting — getting started, finding clients, managing clients, performance deals, upleveling.

I am planning to get Copy Zone out by the end of this month. And I’m planning to sell it for $150 to start. But I’ll make you a wager:

If you pick the winner of this Superbowl right — Bengals or Rams — you get my Copy Zone offer for 50% off, or for $75, during the launch window.

Of course, you gotta buy a ticket if you want a piece of this action.

Fortunately, the ticket to play this game is free. But it is time-limited.

So if you want to play this game of chance, you’ll need to get on my email list first. Then just hit reply to my welcome email and pick this year’s SuperBowl Winner.

Bengals. Or Rams.

You have time to enter until I send out my email tomorrow, Monday, Feb 7 2022, at 8:24 CET.

​​Call — or rather, email — now. Our bookies are standing by.

A defensive Internet troll sets me straight

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Last night, while my Copy Riddles promo was still going on, I sent an email about a troll who chimed in to say Copy Riddles isn’t good enough for him.

He started by accusing me of name-dropping.

​​He ended by telling me to “go read some stuff from Settle, Tony Shepherd and Andre Chaperon.”

So I did. And I used what this guy wrote to illustrate Ben Settle’s idea that Internet trolls always project.

But no.

​​It turns out Ben and I are wrong about that. Or least that’s what my troll claims, in a message he sent me today:

Kind of sad when you think someone being critical of your emails is ‘a troll picking a fight’ with you. Most people would see that as an opportunity to examine, review and possibly improve. You get defensive and start making (bad) assumptions about someone you know NOTHING about.

1. I’m NOT the one dropping names, 2. I’m doing very well with my own sites and 3. I’m not interested in the new ‘shiny’ objects.

Why would you make assumptions like that?

You’ve written a book that may be the best copywriting book ever – but based on the way you’ve responded to me I doubt it.

PS: I’ve read ALL of Settle’s books. Copy Trolls is easily the worst. Read the Infotainment Book, there’s ideas in there you can use.

I’ve done enough unpaid promotion of Ben Settle’s ideas, so I won’t talk about infotainment today.

Instead, let me get back to what I really love to do. And that’s finding illustrations for deep persuasion, influence, and psychology ideas that I can share with you.

Today’s idea comes from neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran.

At one point, Ramachandran studied people people who had suffered a stroke and were paralyzed in one arm. And yet, these people stubbornly refused to admit they were paralyzed.

This wasn’t just a brave face they were putting on in public.

They truly could not accept that their arm was hanging limp by their side, not responding to any command they gave it.

Ramachandran performed clever experiments to try to elicit whether these patients actually believed they were 100% fine.

The answer was yes. They themselves were convinced their arm was not paralyzed, in spite of the very obvious evidence otherwise.

So is this just a strange corner case in the medical literature… or something for the archives of Internet trolldom?

Ramachandran thinks it’s more than that.

He claims this is a dramatic and concrete illustration of the kind of thing we all engage in, all the time.

Denial, Ramachandran says, is a fundamental human activity. It’s how we manage to live in a complex and often nasty and brutish world, and still maintain an illusion of a coherent, in-control self.

I personally find this idea both terrifying and fascinating. Which of the things I know to be true are a flat-out denial of reality?

​​Or maybe, not even a flat-out denial, but something more complex?

Because flat-out denial (“I’m NOT the one dropping names”) was just one of the mechanisms Ramachandran came across in his paralyzed-but-no patients.

There were five other types as well. You can see a few more of these denial strategies in my troll’s response above.

​​But if you can’t spot them, don’t worry.

I’ll spell out the other five types of denial in my emails over the coming days. You can sign up here if you want to read that.

Like I said, I find this stuff personally fascinating. But it can be valuable, too.

It can help you understand other people better, whether those are your friends… family… customers… prospects… or trolls.

And of course, it can help you understand yourself better. And who knows. Maybe, one day, it can even be an opportunity to examine, review, and possibly improve.