Business Ideas

MVE cancelled

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No, not Most Valuable Email.

The MVE that’s been cancelled is the Most Vivian Event, the big promotion I announced yesterday.

I had hoped to use this event to pull every remaining non-buyer on my list and get him to buy Most Valuable Email, will-he, nill-he.

My plan was to use I know about promos inside the Most Vivian Event — structure, copy, and most importantly offer:

An “Italian lottery,” giving new buyers a good chance to get MVE free…

A stack of free bonuses that I’ve sold for good money before, totaling the price of MVE and more, so even if somebody didn’t win the “Italian lottery,” they would still feel like they’re getting a steal…

An entirely new bonuses as well, which would reveal all the thinking that went into this promo — basically a little promo course built around a specific case study, to make this MVE offer so valuable that if you ever send any kind of emails, the investment would pay for itself with this one new bonus alone.

I had grand plans to make this event fun, epic, and undoubtedly immensely successful. Except…

It’s all been cancelled.

Reason why:

Each time I got near to settling on the final offer for the Most Vivian Event, I kept bouncing into one problem:

“What do I do with previous buyers?”

I have a long-standing policy to reward early buyers for buying for me. That means I grandfather previous buyers into any upgrades, new runs of a course, or bonuses I end up offering in the future. It also means I don’t feature discounts.

Yesterday, when I had the initial idea for this new promo, I shrugged this question off.

I told myself I’d figure out some way to incentivize new buyers… to reward previous buyers… and to have this promo make business sense for me personally.

But no matter how I structured this offer, there was always one end of the triangle — new buyers, old buyers, me — that was left high and dry.

I realized it’s not a matter of what bonuses or incentives I end up offering. It’s simply a consequence of my “reward previous buyers” policy, and the fact that I have hundreds of previous buyers of MVE.

That’s why I’ve actually never run a bonus- or discount-based promo for any of my offers, outside of a launch. I just never realized it until yesterday.

You might say I’m being stubborn to stick to this policy. And that’s exactly right. Because I want people to believe a few simple certainties when they think of me.

One of those simple certainties is that I won’t screw over previous buyers. I don’t ever want my buyers to think, even in passing, “Huh, maybe I should have waited to buy this, this new deal is better than what I got.”

Yesterday, I wrote that I had clearly been falling short by continuing to sell MVE on its merits alone.

Some people who could benefit from MVE — like Vivian, who wanted something for “coming up with interesting ideas and presenting it in a concise and compelling way” — never even considered buying.

Frankly, that falling short will most likely continue.

But if you have been on the fence about MVE for a while, I do have a special offer for you today. It’s nothing like the spectacle I was planning on. But you can decide whether it’s enough to get you to take me up on Most Valuable Email today.

I’m calling this offer the “Shangri La” MVE offer. And that’s because like Shangri La, the two parts of this offer only appear once every fifty years. Specifically:

1. I normally don’t offer a payment plan for Most Valuable Email. I did offer a payment plan for MVE once, as a joke, for one day only. Well, like Shangri La, the payment plan is back, and not as a joke.

You can get MVE for $99 today and then two more monthly payments of $99. This payment plan is there to make it psychologically easier to get started — in my experience, people take up payment plans not because they cannot afford to pay in full, but simply because it feels like a smaller commitment.

2. I am also offering a bonus, which I’m calling Shangri La Disappearing Secrets.

Over the past years, I have periodically sent out emails where I teased a secret, which I then turned into a disappearing, one-day bonuses for people who took me up on an offer before the deadline.

Inside this Shangri La Disappearing Secrets bonus, I have collected 12 emails that teased 12 secrets — and I have revealed the secrets themselves. These include:

* An email deliverability tip that is so valuable I decided not to share it publicly, but only with buyers of MVE. This tip is something that multiple people have told me I should turn into a standalone course or training — which I most probably will do one day.

* Stage Surprise Success. Step-by-step instructions for creating effective surprise in any kind of performance, whether thieving, magicking, comedy, drama, or simply writing for impact and influence. And no, it’s not just shocking people with something they weren’t expecting. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of that.

* A daring idea to grow your list and build up your authority at the same time. I have not yet had the guts to put it into practice, even though I have lots of reasons to believe it would work great to build my own authority, and get me more high-quality leads than I’m getting now.

* A persuasion strategy used by con men, pick up artists, salesmen, even by legendary copywriters. I ran a little contest in an email to see if anybody could identify this strategy based on a scene from the movie The Sting. Out of 40+ people who tried to identify the strategy, only 2 got it right.

* An incredible free resource, filled with insightful and proven marketing and positioning advice. This resource comes from a man I’ve only written about once in this newsletter, but who has influenced my thinking about marketing and human psychology more deeply than I may let on — maybe more deeply than anybody else over the past few years.

* Magic Box calls-to-action. Use these if you don’t have a product or a service to sell yet, or if you only have a few bum offers, which your list has stopped responding to every day. Result of a “magic box” CTA when used by one of my coaching clients: the first hand-raiser ever for an under-construction $4k offer.

* A new way to apply the Most Valuable email trick, one I wasn’t comfortable doing until recently. Now that I’ve started using it, it’s gotten people paying more attention… leaning in more… even rereading my emails 3x… and reaching out to reopen dropped business conversations.

* Steven Pressfield (the author of the War of Art and the Legend of Bagger Vance) used to write scripts for porn movies. He once shared two porn storytelling rules. I’ll tell you what they are, and how smart marketers, maybe even me on occasion, use one of these rules in their own sales copy and marketing content.

* A list of 14 criteria of truthful stories. I’m not saying to get devious with this — but you could use these criteria to jelly up a made-up story and make it sound absolutely true. More respectably, you can use these criteria to take your true but fluffy story and make it sound 100% gripping and real.

* Why I drafted US patent application 16/573921 to get the U.S. Government to recognize my Most Valuable Email trick as novel, non-obvious, and having concrete, practical applications.

* Two methods for presenting a persuasive argument, as spelled out by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. I illustrate these two methods with a little public debate that Daniel Throssell and I engaged in via our respective email newsletters. Daniel and I each adopted opposing methods, just as described by Kahneman.

* An infotainment secret I stole from Ben Settle. As far as I know, Ben doesn’t teach this secret in his books or newsletters — I found it by tracking Ben’s emails over a 14-day period and spotting Ben using it in 8 of those 14 emails. And no, I’m not talking about teasing, or telling a story, or stirring up conflict. This is something more fundamental, and more broadly useful, even beyond daily emails.

So there you go. My Shangri La MVE offer:

A payment plan for Most Valuable Email that only appears twice in a century… and 12 bonus persuasion secrets.

This offer is good until tomorrow, Friday Oct 11, at 12 midnight PST.

If you’re at all interested, the time to act is now. That’s because of that simple certainty I wrote above — there won’t ever be a better time.

I won’t be running big promo events for Most Valuable Email, because it doesn’t fit my policy of treating previous customers with respect.

On the other hand, if you get MVE now, you will also be eligible for any future disappearing bonuses I might offer with it, or any other special offer or real I will make to new buyers also.

If you’d like to take me up on this Shangri La offer, before it disappears:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

P.S. And yes, if you have already bought MVE, you also get the Shangri La Disappearing Secrets. No need to write me for it. I’ll add it straight inside the MVE course area, right under the MVE Swipes document.

EXPECTING YOUR REPLY

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This past Sunday, I sent an email with a link to a survey, asking people about their single biggest challenge when it comes to writing or profiting from their email list. One respondent wrote:

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Getting suitable copywriting clients to work with and how to find them and make sure they are suitable and are a good fit with both client and service provider happy with outfoem of the relationship. What are the most effective ways to find copywriting clients when starting out? (EXPECTING YOUR REPLY)

===

Even though this respondent included his (pseudonymous) email address, I did not reply to him. Maybe you can guess what happened next.

I got an email yesterday from the same guy, replying to that email I had sent out on Sunday. He asked:

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Hey John!

How would you get your first copywriting client if you had to start with that?

===

I nodded thoughtfully for a moment, and then I scrolled down to the bottom of the email and I unsubscribed the guy from my list.

Not because he’s pushy or entitled (though EXPECTING YOUR REPLY did rub me the wrong way).

I unsubscribed him because I have zero interest in writing about getting your first copywriting client. I also expect that, for the rest of my life, that will never ever change.

It would be a waste of time, both for me and for the guy above, if he were to stay on my list and keep EXPECTING MY REPLY, given that his single biggest challenge is to get his first copywriting client.

To my mind at least, the most merciful thing is to set this bird free so it can fly off somewhere else. Which is what I did.

You might feel this email is a kind of flex about how I’m so cool that I can casually send engaged readers away from me.

Well, it is that, but it’s also something more.

Because one thread I found in the survey responses came from various people who already run email lists. Their single biggest challenge is that the people on their lists are the wrong type of subscribers.

Too broad of an audience… or no money… or simply a different kind of profile to what the list owner is looking for.

I’d like to suggest to you that regularly sending away the wrong people is one part of getting more of the right people onto your list. We all define ourselves both by accepting and by rejecting. You can bond with someone because you both love the Beatles… or because you both hate the Rolling Stones.

By the way, I’m not saying there’s anything personally wrong with someone if they like the Rolling Stones… or if they are looking for their first copywriting client… or if they have no money right now.

I’m just saying we all have the right to choose what birds we allow to perch and nest inside our own private and walled gardens.

Of course, repelling the people you don’t want is usually not enough. You usually also have to do some things to actively attract the people you do want.

So lemme ask you:

Do you face the challenge of getting the right people onto your list? Or do you face the challenge of a list filled with subscribers you don’t want?

If you do, hit reply. I’d like to hear more about what you’ve tried to overcome this challenge, and how it’s worked out for you.

In turn, if I can give you any suggestions or advice to help you get more of the right kinds of people onto your list, I will.

Should I say it now? I guess it’s inevitable:

EXPECTING YOUR REPLY.

Angel Heart cold outreach

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Last night, I rewatched a dark but fascinating movie called Angel Heart:

Mickey Rourke plays private detective Harry Angel, who is on a missing persons case.

Throughout the movie, in order to unearth the next clue, track down his guy, and collect his unfortunate bounty, Harry Angel pretends to be:

– A researcher from the National Institutes of Health, when getting records from a hospital…

– A journalist writing an article, when talking to Toots Suite, a blues guitar player…

– A client coming to have his future told by a spirit medium…

– A customer at a hoodoo supplies store, looking to buy some High John De Conqueror root.

Harry Angel lies. He doesn’t work at the NIH, and no amount of squinting will make that fact true.

You don’t have to lie. But you can still reposition or repackage who you are and what you do, with integrity, right now, in a matter of seconds, to make it more likely people will hear you out. Without lying, you can get the benefit of what Harry Angel does to move his case forward.

Really, it’s the same thing I talked about in my email yesterday — ask what your prospects are looking to buy, instead of how you can sell what you have.

Because this doesn’t only apply if you want to get people to buy your PDFs or coaching or copywriting services or whatever.

It applies equally well if you’re simply trying to open up conversations with people, which can yield valuable information or lead to a valuable relationship or partnership down the line. In other words, cold outreach.

In entirely related news:

If you take the idea above ^^^^ and generalize it a bit, it applies just as well to get people to open up your newsletter emails, read them, and have their mind gradually or suddenly opened to the possibility of giving you some money.

And if you want specific step-by-step instructions on how exactly you can do this today:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

Spend all your time trying to sell out games

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Yesterday I watched a movie, Local Hero, which finished around 9:17pm my time, some 32 minutes after my daily email went out.

In those 32 minutes, I had 21 sales of the offer I introduced yesterday — “give me $10, and I’ll make you a ‘beta-tester’ for my new book.”

Since I only wanted 20 such beta-testers, I closed the shopping cart, and I updated the checkout link to point to a page that said “Thanks but this offer is now sold out.”

You might think it’s not much of an accomplishment to sell out 20 spots (actually 21) at $10 each.

And true, it’s not a lot of money.

But it’s very important anyhow. Not just for my own morale, but for public perception.

And on that note, I would like to share with you a quote from sports marketer Jon Spoelstra.

Spoelstra worked with some of the losingest and least popular sports franchises out there.

In spite of the lousy sports records of these teams, Spoelstra repeatedly managed to turn the teams into cash-cows. Here’s how:

“At the Nets, we spent all of our energies in trying to sell out games. This started with the games that people most likely would want to go to — the games with the marquee players on the opposing teams. You might think it was easy. It wasn’t. If we hadn’t committed all of our resources and manpower to selling out our best games, we wouldn’t have. A funny thing happened on our way to sellouts. Our attendance picked up in the other games where we weren’t even trying.”

I was planning to promote my beta-tester offer today to make sure this offer sold out, just like Spoelstra advises.

But since the offer sold out with just one email last night, that plan’s out.

So let me remind you of my most popular program, Most Valuable Email.

I can tell you that today’s email does not use the Most Valuable Email trick, which is what this program teaches you to perform in less than an hour.

And yet, the Most Valuable Email trick in a way underlies this entire newsletter, whether I use it in a particular email or not.

I can imagine that doesn’t make much sense without knowing what the Most Valuable Trick is. In case you’d like to find out, and better yet, to profit by using this trick yourself:

​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​

Looking for 20 beta-testers to pay an unthinkable amount for my new book

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I’m looking for 20 beta-testers for a pre-publication “email draft” of my new book.

The background:

Yesterday, I made my plans for this coming month. My goal #1 in October is to finish writing my new book, titled The 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, Comedians, Copywriters, Hypnotists, Door-To-Door Salesmen, Professional Negotiators, Storytellers, Propagandists, and Stage Magicians.

I already have the first 3 commandments/chapters of this new book largely done.

Still, getting the remaining 7 written by the end of this month is ambitious, considering I’ve been working on this book for more than a year now.

In my favor, most of that time has gone to research and outlining. I’ve only been writing for the past few months, on and off. But still — I realized yesterday there’s a good chance that I won’t make it by the end of this month, not unless I change my approach.

I got to thankin’…

I’m good at writing emails, much better than at writing book chapters. Maybe there’s an opportunity there?

And so I thought up a new offer to 1) help me get this book done on time, and 2) entertain and maybe reward a small number of dedicated readers of this newsletter.

So here’s my offer to you:

If you like, you can join a small group of beta-testers for my new book. The price to get inside this exclusive and elite club is an unthinkable $10. That $10 will get you:

1. An extra email with extra content from me, each day this month, starting this Sunday, October 6, and ending Wednesday, October 30, with content that’s intended for the new book.

2. A chance to influence the final content in the book. I hope you you will hit reply when I send you these content emails and share your thoughts. If all goes well, I will have more content at the end of this month than I will need for the book. I will decide what to keep and what to toss based on your feedback.

3. An acknowledgement in the book when I do publish it, because you were there at the start, and because you helped me get it done.

4. A free paperback copy once I publish the book. My current 10 Commandments book sells for $9.99, plus shipping. This new 10 Commandments book will also be priced at $9.99, plus shipping. But join me for this beta tester group, I’ll send you a paperback copy for free when it’s published, and I’ll also cover the shipping.

If you’d like to join, you can do so at the link below. But before you do, a few caveats:

I encourage you to only join if you’re a dedicated reader of these emails… if you’re already interested in getting my new book when it comes out… and if you will have the time to read yet another email over the coming month, and maybe even to hit reply to tell me what you think of what I wrote.

Again, these “new book” emails will start this Sunday. The deadline to sign up for them is this Friday at 8:31pm CET (I want a couple days buffer), though there’s a fair chance I will turn off this offer sooner than that, maybe as soon as tomorrow morning.

If you know you want in right now, here’s where to go:

​https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments​

How to 3x your readership and give the right people an excuse to say hi

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A couple weeks ago I sent out an unusual email using my Most Valuable Email trick.

I got a response to that from a former client/partner, the owner of a successful direct marketing agency, somebody who had at one point paid me a sizable monthly retainer to advise on emails and advertorials. He wrote:

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At first, I thought the [censored] was just a gimmick and part of your email strategy.

But then I wasn’t sure (new CK account and all that).

Finally, on my 3rd read I figured this was actually you being clever and not an issue with your CK setup.

What it DID do is make me pay attention. (Been a loooooong time since I read anyone’s email THREE times).

So I’m voting for “brilliant” vs “haha mistake!”

Also, using this as an excuse to say hi. Hope all is good.

You still doing the coaching gig?

===

The [censored] bit above was my use of the MVE trick in that email.

It’s a new form of Most Valuable Email, one I have started playing with from time to time.

It’s still the same old Most Valuable Email trick, but applied in a new way, one I wasn’t comfortable doing before.

It’s getting results like the above:

People paying more attention… leaning in more… even rereading my emails 3x… and reaching out to reopen dropped business conversations.

If all this sounds abstract, it’s probably because you don’t know what my Most Valuable Email trick is.

You can get it below and find out.

I also have a disappearing bonus to motivate you to act now. The disappearing bonus is simply an explanation of my new way of using the MVE trick, like in the email that drew the response from the agency owner above, and how you can do this too.

If you’d like this disappearing bonus, here’s what to do:

1. Get my Most Valuable Email training at the link below

2. Send me an email by tomorrow, Wednesday Sep 25, by 8:31pm CET, saying you want the disappearing bonus. (After that, no bonus.)

And if you already have Most Valuable Email?

This disappearing bonus is of course open to you too – but the same deadline applies.

Here’s the link to get Most Valuable Email:

​https://bejakovic.com/mve/​

P.S. You might say, “Oh but I want my copy to be crystal-clear like glass, and not to require rereading three times.”

There is something to that.

At the same time, I personally don’t ever want to make what I write scrollable, skippable, and disposable.

If what I write makes people stop, scratch their head, read all the way to the end, reread, I’m good with that.

And in terms of results generated:

Six months ago, the agency owner above and I were talking about working together again.

At that time, I had just started as a coach in Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind, and I didn’t have the time to take on a new project.

The new-style MVE email above got the agency owner to reach out and pick up the thread of that conversation… a win in my book, particularly since, as of last week, I am no longer working with Shiv’s PCM mastermind.

What I learned from my chat with a crypto billionaire scammer

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Two things you might not know about me is that 1) I used to be on YouTube and 2) I used to be in crypto.

This was back around 2018.

Once or twice a week, I’d put on a white dress shirt (no pants)… stand against the only neutral white wall in my then-apartment… and get on Zoom to interview various crypto founders and execs.

Back then, I had plans of becoming a marketer specialized in crypto, before I realized I just couldn’t be bothered to care about the field. In retrospect, it was probably a dumb decision.

But pressing on:

This crypto YouTube channel was how I had an hour-long chat with a certain Israeli-American entrepreneur.

He was already a multimillionaire before he got into crypto, thanks to a half-dozen other tech companies he had started and sold.

But this new crypto venture was by far the biggest thing he had ever done.

Within a year or so of getting started, right around the time I interviewed him, his company had $4 billion in assets under management (not made-up coins, but actual liquid assets). Later that grew to over $20 billion. I imagine the dude’s personal worth reached into the billions as well, for those few brief years at least.

Because it’s all come crashing down since.

The company has gone bankrupt. The guy I interviewed has been arrested and charged with securities fraud, wire fraud, and market manipulation. If convicted, he could spend the next 15 years in prison.

This isn’t a newsletter about crypto. And it’s not a newsletter about moralizing.

This is a newsletter about marketing, so let me stick to that:

What I learned from my chat with the crypto billionaire scammer is that, if you have a podcast or something like a podcast, you can get in touch with anyone.

Sure, you might say my experience was during a crypto boom period. Plus, how hard is it to get a scammer to accept a new opportunity to spread his scammy message?

Maybe you’re right. But the point about podcasts opening doors still stands.

I have seen it with myself. If pretty much anybody invites me to a podcast, I will say yes (just try me). My due diligence extends as far as seeing if the podcast has any episodes published, so I can assure myself that my interview will probably be published if I spend an hour to give it.

This truth about podcasting is one of the tips I share in The Secret of the Magi, my guide to opening the door to conversations that lead to business partnerships.

By the way, “podcasting” is not The Secret of the Magi. The secret is something else, and there are lots of other ways to implement it, even if you have zero intention of creating a podcast or getting on YouTube in your dress shirt and underwear.

I gave away The Secret of the Magi as a bonus for Steve Raju’s upcoming workshop, with my deadline for that being yesterday.

But I had a thought today, why let this little guide go idle now?

If you got The Secret of the Magi already as a bonus for Steve’s offer, great. I’ll see you at Steve’s workshop next week.

On the other hand, if you had no interest in Steve’s workshop, but you would like to know The Secret of the Magi, you can get it below.

Your investment, if you get it before tomorrow, Sunday, 12 midnight PST, is a whopping $23.50.

At that price, it might be worth getting The Secret of the Magi simply to slake your curiosity.

I won’t say anything about the actual value of putting The Secret of the Magi to use, because if it helps you open even one conversation that turns into some kind of business partnership… it’s likely to be worth so much more than what I’m asking for here that anything I say about it will sound absurd.

I’ll leave you to paint your own vision of the business partnerships this could lead you to.

I’ll just say that, after the deadline tomorrow, The Secret of the Magi will go up to $47.

If you’d like to get it before then:

​https://bejakovic.com/secret-of-the-magi​

I am a most utterly suggestible person

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This past Tuesday, Steve Raju floated the idea for a new workshop, one in which he would reveal:

* Why most traditional high-ticket offers don’t make sense any more in the age of AI

* Why most service providers are struggling nowadays

* What you should pivot to

* What hands down the best offer at the end of 2024 actually is

* All the tools you need to offer that

* How to outsource it if you can’t be bothered to do even that

* How to structure deals for the very highest return

“Interested?” asked Steve at the end of his email. “Just reply ‘Yeah, I’m interested, Steve,’ and if enough people say yes, we’ll do it next week.”

I hit reply and I wrote Steve to honestly say:

“I am not looking to pivot or offer another service but God yes I am interested.”

To which Steve wrote back:

“It’s amazing how you are a master in the arts of persuasion and manipulation… and yet you are one of the most utterly suggestible people I have ever met lol.”

It’s true. I am a most utterly suggestible person.

Frankly, it’s one of the reasons why I got into the direct response field — I wanted to figure out what was happening to me so often.

I also suspect my utter suggestibility is one of the reasons I’ve had success in this field. Because, if I only pay attention to my own reactions, I can say “Aha! Got it. I know what happened. And I bet this would work on others too.”

Maybe you’re utterly suggestible too. No shame in it. In fact, you can even think of it as a valuable gift, if you only pay attention.

Of course, in time I’ve developed a thick and cynical buffalo hide to protect me against the world. Today, my default response to most suggestions is “NO!” — before I even hear what the suggestion is about.

But with people I trust and respect, I will sometimes allow myself to indulge my suggestible nature, like I did with Steve above.

After floating the idea, and I guess hearing back from enough people like me, Steve decided to put on this workshop. It’s called The Word Is Not Enough. It will happen next Wednesday at 10am Pacific. As for your investment, it’s pay-what-you-want.

Plus, if you decide to 1) sign up for Steve’s workshop via the link below and 2) forward me your receipt by tonight, Fri, at 12 midnight PST, I will send you a free bonus, The Secret of the Magi.

The Secret of the Magi will tell you how to open up conversations with people you don’t know, even if they are busy, even if they are rich and successful, and even if they are way above you in status.

Of course, The Secret of the Magi will not work in 100% of cases.

But after observing other people cold contacting me… and after spending this past summer cold contacting a bunch of other people… I’ve had one big takeaway for how to open the door to conversations that can lead to those business partnerships.

I will tell you this takeaway, illustrate it with a few examples, and give you specific instructions on how you can apply it too.

Again, the deadline to send me your receipt for Steve’s workshop is tonight at 12 midnight PST. Why? Because I’ve noticed in the past how well deadlines work on me to get me to move. Maybe they work on you too? If so, here’s the link:

​https://bejakovic.com/the-word-is-not-enough​

Pay-what-you-want for a new business opportunity for copywriters

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Last year, I promoted an unusual offer, called ClientRaker, by Steve Raju.

Steve was once a whizbang software engineer, who reinvented himself as a successful direct response copywriter, and who then reinvented himself as an AI consultant.

Steve now charges big businesses good money to tell them how to better use AI. But he does more than that.

Steve is actually using AI to set up commission-only deals with businesses that get tons of lead flow. He sends his little AI minions to reactivate the dormant leads of these businesses, and he gets paid on performance, in amounts that would make a Bond villain take note.

Steve hasn’t put on any kind of training since last year’s ClientRaker — he makes his money in different ways. But this next Wednesday, at 10am Pacific, Steve is putting on a workshop called the Word Is Not Enough (he has a habit of naming offers after Bond movies).

Steve announced this new workshop by teasing some of the content:

* Why most traditional high-ticket offers don’t make sense anymore in the age of AI

* Why most service providers are struggling nowadays

* What you should pivot to

* What hands down the best offer at the end of 2024 actually is

* All the tools you need to offer that

* How to outsource it if you can’t be bothered to do even that

* How to structure deals for the very highest return

I am vaguely interested in learning more about how to use AI.

I am significantly more interested in learning about hot new business opportunities.

I am very interested in hearing Steve talk about what he is doing, particularly how he is positioning himself, how he is adapting to the current market, and how he is finding and structuring new deals.

The copywriting world tends to attract smart people who think different. But there are few copywriters I know who think like Steve does, and who have his credentials for smarts (the man was a legit child progidy, I mean, prodigy).

Steve’s training next week is pay-what-you-want. I’ve signed up, and I’ve paid the suggested $47.

I would like to invite you to sign up as well. I’ll even throw in a bonus, which I’m calling The Secret of the Magi. (If Steve likes to name offers after Bond movies, I name mine after Robert Collier books.)

I don’t know the details of what-all Steve will share in his workshop. But I imagine if you get a new offer you can make to businesses, you will need businesses to make the offer to.

My Secret of the Magi bonus will tell you just one secret related to that — how to open up conversations with people you don’t know, even if they are busy, even if they are rich and successful, and even if they are way above you in status.

Of course, The Secret of the Magi will not work in 100% of cases.

But after observing other people cold contacting me… and after spending this past summer cold contacting a bunch of other people… I’ve had one big takeaway for how to open the door to conversations that can lead to those business partnerships.

I will tell you this takeaway, illustrate it with a few examples, and give you specific instructions on how you can apply it too.

All that inside my Secret of the Magi, which is yours, if you sign up for Steve’s workshop and forward me your receipt by tomorrow, Friday Sep 20, at 12 midnight PST.

Sign up after that, or forward me your receipt after that, and you will be in for Steve’s intriguing workshop, but you won’t get no bonus.

If you wanna get both, the time is now:

​https://bejakovic.com/the-word-is-not-enough​

Sign up to Author Stack because it might be interesting or valuable to you

by

Today I would like to get you to sign up to Author Stack. it’s free, though you can also pay if you want.

Author Stack is a Substack newsletter by Russell Nohelty.

It’s a newsletter for writers. It covers the mysterious business side of writing, as opposed to the familiar technical side that everybody else yaps about, telling you to tack on an ‘s’ to the the verbs in your headline (“TRIPLES your response!”).

As I wrote a few times over the past week, Russell reached out to me when he read that I’m going down the paid traffic route.

He offered to do a recorded interview, and share his experiences spending $30k to grow his own audience, which now stands at over 70,000 subscribers across his different newsletters.

I was grateful to Russell for the offer and for the info he shared with me.

I asked if there was something I could do in turn to make this worthwhile for him as well.

But Russell said he’s not worried about it. “If you put out good and do things with cool people,” he said, “things usually work out like they’re supposed to.”

Outwardly I smiled. Inwardly I cursed. I hate it when people are relaxed, generous, and non-needy around me.

Fortunately, Russell does write Author Stack, and I would like to get you to sign up for it.

Not because Russell asked me to (he didn’t) or because he was nice to me (he was).

Sure, maybe everything I’ve told you so far can be a bit of proof, or a bit of context to help ease you through the link at the bottom.

But really, I would like to get you to sign up to Author Stack because it might be interesting or valuable to you.

Author Stack can be interesting to you if you’re into things like Substack gossip… newsletter growth… or newsletter monetization strategies.

Author Stack can be valuable to you if you write or you want to write — newsletters, books, comics — but more than that, if you want to make money writing, and you’re looking for practical guidance on how to do that in the current moment.

Like I said, Author Stack is a Substack newsletter.

Like many Substack newsletters, there’s a free version and a paid version.

You can get the paid version if you like… or you can choose to not get it. The advice and info that Russell provides in the free version is already copious, and interesting and valuable without any add-ons.

Final point:

I’m not an affiliate for Author Stack. I am personally signed up to get it.

If you would also like to sign up for it, try it out, read Russel’s articles and see if they can benefit you, or open up your mind about what’s possible in the business of writing today:

​https://www.theauthorstack.com/​