Business Ideas

It’s hard to be broke and unmotivated

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A fairly shameless reader from Brazil writes in to ask:

===

Hey John,

do you offer parity purchase discounts? I’m asking because I live in Brazil and $100 in the US = $244 here in Brazil as you can see in the image below:

[screenshot of the wrong data from the World Bank]

a lot of creators offer this kind of parity discount like Justin Welsh, Rob Lennon etc

[a screenshot from somewhere on the Internet]

anyway, it would be great if you offer that too. I feel I need this “accountability push” to my daily writing habit.

tks

===

I squinted hard at this message. Was this guy pulling my leg, or some of my other body parts?

The offer he’s referring to, Daily Email Habit, currently sells for $20/month.

Going by his math above, that would mean it effectively costs a Brazilian… $49/month.

This dude (who’s written me before to say he works as a data scientist) can’t afford $49/month (PPP-adjusted!)… and at the same time, he says he needs an “accountability push.”

What can I say?

It’s hard to be broke and unmotivated, wherever you’re from in the world.

That’s all the sympathy I have for this guy.

The fact is, I have no intention of offering discounts on my offers based on country of origin, color of hair, shoe size, age, height, or weight — all of which are correlated with income.

I also won’t offer discounts based on any other factor, personal or not.

But the message above did have the twinkle of opportunity to it.

It made me realize 1) I’ve been offering the introductory pricing for Daily Email Habit long enough, and 2) I haven’t done a good enough job making it clear what the value of this service is.

So I’d like to announce that, starting this Wednesday, I will increase the price of Daily Email Habit from the current Charter Member price of $20/month to a mighty $30/month.

Call it Prospective Profit Pricing.

Because it’s really not about what this service costs, but the prospect of what it can do for you. For example:

* If Daily Email Habit saves you just 5 minutes a day you would have spent thinking up what to write an email about… that’s two hours saved a month.

I don’t know what your hourly wage is, but odds are fair this translates to at least a hundred bucks every month. And if you save a bit more time, or if your wage is a bit higher, then this service becomes even more valuable.

* If Daily Email Habit helps you write a slightly more effective email on occasion, you can make a sale you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Better yet, if Daily Email Habit helps you write emails that make a stronger connection with readers, this can turn into many more sales down the line.

What’s a sale worth to you? What are many more sales worth to you? I don’t know. But it could legitimately be thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars.

* And if you’re not writing daily emails now, or you are but you might drop it, and if Daily Email Habit helps you start and stick with it for the long term, it’s uncertain what the result is going to be.

But there’s a shot, a non-negligible shot, at the kind of money, influence, and opportunities that you cannot even imagine now.

It’s been like that for me and for a good number of other people who have really kept at daily emailing for a while.

So sign up for Daily Email Habit based on those prospective profits… not on the exorbitant price I’m asking for it.

And if that’s STILL not enough for you — greedy, greedy —

I’ll also have a second reason why you might want to sign up for Daily Email Habit before the Charter Member pricing disappears.

I’ll talk about that second reason tomorrow.

Meanwhile, if you want to get the jump on joining Daily Email Habit under the current introductory price (and benefit sooner from the second reason I’ll announce tomorrow), here’s where to go now:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Some leaked news that ties into what I’m selling

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I’m writing this opening sentence in a ham-handed attempt to intrigue you, so you read on. And I’m announcing that fact because it relates to the following leaked media news:

Netflix execs have started telling their screenwriters to announce what the character is doing. Here’s an example, from Netflix’s #1 hit movie, Irish Wish, starring Lindsey Lohan:

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“We spent a day together,” Lohan tells her lover, James. “I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain, but that doesn’t give you the right to question my life choices. Tomorrow I’m marrying Paul Kennedy.”

“Fine,” says James. “That will be the last you see of me because after this job is over I’m off to Bolivia to photograph an endangered tree lizard.”

===

Billy Wilder it’s not.

So why are Netflix execs mandating this? Why are they breaking the basic rules of good writing? Why do they want to make screenplays intentionally heavy and plodding, repeating what’s already happened, stating the obvious, telling instead of showing?

There’s a good reason. It’s because people are watching Netflix shows in the background.

I’ve seen this first-hand. My ex-girlfriend used to “watch” Netflix shows while cooking. She’d have the headphones in and move around the kitchen, her phone propped up somewhere in the corner of the counter. She’d glance over at it only occasionally, if she was not chopping carrots or peeking inside the fridge at the moment.

If you write emails to connect with your audience, what does this mean for you?

You might think it means you have to get with the times. To make your writing shorter, punchier, more comic book-like. After all, attention spans are dropping! People are distracted! Content is superabundant! Gotta hook ’em in with memes, emojis, and ellipses!

And yet, I’ve consciously gone in the other direction with this newsletter. This ugly Times New Roman font, big blocky paragraphs, stories that require careful parsing to make sense.

I’ve done it all to encourage people to sit and actually read, instead of skimming my emails while they chop carrots. And I’ve done just fine, even well, by taking this approach.

Point being:

Netflix has 282 million subscribers worldwide. That’s a gargantuan number. But even that is only 3.45% of the world’s population.

Today, you can do things the way that you want, the way that pleases you. If you are persistent and unapologetic about it, and if you deliver value as part of what you do, you will find enough people who resonate with your way of doing things, even if the mainstream is going in the exact opposite direction.

And now I’m going to transition to the sales pitch in this email. Because my opening sentence today is not the only place where I ham-handedly announce things that I’m going to do.

I also do it daily inside my Daily Email Habit service. I do it so you can do it too, for your own audience, in your own tone and voice, and so you can stay consistent in connecting with your audience. For more info on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The JV Nothing

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The first book I read in English — English not being my native language — was The Neverending Story by Michael Ende.

Maybe you know the 1984 Hollywood movie? The original book is much bigger, and much more profound.

At the core of it is a boy named Bastian Balthasar Bux, who leads a gray and dreary life.

But then one day Bastian is transported to a fantastical land called Fantastica.

He’s brought there to save Fantastica from an existential threat known only as The Nothing.

The Nothing is not a hole. It’s not black. It’s not white. It just makes people and places in Fantastica disappear. Where these people and places were, nothing is left, or more precisely, The Nothing is left.

But let me get to The Something of this email:

Last year, I went on a kick of cold emailing random business owners in a quest for JV partners.

I did this in part because I was following Travis Sago’s BEAMER training, and also because I was working as a coach in Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind, where most people were doing similar cold outreach. I wanted to see if I could do it myself.

My quest for JV partners came to exactly nothing in the end. And that’s even though I had a good offer, and I did my research on people, and though my copy was on point.

What happened? Nobody knows, and nobody ever will.

One minute, my cold outreach messages were in my gmail composer, and after I clicked send, they disappeared. The JV Nothing swallowed them up.

No information ever came back about where I went wrong — whether it was the list, or the offer, or the copy.

I’m sure somebody has good experiences to counter my bad experience with cold outreach.

But from what I’ve seen, it takes huge numbers of cold outreach messages to get any kind of a serious prospect, and even when you get somebody, they rarely turn out to be a good partner, and the relationship tends to be very flimsy.

So what to do?

In The Neverending Story, Bastian eventually saves Fantastica (and himself) via an act of total self-abnegation. He has to give up his own identity, down to every desire, every memory. It turns out to be transformative.

I’d like to propose the same if you’re trying to get JV partners, whether for a list swap, or an affiliate deal, or some sort of long-term collaboration.

Many things go into making that happen and turn out well.

But in terms of getting it at least started, I can recommend the following:

Start with people you know, and who know you.

Once you’ve worked through those, go to people you know, who don’t know you — people you’re a fan of, follower of, genuinely can say feel you know them, even though the feeling is not mutual. (Trust me, if you communicate this, it somehow comes through clearly in a message.)

And once you’ve worked through those people, go to people you make an effort to get to know, over time, either via an introduction, or by following them, reading their stuff, buying their products, writing them, helping them — without your desires or your memories of your planned JV deal in mind.

Anything to avoid the genuinely cold outreach message.

That’s my fantastical tip for you today.

My fantastical offer today has nothing to do with today’s fantastical email. Well, it does, but in a way that I’m not willing to reveal just yet.

For now, if you’d like my help in starting and sticking with a consistent daily email habit, so you can gradually expand the universe of people who know you, and who can connect you, and who you can partner with:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

2025: The year of “big” topics

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I’m subscribed to a curious newsletter, Thinking About Things. Every few days or few weeks, without rule, that newsletter sends out an interesting article from somewhere on the Internet.

A couple days ago, the guy behind Thinking About Things put out a “Best of 2024” issue. And he wrote:

===

In 2024 there was a noticeable mood shift. While last year’s top articles list was dominated by articles about depression and mental health, this year’s top picks show a very different trend. Not a single article on those subjects made the cut. Instead, our readers gravitated toward the practical: personal finance, stretching, the importance of calling mom, and actionable tips for living your best life.

===

This got me wondering. Mental health in 2023… practical tips in 2024… what about 2025 then?

I got an answer for you. But first, here are a few things I think are in the water right now:

– AGI or ASI (“artificial super intelligence” — the head of AI for Google just tweeted yesterday that it’s looking more and more likely we’ll jump straight to ASI, and skip AGI)

– Serious people claiming we are already living in World War III, in case you haven’t noticed

– The Internet-wide glee over the symbolic assassination of a corporate CEO, and what it means for the future of our economic system

– Trump’s re-election, and the future of America: A new civil war, or Greenland as the 51st state?

These are “big” topics.

The world keeps getting bigger. We know more about it on the microscopic level. We know more about it on the telescopic level. And in between, every damn thing is getting immensely more complex and rich by the day.

All this complexity long ago passed human understanding, but it couldn’t kill the human desire to understand.

And that’s why my prediction for content that will win out in 2025 is content that puts limited human knowledge and understanding inside a bigger context — historical, philosophical, scientific, etc.

Yes, eventually these “big”-topic articles will grow familiar and tiresome also, like articles about depression or mental health.

But I think that people who write about “big” topics will be the attention winners in 2025, and those who don’t will be the losers, or at least the also-rans.

Let’s see in a year if I was right.

I’ll still be here, writing, inshallah, barring a 3rd World War for real, or an asteroid falling on my head.

And if you’d like to join me, and maybe write an email like this tomorrow, and get my help and motivation along the way, you can get started here — before the clock strikes 12:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Ex-reader likes playing games with me

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A guy who is no longer on my list asks about getting mentored:

===

One question that has been cooking up in my mind is that…

Do you ever coach copywriters?

You have mentioned several times that you were a protege of Dan Ferrari and that it helped hone your skills quite a bit. So I was wondering if you do anything like that at all. And no, I’m not talking about Shiv’s mastermind. I’m talking about your own thing.

If not, would you ever consider doing a paid mentorship, like an A-Z program?

Also, would you recommend copywriters to get mentored by someone to get good and ofc, get the street cred and bragging rights?

===

Reasonable questions, right?

No, I don’t think they’re reasonable questions. But I know some things you don’t know.

For example, I know this guy has long been circling the goal of becoming a copywriter, as they say, “like a cat around hot porridge.”

For going on two years now, this guy replied to my emails to express what’s been holding him back:

He hasn’t figured out his ideal client profile…

He doesn’t have sufficient expertise…

He doesn’t have enough time to find clients.

Side note:

A valuable thing I learned from Tony Robbins is that there’s power in asking the right questions.

Says Tony, “why” is not a very good question to ask. And I agree, particularly if you’re unhappy with where you’re at, and you’re asking questions like:

“Why do I find myself in this deep hole? Why have I been unable to get out for so long? Why are others not in this hole, while I am?”

Not good. All those “why” questions confirm you as a hole-dweller, and just give you a glum satisfaction that there’s nothing to be done, because it’s meant to be like this.

Says Tony, “how” is a much better question to ask. As in:

“How the hell do I get out of this hole? How might the normally impossible be temporarily possible? How can I use what I’ve got on me — clothes, hair, nails — to fashion an escape device?”

“Oh,” but you say, “isn’t that what the guy above is doing? Asking how? How he can become a successful copywriter, and if mentoring might be the way out of his deep hole?”

Again, that’s another bit of info that I have that you don’t. Because the same guy has written me before, on multiple occasions, to say how great my offers are. But, alas, he cannot afford them.

He wrote me that when I was selling info products, which almost universally are a fraction of the cost of “mentoring” or “coaching” or any kind of direct work with someone.

Asking about “mentoring” was just another game this guy was playing. “Ah, it would be so great! If only I had the money, which I don’t! I will certainly take you up on it one day, as soon as I can!”

And just so we’re 100% clear, I’m not ragging on this guy because he doesn’t have money. Money is one way to get closer to the things you want, but it’s not the only way, or even the best way.

My point is simply to be honest with yourself, as honest as you can, about what you really want… about what you’re willing to do to get there… and about what it would mean if you don’t succeed.

I’ve long said there’s no shame in starting towards a goal and then deciding it’s not for you. I do it once a week on average.

There are many more goals out there than there is time and energy. And while it can be noble to persevere, it can also be smart to cut your losses, and go do something where you’re more likely to be successful and happy.

But on to my offer:

My offer is to help you start and stick with writing daily emails.

Maybe you’re reluctant to start writing daily emails because you’re not sure if you will be able to stick with it.

It’s a reasonable concern.

My answer? Worst case, you won’t stick with it. No real harm in that. This newsletter you’re reading now, which has been going steady for 6+ years, is something like my third of fourth attempt at writing daily emails consistently.

I couldn’t stick with it every previous time. So what?

One thing I know:

Starting today, and seeing how it goes tomorrow, is infinitely better than circling the hot porridge for months or even years to come.

If you’d like to get started, and today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The “Challenge Playbook” for building a name for yourself

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Yesterday, I promised to tell you about a guy who became the most famous entertainer of his age via a series of challenges, dares, and contests.

A reader wrote in to guess who it might be. Is it Mr. Beast?

No.

I don’t know Mr. Beast from any other Mr. YouTube Star.

But I am sure the playbook I’m about to show you still works today, and maybe is what Mr. Beast used to get attention and success.

Let me get to our story. It takes place on November 22nd, many, many years ago.

A small, muscular man walked into the Gloucester, Massachusetts police station. And he asked to be chained up. In fact, he asked to be put into the most secure handcuffs the police had.

The man wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t dangerous. He hadn’t committed a crime.

Instead, this was a publicity stunt. His claim was that the police couldn’t hold him.

And sure enough, after the police cuffed him, the man got out of the cuffs, in just a few seconds’ time.

That man’s name?

Mr. Bea— no just kidding.

You’ve probably guessed it already. That man’s name was Harry Houdini.

Houdini was the biggest entertainer of his age. Even today, almost 100 years after his death, Houdini is still the famousest magician who ever lived. Most people, even if they know nothing about magic or Houdini’s stunts, at least know his name.

That time in Gloucester (the year was 1896) was the first time Houdini escaped from cuffs in a police station. But the scheme behind it was one he had used before and would use later, many times.

Houdini would challenge rivals to escape his handcuffs, and offer to pay them if they succeeded (they never could).

He’d put out ads in the newspaper, inviting strangers to come to his shows and get on stage, to cuff and chain and tie him as they pleased, and see if they could contain him (they never could).

He’d put himself in impossible situations — in a strait jacket, upside down, locked in a glass cage filled to the top with water, to see if maybe death could catch him (death did win out in the end, in 1926, via a burst appendix).

Many of Houdini’s stunts were very difficult and demanding to perform. Others were genuinely dangerous. But many were just show — planned, orchestrated, dependent on magician’s tricks to make them look daring and impossible.

The reality didn’t matter. The perception did. And the perception was that Houdini could get out of anything, escape any situation, no matter how desperate. He had demonstrated the fact dozens of times throughout his career. Incontestably. That’s why he went to the police station.

This email is getting long, and it’s about to get longer. Well, at least a bit longer.

Because I don’t want to just tell you about Harry Houdini and his “Challenge Playbook” of building a name for himself. I want you to think about how you could apply Houdini’s playbook to what you do.

After I read about Houdini, I thought about this question myself. I thought about challenges, dares, stunts for myself. Something that seemed risky, unlikely to succeed, costing me significantly if it failed.

I came up with ideas like this:

* Pay $1k for a 40-word classified ad — and make my money back on day 0

* Pay $2k and spend a week to attend a live event, totaling about $4k in real cost — and make that money back before the event is done

* Pay $10k to buy a newsletter in a niche where my good name counts for nothing, where I have no experience, and no particular affinity — and make a 100% return on my money within 3 months

… et cetera. The key is that the outcome be a yes/no achievement, an incontestable result, and something with a touch of risk and glamour — at least glamour as it is in the dollar-denominated online marketing space.

And of course, for any of this to make sense, I’d have to announce my challenge in public… draw out the uncertainty and high-stakes for as long as possible… and make a show out of my desperate and unlikely success, if it did happen.

Maybe my ideas gave you some ideas of your own.

If you do end up creating a daring stunt or challenge in your industry, let me know about it. I’d like to come and watch, and maybe I can even bring some friends to help build buzz in the audience.

But on to the sales end of this email:

You might wonder whether an email like the above is actually useful for selling.

The fact is, I don’t know.

I wrote the above because I felt like writing it, without much thinking about actually tying it into an offer.

That’s a privilege that I allow myself to indulge in sometimes, much like chocolate.

But it’s not something I encourage others to do. I encourage others to write deliberate emails, with deliberate goals — to make sales, to change beliefs in their prospects’ minds, to curate and condition their audience.

That’s what underlies the prompts I put inside my Daily Email Habit service. And in case you’re wondering, my email today and my email yesterday were not based on my own prompts.

But two days was enough of a holiday for me, so tomorrow I’ll get back to writing emails based on the Daily Email Habit prompt.

If you’d like to join me, sign up here before tomorrow’s prompt goes out at 12 midnight PST tonight:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Glamourous and profitable #1 ranking in an impossible category

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In 1987, Hatton Gardens Hotel in Upton Saint Leonards won the inaugural Loo Of The Year award.

The Loo Of The Year is awarded each year to the best public toilet in the UK, based on criteria such as adequate flushing frequency, urinal privacy, overall cleanliness, lighting, lack of vandalism, and, best of all, a “wow factor.”

The Loo Of The Year awards were set up in 1987 by the communications director of a washroom service company.

That first year, only 50 guests attended, and awards were given in only two categories, hotels and restaurants.

There are now 63 categories, and over 300 guests attended the prestigious event and dinner last year.

Yesterday, I talked about the transformative effect that winning the race at Le Mans had on Jaguar, the car brand. To my mind, there are three key elements in something like winning a top-tier car race:

1. A ranking with a clear number 1

2. An incontestable result, a matter of performance, not popularity or opinion

3. An element of glamour

But even if you cannot get all three, two out of three can still be great for business.

Awards and arbitrary “Top 100” listings only offer #1 and #3, ranking + glamour. The results are definitely a matter of popularity or opinion, but so what?

I wrote an email back in 2019 about the impact that the World’s 50 Best Restaurants listing had on the restaurant and tourism industry.

As one extreme example, a Copenhagen restaurant named Noma already had 2 Michelin stars. Even so, they were struggling to fill tables.

After Noma randomly and unexpectedly came in at the top of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, 100,000 people tried to book a table there in one day. Suddenly, generating business was no longer an issue.

As for Hatton Gardens Hotel:

At the next year’s event ceremony, in 1988, the manager of the Hatton Gardens said visits to his hotel had doubled since winning Loo Of The Year.

Such is the power of a #1 ranking + glamour, above and beyond a certification… or a gold star… or a label. (And yes, even toilets can apparently have glamour — at least glamour enough to double business.)

So create an award for your industry, or create rankings.

Or better yet, pay somebody else to create them, and to announce you the winner.

Put on a tuxedo or an evening gown, get your photo taken in front of one of those step-and-repeat banners, and watch what happens to your business.

And if you detest awards show, and if paying some rando to create a Top 50 ranking and put you at #1 turns you off, don’t worry.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you how to have success with only elements 2+3 off the list above.

Can you guess what example I’ll use?

I’ll give you a hint. It’s a man who built a massive, enduring career, out of nothing, to become the most famous entertainer of his age. And he did it with a series of incontestable challenges, dares, and contests, all of which featured an element of glamour.

While you ponder that, let me remind you that my Daily Email Habit has been voted #1 among the World’s Best 100 Email Prompt Services by a distinguished panel of email marketers, all of whom happen to subscribe to Daily Email Habit.

Here’s what one of the distinguished panelists, Australian copywriter Allan Johnson, had to say in casting his vote:

===

This is a very useful service. I have always struggled to commit to daily writing (emails or not) and protecting the streak is now a priority, so thanks.

===

If you’d like to find out what makes Daily Email Habit #1:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

What’s next for Jaguar?

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A few weeks ago, Jaguar the car brand ran a new advertising campaign. It was so bad that it had everybody on the Internet talking about Jaguar for a few days.

That sneaky result is not what this email is about. Instead, I want to tell you about something more interesting, and much more value, at least if you sell your own products or services.

I recently watched an old BBC clip, from 1968, titled, “What’s next for Jaguar?”

Jaguar had just come out with a new model then. “Every inch a Jaguar,” said the journalist as he explained all the new features and design choices.

But in the more leisurely pace of 1960s TV, this segment also talked about the history of Jaguar as a company.

It explained how Jaguar had become such an established brand that people would immediately recognize Jaguar design elements, even if the car had no name plate on the back or little cat figurine on the hood.

So let me tell you how Jaguar done it, and trust me, it’s worthwhile reading:

Jaguar was started by two racing enthusiasts. At first, they made sidecars for motorbikes. They then started making race cars.

And they were great at it. Their cars, first called SS, for Swallow Sidecar Company, had both great performance and half the price tag of comparable alternatives like Rolls-Royce and Bentley.

The SS branding was dropped after World War II due to sounding a little Nazi-like, and the company took the name of its main model, Jaguar.

But there was still a problem. Like I said, Jaguar cars had great performance and were cheap. What’s not to love?

Well, the CHEAP. Jaguar suffered from being seen as “budget luxury.” Maybe something like a Mazda Miata today. Yes, a Miata is kind of a sports car… but it ain’t no Porsche.

Let me pause for a moment to say, with all delicacy, that maybe something similar applies to you. Maybe you offer a great service or product, at a really great price.

The market should love it. They should be grateful to you. They should line up at your door.

But they don’t. It’s counterintuitive and stupid. But it’s reality.

So maybe you try to increase prices. But people won’t pay more, or pay anything at all, because they don’t know WHY they should.

What then? Back to Jaguar.

How did Jaguar transform? How did they go from the Miata of the 1930s, to a premium brand in the 1960s, coveted by boys and businessmen alike, driven by celebs like Steve McQueen, Tony Curtis, and Frank Sinatra?

Simple. And I’ll tell you. But first I want you to promise you’ll hold your breath for a moment, instead of immediately blurting out, “Oh but how can that possibly be useful to me!”

Ready? Breathe in, and hold it:

Jaguar’s rebranding trick was to win a series of races in the 1950s, culminating with the biggest race of them all, Le Mans.

Jaguar won Le Mans five times in the 1950s. In 1957, Jaguar took five of the first six places, against competition like Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz and Maserati.

Jaguar got out of racing after that. It was too expensive to maintain a team. But the brand was established, and it’s stuck with us for 70+ years since, until perhaps this new advertising campaign.

“Poof!” you finally burst out with an exhale. “I knew it! How can that possibly be useful to me!”

True. If maintaining a racing division was too expensive for Jaguar to keep doing, it’s probably too expensive for you and your business.

Still, if you think a bit, there might be things you can do, in your own industry, to create the same effect. There might be competitions, contests, or other entirely different things you can do. Because to me, winning races like Le Mans gave Jaguar three things at the core:

1. A ranking with a clear number 1

2. An incontestable result, a matter of performance, not popularity or opinion

3. An element of glamour

Like I said, if you think, search, or scheme a bit, you might be able to find opportunities that will give you all three of these. For example, in the world of direct-response copywriting, this is what “winning the control” did for a freelance copywriter.

Even one or two such results can establish your brand for years or decades to come.

But even if you cannot find a way to get all three elements above for your product or service, you might be able to get two out of three. And that can still be supremely valuable.

To prove it, I’ll give you three examples, over my next three emails, of dominant businesses built on top of having just two out of the three elements above.

For today though, let me remind you of my Daily Email Habit service. It has nothing to do with today’s email. Except of course it does, because I wrote it based on today’s Daily Email Habit prompt. For more information about this service, and to get the prompt that’s coming tomorrow:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Ponzi-like cold calling

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I’m rereading David Sandler’s book You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar, But You Can Teach Him How To Fish.

Even though the title won’t tell you so, it’s a sales book.

Do you know Jim Camp’s Start With No? Camp’s book is in many ways a rewrite of Sandler’s book. But the original, as always, has stuff that the rewrite doesn’t have…

… such as the following story of Ponzi-like cold calling, which could be useful to many, even if they never make a cold call in their life:

In the early days of his sales career, Sandler cold called business owners to sell self-improvement courses and sales training. It was the only way he knew how to get leads.

Valuable point #1: Sandler got 9 out 10 cold-called prospects to agree to meet him. How?

Simple. He’d offer something for free, something that the guy on other end wanted, something nobody else was offering.

Specifically, Sandler would offer to come down to the prospect’s office and demonstrate his cold calling techniques to the prospect’s sales team, and motivate the lazy bums a little.

Like I said, 9 out of 10 business owners agreed to that.

Valuable point #2: Sandler didn’t offer to come do a demo as a means of making a sale. He did it as a means of making cold calls.

Sandler hated making cold calls. If he had to make cold calls at home, he’d put it off, do it half-heartedly, and not make enough of them to set his weekly quota of appointments.

That’s why he did the scheme above.

He’d show up to the prospect’s office, nervous but also amped up. And then, for an hour or so, he’d cold call — for himself.

He’d spend an hour in the prospect’s office, with the sales staff looking at him in wonder, making cold call after cold call, chatting on the phone, digging into the pain, and in many cases, setting new appointments for himself.

A couple days ago, I wrote that identity is just about the most powerful appeal you can make.

Well there’s a close second, and that’s reputation. In fact, for many of us, reputation might even trump identity. Cause you wanna look good in front of people, right? Even if you have to do things you would never do on your own.

And so it was with Sandler. He’d end an hour at a prospect’s office with another 2-3 set appointments, way more than he’d get at home had he spent the afternoon there.

Plus of course, he’d have a way better chance of closing the sale. Because nothing sells like demonstration.

Such story. Much lessons. So few people who will do anything with it.

And yet, it could be so powerful if somebody would only apply it, whether to cold calling… or to any other persuasion-related activity.

I’ll leave you to ponder that, and I’ll just say my email today is a “demonstration” of the daily email prompt I send out this morning for my Daily Email Habit service.

Maybe it’s easy enough to figure out what today’s prompt was.

Or maybe not.

In any case, today’s prompt is gone. Today’s prompt is lost to history, to be known only by the current subscribers to Daily Email Habit.

But a new prompt will appear tomorrow, to help those who want to write emails regularly, both for their own enjoyment, and to impress and influence others in their market. Because powerful things happen when you know that others are watching you.

If you’d like to read the email I write based on that prompt, and maybe try to guess what the prompt was, click here to sign up to my email newsletter.

Writing formulaic copy month after month

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A couple weeks ago, I got on a call with a long-time reader, who works as an in-house copywriter.

This is part of an illuminating practice I’ve taken up, of actually interacting with people who read my emails and buy my courses.

Anyways, this reader, who has been working as a copywriter at the same company for four years, said the following:

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The main problem is, each month, the offers don’t really change so I’m writing the same stuff repeatedly.

The only difference is when they have a product launch, I get to write different stuff and set up more flows.

Other than that, it’s quite routine. There’s not much growth for my skill set.

To be honest, I don’t write a lot of copy there, because the copy I write there is quite formulaic and it’s also, not much variation. I don’t get to experiment much with ideas.

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About that:

Gary Bencivenga, widely called the world’s best living copywriter before he retired, liked to quote Al Davis, the coach for the infamously tough, mean, aggressive 1965 Oakland Raiders team.

One time, during a press conference before a game, a reporter asked Davis, “So I guess you’ll just have to take what the defense gives you?”

Davis glared. “We don’t take what the defense gives us. We take what we want.”

Gary Bencivenga, who seems to be as sweet and nice of a man as you can put a hat on, recommended Davis’s tough-guy attitude for copywriters also.

Gary didn’t just take the offer the client gave him to promote. Instead, he took what he wanted — he switched the offer altogether, or reworked it, or added to it — until it was as close to his ideal as he could get it, and many miles ahead of where it had started.

So that’s point 1.

Point 2 is that you’re not Gary Bencivenga. You don’t have his authority, and you don’t command the same deference and respect from clients. That’s normal. Gary, again, was the world’s best, and he had a reputation to match.

The situation is even trickier if you’re an in-house copywriter, working with one company full-time. In this case, the power dynamic shifts even more to your client/employer.

And maybe, when you try to “take what you want” — to rework an offer, or to experiment with copywriting ideas, or to simply do something that will stretch and increase your skills — your client/employer gives you a look and just says, “No.”

What then?

It’s up to you. But one thing you can do is say, “Fine. I’ll do my own thing.”

I’m not saying to quit your job. You can “take what you want” on your own time, with nobody controlling what you do or how you do it. It can give you new skills, experience, extra authority.

And who knows?

If you come to your client/employer next time, and cite a personal success story, instead of just pulling a good idea out of the air, maybe you’ll get a better hearing.

If not, you will still feel more fulfilled, skilled, and stimulated. And you’ll have options, because you’re building your own thing on the side, and taking what you want there.

On the call I had with the in-house copywriter I mentioned above, I heard that this is exactly what he’s doing. He’s hunting and working with freelance clients as well. Plus, he’s started his own email list, and he’s writing to it daily.

Who’s got time for all that?

I don’t know. You almost certainly don’t. Or maybe you do. And maybe, if you want some help with the last part, starting and sticking to writing a daily email, you will like my Daily Email Habit service.

Every day, Daily Email Habit prompts you to write something different.

At the end of 7 days, you already have a bunch of little experiments you wouldn’t have had before. And at the end of 30 days, you can experience a transformation.

If you’d like to experience that transformation as soon as possible, it makes sense to get started today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh