Business Ideas

The bigger point of the rising AI flood

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Yesterday, Australia’s best copywriter, Daniel Throssell, wrote an email with the subject line, “John Bejakovic is wrong.”

​​Daniel’s email was about my email two days ago, in which I said that nobody really wants a newsletter.

I would like to respond to Daniel’s email, and I will. But a promise is a promise.

And yesterday I promised that today I would continue and finish my email from yesterday, and reveal the bigger point.

My smaller point was that there’s already a ton of fluff on the Internet, and it will only get worse now that anybody can write quickly, cheaply, and convincingly thanks to AI.

You can choose to take advantage of the current moment, which is what my email yesterday was about.

But there’s also the bigger point I promised you yesterday. It’s this.

Last month, over the course of two weeks, an estimated five billion people gathered in bars and on street corners all around the world, or squeezed in on the couch at home next to their friends and family, while watching opposing groups of 11 grown men desperately chasing a rubber ball around a grassy field.

The reason why billions of people engaged in this strange ritual is the same reason why I sent a physical postcard last year as part of my Most Valuable Postcard project.

Because it’s something real.

All those people around the world, hanging out with friends, tuning in to a live football game that everybody else is watching at exactly the same time, with the result still unknown and even uncertain — that’s real.

On a much smaller scale, so was my physical, handwritten postcard.

So that’s my bigger point for you.

The world will soon be flooded by AI-generated and AI-augmented content. This content will be warm, sweet, and inviting.

​​That means the flood will stay, and it will cover and absorb all the other warm, sweet, and inviting content that’s being created by the last generation of well-meaning human influencers and personality-based content marketers.

But islands in the flood will form, created by people who want some actual real experience of human connection to complement all the time spent being plugged into the solipsistic AI heaven.

So start thinking now, about how to create something real, and how to give that to people.

At least that’s my advice if you want influence and impact in the nearly developing future, or maybe just a better society to live in.

Anyways, I had a special, time-limited, free offer today for people who are subscribed to my email newsletter. You missed that, since you are not subscribed, but are only reading an archived version of this email.

In case you’d like to keep this from happening in the future, you can sign up to my email newsletter, and get my emails as they come out, in real time. To do so, click here and fill out the form that appears.

The secret to better pizza, better emails

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Back in 2020, I reported on a saucy story involving Jack Trout.

Trout is one half of the team that wrote Positioning, which I still think is one of the best and most interesting books on marketing.

Once upon a time, Trout was in meeting with John Schnatter, the “papa” in Papa John’s Pizza.

Schnatter’s chain already had 1,000 locations around the country. But I guess he wanted more, and so he was talking to Trout.

Schnatter explained how Papa John’s makes pizza. “… and then we put the tomato sauce, which we get from Dino Cortopassi…”

“Hold up,” said Trout. “I know Dino. He doesn’t sell to chains. He only sells to small mom-and-pop shops. His stuff is fresh-packed and there’s not enough for chains. You’re telling you get your sauce from Dino?”

Schnatter nodded. A call to Dino himself confirmed it.

And so was born Papa John’s positioning:

“Better ingredients, better pizza.”

Is Papa John’s Pizza truly better? I can’t say. I’ve never had it. But the company grew five-fold in the years following the positioning change, and is worth some $3 billion today.

So let’s see how many billion I can make with the following positioning statement:

Better ingredients, better emails.

My claim is that, as for pizza, so for long-term marketing.

More interesting stories and more valuable ideas make for better emails. Independent of the copywriting pyrotechnics you invest in. Independent of the rest of your public persona, which builds you up into a legend worth listening to.

Maybe the fact that you are reading my email now, or have been reading my emails for a while, is proof of that.

But you gotta pay the piper somewhere.

Better ingredients for your emails are not free — free as in just sitting there in your head, right now, ready to be used.

The good news is, better ingredient are not hard to come by, and are not expensive.

They have been collected and sorted, organized and prepared for you, in low-cost receptacles known as books.

If you read the right books, you’re likely to find lots of interesting stories and lots of valuable ideas.

I had more to say on this topic. But I reserved that for people who are signed up to my email newsletter. If you are able to read, including books, then you might like to join my email newsletter as well. Click here to do so.

Marcus Aurelius, not Marcus Mansonius

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Came the following question after I revealed my 2022 reading list yesterday:

What did you think of Roadside Picnic?

I’ll answer, but only because the underlying idea is so valuable, or at least has been so to me.

Roadside Picnic a scifi novel written by two Soviet guys in 1971. I read it because it was the inspiration for the movie Stalker, which is one of my favorite movies of all time.

Both Stalker and the original Roadside Picnic talk about The Zone, a mysterious place that obeys its own dangerous and strange rules, and that grants you your ultimate wish if you can make it to the heart of the place.

Earlier this year, I planned to create a guide to the business side of copywriting called Copy Zone, using The Zone as an organizing conceit.

I knew all I needed about The Zone from the movie, but I decided to read the book because— well, because that’s the super valuable core idea:

If you find somebody whose writing or film or stand up comedy you like and respect, then follow any allusions they make or references they use.

​​If they talk about a book or science paper or inspirational talk that was influential to them, look it up and read it, watch it, listen to it while you wait for your waffles to toast.

More generally, go to the original source, or as close to it as you can stand.

You can call this basic principle, Marcus Aurelius, not Marcus Mansonius.

Mark Manson became a big star a few years ago when he wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

He then had to write an article, Why I Am Not a Stoic, in response to many people who accused him of simply taking ideas from stoic philosophers and regurgitating them as a light summer read, complete with a curse word in the title.

Mark Manson’s fun and easy and accessible book is good for Manson. But it’s not good for you, or it’s not good enough for you. At least the way I look at it.

​​I am personally not interested in stoicism. But if I were, I would go and read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and not The Subtle Art of Using “Fuck” in Your Title.

The way I see it, there’s value in sources that are old, difficult, or unpopular. You can even call it easy value.

Rather than having to come up with a shocking hot take on the exact same news that millions or billions of other people are discussing right this afternoon, you can get a new perspective, by digging into something that was written a few decades, a few centuries, or even a few millennia in the past.

Maybe you don’t agree with me. That’s fine.

But maybe you suspect I’m on to something. In that case, you might want to get on my email list. Partly to read the articles I write, and partly to keep an eye out for references and allusions I use, so you can look up these original sources yourself, and get a valuable new perspective that few other people around you have.

In case you’re interested, click here to sign up.

Chameleon positioning

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If you are ever looking for political influence in a new country, or maybe just a new copywriting client, then the following might be valuable:

A few months ago, I wrote about Alkibiades, an Athenian politician and general who was the ancient world’s Donald Trump.

Alkibiades once cut off his own dog’s tail. The people of Athens were shocked and outraged at the cruelty. “Good,” said Alkibiades. “At least they aren’t talking about the really bad stuff I’ve done.”

Alkibiades switched allegiances several times. First he served Athens. Then Sparta. Then the Persian empire. Then back to Athens.

He did this 1) because he always became hated wherever he stayed for a while and 2) because he had an uncanny ability to become loved wherever he decided to move.

How?

How did Alkbiades, who was hated, envied, and despised wherever he stayed, become quickly loved wherever he moved?

Simple. He turned chameleon.

When Alkibiades moved from luxurious Athens to spartan Sparta, he dropped his personal chef, threw away his perfumes, and packed up his fancy clothes.

Instead, he started bathing in cold water, gnawing on dry Spartan bread, and forcing down the infamous Spartan black broth.

Pretty soon, the Spartans, who had initially been suspicious of Alkibiades and his allegiances, started to wonder that this man could ever have lived in decadent Athens, because he was so clearly a true Spartan at heart.

So there you go. Like I promised. The key to political influence in a new country — or to new client work, if that’s the kind of thing you’re after.

Perhaps you see exactly how to apply the story of Alkibiades to getting new client work. Perhaps you don’t.

In that case, you can look inside my Copywriting Portfolio Secrets, where I lay out and expand on this idea of chameleon positioning, and apply it to the hunt for new clients.

Chameleon positioning is how I won some of my longest-running, most profitable copywriting jobs — and I didn’t even have to become hated anywhere along the way.

But you might hate me for this:

Pretty soon, I will pull both of the free bonuses I currently offer with Copy Riddles, put a bow around them, and turn them into paid products.

For now though, you can still get both bonuses — Copywriting Portfolio Secrets and Storytelling For Sales — for free.

​​You can get them for free if you get Copy Riddles, which, in case you are not overflowing with client work, is something you might want anyhow. As Vasilis Apostolou, formerly a senior copywriter at Agora, wrote after going through Copy Riddles:

I wish I had John’s bullet course when I was starting out. It would have saved me tons of frustration… and shaved months off my learning curve.

To save yourself some frustration, shave months off your learning curve, and find out how to win yourself new client work:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

I’ve written about this before, but you probably missed it

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This morning, I talked to a business owner who is interested in joining my email coaching program. Interested… but also wary.

“I was talking to my husband,” she told me. “And I realized, John writes good emails. But who is he? I don’t really know anything about him.”

About that:​​

I’ve been writing this email newsletter for four years. I’ve shared plenty of personal stories.

I’ve also shared plenty of specifics from my copywriting career — lessons learned, successes earned, endorsements spurned, like the one I wrote about yesterday.

And yet, people still don’t know almost anything about me. Because the problem is this:

I shared all those stories and successes and endorsements once, or twice, or maybe frice.

That ain’t enough.

So here’s my message to you. It’s a message I’ve shared before, multiple times. But you probably missed it, even if you’ve been reading my emails for a while.

You have to repeat yourself over and over and over. And if you want people to “know” you, you have to create a legend – a simplified cartoon version of your life, and you have to hammer that home, week in and week out.

“I was a blessed child born into a billionaire family… but a tragic and violent attack left me an orphan… and then one day, I fell into a cave full of bats.”

You tell that story. And then next week, you tell it all over again.

“I was made an orphan after my parents were brutally gunned down… I was lost, and all the billions I had inherited meant nothing… until one day, when I fell into a cave full of bats.”

You might wonder why I don’t take the opportunity here to talk about my own background, instead of that fantasy with the cave and the bats.

That’s because these emails are not primarily about selling, or even about building authority where you look at me as a leader in my little niche.

You might wonder what these emails are primarily about in that case. I’ve actually written about that in the past, and multiple times, but you probably missed that too.

​​No matter. I will probably write about it again one day.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there are certain messages that I cannot allow to slip through the cracks of your awareness.

​​For example, last week, while I was promoting that coaching program for which I’m interviewing prospects now, I got the following fat-fingered reply from a reader:

What annout copyriddles John? Still selling?

Of course I’m still selling. In fact, I spent a good amount of time just a couple months ago, writing and sending a sequence of two dozen emails to sell Copy Riddles.

And yet people forget, and quickly.

So if you’d like to join Copy Riddles, let me repeat you can do that at the page below. And let me repeat the following, even though I’ve said it before—

Everything I’ve just told you is actually part of a fundamental copywriting technique. It’s a technique covered in Copy Riddles Round 4, with riddles based on bullets by Clayton Makepeace, Gary Halbert, and Parris Lampropoulos.

For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Mysterious showman’s unnatural advice

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For the past four days, I’ve been promoting my new coaching program, but maybe I should stop.

Days one and two produced a lot of response.

Day three produced less response.

Day four has so far produced no response.

It might turn out somebody will still respond to yesterday’s email. After all, I sent it out less than 12 hours ago.

Or it might turn out I’ve genuinely tapped out demand. Especially since I’ve been trying to disqualify people pretty hard in my copy.

Or it might just be that my audience is getting weary of my recent barrage of long, charged, promise-heavy emails.

In connection to that last possibility:

I want to share a tip with you from the mysterious Derren Brown.

Brown is a hypnotist and illusionist and mentalist who has spent a lot of time on stage performing to big crowds, and a lot of time on UK’s Channel 4, making mindbending TV specials for audiences of millions.

Writing once about his experience playing to crowds, Brown gave this advice:

The lesson I quickly learned, which goes against every natural instinct when you are on stage showing off to people, is that if they are losing interest and starting to cough, you must become quieter.

Let me test out Brown’s advice.

So no benefits of my coaching program today. No man-or-mouse copy. Not even any deadline countdown.

I will just quietly remind you that I will be offering a coaching program with a focus on email marketing, starting in January. In case that interests you, the first step is to get on my email list. Click here to do so. After that, we can talk in more detail.

Story of coaching with Dan Ferrari continued

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Yesterday, I promised to share with you how I paid off 6 months of very expensive coaching in less than 60 days.

The story is this:

Back in 2019, I’d been working with an ecommerce company for about a year, writing their entire sales funnels, including advertorials and Facebook and YouTube ads.

At the height of it, we were making 2,000 sales every day to entirely cold traffic.

And then the next day, it was time to make 2,000 new sales to entirely cold traffic.

Meanwhile, the previous buyers’ data went off to some cold storage facility in a bunker at the bottom of the Pacific ocean.

Over and over, I proposed to the ecomm guys to start sending emails to these previous buyers. “It’s free money,” I kept saying. “Let me do it. I’ll do all the work. Just pay me a part of the money I’ll make for you.”

I did this maybe five times over the course of the year we had been working together. Each time, the ecomm guys had some excuse, and they said no. The reality was they were simply making way too much money on the front end, and they didn’t feel like bothering with the setup.

In the meantime, I joined Dan Ferrari’s coaching group.

I also realized that, even though I was getting paid $150/hr to write “horror advertorials” for dog toothbrushes and strapless bras, there was not any opportunity here to reach the next level as a copywriter. And frankly, I was bored with writing advertorials day in and day out.

I decided it was time to cut off the relationship with the ecommerce company, and in that way, to force myself to look for better clients.

“What about writing emails for them on a rev-share basis?” Dan asked me.

“I tried selling them that,” I said. “Each time, they dragged their feet and eventually said no. They obviously don’t want to do it. I’m done with them.”

“Sure,” said Dan. “But try it one last time.”

So I did.

Because one pact I made with myself during this very expensive coaching with Dan was to do whatever he said — even if it seemed futile, even if it felt repulsive, even if I knew better.

So one last time, I made the rev-share email pitch to the ecomm guys. And whaddya know. They finally agreed, for whatever reason.

A few days later, I started writing and sending emails to one of their buyer lists, made up of 40k+ people.

It wasn’t an immediate win. But within a month, I figured out what worked.

And then, the ecomm guys opened up a second 40k+ buyer list for me to mail. And that’s when the money really started rolling in, both for the ecomm guys, and also for me.

Like I said yesterday, this new source of income paid off 6 months of Dan Ferrari’s coaching in under 60 days.

That was not the only bump in income and opportunity that I got from Dan’s coaching. There were others, where he had a much more direct and involved role. But though valuable, those other opportunities don’t compare to the money I made as a result of this simple piece of advice. “Sure. But try it one last time.”

I wanna highlight two things:

You might say that Dan’s contribution was trivial in this case. Maybe so.

But without his trivial piece of advice, I’m 100% sure I would have ended that ecomm relationship early, and I would today be out a large sum of money, and a large amount of experience with email marketing at a very high level.

You might also say the stars had to align for Dan’s comment to have the impact it did.

I mean, how many businesses making 2,000 sales a day are dumb enough to never try to sell another thing to previous customers? It’s easy to make money in that situation.

Again, maybe so. But many businesses, even successful businesses, have marketing cracks like this. But often they can’t see or can’t fill those cracks themselves, and it takes somebody from the outside to force a change.

The same is true of people.

If you’re smart, like Dan is, then you set yourself up to coach people who have a lot of the pieces in place already. People who just need an outside perspective on plugging up cracks, or a push at the right time in the right direction for those existing pieces to click and fuse together.

Because getting somebody from 0 to 1 can be impossibly hard work.

Getting somebody from 1 to 10 might be less hard but isn’t much more rewarding.

But if somebody already has a half-dozen 17’s in hand… then you don’t need to show them how to go from 17 to 30. You don’t even have to show them how to add up their half-dozen 17’s to make 102.

You just have to show them something like the “multiplication trick”, and suddenly, their half-dozen 17’s click and fuse and are suddenly worth over 2 million.

I hope I didn’t lose you with that mathematical analogy. Because it’s time for my pitch, and I’d like your full attention.

As I wrote two days ago, I’m starting my own coaching program. The focus is entirely on email marketing. How to send more emails. How to make those emails more interesting. How to sell more, and at higher prices, using email.

If this is something that interests you, and if you suspect you have a lot of the pieces in place already, then I’d like to talk to you. As the first step, you will have to be on my email list. Click here to sign up.

The price took my breath away

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Back in 2019, I had been talking to Dan Ferrari about joining his coaching program. Dan and I exchanged some emails. We got on the phone to talk — I asked him a dozen questions I had prepared in advance, and he patiently answered.

At the end of the call, I told Dan I’m in. Even though we still hadn’t talked price.

Dan then sent me an email with a PayPal link, and the actual per-month cost of his coaching.

I still remember exactly where I was in the city when I took out my phone and saw Dan’s email. Like I said, the price took my breath away.

I expected the coaching to be expensive. But not this expensive. I won’t say exactly how expensive it turned out to be. I’ll just say it was as high as my total income on many months at the time.

Still, I had some savings. I figured as long as I had some money in the bank, I was willing to give it a go. So I took a deep breath, PayPaled Dan the money, and the coaching started.

Months passed. Dan delivered on his end. He gave me feedback on my copy. He made introductions to potential high-level clients. He showed me some A-list secrets.

And yet, it wasn’t paying off. I was burning through my savings. And I still wasn’t making that filthy lucre that I was hoping for.

Six months into the coaching, I told Dan that I didn’t want to keep going. I felt I didn’t have enough high-level copy projects for him to critique. I didn’t have any promising new leads who might change that. And I was getting very nervous because my savings had all but evaporated.

So I quit.

And then, the very next month, I had my biggest-ever month as a copywriter. I made about double what I had made on my best month to that point.

The month after that even bigger.

The month after that, bigger still.

And it kept going.

In just the first two months after I quit Dan’s coaching, the extra money I made paid for all the coaching I had gotten from Dan.

Over the next year or so, I made more money than I had made in the previous five years total.

My work and and skill and dedication where an undeniable part of that jump in income. But so were a few things I can directly trace to Dan and his coaching program.

I’d like to tell you the biggest one of those. It was a throwaway piece of advice I got from Dan around month four in the coaching program. But today’s email is getting long, so I will tell you that tomorrow, in case you are interested.

For now, let me restate my offer from yesterday:

I’m starting up a coaching program, focused specifically on email marketing.

You might think I told you the above story to encourage you to jump in, price be damned, because it will end up paying for itself somehow.

That’s not it at all.

Yes, my goal is for this coaching program to pay for itself for the right person.

But I am not nearly as willing to gamble with other people’s money as I am with my own. And since this is the first time I am offering coaching like this, I want to kick it off on a positive note, with people who have the best chance to make this coaching pay for itself, and soon, rather than in seven or eight months.

If you think that might be you, then my first requirement is that you join my email newsletter. Click here and sign up. That done, we can talk.

Income at will

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Tonight, as this email goes out, I will be finishing up the third and final call of the Age of Insight core training.

That done, I still have a few bonuses to deliver.

But pretty soon, I will be finished with everything I promised as part of this offer.

I will have the recordings of all the trainings. With a bit of polishing and tweaking, these will turn into assets I can sell down the line.

I will also have a better and deeper relationship with the group of people who went through Age of Insight, most of whom have bought stuff from me before.

​​If these people got insights from this course, if they got good ideas, if they got value they can use to make themselves more successful, odds are good they will want to come back for more in the future.

A few days ago, Dan Kennedy wrote:

If you’re in a position that at almost any time you can come up with an offer that your customers, clients, patients, donors, followers, or fans list will like, then you have the ability to create income at will.

This position should be a big priority for people to get themselves into. Because in harsh reality, this is actually the only financial security there is. Because one way or another, what you already have can be wiped out. So the only real financial security you ever have is being in the income-at-will position and able to replace disappeared wealth.

I got started with income-at-will very hesitantly last year.

After sitting on the idea of my Copy Riddles program for a few months, I finally got up the nerve to presell it. I then delivered it over the course of a month, while creating it day-for-day.

Then came Influential Emails, also last year. I had the idea for that training one morning. By the afternoon, I had a sales page up and an email went out to drive traffic to that sales page. Again, I presold this training. I delivered it over the next few weeks, and made a nice sum of money as a result.

Next was the Most Valuable Postcard. I sat on that idea for a while, but when I did decide to do it, up went a minimalist sales page. Later that day, a few hours after my one and only email about this offer, I had filled the quota I wanted for this experiment.

Then there was the Most Valuable Email this past September. And then Age of Insight last month. And that brings me to today, and my new offer.

It’s no secret that the reason I’ve been able to create income at will has been this very email newsletter.

I have done precious little to promote myself other than writing a daily email.

I have also done precious little to sell my offers other than writing a daily email.

I’m not telling you anything new here. You probably know the value of email marketing. But the question is not whether you know it.

​​The question is whether you yourself are in that desirable position, where you can write some emails and create income at will.

Enter my new offer.

My new offer is a coaching program, focused specifically on email copy and email marketing. It will kick off in January.

The primary goal for this coaching program is not to make you into the Michelangelo of email copywriters.

The primary goal is to make this coaching program pay for itself, and for much more.

The main mechanism to do that is getting you to send out consistent, interesting, influential daily emails, which you can tack an offer onto whenever you want.

In case you’re interested, the first pre-requisite is to be on my email list. You can sign up for that here.

Bat-John: The Killing Joke

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Last night, Bat-John sat on his couch in shorts and a t-shirt, officially watching the penalty shootouts at the World Cup, but really, keeping an eye on the Bat-Fax for news of criminal activity in Gotham City.

Another slow night.

​​No Scarecrows or Penguins running amuck anywhere.

Instead, all that came through the Bat-Fax were letters from grateful citizens of Gotham:

“Subscribe For ‘LIFE’ please”

“You had me in stitches with this part”

“I was so tempted to reply to this with an off the wall rant — just for fun. But I’d rather remain subscribed…”

“Love your emails. But I must admit I have to read the ones you mentioned about the trolls.”

The background, in case you missed it, is that I wrote an email yesterday, modestly comparing myself to Batman.

​​My point was that it’s good for business if your readers see you scrapping each night with wacky costumed villains who lurk beneath the surface of your email list.

Unfortunately, that email didn’t provoke any of these wacky villains to pipe up.

But based on the replies I did get, my point stands. Create enemies, and people rally around you.

And since the Bat-Fax has been so quiet today, here’s some truly wacky news from outside Gotham City:

Have you heard of the violent coup d’etat attempt in Germany this past Wednesday?

The German police arrested some two dozen far-right terrorists, including a Russian national, who were planning to overthrow the German government and install 71-year-old Prince Heinrich XIII, a member of the royal House of Reuss, on the restored throne.

For months, these 25 terrorists had been making plans about the colors on their future flag… recruiting new members at RPG nights at the local comic-book store… gathering equipment, including thermal socks and cans of corn.

A press release from German’s federal public prosecutor explains what was going on in the heads of these terrorists:

“The accused are united by a deep rejection of the state institutions.”

Hm.

Could it be that the German government is trying to create its own villains out of thin air… as a way to get its citizens rallying around its state institutions?

Maybe you don’t think there’s anything there.

But maybe you are intrigued or at least entertained by the idea, now that I bring it up.

If so, you might want to know what just happened inside your head. It’s one of my 10 Commandments of A-list copywriters, Commandment V:

“Honor thy reader’s skepticism, and structure your ad accordingly.”

This particular commandment is by Gene Schwartz. It’s not about sophistication or awareness, two concepts that Gene is best known for.

Instead, this commandment is real A-list stuff. Few copywriters know it and even fewer follow it.

Ignore this commandment and all your case studies, testimonials, statistics, and other proof will be worthless. Follow it and the power of your proof will be amplified hundredfold.

In case you’re curious:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments