Business Ideas

The bluebird who paid a $10k bill plus travel expenses

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Recently, I had the idea to take a bunch of my previous emails on the topic of pricing and positioning, and to write a book titled “Charge More,” or something like that.

The basic idea being, charge more for what you offer.

But like “Just Do It,” “Charge More” is one of those bits of good advice that people nod their heads to in agreement, but rarely actually follow.

So rather than just repeating “Charge More” for 150 pages to no effect, I figured I would take a bunch of emails I’ve written, with distinctions and stories, to both inspire people to raise their prices, and to give them tips on how to do so in various situations.

And now that I’ve given you that intro, it seems a good time to share a story by sales trainer Dave Sandler, which I read in Sandler’s book You Can’t Teach A Kid To Ride A Bike At A Seminar. The story goes like this:

Sandler once gave a talk at a business convention, outlining his own homebrewed system for raising salesmen’s self-esteem.

Next day, Sandler flew back from the convention to his home in Baltimore.

At the time, all of Sandler’s business was local to Baltimore. He wasn’t expecting anything to come from the convention.

But the next morning, Sandler got a call from an excited business owner from Indiana, halfway around the country.

The business owner was there at convention. He said he took Sandler’s ideas back to his salespeople. He was flabbergasted at the initial results. He wanted Sandler to come out immediately and give his salespeople the full training.

While this guy talking, Sandler thought to himself, “Well! here’s a bluebird.” It’s like the guy had just flown in through an open window and landed on Sandler’s desk.

At the time, Sandler’s fee for a 2-day seminar in Baltimore was $2,500 dollars (this was in the early 1970s). He was simply waiting for the excited business owner to exhaust himself with talking, and then he’d ask for $2,500 plus travel expenses.

But the business owner kept talking, all about how much money he had spent on traditional sales training… and how happy he had been to hear Sandler speak on this topic, because Sandler was right, and others didn’t get it…

“I do have to spend the night at a hotel and away from home to teach this seminar,” Sandler thought. “Better ask for another $500 and make it an even $3k. I’ll do it once the guy stops talking.”

… but the business owner still kept on, all about the books and tapes and trainings he had purchased for his sales staff, and how none of it had worked… and how much it’s been hurting his business… and how it’s been driving him up the wall and he didn’t know what to do until now…

“I do also have to get on a plane for this,” Sandler thought. “Plus I’ll have to give up some selling time. I’ll tell him the price is $3,500, as soon as he slows down.”

… but the biz owner kept talking and talking, venting and venting, revealing and revealing. Sandler says it felt like the guy talked for an hour, even though it was probably only a few minutes.

Finally the business owner talked himself out. “By the way,” he said, “how much is this going to cost me?”

“$10,000,” Sandler said, “plus travel expenses.”

“Well that’s no problem,” the business owner replied. “How soon can you get here?”

I think there are lots of lessons in this little story. Let me just share one, right at the top, about how Sandler got a warm inbound lead, a bluebird who landed on his desk, ready to to buy without any sales call or persuasion or objection overcoming.

Sandler did it by flying across the country and getting up on stage and giving a talk.

That’s an effective way of getting warm inbound leads, if you’re willing to fly around and get up on stage and give speeches to crowds.

But the same psychology applies whenever you have a platform to speak from, even if that platform is entirely virtual, and even if speaking is really writing, like what you’re reading now.

The key is simply to build a mini-monopoly, a situation in which people in your audience have grown to trust you and to have a relationship with you and to want to work with you specifically, even if you have supposed “competition.”

All that’s to say, if you don’t consistently write daily emails yet, it pays to start. And if you want my help doing so:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Do I have an affiliate relationship with all these big names?

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A couple days ago, I opened the most recent Exploding Topics newsletter, which tracks topics and brands that are surging online.

The top Exploding Topic was Scandinavian Biolabs, “a hair growth startup” that raised $5M in funding last year.

“Hello,” I said, “this sounds familiar.”

I had a sense that I know the head copywriter at Scandinavian Biolabs. I suspected it might be one Liza Schermann, the original Crazy Email Lady, who also acted as a cohost of the Age of Insight and Influential Emails trainings I ran several years ago.

I forwarded the Exploding Topics email to Liza to confirm this is indeed the place where she works. Liza wrote back:

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Haha look at that, I’m back at work and growth is skyrocketing! That’s the place indeed. I remember the celebration party for that $5M funding vividly.

I was just typing a reply when you forwarded it so I might as well do it here.

Did you have an affiliate or some kind of other partnership with Chris Orzechowski? Or did you just promote his workshop because you found it interesting? I was wondering that every time you promoted a big name.

Anyway, it seems like it’s been an eventful year in Bejako Land business-wise with lots of different offers (at least from what I could keep up with). I’m looking forward to your annual summary email if you’re planning to send one!

===

In answer to Liza’s question:

Yes, I promoted Chris Orzechowski’s training (“5 steps to a million-dollar list”) as an affiliate.

I also promoted Derek Johanson’s CopyHour and Email Delivered Courses as an affiliate.

I promoted Thom Benny’s 1-Person Advertorial Agency as an affiliate.

I promoted Justin Blackman’s Different On Purpose as an affiliate.

I promoted Igor Kheifets’s Click Send Earn as an affiliate.

I promoted Kennedy’s “$27k to $544k” training as an affiliate.

And in a couple weeks from now, when I promote Gasper Crepinsek’s ChatGPT Mastery, I will do so as an affiliate.

I have in the past promoted people’s things simply because I thought they were cool and valuable, without getting paid.

I still do that sometimes.

But if I can promote something I think is cool and valuable AND get paid for it at the same time, well, I like to have my cake and lick it too.

The fact is, I have been feeling burned out this year about creating new offers.

I have created a lot of courses, trainings, reports, and even books over the 6+ years of running this newsletter.

Some have stuck around and become evergreen offers (Copy Riddles, Most Valuable Email, my new 10 Commandments book). Others were exotic one-time events (like the Age of Insight and Influential Emails workshops).

One thing’s for sure:

Even when I’m in full offer-creation mode, the appetite of my audience for cool and valuable new solutions to existing problems is much much bigger than what I can personally satisfy.

That’s one reason I’ve been building up a little invite-only group of list and offer owners.

I’ve been quietly pitching this group to people as a place to connect and partner and share ideas.

It’s proven to be that — it’s led to list swaps, podcast appearances, and affiliate promos, and not just involving me, either.

It so happens that Chris, Derek, Thom, Justin, Igor, Kennedy, and Gasper are all in my little invite-only group.

Maybe this group could be a good fit for you too?

If you’re interested, write in and let me know who you are and what you do.

A list is a mandatory requirement, as is the fact that you are writing that list regularly, and that you’ve made money from your list.

If have your own proven offers, that’s definitely a bonus.

Beyond that, I’m curious to hear who you are and what you do. If it’s a fit with the group, I’ll know it when I see it.

If more sales from your list with less work sounds sexy to you, write in and let’s talk.

Sneaky guru model for getting the most out of a pool of prospects

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If you’re the enterprising sort, here’s a direct-response recipe for getting the maximum value out of a pool of prospects:

1. Run a campaign featuring a guru who is promising an outcome, say, big stock market returns.

2. Make sales of your offer to people who respond to that campaign.

3. Take all the people who didn’t buy (or who bought once, but then canceled a subscription offer) and put in front of them another, entirely different-seeming offer, with a different guru, which actually makes the exact same promise as the offer in step 2.

4. Go back to step 2, and keep going back, with still another guru and another different-seeming offer, repeating until everyone has bought.

I once heard direct marketing expert Dan Kennedy talking about this sneaky multiple-guru model, which is actually very common among high-level direct response operators.

This strategy is obvious enough that in what behemoths like Agora are doing, but it happens in less obvious ways in many other businesses.

Some direct response businesses have low/mid/high variants of the same underlying product, all behind different brands that are impossible for prospects to see through.

Other businesses simply partner with related businesses who make the same promise but with a different feel, tone, or face to their message.

The point being, some people might not like you or your style. But if they’ve raised their hands to say they want the outcome you promise, that’s real value.

Sooner or later, somebody somewhere will sell these folks an offer to help them get that outcome. That somebody might as well be you, and that somewhere might as well be right here, right now, using the recipe above.

And with that, let me remind you one final time of the free training that email marketer Chris Orzechowski is putting on tomorrow, Monday, October 6, at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST.

Chris is gonna be sharing his “5 Steps To A Million Dollar List.”

I haven’t seen Chris’s training, but I do know his business model and his philosophy.

The fact is, it’s very similar to what I do, to what I preach in these emails, and to what I sell in my offers.

But — maybe you don’t want to hear this from me. Or maybe you have heard it from me, for a long time, and while you like hearing it, maybe it still hasn’t clicked, or hasn’t moved you to action.

In that case, Chris’s free training — and the 8-week coaching program he will be launching on the back of it in the coming weeks — might just be the fix.

If an email-based, flexible, profitable, and even fun business is an outcome you would raise your hand for, then here’s a free offer to help you get there:

https://bejakovic.com/mdl

Free training by million-dollar list owner

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This Monday, October 6, at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST, Chris Orzechowski is putting on a training called “5 Steps To A Million Dollar List.”

In case you don’t know Chris, he himself is the owner of a million-dollar list. He’s built a 7-figure list-based business selling offers around copywriting and email marketing, both to copywriters and big ecom businesses.

For the record, Chris’s list is currently under 13k people.

A few years ago, back in 2021, Chris made $996k with a list of just 6k people. Business Insider wrote up a profile of him because of this.

All that’s to say, Chris knows what he’s talking about — and the stuff he’s talking about is doable for others too.

I haven’t seen Chris’s training yet, but I know his philosophy of email marketing. It’s to email daily, sending out emails pretty much like the one you’re reading now.

Chris is gonna be kicking off an 8-week coaching program in October, guiding a group of people who wanna build the kind of profitable list business he himself has.

Monday’s “Million Dollar List” training is gonna be a kind of appetizer for that.

Chris says it will be a deep dive into list growth and monetization strategies that have worked for him.

So if you attend Chris’s training on Monday, you might learn something valuable and lucrative, maybe something you apply to your own list and your own biz starting Tuesday morning.

And if you’re interested in getting outside help and guidance in building the same kind of lean, profitable, list-based business Chris has, then Monday’s training will also be a chance to see if Chris is the guy for you.

If you’d like to attend, here’s the link to sign up:

https://bejakovic.com/mdl

Sell a copywriting “mini-mentorship” in a box

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A copywriter who recently finished my Copy Riddles program (not sure he wants me to share his name) wrote me a couple days ago and said:

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I want to share a quick story, so you understand the true impact Copy Riddles has had on me.

I’ve been wanting mentorship for over a year to know I’m heading in the right direction, and getting better at what I do. It’s why I took an in-house copywriter role with the hopes of having a senior mentor me. Alas, after all the promises, I was just used to handle multiple roles.

So, I made the decision to quit, and do my own thing — properly this time. But in my last few weeks at the company, I came across you (through Parker Worth), and you know the story there, I shared it briefly on one of the calls.

But another reason I bought CR, was I hoped it would act as a “mini mentorship.” Now — 10 or 11 weeks later — I can tell you that CR delivered exactly that. The calls really helped put things in perspective. And it’s just refreshing to finally get what you’ve been searching for.

===

I have been selling Copy Riddles since 2021, and have had a good number of people go through the program.

I’ve had lots of nice testimonials come in about the quality and usefulness of Copy Riddles. And I’ve also had a few people, like the copywriter above, write in with greater praise, about how the course had some unexpected impact on their career.

I’m telling you all this because yesterday I made an unusual offer:

I’ll sell you the right to sell Copy Riddles yourself and keep all the money.

There are a lot of copywriting offers out there in the world, but there aren’t a lot of great offers.

Copy Riddles is one of the great offers, both because of the results it delivers to customers (see above), and because of the baked-in sellability of the course (see the sales page for that).

And now, if you like, you have the opportunity to sell Copy Riddles yourself.

If you have your own list, you can sell Copy Riddles to your list and keep all the money from every sale you make, from here till eternity.

If you want to create a little cold traffic funnel, and put some lower-ticket items up front, and then use Copy Riddles (a $1k course) as the “main course” that makes it likely your funnel is breakeven or better on day zero, you can do that — and keep all the money.

If you already have lower-ticket copywriting offers, and you want to put a proven higher-ticket upsell behind them, you can put Copy Riddles into your upsell flow — and keep all the money.

Or of course, if you are an enterprising guy or gal who is not afraid to reach out to others who have lists, cold traffic funnels, or offers that are in some way related to Copy Riddles, you can partner with them so they provide the flow while you provide a valuable new offer — and split the resulting money with them, however the two of you agree on it.

Along with the right to sell Copy Riddles and keep all the money you make, I will also provide you with the marketing that has sold this course for me in the past — emails, copy angles, social proof, and promo ideas that have worked.

If you’re interested, hit reply, and we can talk in more detail.

Sell Copy Riddles yourself and keep all the money?

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This morning, I got a message from “the largest copywriter in the Netherlands,” Robin Timmers. Robin writes:

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Well, I’ve just finished Copy Riddles.

I have spent a lot of $$$ on copywriting training and books and programs and stuff…

But there is nothing like Copy Riddles.

Really.

I think the way you’ve designed the program is 10/10.

(Try/Write > Insight/Learn > Try/Write again > Increase copywriting IQ points > Repeat.)

The stuff you teach is 10/10, yet it is simple as hell to understand.

Even in the last bonus rounds, where most programs will probably have some throwaway-and-lame-insights to share, you’ve actually managed to give me an EUREKA moment by reminding me that, well … you want to write your bullets based on the market awareness and sophistication too.

For some reason I have never ever thought of that, yet it is a crazy good and persuasive thing to do.

Go figure.

I can honestly say that Copy Riddles is a must-have for anybody new to copywriting, or who already considers themselves, like I do, a good enough copywriter to earn good money with it.

I’ll 100% go through it again. 🙂

===

I’ve had a few other folks who just wrapped up Copy Riddles in the past week say good things about the experience.

I thought this would be the perfect time to run a little promo for Copy Riddles… except I remembered that during the last promo, back in July, I (wisely) announced I will not be running any more Copy Riddles promos this year.

Still, it’s a shame to let nice testimonials and case studies go to waste.

So rather than trying to sell you Copy Riddles, I want to see if you want to sell it yourself.

I tried doing this once before, a few years ago. I didn’t really know what I was doing back then, and so my idea got bogged down in indecision and uncertainty.

My offer today is basically this:

I’ll sell you the right to sell Copy Riddles yourself and keep all the money.

If you have your own list, you can sell Copy Riddles to your list and keep all the money from every sale you make, from here till eternity.

If you want to create a little cold traffic funnel, and put some lower-ticket items up front, and then use Copy Riddles (a $1k course) as the “main course” that makes it likely your funnel is breakeven or better on day zero, you can do that — and keep all the money.

If you already have lower-ticket copywriting offers, and you want to put a proven higher-ticket upsell behind them, you can put Copy Riddles into your upsell flow — and keep all the money.

Or of course, if you are an enterprising guy or gal who is not afraid to reach out to others who have lists, cold traffic funnels, or offers that are in some way related to Copy Riddles, you can partner with them so they provide the flow while you provide a valuable new offer — and split the resulting money with them, however the two of you agree on it.

Along with the right to sell Copy Riddles and keep all the money you make, I will also provide you with the marketing that has sold this course for me in the past — emails, copy angles, social proof, and promo ideas that have worked.

If you’re interested, hit reply, and we can talk in more detail.

If you cannot persuade yourself to act however hard you try

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This morning, a private detective I know here in Barcelona sent me a screenshot of a trending social media story:

“Couple Who Met On Dating App Rob Bank On First Date”

Can this really be true? I decided to do my own sleuthing.

It turns out yes, the story is roughly true, but with an important detail that’s missing in the headline above.

The man, Christopher Castillo, age 33, and the woman, Shelby Sampson, age 40, agreed to meet for a date.

Castillo asked Sampson to pick him up in her car. Once in the car, Castillo started drinking wine, presumably red. He then asked Sampson to pull over at a bank.

Castillo was gone for a few minutes. He came back sweating, wearing sunglasses and a hat (!), and holding an antique gun and a wad of cash.

He told Sampson to drive, which she did, for a bit, until the cops pulled them over and put the date to an end.

The crucial bit is that Sampson was not charged with anything, because, so the state believes, she had absolutely no knowledge of or participation in any criminal aspect of this first date.

This missing detail is what I found most interesting in the whole story.

I’ve never robbed a bank, but I imagine it’s hard.

The stock joke is that a typical man is unwilling to pull over and ask for directions while driving. Can you imagine how much more unwilling a typical man is to pull over, walk into a bank, hold up a gun, and ask for $1,000 in cash (and five years in prison, it turns out)?

No wonder Castillo was drinking in the car. And no wonder he felt he needed somebody “in his corner,” even if that was an unwitting and unwilling non-accomplice he had met on Tinder.

I found this interesting because, while I’ve never robbed a bank, I have done other, legal, things in my life. Some of these things I found personally very difficult to do, because they challenged my own identity.

There were times when no amount of auto-suggestion, willpower, or even red wine would push me over the threshold.

There were times when the only thing that would help me act would be having somebody “in my corner,” having a feeling of a home base I could come back to, even if that was somebody I had met minutes earlier and had no special relationship with.

I imagine this is all a bit waffly without specific examples. I might give those in another email.

My point today is simply that if you have something you know you should be doing (don’t rob a bank), but you cannot persuade yourself to do it no matter how you try, then having some kind of support or community of other people to rely on, however tenuous, can make all the difference.

Ideally, this is other people in real life. Real life seems to make a big difference.

But if you cannot find people in real life to act as a home base, then people online can sometimes act as a substitute. At least that’s the promise of online communities, groups, and memberships.

I am still keen on spinning up a new online community of my own, but I haven’t yet decided which (legal) things I would like to support people in doing.

While that’s going on, I can only recommend once again a community that I myself am part of, Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin.

If you’re struggling to take the action needed to build your own audience… or to make deals with people who have an audience of their own… or to make your first $5k online… then you might find the support you need within Royalty Ronin. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

Amazon ad apocalypse

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Trouble in Bejako land:

My Amazon ad campaigns, which have been buoying up sales of my new 10 Commandments book, have cratered.

The background:

Since publishing my new 10 Commandments book back in May, I have reliably been selling 15-20 copies of the book per day.

A part of how I have been doing this is by running several Amazon ad campaigns in the background.

These campaigns have been working consistently for me. Until, of course, last week, when something shifted.

My campaign ad spend was no longer being spent, or even close to it. Ad cost per sale went way up. Most importantly, fewer books started being sold, just 5-10 per day, both via ads and organically.

I asked the universe why it’s doing this to me, and the universe came back with an answer.

“Amazon has changed its ad algorithm,” the universe told me.

It seems Amazon is now favoring “auto” ad campaigns (which I only had a small discovery budget for) and punishing “exact” campaigns (which was the bulk of my ad spend, because it got better results for cheaper).

I’m not sure what my point is, except maybe the old advice from sports marketer Jon Spoelstra:

“In almost any industry, the best role model is the high tech business. They can’t sit back and stop innovating. If they did, in three to six months they would be woefully behind.”

Amazon is innovating, and I fortunately am forced to innovate alongside them.

The fact is, email lists as a marketing tool provide a certain moat.

An email list is a free way to regularly communicate with dedicated, trusting readers and past customers, many of whom are ready and even eager to buy from you rather than others.

But an email list is only so much of a moat, and lulling yourself (like I often do) into thinking that an email list is a forever source of income, while sitting back and not innovating, will lead to woe.

In any case, I am adapting my Amazon ads strategy, and maybe I will get my book sales back up.

But also I want to get back to more active promotion of my new 10 Commandments book.

My initial idea for promoting this sucker was to get on podcasts. I put that on hold because 1) Amazon ads were working reliably until now and 2) finding podcasts to guest on is a pain.

But now it’s time to innovate. So can you do me a favor?

Do you listen to a podcast — about con men, or pickup, or magic, or sales, or hypnosis, or copywriting, or negotiation, or political propaganda, or comedy, or screenwriting — that you enjoy, and you think might enjoy having me as a guest to talk about the ideas inside my new 10 Commandments book?

If you do, hit reply and let me know. You’ll be doing me a favor.

And if you haven’t yet read my new 10 Commandments book, it deals with all those fields in a coherent and even interesting way. A few headlines from Amazon reviews:

#1. “This is going into my yearly reads collection”

#2. “A new favorite”

#3. “Sophisticated strategies behind the playful tone”

#4. “Instant Classic That’s Highly Entertaining”

#5. “This One’s Staying on My Desk!

#6. “More compelling than Cialdini with sprinkles of Houdini”

#7. “Superb lessons to be aware of”

Your own copy of my new 10 Commandment book is waiting patiently for you right now. If you’d like to claim it:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Not reading my email today is expensive

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Yesterday, I promoted an offer called “Unstuck Sessions,” basically consult calls to help people overcome a challenge and get unstuck.

Like I wrote yesterday, that’s an offer that I first heard about from marketer Travis Sago.

I actually have a bit of swipe copy from Travis from when he promoted his own Unstuck Sessions.

An Unstuck Session by definition is pretty waffly and vague. How do you sell “getting unstuck”?

I looked at Travis’s copy. Here’s what caught my eye, from the second half of Travis’s email:

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What’s it REALLY COSTING YOU to stay where you’re at?

(If you know all these answers, you probably aren’t stuck…LOL)

If you’re making $5k a month…and you want to making $10k…if my math is right…isn’t that a $5k a month problem? a $60k per year whopper of a problem…yeah?

And then…if I may be so bold?

What is the problem costing you in your enjoyment of life?

How much worrying are you doing now?

How much of life are you missing out on? 

I’m not trying to be a sadist.

It’s a courtesy “poke”.

Being stuck is expensive…emotionally, financially AND physically.

===

I happen to know Travis is a student of sales trainer Dave Sandler. And in Sandler’s book You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar, Sandler writes:

“While you need to discuss the cost of your product or service, it’s more important to discuss the cost to your prospect if they do nothing.”

I read Sandler’s book multiple times.

I wrote down that line as a note to myself, and then transferred it to my “Library of Rare and Precious Ideas.”

And yet, this idea is something I only rarely and casually remember to apply in actual sales contexts, even though, as Sandler says, discussing the cost of doing nothing is more important than discussing the cost of your offer.

But Travis Sago doesn’t forget. And as you can see above, he actually puts this idea to use in his copy.

Lots of people read. Lots of people take notes.

But few put ideas into action.

And fewer still keep tweaking and fiddling with ideas-put-into-action until those ideas actually turn into big results.

Travis is one of those rare few.

That’s the reason why Travis is the #1 person I’ve been following and learning from for the past two years.

Actually I take that back. Travis is pretty much the only person, at least living person, in the space of marketing/copywriting/persuasion/online businesses, that I’ve been listening to and learning from.

This is also the reason why I keep promoting Travis’s Royalty Ronin membership.

As for the cost of Royalty Ronin:

Right now, you can get into Royalty Ronin for free, for 7 days, so you can test it out. After that, Ronin costs $299/month.

I guess I had to cover that. But the following is much more important:

If you are a copywriter who works with clients, then what is it costing you to not spot your client’s “trashcan assets”… or not know how to persuade your client to give you control of such asset… or how to monetize them?

In my experience, it can easily be costing you $10k this very month, and $200k feasibly over the course over the next year or two.

And if you have your own list, what is it costing you to keep “creating” new offers to put in front of your list, instead of “producing” new offers, the way Travis teaches?

Again, in my experience, it can easily be costing you hundreds of hours of unnecessary work in the coming weeks if you are working on creating a new offer.

To rub salt into the wound, it might also cost you $15k-$20k in foregone sales by the time you release that offer, both because you missed out on promoting other “produced” offers in the meantime, and because “created” offers often fail to sell as well as “produced” offers.

In other words, not being inside Royalty Ronin is expensive… in terms of time, stress, and money.

If you’d like to stop that, starting with a free trial:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

10 ideas for writing better daily emails in 10 weeks

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Once upon a time, I had a habit of focusing on one aspect of writing daily emails for a week at a time. The next week, I’d pick something else, and so on, until I got really good at writing emails.

At some point, I dropped the habit. That’s a shame. Recently, I had the idea to pick it up again, and so I made a list of 10 things to focus on in my daily emails, one thing per week, in order to make your emails much more fun, sticky, and effective in terms of sales and influence.

In case you’re curious or would like to do something similar, here’s 10 ideas for writing better daily emails in 10 weeks:

1. Be narcissistic, or give undue importance to yourself or things associated with you.

(This can be done earnestly or tongue-in-cheek. For example, I once wrote an email about how I had drafted a patent application to protect my Most Valuable Email trick, because it is too valuable not to protect, and because it satisfies the three criteria required by the U.S. Patent Office, namely novelty, non-obviousness, and concrete and practical application.)

2. Push-pull, near misses, teasing.

3. Fun vibe.

4. DHV = demonstrations of higher value.

Another term for this is status building, such as for example, when I tell you that I am currently running the only private, invite-only group of email marketers and course creators in the email marketing niche, which brings together pretty much everybody you have heard of in this space.

5. Clarity.

6. Personal frame. Meaning, every email should really be about you, or should have a frame of “you,” even if the picture inside the frame is, say, a scene from a Batman movie.

7. Being black-and-white, dogmatic.

8. Teasing or building up upcoming things (push-pull on a longer scale).

9. Transparency, Skeleton Protocol.

10. Reason why.

If some of the terms above — “push pull,” “near misses,” “Skeleton Protocol” — are unfamiliar to you, that’s because you have not read my new 10 Commandments book.

It took me several years of research, thinking, and paring down my ideas to the most valuable ones to be able to write this book.

This book is not a replacement for Bob Cialdini’s bestselling Influence, but a complement to it. As Rob Marsh, founder of the Copywriter Club, wrote after he read my new 10 Commandments book:

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In addition to Cialdini’s well known 6 principles of influence (urgency, scarcity, consistency and so on), it’s time to add Bejakovic’s 10 commandments of persuasion. This book will make you a better writer and a better sales person. But more than that, you can use John’s commandments to be more persuasive, more engaging and more interesting in everything you do.

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Imagine if you had been one of the first few thousand people who had read Cialdini’s Influence, back in 1984.

Entire multi-million dollar info businesses have been built up in the ensuing years by simply repackaging and selling the ideas in this book.

And many much bigger businesses have been built up by taking the ideas in Cialdini’s book, including the many nuances in there beyond just the chapter headings, and applying those ideas to sales and influence systems.

Would I be bold or arrogant enough to claim my new 10 Commandments book offers a similar opportunity today, in 2025?

Clearly I would. So in case you haven’t read it yet, you have only one option:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments