Positioning

Disaster recovery

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This morning I tried to walk to the beach. The police stopped me.

They said something in Catalan. I couldn’t understand. I got the gist though.

“Disaster recovery. Off limits.”

On my way to the beach, I had to walk through broken glass, charred pieces of wood and cardboard, and many shards of explosive. The air still smelled of smoke.

Hundreds of city employees in yellow vests were already on the scene. Several large, specialized tractors were brought in to decontaminate the area.

A few groups of shell-shocked survivors stood here and there, swaying mindlessly to some Latin music that I couldn’t identify.

All this was the consequence of la nit de Sant Joan, aka Saint John’s Eve. It happened last night.

Sant Joan is a holiday to mark the start of summer. In Barcelona, it’s celebrated with bonfires on the beach, big parties, and billions of kilograms of various explosives in the form of firecrackers and fireworks.

I only witnessed this from my couch last night. I was trying to read, but the warzone outside made it impossible.

Missiles whistled through the air. Deep explosions rumbled and echoed through my living room. A rat-tat-tat of what sounded like semiautomatic weapons went off regularly.

And it kept going all the damn night.

Instead of my usual 11pm-on-the-dot bedtime, I guess I fell asleep after 3am, when the explosions started to die down. Of course, I still woke up as I always do around 7am.

All that’s to say, my brain isn’t working so good right now.

But lucky for me, I got a reader question I can answer in today’s email to take the load off.

Paul, an in-house copywriter at a supplement brand, expressed interest in my upcoming Water Into Wine workshop. We exchanged a few emails, and then Paul posed me the following riddle:

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Thanks John.

​Yes, it’s very helpful and I think it’s a good fit 🙂
​​
By the way, I don’t know how much interest there is for this workshop. But maybe it might be useful for you to send to your list some quick “bullets” about the benefits of attending this workshop?

===

Hm. Benefits. I’ve heard of those.

The fact is, I’ve been purposefully keeping much about this workshop vague. But I can share the following.

During the Water Into Wine workshop, I will to cover one specific repositioning formula. I’ll show how this formula can be used in three separate ways:

1. To give clear, “Oh I get it” positioning to an offer that’s currently vague or unclear

2. To give unique, attractive positioning to a product or service which is not unique or not attractive (yes, sometimes you’re stuck with those)

3. To open up new markets for an offer, where the selling might be easier and where the money might come in bigger, heavier bags

I’ll have examples of how smart marketers have used this repositioning formula in niches like bizopp, finance, weight loss, copywriting, baseball, and of course, dentistry.

​​I’ll also have examples of how this formula can be used to sell offers of different formats, including courses, coaching, certifications, tickets to live events, and done-for-you services.

That said, it will take some thinking to apply this repositioning formula to your specific situation.

If that don’t turn you off, here are more details about this training:

===

This Thursday, June 27th, I will host a little workshop with a few people.

I’m calling it the Water Into Wine workshop.

It will be all about a specific technique for repackaging and repositioning your offers so they sell better.

If you currently have an offer that’s not selling, this technique can start selling that offer for you.

On the other hand, if you have an offer that’s selling already, this technique can sell your offer more easily and for more money.

The ticket to join the Wine Into Water workshop is $197.

The workshop will happen live on Zoom, next Thursday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. It will also be recorded. So if you cannot attend live, you can still get your hands on this info and apply it to your own offers as soon as next Friday.

I’m not sure whether there will be a ton of demand for this workshop. In any case, I’ll cap the number of folks who sign up to 20 maximum.

Are you interested in joining us?

If so, just reply to this email.

I won’t have a public-facing sales page for this offer, and replying is the only way to get more info or get in.

Of course, if you reply to this email to express interest, it doesn’t oblige you in any way. I’m happy to answer any questions you might have and help you decide if this workshop is or isn’t right for you.

Competition riding your tail?

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Something you might not know about me is that I am not a fighter pilot.

​​Not even close.

​​I don’t even like flying as a passenger on a commercial plane.

But still, I have fantasies of how cool it must be to be a fighter pilot, based on movies like Top Gun and The Right Stuff.

Many of those fantasies were ruined for me today while I listened to an interview with an actual fighter pilot, one who flies a modern F-18.

He tried to repeatedly make it clear:

Flying a modern fighter jet is less about seat-of-the-pants flying skill and more about integrating a huge flow of information from all the panels and monitors and sensors.

But the podcaster who conducted this interview didn’t want to hear any of this.

Like me, the interviewer grew up on movies and video games. So he asked questions about the Red Baron and about Maverick from Top Gun.

The fighter pilot dutifully answered. And then, he tried to once again explain the complexities of how things really work today.

The interviewer glossed over these explanations. He kept circling back to what he really wanted to believe. At one point he got impatient. He asked:

“I know you said this doesn’t happen any more in aerial combat, so this might be a silly question. But what if an enemy plane gets on your tail? How would you shake him?”

The fighter pilot smiled sadly.

“It depends on which plane was behind me,” he said. “The F-18 has a very short turning radius. I might be able to evade him by making a quicker turn. But if it’s the same plane like mine, he could mimic every move that I do.”

The interviewer paused for a moment. “So you’d be fucked?”

“Yep,” the fighter pilot said. “I’d be fucked.”

One thing I’ve learned, from years of watching Top Gun, is that landing a fighter jet on an tiny aircraft carrier runway is the trickiest thing a fighter pilot has to do.

Another thing I’ve learned, from years of writing daily emails, is that landing a story about fighter jets on an dry marketing takeaway is the trickiest thing a daily email pilot has to do.

But I’m fearless, so let me try it now:

You know that thing above, about having the enemy plane on your tail? You might liken that to your competition. Hear me out.

Maybe you’re blessed to have an advantage that allows you to evade or overtake the competition — your shorter turning radius, your “USP.”

But maybe you don’t have anything like that.

Maybe your fighter jet is much like the one that the other guy or gal has.

What then?

Unlike the fighter pilot, you have some options. But I can tell you one thing that’s unlikely to work.

And it’s to dive into the complexity. To explain to your market how your offer actually works. To point at all the panels and the sensors, and to explain what they do and why that’s important.

Just like with the interviewer above, that kind of information will only make your market impatient and will likely be ignored.

So what to do instead?

That’s what I’ll be talking about during my upcoming Wine Into Water workshop, next Thursday evening.

For more information on that, here are the details from an earlier email:

===

Next Thursday, June 27th, I will host a little workshop with a few people.

I’m calling it the Water Into Wine workshop.

It will be all about a specific technique for repackaging and repositioning your offers so they sell better.

If you currently have an offer that’s not selling, this technique can start selling that offer for you.

On the other hand, if you have an offer that’s selling already, this technique can sell your offer more easily and for more money.

The ticket to join the Wine Into Water workshop is $197.

The workshop will happen live on Zoom, next Thursday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. It will also be recorded. So if you cannot attend live, you can still get your hands on this info and apply it to your own offers as soon as next Friday.

I’m not sure whether there will be a ton of demand for this workshop. In any case, I’ll cap the number of folks who sign up to 20 maximum.

Are you interested in joining us?

If so, just reply to this email.

I won’t have a public-facing sales page for this offer, and replying is the only way to get more info or get in.

Of course, if you reply to this email to express interest, it doesn’t oblige you in any way. I’m happy to answer any questions you might have and help you decide if this workshop is or isn’t right for you.

RSVP: Water Into Wine workshop

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Next Thursday, June 27th, I will host a little workshop with a few people.

I’m calling it the Water Into Wine workshop.

It will be all about a specific technique for repackaging and repositioning your offers so they sell better.

If you currently have an offer that’s not selling, this technique can start selling that offer for you.

On the other hand, if you have an offer that’s selling already, this technique can sell your offer more easily and for more money.

The ticket to join the Wine Into Water workshop is $197.

The workshop will happen live on Zoom, next Thursday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. It will also be recorded. So if you cannot attend live, you can still get your hands on this info and apply it to your own offers as soon as next Friday.

I’m not sure whether there will be a ton of demand for this workshop. In any case, I’ll cap the number of folks who sign up to 20 maximum. ​​

Are you interested in joining us?

If so, just reply to this email.

I won’t have a public-facing sales page for this offer, and replying is the only way to get more info or get in.

Of course, if you reply to this email to express interest, it doesn’t oblige you in any way. I’m happy to answer any questions you might have and help you decide if this workshop is or isn’t right for you.

Persuasion, Plan B:

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This past week, Lawrence Bernstein shared, via his Ad Money Machine, a very risky but very effective direct mail sales letter that ran some 15 years ago.

The teaser headline on the envelope read,

“Retirement, Plan B:”

… and then in smaller font, the copy went on to explain how you could now enroll and collect up to $120,000 each year, for the rest of your life, in the form of “pension paychecks.”

Pension paychecks?

As Lawrence said, “I don’t have the risk tolerance for such a promo, nor the legal team to cover me in case. But there’s no denying the success of this promo, based on its longevity.”

Maybe there’s something we can learn from this promo, without crossing over into risky legal waters.

Enter “Persuasion, Plan B.”

Persuasion, Plan A is to make your best argument. To give your audience the big promise. To pile on the reasons why, the testimonials, the features, the benefits, the bonuses, the urgency.

In many situations, that will work just fine.

But what if it don’t?

Persuasion, Plan B is what you can try then. It’s what you can witness in the promo above.

And it’s to suddenly whip up a creative repackaging that sums up, often in just a word or two, all the appeals in your offer, and suggests other appeals also, even if they’re not really there in your offer. (It’s not always illegal.)

I’m thinking about putting together a one-evening workshop about this. About using this kind of repackaging in your headlines, your body copy, your emails, and most importantly and profitably, in the positioning and packaging of your offers.

Persuasion, Plan B.

Is this workshop something you’d be interested in? If so, hit reply and let me know. If there’s enough interest, I’ll put it on. Otherwise, we can stick with just Plan A.

4 lessons from my 9-day promo for Daily Email Fastlane

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Last night, I concluded the promo for for Daily Email Fastlane. That’s the workshop I’m hosting tonight, right now, as this email goes out.

Good news: I sold more tickets to Daily Email Fastlane than I was expecting.

Bad news: At $100 per sale, it’s still not enough to buy a Rolls-Royce.

But that’s okay. This workshop was most of all an experiment, in a few ways.

I’ve collected the data. It’s now time to analyze it.

Some of what my analysis shows is standard daily email propaganda. What I mean is, the data supports the basic idea I was plugging all week long, about the value of writing daily emails for your personal brand. For example:

#1. 87% of people who signed up for Daily Email Fastlane have bought other courses or trainings from me before. Many have been on my list for 3+ years.

Would they have stuck around and been willing to buy from me now if I failed to stay in touch with them during that time?

#2. There was also a handful of first-time buyers. Most of them have been on my list for weeks, months, or in one case, closing in on a year.

In other words, it took dozens or hundreds of daily email “touches” to close this first sale… but it wasn’t very hard to do.

In fact, I even had fun writing some of those dozens or hundreds of emails over the past weeks, months, and year.

#3. I made sales with every email I sent out during this promo. This tells me I probably could have sent out still more emails and made still more sales.

All these conclusions are probably obvious to you. And they are only really useful in case you too send daily emails, as validation, or want to start sending daily emails, as inspiration.

But I do have one extra tip for you.

It’s relevant whether or not you choose to send daily emails.

In fact, it might be more relevant if you don’t send daily emails.

This tip doesn’t come from the sales data. It comes from the replies and comments of the people who ended up signing up for the workshop.

It’s this:

Many of those who joined told me they were sold by the core idea I had for this training. The core idea was to share the common elements among 3 daily emailers I’ve coached, each of whom is uniquely successful in his own way.

The way I came up with that core idea wasn’t accidental. It wasn’t a unique moment of inspiration, either.

It was routine, and something you can do too.

It’s simply an application of my #1 strategy for creating offers of any kind, in any niche.

You can use this strategy to create offers that sell… even if you don’t have your own coaching program for authority, even if you don’t sell marketing advice, even if, like me, you don’t bother to set up a sales page.

You can find this strategy described in detail towards the end of chapter 1 of my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters. For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Even criminals need a “wow” factor

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A few weeks ago, I was listening to an interview with an FBI special agent. That’s how I found out there’s an application process for getting onto the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list. Says the FBI agent:

“Yeah, there’s an application process, because the FBI knows that this is going to be on the media. Everyone’s going to scrutinize this, so they want to make sure everything is correct. You know, there has to be a little bit of a, I wouldn’t say, a wow factor is not the right word, but a factor of saying, ‘Listen, wow, I’m really interested in this.'”

The FBI agent seems to be trying to not glamorize violent crime.

First he denies criminals who get on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted list have a “wow” factor.

But right after, that’s exactly what he confirms. There has to be an element of “wow.” There has to be something to set the criminal apart and to get the public interested.

Really, when you think about it, that’s not much of a surprise.

There are millions of criminals around the U.S.

​​There are probably tens of thousands of violent, dangerous, would-be-great-to-get-into-custody-today criminals. But there’s only so much space in the news and only so much capacity for attention in the public mind.

Of course, you are not a criminal. That’s good.

But I think the lesson from the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted holds even on this side of the law.

Whatever it is that you do, you are competing against a bunch of other people.
​​Maybe millions of others.

More likely, thousands do something like you do. Even a few dozen options in a market is more than the public mind can comfortably handle.

So you need a “wow” factor. Something to set you apart and to get people interested. Because simply doing your job very well — or very violently — is usually not enough.

There are lots of ways you can create a “wow” factor for yourself.

I’ve done it for myself using what I’ve called the Most Valuable Email trick.

This trick is not stories, or pop culture illustrations, or shock and controversy.

It’s something else entirely. Something that others have used profitably before I started using the Most Valuable Email trick, and still others have used profitably since I taught it to them.

If you’d like to learn the Most Valuable Email trick yourself, you can. It takes all of an hour to learn and start applying in your own emails, so you can create a kind of “wow” factor for yourself.

If that’s something you’re interested in, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Ugly personal positioning

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“It’s pretty ugly,” my dad said.

I nodded and shrugged. “Yep… I agree.”

My dad and his wife and their two friends were visiting me in Barcelona over the past few days. Today was their last day.

Before leaving, they decided to go see the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s best-known landmark, the many-spired church designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi.

My dad, a devoted atheist, is also a connoisseur of churches. He loves to travel the world and visit all kinds of churches with their beautiful architecture and their ancient frescoes and their sculptures of bleeding martyrs.

Earlier on this trip, my dad whimpered a little when we walked by the 14th-century Gothic cathedral in the old town of Barcelona, and the rest of the group decided that it wasn’t the right time to go in.

And yet, when faced with the Sagrada Familia, my dad was not impressed.

I agree. The Sagrada is pretty ugly to me too. It’s kitschy and garish, at least from up close.

And yet, every year, some 20M tourists come and see the creation. They look up, they marvel, and they take literally hundreds of millions of selfies with the church in the background.

I’m not sure what my point is. Maybe it’s just to share the following quote by filmmaker Pedro Almodovar.

Almodovar’s movies have been accused of being kitschy and garish. And yet Almodovar has built an incredible career and has become Spain’s most successful director. About that, Almodovar once said:

“When a film has only one or two defects, it is considered an imperfect film. But when there is a profusion of technical flaws, it is called style.”

Of course, you don’t care about style, at least not when reading this newsletter.

This newsletter is about making sales.

But Almodovar’s quote applies just as well to personal positioning, which makes selling so much easier.

So apply the lesson and confidently pile on the defects. The stupid opinions. The violations of industry norms. The flat-out typos, contradictions, and ugly design.

What you get is something that in time sells itself, because it stands out in people’s minds. And that can lead to millions in your future — and not counted in visitors, but in sales.

Don’t be like me

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For the past two days, I’ve been running a kind of flash offer I’ve called Copy Riddles Lite.

In order to promote that, I have finally done something I should have done months ago, and that’s to go through the emails that Australia’s best & world’s most provocative copywriter, Daniel Throssell, wrote to promote Copy Riddles back in September.

Daniel’s emails are filled with gold I could and should have been using to promote Copy Riddles ever since. Such as, for example, the following quotes:

“There are few other courses I fully and wholeheartedly endorse as strongly as one of my own. Copy Riddles is one of them.”

“I have literally never had so many people write to me after I start promoting something, offering unsolicited & gushing feedback on it!”

“It’s the most brilliant course concept I’ve ever seen … literally a gamified series of sequential puzzles that teaches you copywriting.”

So don’t be like me — lazy, careless, and self-defeating when it comes to promoting your own good offers.

Instead, when people write nice things about you and what you sell, save those comments… cherish them… casually drop hints about them over tea or coffee… and every Sunday or even more often, stand up on a soapbox, and openly and dramatically read out those flattering endorsements to everyone who might be interested and many of those who are not.

The Copy Riddles Lite offer is closing down tonight, in another 8 hours, specifically at 8:31pm CET.

Copy Riddles Lite is not a gamified series of sequential puzzles. That’s the full Copy Riddles course, which contains 20 such sequential puzzles.

Copy Riddles Lite contains just one such puzzle.

But it’s a puzzle that stands alone, without the rest of the Copy Riddles program. And if you can guess the right answer — or even if you don’t, but you put in the effort — it will teach you something very valuable about copywriting, in a very short period of time.

Copy Riddles Lite is priced lightly, according to its lite nature. And if you buy it and decide you want to upgrade to the full Copy Riddles program, I will credit you the price you paid for Copy Riddles Lite.

So if you’d like to get this piece of a highly endorsed training before I close down the cart, here’s where to go (no sales page, just an order page):

https://bejakovic.com/crl​​

Magic words that bring you status

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Yesterday, I went on Twitter in search of my own name.

What I found was a photo somebody had posted of a densely scribbled page, containing the text of one of my emails.

I squinted and leaned in so far my nose almost touched the screen. It was true.

People are actually copying out my emails by hand as a way to learn email copywriting.

It was a bizarre moment. It reminded me of the first time I printed a black-and-white photograph in my high school’s darkroom.

Take a normal-looking piece of paper, expose it to light for a second, then dump it into a bit of clear, water-like liquid. A picture emerges of something you had photographed days or weeks ago.

It feels like magic, because the ingredients seem so ordinary — paper, light, a bit of water-like liquid.

I’ve been writing this daily email newsletter for 5+ years. At first, I was writing mostly just to practice and then sending my emails out into the void.

After a while, I created an offer. I sent out an email just like the ones I had been sending out. Except this time, money came back at me.

It felt like magic, because it was still the same ordinary ingredients — a bare-bones text editor, ActiveCampaign, the blue “send” button.

Since then, I’ve continued sending the same text-only emails, just words in a text editor. And that’s been good enough to give me status and authority in this field. I got into copywriting some ten years ago by hand-copying issues of Gary Halbert’s newsletter. Today people are copying my newsletter issues by hand.

A few days ago, I announced I’m looking for five beta testers for a 3-month group coaching program.

The goal for this group coaching program is to implement the techniques and ideas I talked about on the “How I do it” call I held on Monday. Write interesting emails… build a list… grow your status… make money.

I announced this group coaching program to the people who were there for the live “How I do it” call, and to the people who signed up for the recording.

And in spite of the fact I once again managed to muck up the tech, so that some people never got the link to join the live call, and others never got the recording, I’ve so far filled three of those five spots. I also have a few people who’ve expressed interest in the remaining two.

But I want to get this sign-up process wrapped up now, so I can kick the group coaching off.

So if you’re interested, hit reply and let me know a bit about who you are and what you do.

I will send you a doc with the full info on this 3-month program, and you can decide if it’s for you or not.

If not, no problem. But if yes, then you can join us, and we will start next week.

Valuable positioning idea inside

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For the past year, I have been writing a second newsletter, one about health. About ten days ago, on a whim, I changed the name of it.

I’m still not publicly sharing either the old or the new name of my health newsletter, because the CIA asked me not to.

But I want to tell you something curious that’s happened following the name change.

So let’s pretend my old newsletter was named Morning Brew, which it was not. But Morning Brew is a big and popular email newsletter that covers the day’s business news, so you might know it.

My health newsletter’s old name was something like Morning Brew. Cute, possibly clever, with a brandable tinge to it.

But ten days ago, I decided to kill the cuteness, cut the possible cleverness, and go for clarity instead of branding.

As a result, my health newsletter is now called something like, Daily Business Newsletter. Again, that’s not the actual name, but it should give you an idea.

Now here’s the curious thing that happened:

As soon as I made that switch, I started getting organic traffic from Google. Finally — the first organic traffic I got after about 11 months of regular posting of content to my website.

And apparently, it’s high-quality traffic, because these Google-sent visitors are opting in to the newsletter at a clip of about 10-15 per day, double-opting in, and will hopefully be reading and buying in the future.

To be fair, this might be absolute coincidence.

Or, if it’s not coincidence, it might be something that’s not repeatable for anyone else, or even for me.

Or, maybe there’s something there. Maybe it’s an illustration of a valuable positioning idea I read once:

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For many people or products today, one roadway to success is to look at what your competitors are doing and then subtract the poetry or creativity which has become a barrier to getting the message into the mind. With a purified and simplified message, you can then penetrate the prospect’s mind.

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That idea comes from of the best marketing books I’ve ever read. It’s one of the best as long as you read it carefully and slowly, rather than skimming through it to “get the gist.”

And no, it’s not the same book I recommended yesterday, and it’s not written by Dan Kennedy.

If you think you know what this book is, or you want to know, you can find it revealed at the other end of this link:

https://bejakovic.com/lost