Positioning

Announcing: Live personal positioning cohort

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Yesterday, inside a small group of list owners that I have set up to help with affiliate deals, marketer Justin Blackman posted, as a kind of afterthought, that he has an exciting and cool new offer, that, by the way, it’s live now, and, oh, that it’s only available until the end of this week, or maybe not even that long.

The offer is called Different On Purpose.

You can find the full details of it at the sales page below. But in the interest of getting you to click through to that sales page, here are some intriguing facts about Justin’s “now you see me, now you don’t” new offer:

# Who it’s for

Freelancers, coaches, and service-based business owners who feel they’ve lost their mojo — thanks to AI, competition, and simply stuff that used to work not working any more.

(No judgment here, by the way. As Justin says on sales page, he himself has been wrestling with these issues for the past year and a half.)

# What it is

A live cohort that runs from September 25 – November 19. Small groups that Justin will be heading, with frankly a crazy list of 15 guest trainers to add in unique expertise, including Todd Herman, Daniel Throssell, and Chris Orzechowski.

Deliverables and outcomes are both new and different personal positioning… plus assets to support and communicate that… and, thanks to the guest trainers, strategy to get those assets and message out into the world, so as to regain that lost mojo.

# Why you might wanna sign up now

Two reasons:

First is that this is the first time Justin is offering Different On Purpose, and his strategy is to underprice it and overdeliver on it. (See the complete list of 15 guest trainers if you don’t believe the “overdeliver” bit.)

Second is that, this being a live cohort which Justin will head, it’s limited to 30 people.

I don’t know how many of those spots are already taken.

I do know Justin is promoting Different On Purpose to his list… I’m guessing at least some of the guest speakers who have lists totaling hundreds of thousands of names will promote it as well to their lists… and maybe others in that group I set up will promote it too.

All that’s to say, if you worry about where your service or client business is going… if you feel like your personal positioning is taking on the nice ochre color of a brick in the wall… and if you wanna do something about it now rather than in 2035… then Different On Purpose is something to consider.

To find out more about it, before those 30 spots are filled and the decision is no longer yours:

https://bejakovic.com/different

The foundation that personal positioning is built on

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Back when I was researching my new 10 Commandments book, about con men, pick up artists, and among others, door-to-door salesmen, I came across a 10-minute documentary titled, “The Bronzer.”

The Bronzer is about a door-to-door salesman named Stu Larkin, who has been selling bronzed baby shoes his whole life.

(The movie came out 10+ years ago, but Larkin is still at it as far as I know.)

There weren’t any useful door-to-door selling techniques in this documentary. But there was a kind of wake-up call.

Bronzed baby shoes are nice. I guess they sell for $50 a pair? or $100? or $200? In any case, Larkin had this to say:

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The thing about selling that I’m kind of disturbed about, because I know that I’m so good at what I do, is that I think I missed my calling in something else. That I could have made millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars selling something else. Like someone would be going, “We know that guy. He’s the most renowned salesman in the world.”

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There are good techniques for positioning yourself at the top end of your market, and I want to write my next book about those.

But those good techniques are like the blueprints for building a skyscraper. The foundation of that skyscraper, without which even the most sound blueprints will result in a janky leaning tower that nobody wants to live in, is choosing which market you will be in to begin with.

Fact one:

It takes as much skill to sell to people who aren’t interested in buying or who have no money… as to sell to people who both are eager to buy and who have the money to do so. Often, it takes more skill and more work, far more, to sell to the first group.

Fact two:

If you’re selling something right now, then there’s sure to be another market where your exact skills, and maybe even your exact offers, could sell for 5x or 10x or 100x of what you’re selling for now.

Of course, it’s not an easy or light decision to switch markets and to basically set sail in an unfamiliar and possibly shark-infested sea. But it’s worth thinking about, or at least that’s what I tell myself, as I’ve been thinking about it too.

I’ll leave you with that seed for today.

Meanwhile, as that seed germinates, if you wanna see what valuable techniques of door-to-door salesman I did find, and how those tie into related fields like copywriting, standup comedy, and con games:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

The guy who sold the Brooklyn Bridge (lights)

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A long time ago, in a chair very very near away, I read a story about a guy who bought the Brooklyn Bridge.

Well, he bought the lights of the Brooklyn Bridge, which were due to be replaced with new, brighter, more energy-efficient lights.

And then, some time later, one by one, the same guy sold the same lights, at a profit.

This guy, name Joe Pilato, flips random stuff for fun, because the business is not really all that great.

Pilato bought 123 of the Brooklyn Bridge lights for about $4.3k, and and he “made in total” between $13k and $14k. It’s not clear if that’s profit or revenue because it took Pilato a year to offload the lights — and along the way he had to pay for storage, transportation, cleaning, and even marketing.

But do the numbers really matter?

That snippet, “the guy who sold the Brooklyn Bridge (lights),” was good enough to get Pilato featured in a national magazine (one of a few still left with circulation of millions).

It will be a tagline he can use for the rest of his natural life to sell himself and his “flipping insider” knowledge if he were to create a bizopp course out of it, or a book on the matter, or if he wanted to get featured on podcasts or when Oprah does a segment on flipping (yeah right).

The point being:

A notable, simple, fascinating tagline, which is actually based on a pretty lousy reality (the numbers again are maybe $5k in profit, over the course of a year, and are completely unscalable), is worth more in positioning gold than an unremarkable, complicated, unglamorous summary of a genuinely successful project (“I flipped a beat-down house in Towson, MD, in just 4 months and made a profit of $67k, and that was just one of five such projects in the last year”).

He who has ears, let him hear.

Meanwhile, one thing I didn’t realize until pretty recent (I’m a slow learner, and much isolated from the world) is that “the guy who sold the Brooklyn Bridge” is such an effective tagline because it’s actually been used to describe a number of famous con men over the past century.

Con men have legitimately been selling the Brooklyn Bridge, often for cheap, to very gullible newcomers to New York, who were hoping to get something for nothing, but who ended up getting nothing for something.

That’s a bit of research that that didn’t make it into my new 10 Commandments book.

But there is a lot in that book about con men, and about valuable and even legal marketing and business and persuasion lessons that can be extracted from their sneaky and deceiving ways.

If that’s something you can imagine finding interesting:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

A billionaire’s personal positioning test

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A few days ago, a new reader and Copy Riddles member named Tim wrote me an email with the subject line, “a billionaire’s bullet idea.” Tim’s email said:

“This guy, Jason Cohen, founded a few billion dollar companies. Anyways, he wrote an article you might like and seems relevant to Copy Riddles.”

Tim linked to Cohen’s article, “The Opposite Test,” the gist of which was the following:

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So here’s my Opposite Test: For each feature/benefit bullet point, construct its negative and see if that statement is ridiculous. Would anyone be able to construct a rational strategy with that negative? Perhaps a competitor already has! If the negative is indeed ridiculous, if it would be impossible to have a product or positioning or strategy that included the negative, it means this bullet point is trivial, obvious, mandatory, or at least undifferentiating from the competition.

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This one of those ideas that is not 100% true but is 100% useful. Try it yourself and see. Take any well-established promise or positioning idea in your industry, even one that seems unassailable, and turn it around:

“Get rich quickly” => “Get rich slowly” [worked for Gary Bencivenga]

“How to Win Friends and Influence People” => “Winning Through Intimidation” [worked for Robert Ringer]

“Getting to Yes” => “Start with No” [worked for Jim Camp]

The underlying psychology here is that we don’t just align ourselves to certain people and ideas. Just as often, or probably more often, we align ourselves in opposition to certain people and ideas. The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t… unless you’ve really grown to hate the devil you know, in which, case any other devil, no matter how bad, will do.

I’m telling you this because I’m thinking of the next book I want to write, about personal positioning, and I’m testing out ideas for that.

In the meantime, I can point you to my new 10 Commandments book in case you still haven’t read that. My book has been on sale since May and has slowly accumulated 26 reviews, all of them 5 star. Here’s one from the same Tim who wrote me about the Opposite Test:

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“A new favorite”

You know, I’ve read a lot of books in this space and this is one of my favorites. He skips over the common knowledge and dives into really eye opening insights.

He condenses lots of research into a really fun book. I’ll be rereading this one soon.

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If you want to read probably the best thing I’ve written to date, in a fun and small package, for just $4.99:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

How cool are you?

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If you’ve ever wondered if you’re cool, I mean really cool, you don’t have to wonder any longer. You can now know with absolute certainty, thanks to a group of scientists who have conclusively studied, analyzed, and answered this question, from here to eternity.

Based on a worldwide study of 600 people, published a few weeks ago, the scientists say coolness breaks down into the following six characteristics:

1. Extroverted

2. Hedonistic

3. Powerful

4. Adventurous

5. Open

6. Autonomous

So you just gotta look at yourself honestly, decide how you measure up on each of these traits, add up the scores, and ta-da!

I did this exercise myself. And if you’re curious about how cool I am, I’ll tell you:

I’m as extraverted as a late-stage Howard Hughes… as hedonistic as Greta Thunberg… as powerful as Steven Seagal… as adventurous as Fred Rogers… and as open as Winston Churchill.

In other words, on the first five measures of coolness, I score a cool, hard ZERO.

All that’s left to me is trait six, autonomous.

I do pretty well there.

I live where I want, I do what I want, when I want and with who I want. I have enough money to satisfy my appetites and then some, without a boss to answer to, a constituency to appease, or a strict to fulfill.

If I want to change where I am or what I do or how much time I spend doing it, I can — I have done so in the past and I might do it again.

No man is an island, entire of itself, but I am autonomous enough to score myself as a 10 on the autonomy scale, giving me a solid 16.6% overall coolness rating.

The thing is, 16.6% is as good as 100%, at least when it comes to having a personal brand online.

In fact, once upon a time, I wrote a daily email with the hidden goal of communicating how I value autonomy over all kinds of other goods. I got a shocking number of “that’s right!” replies from long-term readers and customers, or people who have since become such.

I wrote that very deliberate email after hearing Dan Kennedy say how autonomy is the core appeal that underlies his popularity and standing and authority as a marketing guru.

That might be a valuable something to consider if you are trying to sell people stuff online.

And on that note, as I wrote yesterday, if that’s a world you’re looking to get into, then Kieran Drew is launching a new offer, called Productize Your Knowledge.

The end result of Productize Your Knowledge is you take what you already know or are already doing for clients as service work, and package a part of that into a product that sells, just for you, without making more demands on your time or lifeblood.

Like I wrote yesterday, Kieran’s Productize Your Knowledge is not a collection of “secrets” on how to create a course.

Instead, it’s both a process to help you go from where you are now to having a info product that actually sells and makes money.

It’s process that Kieran himself has followed, and also a process 7 private clients each paid Kieran $2,997 to help them implement, earlier this year.

Kieran lays out the process on the sales page below. And while you can read the sales page and then follow the process and try to do all this yourself, it’s worth considering paying Kieran for Productize Your Knowledge now. Three reasons why:

1. The launch price of $297, which will go up to $497 after the launch

2. The “Product Summer Bootcamp” community — basically an 8-week implementation and support group kicking off after the launch, with Kieran leading, giving feedback, and possibly cracking the whip (though don’t hold me to that last one)

3. Two free bonuses which I am adding in:

BEJAKO BONUS #1: 3rd conversion (last sold for $197)

Kieran’s Productize Your Knowledge guides you how to making a great info products people wanna buy. But the fact is, you can sell great info, and have people excited to pay you for it, and yet won’t consume it and won’t implement it.

3rd conversion shows you how to take care of that next step, and dramatically incraeses the odds people consume and implement the info you sell.

Not only does this make it more likely that one-time buyers buy the next thing from you and turn into long-time customers, but it makes it so you feel good continuing to sell info products instead of wanting to hang yourself (ask me how I know).

BEJAKO BONUS #2: Most Valuable Postcard #1: Nota Rapida (last sold for $100)

… all about the most important number to focus on in your business, whether you sell info products or services.

The fact is, I never cottoned on to this until I started selling info products. And out of the many mistakes I made while working as freelance copywriter, not focusing on this number is the only one I truly regret.

Whether you’re planning to completely shift to selling products or you want to sell a mix of products and services, I belive the info in this Most Valuable Postcard will keep you happy, wealthy, and wise.

These two bonuses I’m offering add up get a real-world value of $297, which is what Kieran’s PYK sells for during the launch.

If you want to get PYK but you already have both my 3rd Conversion and MVP #1:

Then write me and I will give you something of equivalent or greater value as a bonus.

Kieran’s launch, including the special launch price and the Product Summer Bootcamp, runs until next week.

However, if you want to also get the free bonuses I am offering, there’s a tighter deadline, tomorrow, Sunday July 6, at 12 midnight PST.

The sales page for Kieran’s offer is below.

If you have knowledge or expertise… if you’ve been thinking about turning that into products you can sell… if you want Kieran’s guidance and even personal feedback on what you’re doing so can get this product done in the next eight weeks instead of the next eight months or the next eight years… then take a look at Kieran’s page below, and decide if Productize Your Knowledge is for you.

If you do decide to join, forward me your receipt. I will then get you hooked up with 3rd Conversion or Most Valuable Postcard #1 — or if you already have those, with something of equivalent or greater value.

Here’s the sales page:

https://bejakovic.com/pyk

Get low

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Some time ago, I was browsing through the list of Recommended Creators on Kit, basically other newsletter owners I could do a list swap or cross-promotion with. Among the million and one marketing ones, there was a standout:

Lil Jon’s Wellness Newsletter

It turns out that rap star Lil Jon is now “on a journey of wellness and enlightened.” And if you like, he will send you “simple wellness tips each Wednesday.”

I gotta say this made me chuckle.

All I really knew of Lil Jon is his 2002 megahit, Get Low.

The video for that song showed Lil Jon as a kind of king of the ghetto club, holding a chalice and a glass cane that looked like a scepter, and with his mouth full of gold teeth. The video also featured the usual women grinding and twerking on stripper poles, while the refrain of the song ran:

“To the window/to the floor/till the sweat drop down my balls/till all these bitches crawl”

After I saw that Lil Jon is now enlightened and willing to send me wellness tips each Wednesday, I got curious.

What happened? I had to read about the man.

“Well I’ll be damned,” I said after Wikipedia hit me. It turns out that the “king of the ghetto club” thing was just an act.

I don’t know how much you care to know about Lil Jon, but here are a few facts that can be enlightening:

1. Lil Jon’s dad was an aerospace engineer and his mom an army nurse.

2. He grew up in a middle class neighborhood and attended a magnet school.

3. As a teenager he was heavily into skating culture and his favorite bands included the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

4. He’s been described as a “high achiever” and a “passionate reader.”

You might think this email is just about how your public persona can be vastly different from who you really are. But it’s more than that.

I’ve been going on lots of first dates lately. Inevitably the girls ask me what I do. To which I say, “Not much. Mostly I sit around. I watch TV. I play a LOT of video games.” Then I look the girl straight in the eye and smile to make it clear I am rather proud of what I just said.

One girl so far has been confused and shocked. The rest were first amused and then pleased.

Because what’s the alternative? A boring conversation about work, or worse yet, digging myself deeper and deeper into the quicksand of trying to impress the girl. That’s not good for me or her.

I think this whole topic is worth developing more, and maybe I will do that in a future book on personal positioning. I could call the chapter about this “Idiot Positioning,” or with a hat tip to Lil Jon, maybe “Crunk Positioning.”

But maybe I’m running ahead of myself. Maybe I haven’t sold you on this whole idea yet. Maybe you are skeptical that making yourself out to look dirty or stupid or like a loser is actually a good strategy.

What can I tell you? Effective communication is not always what it seems. Insults can work as glue between friends. Assurances can be veiled warnings. And making yourself out to be an idiot, and smiling about it, can work in your favor.

And if you want to understand why, and how to make this work for you, I suggest consulting Commandment VI of my new 10 Commandments book. In case you haven’t gotten your copy yet:

​https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

What matters more than results

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Last year, a dude with some personal domain email address signed up to my list.

I make a habit of doing a bit of detective work on new subscribers. This led me to a New York Times article about the dude from 2015.

At that time, said the article, he was the manager of an investment fund with $35 billion under management.

I wrote him a 1-1 email, as I do sometimes with new subscribers, to say hello, to mention the article about him I had dug up in my snooping, and to ask what a person of his profile is doing signing up to a daily email list like mine, about writing and marketing and effective communication. He replied:

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I basically do the same thing I did for the pension fund, but now for a small group of direct clients. I also run quite a bit of money for other investment advisors and their clients. I manage about $1.2 billion total – I’m a solo shop, do it all myself.

I decided a few years ago that I wanted to be out of the public eye – 20 years was enough, so I’m pretty secretive and off the grid.

My results are still among the best in the country, but I’ve learned in the retail investment world perceptions matter more than results. So I generate best in class returns mostly for myself and personal pride.

My business actually runs and grows off the image I portray to clients and prospects. I’ve learned that I’m lucky enough to have the ability to naturally make complex things simple, which people are dying for in the investment business.

I’ve developed a somewhat unique way to communicate, mostly using very focused, simple communications. Especially in the world of AI, I think this skill will matter more than most. So I’ve become a closet student of writing, copywriting, communication, etc. That’s how I can across your newsletter. I bought your book too.

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I thought that was curious and wanted to share it with you.

Here’s a dude who, so you might imagine, lives and breathes by measurable results. I mean, either he makes his investors money, or he doesn’t. Either he outperforms the other guy, or he doesn’t.

Except, as he says, that doesn’t really matter, not as much as perception, as the image he portrays to his clients and prospects.

That’s something to keep in mind, if you yourself work in a field that’s supposedly results-based, and particularly if you work in a field that’s more fuzzy and wooly.

So how do you build up and maintain an image that clients and prospects are willing to pay for?

The message above from the investment advisor spells it out.

I can only add that he also told me he sends “clients and prospects periodic emails about the markets, my strategy, etc.”

Maybe it’s something you could profit from too? If you’d like my help on that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

What it’s like to finally sell Guinness

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My friend Biff recently texted me to say he had been listening to the What It’s Like To Be podcast, which I’ve written about often in these emails.

That podcast features interviews with people in different professions, with the goal of finding out what it’s like to do their job.

(As is often true of these kinds of podcasts, the host is somebody famous or influential, who has decided to do a pet project. In this case the influential person is Dan Heath, author of the book Made To Stick, which I’ve also written about many times in this newsletter.)

Anyways, I had not been listening to the What It’s Like To Be podcast for a while – there’s too much damn stuff to listen to.

I felt guilty after Biff wrote me to say he had heard some good episodes lately.

So at the gym two days ago, I put on the latest episode, to find out what it’s like to be… a barman.

A barman is apparently what in Ireland they call a bar tender. Except not really, because a barman also acts as a kind of standup comedian as well as a therapist or self-esteem coach, which U.S. bar tenders are typically not certified for.

But let me get to the point of today’s email, the valuable message that can maybe make you millions of cents or even dollars:

The barman — name, Brian Wynne – said that his pub has been around for 30 years. But in spite of it being an Irish pub, in Dublin, they didn’t sell Guinness until three weeks ago. He explained:

“We’ve been open since ’96 and we put our first Guinness tap in three weeks ago. We make an equivalent porter. When I say equivalent, I mean it’s vastly superior, of course, but I can’t say that. I’m sure your lawyers will have a go at you for allowing me to say that kinda thing.”

Dan Heath then asked Wynne how Guinness is doing after the first three weeks. Wynne replied:

“Oh, it’s outselling everything else we have. You spend 20 years explaining to people why we don’t sell Guinness ’cause our products are superior and more Irish. You make jokes about it. I have so many anecdotes and lines all built up about the sale of Guinness, which we don’t have, and then we do have it in…”

… and it outsells everything else, without even trying.

I wanted to share this with you because it’s a truth that goes far beyond the Irish pub.

I thought to myself, as I listened to Wynne while doing my fire hydrant exercises, how many online business owners find themselves in same position?

They work to create a “vastly superior” product… they turn themselves into the equivalent of a barman who educates and jokes and soft-sells… they show up day after day in front of their prospects… and yet, sales still a fraction of what they could be, if they only sold what people already really wanted, ie. a Guinness instead of their no-name vastly superior equivalent.

Do with that what seems meet.

As for me, I’ll take me to do some market research. I’ll even offer you a trade:

Hit reply to this email and tell me the last digital info purchase you made. It could be a course… some live training or coaching… a new newsletter or membership you subscribed to… or an ebook (except Amazon kindle ebooks, that’s too broad for my purposes).

I’m curious to find out what you’ve already spent money on, and maybe I will start selling the same.

And in return?

I’ll reply to you and tell you my own latest digital info purchase. (It’s not Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin, I promise that.) I will tell you that it’s an ebook, that I paid $209 for it (yes, there are no missing decimal points in there), and that I have so far taken 9 pages of notes from it.

I’m not sure it will be as useful for you as it has been to me, but if you’re curious to find out what it is, you know what to do.

If you’re struggling to sell continuity…

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This morning, I got a DM on Skool from a business owner in Australia, who wrote:

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Hey John, I saw you promoting Ronin, how’s the signups going on your side? I’ve sent a couple of emails but only 50 odd clicks which is pretty low. I’m finding it a challenge to convey the real value of what Travis teaches without sounding like a scammy hypester!

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The background is that the past few days, I’ve been promoting Travis Sago’s Royalty Ronin membership program. It’s a membership I’m personally signed up to, as is the business owner from Australia above who wrote me this morning.

So far, I’ve sent 4 emails to promote Ronin. I’ve had a few hundred people click through, but I have only had a handful of people sign up for the free trial.

I’m not bothered by that result.

Travis’s community is after all built around Travis, and selling my audience into a paid community built around a person they don’t really know is a tough ask.

Plus, Royalty Ronin is very expensive, and I figure people are wary of signing up for a $300/month subscription, even if they get a week’s free trial to make up their minds.

I keep cheerfully promoting the free trial of Royalty Ronin because 1) every day, I’m still getting more people to opt in, and 2) even if a few folks decide to stay signed up past the trial, it’s going to be long-term good for me and good for them.

That said, I thought it was actually a curious choice from Travis Sago to start selling Royalty Ronin as a per-month subscription (something he only started now, as far as I know).

That’s because I remember one training of his, and the question of continuity programs came up. Travis explicitly shared his philosophy, which was “Don’t sell continuity.”

That doesn’t mean you can’t get paid recurring month-to-month. It simply means how you price and position your existing offer (yes, the one you’re selling via continuity) in the audience’s mind.

Travis had a small, counterintuitive twist for making recurring sales, which gets you a bunch of money up front as well as more people to pay you month-to-month than if you just offer a monthly subscription.

If you yourself have a continuity program that’s not making as many sales as you like, this info could be gold for you. Or it might be something you choose to ignore, the way Travis seems to be doing now, for reasons of his own.

In any case, if you’re already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin, you can find this recurring-income-without-continuity tweak inside the “$1k a Day in 1 Hour a Day” training in the Ronin course area.

And in case you haven’t already signed up for trial of Ronin, but you would like to see what it’s about, and whether it’s worth your time and attention, then here’s more info on the membership from Travis himself:

https://bejakovic.com/ronin

P.S. If you’ve already signed up for trial of Royalty Ronin via my link above, forward me Travis’s welcome email, the one with “Vroom” in the subject line. I have a small but growing bundle of bonuses that’s waiting for you as a way of saying thanks for taking me up on my recommendation.

The legend of my upstairs neighbor

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One of my upstairs neighbors is a middle-aged, rather large golden retriever, whose name I’ve never learned.

I hear him frequently trundling across the apartment above mine, his unmanicured golden retriever claws clack-clacking on the hardwood floor.

He he as a passion for barking, often late at night, as I’m falling asleep (warding off robbers who might have climbed up to the 10th floor), or early in the morning, before I’ve really woken up (I guess to announce he is awake and ready to pee).

One time I was sitting on my balcony when a gigantic, disgusting clump of yellow golden retriever hair wafted down from the balcony above and landed at my feet.

For a few moments, I sat there staring at it, considering what to do. Eventually I just decided to just pick it up and throw it in the trash, and never speak of it again (until now).

I’ve run into this golden retriever several times in the elevator. He’s always completely ignored me. He’s never bothered to sniff my hand. There was not the slightest tail waggle. He never even looked up at me — the elevator doors were more interesting.

All that’s to say, my entire experience with this golden retriever has been negative. At no point has this dog ever done anything nice for me or towards me.

And yet, I still have sympathy for this stupid dog, and I keep hoping I’ll run into him whenever I take the elevator.

In part, this is because I’m a sucker for dogs. But in bigger part, it’s that golden retrievers have such a reputation about them — playful, loving, comfortable with and interested in all strangers.

I bring all this up because a couple days ago, I was listening to Dan Kennedy’s Influential Writing seminar.

One of the things that Dan talked about was legend.

He gave the examples of Wyatt Earp (who prolly had little skill with a gun, but developed a reputation as the fastest gun in the West) and Harry Houdini (who created such mystique around his acts that grizzled ex-president Teddy Roosevelt once asked Houdini if the stage illusions were real magic).

The value of such a legend, says Dan, is that it precedes you. Once it’s there, it doesn’t matter much what you do or don’t do. People will still perceive you and think of you through the prism of that legend.

So if you want things to get easier for you in the future, before you even arrive to where you’re going, it makes sense to think about legend, one that precedes you like the smell of galleys preceded them.

And now, I have to go. I have a flight in a couple hours, and I still have to pack and get to the airport.

On my way to the airport, I’ll take the elevator to get to the lobby of my building… and I’m hoping against hope I’ll run into the golden retriever, even though he’s never done anything for me, and maybe this time I’ll get to pet him.

In entirely related news, if you’d like my help starting and sticking with writing daily emails like this one, which get people reading and buying today, and spreading your legend tomorrow, then take a look here:

​https://bejakovic.com/deh​