Spectacles

Will you witness your own Moose Murders?

by

Today being February 22, it makes for the 33rd anniversary of the one and only performance of the Moose Murders, said to be the most notorious flop that Broadway has ever seen, which opened and was shut down on the same night, February 22, 1983.

The Moose Murders was a slapstick murder mystery that featured plot elements such as:

* Attempted incest between son and mother

* A coffin, corpse, and a taxidermied moose head on stage for most of the play

* A mummified paraplegic who gets up from his wheelchair to kick a man dressed as a moose in the crotch

A New York Times theater critic who was present at that one and only performance wrote:

“The season’s most stupefying flop — a show so preposterous that it made minor celebrities out of everyone who witnessed it, whether from on stage or in the audience.”

I’m telling you this because, as two time Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman once put it, nobody knows anything.

Goldman was talking about Hollywood, but same applies to Broadway and elsewhere.

A bunch of people, typically trained pros and maybe even talented, putting their maybe-talented heads together… putting in a lot of effort… putting their reputations and emotional well-being on the line… only to produce a complete and embarrassing flop, one that will hopefully soon be forgotten, or worse, that will be remembered for years to come and held up as an example of BAD.

And now, a chance to witness your own Moose Murders?

As I announced in my email yesterday, I will be running a “behind the scenes” auction — auctioning off the offers, sales numbers, DM sales conversations, insights, and private conclusions, present and future, from auctions I will run in the coming weeks and months with partners and for myself.

An auction about auctions? Too meta?

I floated the idea in an email a few days ago to see if there is interest. There seems to be.

But the Moose Murders had 13 preview performances before that fateful February 22 1983 opening.

The writer, the director, and the actors still had no real idea this is gonna be a disaster. Like Goldman said, nobody knows anything, not until the stakes get real.

So let’s see what will happen with my “behind the scenes” auction.

Maybe it will go off well.

In this case, it might be a fun show and maybe you learn something and even get your hands on some private and behind-the-scenes data and insights.

Or maybe it will turn into the Moose Murders of auctions.

In other words, maybe this is your chance to witness a stupefying flop in real time, and become a bit of minor celebrity, and have a story you can tell your Internet Marketing grandchildren for years to come.

My “behind the scenes” auction will have its one and only performance this Tuesday, February 24.

The curtain goes up at 7pm CET/1 pm EST/10am EST.

If you’d like to grab your seat in time for the spectacle and possibly legendary flop:

​https://t.me/+_qLpIllO2IZlM2Q0

If you won’t laugh too much if I fail, I’ll try it

by

A couple years ago I read a biography of Harry Houdini. I wanted to learn about showmanship because I’m far from a natural showman. And who better to learn from than one of the greatest showmen of the 20th century?

One curious thing kept catching my eye throughout the book. The background:

The background:

Houdini built his career on accepting public, grand, and spectacular challenges.

He’d perform on stage and offer audience members the chance to tie him in the thickest of ropes from head to foot, twice over, however they pleased, to see if they could keep him from freeing himself.

He’d challenge secret service agents to cuff him with their most modern handcuffs, to see if these cuffs were the ones that could finally hold him.

He’d accept when police chiefs publicly announced they would lock him inside their most secure cells, because those cells were impossible to get out of.

Now here’s the curious thing that caught my eye:

Each time Houdini accepted such a public challenge, rather than boasting that this would be a cakewalk because of his supernatural skills, he would rather highlight the possibility that he would fail.

For example, one time, after Houdini had just escaped from handcuffs in a police station, the police chief joked he will lock Houdini in a cell to keep him from escaping. Houdini replied:

“Getting out of a cell isn’t in my contract and I don’t guarantee it, but if you won’t laugh too much if I fail, I’ll try it.”

I’ve been thinking about this as I prepare for my upcoming “I endorse YOU” auction.

As I wrote a few days ago, this auction is the riskiest offer I’ve ever made, for myself personally.

If nobody ends up bidding or the winning bid ends up too low, I will look incompetent, foolish, and very probably unskilled in this thing I claim to be good enough to teach, namely, making offers that people want to pay me good money for.

On the other hand, the more successful the auction becomes, the more obligation I am taking on, and the more risky it becomes that I will fail on the delivery side. After all, I am promising that the winning bidder will make back all of his or her investment, and that becomes progressively more difficult the higher the bid goes.

But I’ll try it nonetheless, for your entertainment.

If you won’t laugh too much if I fail, I’ll put my reputation and wellbeing on the line for you.

Here are the details of the spectacle:

Time: This Wednesday, Dec 10, at 6pm CET/12 noon EST/9am PST.

Place: My Skool community, Daily Email House

What to bring: Popcorn, binoculars, and possibly smelling salts in case the person next to you faints from the suspense

If you wanna get your seats to the most daring, most risky, possibly most lethal challenge of my career:

https://bejakovic.com/house

A splendid chance for notoriety that will never offer itself again

by

Three years ago, I wrote a prescient email that started out so:

“Today, I want to share with you a marketing technique so powerful, so daring, so all-around incredible that I wish I had the circumstances and the courage to implement it myself right now.”

This powerful, daring, and all-around incredible marketing technique is something I found in a book about P.T. Barnum. Lemme tell you about it.

Barnum once promoted a Swedish opera singer, Jenny Lind, on her first tour of the U.S. He ran ads in newspapers to promote Lind, but not just that.

Barnum also — get ready for this — ran an auction for the very first Lind ticket to be sold.

But again, not just that.

Barnum went in private to see a certain hat maker, Genin, and told Genin to bid as much as needed to win.

Barnum then went to a Dr. Brandreth, a maker of patent medicines, and also told the good doctor to bid as much as needed.

“The higher the price,” Barnum told both men separately, “the greater renown it will give you all over the country within twenty-four hours.”

Genin listened. He kept bidding and ended up putting up the winning $225 bid for the first Lind ticket, about $8,662 in today’s money.

Within 24 hours, the name “Genin the hat maker” was known all over the country.

Ragged and beat up “real Genin hats” started being sold at a 46,000% markup.

Genin started selling 10,000 extra hats a year on the back of that initial $225 investment — and became a very rich man.

Dr. Brandreth, on the other hand, didn’t listen to Barnum’s advice.

Brandeth decided to cap his bidding at $200, and he lost the opportunity to win the first Lind ticket. He later said:

“I had better have paid $5,000 [over $192,000 in today’s money] than to have missed securing the first Jenny Lind ticket. Such a splendid chance for notoriety will never offer itself again.”

Three years ago, as I said, I didn’t have the courage or circumstances to implement Barnum’s powerful, daring, and all-around incredible auction idea.

Today I have the circumstances — my Daily Email House group, where I can run the auction. And as for courage, I have gathered that too, and will run my own first auction soon.

Ultimately, this auction is your opportunity to build a name for yourself, gain notoriety, and achieve status, all while building up your email list.

If you win the auction, I will use my own good name, standing, and authority with my list to hold you up like baby Simba and say “Behold!” while all the gazelles and zebras stare up in wonder and applaud.

But even before that happens, you will already have gotten your name into people’s minds.

“Who is this Genin the hat maker?” they will ask, except with your name except Genin’s.

Some people are sure to look you up and sign up for your list right away.

If you have a flair for showmanship and self-promotion, you will be able to capitalize immediately by making a big deal out of being the winning bidder.

But even if not, your name will simply become more familiar to people — including the many influential marketers and business owners who read these emails — so they become more responsive to you the next time hear of you.

Now lean in. Close. I wanna whisper something important to you:

If you’re looking to build a name for yourself, I advise you, in secret, one-to-one, just you and me here inside this email, to bid as much as it takes to win.

It will be a splendid chance to win renown for yourself that will never offer itself again.

You’re likely to profit many times over what you will bid to win. Of course, I’m even guaranteeing that you will make all your money back before I’m done promoting you.

More details on my auction soon.

Meanwhile, if you wanna secure your spot inside Daily Email House, where the auction will be happening:

https://bejakovic.com/house

Bejako After Dark, my new OnlyFans project

by

I’ve spent a lot of time in Ubers the past few days, jetsetting back and forth across my home town of Zagreb, Croatia.

A part of that experience has been listening to the local pop radio stations, which seem to be the music of choice for Uber drivers here.

(Bear with me for a minute. I promise to give you a good payoff to this story.)

During an Uber today, an awful pop song came on the radio. A woman was singing a childish tune over a reggae rhythm played by synthesizers. The chorus kept repeating (translated from Croatian):

===

When you’re alone, you need to go to the sea

When you’re alone, you need a friend

When you’re alone, you need a bottle of wine, you need a nice girl

===

“What is this horror,” I asked myself after the chorus repeated for the 45th time. Then on the 46th repeat, the final line changed:

“When you’re alone, you need a bottle of wine, you need Severina”

“Oh ok that makes sense,” I said.

In case you don’t know — and if you do, I have questions for you — Severina is the most nationally and internationally famous singer from Croatia.

Starting in the early 90s, for a decade and more, Severina recorded dutiful and horrible songs like the one I heard today. Her career wasn’t going anywhere.

And then, in June 2004, a sex tape involving Severina leaked out. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, the tape was quickly viewed more times than the moon landing.

As you can probably guess, Severina’s sex tape transformed Severina’s music career.

It opened up huge new audiences both locally and internationally. It helped her change her image to a kind of sex vixen.

It got a lot of musicians, including some respectable ones, interested in working with her. And it has kept her music, awful though it is, playing on the radio, even today, 20 years later.

But I promised you a good payoff to today’s story, and a sex tape ain’t it.

Along with listening to Severina, I am also reading a book titled Veeck As In Wreck. It’s the autobiography of Bill Veeck, who was one of the most innovative and influential owners of a major league baseball team in the history of the sport.

At different times, Veeck owned the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians.

But he started out by working for the Chicago Cubs, back when the Cubs were a horrifically losing team. Of course, no fans wanted to go see the Cubs since they were so bad, and the Cubs’ stadium, Wrigley Field, sat empty.

Veeck managed to turn all this around. Well, not the Cubs’ losing record, but the attendance problems.

Veeck managed to sell out game after game by introducing creative giveaways (live lobsters, a horse), spectacles (fireworks, before any other baseball teams had ’em), and schemes (a dwarf playing as designated hitter). As Veeck put it in in his autobiography:

“A team that isn’t winning a pennant has to sell something in addition to its won-and-lost record.”

And now I’d like to point out something crazy that might have slipped your attention:

Both the Chicago Cubs and early-stage Severina were in the entertainment business — sports and music. I mean, what sells easier and better than sports and music?

Except, of course, for the Cubs and Severina, being “entertaining” wasn’t enough. They both kind of sucked at that, and so they had to tack on a second degree of entertainment — a circus environment, a sex tape — in order for fans to care or at least stomach their first degree of entertainment.

And that’s the point I wanted to get across to you.

If you’re selling something important and dutiful, you can sell more of it by trying to be entertaining. You probably already know that – it’s the “infotainment” idea that people like Sean D’Souza have been championing for two decades.

The thing is, you might not be much of an entertainer. Or you might be decent, but you might simply be in a marketplace where everybody else is also entertaining, and maybe as well as you.

In that case, you can still lap the pack if you offer a second-degree of entertainment — entertainment of a different kind, preferably in an entirely different format.

And with that, I’d like to announce I’m launching a new project, an OnlyFans channel, Bejako After Dark — no, you wish.

But I am thinking about this topic of second-degree entertainment seriously. In time, some good idea will land on me. Maybe it will be OnlyFans.

In any case, until that happens, let me just turn you on to something I’ve already created — an entertainment of a different kind, in an entirely different format, in which I bare myself quite naked:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

Солярис

by

Last night, I went to the movies. By myself. At 10pm, which is pretty much my bedtime.

First came one trailer — some Iraq war thriller with Matt Damon as a solider yelling at other soldiers and lots of explosions and jets swooping in and rapid-fire editing between more yelling and explosions and gunfire.

Then came another trailer — a horror movie about vampires in the deep south, with bloody mouths and fangs and a vampire banging his head on the door of a wood cabin, asking to be let in, while the non-vampires inside cower and transfer their fear to the audience.

And then, after about six total minutes of this adrenaline-pumping overstimulation, the screen got dark. A Bach piece on organ started playing and a barebones title card showed the name of the movie:

Солярис

… or Solaris, if you can’t read that. A three-hour-long science fiction movie from 1972. In Russian, which I don’t speak. With Spanish subtitles, which I can barely read before they disappear. The movie opens up with a five-minute sequence of a man walking next to a lake, without any dialogue.

I’ve seen Solaris twice before, years ago. A few days ago, I finished reading the science fiction novel on which it’s based. When I saw it was playing at the local old-timey movie theater, I decided I would violate my usual bedtime and go see it again, and on the big screen.

I’m not trying to sell you on Solaris. All I really want to highlight is the contrast that was so obvious between those new Hollywood trailers and the start of the 1972 Russian movie. It reminded me of something I read in William Goldman’s Adventures In The Screen Trade:

“In narrative writing of any sort, you must eventually seduce your audience. But seduce doesn’t mean rape.”

Goldman was writing in a different era. He was contrasting movie writing to TV writing.

At the beginning of a movie, Goldman said, you have some time. You can seduce. Things are different in TV land — you gotta be aggressive, right in the first few seconds. Otherwise the viewer will simply change the channel.

Things have changed since Goldman wrote the above. Today, all Hollywood movies have become like TV. That doesn’t eliminate the fact that different formats allow you to do different things, and that not every movie needs to start with a heart-pounding sequence of bloody vampires banging their heads on the door.

The bigger point is, just because you know a trick, this doesn’t require you to use it at every damn opportunity. Holding back can in fact can make the show better.

A year ago, I read a book titled Magic And Showmanship, about… magic and showmanship. The author of that book, a magician named Henning Nelms, kept coming back to a principle he called conservation.

Conservation is keeping from overselling what you’ve got, and from making yourself out to be more skilled or powerful than absolutely necessary for the effect in question.

It’s a lesson that can apply to a lot of showmanship, including showmanship in print.

Anyways, I suspect nobody will take me up on a recommendation to read Nelms’s Magic And Showmanship, but recommend it I will. In order to sell it to you, I can only say that last year, I was even thinking of taking the ideas from this book and turning them into a full-blown course or training about running email promos, because I found the ideas so transferable.

In case you’re a curious type, or in case you simply want new ideas for running email promos:

https://bejakovic.com/nelms

The “Challenge Playbook” for building a name for yourself

by

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

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

No.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That man’s name?

Mr. Bea— no just kidding.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I came up with ideas like this:

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe my ideas gave you some ideas of your own.

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

But on to the sales end of this email:

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

The fact is, I don’t know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Swan song for famous forecaster

by

Today’s top headline in the New York Post:

“Renowned election guru Nate Silver reveals latest forecast for presidential election”

That’s news to me because I remember Nate Silver as a famously failed forecaster.

Silver confidently predicted the 2016 election for H. Clinton. After Trump won that election, Nate Silver waffled and said the data was right but his own weakness got in the way. The implied promise was, “I’ll be right next time.” People around the Internet shrugged and said, “That’s good enough.”

I think there are lotsa lessons to be learned from the ongoing career of famed forecaster Nate Silver. I will draw just one for you today, one I read in Lawrence Bernstein’s newsletter a few days ago:

“Rule #1 of Financial Copywriting 101: It’s better to be wrong than wishy-washy.”

This applies to any copy, not just financial.

So I’d like to make a confident prediction of my own. We won’t be hearing from Nate Silver again, at least not in front page stories for big publications like the New York Post, and not around major future contests like the 2028 presidential election.

Because Silver seems to have lost his nerve, possibly after the last Trump election he had to call. While people dearly want him to make confident predictions, he’s hedging his bets now. From the NY Post article (emphasis mine):

“Renowned election guru Nate Silver called the race for the White House a “PURE TOSS-UP” Sunday as he gave ex-President Donald Trump a SLIGHT EDGE over Vice President Kamala Harris in his latest forecast.”

Who’s got any use for wishy-washy forecasts like “pure toss-up?” My prediction is that the media will find a new Zoltar, one who is willing to confidently say what will happen and cheerfully be wrong.

Another prediction:

Tom Grundy’s Subtraction Method training will happen this Wednesday at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST.

Tom will talk about how to think less pedantically, how to be okay without clinging to the latest mental-model-of-the-month, and how to do better in life as a result — emotionally and maybe even practically.

Tom’s training is free for you because you are a subscriber of my newsletter.

If you’d like to sign up for it before the polls close:

https://bejakovic.com/subtraction

The winners of the 2024 Best Daily Email Awards

by

[lights, red carpet, swelling music… I trot out on stage in a tuxedo and black tie, hold up my hands, and say]

Thank you, thank you.

We’re here tonight to celebrate the greatest year ever in daily emails.

[applause]

As you know, tonight’s awards show is organized by the Daily Email Academy, which you happen to be a member of by virtue of reading this newsletter.

[more applause, I give a few measured claps as well]

This is the inaugural Best Daily Email Awards.

While there’s been lots of glamour and excitement in the buildup to this event, there were also inevitably some little hiccups that go with the first of anything.

That’s okay… as Dan Kennedy might say, if we all stopped doing something if the first time wasn’t perfect, the human race would soon die out.

[a bit of laughter]

No, but seriously. There were some issues.

For example, there are thousands of daily email newsletters out there, and hundreds of thousands of actual daily emails in a year.

We in the organizing committee didn’t realize it’s unlikely that any one daily email would get more than one vote, even with a voting body as numerous and global as the Daily Email Academy.

[camera pans out to thoughtful, nodding faces in the audience]

The second issue was that the rules for voting this year didn’t prohibit voting for your own emails. Which is just what a lot of enterprising Academy members ended up doing.

[a bit of chatter in the audience, some shaking heads]

Since this wasn’t against the rules this year, the committee decided to accept such nominations, but it evaluated them with extra scrutiny.

The third and final hiccup was that there were a large number of submissions.

And since other prestigious awards (ahem, looking at you Oscars) are infamous for long, drawn-out ceremonies that last for many hours, with dozens of categories nobody cares about…

… ​​the committee has decided to make tonight’s ceremony short and snappy, like a good daily email, and focus on 5 most relevant and dramatic categories, highlighting diverse topics and styles, for this inaugural 2024, Best Daily Email Awards.

So without further ado… drum roll please… thank you… starting from the top…

The award for the Best Short Daily Email (under 100 words) goes to:

Josh Spector of the For The Interested newsletter, with his email, “So you say you want a resolution…”

In just 33 words, including the subject line, Josh managed to put a little smile on his readers’ faces… get them to open his email… share two valuable resources… and even include a classified ad that paid him a few hundred dollars.

Big congratulations to Josh for this successful daily email, and for being the first ever Best Daily Email Award winner.

Next, the award in the Best Original Story Daily Email goes to…

Australia’s best copywriter, Daniel Throssell, for his email, The Airport Incident.

Daniel’s email was a taut psychological thriller, set within the boarding queue at an airport gate.

Will she? Won’t she?

You had to keep reading to find out, only for the shocking surprise at the end of the email.

Big congratulations to Daniel on winning this prestigious award, and for writing an email that still keeps people talking months later.

Next, the award for the Best Foreign Language Daily Email goes to…

René Kerkdyk, a school teacher and guitar instructor from Hildesheim, Germany, for his email, “Gute Idee – Falsches Werkzeug.”

Fortunately, René’s email was subtitled in English as well. That’s why the committee could confirm the email was funny, charming, and heartfelt, the way that those European productions often are.

Congratulations to René for his successful email, and for being the inaugural Best Foreign Language Daily Email Award winner.

At this point, only two awards remain.

The tension is palpable.

First, we have the award for the Best Documentary Email, which goes to…

Matt Levine over at Bloomberg, for his email, “Money Stuff: Bill Ackman Wants Less Money.”

This was a 4,052-word email about markets and finances, and about a man named Bill Ackman, who is apparently a billionaire hedge fund manager.

I have to admit, I dozed off during this email, but that’s just because I find the topic of financial markets so foreign to me.

But — clearly those who enjoy financial topics thought this email was particularly fine. Also, it’s very likely that out of all the successful email writers on this list, Matt Levine got paid the most to write this exhaustive and exhausting piece.

For all these reasons, “Bill Ackman Wants Less Money” clearly deserves its Best Daily Email award. Congratulations to Matt and to Bloomberg.

And finally, our last Best Daily Email Award of the night, in the Best Adapted Story category, goes to…

…. yes, well, maybe you were wondering…

… of course it goes to me, John Bejakovic, for my email, “You don’t want to sell to a hobbit like me” — a story set in Middle Earth, featuring a boring and conservative hobbit who refused to heed the call of adventure.

I debated about including this email because it’s my own.

But as I wrote last week, the whole point of inventing an awards show is to be in the middle of it, and to use it for promotion and business-getting. So it would be a bit foolish to back out now. I will only say I was not the one to nominate this email.

So congratulations to all the Best Daily Email Award winners. You displayed an incredible amount of talent, creativity, and devotion to your craft.

And thank you to all Daily Email Academy members who voted in this year’s awards.

We will be back next year, with an even bigger, even more glamorous show, to celebrate what’s sure to be a new greatest year ever in daily emails.

Picture it now and ask yourself…​​

Will you be standing on stage to accept one of the 2025 Best Daily Email Awards?

The best way to make sure it happens is to start writing today. And if you’re ready to make the commitment and to dive in and pursue your crazy passion, here’s the official, Daily Email Academy-endorsed guide to producing interesting, acclaimed, and profitable daily emails:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

Slutty email

by

Yes, the subject line of today’s email includes the word “slutty.”

If that didn’t outrage or shock you so much that you marked this email as spam already, then read on, because I will tell you how to turn any shock and outrage you did feel into profits, regardless of what you sell.

I’m making my way through a backlog of old New Yorker magazines that have gathered under my living-room coffee table.

​​The one I’m currently on is from April 2023. The main article is about Pinky Cole, the founder of a fast-food chain called Slutty Vegan.

The Slutty Vegan menu features no-meat burgers such as Fussy Hussy ($13) and Super Slut ($15).

When customers step forward to order, a Slutty employee announces through a microphone, “It’s Slutty Saturday!”

​​If it’s the customer’s first time at the restaurant, and they admit it, then the employee adds over the microphone, “We have a virgin slut!”

There’s a bouncer at the Slutty Vegan entrance, and a DJ plays Drake and Aaliyah inside. On the wall, there’s a bright sign that reads, “EAT PLANTS YA SLUT.”

As one investor in the company said, “It’s this very unusual juxtaposition of veganism, which is often connected to what I’m not allowed to eat, with sluttiness, which is all the things that I’m gonna do even though I’m not allowed to.”

And it’s resonating.

Most people who go to Slutty Vegan are not going because they are militant vegans. In fact, most are not vegans at all, or really going for the food.

Slutty hamburgers seem to be middling — “better than American McDonalds,” as one interviewed customer put it. Or in the words of the author of the New Yorker article, who was trying to quit eating factory-farmed meat when he first went to Slutty Vegan, “Like most people, though, I went back in equal parts for the vegan food and for the vibes.”

You might wonder whether it’s viable long-term business strategy to sell people middling food while calling them sluts.

As of that April 2023 article, Slutty Vegan had 10 locations around Georgia, Alabama, and New York. It’s had investment that valued the company at $100 million (the first location opened in 2018).

Slutty Vegan has since opened a new location in Texas and is opening a new one in Baltimore, one of my adopted home towns.

Pinky Cole, the founder, is also launching an entrepreneurial reality show, and Slutty Vegan has had partnerships with designer Steve Madden and was planning one with Lululemon.

The point I’m trying to illustrate is the power of creating a sense of place around whatever and wherever you sell, whether that’s a slutty drive-through or your own slutty website.

Of course, you don’t have to get all crass and sexual with your sense of place, like Slutty Vegan does.

This idea of sense of place has long been practiced to perfection by another restaurant franchise, Unslutty Starbucks.

As the Starbucks website says (under the “Stories” subdomain), Starbucks is the Third Place, a place of warmth and connection and belonging, a place apart from work (presumably, where coldness and alienation reign) and home (filled with mess and stress).

And if you need reminding how valuable that Third Place concept has been, Starbucks now has 35,000 locations worldwide and is valued at $104 billion.

So if you felt any shock or outrage at today’s “slutty email” subject line, then good.

It will help you remember today’s email, and apply, in your own business, the lesson of creating a sense of place — a gift-box-and-bow around whatever you sell, which elevates your product from a commodity to a price-elastic emotional experience.

You might wonder what kind of sense of place I aim for with my emails, and with the products that I sell.

Or maybe you don’t wonder. Maybe it’s obvious. Because I’ve written emails about it before, and I’ve even created paid courses about my chosen “sense of place” in the past.

But if would like to hear me spell it out, you can do do so on the free training putting on later this month.

The training will cover how I write and profit from this newsletter that you are reading now.

It will happen on Monday January 22, 2024 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. But you will have to be signed up to my list first. Click here to do so.

The essence of expert showmanship (prepare to be underwhelmed)

by

I’m reading book about magic and showmanship by a magician with the fanciful name of Hake Talbot. Old Hake says:

“Attention to detail is the essence of expert showmanship.”

I see you rolling your eyes.

​​​​”Oh no Bejako! Please stop with all these profound, new, and immediately useful ideas! No more please, I’ve had enough value for today!”

Bear with me for a second.

Talbot’s advice to magicians is to write out their routine as if it were real, with no tricks, no sleights, and no misdirection necessary. Real magic, not stage conjuring.

And then, says Talbot, compare your actual act, detail by detail, to the real thing.

Any place where there’s a discrepancy from the real to the stage, well, you gotta address that in some way. At least if you wanna achieve “expert showmanship.”

That’s what attention to detail means.

But that’s abstract advice. Maybe an concrete example would help.

Let me use the example of my Influential Emails promotion earlier this week.

After all, I put on a kind of performance every day in these emails. I don’t play the role of a magician who makes rabbits appear out of top hats. But I do play the role of a marketing wizard who makes thousands of dollars appear on command out of daily emails.

Now, in an ideal case, in the case of real magic, what would a promotion for a course like Influential Emails look like?

​​Here’s an idea:

The offer would sell out before it even became publicly available.

That’s what I was planning to do with Influential Emails.

And I got tantalizingly close, first by having a waiting list, and second by offering the course a day early to the people on the waiting list who had bought something from me before, along with an inducement to buy now.

(In case you’re curious, the reason for this was both to reward those existing customers, and also to only do business with people I have sold to before and know to be good customers.)

But I didn’t make as many sales as I had planned during that secret pre-launch. So to reach my target, I had to open Influential Emails to the entire waiting list, before closing it down 12 hours later, as I wrote about in my email two days ago.

Are you still with me? Good. Because we’ve gotten to the discrepancy:

Even though I managed to reach my target number of sales within just 12 hours of the opening of the promo, I didn’t manage to do the truly magical thing, which would have been to announce that Influential Emails had sold out before the promo even started, and only to an insider circle of previous customers.

Maybe you’re rolling your eyes again. Maybe you think nobody cares, and nobody was expecting me to sell out Influential Emails without even opening up the promo.

Well, in that case, all I can do is refer you to Talbot’s advice above.

I care, and on some level, I believe it makes an impact.

That’s why I sent out the email yesterday about the technical muck-up I did with the waiting list for Influential Emails, which means a bunch of people who wanted to buy didn’t get a chance to.

I opened up the cart again just for those people.

And the fact is, with their added sales, I would have blown past my sales goal during that secret pre-sale period.

So in the interest of showmanship, I’m telling you about it now. I’m also thinking how I can make sure this kind of discrepancy never happens in future performances, I mean, promotions.

Because if you’re putting on a show as a marketing wizard, it’s fine to present yourself as an absent-minded luddite, like I did yesterday. ​​But it won’t do, not at all, to allow even a shred of doubt to form about your wizarding abilities.

Anyways, maybe that gives you some ideas for future promotions you too plan on running.

Meanwhile, as I said yesterday and the day before, all this is an added reason to get my 10 Commandments book if you haven’t done so yet.

At the end of that book, I have a special offer for an apocryphal 11th commandment.

If you take me up on that offer, I will know you bought the book, and in the future, you will be included in the special circle of previous buyers who get in on things that the rest of my list does not.

If you want in, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments