Business Of Copy

I’m open to client work once again

by

This morning, I summed up the money I made during 2023, and then I broke it down by where it came from.

I came up with a whole host of new insights, enough to fuel a week’s worth of emails.

Today, I’ll share just one thing I spotted, and that’s the outsized role of client work in my 2023.

Only a few days ago, I wrote that 2023 was my second-best year ever, trailing only behind 2020, when I was fully immersed in copywriting client work.

But last year, I did almost no client work. Or so I thought.

Because while I only had one client last year, and I only wrote quick and easy emails for this one client, it ended up accounting for almost 18% of my total income for 2023.

It turned out client work was the second-biggest source of income for me in 2023, ahead of most of the courses I sold, ahead of the coaching I did, ahead of the affiliate offers I promoted. And I didn’t realize it until just this morning.

Really, that shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Because done-for-you services are easy to sell. And if they have to do with marketing or sales, they are easy to charge a big chunk of money for. And yet, for the right client, they still make sense, and then some.

All of which is to say, for the first time in a long time, I am actually open to new client work.

Maybe you’d like to hire me.

Not for email copywriting, but for managing your entire email list. This includes writing the emails, but also everything else that goes with making money via a list, including picking offers, organizing promotions, and even doing things to grow the list, in case that makes sense.

Basically, I handle everything, take this worry off your plate, and make you money, probably much more than you’re making now.

And since this email is quickly turning into a sales pitch, let me give you some proof that this is something I am qualified to do:

One is my experience with this newsletter, and making a good living at it.

But more importantly, two is my experience managing the email lists of clients who had much much bigger businesses than mine.

I’ve written about this experience before. But the most interesting and notable was managing two lists of ecommerce buyers, each with over 70k names, each bringing in multiple millions of dollars in sales per year via daily emails alone — all of which I was doing.

So if you have an email list that you’re not monetizing at all… or that you are not monetizing well… or that you simply don’t want to manage yourself any more, then hit reply, and let’s talk. Maybe we can work together.

Would you bet on it?

by

A few weeks back, I was talking to a successful copywriter, and he mentioned a stupid job he had just finished.

The client was a moron, the product a disaster, and there was little to no hope any of it would sell.

But the copywriter got paid well to write the sales letter. And he did it, and since he’s a good copywriter, he did a good job with the copy. Then he got his money and he moved on.

I used to have that same attitude.

But I don’t any more. Because I found in time that working on hopeless projects is not good long-term policy — not emotionally, not financially, not careerly.

Today, I’d like to give you a different perspective.

These days, when a new opportunity comes my way, I ask myself, “Would I do this if I were getting paid on commission only? Would I bet on it?”

It doesn’t mean that I actually only do stuff on commission. That’s often not practical, and it’s sometimes not even desirable, for me or for the other party.

But if I wouldn’t accept this opportunity if I were getting paid only based on results, if I’m not confident enough that it will be a success that I would bet on it myself, then I don’t do it at all.

I’ve applied this to client work… I’ve applied it to coaching that I’ve been doing over the past year… I will start to apply it to courses and trainings I’m thinking of creating.

Again, it doesn’t mean offering courses for free and hoping to somehow get paid later.

But it’s a valuable thought experiment. If I could somehow track what extra money this imagined course would bring in my students’ lives… and if I knew I could get, say 5% or 10% of that extra money… would that pay me enough?

Often, the answer is no. Even if I could make a super-thorough and valuable course.

Because if that course only attracts people who will never go through it… or who will go through it but never implement it… or who will implement it but who are not in a position to ever profit from it… then the total extra value created out of all of that is a big beefy zero. And 10% of zero is zero.

On the other hand, sometimes I would bet on it.

And if there’s one of my existing courses that I would bet on, that I would sell for only a percentage of future results, if such a thing were feasible, it’s Copy Riddles.

I’d bet on Copy Riddles because some of the previous people who have gone through this training have written in to tell me the results they ascribe to this course.

Some of those results are private because those people asked me not to share them. But some are public, and you can find them on the final page of the Copy Riddles sales letter. If you’d like to see that:

https://bejakovic.com/cr-3/

Dating and business advice to a needy blackbird

by

A few days ago, I was minding my own business, washing the dishes. The weather was warm so I opened the window.

Just as I was in the middle of scrubbing the salad bowl, a little blackbird landed on my windowsill.

“CHEEP,” said the blackbird.

“Oh hello there,” I said. “How do you do?”

The blackbird paced for a moment and then sat down on the windowsill. He seemed to be getting comfortable, which made me frown and pause my dishwashing. And then the blackbird spoke:

===

Interesting that you ask that. Very interesting.

Something I am really struggling with at the moment is securing a mate.

I can’t get a mate for my familybuilding services. Even when I catch the eye of female blackbirds, they seem to smell my neediness from a mile away even if I don’t reveal it intentionally.

I wanted to ask:

How would you go about getting a mate if:

===

… and then the blackbird listed his unique mate-getting situation, which happens to be the same unique situation faced by all single blackbirds, crows, and seagulls, as well as by all individuals, whether human or avine, who are hoping to go from zero to one in any endeavor that involves selling yourself.

I’ve long ago decided that I don’t want to be in the business of taking people or birds from zero to one.

So I just nodded to the blackbird in understanding, picked him up, placed him on the outside window sill, and closed the window shut.

That said, I do have one piece of advice.

I’m only sharing it because it applies to anybody who is looking to do anything new and frightening, whether they are beginners or much more advanced.

It applies to newbie copywriters looking for their first client… to experienced copywriters looking to send their first email to their own list… to business owners looking to go into a drastically more upscale market and charge 2x or 3x or 10x of what they are charging now.

It also applies to securing a mate. In fact, this piece of advice is something I heard from the infamous pick-up coach Owen Cook, aka RSD Tyler, the villain in Neil Strauss’s book The Game.

Owen was talking about the horrifying prospect of flying up to an attractive and unfamiliar female blackbird, in the middle of a park with lots of other blackbirds around, and striking up a fun and natural interaction.

Perfectly easy if you have total belief in yourself and your worth.

Perfectly impossible if you are overwhelmed by fear and self-doubt.

So here’s Owen’s observation:

“The halfway point between fear and total belief is indifference.”

You can’t go from fear and neediness to total belief and confidence.

But you can go from fear and neediness to indifference.

One way to do it is repeat exposure in a short enough period of time.

Go and cheep at seven attractive and unfamiliar blackbirds today. Each of those interactions might go horribly, though they probably won’t.

But whatever the outcome of the interactions, by the end of the seven, you will realize you are still alive. In fact, you are perfectly fine.

Do this a few days in a row, and those innate survival mechanisms, which underlie both fear and neediness, will begin to get habituated and calm down. You will start to get indifferent. And that’s the halfway point to total belief and confidence.

In other words, if you think you have a neediness problem… what you really got is an activity problem.

That’s all the free advice from Bejako’s windowsill for today.

If you’d like to buy something from me, I can recommend my Simple Money Emails training.

​​No, Simple Money Emails won’t replace the need to actually write and send emails, whether for your own business or for a client business.

But Simple Money Emails can teach you my effective one-two system for writing emails, much like this one, that make sales, keep readers reading, and keep birds chirping. If that’s an outcome you’d like as well:

https://bejakovic.com/sme

What it’s like to be… faced with AI eating your job

by

Question:

What’s the worst thing you can ever say to a TV weather woman?

Answer:

“That’s not what my app says…”

I’ll tell you in a second how I found out that riveting bit of information. But first:

At a recent gathering of copywriters in London, I saw several attendees hang their heads and say, “As we all know, it’s been a rough year for many copywriters.”

I kept quiet because I didn’t want to expose my ignorance and absence of rough year.

​​I don’t work with clients any more. And my year has been fine.

What exactly has been rough on copywriters who do work with clients?

Is it the economic climate? AI taking copywriting jobs? Too much competition from the glut of would-be copywriters who entered the field over the past few years?

I felt it would be tactless to ask. So I kept quiet.

But back to the weather woman. I found out that the best way to piss off such a one is to say, “That’s not what my app says.”

I found that out because I’m dipping my toes into a new podcast, called What It’s Like To Be.

The podcast features interviews with people in different professions, so you can find out what it’s like to do their job. The last episode was TV weather woman Lacey Swope, who works for News 9 in Oklahoma City, the world epicenter of extreme weather.

I had no particular interest in hearing what it’s like to be a TV weather woman. But I’m glad I listened.

Because in many ways, weather womaning turns out to be a profession very similar to copywriting.

For example:​​

The job of being a TV meteorologist requires two separate skills — the technical skill of divining the weather, and the presentation skill, you might even say sales skill, of being friendly and cute on TV.

But wait, there’s more.

Weather meteorologists have for years been under threat by apps and websites that give the masses by-the-minute weather info. And the TV weather people who are surviving and thriving in spite of it are all—

… well for that, I will point you to the podcast itself.

You can find the podcast episode at the link below.

It’s worthwhile listening if you’re working as copywriter, and wondering what the future might bring, and how you can best prepare for it.

TV weather men and weather women been there, maybe a decade earlier. You can lean surprisingly practical stuff by listening to Lacey Swope and thinking how to apply her experiences and attitudes to your career.

And if that’s not enough to get you to click through and listen, then I will tell you the reason I started listening to What It’s Like To Be in the first place.

It’s because it’s the new podcast of Dan Heath, who is one half of the Heath brothers team that wrote the book Made to Stick.

​​So if you want to hear how somebody who literally wrote the book on effective, viral, long-lasting communication organizes and structures his content, then here ya go:

https://www.whatitsliketobe.com/2246914/13858315-a-tv-meteorologist

PS. Thanks to everyone who joined me and Kieran for the the storytelling presentation earlier today. I feel it went well. But I honestly never know when I’m presenting. If you were there live, I’d love to know what you thought of it. Write in and let me know.

A lesson for con men, car salesmen, and possibly, client-hungry solopreneurs

by

A while back, I was listening to a fun episode of the James Altucher podcast.

James was interviewing the world’s most successful gambler, Billy Walters, who has won hundreds of millions of dollars by betting on sports. For the past 36 years straight, Walters has had a winning gambling record.

There’s apparently glamour associated with sports betting, which I wasn’t aware of. As a result, much of Walters’s story focuses on that.

But what I found curious is that, even before Walters became a successful betting pro, he was an unsuccessful betting amateur. He used to bet and lose millions of dollars of his own money, which he earned as a first-rate car salesman.

How do you make millions of dollars selling cars, back in the 1970s, in Kentucky?

Walters managed it because, as he said, “I did things that most people weren’t doing in those days.”

“Like what?” James Altucher immediately asked.

Walters obliged:

===

Well, every customer I sold a car to had a criss-cross directory. I got the identification of all of their neighbors. I would contact them either directly or I would send them a postcard and introduce myself and point out to them that I’d sold Mr. Smith his car, and who I was, and we were running a sale, and I would encourage them to come down.

Every customer I sold a car to, I turned into a referral source. I paid them a referral fee, a substantial referral fee.

I stayed in touch with them. I created personal relationships with them.

I would go to the local newspaper each day. People would have their cars, and they’re listed. ‘For sale, take over the payments.’ Well, they weren’t going to start walking. They wanted to sell their car because they could no longer afford it. So I would bring them in, sell them a less expensive car, take their car in trade and then reduce their payments.

When there was nothing else going on, I would just pick up the phone and start calling people with the same prefix as the area of Louisville I was working in. I would just cold call people.

​​And sometimes they’d slam the phone on me, but sometimes they’d get into an easy conversation. I would introduce myself, tell them that we’re running this sale, tell them where we are located, and as a result, I sold a lot of cars and made a lot of money.

===

This brought to mind something I read in The Big Con, all about the world of con artists back in 1930s and 40s.

A top roper — a con man who had to go out into the world and bring in the marks — was asked what it takes to be a first-rate con man. He replied:

===

I couldn’t say what you must have to be a good roper, but I can tell you some of the traits you better not have. Never permit yourself to be bored. If you gander around you will always find some mark you can trim. But some heel-grifters think it is smartly sophisticated to appear languid or condescendingly wise. That is really stupid. Tie into any mark. He may have it in the jug.

===

I’m sure you don’t want to be a con man. And you probably don’t want to be a car salesman.

But you might be a copywriter, or designer, or coach, or you have another business that depends on a steady flow of client leads.

Cold calling works, as a last resort.

But Billy Walters above gave you four other great recommendations to keep you from being bored, long before you have to resort to cold calling.

And the bigger point is:

The trick to winning this game, that game, and pretty much every game, is to stay busy. Not to put on a stupid air of appearing languid or condescendingly wise.

​​And if you’re staying busy, you might as well do things that are known to work.

Maybe you’ve heard that having your own email newsletter works wonders for business.

​​Maybe you’ve even heard that doing it daily is better than doing it weekly or monthly.

But did you know that daily emailing can also keep you from being and looking bored, ever again?

In case you don’t have a regular email newsletter, or you’re not writing daily, and and you want a simple system for how to write effective emails, keeping you busy day in and day out, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/sme/

10 pieces of Bejako advice to a newbie copywriter

by

A new subscriber to my list wrote in today to ask:

===

how would you approach copywriting & marketing if you had to start from scratch. or if, let’s just say your brother (if you have one) asked you he wants to learn copywriting and marketing. what would you tell him? what would you tell him in terms of getting clients (it seems this is a whole phd education on itself)?

===

That’s not unlike asking how I would approach a career in computer programming if I had to start from scratch.

​​But even though I have literally hundreds of posts on my website that are relevant to answering this question, I decided to entertain this reader and so create a single resource to point people to in the future.

So here are 10 pieces of Bejako wisdom for newbie copywriters:

1. The 5-year rule: It will take months and more likely years to get consistently good and make good money from copywriting. Unless this is a job that you imagine you will be okay doing every day for at least the next five years, then don’t get started at all.

​(​By the way, this bit of advice isn’t unique to copywriting — I apply it to every complex project or undertaking I’m considering.)

2. There’s no “one thing.” Copywriting and marketing are really a collection of different principles and techniques you have to understand and master to some extent, preferably to a high extent.

3. Books: The best way to learn if you have dedication (see point 1 above).

4. Ads and working funnels. The best marketing is out there for free. Look at it critically. Try to deconstruct it consciously, and write down what you see. Patterns will soon start to emerge that you won’t see if you simply look at advertising like a consumer, or worse, if you dismiss it by saying, “I could do this” or “I’ve seen this described in a book.”

5. Get real practice, as soon as you can, preferably today. “Real practice” does not mean hand copying sales letters or writing mock ads for made-up products. You have three options. Get a job, get a client, or start your own project. No need to restrict yourself to just one of these options, by the way.

6. Start an email list today even if no one is reading it but you. Write about what you’re learning and apply it within your emails.

7. You will have to pay one way or the other. In one case, you will have to pay in time and money (the freelance route, which means buying your education in drips and drops via courses or coaching or ongoing mistakes that nobody corrects for you for too long).

In the other case, you will have to pay in freedom that you’ve sacrificed and in having your productivity arrogated by an employer (the route of getting a job, and working for somebody who knows what they are doing and can teach you and correct your errors).

8. The golden ticket is not to be a copywriter but a marketer who either 1) guides client businesses to make more money and gets paid accordingly, or 2) eventually takes his skills and runs his own business.

​​That said, copywriting is a kind of Trojan horse that can help you do either of those more easily. If you have this understanding at the start and if you take it seriously, it will make your path easier and more lucrative.

9. If after everything you have read so far you still want to become a copywriter (or better yet a marketer), then the sooner you get started, the better.

​​This is not a field in which you have to study for years before you can have the authority to actually do any work — though it might take you years to figure out the various elements (point 2 above) and have them click in your head.

10. Read my 10 Commandments of A-List Copywriters book if you haven’t yet, and consider re-reading it if you have read it once already. It lays out several of those fundamental principles and techniques (point 2 above) and exposes you to a handful of the top people in this field, many of whom have written informative and very affordable books (point 3 above).

Here’s the link to get started:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Insurance against bad clients, present and future

by

Three days ago, after I announced that I’d let Arnold Schwarzenegger shortcut his way into my coaching program, I got an reply from a long-time reader and customer, with a sad but familiar story:

===

I was lucky with a sales letter I wrote. I made a proposal. Their board loved it. When I actually wrote the piece the attorneys tore it apart. Can’t do this. Can’t say that…

I felt like walking away from it because I knew their ideas wouldn’t work. But they were still excited. I should have walked away, but it paid pretty good, and if it sold this gig would bring a lot more work. I didn’t walk away. I needed the money. It bombed. Not one response.

Fortunately for me, my contact said, “At least we know this type of advertising won’t work for us.”

I thought, “No. Your attorneys won’t let it work for you.” But I said, “You’re right, who would have thought it would have done so badly?”

===

I say this story is sad but familiar because in the past all those things happened to me as well.

​​I got to working with clients I should never have worked with. I stayed with bad clients because I needed the money and because of the promise that it would bring future work. I had clients, or people working for them, rip up my copy, replace it with their own, and then tell me that what I wrote didn’t work.

The guy who wrote me the above message wanted to know if I had ever had business insurance as a copywriter. You know, to protect myself in these kinds of situations, when my copy produces zero sales, and the client has a team of lawyers.

The fact is, I never did have business insurance as a copywriter.

What’s more, I figure the way to deal with above situations is not after the fact, with insurance, but proactively, by choosing the right clients and by setting the right expectations.

It’s not an easy thing to do. But it’s not immensely difficult either. There are different ways you can go about it. But if you ask me how, my recommendation is to check out Steve Raju’s ClientRaker.

Steve’s process will help you both 1) choose the right clients, and 2) set the right expectations with those clients.

​​You can think of it as an investment — insurance against any bad clients you have now, or might be tempted to take on in the future.

Registration for ClientRaker closes in just 8 short hours, at 8pm CET/11am PST. And in fact, the first ClientRaker training will happen later today. If you’d like to get in while there’s still time:

https://bejakovic.com/clientraker

Can you win client work in obscure niches like board games, candlestick makers, and glassblowing studios?

by

During the last Insights & More call on June 29th, an Insights & More member named Jordan mentioned he was trying to offer services to clients in the board game industry. But he was struggling to get conversations going.

I planned to write an email this morning about Jordan’s struggles, since they tie into the offer I’m currently promoting, Steve Raju’s ClientRaker training.

But it turned out even better than I planned because Jordan wrote me just last night in reply to another ClientRaker email:

===

I’m just about to pull the trigger on this one

My main concern is that I target obscure niches like Board Games, Crystal shops and Travel Agencies (big PWM on those) but I don’t really know if the system will work on those.

===

Can ClientRaker win you clients in your chosen pet industry, regardless of how small and obscure and very probably hostile to marketing that industry might be?

Can you use ClientRaker to win clients in the board game industry? Or among crystal shop owners? Or ship chandlers? Or tea house stewards? Or rare book sellers?

I have no bloomin’ idea. Maybe you can. Or maybe you can’t.

And yet I still believe that, if a pet niche is what you’re trying to go after, you should get ClientRaker, and it will be well worth it if you only do what it says.

ClientRaker has two steps. Step one is to pick out your target client, then whip the AI until it comes back half an hour later, cowering and exhausted, with your shiny, new, and effective positioning to attract that target client.

Step two is to actually track down and connect with those clients in an easy and low-stress way, so they get exposed your new positioning, and so they reach out to you.

But it doesn’t have to go from step one to two.

As Steve says himself in the training, you can go in opposite direction also.

You can first track down, or try to track down your target clients, using the info Steve gives you in ClientRaker. Very quickly, you can make sure your target clients are actually there, and have actually signaled they have problems and are looking for solutions.

If you do find them, then you go back to step one.

And if not, if there’s actually nobody there for you to serve or nobody who wants to be served, well, then you’ve saved yourself weeks or months of what would otherwise be fruitless and frustrating toil.

Is that worth the $297 Steve is asking for ClientRaker during this run? Yes, but that’s not only reason why you should get it.

There was a time when I was young and cheap. I would have wriggled and squirmed to give $297 to save myself hours or days of frustration and waste.

“Sure,” I might have said then, “it would be great to know in a half hour from now whether this market is a good one to go into… but $297, that’s a lot of money! And I’m quite cheap!”

Today, I am older and less cheap. I make those decisions in an instant. And I say, “Absolutely, hours or days of my time, plus weeks of opportunity cost, are worth $297 to me, or actually much more.”

But again, I know that argument wouldn’t have sold me 10 or 15 years ago. And maybe for you too, savings of your precious time are still not something you can get excited by.

So let me tell you why ClientRaker is still a good investment, even if it turns out that your pet industry is not actually a good fit for the services you offer.

And that’s the fact that there are bound to be other industries, adjacent to the one you have currently focused your sights on, which will be a good fit. For board games, that might be the collectible card industry. Or the puzzle industry.

Or it will turn out you have more than one pet interest or passion — board games AND crystal shops AND astrolabe manufacturers.

One of those will be a good fit, and ClientRaker can get you clients in that industry. In fact, in part one of ClientRaker, Steve goes through the process of figuring out different potential markets you could target, again using AI.

Why AI again? Don’t you already know what your pet industries and obscure interests are?

This goes back to the core point I made at the start of this promotion.

All of us go through much of life with blinders on, focused exclusively on one idea, the one that’s right in front of us right now, which currently has our attention, even though the world is much bigger and richer than what we can see at this very instant.

It takes a lot of discipline and work to rise above that for even a brief moment.

Or it takes an external system, which isn’t restricted by your own blinders, and which works in spite of your own maniacal focus on what you know and want right now.

ClientRaker is one such system, and a fantastic one. Both because of the care and thought Steve has put into it, and because of the real results it’s been getting him.

ClientRaker is open for registration now. But the doors will close soon, this Wendesday at 8pm CET/11am PST. In case you’d like to get inside before then:

https://bejakovic.com/clientraker

Most people get zero results from anything, but that doesn’t have to be you

by

Valuable marketing idea:

If there’s a killer objection to what you’re selling, it can be smart to raise that objection right in your headline.

If that valuable marketing idea is true, then I screwed up. In fact I am three days too late.

I started promoting Steve Raju’s ClientRaker course three days ago.

​​ClientRaker is a paint-by-numbers approach to getting high-quality, long-term clients using AI in just the next 28 days.

That’s a big promise. Big promises are worthless if they are not believed. If there’s a killer objection in the way.

And the killer objection to Steve’s ClientRaker is… where’s the money?

So far, Steve has used his trainings to line up a bunch of high-end meetings.

He fired all his copywriting and marketing clients in January, took a 2-month vacation, came back home, decided to reposition himself as an AI expert, and within two weeks, already had high-end meetings lined up using this system he is teaching now.

I explained before how Steve’s targeting whale clients like Big Pharma and international organizations — slow-moving beasts that take months to digest information and make a decision. Hence no money yet, though if the money does come, it’s likely to be big.

​​These are the waters Steve is hunting in, and since he has other sources of income, he is not in a hurry.

“That might be okay,” you say, “but what about…”

Yep, I know. As I mentioned in that very first email when I started to promote ClientRaker, Steve already taught his system last month to a small cohort of people from his own list.

If ClientRaker works so well, where are the results? Where are the high-quality clients, and more importantly, where’s the money that this system is really meant to produce?

Steve followed up with the people from his previous ClientRaker cohort. The results were predictable. A ton of glowing reviews:

“Amazing session.” “My mind is blown.” “I had several epiphanies.”

The fact is, nobody from that first cohort has actually put Steve’s system into action, even now, more than a month later.

I’ve been selling trainings, courses, and books for a few years now. My estimate is that only 5% of people will ever do anything with the info they buy. And only 2% will actually use it as it’s meant to be used.

If that’s been you so far, then you can stop this kind of self-defeating behavior whenever you choose, including right now.

​​​​You might be surprised to find that it really wasn’t anything hard. You might even start to wonder at all the other people who have some invisible and imaginary chain around their leg, which keeps them from doing what you just did.

Like I said, Steve’s system is paint-by-numbers. It’s got AI baked into it — the whole point is that you don’t have to work beyond pressing the toaster lever down a few times and waiting for results to pop up. Do that, and you will get clients. And if you don’t, Steve’s got a guarantee. From his sales page:

===

If after 30 days, you can show me you’ve done the small amount of setup required, and you are putting in the minutes of work required each day to fill up your pipeline…

And you still haven’t met with a prospect you are excited by…

Then I’d be happy to give you your money back.

No point going through life and not being happy.

===

30 days… minimal work… no risk… big upside. Or an invisible and imaginary chain that you can cling to, because it’s familiar. The choice is yours:

https://bejakovic.com/clientraker

“Too many single moms” in my Facebook DMs

by

Due to some client work I’ve been doing lately, I’ve been forced to go back into the cobweb-laced haunted house that is my Facebook account.

Each time I tip-toe my way along the creaky floorboards there, I see dozens of new friend requests pasted on the walls, all from people I don’t know from Adam’s off ox.

Occasionally, I go on binges of approving those friend requests.

Last week, I logged in and saw a message from a guy with an Italian name, whose friend request I must have approved some time earlier. My new friend wrote:

“Thanks for accepting my request man, I appreciate that! I noticed you’re into personal development. I have a quick question if you don’t mind.”

Personal development? I replied to say, sure. And I went about my day.

Since I don’t have any notifications enabled anywhere, I forgot all about it until I logged in to Facebook a few days later. And there was my friend’s quick question:

“Are you currently using online dating apps?”

That escalated quickly. ​​With just 7 words, this Italian stallion was quickly nearing “unwelcome pest” territory.

​​I replied with a professional and elegant “no.”

I thought that would be the end of it. But I was wrong. The next time I logged in, a follow-up was waiting for me:

“Too many single moms or not matching with the type of women you truly desire?”

At this point, like a hot 24-year-old girl who has lost interest in a boring Tinder chat, I stopped replying. But I did check his profile. It turns out he sells some kind of service to get you matching with the type of women you truly desire.

This got me wondering. Even if this guy’s presumptuous marketing approach is successful in hooking somebody, who is he gonna get?

A long-term, devoted customer or client?

Or somebody who will ghost him at the very first turn in the road?

My guess is the second.

That’s not a game I ever want to play, and not one I advise to you either.

A sale is never just a sale, and a client is never just a client.

My advice is to think actively about the relationships you build, the long-term potential of those relationships, or if you like, the lifetime value. That’s really my biggest and most valuable conclusion after having worked with hundreds of clients, many of who paid me $100, a few of who paid me $100k or more.

And on that note:

Until this Wednesday, I am promoting Steve Raju’s ClientRaker training.

ClientRaker is all about finding high-quality, long-term, devoted clients. Without sliding into anybody’s DMs, without embarrassing yourself, and without offending or annoying people who are no prospects of yours to begin with.

In case you’re interested:

https://bejakovic.com/clientraker