Message Frame

The next step

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A couple days ago, I heard a very smart marketer share a story from the trenches:

Back in the day, during the ClickBank wars, this marketer used to do webinars to promote offers from other offer owners.

The owner of one such offer told this marketer, “My upsells are sucking. Don’t be mad if you promote and nobody buys the upsells.”

The very smart marketer said, “We’ll fix that.”

He spent most of the webinar talking, not about the offer on sale, but about why folks need the upsells that will be available if they buy the front-end offer.

In a way, he flipped the script, or reversed the normal order of selling. He talked past the actual thing on sale, and focused entirely on the step after.

Result:

60% upsell take, and though it wasn’t mentioned when I heard the story, I imagine higher front-end conversions also.

In case you’re tempted to file this away in your mental folder of “interesting but useless factoids about webinar selling”:

This isn’t about just upsells, and it’s certainly not just about webinars.

As the very smart marketer put it:

“Any step that you know is coming, you want to presell or preframe that first.”

In entirely unrelated news, let me tell you about my own plans for the rest of this month.

This February, starting February 3, I will be going for a ride. I will also be taking a few folks along with me. You have the opportunity to come with.

The destination is a $1k+ offer, which you can sell 3-5 copies of per month, and which you can deliver in 5-6 hours total to start and then faster and faster each time you sell it.

You don’t need a lot in case you want to go for this ride with me.

I’ll provide the car (well, minivan), the route planning, the music, and maybe some snacks and drinks along the way.

What you will need:

A pair of sunglasses (to look cool), a small but dedicated audience, and knowledge or experience you can pass on to people.

(If you’ve previously thought of or tried selling “coaching” or “mentoring” to your audience, you are most likely ready to go, even if nobody took you up on your offer. We’ll fix that.)

For the rest of this month, I’ll be talking about this ride, and seeing who would like to come with me. I already have people who have expressed interest in various ways, and I will be starting with them.

Meanwhile, you might be interested in my Daily Email Habit service.

It makes it easier to email daily, which is key to being able to sell 3-5 copies of a $1k+ offer even with a small audience. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Sloppy agree & amplify

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I’m reading a frustrating/fascinating article about Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin has been writing various blogs for close to 20 years, in which — so says the article — he advocates for shutting down the American experiment in democracy, and a return to monarchy.

You might think, so what, another Internet kook.

The difference is that Yarvin has the ear of the rich and powerful.

He’s apparently buddy-buddy with Vice President J.D. Vance, and, according to the article, he has become a kind of Machiavelli for Silicon Valley billionaires Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel.

And that’s where the trouble, or rather the sloppiness, starts.

Says the article, after Thiel wrote his book Zero to One and went on a publicity blitz, he reached out to Yarvin for advice. How to handle the inevitable question he would get from journalists, about getting more women into tech?

(Thiel apparently thinks this is a misguided question, and that the numbers of women in tech are fine as is.)

Here’s Yarvin’s advice, from the article:

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Yarvin suggested that Thiel deploy a pickup-artist tactic called “agree and amplify” — that is, ask a journalist, who probably had no solution in mind, what she would do to tackle the problem. “The purpose here is not to get the interlocutor to sleep with you, but to get her to fear this issue and run away from it — and ditto for future interviewers,” he wrote.

===

I’m not sure who’s to blame for this nonsense — Yarvin, or the author of the article I’m reading, or both. But this is 100% not what agree & amplify is. It doesn’t even make sense when you think about the name:

Agree & amplify = First you agree, and then you amplify, or exaggerate, to make the whole thing absurd. For example:

JOURNALIST: Don’t you agree we need more women in tech?

THIEL: I absolutely do. I also think we need more women in coal mines, in slaughter houses, and on oil rigs, all of which are places of employment where women are vastly underrepresented.

I suspect Yarvin still hasn’t read my 10 Commandments of Con Men, Pick Up Artists, etc. But it seems he needs to. He’s getting his commandments confused, and he’s giving out bad advice as a result.

Agree & amplify, and the strange psychology of why and when it works, is Commandment VI.

I have another commandment, Commandment VIII, about what Yarvin recommended to Thiel, to take the journalist’s question and reverse it.

Thing is, reversing a question is unlikely to have the effect Yarvin predicted, but the technique can be used to get people to work with you instead of against you, and to sell themselves on your plan, as if they came up with it on their own.

If you’d like more (properly researched and fact-checked) detail on all this, or you simply want to learn some powerful communication techniques that straddle the world of pickup artists, political propagandists, con men, and other savory and unsavory types:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

It’s not an OPEN loop, it’s an OPENED loop

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A while back, marketer Daniel Throssell wrote an email pointing out the nonsense of the term “open loop.”

An open loop, as you might know, is a technique in copywriting where you start a story and then cut it off to talk about other stuff, basically leading the reader on and sucking him deeper and deeper in.

I was a tad irritated by Daniel’s calling out “open loop” as nonsense, because I always thought the term sounded somehow poetic. But really, I had to admit I couldn’t make sense of how an “open loop” makes sense.

Well, I found out yesterday where “open loop” actually comes from and what it actually is — a corruption of a term from computer programming.

Computer programs have constructs known as loops — “for” loops, “while” loops etc. – where an instruction is executed over and over while some condition holds true. So you open, say, a “for” loop within a computer program, and then you specify what happens next. (What happens next can actually include opening a new “for” loop — so you end up with a hierarchy of embedded “for” loops, one within the other.)

This analogy between computer program loops and a technique of communication was first made by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, the creators of neurolinguistic programming or NLP.

In the 1970s, Grinder and Bandler were at the University of California Santa Cruz (my alma mater), a school that combined such interests as computer programming, linguistics, and dropping acid. It was natural that Bandler and Grinder would make the loop analogy, not only because it was in the water at UCSC, but because of the nested nature of both kinds of structures.

Ultimately, Bandler and Grinder got the idea for this technique from psychotherapist and hypnosis innovator Milton Erickson, one of the most effective therapists of all time. Bandler and Grinder sat at Erickson’s feet and recorded Erickson’s unique patterns of communication, which then became formalized as NLP techniques.

This really gets to the core of this email. The core is my answer to the daily puzzle from my Daily Email Habit service, which you can sign up for at the link at the bottom. Because one thing that Bandler and Grinder noticed was that Erickson would often embed suggestions in the middle of a story.

Embedded suggestions supposedly work better than if you just tell people to do something outright. And if you tell a bunch of nested stories, and embed a suggestion at the center of them all, it supposedly works even better.

Who knows though? Maybe it just worked for Milton Erickson, because the guy was unusually skilled, observant, and charismatic.

Besides, Erickson enjoyed constantly experimenting and inventing new techniques and new means of allowing people to make the changes that they wanted to make. He didn’t seem to be particularly wedded to any one technique, which is something I admire him for, and a credo I live by myself.

Grinder and Bandler, on the other hand, took Erickson’s improvised, free flowing, one-time experiments and formalized them into set rules and templates with catchy names.

Rules and templates with catchy names tend to sell well, which is why NLP ideas, effective or not, have become so widespread and influential, from corporate training, to copywriting, to pick up artists.

Along the way, of course, a lot has been lost, and even more has become corrupted. Which brings me back to the term “open loop.”

Now that we know where the term comes from, it’s clear it’s not really an “open loop.” Rather, it’s that you “open a loop,” or maybe you have an “opened loop.”

In Ericksonian hypnosis as in computer programming, you eventually have to close your loop to have a program that’s syntactically valid. (And if you’ve nested multiple loops, one within the other, you have to close each one, in reverse order to how you opened them.)

All that’s to say, I have to admit that Daniel Throssell was right and that the term “open loop,” poetic though it sounded to me, doesn’t really make sense. And now you know what term really does make sense — an OPENED loop — and maybe you’ve learned something else along the way.

And as for that link I promised you, it’s below. Maybe it could be valuable for you to take a look at it now:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

May we please have your attention

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Welcome aboard this Bejakovic Air email from Barcelona to wherever it is you may be right now.

For your safety and entertainment, please pay close attention to this short safety demonstration. Even if you are a frequent newsletter reader, the safety features of this Concord-like newsletter may be different from any you have flown on before.

There are no seat belts on this newsletter. Bejakovic Air only shares ideas that are found to be interesting or possibly useful, with no guarantee of truthfulness or consistency from email to email.

We recommend you fasten yourself to an idea whenever reading this newsletter. Unfasten that idea tomorrow by pulling on the buckle, like so, and consider fastening on tomorrow’s idea to see if it fits more snugly.

The emergency exits of this newsletter are clearly marked. We have 6 exits: two at the front (archive, or delete); two at the back (follow the link, or unsubscribe); and, if you are using a mobile electronic device, you can also swipe left or right, to read other emails in your inbox.

In the unlikely event of an evacuation, press the “Spam Complaint” button above you. Leave all carryon luggage behind so our staff can rifle through it as you leave, and make fun of you once you’ve gone.

Cabin pressure on all Bejakovic Air flights is maintained in a narrow range between “intriguing” and “impossible to parse.”

If we lose cabin pressure or gain too much of it, oxygen masks will deploy automatically. Immediately extinguish all cigarettes, and adjust your own newsletter first before offering to assist with ours.

Thank you for your attention during this brief safety demonstration.

In preparation for takeoff, please make sure your seat is upright and your tray table is stowed away. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy this personal message from our captain:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Don’t think of an Iranian drone

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A couple nights ago, I rewatched the 1997 comedy Wag The Dog… as research for work.

Robert De Niro plays a political communications consultant. He’s brought in for clean-up after news breaks that the President of the United States has had sex with a 15-year-old girl in a closet behind the Oval Office.

The situation is bad. De Niro needs at least a day to think up a way out of this sticky situation. Fortunately, the President is on a visit to China.

“Keep him there,” De Niro tells the President’s handlers. “Say he’s sick. And say his visit has nothing to do with the B3 bomber.”

“Sir, as far as I know, there’s no such thing as a B3 bomber,” says a White House staffer.

“That’s exactly what I said,” says De Niro.

The rest of the movie is about how De Niro’s character, along with a Hollywood producer played by Dustin Hoffman, orchestrate a make-believe war against Albania (“They seem shifty”), which happens entirely on the evening news.

I thought about this while reading a news article yesterday, titled, “New Jersey drone cluster sightings prompt call for ‘state of emergency.'”

In case you haven’t heard, the state of New Jersey is under attack by swarms of unexplained drones. An FBI official explained:

“Are we concerned there are nefarious intentions that could cause either an actual security or public safety incident? There’s nothing that is known that would lead me to say that, but we just don’t know. And that’s the concerning part of it.”

Could it be Iran? China? Perhaps the Albanians?

“There is no Iranian ship off the coast of the United States,” said the Pentagon press secretary, “and there’s no so-called mothership launching drones towards the United States.”

So you’re saying it could be the Albanians…

Look, I’m just fooling around. I’m certainly not claiming there are any parallels between the current drone situation and Wag The Dog. As far as I know, there’s no evidence that the drone situation is any kind of ploy to cover up some new atrocity being committed by people in power as we speak.

(See what I did there?)

All I really want to do is to introduce you to the powerful concept of a “frame.”

A frame is all the stuff that goes on in your head before, after, and around a specific message. A frame is how the phrase “SHUT UP!” can be interpreted in your head as an insult… a joke between friends… a cry of surprise or disbelief… a sign of mental breakdown… and probably 10 other things, all depending on the context.

There’s a guy named George Lakoff, who is a real-life version of Robert De Niro’s character in Wag The Dog.

Lakoff is a professor of linguistics at Berkeley, and he has long advised Democratic candidates on messaging and communication.

Lakoff believes that frames are such powerful and valuable communication tools that he wrote a guidebook, all about how to use them in politics, which he titled, “Don’t Think Of An Elephant.”

Because you can activate a frame even if you seemingly deny or negate that frame.

Frames are definitely an interesting topic, and it makes sense to actively play with them in high-stakes situations like political messaging.

But in everyday life, it can be exhausting and paralyzing to try to “control the frame,” as pick up artists like to say.

Fortunately, it’s not necessary to be constantly aware and constantly in control of the frame as you go about your life.

Because you can simply adopt a frame which will always serve you well.

That frame is that everything that happens works in your favor and is there for your benefit.

It works in politics, and in daily emails too, where it’s often expressed by the maxim, “Nothing bad ever happens if you write a daily email.” Everything becomes fodder for the content beast.

If you’d like to see how I and a group of other smart folks are taking our everyday frustrations, thoughts, and even stupid news items, and turning them into daily emails that both entertain and sell, you can find that inside my new service Daily Email Habit.

I’m not saying this service could transform your life, or be the equivalent of hitting the lottery. The people who subscribe to Daily Email Habit have reported good results, but nothing so far that would lead me to say this is the one thing you will ever need in your life for success, happiness, and contentment.

And that’s the concerning part of it.

For more info on Daily Email Habit:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

[firstname], here’s what’s working in email NOW

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Hey [firstname]!

Last week, I switched my email software from ActiveCampaign to ConvertKit. It’s largely been a smooth transition. The only thing I have to gripe about is ConvertKit’s overly enthusiastic UX, which greets me like a robot cheerleader each time I send a new email, and shows me a drawing of confetti and tells me congratulations. It makes me feel a bit like an imbecil.

I have this theory that, today more than ever, we all want something that feels real.

Or at least I do, and I notice how quickly I dismiss anything that gives off subtle hints that it’s not real:

Stale weeks-long autoresponders…

Merge fields…

Or just a fake emotional tone or connection, where there clearly cannot be any, like with a piece of email software that pretends to be my friend. You know what I mean, [firstname]?

A few days ago, I talked to a very smart and enterprising young marketer named Shakoor. He asked me if I think the email business model — build an email list, send emails, make money — will ever disappear.

I’m personally bullish on the email business model. But if it does ever disappear in its current form, I figure it will be replaced by something that works in basically the same way. Relationships with other humans will keep having value, as long as anything humans do still has any value.

And on that note:

Let me remind you that tomorrow, Wednesday, at 8pm CET/2PM EST/11am PST, I will host a “fireside council” with Travis Speegle.

Travis been selling online since 1996, and has been working as media buyer for 7- and 8-figure direct response brands for a good amount of time. He has seen things come and go.

Tomorrow, Travis and I will talk about paid traffic to grow an email list.

I imagine that nothing we discuss will be stuff that’s working NOW, in the sense that it wasn’t also working yesterday and won’t also work tomorrow, or next week, or next year.

But maybe that’s exacly the kind of information you’re looking for.

If you’d like to join Travis and me on the call tomorrow, you’ll have to be on my list first. Click here to make that happen.

I know what you did last night

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Well, I can take a guess. It’s not like I have a little camera in your kitchen or anything like that.

​​Also, I don’t know everything you did last night, nor do I want to. But I can take a good guess about at least one thing you did last night.

​​I’m guessing it’s one of the following:

1. You checked the latest Wimbledon results, or

2. You nodded with approval at the news that the far-right party in France lost at the elections, or

3. You read up on the U.S. election, maybe even going so far as to investigate what exactly “Project 2025” is.

So?

Did I guess right?

Did you do any of those things last night?

If you did, you may now marvel at the amazing clairvoyant powers of Cavaliere Bejako.

And if you didn’t do any of those three things last night, well, you really should have. At least one. At least statistically speaking.

A few days ago, I made a list of 10 ways to get an idea of what people are thinking about and interested in, right now.

And this morning, I cross-referenced some of these sources of information. Those three things above were the top three things I saw in my CIA-like sleuthing.

I did this research because I’ve been re-reading the Robert Collier Letter Book, which I have come to believe is the most valuable copywriting book ever published.

For example, after reprinting a sales letter that had helped sell 250,000 copies of an 820-page history book (!) by mail (!) in 1923, Collier says the following:

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The point would seem to be that if you can tie in with what people are thinking about and interested in, you can sell anything. And the particular form that your letter takes is far less important than the chord it happens to strike.

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So there you go. Figure out what people are thinking about and interested in, and you can sell almost anything.

Of course, what people are thinking about doesn’t have to be of general interest — something that will show up on Google Trends.

​​Your particular audience might have a unique and specific obsession right now that only a small number of other people share.

But the point is the same. If you can figure out what that obsession is, and if you can tie your sales message into that, then…

Well, would you like to buy something? Then consider this highly topical and highly valuable offer:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Sophistication, awareness… what’s missing?

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Last night, I was walking around my neighborhood, listening for the third time to a talk by Internet marketer Jeff Walker, of Product Launch Formula fame.

Jeff’s talk is incredible. Each time I have come at it, I’ve found new valuable things inside. Such as, for example, the following oddity:

Jeff once created a completely new offer, unlike anything else in his market.

He first launched this new offer to his own list.

He opened that launch with a video of himself in the woods, on his property up in the Colorado mountains. He has a private tennis court there. Every Friday, he and his buddies play tennis there and drink margaritas afterwards.

This campaign opened with zero promises and zero hype. The implied message of the opening video was simply, “This is how life and business are really meant to be.”

​​This first campaign was a big success.

Later, Jeff launched that same offer to JV lists.

Again, he opened the launch with a video of himself in the woods. Except this time, there was no tennis court, and no margaritas. Instead, straight away, Jeff jumped into hype and promises, about making a ton of money without a list and without a product.

This second campaign was also a big success.

Strange, no?

Because back during the Cold War, direct marketing legend Gene Schwartz told us there are exactly two factors for figuring out how to position and open up a marketing message.

One is sophistication — how many ads/claims people have seen before in your market.

The other is awareness — how much time people in your market have spent thinking and researching this particular problem or desire.

But these two Jeff Walker campaigns say different.

Both of these campaigns sold a completely new offer, unlike anything else in the the market.

​​Both went out to audiences of fiending internet marketing junkies.

​​In other words, the sophistication and awareness were exactly the same for the audiences of both campaigns.

And yet, one campaign opened with zero hype or promises… while the other opened with 100% hype and promises.

My point being:

Sophistication and awareness are not the only two factors for figuring out how to position and open up a marketing message.

There’s a third, equally important factor. You can probably guess what this factor is. I won’t belabor it here.

​​I’ll just say:

Get this factor working in your favor, ​​and not only will you be able to make marketing messages that are less hypey… but your sales will come more easily… and price resistance will largely fly out the window.​​

And if you want some help with that:​​
​
https://bejakovic.com/sme

Here’s something interesting you haven’t thought about before

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This morning I was chewing on a carrot — I’m trying to eat more vegetables — and to distract myself, I put on a standup comedy routine by Larry David, the writer behind Seinfeld and later the star of Curb Your Enthusiasm. David opened his set by saying:

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You seem like a very nice audience. I’m wondering, in case I break into some Spanish or French, may I use the familiar “tu” form with you people? Instead of “usted”? Because I think “usted” is gonna be a little too formal for this crowd. I feel already that I’ve established the kind of rapport that I can jump into the “tu” form with you.

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Larry David’s brand of humor is awkwardness. He always hits a snag on social interactions that others handle smoothly. He has to verbalize and negotiate things that others do subconsciously or nonverbally. That’s why his opening above illustrates the following point so well:

Comedians assume familiarity in their sets.

Why familiarity? Because being familiar is a precondition to being funny.

Comedian Bill Burr opens his “Why Do I Do This” special — my favorite — by saying, “It’s nice to be here. I didn’t do shit today. I didn’t. I’m a loser man. I just sat around watching TV and all that type of stuff. Let me tell you something…” Only then does he launch into his actual set.

You might wonder why I’m killing the joke in this way.

It’s because the same applies to you, at least if you want to influence other people, to sell your products, your services, or your ideas.

Comedians assume familiarity. So do pick up artists. Hypnotists do something similar that suits them, and that’s to assume trance.

The result is that their audiences, targets, and subjects, follow.

So that’s my suggestion for you too:

Figure out what goal you are trying to lead people to. Then figure out what the preconditions are for that.

And then, just act as-if. Assume that the preconditions are true.

Do it with enough conviction — not like Larry David, but like Bill Burr — and people will fall into step with you. This is as true of sales and copywriting as it is of comedy, magic, and seduction.

Speaking of seduction:

If you think you might learn a thing or two from me about influence, then consider my Copy Riddles course.

​​I break down the seemingly simplest type of copy — sales bullets — along dimensions you might not have ever thought about.

​​The result is you go from unconscious incompetence to conscious competence quickly… and then with a bit of practice to unconscious competence, where you simply own these copywriting skills, cold.
​
​In case you’re interested:

​https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Why I’ve just sent you the only Times New Roman newsletter you are likely to read today

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This past Wednesday, I found myself mystified by an article titled The Reaction Economy. It was written by a William Davies — “a sociologist and political economist” — in the London Review of Books.

Davies was complaining about Twitter, and how he is trying to wean himself off it, and how his brain screams to set the record straight whenever it sees idiotic conservative tweets. But Davies is a disciplined person, so he didn’t give in to the urge and get back on Twitter. Instead, he went and wrote a 6,276-word article in the LRB about it.

As I read this, I found myself mystified why I was reading it at all. I mean, what was fresh here? Some guy saying he wants to use social media less? Or a liberal airing his lungs about conservative trolls? Or an online pundit shaking his finger and warning me, as I nod along in silence, that social media is designed to provoke outrage?

And yet, there I was, reading, paragraph after long paragraph. I asked myself why. One small part was the good headline, The Reaction Economy. That sucked me in initially. But what kept me going had nothing to do with the actual content, which was neither new nor insightful.

I realized that the real reason I was reading was that the article was hosted on the LRB website. Beyond that, it was the formatting — 10-line paragraphs, drop capitals, Times New Roman font.

Copywriter Gary Bencivenga once told a story of how his ad agency rushed an ad into the New York Times. In the rush, the NYT typesetters set the ad with a sans-serif font. Gary’s agency complained, and the Times offered to run the ad the next week, for free, with the correct serif font. This was not a proper A/B split test. Still, the serif ad ended up pulling 80% more sales than the sans-serif ad the week earlier.

Is there really sales magic to serif font? Probably not. But we use cues all the time to decide on value, and to guide our decisions. I’ve written before how I find myself unable to spend more than 20 seconds reading a 700-word blog entry or email newsletter, but that I’m happy to read a four-volume book of 1,900 pages for more than a year.

Quality of content is a part of it, but only a part. The fact is, I use cues all the time to evaluate that quality, and I rely on past habits to determine what deserves my attention or not.

So my point for you is is, why stack the odds against yourself? Why give your reader subtle cues that your writing is skimmable, disposable, low-value fluff? The bigger principle, which I’ve seen proven in different areas of life, is: Assume people are already acting how you want them to act. Very often, they will end up doing just that.

Since you’ve read this far, I assume you must be a reader. So I will remind you that, for the next three days, until February 27th, I am opening the doors to my Insights & More Book Club. After that, I will close off the club to new members. We will start reading the next book on March 1st, and it makes no sense to have people join mid-way. The only way to join is to be signed up to my email newsletter first. If you like, you can do that here.