Sticky Messages

I watched 3 hours of MTV for you

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I was reading a comment thread recently where MTV was mentioned, and somebody asked, “What’s MTV?”

If you were a child of 80s, as I was, you know.

If you were not a child of the 80s, it’s hard to overstate the cultural importance that MTV had in the 80s and 90s.

MTV originally stood for Music Television, nominally the first-ever TV channel showing only music videos, but really, a source for kids to find out what was cool before there was social media.

A few days ago, on August 1 to be exact, somebody uploaded to YouTube the recording of the first three hours of MTV broadcasting.

The date was significant, because it was exactly 45 years since the original broadcast, which happened on Aug 1 1981.

Over the past week, I watched all 3 initial hours, bit by bit, and because I always need stuff to write emails about, I took notes that pertain to business. Lemme tell you the most interesting things I found, grouped into 3 points:

#1. Even on day 0, so little of MTV programming was actually music videos.

MTV eventually became accused of showing more reality TV than music. But they didn’t show a lot of music even at the start.

Instead, there were lots of commercials… a good-looking “VJ” talking at you while sitting on top of a desk… music-related news segments.

As I’ve written before, even the most entertaining kinds of entertainment, music in this case, become dull after a bit and require a regular change to a different form of entertainment.

#2. Much of the content was actually advertising for MTV itself.

There were segments encouraging you to call your cable company to get MTV if you don’t have it yet (which soon became the “I want my MTV” ad campaign).

There were ads for merch that would encourage you to watch more MTV and spread the word (a poster, an “MTV dial sticker” because I guess TVs had dials?).

But most important were short clips that hammered home the positioning — the uniqueness and significance of what MTV was. “TV used to be called a wasteland,” the clips said. “That was before MTV.”

#3. MTV got going before they were “ready.”

The production was barebones and by today’s standards amateurish. They didn’t have enough advertisers. And hard as it might be to imagine today, MTV had a shortage of music videos to play on day 0.

A bunch of artists appeared multiple times with different songs.

Many of the “videos” were actually concert clips.

Some of the videos that they did show then…. could not appear today, at least without being censored. Consider the following line from Elvis Costello’s Oliver’s Army, which appeared uncensored around hour 2:

“Only takes one itchy trigger

One more widow, one less white nigger”

And yet, in spite not being “ready” on day 0, MTV went from a marginal cable channel to international arbiter of youth culture, as well as a multibillion-dollar business, against a $20m initial investment.

You can take from this email what you need from it.

I’ll just end on that last point, about being “ready.”

You can get going today, even if you’re not “ready.”

The fact is, nobody is ever ready, and you won’t ever be ready, not really, because the world is a complex and changing place, and your ability to prepare for that is limited.

So might as well get started today, and adapt tomorrow, and profit the day after.

My thing is writing emails like this, about stuff that interests me, and somehow making money in the process.

If you like, you can make it your thing as well. You don’t need my help to get started, but in case you want it, I have something to help you here:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Turns out, I was right about the best kind of infotainment

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A few months ago, I wrote an email with the subject line, “The BEST kind of infotainment, for me, now.”

In that email, I said the kind of infotaining content that’s working best for me now is not not funny stories… nor personal reveals… nor pop culture references… nor rants and raves.

Instead, the best kind of infotainment for me now is “What’s working for me now,” and its flip side, “What’s not working for me any more.”

After I wrote that email, there was some chatter in other newsletters to the effect of, “Yeah but that’s because John writes to an audience of sophisticated marketers and marketing-savvy biz owners. The same is NOT true for the vast majority of other niches.”

Well, about that.

Yesterday I saw a post titled “The Great Blogging Collapse” by a guy named Daniel Stanica.

Stanica did some research.

Back in 2022, he took a look at 100 money-making blogs, spanning fields like blogging, recipes, travel, DIY, parenting, health.

Today, in 2026, Stanica looked at those same 100 blogs again. Did they grow, shrink, or disappear?

And yes, before you raise your hand, his post is mainly about blogging and about success as measured by SEO traffic.

Still, the conclusions he reached in comparing 100 successful online properties in 2022 and 2026 sound reasonable to me, and align very much with what I said above.

So what happened to the 100 successful 2022 blogs in 2026?

According to Stanica:

1. “The median successful blog lost 85% of its Google search traffic.”

2. “More than half of the blogs experienced catastrophic declines.”

At the same time, a small number of blogs maintained or became more successful. Looking at the commonalities among them, Stanica sums it up in four points:

1. Firsthand experience (“I made/tested/went”)

2. Owned audience

3. Real product

4. Brand search (people search for your name)

To me, that first point, about firsthand experience, sounds exactly like what I talked about when said “what’s working for me now.”

Combine that with the remaining 3 points, and it pretty much sums up what I’ve found to work and what I do with this newsletter.

It’s something that worked in 2016… that’s working in 2026… and that is highly likely to work still in 2036, even with the development of AI… and the great blog collapse… and the impending shortage of sulfur in the world.

If you’d like to find out more about how I and a small group of forward-thinking marketers and business owners are surviving and even thriving in 2026, and probably 2036:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Writing a novel is child’s play

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How do you write a novel?

According to Nobel-prize winning writer Harold Pinter, writing a novel is child’s play.

You just need a starting point, says Pinter. You look around and describe what you see. After that, it’s all downhill.

For example, if you happen to be in the middle of the 1974 movie Accident… which features a scene involving a middle-aged Oxford professor, his wife, and his two children, on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the yard of their countryside house… then you start with that.

As one of the characters in Accident (a cynical novel author) tells another (a naive student), you just describe what you see:

Middle-aged professor… wife… children… Sunday afternoon.

Except, says Pinter via his character in Accident, you can go further. (This is possibly where Pinter sweeps his Nobel-prize winning talent under the rug.)

For example, you can notice that the wife is pregnant.

You can spot subtle signs the professor is having an affair with a girl at Oxford.

You can even claim that he’s reached the age where he can’t keep his hands off girls at Oxford.

And there you go. That’s the start of your novel, or really, your screenplay, because that’s also what Accident is about.

Like I’ve written already, I’m in Bologna this entire week.

The reason is that there’s a movie festival going on, which shows curated old movies I’ve never heard of or seen before.

One of these movies is Accident, which was written by Pinter, and which I saw yesterday, in a sweltering hot theater, with a few hundred other movie nerds who were fanning themselves and wiping off their faces with handkerchiefs, and not out of sympathy for the philandering Oxford professor.

I don’t know why I started out by telling you about novels. The fact is, this email is about movies.

Movies movies movies.

I like ’em old, I like ’em young, I like ’em arty, I like em trashy and popular.

I’ve worked movies into my emails (Accident in this one)… into my books (The Sting in my 10 Commandments of Con Men etc), into my courses (Top Gun in Daily Email Fastlane), and into my offers (Harry Potter for my current promotional event).

Speaking of, today is the last day for my Hogwarts of Influence offer.

I came up with the the idea of Hogwarting this offer because in one of my most popular courses, Most Valuable Email, I already use a Harry Potter movie to make a point. Specifically, I make the comparison between the Most Valuable Email trick I teach inside that course to the Wingardium Leviosa spell from the Harry Potter movies:

“Just say the phrase — ‘make the ‘gar’ nice and long” — and with a swish and flick of your wrist, you can make any email rise into the air and levitate.”

The Hogwarts of Influence offer is disappearing later tonight, at the witching hour, 12 midnight PST.

If you want to find out all I’m including inside the various levels of this offer, before the movie runs out and the theater is locked up, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/core-promise-pwyw/

It’s as easy as ABC

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Maybe you’ve heard?

Google and Meta are now on trial for creating apps that are addicting to children.

No?

You haven’t heard?

Well I have heard. Or rather, yesterday I read an article about it.

I have little to say about the actual substance of this case, since I have neither children nor any apps, but I thought something else in the story was very interesting.

Trial lawyer Mark Lanier, who is representing the plaintiffs, was using all kinds of sticky messaging strategies. A few examples:

1. “They don’t only build apps; they build traps.”

2. “They didn’t want users, they wanted addicts.”

And my favorite…

3. “This case is as easy as ABC. Addicting the Brains of Children.” [Lanier also had some toy blocks to spell out ABC]

I looked up this Lanier guy.

Turns out he’s one of the biggest trial lawyers in the US. He’s represented plaintiffs against big corporations like Johnson & Johnson and Merck, and has been able to win ~$20 billion in damages for his clients.

And get this. In an asbestos damage trial, Lanier used the same ABC strategy as in the recent Meta and Google trial:

“This case is as easy as ABC. Asbestos, breathed in, causes cancer.”

My point for you today is as easy as ABC:

Aphorisms. Boost. Conversions.

(Particularly if you can get them to form an “ABC” acronym.)

If you’re interested in more ways to make your message sticky and persuasive, I have a book recommendation for you.

It’s a book I’ve read only once but that has been immensely sticky in my head, in part because the entire message of the book is summed but up in an easy-to-remember acronym (you’ll have to read it to find out).

I think this book is so important if you thrive or starve by how well you persuade people that I have repeatedly said I would include it in the first-semester required reading of my mythical AIDA School.

In case you’re interested in getting your hand on the ABC’s of effective messaging:

https://bejakovic.com/sticky

How to write a really great hook

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A hook, as you prolly know, is how you pull people into your marketing message. It’s the core sexy idea in the headline of your ad, or the lead of your sales letter, or the top half of your email.

A few famous hooks:

* “The lazy man’s way” (to riches, to comb your hair)

* “Do you make these mistakes” (in English, in your underpants)

* A picture of a dapper man with an eyepatch [to sell dress shirts, or a parrot]

So how do you write a really great hook?

I don’t know. I wish I did. Consider the following:

For the past few weeks, I’ve been talking, on and off, about creating a $1k+ offer that sells 3-5 times a month.

At some point, I created a 1-page overview of how I have already guided a few people to that outcome, and I started offering that to people on my list, if they reply to say they want it.

Here are the email hooks I’ve used, and the number of people who responded to ask for the 1-pager:

Jan 10. Hook: “Where to buy crack.” Responses: 26.

Jan 11. Hook: “Taking credit for your rock star clients’ results.” Responses: 14.

I then spent some time talking about the promise of a $1k+ offer, without directly offering the 1-pager. I eventually offered the 1-pager again and…

Jan 22. Hook: “You’re probably creating too many products.” Responses: 7.

7 replies for a free and short and valuable PDF? At this point, I figure I’ve pretty much tapped out demand. I still try one more time and…

Jan 23, yesterday. Hook: “Really great price on coaching.” Responses 39, including my own father, an economist, who wrote, “Dear John i really need this paper for the subject I teach on the prices. Kind regards”

In case you’re as bad with numbers as I am, my point is that the responses I got, while making the same offer to my list, day after day, with different hooks, went like this:

Big, small, tiny, BIGGEST.

That’s contrary to all intuition, but that’s the power of a really great hook.

And if I knew how to write one regularly, I would write one regularly.

But my best advice for how to write a really great hook is to write a bunch of hooks, to serve them up to your market, and to let the market surprise you by which ones they love and which ones they treat like blood pudding.

If you want my help coming up with hooks for your daily emails — some good, some meh, some AMAZING — I’ve got a service just for that. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The BEST kind of infotainment, for me, now

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… is listicles. Let me give you 10 reasons why.

No, listicles ain’t it, though my recent email with 10 reasons why auctions can beat launches did work well. It drew a bunch of interest, including from some very successful course creators and audience owners.

I don’t think it was the listicle part of that email that did it. Rather, I think there were a few other reasons why that email drew big fish from deep under the surface of my email list.

Would you like to know what I think is the biggest of those reasons?

Would you like to know what I believe is the BEST kind of infotainment right now, which draws in even sophisticated and big-time marketers and business owners… and which also happens to be the only kind of infotainment I still regularly consume?

It’s not funny stories about what happened around the kitchen table last night…

… not personal reveals of childhood trauma…

… not pop culture references…

… not historical anecdotes…

… not insightful analogies that put familiar facts into a new context…

… not rants and raves…

… not, like I said, listicles.

Nothing wrong with any of those, and you can weave them into your emails, as I do, often.

But on their own, all of these have become insufficient, at least to draw my weary attention and interest.

Rather, the BEST kind of infotainment, in my immodest opinion, because it is the the ONLY kind of infotainment that still sucks me in on a consistent basis, is…

“What’s working for me now”

(… and its flip side, “What’s not working for me any more.”)

It’s important to highlight this is still infotainment. It’s still there to attract and give your readers momentary pause, to allow people to nod along for a minute and say hmmm.

It’s not heavy-handed teaching or nuance or complexity. And its ultimate and not-so-secret goal is still to sell – you as a trustworthy and successful and relatable person, and your current offer, whatever that may be, as a worthwhile and credible opportunity.

Why does “What’s working FOR ME now” work so well, for me, and on me?

Under the shiny “NOW” hood, it’s still the old-fashioned engine, made up of news and benefit and proof.

Except, in today’s world, news spreads quickly and soon stops being news, often before your audience has had a chance to even see your message.

And as for proof, we’ve all become skeptical and jaded and suspicious.

The fix to both is to share, not “What’s working now,” but “What’s working FOR ME now.” Not, “How TO” but “How I.”

So there you go.

Whether you’re new or established, my suggestion is to write more “What’s working FOR ME now” content.

Not only will it draw in even sophisticated readers, but it will force you to try out new things in your business, make them work for you, and then figure out how to package that up in a sexy and sellable way. And if you’re constantly doing that, you will find success, and soon.

By the way, “What’s working FOR ME now” is an expansive category that allows for lots of different experiments and reports.

One small slice of that category is what I’ve called my Most Valuable Email trick.

The Most Valuable Email trick allows you to create “What’s working FOR ME now” content quickly, without taking weeks or months to run an experiment and collect and process results.

In fact, I used the Most Valuable Trick in this very email. And like I say on the sales page, you can get going with it in an hour from now. If you’d like more info, or to get started today:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

How much is infotainment worth?

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How much is infotainment worth? I mean, how much do stories and pop culture analogies and outrage in your marketing sell, above and beyond what you could sell by appealing to personal interest alone?

I don’t know. As far as I know, nobody has ever tried to quantify it.

But I do know of an analogous situation, one that has been quantified. Check it:

Back in 1946, baseball club owner Bill Veeck was the first to introduce fireworks at a baseball game. The baseball establishment was outraged. “It cheapens this great and noble sport,” they said.

Veeck was undeterred. Eventually, other team owners came around, and today, fireworks are a standard addition to many major league games.

Of course, the change in attitude came down to money.

As Veeck argued and found to be true, fireworks at a baseball game pay for themselves many times over, primarily in the form of keeping fans at the stadium longer and selling more hotdogs and beer. When combined with a home-team win, the results are multiplicative. Here are the stats:

1. Lose game, no fireworks: X

2. Lose game, fireworks: 1.4X

3. Win game, no fireworks: 2X

4. Win game, fireworks: 3X

In my mind, this is analogous to selling with or without infotainment.

In this analogy, fireworks are the fun, infotainment, insight.

As for “winning the game,” that maps to your customers actually profiting from the product or the service that you sell.

And “extra money made via concessions” maps to how much more money your one-time customers are willing to spend with you in the future.

Do the baseball numbers above map perfectly to selling?

Again, I don’t know. I would be surprised if they mapped perfectly, But I do suspect they are indicative.

The fact is, infotainment has value in terms of customer loyalty and future willingness to buy. But it has far less value than a product that delivers real results. You can be unlikable or dull, and people will still buy from you, over and over, if they get value from what you sell.

Of course, if you both have a great offer that actually produces results… and you add in your stories and analogies and outrage… then you can look forward to really amazing profits, ones that insulate you from the ups and down of the market and the claws of the competition.

Now I got a favor to ask you, or rather, a deal to make with you:

I’m always on the lookout for great products to promote. The problem is, lots of stuff looks great on the outside. But does it actually deliver results? That’s where I’m hoping you can help me.

What’s a product or a service that you paid $200 or more for over the past year, which really delivered?

It could be an info product, a service, or something you paid to have done for you. And by “really delivered,” I’m not talking about being fun and diverting, but of giving you real value in your real life.

If you’re game, hit reply and let me know of stuff you’ve paid for that was a good investment.

In turn, I’ll reply to you and tell you three offers I’ve bought over the past year or so, all of which cost around $1k, all of which delivered real value to me, and all of which happened to be sold via infotainment.

Do we have a deal? If so, hit reply, and fire away.

How to get informed (it’s not the news)

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Perhaps you’ve seen the trending anti-news article that’s gone viralish over the past week.

It deals with news versus reality, specifically, deaths as reported in the news versus the deaths people actually die from.

The article compared data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to news reports of deaths in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the news website of Fox News.

Some of the results:

First, there wasn’t much difference between the three news outlets, in spite of different political leanings.

Second, there was a big gap between which deaths get written about and which deaths actually happen.

On the over-represented side, murders were 43 times more reported than their share of deaths. Terrorism deaths got 18,000 times more coverage than their share of actual deaths.

On the under-represented side, deaths from things like stroke and heart disease were underreported in the news by a factor of 9 and 10, respectively.

I personally don’t watch or read the news, and this kind of stuff allows me to be smug. “You see,” I imagine telling some imaginary debate partner, “I haven’t been missing anything.”

The fact is, the news doesn’t represent reality, meaning stuff that happens out there. The only reality it represents is what biases exist in the human mind, across time and across space and culture:

Our cravings for novelty… for low probability, high-impact events… for negative rather than positive outcomes… for individual dramatic stories rather than statistics encompassing millions of data points.

But though I personally ignore the news and even like to be smug about it, it’s not just cynical and self-serving news outlets that do this to us.

We do the same thing to ourselves, all the time, because of habit but also because of our inborn neurology. We focus on the negative… the low-probability… the high-impact… and we weave stories about such things that often have little to do with the reality of of our existence.

This all sounds kinda depressing, and I don’t want you leaving my email that way.

So let me share a resource I’ve shared multiple times over the past year and a half.

It lays out a simple process that has allowed me to see reality more clearly and to challenge stories my brain likes to tell itself.

This process worked for me when I first read about it and tried it a year and a half ago. It’s working for me still.

Maybe most importantly, following this process opened up some sort of a gateway in my mind that’s allowed related ideas and practices to flow in, which have made me more happy and resilient these days than I have felt my whole adult life.

In case you want to get informed about reality:

https://bejakovic.com/stillworking

12 sticky disciples to get your message out into the world

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If I ever launch my AIDA University, a 4-year, overpriced curriculum teaching people how to persuade, the mandatory reading for the first semester will include the book Made To Stick.

In that book, authors Chip and Dan Heath tell you how to create a message that sticks.

Basically, they say that you should turn your message into a simple, unusual, concrete, and emotional story.

Which is all good and fine but— are simple, dramatic stories really the only kinds of sticky messages?

Clearly no. I imagine that, in the interest of making their own message sticky, that is, simple and concrete, the Heath brothers decided to stick to teaching just one sticky format.

But I’ve been keeping track of different kinds of sticky messages. Today, I’d like to share them with you.

If you have an idea you want to go out into the world, then here are 12 ways, 12 little disciples, that can preach your message from the housetops:

1. Story, particularly drama

Well ok, yes, this is familiar enough, and it’s what Chip and Dan Heath talk about as well. (Bear with me. I have different ones after this one.)

2. High stakes

Classic example: Stansberry’s “The End of America” video sales letter, which was one of the two or three biggest direct response campaigns of all time, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars through a single VSL.

3. Visuals

Here’s one that made Rich Schefren’s Internet Business Manifesto stick:

Rich Schefren's Internet Manifesto | Tyrone Shum | Flickr

4. Exercises

The first thing that comes to my mind is the following old chestnut, used as a sticky message to illustrate lateral thinking or the absence of it:

Say we have a pen and a piece of paper with 9 evenly spaced dots (as shown). How do we draw 4 straight lines through the 9 dots, without ever lifting our

5. Quizzes

Is your “fat loss type” an I, G, C, or T? What’s your Myers-Briggs? Are you a Pisces or a killer whale? Take our quiz to find out what this says about you as a marketer.

6. Metonyms

A metonym, as I learned once but keep forgetting, is “a figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated, as in the use of Washington for the United States government.”

A great pop culture example of using a metonym to get the point across and to persuade the other side comes from the movie Ford v. Ferrari.

In that movie, Matt Damon, playing car designer Carroll Shelby, is explaining to Henry Ford III why Ford’s sports driving team sucks.

Damon points to a little red folder that one of Ford’s underlings is currently thumbing through (the folder is the metonym, albeit nonverbal) and says:

“As I sat out there in your lovely waiting room, I watched that little red folder, right there, go through four pairs of hands before it got to you. Course that doesn’t include the 22 or so other Ford employees who probably poked at it before it made its way up to the 19th floor. All due respect, sir, you can’t win a race by committee.”

7. Parallel case studies

… which are a subset of dramatic stories, but which occur often enough and are successful often enough compared to regular stories, that they warrant including.

A famous example is the Wall Street Journal “Two Young Men” sales letter, though wise marketers (eg. Andre Chaperon) have been using the same format online as well.

8. Authority (scientific research)

Scientists from MIT report that this kind of message is very sticky, in fact 38% stickier than the average.

9. Demonstration

“It slices, it dices, it makes julienne fries.” Good if you get to see the demonstration on TV… better yet if you see it live… best if you can actually experience it directly on yourself.

10. Outrage/saying the “wrong” thing/playing against type

This is what a huge chunk of classic direct response headline complexes are about. Think “Lies Lies Lies” by Gary Bencivenga… “What THEY Don’t Want You To Know” by Eric Betuel… or “Why Haven’t TV Owners Been Told These Facts” by Gene Schwartz.

11. Rhyme, alliteration, or co-opting phrases that already exist in the mind

This is a broad category but it all comes down to wordplay of one sort or another that our brains seem to enjoy:

– “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit”

– The “Big Black Book” series of big Boardroom blockbusters

– “The Plague of the Black Debt,” which along with the End of America above, is another of the two or three biggest direct response campaigns of all time

12. Metaphor or analogy

An analogy is like a listicle, in that it organizes under one umbrella a number of related points, some of which are strong, and others, which can be disguised and hidden among the stronger ones.

If you have other good categories of sticky messages, write in and let me know. I am putting together a new book in which this kind of stuff will feature. I will appreciate your help, and maybe what you send me will wind up in the book.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t done so yet, you might enjoy my most recent book,

“10 Commandments of Con Men, Pickup Artists, Magicians, Door-to-Door Salesmen, Hypnotists, Copywriters, Professional Negotiators, Political Propagandists, Stand Up Comedians, and Oscar-Winning Screenwriters”

In that book, you can find lots of simple, unusual, concrete, and emotional stories.

But you can also find demonstrations (check out the very first sentence of the intro)… outrage (that’s the whole point of featuring con men and pickup artists in the title)… co-opting phrases that already exist in the mind (“10 Commandments”)… authority… quizzes… high stakes… and even visuals, at least such as can be done with words (specifically, the opening of Commandment V).

For all that, and more:
​
https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

How to stay off Reddit and improve your productivity

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In short, sign up to my Daily Email Habit service. Explanation plus proof:

I put in a funny image or meme at the top of each DEH email, to make it fun to keep opening up these emails day after day, and to put you in the right frame of mind to write your own daily email.

At least that was my reasoning for putting the funny image or meme in each DEH email. But apparently there are other benefits too. From email marketer Logan Hobson, who subscribes to Daily Email Habit:

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I find the daily meme an extra benefit to DEH. I started noticing that I recognized some of your images from reddit, and I wanted your images feel fresh, so I stopped browsing reddit as much and have improved my productivity, knowing I will receive a high-quality curated meme each day in your email without having to endlessly scroll to find one in the wild.

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Of course, the goal of Daily Email Habit goes beyond just improving your productivity and keeping you off Reddit. The real goal is to get you writing your own daily emails consistently, both so you make sales today, and so you build up a relationship with your audience, so they open and read your email tomorrow.

And about that, here’s marketing strategist Nick Bandy, who also subscribes to Daily Email Habit, and who has been emailing his list of buyers daily:

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DEH is the biggest ROI I’ve ever gotten on any course or product I’ve ever purchased. It’s incalculable.

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I have a bunch more testimonials from subscribers who praise Daily Email Habit. I also give away a sample 0th Daily Email Habit email, so you get a sense of what it looks like and what you’d be signing up for, including the funny image/meme up top. For all that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh