Linking

Budapest, Hopkins, cold outreach

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Three mildly connected things for you today, to pick and choose from as you like:

#1. Budapest

I’m just finishing my visit to my former home town, Budapest, where I spent 11 years of my life. I reconnected with friends I’ve known for decades. The weather was perfect. The city was more beautiful than ever. All in all it was a great trip.

One thing that stood out during this trip:

Hungary, of which Budapest is the capital and by far the biggest town, had a big change of government earlier this year. The political party that had ruled for 16 years, and that had become infamous for corruption and undemocratic consolidation of power, finally lost the elections.

Ever since, foreign investment that had been frozen and kept out of the country has started flowing back in… Hungarians who had moved abroad, because they found the local situation hopeless, have been moving back… and the locals here just look optimistic and happy (ok, as happy as Hungarians can ever look).

This brings me to…

#2. Claude Hopkins

Claude Hopkins, author of Scientific Advertising, which is a sort of Bible in the field of direct advertising, once wrote:

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“People are like sheep. They cannot judge values, nor can you and I. We judge things largely by others’ impressions, by popular favor. We go with the crowd. So the most effective thing I have ever found in advertising is the trend of the crowd. That is a factor not to be overlooked. People follow styles and preferences. We rarely decide for ourselves, because we don’t know the facts. But when we see the crowds taking any certain direction, we are much inclined to go with them.”

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Hopkins was talking about advertising, about picking and choosing products to sell and copy to run based on the trend of the crowd. Sure. But the idea applies more broadly.

The most effective thing in business, and maybe in life, is the trend of the crowd.

Yes, it’s possible to get rich and be happy during depressions and wars.

But a much more effective way to get rich and be happy is to work in industries and live in places that are going through periods of growth or rebirth of expansion. I thought of this during this trip to Budapest.

I hadn’t seriously considered moving back here ever since I had moved away almost 8 years ago. I’ve been thinking about it for the past few days, because of the trend of the crowd. I feel like this will be a place of excitement and growth over the coming years.

#3. Cold outreach

Yesterday I sent out an email to my list, asking folks if they’ve tried getting clients via cold outreach.

I got two classes of responses. Class 1:

1A. “Yes, I hate it. I hired an agency multiple times and every time I hated it.”

1B. “So far, 17 days in, 70 prospects approached, 0 clients, countless menty b’s.”

1C. “No, and wouldn’t ;)”

Then there’s class 2:

2A. “That is my primary method for getting clients.”

2B. “Yes, John. Works very well for me. No fancy cold email stack. Just a 3-liner email with a very relevant problem that they’d wanna get rid of. Brings me every month $12K to $18K!”

2C. “I’m using cold outreach to get clients, and I’m doing very well with it. Personally, one of the best methods, especially if we are talking about cold email outreach.”

Quite the difference between Class 1 and Class 2.

I started a discussion about this in my Daily Email House community.

If cold outreach is not something you hate or are fundamentally opposed to, you can join in the discussion below.

It’s an opportunity to share your experiences, and maybe learn from the experiences of some people who have been very successful with cold outreach. Here’s the link:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house/cold-outreach

Don’t think of Greenland

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Back in 2019, Internet personality James Altucher ran a crowdfunding campaign to raise $100,000,000 to buy Greenland. He felt Greenland was too important not to be bought.

Altucher is a smart guy. He did his research to back up his claim.

His primary reason for wanting to buy Greenland?

Rare earth minerals, like yttrium, scandium, neodymium, which are used in modern-day technologies such as LED screens, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. Rare earth minerals today almost exclusively come via China, which puts the U.S. in an awkward and dangerously dependent position.

But don’t think of China, and don’t think of Greenland.

Because I read a story this morning in the Wall Street Journal, about how the U.S. is trying to feed its growing mineral hunger — by farming.

Apparently, certain plants are “hyperaccumulators,” and pull out lots of minerals from the ground.

The U.S. has millions of acres of barren, mineral-rich soil.

The minerals in this soil are not of high-enough concentration to deserve being refined by traditional means. But they can be farmed into plants, which can then be incinerated to produce a cost-effective new source of minerals.

If it all works out, farming might become a viable new source of rare minerals for the U.S. economy.

So don’t think of Greenland.

But do think how this story offers a simple, classic, and memorable example of what business and innovation are all about:

An abundant and cheap resource (land in this case)… a new or better process (hyperaccumulating plants)… and a rare and valuable end product (rare minerals).

Also, do think of how this might apply to you and your business.

Because what resource is more abundant and cheap than ideas, gossip, and news stories?

And yet, with a simple enough process, these cheap resources can be turned into rare and valuable end products — sales copy, or marketing content, or even highly priced courses, books, and training.

What is that simple enough process?

Daily emails, exactly like the one you’re reading now.

My email today happens to be based on today’s Daily Email Habit puzzle.

If you’d like to engage in your own “hyperaccumulation” process, and use daily emails to convert cheap and abundant resources into rare and valuable assets, then consider checking out Daily Email Habit today, before tomorrow’s puzzle appears and then disappears.

And whatever you do, don’t think of Greenland.

Here’s the link to take things into your own hands:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Bud Light boycott keeps getting worse, but I can fix it

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Bud Light is in a tailspin. You may have heard the news.

On April 1, transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney announced that Bud Light had sent her personalized cans to celebrate her one-year anniversary living as a trans woman.

A boycott of Bud Light started as a result. In the weeks and months since, sales of Bud Light have plummeted close to 30%. The stock price of Anheuser-Busch is down by almost 20% compared to April 1. This fiasco has erased over $22 billion worth of market value.

Brand boycotts normally blow over in a couple weeks. The Bud Light boycott is getting stronger after 3 months. Sales of Bud Light are trending lower and lower each week. Data out In June showed Mexican lager Modelo replacing Bud Light as America’s best-selling beer.

Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth issued a peacemaking statement, saying the company never meant to be “part of a discussion that divides people.”

​​Bud Light continues to sponsor Major League Baseball and has a new summer campaign, “easy to drink and easy to enjoy.”

None of this is making an impact.

At this point, I’d like to step in. ​​Anheuser-Busch is an American institution, as is Bud Light. Also, some 18,000 people’s jobs are directly on the line.

At the same time, it’s clear that this is not an issue of beer or jobs only, but really about values and identity.

Where Brendan Whitworth and the billion-dollar marketing agencies that Anheuser-Busch employs have failed, I will succeed.

Using the almost mystical influence powers I have gained through repeated use of my Most Valuable Email Trick trick, I will realign Bud Light’s public positioning so it once again fits its core market’s values and identity. At the same time, I will do so in a way that leaves the progressive community impressed and content.

If I were to start now, I could have Bud Light back on top, ahead of Modelo, getting more Americans slightly buzzed without feeling bloated, well before Labor Day. All Anheuser-Busch has to do is get Whitworth to write me and ask. My email address is publicly available.

In other news, I have a disappearing bonus for you for today.

This morning I came across an incredible resources, filled with insightful and proven marketing and positioning advice.

It comes from a man I’ve actually written about once in this newsletter, but who has influenced my thinking about marketing and human psychology more deeply than I may let on — maybe more deeply than anybody else over the past few years.

Among a dozen or more great ideas in that resource I found today, one stood out to me.

So here are the details of my disappearing bonus offer:

1. Get a copy of my Most Valuable Email training at https://bejakovic.com/mve

2. Then reply to this email and say you want the disappearing bonus offer.

3. I will write you back and tell you 1) That resource I found this morning, and where you can get it for free 2) the particular idea that struck me, and how you can apply it in your own marketing and 3) why the man behind this resource has been so influential to me personally.

4. This disappearing bonus offer is good until tomorrow, Tuesday July 11, at 8:31pm CET.

5. And of course, if you’ve bought MVE already, this is open to you as well. Write in and ask away, and I will tell you. But the same deadline applies.

2020 isn’t done with us yet

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Last Wednesday, a troop of scientist monkeys was circling in a helicopter above the Utah desert, when they spotted something that shouldn’t be there.

The scientists landed to take a closer look.

There, in the middle of Road Runner country, among red cliffs and tumbleweeds and a whole lot of nothing, stood a rectangular silver pillar. It was about 10 feet tall, and about 1 foot in width and depth.

The mysterious object had no apparent purpose or function. There was no clue who or what had created it.

So in an instinctive show of excitement, the scientists started hooting and throwing sticks and scratching their armpits.

But let me take a step back. I found out about this from a BBC article titled:

“Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert”

I clicked on this article among dozens of other tempting news headlines. So I asked myself why. The news aspect was one, the curiosity another. But that’s clearly not all.

It’s that word “monolith.” Maybe you see where this is going.

A monolith in the middle of the desert ties into Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001. You know the famous scene, with the orgasmic music and the sun rising as a monkey smashes some tapir bones.

I thought this monolith article was speaking directly to me. But sadly no. ​​The BBC knew what it was doing.

​​Millions of other people made the same 2001 connection. One twitter intellectual writing under the account @MonolithUtah commented “We come in peace.” Another wrote “2020 isn’t done with us yet #utahmonolith.”

This has obvious applications if you’re writing sales copy. In fact, marketer Joe Sugarman exploited the underlying principle behind this monolith story to sell all kinds of devices, from smoke detectors to remote car starters.

That’s something I wrote about in more detail when I originally wrote this article and sent it out to my newsletter subscribers.

In case you’d like to be on my newsletter, so you don’t miss any more copywriting tricks that link into popular science fiction movies, click here and subscribe.