Copywriting

What I learned from copywriting

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Copywriting pays for my food, my rent, and my collection of black t-shirts.

Copywriting allows me to work on a Saturday, if I so choose, and skip Monday through Wednesday.

Copywriting has put me in touch with multimillionaires and even one billionaire.

It’s exposed me to strange new worlds, such as beekeping, billboard wholesaling, and penis enlargement.

But all that is kids’ stuff. Where copywriting really impacted me, where it changed me in ways I didn’t expect, is the following:

A. It taught me to read.

David Deutsch said, “If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t read 50 books one time each; I would read 10 books five times each.”

Other famous copywriters say the same.

So I reread books now. And I find mucho stuff in there that I didn’t see before. My brain changed in the meantime.

Also when I read, I’m much more careful. I keep stopping to ask myself, “Is this interesting? New? Useful? Could it be useful if I combined it with something else I’d read?” It’s slow and it’s work. But it’s a better use of my time than flying through text and not getting anything out of it.

B. It gave me a real acceptance of the moist robot hypothesis.

Scott Adams says we are all “moist robots”:

“Humans are wet robots that respond to programming. If you aren’t intentionally programming yourself, the environment and other people are doing it for you.”

This sounded outlandish when I first heard it… then amusing… then interesting… then believable… then obvious. Copywriting provided me with plenty of real-life examples. There might be something more inside of us, some capacity for experience and reflection… but most of what we do is moist robot.

C. It exposed me to the Gene Schwartz sophistication/awareness models.

This is so valuable whether you’re writing copy or doing any other kind of communicating. It can be summed up with the idea of starting where your reader/prospect/adversary is… But how do you do that? Schwartz’s models tell you exactly.

D. It taught me the low value of secrets.

And also the low value of supplements. And the low value of opportunities. In general, through copywriting, I’ve developed a suspicion of anything new being advertised for sale.

E. It taught me the enduring power of listicles.

For getting attention. Not necessarily valuable attention. Which is why I used the headline “What I learned from copywriting” instead of “5 things I learned from copywriting.” As Mark Ford said recently:

“If you want to get cheap readership, listicles are great. But they don’t do a good job selling anything, or getting serious attention, or creating a fan out of the reader, especially at higher price points.”

F. It taught me how to get rich.

I’m not sure if I ever will be rich. But I might.

Through copywriting, I’ve had an amazing business education. I’ve gotten to look behind the curtain at dozens of successful enterprises. I’ve found out exactly how they get their customers… what they sell to these customers… and how they keep selling more.

Maybe one day, I’ll turn that knowledge into actual success. Speaking of which, let me repeat something I wrote a few months back:

​​”Perhaps success is simply about choosing a field where you don’t mind getting better. Where the daily work is something you find enjoyable enough — or at least, not too repulsive — so you can continue to get better at it day after day.”

Copywriting is not my passion. I don’t have any passions.

But I don’t mind the daily work, and sometimes I even find it enjoyable. And that’s something I never thought would happen.

Maybe you’d like more articles like this. In that case, you can sign up for my daily email newsletter.

How to infect customers with the desire to do what you want

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Envy the killifish.

Normally a shy and reserved animal, the killifish is always a bit nervous. It’s always looking left and right, trying to avoid danger and trouble.

It’s not a great way to live.

But for a few days of its life, everything changes for the killifish. It’s suddenly filled with energy and passion. Its fears melt away and it finds itself enjoying the wonder and joy that was always there, surrounding it.

In its new-found optimism, the killifish swims up to surface of the water, splashes in the sun, and even turns its scaly belly to the sky for the pure pleasure of it.

And then, a seagull or some other predatory bird, spotting the shiny belly of the killifish glistening at the surface of the water, swoops down, snatches the killifish, and swallows it whole.

Turns out the killifish had actually gotten infected by the Euhaplorchis californiensis parasite.

​​The E. californiensis gets into the brain of the killifish. It messes with its serotonin and dopamine levels. In this way, it makes the normally wary fish action-oriented and fearless.

And here’s the key point:

The parasite does this not out of spite, and not out of random destructiveness.

Instead, the parasite does it because getting the killifish eaten by the seagull is crucial to completing the parasite’s own complex lifecycle (a bizarre story, one that’s worth looking up).

A couple days ago, I wrote an email about tying in your marketing emails to news items.

I wrote something about princes Harry and William, and about “unity.” Then I stumbled onwards, towards my point and sales pitch.

Honestly, that email was nonsense. It was something I did just to demonstrate the point I was talking about. I would never write an email like that if I were trying to really sell something. I wouldn’t ramble on about a random news item and then milk it for some kind of aimless point.

Because here’s something I’ve learned from the best marketers out there:

The best marketers don’t just tell vulnerable personal stories, or just share interesting news items, or just make mind-expanding analogies.

In other words, they don’t just share ideas or provide changes of perspective for the sake of being helpful, friendly, or educational.

Instead, they do everything — story, news, change of perspective — for the sake of furthering the sale.

Perhaps that’s super obvious to you. In that case, you’re smarter than I am, because it took me some time to realize. When I did realize it, it was a huge mental shift that changed both how I consume marketing and how I produce marketing.

Now, it’s popular in the marketing world to say your marketing should be all about your prospect, and not about you.

And maybe that’s true.

But what’s not true is that your marketing should be about who your prospects are, what they want to become or achieve, and how your product or service can help them get there.

Instead, here’s the key point, once again:

Your marketing should be about what you want your prospects to do, and the beliefs they need to have in order to move in the direction you want them to go.

Maybe that sounds mercenary or even parasitical.

Maybe it is. ​​

And maybe it raises the question, if what you are reading right now is marketing, then what is it I want you to do, and what do I want you to believe?

I’ll leave the question of beliefs hanging for now.

As for what I want you to do, I just have an offer, my free daily email newsletter. It’s for you to decide whether you are action-oriented enough to take me up on this offer. In case you feel that you are, here’s where to go to sign up.

Don’t read this email

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I bought an ugly pair of Patagonia swim trunks once. That’s why this morning, I felt emotionally invested in reading an article about Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, and how he has just given away his entire $3 billion company to a climate-change nonprofit.

Chouinard was a early-generation rock climber, a bum who lived in his car and ate cat food to support his rock-climbing habit.

Later, Chouinard started Patagonia. After the company started selling millions and then billions of dollars of ugly swim trunks and other stuff, success never sat right with him.

Chouinard’s final solution was, like I told you above, to give away his entire company.

But even before that, Patagonia seemed to do strange and self-defeating things.

For example, back in 2011, on Black Friday, Patagonia ran a full-page ad in the New York Times. The headline of the ad ran:

“DON’T BUY THIS JACKET”

Below that was a picture of the R2 jacket, one of Patagonia’s best-selling items. The body copy of the ad explained in detail the environmental cost of producing each such jacket. “As is true of all things we can make and you can buy, this jacket comes with an environmental cost higher than its price.”

The direct result of this ad?

I have no idea. This was not your usual direct response ad. And if there were any measurable consequences of this ad, I couldn’t find any info about them online.

So rather than speculating whether DON’T BUY THIS JACKET is effective marketing, I will focus on one specific, certain thing about that Patagonia ad.

The body copy of that ad ended by advising New York Times readers,

“Don’t buy what you don’t need. Think twice before you buy anything.”

“Why the provocative headline,” Patagonia marketers wrote later on the company blog, “if we’re only asking people to buy less and buy more thoughtfully?” Answer:

​​”To call attention to the issue in a strong, clear way.”

A couple weeks ago, I stayed in an Airbnb and I found a copy of Paul Arden’s book, “It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be.”

Arden was the creative director at Saatchi and Saatchi, one of the biggest brand advertising agencies in the world.

Arden’s book was mostly terrible. But the following idea, which ties up today’s email, makes the entire book more than worthwhile:

Find out what’s right about your product or service and then dramatize it, like a cartoonist exaggerates an action.

For example, you know a horse can jump a ditch, therefore you accept that it can jump the Grand Canyon.

This realization accelerated my career faster than anything I have learned since.

So yeah. Don’t read what you don’t need. Think twice before you open any email, particularly a marketing email. And take a moment before you click on any links that could suck you in or sell you stuff against your better interests.

On that note, if you enjoyed this email or even found it more valuable than anything else you have ever read, if you think today’s idea might even save your life one day, then here’s something else you might enjoy:

https://bejakovic.com/dont-listen-to-me-im-just-some-guy/

What we can all learn from princes William and Harry

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A few hours after I write this, the Queen’s coffin will be placed on a gun carriage and will lead a procession down a packed Mall, along Whitehall and then into Parliament Square before entering the Palace of Westminster.

Walking in the procession behind the Queen will be her son, the new king, Charles III.

But perhaps more remarkable, Charles’s two sons, William and Harry, will also be walking in the procession.

That’s remarkable because for the two princes, this act will bring back painful memories of when they, aged 15 and 12, walked behind the coffin of their mother Princess Diana in 1997.

What makes this act still more remarkable is that princes Harry and William are embroiled in a bitter personal feud with each other. (I don’t know the details of the feud, and the Daily Mail article I just read didn’t elaborate. So I guess I never will know.)

Whatever the case may be, I think this all just highlight the importance of unity.

Unity of family… unity in moments of crisis… unity when different, individual, tiny elements come together to form a bigger and more powerful whole.

Because after all, isn’t unity really the essence we all strive for, in life in general, and in email marketing in particular?

In particular, I have just read about the first ever email marketer, a man named Mr. Pease.

Mr. Pease sold a product called “Pease’s Horehound Candy,” a kind of cough drop. And since he lived in the first half of the 19th century, he clearly didn’t use email, not the way we know it today.

But Mr. Pease’s remarkable marketing was the essence of what email is about. It would work today as well as it did in early America.

So what did Mr. Pease do to advertise his cough drops? ​​From chapter 8 of P.T. Barnum’s book, Humbugs of the World:

Mr. Pease’s plan was to seize upon the most prominent topic of interest and general conversation, and discourse eloquently upon that topic in fifty to a hundred lines of a newspaper-column, then glide off gradually into a panegyric of “Pease’s Horehound Candy.” The consequence was, every reader was misled by the caption and commencement of his article, and thousands of persons had “Pease’s Horehound Candy” in their mouths long before they had seen it! In fact, it was next to impossible to take up a newspaper and attempt to read the legitimate news of the day without stumbling upon a package of “Pease’s Horehound Candy.”

Mr. Pease got very rich selling his horehound candy with his humbug news item advertisements.

And that’s what I hope will happen for you as well, if you only follow his very smart, very durable, very unified marketing approach.

The good news is, in many ways you have it easier than Pease did. For example, Pease had to pay for advertising space each time he wanted to get his message out. But email today is pretty much free.

Of course, Pease did have some advantages that you today do not have.

Such as, for example, a ready-made and large audience of newspaper readers.

Or the fact that those newspaper readers read their newspaper with a curious and trusting mind, rather than with skepticism and disinterest.

Or the fact that those readers didn’t have Twitter, where they could start campaigns to mock or even shut down Pease’s company because of its misleading advertising.

But fear not!

Because there are simple, quick, and quite specific methods to overcome those problems in your email marketing today.

And if you have a business, and more specifically an email list, and you would like to make like Mr. Pease and market your way to great wealth, then may I advise you take a look at the fine offer below.

What, you want me to tie this offer into the topic of unity, or to princess William and Harry?

Not today. That’s not what I learned from Mr. Pease.

But if you do want potentially business-changing guidance with your email marketing, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/audit

Dan Kennedy corrects a mistake I’ve made in my copywriting career

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Let me tell you a copywriting client experience that still stings:

About two years into my freelancing career, I got the opportunity to write some emails for RealDose Nutrition.

​​RealDose is an 8-figure supplement company, started by a couple of direct marketers and an MD. They sell actually legit supplement products — their USP is right there in the name.

Long story short – I did a good job with those emails. I even tripled results in one of their main email funnels.

Impressed with those results, the CEO of RealDose asked me to write a sales letter next, for their probiotics product.

The only problem was, at this stage of my career, I had never written a full-blown sales letter.

​​What to do?

​​I took Gary Bencivenga’s olive oil sales letter and analyzed the structure. I wrote something that looked nothing like Gary’s letter, but was the exact same thing under the hood.

I gave it to the guys at RealDose. They shrugged their shoulders. They copy seemed okay… but I guess they weren’t sold. Because as far as I know, the sales letter was never tested.

Some time later, I got that sales letter critiqued by A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos. Parris said the body copy was fine. But the hook? The headline and the lead?

Parris used my headline and lead to publicly illustrate what an uninteresting promise looks like. “Are you the first person on the plant to ever sell a probiotic?” Parris asked me. He laughed and shook his head.

I never got another chance to write anything else for RealDose. I always wonder how my career might have gone had I done a better job with that big shot that I got.

I bring this up because today, I made a list of 10 mistakes I’ve made in copywriting career.

That RealDose sales letter, with the uninteresting promise in the headline, was no. 1.

No 4. was that this newsletter, the one you are reading now, is actually the third iteration of my daily email newsletter.

​​I deleted the previous two versions.

Version one was very much like this, and ran for a few months in 2016.

​​​​Some time later, I deleted it because I started writing about crypto marketing.

​​Then in 2018, I deleted that crypto daily email newsletter… and started writing this current iteration, starting over where I had left off two years earlier, and wasting a bunch of time, effort, and opportunity in the process.

So those are mistakes no. 1 and no. 4.

And then there’s mistake no. 7.

Mistake no. 7 is that i didn’t treat my freelancing career as a business for way too long. And when I say that, I might not mean what you think I mean.

For example, I always paid a lot of attention to the prices I was charging clients. And I worked hard on getting those prices higher.

I was also always on the hunt for new leads and new ways of getting leads.

And yet, at the same time, I didn’t ask myself, until way too late, “How can I promote this? How can I make a spectacle out of this? How can I get this offer that I have — meaning myself and my copywriting services — in front of a much bigger audience?”

Maybe what I mean is best summarized by Dan Kennedy, the very smart and successful marketer I’ve mentioned a few times in the past few days. Dan once said:

“Your growth will have less to do with your talent, your skill, your expertise or your deliverables than it will your ability and willingness to create and exploit your own status.”

Dan claims this applies regardless of what business you are in, whether you are selling services or products. In fact, Dan gave the above advice to a guy with a software company.

Which brings me to my offer to you for today.

How would you like a free consulting day with Dan Kennedy?

A daylong consult with Dan normally costs $18k. But you can get it for free.

Well, fine, not the whole thing.

But you can get three highlights of the consulting day that Dan gave to marketer Mike Cappuzzi.

The fact is, I told you one of the highlights of that consult day above. But in case you think a little bit of Dan’s $18k/day wisdom could benefit your business, here’s where you can read Dan’s other two consulting day highlights:

https://mikecapuzzi.com/an-insiders-glimpse-into-a-consulting-day-with-dan-kennedy/

In defense of bad headlines

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I like to get my contact with the world through a news board called Hacker News. It works just like other news boards — popular and interesting article stick around for a longer time. In general, even the most popular articles stick around for only a few hours.

Yesterday, I went on Hacker News and I saw a terribly uninteresting article had appeared on the front page. The headline ran:

“What’s SAP, and why’s it worth $163B?”

“Geez,” I said, “who cares? I know all I need to know about SAP. It’s some big enterprise software company. Why would I ever want to read more about that?”

So I ignored this article.

And I had to keep ignoring it because a few hours later it was still there, getting more and more upvotes.

This morning, I sat down on a park bench with a croissant and checked Hacker News again. “What’s SAP” was still there, with about 10x the average upvotes of all the other posts on the HN front page.
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I sighed, hung my head, and clicked to read this stupid article.

​​And you know what?

It was fascinating.

I won’t repeat the article here. I will just tell you that it put the current moment into a bigger context and taught me something new about my world. (And yes, that new thing was about enterprise software.)

But this article did more than that.

For example, did you know that until the 1990s, 90% of software sold was custom-built, and not off-the-shelf?

Of course, today, it’s the exact opposite.

Which made me think about the direct response business. Could we be in a similar, pre-1990s situation right now when it comes to DR marketing funnels and sales copy? As in, 90% of copy today is still custom-written, instead of off-the-shelf?

You might say it’s a stupid question, and that it’s impossible to have off-the-shelf sales copy and marketing.

​​Or you might say it already happened, with companies like Clickfunnels, and with niche marketing providers like Vyral Marketing for real estate agents.

Whatever.

The point of this email is not this question of custom-built vs. off-the-shelf marketing. The point is simply that the “What’s SAP” article got me thinking in a new way.

And that’s really what I want to share with you today. A defense of bad headlines.

Because if you find yourself magically attracted to a headline — “I gotta read this!” — odds are good it’s because you are looking for confirmation of previously held views… or perhaps some small update on a topic you already know too much about.

On the other hand, when you find yourself completely repelled by a headline (“What’s SAP”), it might be time to stop and say, “Sounds horrific! But let me see what this is about.”

A couple days ago, I shared a talk given by a very successful and very influential marketer, Dan Kennedy, about thriving during a recession. In that talk, Dan said:

You pay attention to everybody else who’s in your business. It’s like being Amish. It works just like real incest. Everybody gets dumber and dumber and dumber until the whole thing just grinds to a halt.

So you can’t do that. You’ve got to pay attention outside your little Amish community of jewelers or carpet cleaners or whatever it is that, up until tonight, you thought you were.

You’ve got to pay attention to other stuff because you ain’t going to find any breakthroughs in the five other people standing in a circle looking at you. They aren’t any smarter than you are. They are probably dumber than you are.

I think that covers the M and the B in my M+B+C email formula. Now as for that C:

You might or might not already know that I offer an Email Marketing Audit.

So far, I’ve been selling my Email Marketing Audit by referring to results I have achieved for businesses I’ve worked with. The increases in conversion rates in email funnels… the millions of dollars of sales made by writing emails and managing email lists.

But there’s another good reason you might want to get me to look at your email marketing:

​​My non-Amish breadth of of experience in this field.

Off top of my head, I’ve consulted and worked on email funnels to sell weight loss supplements… shipping containers… pet supplies… sex and dating info products… essential oils… Internet marketing… fermented food preparation kits… realtor services… and real estate investing education.

Do you think this breadth of experience might help you and your business get out of incestuous and closed-minded marketing practices?

In case you do, ​​here’s where to go to get my Email Marketing Audit:

https://bejakovic.com/audit

Gratuitous fun to make readers stand up and beg for buttermilk

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For the first 20 or 30 years of my life, I had this serious mental defect where I couldn’t enjoy a good bangemup action movie.

“So unrealistic,” I snuffled. “So predictable.” That’s how I wasted decades of my life.

Thank God I’ve grown up.

​​Because now I can watch and enjoy movies like True Lies, James Cameron’s 1994 action comedy.

​​True Lies stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as super spy/boring suburban dad Harry Tasker, and Jamie Lee Curtis as his stodgy/talented wife Helen.

The initial reason I watched True Lies was the following famous line. It’s delivered by a used car salesman who’s trying to seduce Helen and is unwittingly confiding to Harry about it:

“And she’s got the most incredible body, too, and a pair of titties that make you wanna stand up and beg for buttermilk. Ass like a ten year old boy!”

Which modern Hollywood screenplay would dare have that?

But even beyond the risky dialogue, I was surprised by how fun this movie is. I guess that’s the only word to describe it. For example, as the movie goes on, you get to see:

– an old man sitting on a public toilet, calmly reading a newspaper, during the first shootout between Harry and the bad guy

– Harry riding a horse into an elevator, and an aristocratic couple in the elevator getting whipped in the face by the horse’s tail

– Tia Carrere (the evil seductress in the movie) rushing to grab her purse before the bad guys drop a box with a nuclear warhead onto it

– a pelican landing on a teetering van full of terrorists and sending it crashing off the bridge

– Harry saving the day flying a military jet, perfectly landing the plane on a city street, and then accidentally bumping a cop car

The point is that all these details are what I call “gratuitous fun.”

They weren’t in any way central to the action of the movie… and even the comedic part of the plot could have done without them.

They were just pure, unnecessary fun that made the movie sparkle a bit more. And I guess they helped it become the success that it was, netting almost $400 million in 1994 dollars.

I think the message is clear:

This year, surprise your readers with some gratuitous fun in your online content, in your sales messages, and even your one-to-one business communication.

​​People love James Cameron’s movies. They will love your stuff, too. In fact, you’ll make them wanna stand up and beg for buttermilk. Whatever that means.

And if you are too close to your own marketing to know what “gratuitous fun” might look like… well, maybe you can get some ideas from my own marketing. If you like, you can sign up for my daily email newsletter here.

How to get paid extraordinarily for doing ordinary work

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Back in 2019, a banana, taped to a wall, sold for $120,000.

That’s because it was art.

The artist in question, Maurizio Cattelan, became famous for an earlier piece, a functioning solid gold toilet, titled “America.”

America-toilet was first installed at the Guggenheim, where it was used, as intended, by 100,000 people. It was then loaned to a palace in the UK, where it was stolen and probably melted down.

(All this outrageous information was reported by CNN, so you can be sure it’s true.)

And here’s the 24-karat point:

Cattelan could have stayed in his home town of Padua, taping fruit to the wall and talking about gold toilets to anybody who would listen. He probably would have been shunned and mocked.

Instead, he chose to go on the world stage, where he tapes fruit to the wall and makes gold toilets. As a result, he is being celebrated and paid millions of dollars.

Fact is, you often get as much as you ask for. And that even holds in “results-based” professions like sales or copywriting.

You can work for small clients, who give you trouble, pay you pennies, and grumble when they do.

Or you can work for big clients, who appreciate your work, shower you with gold, and treat it like the deal of a lifetime.

And speaking personally, here, lean in:

That’s one of the reasons I recently restricted my Email Marketing Audit to only those businesses who have an email list of 10,000 names or more.

If you have a business, but your list has fewer than 10,000 names right now… there’s no shame in that. But it does mean you might want to start thinking bigger.

On the other hand, if you do have a list of 10,000 names already, and you would like to make much more money from that list, then my Email Marketing Audit might be for you. To find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/audit

Announcing: Membrane Theory

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Frankly, I’m a little filled with dread as I sit down to write this email. I mean, just a moment ago, I realized it was time, but I had nothing. No ideas to write about. In a last-ditch attempt to put off work, I decided to check my own inbox.

​​And whaddya know?

There was something interesting in there:

My monthly report from Google Search Console, telling me which pages on my site have gotten the most visits.

So what are my most visited pages? And how are people finding me? Here are my top 3 Google queries:

1. Dan Ferrari copywriter
2. Evaldo Albuquerque
3. Daniel Throssell

Is this fair?

​​I mean, I’ve written way more emails/posts in the categories of motivation, positioning, and insight marketing than about any of those three guys.

But as the numbers show, that doesn’t matter.

​​What does matter is a really fundamental and very valuable idea — valuable if you are ever trying to influence people and get them to change their minds. I’ve previously summed this up as:

Sell people, not ideas.

Ideas are smoke.

But people have meat to them.

It’s just something about the human brain. In any pile of random data points, we are pre-progammed to search for human actors, for faces, for names.

This is just one example of something I call “membrane theory.”

Rather than dealing with a bunch of loose stuff, people want to put a membrane around it, and deal with it as a unit.

That’s why we love clearly defined scenes and events, with a ritualized beginning and an end.

That’s why we love to get a medical diagnosis, as bad as it may be, rather than keep living with a bunch of vague, threatening, on-and-off symptoms.

That’s why we love to categorize ourselves and others. We want to stop the world from being fluid and flexible, and instead we want to see ourselves as an INTQ while the other guy is an EFBJ and so of course we cannot work well together.

But you know what?

I’m not applying my own lesson here.

Because “Membrane Theory” is a horrible-sounding and abstract idea.

So let me stop talking about that. And let me talk about myself instead.

As I finish up writing this email, I’m a lot less filled with dread than I was just 20 minutes ago.

I’m looking out my large balcony doors, to yet another sunny and hot day in Barcelona. A scooter just drove up my street. Man those things make a lot of noise.

As soon as I finish up here, I’ll get back to work on my Most Valuable Email project. I’m turning that into its own complete course, and it should be ready soon.

Also, a bit later in the month, I will convert my Copy Riddles program from being delivered by email, only a few times a month, to a standalone, web-based, evergreen course.

In the meantime, if you want to help me get the word out about 1) myself and 2) Copy Riddles, I created an optin page/too-valuable post for that.

And if you share that optin page publicly, I’ve got a little bribe for you. It might be of interest in case you are a freelancer — it can help you get clients.

For the full details on that offer, which I have membranized under the name Niche Expert Cold Emails, take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/free-offer-niche-expert-cold-emails/

I grinned when I sat down in the metro but when the doors closed!~

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A few days ago, I got on the metro here in Barcelona and I spotted a rare empty seat. I jumped into it, grinning with satisfaction. But in the very next moment, my face sank.

“Oh no…”

A trio of busking musicians — a guitar, a fiddle, and a drum — had entered the metro car right after me. They were getting ready to play and make me listen.

In a panic, I looked to the doors.

​​​They had just closed.

​​There was no escape.

I sighed and settled in. There must be something worthwhile I can get from this, I said to myself. And there was.

The metro started rumbling and the musical trio started their act. A song about love and flowers, from what little I could understand.

Most of the passengers ignored the music and stared at their phones. A few people looked on and smiled. And the guy sitting next to me, he even clapped along silently.

After all, the buskers were singing and playing well.

They kept playing through the next stop. As the stop after that neared, they wrapped up their act.

​​Hat in hand, they walked up and down the car, modestly asking for money.

From where I was sitting, it looked like they didn’t get a single euro cent.

Not a cent. Not from any of the dozens of passengers who paid or didn’t pay attention… not from my clapping neighbor… and not from me, certainly.

Sad? Not sad? Serves them right? The trio made their way to the next car. And they got ready to do the whole act all over again.

​​Now let me tie this up to something you might care about if you are a copywriter or for-hire marketer:

A lot of service providers in this field, including myself at an earlier day, do something similar to those metro car buskers.

They naively think that if they provide a good service – copywriting, ad management, singing and playing the fiddle — then, in a big enough group of random and disinterested people, they are sure to hit upon at least a few who will want to pay for that service.

So these service providers collect a bunch of emails of business owners… they craft the perfect cold email… maybe they even take the time to put on a little song and dance, in the form of a custom sample.

But there’s a problem with this kind of thinking. It doesn’t take into account the disastrous “buying context” that’s working against them:

Prospects who are in the wrong headspace… negative positioning/social proof… technical problems… a suspicious odor of pushiness and neediness… the time, work, and emotional toil of putting on a show, over and over, for people who don’t want to hear it, and who give you no feedback, encouragement, or money in return.

That’s not to say that cold email cannot or will not ever work.

I mean, millions of buskers around the world do well, much better than those guys on the metro.

Just one day after that metro performance, I was sitting in Madrid, and I watched a busking duo — a guitar and an accordion this time — clean up a pedestrian street filled with bars and restaurants. They must have made a hundred euro or more, for about five minutes of playing.

These guys were providing pretty much the same service as those Barcelona metro buskers. But in a different context. With different positioning.

And it’s the same with cold email.

In spite of giving it a good go a few times, I’ve never had success with “standard” cold email, the way it’s talked about online.

But I have had success with cold email a few times, in a different context, with different positioning.

After some thinking, I even formalized this into a system, one I call Niche Expert Cold Emails. And I’ve prepared a training all about it.

And it’s free. ​​

Well, free as in, it won’t cost you one euro cent.

But there is a catch. In case you are curious, you can read more about it here:

https://bejakovic.com/free-offer-niche-expert-cold-emails/