Copywriting

Just how bad are you at multitasking?

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Nobody called me out on it. But yesterday, I made a kind of preposterous claim.

​​I was talking about the following headline:

“If you’ve got 20 minutes a month, I guarantee to work a financial miracle in your life”

… and I said that his was an example of a concrete promise, something real and palpable.

As of this writing, nobody wrote me to challenge me on that. So let me do your job for you:

“Really Bejako? A ‘financial miracle in your life’? That’s your example of a concrete and real and palpable promise?”

Yes, really. And to prove it to you, let me tell you a story.

This story involves a man. A man named Tony. Tony Slydini.

Little Italian guy.
​​
Wrinkled, like a salted cod fish.

Spoke with a heavy Italian accent.

Performed magic tricks like you wouldn’t believe.

One of Slydini’s magic tricks involved making a bunch of paper balls disappear, only to appear in a hat that was empty at the start of the trick.

Before making each paper ball disappear, Slydini performed a few elaborate hand gestures. He’d wave the paper ball around in front of him, close it in his hand, sprinkle some invisible magic dust on it, open his hand, close it again, etc.

If you haven’t seen this trick, I have a link to it at the end.

​​But before you go watch, read on. Because I’m about to spoil the magic for you, and that’s important.

How does Slydini make each paper ball disappear?

​​And how does he teleport them inside the hat?

If you don’t want to know, then stop reading now. Otherwise, I’ll tell you.

Still here?

Fine. Here’s the trick behind the magic, from an article in Scientific American:

===

Slydini deposits the vanished paper balls into the hat when he reaches inside the hat to fetch invisible magic dust. This mock action prevents the audience from assigning an additional, key intent to the move: to unload the paper balls inside the hat, to later reveal them at the trick’s finale.

Just as our visual system strains to see the vase and the two faces at once, we struggle to conceive of a motion that has a dual motivation: to put and to fetch. Even when it should be apparent to every member of the audience, and to every YouTube viewer, that Slydini’s action of fetching magical powder inside the hat must be a ruse.

In other words, even when the ostensible purpose is preposterous, we still can’t consider an alternative explanation.

That’s how bad our brains are at multitasking.

===

Our brains are sticky. This creates some strange phenomena.

Give me a warm cup of coffee to hold. Then show me a stranger’s face. I’ll evaluate the stranger as looking friendly.

Point my attention to the 20 minutes I know I have. Then make me a promise of a financial miracle in my life. I’ll evaluate your promise as concrete and real.

Don’t believe that it works?

You can see Slydini’s trick on YouTube. Link’s below.

​​You now know how the trick is done. But watch it yourself — it takes all of 4 minutes — and witness just how bad you are at multitasking:

 

If you’ve got 2 minutes right now, I guarantee more response to your offers

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A few weeks ago, I joined JK Molina’s email list. You might have heard of JK — he’s kind of the marketing coach to all the coaches who coach coaches.

Anyways, in between the steady flow of familiar promises – “make $100k per month with just Google docs and email” — I found an interesting persuasion idea in one of JK’s emails. Says JK:

“You get better leads by offering to take something they ALREADY HAVE into something they DON’T.”

Huh? The first time I read this, I had no idea what JK’s on about. But an example helped:

Bad ad: “How to make $30,000”

Good ad: “Turn the old car you’ve got parked in your garage into $30,000.”

A-ha. A dim, flickering light came on in my head.

And thanks to that flickering light, I could once again see Gary Bencivenga’s Marketing Bullet #3. Gary asked which of these investing headlines won:

A:

The Millionaire Maker:
Can he make YOU rich, too?

B:

If you’ve got 20 minutes a month,
I guarantee to work a financial miracle in your life

As you can probably guess by now, the answer was B. Gary says it “worked like a charm and handily beat the previous champ.”

Gary’s explanation for why B won is that we’ve all gotten jaded by big promises, but the if-then structure somehow manages to disable normal critical faculties.

Maybe that’s really it.

Or maybe it’s what JK says above.

Maybe it’s that we don’t respond to promises unless we feel they are concrete and real. Unless those promises are anchored to something we can touch, taste, or in case of 20 minutes, simply know with 100% certainty that we have on us, right here, right now.

So try it yourself and see.

​​Use the if-then structure, or promise to turn the junk in your prospect’s garage into a stack of $100 bills.

I guarantee this will increase response to your offers. And if it doesn’t, come back tomorrow, and I’ll give you a new idea, for free, and keep giving you new ideas, until one of them does increase your response.

Also:

If you’ve got two thumbs and a smart phone, then I promise you a new way to fascinate your email subscribers every day. For more information on that:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Persuasion, Plan B:

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This past week, Lawrence Bernstein shared, via his Ad Money Machine, a very risky but very effective direct mail sales letter that ran some 15 years ago.

The teaser headline on the envelope read,

“Retirement, Plan B:”

… and then in smaller font, the copy went on to explain how you could now enroll and collect up to $120,000 each year, for the rest of your life, in the form of “pension paychecks.”

Pension paychecks?

As Lawrence said, “I don’t have the risk tolerance for such a promo, nor the legal team to cover me in case. But there’s no denying the success of this promo, based on its longevity.”

Maybe there’s something we can learn from this promo, without crossing over into risky legal waters.

Enter “Persuasion, Plan B.”

Persuasion, Plan A is to make your best argument. To give your audience the big promise. To pile on the reasons why, the testimonials, the features, the benefits, the bonuses, the urgency.

In many situations, that will work just fine.

But what if it don’t?

Persuasion, Plan B is what you can try then. It’s what you can witness in the promo above.

And it’s to suddenly whip up a creative repackaging that sums up, often in just a word or two, all the appeals in your offer, and suggests other appeals also, even if they’re not really there in your offer. (It’s not always illegal.)

I’m thinking about putting together a one-evening workshop about this. About using this kind of repackaging in your headlines, your body copy, your emails, and most importantly and profitably, in the positioning and packaging of your offers.

Persuasion, Plan B.

Is this workshop something you’d be interested in? If so, hit reply and let me know. If there’s enough interest, I’ll put it on. Otherwise, we can stick with just Plan A.

How to deliver a racist rant

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Before we dive into the racism, I’d like to remind you of my Copy Riddles program.

​​Somebody once told me that Copy Riddles is expensive, considering it just teaches you one niche copywriting skill.

I have to agree. But I also have more to say about it at the end of this email.

For now, let me tell you about the late great Patrice O’Neal.

As you might know, Patrice was black — a fact that will be relevant in just a moment.

Patrice was also the favorite comedian of a huge number of top comedians of the past few decades. Bill Burr, Norm Macdonald, Andrew Schulz — those are a just a few top comedians I found after a two-minute Google search, who all said there was nobody as funny as Patrice.

I’m using that to set up a contrast to the following. Because racist rants aren’t funny, are they?

Maybe they are. Or maybe they can be.

Take for example, Patrice’s HBO special, One Night Stand. It aired in 2005.

Patrice opens up without any of the usual, “Good to be back, how are you guys doing” fluff. Instead, he launches straight into his material. He says:

“So how many people are getting sick of the Hindu obstacle course at the airport?”

The audience laughs uncomfortably. They’re sensing this might not be stuff they should be laughing at, and they’re wondering where Patrice is leading them.

In fact, the audience is right to be wary.

Patrice is about to launch into a 5-minute racist comedy rant, mocking and imitating Indian people who work at airport security and who run convenience stores.

“I don’t mind foreigners,” says Patrice at one point, “but don’t be FROM your country.” And after he finishes mocking Indian accents, Patrice moves on to Mexicans.

This is the kind of stuff that wouldn’t fly for white comedians since the days of Don Rickles in the late 60s and early 70s.

And in fact, it wouldn’t fly for Patrice either, not in 2005. Except for one thing.

In between saying “How many people are tired of the Hindu obstacle course” and launching into his racist impressions, Patrice delivers one miraculous, life-saving line.

​​It goes like this:

“So how many people are tired of the Hindu obstacle course at airport? [He pauses while a few nervous laughs acknowledge the inappropriateness of this statement. Then he continues] I mean… I’m a racist, but it’s getting…”

… and here Patrice continues into the rest of his set, with the audience suddenly loose and laughing, and ready to laugh more at the rest of his jokes, racist though they are.

My point is not that you should be racist.

My point is also not that you should laugh along with racists, or condone racist behavior.

My point is simply how much you can get away with, if you correctly anticipate your audience’s objection, and call that objection out ahead of time. Even if you don’t do anything else but call it out.

Now back to my Copy Riddles course.

It’s true that Copy Riddles is expensive. It’s also true it only teaches you one copywriting skill, and a niche one at that.

On the other hand, experts in the field, like Ben Settle, John Carlton, and Gary Halbert, have all said that this one niche skill is what all copywriting comes down to.

All these guys have made millions of dollars from copywriting, and some have specifically credited millions in earnings just to this one skill.

When you look at it that way, maybe Copy Riddles isn’t so expensive after all.

Of course, it’s going to depend on your situation, and what you’re looking to do.

If you’d like to find out more about Copy Riddles, and see if it could be a fit in your quest to write more effectively, and even make good money in the process, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Daily Email Fastlane for women

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Last night, I sent out an email promoting my upcoming workshop, Daily Email Fastlane. And for a bit, I was pleased by the number of sales that came in as a result.

I actually stayed pleased until this morning.

And then this morning, I got a reply from Adam Silver, an expert in user experience. Adam wrote me to ask:

“Did you hesitate to write ‘handsome mug’ as it doesn’t work for women? :)”

Adam was referring to the way I ended my email last night. I said there will be a recording of next Thursday’s workshop, but if “I can see your handsome mug live on Zoom, that’s even better.”

Suddenly, after reading Adam’s message, I stopped being so pleased with myself.

I hadn’t thought much about that “handsome mug” phrase while writing it. I didn’t think it mattered.

But now that Adam brought it up, I checked the stats.

It turned out that, out of the 10 sales that have come in since yesterday’s email went out, 9 are from men and only 1 is from a woman.

For reference, I normally get a healthy mix of both men and women buying my stuff.

So was this just a coincidence?

Or did that small phrase really kill a bunch of sales that women might have made?

Did I shoot myself in the foot with just two words?

Or… was it the exact opposite? Did those two words actually help me make those other 9 sales?

Because check it:

In emails and in copy more generally, it makes sense to call out your audience.

Maybe everyone in your audience could possibly benefit from your offer. But most people won’t reply unless they feel your offer is somehow uniquely for them.

The trouble is, you probably have lots of different ways to call out your audience. Lots of different ways to slice and dice your market. Lots of different ways to appeal to how people think of themselves.

So what do you do?

Daily emails offer an easy fix to this conundrum. You just call out a new segment every day, and see what works.

And so, I would like to announce I will hold a workshop next Thursday. It’s called Daily Email Fastlane, and it will help women benefit by sending daily emails for their personal brand.

Maybe you think I’m pandering. Maybe you demand to know why specifically women can benefit from this training, and from daily emails more generally.

Here’s why:

It’s my observation that, out of the hundreds of daily email newsletters I’ve subscribed to over the years, in all kinds of niches, the majority are still sent by men. In many niches, it’s a significant majority.

I’m not appealing to your sense of justice here. I’m appealing to your sense of opportunity.

In most markets today, women would have an immediate advantage by sending out daily emails. They would have this advantage by having unique positioning. By being different to what’s already out there. By simple virtue of being a woman.

And if you want more of a sexist, stereotypical reason:

From what I hear, many women are naturally good at building a sense of community, of forming relationships with others, of emotional bonding. More talented than many men in any case, and certainly more talented than me, somebody who has to relearn this kind of stuff consciously, on a daily basis.

But daily emails are all about forming relationships with your audience, and building a sense of community.

So it seems to me that many women would naturally take to sending good daily emails for their own brands… and it seems to me they would benefit uniquely from doing so.

And yet, like I said, it’s still mostly men who take advantage of daily emails.

I don’t know why that is. But I do have a fix for it, or rather a fast lane.

This fast lane is made up of the commonalities I’ve seen in three uniquely successful daily emailers I’ve coached over the past year and a half.

These daily emailers have stood out to me — in terms of the money they make, the stability of their income, and simply in how much they seem to enjoy their business and their life.

All three achieved success via daily emails, in spite of not being women. So imagine what you could do.

If you’d like to join me for this workshop:

https://bejakovic.com/daily-email-fastlane

Flamboyant, famously homosexual football club chairman

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A few months ago, a friend turned me on to a new addiction:

BBC Archive.

Sounds… archival, I know, and as exciting as a dusty library.

But the BBC Archive can be a fascinating look into a completely different time and often into places that have now fully disappeared.

For example, today I watched a BBC report from 1979, asking the question, does English football need investment?

Was a time when football (soccer) wasn’t much of a business. Back then, a couple English First Division team owners had audacious ideas such as expanding the number of seats in their stadiums past the 10k mark, or maybe even introducing functioning toilets.

The BBC interviewed a couple of these team owners and execs, including the director of Watford FC, a guy named Elton John.

“Haha,” I thought. “What a coincidence. This football club bro has the same name as the flamboyant, famously homosexual rock and roll star.”

Except, of course, it turned out that the football club bro was actually the flamboyant, famously homosexual rock and roll star.

Elton John has been a diehard supporter of Watford FC since he was a kid.

​​After he became rich and famous, he bought his way into the club. He acted as their chairman and director between 1976 and 1987, and then again from 1997 to 2002.

It’s only in my limited, stereotyping mind that it’s incongruent for a football club chairman and a flamboyant, famously homosexual rock and roll star to be one and the same person.

Maybe you’re nothing like me.

Or maybe you’re a bit like me.

In that case, let me share something that’s really been working for me to get a fascinating change of perspective from the usual.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten on Zoom calls with a half dozen or so people who have bought my courses.

I wanted to find out a bit about who they are.

Oh, sure, I knew all about them already, everything I needed to know. I knew they were interested in copywriting, marketing, and my charming and funny personality.

What else is there to possibly know?

Turns out, a huge amount, measured in tons. I won’t list everything I learned here. But let me just say much of it has been as surprising and frankly eye-opening as seeing a 1970s Elton John discussing the plight of football fans who don’t have access to clean toilets.

I’ve also gotten lots of ideas for new offers by talking to my customers over the past few weeks.

​​Not just via ideas that popped up in my mind while I was listening to people talking. No, the people I talked to gave me specific recommendations and said, “Here, this is what I like to buy.”

So if you’re racking your brains about your next offer, might be time to invest in walking around the virtual bleachers, and talking to a few of the people who are sitting there on Friday nights.

I’ll be applying some of these ideas soon. Meanwhile, I just have a few archival offers, including the best thing I sell, a flamboyant program known as Copy Riddles. For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

I asked for ideas to fail, and I got ’em

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The results are in. Well, some of the results.

Yesterday, I wrote an email asking my readers for ideas. On how I could make more money. And I offered a $100 reward — if I run with the idea and it fails.

Result:

I got a small number of replies so far. Almost all the replies were thoughtful, serious ideas that could legitimately make me more money.

I’ve decided to try out an idea sent to me by Modern Maker Jacob Pegs. I’ll report on the final result of that — $100 or glory — by the end of this month.

The thing is, I would like to do more. Try out two, three, all of the ideas people sent me. All at the same time.

I’d also like to finish that book I’ve been working on for a while. Plus I’d like to go through my existing emails and package those up into even more books.

I’d like to create a couple new courses, or maybe a half dozen. I have ideas for a few workshops as well. Plus I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a community for a while.

I’d like to find new affiliate offers to promote… I’d like to come up with some sort of continuity program… I’d like to build up my list with more people with money.

And that’s just for this little info publishing business.

There’s a whole big world of money-making opportunities out there that regularly calls my attention and tempts me with the thought of cool new projects using skills and assets I already have.

All that’s to say:

I’m a moderately successful dude. And I have a moderately infinite list of possible projects to do, all of which sound cool, all of which which could make me a ton of money, all of which could be good for me in other ways.

But there are people out there who are vastly more successful than I am. And those people have vastly infinite lists of possible projects to do, all of which sound cool, all of which could make them a ton of money, all of which could be good for them in other ways.

You see the problem:

Infinite opportunities…

Finite time. Finite energy. Finite head space.

And that’s pretty much the argument for going to business owners and saying, “Hey. You. How about I just do this for you? Don’t pay me anything. Don’t stress about this at all. I’ll handle all of it. Just, if it makes money, you give me a share?”

These kinds of offers work. I know, because I’ve made them, and I’ve had them accepted.

I can vouch first hand that these offers can collect you — as the party doing the work — a lot of money.

You can go out now and start reaching out to business owners and saying “Hey. You.”

If that works, great.

But if not, then consider Shiv Shetti’s PCM mastermind.

Shiv’s got a whole system for how to find business owners to partner with… how to approach them… what to say to them… and how to deliver on work that makes the business owner free money, which they are then happy to share with you.

Oh, and there’s also coaches inside PCM to help you along. I’m one of those coaches.

If you’d like to find out more about PCM:

https://bejakovic.com/pcm

Birthday bash offer

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I wrote a long email just now. Until I realized I was burying the lead.

So I told myself what I often tell coaching clients – split up the damn thing into two emails. One for today, one for tomorrow.

Here’s one for today:

Today is my buddy Kieran Drew’s birthday.

As you might know, Kieran is a big name in the online creator space. He has a Twitter following of 205k people, a newsletter audience of 30k people, and 6-figure launches every few months.

To celebrate his birthday, Kieran has prepared a special bundle of his most popular offer, High Impact Writing, with his second-most popular offer, the Viral Inspiration Lab.

I imagine that anyone on my list who wanted to get High Impact Writing got it back in March when I promoted it. But I’ve been wrong before.

If you don’t yet have High Impact Writing, I endorse it fully. And now is a good moment to get it because you can effectively get the Viral Inspiration Lab for free.

Plus!

Over the next month, Kieran will also hold a series of private interviews as a special thank-you gift for people who buy HIW now, as well as people who have bought HIW before.

The interviews will be with five successful writers Kieran knows, including A-list copywriter David Deutsch… email copywriter Chris Orzechowski… and yours truly, Bejako the Slow.

If you’re interested and you want to find out more:

https://bejakovic.com/hiw​​

“How do you know?”

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Over the past five or so years, I’ve noticed that I:

1. Am listening to the same music, mostly stuff I’ve listened to for decades

2. No longer enjoy going to restaurants

3. Prefer really simple food, prepared simply

4. (If I watch anything at all) watch TV shows I already know, like Arrested Development or Twin Peaks

5. Watch movies that were made up to the year 2000 but not beyond

6. Am no longer interested in traveling

7. Am in particular not interested in traveling to poor places where I can’t have the comforts I’m already used to at home

8. Have a very routinized life — work, gym, reading, walk

9. Am getting more politically conservative

10. Feel I have an explanation for everything — just ask me.

I’m telling you these 10 highly personal things to illustrate a valuable marketing and copywriting tip:

People in your market will often describe their situation with a statement like, “I am getting closed-minded.” I know I’ve been saying this lately as I’ve noticed myself getting older.

Trouble is, “getting closed-minded” is abstract. It’s fuzzy. It can mean lots of different things to different people.

And even to people who might actually agree such a statement describes them, it doesn’t really spark a very strong emotional self-identification.

The fix for this are four simple words:

“How do you know?”

Ask your market these four words.

These four words get to the specifics, the scenes people can truly see, hear, and touch.

​​This leads to emails and sales copy that hypnotize people.

​​And if you want to know why that is, just write in and ask. I have an explanation for it — and for everything else you might ever want to know.