Proof

Tiny mechanisms for huge offers

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I’m busy preparing for tonight’s Core Promise Workshop and A&Q call, so I will just share with you something interesting I read a few days ago, in an email by copywriter Mike Samuels.

Mike used to the the head copywriter at Clients on Demand, a big company that works with coaches to get them lients, I mean, clients.

Part of Mike’s job was to advise coaches on copy and offers.

You learn a lot by having to coach hundreds of people, all of whom are making one of three or four basic promises (“get rich, “get thin,” “get laid”), and all of whom are trying to compete with thousands of other people making the same promise.

How do you stand out? How do you say something different? How do you persuade people to go with you and not with one of the thousands of others? Says Mike:

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The offers that worked best were the ones when we really dove into the mechanism to find something unique.

Often, it wouldn’t be the main part of the program.

It might have been something small the coach did.

In a fitness offer, maybe it was actually a mindset practice that we focused on.

For a dating coach, it could have been a confidence ritual that became the mechanism.

In the business coaching space, we might’ve dropped all talk of funnels, social media and ads, and instead spoke to the coach’s background in construction, and how they built their business methodologies around that.

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I have seen smart marketers use “tiny mechanisms” before, meaning they only refer to a tiny part of the offer, in order to sell hugely successful offers.

I have snuck the same “tiny mechanism” idea into some of my own stuff as well.

But I’ve never heard somebody call it out until Mike did. I wanted to pass it on to you, so you can use it in your own marketing, positioning, and offers.

Of course, f you want to stand out with a generic, familiar promise, a tiny mechanism is not the only way to do that.

There are dozens of techniques to do so, which might be more or less appropriate for your specific case.

Oh, if only somebody would catalogue all these techniques?

And then present them in a way that gets you practicing them?

So as to stimulate your thinking about how you promote your own offers?

Yes, I am leading you on. Yes, this is exactly what my Copy Riddles program is about.

Copy Riddles is positioned around a tiny mechanism, the fact that I organized the lessons as riddles, to get you thinking and practicing real copywriting rather than just skimming the content.

In case you would like to create a huge offer, and present it effectively, Copy Riddles can help you do that. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Why yes, I am entirely untrustworthy!

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There’s a well-known Internet marketer who recently ran a webinar on an intriguing topic.

Normally I don’t sign up for webinars. Who’s got time or patience to be teased and massaged into a sale for two and a half hours? But the topic of this webinar sucked me in.

I signed up. Of course, I still didn’t attend. And then, I got an email from this marketer.

Subject line: “a REPLAY??”

Preview text: “ok ok… I’ll cave this time. Replay is up for 48 hours.”

The body of the email talked all about how this marketer doesn’t normally do replays for webinars because people never watch them, and because attendance is higher if you don’t offer them.

And yet this time, the email said, he’s making an exception. Why? No one knows. The email didn’t say anything about that.

I recently ran a presentation I called Manna for Marketers, in which I covered how I consciously apply the commandments in my 10 Commandments of Con Men etc. book in everyday tasks like these emails and the offers that I make.

The example I gave for how I used Commandment II, about overcoming objections that my readers are likely to have, was all of 6 words, buried inside of a daily email.

I admitted inside that Manna for Marketers training that 6 words in the middle of an email might seem like a trivially small use of a persuasion idea.

But trust takes a long time to build up.

It can vanish quickly with one big blunder, or a little less quickly, with a few off-smells that signal that something isn’t right here.

Those off-smells can be implicit, like glossing over an objection or question your reader is likely to have…

… or they can be explicit, like what that well-known Internet marketer did in his emails.

“I never do this! But I’ll cave this time! Just this once! Trust me!”

The sad thing is, it’s so easy to avoid this.

Of course, the strategic way is simply to stick to your principles.

“I don’t offer webinar replays because I believe they are worthless. And so I won’t offer one for this webinar either.”

But if you really must go against principle, there’s a tactic for how to do it in a way that doesn’t tank your trust with your audience.

That’s something I cover in Commandment V of my 10 commandments book. If you still haven’t read that:

https://bejakovic.com/new10commandments

I predict you will have your birthday in May

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Three things for you today:

#1. Experts make predictions

From Alan Weiss’s book, Million Dollar Consulting:

“Experts make predictions. They don’t fret about whether they’ll be right, they don’t keep score, and then have no regrets. If you’re afraid to make a prediction because you may be wrong, then you’re no expert.”

#2. The best 9-word email

Yesterday I was listening to examples of business owners using variants of Dean Jackson’s 9-word email (“Are you still interested in buying a house in Georgetown”).

All business owners had good results by sending out a 9-word email to their lists. But who had the best result?

A trainer/education provider for dental hygienists in Canada, because…

Apparently dental hygienists in Canada are supposed to have continuing medical education, and they get audited to make sure they are complying with this.

CRUCIAL: The audits all go out on the same day.

The trainer/education provider for dental hygienists simply sent out her 9-word (actually 6-word) email the day after the audits went out. The 6 words were:

“Are you being audited this year?”

Replies (and business) came fast and furious after that.

#3. I predict you will have your birthday in May

And if I am proven right, what better time to clean up all the latent demand from people on your list who have built a relationship with you, and have been meaning to give you money to get your help, but who haven’t gotten around to it?

Your birthday gives you a good “reason why” for creating a unique offer and running an email promo around it.

For bonus points, you can design your offer so it’s not just tied into a unique occasion in your life but tied into a unique occasion in your prospects lives, so they are doubly likely to take you up on your offer and to pay you good money.

Related to that, I have a special offer for you today:

It’s to get my help coming up with a birthday offer and promo for your list next month.

If you’re interested, hit reply and tell me which day in May your birthday is, and we can take it from there.

Do you have a new plan for copywriters to get clients?

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Do you have a new plan for copywriters to get clients?

If so, I’d like to promote you.

One thing that always gets a good response from my list is a new plan for copywriters to get clients. A few examples:

* Using AI-generated advertorials to get ecom clients (the 1 Person Advertorial Agency, which I promoted back in January)

* Using direct mail to get and deliver on revshare deals (Doberman Dan’s offer, which I talked about last month)

* Using Instagram outreach to get email copywriting clients (copywriter Logan Hobson once gave a presentation on this for members of my Daily Email House community)

* Going into a secret cave that nobody knows about and coming out with a legit DR job, up to and including a copy chief position (more on this soon)

So lemme ask you…

Do you already have an offer about an exciting new plan for copywriters to get clients?

If so, I’d like to promote it.

Do you not have such an offer, but you have a cool way of getting clients that’s working well for you?

If so, I can help you turn what you know into an offer, and make that sweet “zero delivery” money, and become a bizopp guru (ok, we can skip the last part if you really hate the idea).

Do you neither have an offer nor a new plan, but you know somebody who does?

If so, I’m happy to pay you a finder’s fee for putting me in touch with that person.

In any of these cases, hit reply, and let’s talk. Thanks in advance.

 

Who else wants to finally put an end to their prospects’ behavioral problems for good?

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… including leaving your sales page without buying… not reading your copy carefully… not taking you up on your upsells… demanding refunds… and more?

Today I started working with a business owner who has a sizable email list and a cold traffic funnel that’s driving buyers to his list.

Our deal is that I’ll help him monetize his email list better.

As a first step, he asked me for some ideas on how to improve the sales page for his cold traffic funnel.

Why not? After all, the more people we get on his email list, the better it will be for everyone long term. (I’m getting paid partly up front, partly a share of increased sales we get from emails.)

The sales page is doing well, a 3.6% conversion rate. It features the proven old headline formula:

“Get [the good] without [your main objection]”

How to improve on this?

Here’s one idea:

Earlier today, I watched a video by a very successful but very underground marketer. He shared a quick case study.

Once upon a time, he had dog training info biz — various offers to help owners teach their dogs to obey, to be house trained, even to do fancy tricks.

It didn’t work. 1 person in 666 actually bought.

This marketer put a popup survey on his sales page, asking people why they are leaving without buying. People replied:

“My dog is aggressive towards other dogs…”

“My dog chews up our furniture…”

“My dog pulls on the leash…”

“My dog nips at stranger’s heels, AND IT DOESN’T SEEM THIS IS WHAT I NEED.”

The marketer says:

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Of course all these problems were covered in our book and in our videos. We just doubled down on it, made sure that they were extra covered, extra well… added those to the sales copy… and made the headline something like:

‘Who else wants to finally put an end to their dog’s behavioral problems for good… including digging, barking, chewing, aggression, pulling on the lead, and more?’

All of a sudden it went from 1 in 666 people buying, to 1 in 90 were buying. And then eventually, with a bit more tweaking, we got it to 1 in 60 buying, and then on some search phrases as many as 1 in 10 were buying.

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You’re probably not selling dog training info. Also, it sounds like this was search traffic, whether organic or paid, and that might be different from other kinds of audiences.

Still.

1 in 666 buying… to 1 in 60 buying. That’s like an 11x improvement in sales. By talking first and foremost about the present pain rather than about future gain. It’s worth a test.

That’s my public service announcement for you. I have nothing really to promote to you today.

So let me remind you of my Copy Riddles program.

The first two rounds of that program deal with this most fundamental topic, of promises, warnings, pain, and gain… and how to use that to keep prospects from ignoring you, leaving you, and not buying.

If you’d like to find out more about Copy Riddles:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

How to sell a $1k+ coaching program without testimonials

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I’ll tell you in a a sec how to sell a $1k+ coaching offer without testimonials. But first lemme tell you a related and intriguing list-building tactic.

It comes courtesy of marketer Kevin Hood, who shared it inside my Daily Email House community a couple days ago. It goes like this:

1. Come up with a list of “mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive buyer personas” who could potentially be interested in what you offer (Kevin used AI, but you can use… other methods also)

2. Come up with a list of “pain points, desires, beliefs, thoughts, and feelings” those people might have

3. Go on social media and write 100s of tweets or threads or stories or whatever and combine one item from list 1 and one item from list 2 in a statement that looks like:

“If you spent your 20s or 30s digging yourself into debt but deep down you desperately want to become financially free, I hope you find my page.”

Says Kevin:

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Where most posts get 500-1000 views.

These get thousands.

No matter your follower count.

This is a real post from one of my clients who teaches Financial Independence and investing, and it got 189,000 views while generating 1,600 new followers for his account. And while we can’t be 100% precise on measuring email subscribers according to individual posts, the estimate is around 100 new email subscribers from this post alone.

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I don’t know what Kevin client’s “my page” looks like. Maybe it has some testimonials. Maybe it has a unique mechanism for how he financially frees 20- and 30-somethings from debt. Maybe it features risk-reversal copy such as, “Sign up to my newsletter and if you don’t like my emails, you get to come to my house and kick me in the shin.”

Whatever. All those things are nice addons.

But the fact remains, specificity, and in particular double-specificity like Kevin is using, is a powerful way of drawing attention… creating interest and desire… and providing proof. Even if you have nothing else going on.

Now back to coaching programs.

Q: How do you sell a $1k+ coaching program without testimonials?

A: You rely on other forms of proof.

There’s many, beyond testimonials. In particular, there’s specificity. I’ll leave you with a riddle related to that:

If you’re looking to monetize your list with a $1k+ offer… if you tried offering “coaching” or “mentoring” to your list before but got zero takers… then how do you figure out what specific or double-specific segment of your audience to appeal to in order to actually make some sales?

I’ll give you a hint about my thinking.

My recommendation is not to do what Kevin did, and use AI to come up with a bunch of stuff that you throw at the wall to see if it sticks.

My recommendation is also not to use your own creativity and brainpower, to sit and introspect what specific segment you could appeal to.

If you eliminate both of those options… then what’s left as a means of determining which specific people you could help with your $1k+ coaching offer?

If you like, guess what I have in mind, write in and tell me so, and I’ll tell you quick whether you got it or no.

What Hysterical Hulks can teach you about procrastination

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See if you can spot the pattern:

1. On Feb 8 2006, a woman in a village at the northern reaches of Canada was watching her son and his friends play hockey.

This being close to the polar circle, a polar bear appeared, which was later found to weigh 320kg aka 507lbs.

The woman jumped in front of the bear to allow the kids to get away. She tried scaring the beast but that didn’t do much, and so the two of them got into a life-and-death wrestling match.

The bear seemed to be getting the upper hand, but the woman was holding her own.

Meanwhile the kids ran and got help from a local hunter. The hunter got his shotgun and “neutralized” the bear.

The woman got away with only light injuries. She was later awarded Canada’s Medal For Bravery and got a Gold Star for her bear-handling skills.

2. In 2012, a 22-year-old woman lifted a BMW off her father, who had been working under the car when the jack collapsed. The BMW weighed over 1500kg.

3. Back in the 1990s, a man pulled over on the highway when he saw a wrecked car with a man trapped inside. He ripped off the metal doors off with his bare hands to get the other guy out.

These a just a few examples of what is known as “hysterical strength.”

Hysterical strength can’t be reproduced in the lab, and doesn’t happen all that often in the wild either. But it does happen.

Michael Regnier, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington, was the door-ripping Hulk in anecdote 3 above.

Based on his own experiences (the door ripping, and as a competitive weight lifter, and as professor of bioengineering) Regnier claims that most people can lift six or seven times their body weight, though most of us struggle to deadlift even a small fraction of that at the gym.

What changes in situations of hysterical strength?

It’s not adrenaline pumping through the body. Adrenaline supports better muscle use, yes, but it doesn’t increase the tetanic force, meaning how much a muscle can contract.

Rather, it’s believed hysterical strength is all down to the brain.

Our brains normally restrict maximum muscle exertion to maybe 60% of actual muscle capacity. Elite athletes can through training get that to around 80%. Hysterical Hulks apparently get pretty close to 100% of what their body is capable of for a few dramatic moments.

The brain hinders us like this to keep us safe.

The brain has many ways to keep us from going down dangerous and uncertain paths, even ones that we could survive or in theory even thrive in.

In my own brain, this connected to something I read long ago, which has had a big impact on me over the years. Cal Newport, the author of books like Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You, once had an interesting theory about procrastination. He wrote:

“The evolutionary perspective on procrastination, by contrast, says we delay because our frontal lobe doesn’t see a convincing plan behind our aspiration. The solution, therefore, is not to muster the courage to blindly charge ahead, but to instead accept what our brain is telling us: our plans need more hard work invested before they’re ready.”

Yes, there are tactical ways to beat small-scale procrastination, to “blindly charge ahead,” and I will be talking about those in the coming days and teasing what’s worked for me personally.

But what Newport is advising above has been my best way of dealing with serious, long-term procrastination on any sizeable project that I knew needed doing.

And it’s my advice to you tonight.

If you find yourself procrastinating… get yourself a new plan you can believe in.

How do you do that? I will have more on that tomorrow.

Once upon a time in Ohio

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Lean in so I can tell you a story I myself only heard today:

This story features a cowboy named Gary Halbert, who, as you might know, was one of the legendariest direct marketers to ever terrorize the Wild West.

The story actually takes place before Gary got into direct marketing and copywriting. I’m guessing it happened in the 1960s, in Gary’s home state of Ohio.

In those ancient days, Gary was a salesman, selling postage machines.

The company Gary worked for, Pitney Bowes, divvied up the sales area so that each salesman got to handle a certain number of zip codes.

Whenever the company hired an additional salesman, they would shrink the area of sales that each existing salesman had, in order to give the new guy a few zip codes, and to keep everyone balanced.

Each time this happened, four or five separate times, the existing salesmen bitched and moaned and felt like they’ve lost something in having their area of sales reduced.

In reality, says Gary, each time the salesmen had one of their zip codes taken away, the salesmen actually did BETTER, not worse. They made more sales BECAUSE their area of sales was reduced.

How is this possible?

Stuff like… The salesmen spent less driving and more time selling. They gained better knowledge of local conditions. They developed better relationships with prospects there. They followed up more instead of reaching out to new leads. And so on.

The lesson is clear enough, except… it could never apply to you and what you’re doing, right?

In my Daily Email House community, I heard tell of different folks who are looking to start credible-sounding new businesses:

A direct mail agency. New shopping cart software. A personal trainer business.

Each of those is credible-sounding in the sense that it can succeed, as evidenced by many other such businesses on the market.

At the same time, each of those is much more likely to succeed, or at least to survive the first year, if you narrow down and get more specific about the market you will be working in.

You can slice and dice your market in lots of ways. You might wonder how and which tiny and specific segment to choose?

My answer is to go all the way down to a single prospect. Pick somebody you feel sure you can help… and who you are therefore most likely to sell because of your conviction.

After all, if you cannot sell a specific customer on your proposed solution, and if you cannot solve a particular and definite problem that customer has, then with all due respect, what hope do you have of selling and solving problems for a bigger, more complex, more nebulous group?

I’ll have more to say about this because in 2026, in fact in January, I will be helping folks create and sell their first $1k+ offer.

For now, lemme just tell you I heard that Gary Halbert story earlier today, in a podcast by Dean Jackson and Joe Polish.

As you might know, Joe runs the biggest and (according to him) most successful mastermind for direct response entrepreneurs. (He heard the story above from Gary Halbert directly.)

As for Dean, he’s a legend in the direct marketing space, particularly online.

If you’re doing Internet marketing today in any form, odds are you are using ideas and techniques Dean invented, which have been percolating down through a series of gurus who learned from Dean or from people that Dean taught.

In the podcast I listened to today, Dean and Joe talk about 8 “Profit Activators” that all successful DR businesses are ultimately built on. (The topic of today’s email is Profit Activator #1).

Highly recommended listening:

https://www.morecheeselesswhiskers.com/podcast/268

Dude quietly bows out of Monetization Mastermind

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This past summer I created an invite-only group called Monetization Mastermind. To start, I invited a small group of list owners I have done affiliate deals and list swaps with. The idea for the group is to make more such partnerships possible.

Initially, the group featured mainly list owners who sell courses around copywriting or email marketing, since that’s what kinds of offers I’ve promoted a lot in the past.

Over time, the group has grown, either by my invitation or by recommendation of the people inside. As a result, the profile of people inside has gotten more diverse, and has gone beyond course creators in the copywriting space.

So far, everybody who has joined this group has stayed inside, though some participate more and some less. But now I have the first person who has left the group. It happens to be one of the first people I invited inside the group. Two days ago, this dude wrote me to say:

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I think I’m going to quietly bow out of Monetization Mastermind. I’ve been making an effort to network outside of copywriting groups and focus on a different audience. While I appreciate what you’ve built here and have tremendous respect for you and the folks in here, I need to put my energy elsewhere.

Thanks for putting it together. You’re doing a lot of good here. I appreciate you letting me be a part of it.

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I don’t know the full details of this dude’s business.

On the one hand, it’s a tried and true strategy to take yourself and your offers to a new market, particularly one that is willing to pay you more.

On the other hand, based on what little I know of this dude and his business, my diagnosis is that his is an issue of offers.

Specifically, I think it comes down to a classic mistake, one I see others making all the time, and one I have made myself plenty of times too.

Internet Marketer Travis Sago, who is either unable or unwilling to speak other than in metaphor, calls this mistake “selling the hammer.”

The alternative being, selling the birdhouse, or the patio deck, or the chicken coop.

As Travis says, “Nobody is ever just buying a hammer. There’s an outcome they’re looking to get with that hammer”

Do I hear you groaning, or are you rolling your eyes right now?

I mean, this is really just that old chestnut about how nobody wants a quarter-inch drill, but a quarter-inch hole, except with other hardware, right?

Right.

But people find it surprisingly difficult to apply this super obvious and familiar lesson when it comes to their own hammers, ones that they have spent weeks or months designing and sourcing and forging.

Folks keep selling the hammer for years, or for as long as they stand, making new versions and crowing about the latest improvements… until they either wise up and start promising birdhouses and patio decks and chicken coops… or until they quietly bow out of the market, because their hammers are just not selling enough.

This got me curious.

Are you planning to launch an offer in 2026, an offer you need to be a success?

If so, I’m curious what offer you’re planning.

And I’m curious how you came up with your plan.

If you like, hit reply, unburden yourself, and tell me about your upcoming offer.

I’m not promising anything but to listen and maybe to ask some follow up questions.

But who knows, sometimes that can be the most valuable thing you can get, and can lead to insights that can make all the difference when you make the intimidating decision to actually go live.

He auctioned his CAT?!?!

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Yesterday in my Daily Email House community, I announced the winner of the prestigious “Inaugural Pool Party Funniest Comment” award.

The lucky winner was audio-engineer-turned-newsletter-operator Filip Stilin. Filip’s winning comment was:

“Subject line: He auctioned his CAT?!?!”

(In case you’re wondering why Filip’s comment was possibly funny, I could explain it, but would that make it funny now? I suspect no. Such is the nature of humor. You had to be there.)

Filip’s prize for writing this funniest comment are A) a physical copy of my favorite comedy book, which has influenced my writing as much as any copywriting or marketing book I’ve ever read, and B) the pleasure of seeing his comment turned into an actual subject line in my email today.

Now here’s the point, and why you might feel this email is anything beyond an inside joke run amok:

The whole idea for this “funniest comment” contest came up as a suggestion during the auction I ran last week, by one of the auction participants.

It was a suggestion I immediately adopted.

That’s because the biggest thing I’ve learned over the past year of running a community is to stop trying to do everything myself… to start asking for feedback and guidance and input… to let people participate and shape the direction of the group… instead of hitting them over the head repeatedly with content and “value” and then wondering why nobody’s engaging.

It’s kinda opposite of how I run this newsletter, which is guided exclusively and jealously by my own standards and tastes and preferences.

That’s not to say I can never adopt others’ suggestions in these emails. In fact that’s what I’m doing today with Filip’s subject line.

But that’s all done in line with the core concept of this newsletter, which I’ve realized is about performing real magic, about turning ideas into reality, about casting spells that make living, breathing rabbits appear.

That might sound grandiose, and maybe it is. In any case it’s true.

For example, the spell for today was “Apply a suggestion coming from the audience.”

Tomorrow’s spell might be something else.

This spell-based approach has been profoundly valuable to me in running this newsletter, and has made this newsletter 1000x more fun and educational and ultimately profitable than it would have been otherwise.

If you you wanna find out more about this “real magic” way of running a newsletter, and of the power of turning ideas into reality, I have created a course all abut it. It describes my approach in detail, gives lots of examples, and maybe encourages you to apply the same in your own world. For more info:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/