Specificity

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.

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

When 4.9 is bigger than 5

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It finally happened — I got my first 4-star review for my new 10 Commandments book.

Part of me is of course annoyed — “How dare you” — but a part of me is also relieved. The book has had 26 reviews so far, all of them 5 star.

My average ranking has now tanked from a perfect 5.0 to a more reasonable 4.9.

This brought to mind a Gary Halbert bullet:

* Almost foolproof contraception: It’s over 99% effective but… so new… most people have never even heard about it!

Unless you’ve been through my Copy Riddles program, you might wonder what this new and unheard-of form of contraception is. That depends, like Bill Clinton said, on what the meaning of “is” is. But I will tell you this:

The secret Gary is talking about is actually 100% effective.

The question then becomes, if Gary’s “almost foolproof contraception” is actually 100% effective, why did Gary knock it down to “99%”?

I mean, isn’t 100% better than “over 99%”?

Isn’t “foolproof” more attractive to the foolish, which includes all of us, than “almost foolproof”?

The answer is no, not in the strange way the human brain works, which master copywriters like Gary intuitively understood and additionally proved by experience.

It’s another one of those bits of elite copywriting you would never pick up on by looking at the finished copy alone.

In order to figure out that Gary’s “over 99% effective” is not an ordinary fact, but a bit of A-list wizardry, you need to peek behind the curtain.

That’s the basis of my Copy Riddles program.

And about that, here’s a quote from copywriter Kevin Orellana, who is going through Copy Riddles now for I believe the fourth time, and who won last week’s Copy Riddles bullets contest:

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Being a Copy Riddles customer has been one of the best decisions I’ve made!

I’ve actually been going through Copy Riddles since 2021 and till this day, I still get new insights from it.

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If Copy Riddles had a rating, it would be over 4.99. For more info on this program:

https://bejakovic.com/cr/

Last call for MyPeeps bonus offer

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Once upon a time, I saw a one-panel cartoon that showed Pinocchio and his fairy godmother hovering over him, ready to make Pinocchio’s deepest wish come true.

The caption explained what Pinocchio was wishing for:

“It’s not so much that I want to be a real, live human boy as that I’d rather be anything than a terrifying, nightmare-inducing marionette.”

That’s my tip for you for today, at least if you are planning on running ads to grow your email list.

If you need more explanation of what I mean by that tip, or if you simply want a much more detailed process for running ads to grow your email list, then I suggest you take a look at the sales page below for Travis Speegle’s MyPeeps course.

I bought Travis’s Mypeeps course myself last year.

I went through it and I was impressed with the content.

I promoted it to my list and even ran a 4-week implementation group on the back of it, in which I followed the process to subscribers at $0.60 a name for a new list I had created (dog owners, see my email yesterday).

Along with Joe Biden, Rafael Nadal, and the Paris Olympics, that implementation group has faded into the 2024 past. But if you get MyPeeps by 12 midnight PST tonight, and forward me your receipt, then I will give you access to:

#1. The recordings of the three calls I put on inside that implementation group

#2. My 8 pages of notes from going through MyPeeps

#3. An interview I did with Travis Speegle, which many people wrote me to say was eye-opening to them, particularly around Travis’s personal positioning as a media buyer

#4. “Do You Make These Mistakes In Paid Ads For Your Personal List?” — a document I’ve written up about the biggest mistake I saw people making in that implementation group, which sabotaged all their other good work, along with my suggestion for how you might be able to avoid this mistake.

Again, the deadline is tonight, Sunday, at 12 midnight PST. After that, these bonuses go back into the darkness of the cupboard, and not even your fairy godmother will be able to get them out.

If you’d like to act before then:

https://bejakovic.com/mypeeps

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

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

Jumbo PT Barnum writing tip from me to you

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Many people like to start off their emails with categories and abstractions. They say stuff like…

This past Thursday night, I hosted the weekly Write & Profit coaching call. Around 7:15pm Barcelona time, I was in the middle of copywriting feedback to a business owner, Jeff, on an email he wrote. His email started by saying:

“I have heard many stories of…”

Whoa there. That word many is a trigger. It triggered me to think of a passage from Joe Vitale’s book about P.T. Barnum, There’s A Customer Born Every Minute.

In chapter 8 of that book, Joe sums up 17 copywriting lessons to be drawn from Barnum’s massively effective advertising. Lesson #10 is “Say Jumbo.” Joe explains:

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Whenever you write something vague, such as, “they say,” or “later on,” or “many,” train yourself to stop and rewrite those phrases into something more concrete, such as “Mark Weisser said…” or “Saturday at noon” or “seven people agreed.” Don’t say “dog” when you can say “collie.” Don’t say “elephant” when you can say “Jumbo.” Don’t say you have a “midget” on display when you can have “General Tom Thumb.”

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In completely unrelated news, my promotion of Newsletter XP is nearing its climax.

Newsletter XP is an expensive and valuable course on how to build, grow, and monetize a successful newsletter. It’s put on by Alex Lieberman and Tyler Denk, the founders of Morning Brew and Beehiiv, respectively.

I’ve managed to claw out a $200 discount for you from the usual price that Newsletter XP sells for. That discount is good until tomorrow night, Monday Feb 26, at 12 midnight PST. If you’d like to take advantage of this, here’s what to do:

1. Go to the Newsletter XP sales page at https://bejakovic.com/nxp

2. If you decide you want to get Newsltter XP, then use coupon code JB20 at checkout.

3. Make sure the coupon code works — that you see the price drop by $200. This is not my funnel, and if you end up buying at full price, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Don’t write emails like this

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Do you start your emails with a question?

Do you try to identify with your reader, or get him to identify with you, by waffling on about his life, or worse, about the type of person you think he is?

Do you guess at your reader’s problems, but because you’re not really sure what those are, do you frame your guesses as questions to buy yourself some wiggle room?

If you’re anything like the several people I know who write vague and fluffy email copy that fails to draw readers in, it may be because you’re not saying anything hard and clear at the start of your email, and instead you engage in watery attempts at empathy.

Ok enough of that. Everything I’ve just done in the four sentences above — don’t do it. Especially at the start of your email.

Last night, I sat down and finally finished a batch of email copy critiques that had been lingering on my todo list.

There were lots of good ideas in each email.

But there was one recurring problem I saw. Maybe it was my fault, because I’ve been encouraging people to write about “symptoms” their audience is experiencing.

What I got instead was a cloud of throat clearing at the start, disguised as empathy copy.

The fact is, writing is not talking.

People will forgive a lot of when they look you in the face and hear your voice.

They will not forgive nearly as much when they are sitting alone on their couch with their phone in hand, with the TV on in front of them, with the next-door neighbor’s dog barking, with their own stomach growling. They won’t forgive:

– Abstraction that really doesn’t say much
– Aimless repetition
– A 2-3 min period to “warm up”
– Groping in the dark in the hope of finding something to say
– “Vibing”

Don’t do any of that. Especially at the start of your email.

Instead, say something hard and clear.

If you want examples of what hard and clear looks like, look inside my 10 Commandments book. Not among any of the actual A-list commandments. But in the way I start each chapter, which is really just an expanded email. As a reader named Tom wrote me:

I’ve been reading a lot of books around copywriting; but as a jumping off point, 10 Commandments was the best I’ve read so far.. So many good pointers on techniques to use and people to pay attention to.

But on a deeper level, your writing is exceptional. The first two books I started on were by Olgivy and Makepeace, but I was looking for something to bridge the gap in to the current era, as I couldn’t imagine myself ever actually engaging with their copy as a prospect.

I really appreciated how up-front, engaging, but still subtly very technical your style is. I’m planning to try to reverse engineer exactly what do, because I couldn’t put 10 Commandments down, and by the time your dropped the first CTA, there was no choice.

So…

Would you like to stop fluffing around? Are you sometimes stumped for a non-vague way to start your emails? Do you—

Ok, enough, once again.

For examples of hard and clear ways to start your message:

https://bejakovic.com/10commandments

Free info on free reports

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Copy Riddles member Andrew Townley takes advantage of the Copy Oracle privilege to ask:

I was listening to a Dan Kennedy program today that got me thinking about all those direct mail “free reports.” I was wondering if you had a source of any guidance on how to build one. I remember Parris describing the process somewhere on a podcast or something, but I can’t find it now.

The background, as you might know, is this:

A-list copywriters like Dan Kennedy and Parris Lampropoulos are experts at selling newsletters. Newsletters are a direct marketing staple because they are great for the publisher. Money comes in like clockwork, on your own schedule, without any added selling of your vague and broad and cheap-to-produce subscription offer.

For those same reasons, newsletters are a suspect deal for the subscriber. Many potential subscribers instinctively feel repulsed at the thought of paying good money, every month, for a “cat in the bag” piece of content, whether they are eager to consume it or not.

Enter free reports. Free reports are one effective strategy that guys like Dan and Parris use to overcome the resistance of skeptical newsletter buyers. The recipe is simple:

1. Go through your past content (newsletter or really anything else)
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2. Find the sexiest stuff. It can either be a single bit of info, or a small number of related items you bundle together.

​3. Put that sexy stuff in its own little package.

​4. Give that package a sexy and mysterious new name.

​5. Repeat as many times as your stamina will allow. I believe one Boardroom promo offered 99 free reports along with a newsletter subscription.

When you think about it, this is really just the same work that a copywriter would do normally. Look at what he has to sell… figure out the sexiest parts of that… highlight it in the sales material, and of course, make it sound as sexy and as mysterious as possible.

And now for the pitch that probably won’t convince you:

I write a daily email newsletter about copywriting, marketing, and persuasion.

But like I said, that probably won’t convince you to sign up.

So let me take my own advice, and offer you a free report when you sign up:

“Become a Repositioning Specialist”

This report shows you how to start a profitable repositioning business, with your own home as headquarters. In case, you want this report, follow these steps:

  1. Click here and sign up to my free daily email newsletter
  2. When you get my welcome email, hit reply and tell me you want the free report

A $2,000 idea

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Yesterday, I met the owners of an apartment I am trying to rent in Barcelona. They are a married couple, very elegant and stylish, a few years older than me. We met at a cafe.

I sat down across from them and I leaned back in my chair. “So what do you have for me,” I said.

The husband smiled at me. “Would you like to drink a coffee first?”

I smirked, stared him in the eye, and said nothing.

“Oh okay,” he said, clearly browbeaten. “So you’ve had a chance to look at the apartment? You liked it?”

“The apartment is fine,” I said. “But let’s talk turkey. How much do you want for it?”

The man paused for a moment. He and his wife looked at each other in confusion.

“What do you mean?” the wife said. “The rent is right there on the listing.” And she repeated the number. It was a round figure, divisible by one hundred, ending in two zeros.

I laughed with contempt.

“A round figure?” I said, barely controlling myself. “You haven’t done one minute of work on this, have you? You just pulled that number out of your ear, without checking comparables and without putting in any effort to calculate a fair price. No! I don’t trust your round figure. And I don’t like being disrespected like this. I’m not interested in renting your apartment any more. Goodbye!”

I got up and left the cafe. The husband ran after me, begging me to reconsider, offering to make the price more specific and jagged. But it was too late.

In case this sounds like a slightly fantastical scenario… well, that’s because it is.

What actually happened yesterday was that I did meet the owners.

I smiled at them and I put on my best and most responsible face.

Using subtle sub-communication, I made it clear that if they let me rent their apartment, I would not adopt a pitbull… I would not host any drug-driven orgies… and I would not take up drumming as a new hobby.

After a few minutes of this renter mating dance, the owners were satisfied. They agreed to let me have their beautiful apartment, and I agreed to take it, at a perfectly round monthly rent, neatly ending in two zeros.

If you’re wondering why I’m telling you this, then, like my fantasy owners above, you clearly didn’t read my email yesterday.

That email was all about the power of specificity. Specifically, the power of specific numbers. Recently proven by some fancy scientific research, but suspected by smart marketers for decades and probably centuries.

Except…

There are times where your numbers don’t have to be specific.

My rent situation above was clearly one.

I accepted the nice and round price. Doing anything else would have been foolish, bordering on very foolish. The rental market in Barcelona is insane. There are only a few available apartments and thousands of hungry renters swooping down on each one.

But you might say, “Sure, you can get away with a round price sometimes. That doesn’t mean that a specific, jagged price wouldn’t work just as well or better.”

Maybe. Or maybe not.

There are situations where a round price is not only acceptable, but actually better. Where a round price sub-communicates high status, a lack of neediness, and a position of power.

Take for example the curious case of one Joe Sugarman. Joe was a multimillionaire marketer who created the BluBlocker sunglasses empire.

Joe sold each of his BluBlockers for $69.95.

But when Joe ran an ad to advertise his legendary copywriting and marketing seminar, he didn’t promise to reveal “7-figure funnel secrets,” or offer a *9.99 price.

​​Instead, Joe said, “Come study with me,” right in the headline. And then in the subhead, he told you how much it would cost, — $2,000, with three round zeroes at the end.

So take time and ponder on that. I’ll leave you today with a bit from Joe’s ad:

There are two types of successful people. Those that are successful and those that are super successful.

To be successful you must learn the rules, know them cold, and follow them. To be super successful, you must learn the rules, know them cold, and break them.

For more marketing ideas, some worth $9.99 and others worth $15,000, come and read my email newsletter. You can sign up for it here.