I’ll start off this email by projecting out some praise and admiration I’ve gotten in the past

Right about a year ago, I sent out an email with the subject line, “Send me your praise and admiration.” Best thing I ever did.

​​Here are a few of the lavishly praising and admiring responses I got to that email. First, from David Patrick, senior copywriter at Launch Potato:

“If John is behind anything, then I’m sure it’s going to be good. In fact, he may very well be the best thing to happen to America… at least when it comes to persuasion and influence! No, really!”

Second, from “The Eco-Copywriter,” Thomas Crouse, who went absolutely nuts and over the top in his flattery of me and the work I do:

“My inbox is bombarded with emails every day. But when I see one from John, I stop and read it.”

And finally, here’s one from Liza Schermann, the lead copywriter at Scandinavian Biolabs:

“John Bejakovic and persuasion. You can’t beat that. He made me like cats. Even though I used to hate them and they used to hate me. So he’s a great person to find out about a new product that’s about persuading stubborn prospects. Or cats.”

The reason I’m sharing such lavish praise and admiration with you is because I’m still reading a magic book I mentioned two weeks ago.

​​The book is called “Leading With Your Head: Psychological and Directional Keys to the Amplification of the Magic Effect.” It’s basically a guidebook for stage magicians about how to organize their tricks and their shows to maximize the magic, the fun, the show for the audience.

Here’s a relevant bit from Leading With Your Head:

“If we don’t draw attention to the magical occurrences, the effects may be weakened, or lost. The answer lies in analyzing your performance pieces to know when you need to direct attention to the magic. All other times you should be projecting out and relating to your audience, so they remember you.”

I hope that with all the projecting out and relating I’ve done so far, you will remember me tomorrow. Because now the time has come for me to draw your attention, and in fact direct it, to a bit of sales magic. Specifically, to my Most Valuable Postcard #2, which I am offering for the first and only time ever at a 50% launch discount, until 12 midnight PST tonight.

I started this launch two days ago with a message I got from copywriter Kay Hng Quek.

​​Kay went ahead and bought MVP #2 and wrote me about it yesterday. His message is below. Please read it carefully, particularly the parts about how MVP #2 “blew his mind” and how MVP #1 and MVP #2 are “probably the best $100” he has ever spent on marketing training:

===

Read it immediately, and how you tied everything together at the end just blew my mind. Obviously this demands a second or third read. Obviously I will learn so much more from that.

Ngl, I would have loved MVP #3, but I’m grateful I got to read at least MVP #1 and #2. Probably the best $100 I’ve ever spent on marketing training…

===

Again, the deadline to get Most Valuable Postcard #2 for 50% off the regular price is tonight at 12 midnight PST. But the only way to get this offer is to be on my email list before the deadline strikes. If you’d like to that, click here and fill out the form that appears.

My Most Valuable Email trick leaks out all over the Internet

This year, I set myself the task to do something “paid” each month to grow this newsletter, as well as something “free” — something I don’t have to pay for, except in my time, thought, and effort.

The free thing for February was writing up a guest newsletter issue for the Formats Unpacked people. Formats Unpacked is a Substack newsletter that looks at the underlying structure of interesting podcasts, newsletters, YouTube Channels, computer games, pop songs, subscription boxes, physical puzzles.

The format of Formats Unpacked itself is to briefly describe the format of the thing under examination, and then then to focus on “the magic that makes it special.”

I decided to unpack the format of the Brain Software podcast, by hypnotists Mike Mandel and Chris Thompson. I’ve written about Brain Software many times in this newsletter, because it’s one of only two podcasts that I listen to regularly.

The format of Brain Software is a cross between Car Talk, absurd late-night sketch TV, and a standup show.

But while writing that Formats Unpacked analysis, I realized that the magic that makes Brain Software special might just be that Mike and Chris use what I call the Most Valuable Email trick.

So maybe I should call it the Most Valuable Podcast trick.

Or maybe the Most Valuable YouTube Channel trick.

Or maybe the Most Valuable Book trick.

Because over just the past few weeks, I’ve noticed the MVE trick in action in Brain Software (hypnosis podcast), in a top YouTube channel about learning Spanish (Español con Juan), and in a cult book about negotiation (Jim Camp’s Start With No).

And then there’s a message I got a few days ago, from career coach Tom Grundy. Tom knows the Most Valuable Email trick, and he had this to say:

===

Hi John,

I bought MVE a couple of weeks back – despite your warning a few months ago that it might not be best suited! And I love it.

I can see lots of ways to use the trick in my career advice/personal development emails. Mainly related to Topic 4 (positioning/attitude) but also general “life advice” (e.g. “there’s no such thing as perfection”) and self-promotion/self-marketing (some overlaps with direct marketing). I’m sure there’s other ways I could use the trick too which I haven’t figured out yet.

Looking forward to the second Book Club call. I’m a big magic fan so I was excited to see the book choice for round 2.

===

The warning Tom is referring to is right there on top of the MVE sales page:

“If you are NOT primarily a marketer or copywriter, or you do not write about those topics, then I advise you NOT to buy this training. The Most Valuable Email trick will not work for all niches, markets, or topics.”

I stand by that — even though the MVE trick can be used effectively to write about hypnosis, language learning, negotiation, and like Tom says above, personal development and career advice.

But maybe you are a daredevil. Maybe you don’t heed any warnings, including mine. ​In that case, I can’t stop you from buying Most Valuable Email and even profiting from it. To find out more about MVE:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

The quantum theory of sitcom or blowing your readers’ minds

Two weeks ago, I wrote an email all about my futile, morning-long search for a quote about Larry David and how he ran the writers for “Seinfeld” like a team of huskies pulling a sled.

It turns out my search wasn’t entirely futile. I did come across the following interesting bit by Larry Charles.

Charles used to be the supervising producer on “Seinfeld.” In a New Yorker article, he remembered the exact moment, during the development of season three, when he was talking to Larry David and when things clicked:

===

We went, “What if the book that was overdue was in the homeless guy’s car? And the homeless guy was the gym teacher that had done the wedgie? And what if, when they return the book, Kramer has a relationship with the librarian?”

Suddenly it’s like — why not? It’s like, boom boom boom, an epiphany — quantum theory of sitcom! It was, like, nobody’s doing this! Usually, there’s the A story, the B story — no, let’s have five stories! And all the characters’ stories intersect in some sort of weirdly organic way, and you just see what happens. It was like — oh my God. It was like finding the cure for cancer.

===

Last November, I put together a live training about creating an a-ha moment in your reader’s brain or brains.

I did a lot of research and a lot of thinking to prepare for that training.

One thing I realized is how there’s 98% overlap, perhaps 98.2%, between creating an a-ha moment and creating a ha-ha moment.

The difference mainly comes down to context, tone, the kind of setting you find yourself in.

On the other hand, the structure, techniques, necessary ingredients, and resulting effects are all the same between a-ha and ha-ha, insight and comedy.

So maybe it’s worth looking at Charles’s quote above in more detail, at least if you want to blow your readers’ minds.

Notice what it doesn’t say:

* There’s nothing about character development

* There’s nothing about carefully crafted language

* There really nothing about the substance of the thing, rather only about the form, the structure

Maybe you find all this kind of abstract.

Maybe you’d like some more concrete stories and examples to illustrate how to take the quantum theory of sitcom above, and use it to blow people’s minds.

If that’s what you’d like, I’ve put together a course about it, called Most Valuable Email. It tells you one way, which has worked very well for me, to take Charles’s idea above and apply it to writing daily emails.

Most Valuable Email also gives you 51 concrete examples of the most successful, influential, and insightful emails that use the Most Valuable Email trick.

It’s very possible you’ve decided Most Valuable Email isn’t for you. That’s fine. Otherwise, you can find more information here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

I have not been paid to stuff this email full of “hyper”

Disclaimer:

I did not receive an email last night around half past 10 from CIA special agent Dallin Carr. I have in fact never been in contact with special agent Carr or anybody else from the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. Furthermore, I have no plans to start writing a daily email newsletter on behalf of the CIA, either to be sent internally to CIA employees, or covertly, on behalf of the CIA but under my own name, to any hyper-sophisticated audience around the world.

And now on to business:

I am a big fan of the Brain Software podcast. In fact, it’s one of only two podcasts I listen to.

Brain Software is put out by hypnotists Mike Mandel and Chris Thompson. I listen to Mike and Chris because the topics they cover are often interesting to me personally and useful for the business of persuasion, manipulation, and influence.

But really, really, do I keep listening because Mike and Chris share interesting and useful content?

No. I keep listening because the two of them are fun, in fact hyper-fun, to listen to.

And because I like to kill fun, I decided a while ago to reverse-engineer what exactly it is that Mike and Chris are doing.

One thing I discovered is that they repeatedly use hyper-specific, absurd denials. They often open with a sequence of them, and they also pepper them in throughout their podcast episodes.

So if you too are looking to make your content more fun, add in some hyper-specific denials.

And no, special agent Carr did not tell me to tell you that, nor did anybody from the CIA promise me that I would get $15 each time I use the word “hyper” in this email.

Perhaps you found this whole thing fun and useful. In which case, go and listen to Mike and Chris, and try to reverse-engineer their podcast, like I’m trying to do.

But perhaps you did not find today’s email very fun or useful. In which case, consider that an argument against trying to reverse-engineer how other people communicate.

Instead, consider that an argument in favor of my Copy Riddles program. Because:

Copy Riddles teaches you to create intriguing, persuasive communication, and it doesn’t do it through reverse-engineering anything. Instead, it does it by looking at source material and the ways that source material was transformed by master communicators in order to make it more persuasive and intriguing.

You can find out more about that at the link below. Click, because it’s hyper-interesting:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

You see it, but you don’t really see it

A few days ago, Andy Griffiths, who publishes a newsletter about newsletter formats, wrote up an issue about email marketer Ben Settle. The most interesting bit came in the last sentence:

===

I sent Ben Settle a few questions. He declined to answer, saying anyone could work out his business model by deduction. That’s true. It’s all there in the emails.

===

But is it really?

I doubt Ben really believes that. He runs an info publishing business telling people exactly what’s really going on in his free emails, underneath the surface.

This extra information is worth paying for, and a lot. Ben’s info publishing business started pulling in $1M/year a few years back. Today it’s probably higher.

So the question becomes:

How can anybody sell something that’s out there for free?

It’s because you see it… but you don’t really see it. A-list copywriter John Carlton put it this way:

===

The ads you see in the wild are finished products. All the work that went into creating that finished product is invisible. There’s no “infrastructure” to an ad, no curtain to peek behind once it’s posted or printed.

===

Except of course there is a curtain to peek behind.

You can pay Ben Settle to find out how he runs his email marketing business — how he got you to pay him to find out how he got you to pay him.

You can also pay me to find out how A-list copywriters, like John Carlton above, wrote some of their most lucrative ads, and how you might be able to do something similar.

​​I worked it all out by deduction — well, not really. I had a secret resource at my disposal.

You can find out the details of that secret resource on the page below, which is the sales page for my Copy Riddles program.

For now, I will just say that today is the last day can get two free bonuses I have long offered with Copy Riddles.

The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until tonight at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.

That’s just a few short hours away, and this will be my last email before the deadline. ​​

Once the deadline passes, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear. My plan is to flesh them out and turn them into paid upsells for Copy Riddles.

To get the whole package before then:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Billion-dollar psychology lessons for cheap

“Look at what they’ve done to you. I’m so sorry. You must be dead… because I don’t know how to feel. I can’t feel anything any more. You’ve gone someplace else now.”

You recognize that?

​​It’s from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. One of the biggest movies of all time. And an incredibly valuable resource — if you only know when to stop watching.

When I was a kid, around age five, my eyes bulged out each time my parents took me past the main movie theater in town.

​​For some reason, the ​theater​ still showed the marquee for E.T., even though the movie had stopped playing years earlier.

I was too young to see E.T. when it came out. And I suffered for years, seeing that marquee. I wanted to watch the movie so bad — a real life alien! On Earth! Makes friends with a little boy and turns the boy’s bike into a flying machine!

It’s everything my 5-year-old self wanted in life. But the movie was no longer in theaters, and there was no VHS either.

So a few years ago, fully grown and rather jaded, I downloaded E.T. to finally heal this childhood wound, and to see why this Spielberg fantasy is called the #24 greatest film of all time.

Unfortunately, the moment has passed.

I couldn’t really get into E.T. But I did get some use out of it.

​​That scene above. Let me repeat it in case you didn’t read:

“Look at what they’ve done to you. I’m so sorry. You must be dead… because I don’t know how to feel. I can’t feel anything any more. You’ve gone someplace else now.”​​

That’s when E.T. dies, about nine-tenths of the way through the movie. And the boy, Elliott, who had a psychic link with E.T. and who has felt everything E.T. has felt, suddenly cannot feel anything any more.

I can imagine that when E.T. played in movie theaters, both the kids and the parents choked up at this point.

​​The kids, because the cute little extraterrestrial is dead.

​​The parents, because they felt on some level this scene might be about their childhood dreams, hopes, and capacity for joy and wonder… which have been drained out of them as they grew up and became adults.

And then of course, in the movie, E.T. comes back to life and everything works out just fine. Which is the insight I want to leave you with today.

If a story reaches mass popularity — E.T., Fight Club, Bad Santa — it’s because it makes people vibrate.

The thing is, social order must be maintained. That’s why each mass-market story either has a happy ending (if the characters were deep-down deserving) or a moral to be learned (if they were not).

Don’t let that fool you.

Market-proven tear-jerkers like E.T. can really show you true human nature — if you don’t wait until the end. The end is just tacked on to muddy the waters. But the psychology lesson is all the emotional buildup that happens before the turnaround.

That buildup shows you how people really are. Those are the real problems and desires people respond to, and that’s what you should speak to. Everything else is just Hollywood.

Meanwhile, in an alternate cinematic universe:

I’d like to remind you that this is the last week I am giving away two free bonuses with my Copy Riddles program. The first bonus is Storytelling For Sales. The second bonus is Copywriting Portfolio Secrets.

Don’t buy Copy Riddles just for the free bonuses.

But if you decide you want to get Copy Riddles, you have until Saturday Jan 21 at 12 midnight PST to get Storytelling for Sales and Copywriting Portfolio Secrets as free bonuses.

That’s just two days away. ​​

Once the deadline passes, Copy Riddles will remain available, but the free bonuses will disappear.

To get the whole package:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Daniel Throssell, Daniel Kahneman, and a robot lawyer walk into a bar…

A few minutes ago, I got my coffee ready, I set my timer, and I got down to writing this email. As a first step, I checked some news headlines and bingo — I saw it:

“AI-powered ‘robot’ lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court”

Maybe you’ve heard the news already. A startup called DoNotPay is helping people fight speeding tickets.

Before, DoNotPay used AI to write a letter that you could mail in to contest your speeding ticket. But now, DoNotPay will help one lucky defendant in court.

The DoNotPay app will run on the defendant’s phone. It will listen in to the court proceedings. And it will tell the defendant what to say to get out of his speeding ticket in court.

“This courtroom stuff is more advocacy,” said Joshua Browder, the CEO of DoNotPay. “It’s more to encourage the system to change.” Browder says he wants to give access to law to people who can’t afford it.

As you might guess, this noble mission isn’t very popular with lawyers themselves.

When Browder tweeted about his new courtroom “robot”, lawyers jumped on him, and threatened he would go to jail if he followed through with this plan.

And verily, a courtroom robot is not legal in most places. In most places, all parties have to agree to be recorded. But I doubt good will and keeping Browder out of jail is why lawyers jumped all over Browder’s tweet, telling him to stop this project immediately.

Lawyers still have a bit of time.

Right now, courtroom AI robots just handle speeding tickets. And Browder admits even that took a lot of work.

His company had to retrain generic AI for this specialized task. “AI is a high school student,” Browder said, “and we’re sending it to law school.”

Law school… and then what? because Being a good lawyer is not just about knowing the letter of the law.

Specifically, I have in mind a passage I read in Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow.

Kahneman says there are two fundamental ways lawyers argue.

These two ways are actually illustrated perfectly in the little debate Daniel Throssell and I had last week, in emails talking about newsletters and who wants ’em.

So I will make you an offer right now, which you are free to refuse, in case you’d rather go read Thinking Fast and Slow yourself.

My offer is a disappearing bonus.

It’s good until 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PSST tomorrow, Thursday, Jan 12 2023.

If you’ve already bought my Most Valuable Email course, and would like me to spell out Kahneman’s two lawyer strategies, write me before the deadline and ask.

​​I will write back to you, both with Kahneman’s passage, and the specifics of how Daniel and I each took one of the two approaches.

And if you haven’t bought my Most Valuable Email course, then my offer is the same, except you have to also buy the course before the deadline.

Buy just to get the bonus?
​​
If you find yourself desirous of the disappearing bonus, but reluctant to buy a course just to get that bonus, then I will argue that desire itself is a reason to get MVE.

​​Because this desire is something you too can create in others. It’s something I talk about in the course itself, specifically inside the 12 Rules of Most Valuable Emails, specifically Rule #10.

For more info on this course, or to get it before the deadline:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Who today remembers Ragged Dick?

I was very grateful to find out the following fact just now:

Today being January 13, it is the birthday of Horatio Alger, one of the most popular and influential American writers of all time.

Starting with Ragged Dick in 1868, Alger published almost a hundred novels. They were all exactly the same — but readers didn’t mind.

Each of Alger’s novels starred a poor and luckless boy, who managed to stay afloat through honesty, hard work, and perseverance.

Eventually, following a noble act, the boy would be brought to the attention of a wealthy patron. The patron gave the boy his lucky break, setting him on the path to success and security.

It was good story for 19th-century America. That’s why it could be told over and over again.

Today, of course, nobody remembers Ragged Dick. Nobody reads Horatio Alger any more.

It takes somebody like me, an email columnist a little desperate for a daily email topic, to even bring up the fact that today is Alger’s birthday, and to tell you something interesting about the man. Such as the following haiku:

Rags-to-riches theme,
Urban tales of working class,
Alger’s legacy.

In case you are wondering what I’m getting at, I’ll admit that Alger’s story makes me think of the mysterious question of fame, and who gets it and who gets to keep it for more than a few years.

Alger sold some 20 million copies of his books in his time. But just a few years after his death, surveys showed that few kids had ever heard of him.

But — and maybe I am naive, and maybe I have bought into the Horatio Alger myth too much — I feel that today is a moment of opportunity as good as 19th-century America. Maybe better. And Alger’s stories, outdated as they are, remain emotionally relevant.

Ragged Dick was a bootblack.

If Dick lived today, I imagine he would join the creator economy, and maybe start a free email newsletter. Through honesty, hard work, and perseverance, he would toil away on his newsletter until he got his lucky break, which would set him on the path to success and security.

Maybe you don’t buy into my Ragged Dick daydream. And maybe this entire email isn’t relevant to you.

But if by chance you are starting a free email newsletter, or in case you’ve already got one, then you might want to know about my Most Valuable Email.

For more info on that:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Bare metal: Poor single mom risks death to feed her family

A couple days ago, I sent out an email about charging out, King Arthur-like, to fight dragons on the borders of your kingdom. That was my metaphor for defending your business interests.

I got lots of interesting replies to that email, and none more so than from Shawn Cartwright. Shawn runs TCCII, an online martial arts academy. He wrote:

===

While I sympathize with your position on this, I’d just like to ask this question…

Why are dragons always made out to be the bad guys?

Seriously…

Imagine you were the millenia old beast who woke up one day to find a bunch of unwashed simian descendants using your pristine mountain stream as a latrine?

Or erecting god-awful ugly structures made from your trees they took without so much as a please or thank you.

And shot at you when you went down to have a little chat with them to sort it out.

And then organized some sort of genocidal campaign to eradicate you and take all your stuff.

Is it any wonder they might be a little ill-tempered?

===

Shawn asks a great question. In response to it, my mind jumped to a tense scene from the 2015 Disney documentary, Monkey Kingdom.

The scene shows a tiny and cute macaque monkey dangling from a vine a few inches above some murky water.

This monkey is a single mother, the narrator tells you. But not only that. She’s also at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Higher-caste females are safe up in a tree eating figs. But even though there’s plenty to go around, these higher-caste females are not willing to share any food with the low-born single mom.

So she is forced to roam deep into the jungle to feed her family. That’s why she’s now dangling above the murky water, so she can harvest some water lily seeds.

And then the scene shifts. It suddenly shows a monitor lizard.

The lizard is huge. It’s seven feet long, three or four times the size of the tiny monkey mom.

The lizard is ugly. It’s thick and black and scaly, with a long flame-like tongue flickering in and out of its mouth.

And worst of all, the lizard is treacherous. At first it’s lurking at the edge of the water. But then it slips in silently, and swims under the surface to where the water lilies are.

So why are dragons always made out to be the bad guys?

Because our race and their race have been at war since time immemorial. Because this feeling is baked into us. Because it’s bare-metal.

Bare-metal is my term for the fact that if you keep asking why long enough, you eventually always get to the answer, just because. Because it’s how we humans are. Because it’s right, whether or not it’s historically fair to the dragons, whether or not it makes sense in today’s world.

If you want to influence people, then write about bare-metal topics.

It’s not just slimy, treacherous serpents.

I gave you a few other bare-metal topics above, in that monkey scene setup. But there are many more.

I rewatched Monkey Kingdom last night. And because I’ve become obsessive through writing this newsletter, I took notes every minute or two.

I found 40+ bare metal topics in Monkey Kingdom. They are brilliantly illustrated because it’s monkeys. Monkeys are close enough to us to be relevant, but different enough to illustrate each bare-metal topic distinctly.

So my advice to you is, watch Monkey Kingdom. And take notes.

If I ever create my mythical AIDA School, this movie will be a part of the first-semester curriculum.

And now for something completely different:

Specifically, my Most Valuable Email course.

That course is connected in some way to today’s email, though only lightly.

That don’t change the fact that, as the name of it says, this course is about a type of email that has been most valuable for me.

If you also write about marketing or persuasion or copywriting, this type of email might be just as valuable for you.

To find out more about it — and about love, death, and politics — go here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Stolen ideas are worth more than fine gold

Incline thy ear unto my sayings:

Over the past day and night, I’ve had an unusual influx of new subscribers. I went to check my website analytics.

There was nothing unusual except extra traffic to a post with a weighty and smooth title:

“The 7th pillar of influence”

“Huh?” I said. I couldn’t remember ever writing this. I had no idea what it was about. But I did find the title intriguing so I looked it up. It turns out the “7th pillar of influence” is an email I wrote in very earliest days of my newsletter, back in 2018. I won’t tell you about the content of that email — you can look up the 7th pillar on my site if you like. But I will tell you about that title:

The 7th pillar of influence was a play on T.E. Lawrence’s 7 Pillars of Wisdom, his memoirs of serving in the Arab revolt. I read that book some time ago, but I never did figure out what the 7 pillars of wisdom are. I checked just now. It turns out Lawrence’s title was itself a reference — to the book of Proverbs, chapter 9, verse 1:

“Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars”

Now I betcha that this Old Testement reference in Lawrence’s title is one good reason why we are still talking about his book today, one hundred years after it was written. And perhaps it’s the reason why my email from 4 years ago, archived in the chambers of death that is my website, got some surprise visits today.

James Altucher called this practice plagiarizing.

​​And what else can you call it? Stealing from another text, word for word, without giving credit. And yet, James himself has stolen in this way many times, for the following reason:

Because out of the thousands of documents written over the past 5,000 years, this document has survived. Thousands didn’t.

Religions and philosophies sprung from it. Millions worshipped it.

The text is somehow primal to our experience as humans.

So let me reveal a secret to you:

If you want to instruct or influence people, and you want to find an attractive way to package up your message, then dig through the Book of Proverbs. Find a formulation that has survived thousands of years, and stuff your message in that box.

Perhaps you think it’s foolish for me to reveal this secret. But I find that the more I scatter good ideas about, the more they increase.

On the other hand, the Book of Proverbs also promises blessings to those who sell. So let me sell you a spot on my daily email newsletter. It’s worth more than fine gold. You can pay for it by clicking here.