Direct Marketing

Get expert training in Scheming, raise your income

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I once read a book called The Man Who Sold America and in it I came across the term “scheme man.”

Once upon a time, a scheme man was a legitimate and even highly coveted and paid profession.

Scheme men were basically marketing consultants who could devise new selling “schemes” — ideas, concepts, breakthroughs. As master direct marketer Robert Collier put it, “It’s not the copy so much as the scheme back of it.”

Claude Hopkins, often thought to be the first A-list copywriter, was the premier scheme man (he was the one discussed in that book I read).

Hopkins didn’t really use clever copywriting to turn his clients and himself into billionaires (in today’s money).

Instead, he did it by devising new selling schemes.

As an example, Hopkins’s first big marketing job was to sell “carpet sweepers.” His innovative scheme was to start offering these carpet sweepers in a dozen different fancy wood casings, rather than the single drab choice available previously.

Stupid, right? Who cares about the casing?

This was a completely impractical and unnecessary new development. And yet, it resulted in 250,000 carpet sweepers being sold in 3 weeks.

After that, some of Hopkins’s schemes involved the “world’s biggest cake” (100,000 people came to see it)… the “paid free sample” scheme for Liquozone (which took the company from bankruptcy to making $60 million in profit the next year)… and the “engraved with your name” pen that doubled response when added as a bonus to an ordinary offer.

Point being:

Become a skilled Scheme Man, then or now, and your future is settled.

If you can devise new ways for a company to sell what they’ve already got, your services will ALWAYS be in demand, and you will get paid BIG MONEY IN BIG CHUNKS. Plus, the work can be exciting and challenging and even fun.

Except how? How do you become a skilled Scheme Man, today, in 2026?

For that I’d like to point you to Mike Samuels, and his 6-week ABP cohort.

Mike’s cohort is currently open for signups. The signup window closes tomorrow. After that, you won’t be able to get in, and also the bonuses disappear, and if this program is ever opened again, the price will go up.

Like I said, Mike’s cohort program is called ABP, which stands for Action Based Psychology. I don’t think that name does justice to what Mike is offering here.

What Mike is offering is a full-on certification program for Scheme Men, though he calls them “ABP Consultants.”

Mike’s program first gets you trained on the relevant underlying psychology and translates that into specific marketing techniques, so you can own these ideas yourself and turn them into new selling schemes for specific businesses.

Mike then gives you “audits” so you don’t have to count on remembering all these ideas and schemes, but can simply refer to the audits when the time comes.

And then finally, there’s a client-getting section so you can actually turn your new Scheming skills into profits for clients and income for yourself.

Like I said, the signup for this cohort closes tomorrow. If you’re interested in the full details before this opportunity goes away:

https://bejakovic.com/scheme

3 random things on my mind

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Yesterday, copywriter Svet Dimitrov posted in my Daily Email House community about a kind of email he writes each Saturday. It’s a “3 random things on my mind” email that Svet picked up from evaporated marketer Justin Goff.

Says Svet about this kind of email:

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Well, a lot of folks who read my emails tell me they’re always excited to read my Saturday email.

Why?

Because that’s one way to get to know the person on the other side of the screen more.

I love it. My audience loves it. And I don’t need to always think about a marketing lesson in every single email I send.

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I’m game to try anything once (in email). So here’s 3 things on mind on this Saturday, September 5, 2026:

#1. What it’s like to learn something new these days

I recently started taking Thai kickboxing classes. A former pro fighter has been putting on these classes for the past 10 years, down by the beach in Barceloneta.

I saw them training once, got curious, signed up, and loved it. I’ve been going for my third month now.

Somehow, YouTube found out about my new hobby, and has since been serving me up a steady diet of boxing, kickboxing, and MMA advice.

I find myself inevitably clicking on much of it, and I find myself pulled in a hundred separate directions, feeling both inadequate and hyped up.

I have no idea what’s important, what’s not important, or who to listen to. I’m ready to jump on every new suggestion in the hope of getting better sooner.

It’s the first time I’m learning something genuinely new in a long time, and I’ve forgotten how disorienting it can be, particularly now in the days of the mature “creator economy.”

#2. 24-hour info fast

In part to escape the mature “creator economy,” as soon as I finish and schedule this email, I will turn off my Internet, power down my laptop, and hide my Kindle and my New Yorkers under a couch cushion.

For the next 24 hours, I have decided to hold an information fast.

I can write in my Remarkable, I can go for a walk, or I can stare at the wall. But there will be no media consumption, modern or ancient.

If you don’t hear from me again, it’s because I’ve gone insane and have been committed to an asylum in the Barcelona hills.

#3. Substack pop-up newsletters

There’s a guy on my list who joined a few days ago. He used to be on my list before, but then unsubscribed, and now has rejoined.

Two years ago, we exchanged some messages. That’s how I know that back then, he had an email list of 72 people.

We exchanged some messages again now, two years later. Today, he’s got an email list of 12,000 people.

How do you go from 72 to 12,000 in two years? In his own words:

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First, I was finally able to grow my audience on social media (this helped me go from 72 -> 2,500ish subscribers). But at the start of this year, I started taking Substack more seriously as I also like to write long-form newsletters and this helped me go from 2,500 to 12,000.

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This stuck out to me because I’ve recently heard the idea of “pop-up newsletters” — newsletters that only run for a fixed length of time or number of issues.

I’ve since been thinking about creating a pop-up newsletter on Substack for a project that’s been on my mind for years, a series of persuasion lessons illustrated with scenes from movies. Now that I hear the list-growth benefits of a Substack newsletter, well, I’m still thinking about it.

And that’s it.

I have more things on my mind this Saturday, but three is the magic number.

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy my Daily Email House group.

Lots of good and random ideas are getting shared there by House members, and I’m also in there participating regularly, whenever I’m not on a 24-hour info fast.

If you’d like to get inside the House, here’s the entrance. Just knock and I’ll let you in:

https://www.skool.com/daily-email-house

How to get your audience to engage after years of passive lurking

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In this email, I will tell you how to get your audience to engage after years of passive lurking. Or rather, I will tell you how modern Renaissance man Tom Grundy done it.

Tom, as you might know if you are a careful reader of my emails, is a high-powered London banker.

Tom is also the father of someone I only know as “Baby Grundy” (now “Toddler Grundy”)… a half-marathon runner… a semi-professional poker shark… a competitive chess player… a card magician… an avid book collector… and the author of a great daily email newsletter, on topics of self development and happiness and career satisfaction.

Earlier this year, Tom took part in a Most Valuable Offer cohort I ran, where I offered to help list owners plan, sell, and run a paid live workshop to their list. After it was all said and done, Tom wrote me to report on the results:

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I ran Reclaim Your Evening last night. I had eleven people buy the offer so $1k in total which I’m counting as a big win. Every email I sent made at least one sale, which was very cool, and I also had people buying who’d been on my list a couple of weeks and others who’d been on my list a couple of years (and this was the first time they’d interacted with me/bought something from me) so also very cool. So thank you!

 

One thing I realised was that I probably needed the accountability more than I thought I did ☺️

===

Like I wrote last week, you can write the engagingest, fascinatingest content in the world, and it still won’t matter much, not unless you have an exciting offer to lead into.

Tom’s case study above is proof for that.

Tom writes great daily emails. Has been for years.

For a long time, Tom was promoting a “waiting list for his coaching program” at the end of his emails. That’s better than nothing, but it was not reason enough for folks on his list to actually take any action.

But one exciting and relevant Most Valuable Offer later, and Tom had 11 sales, new buyers, and engagement from people who have been on his list for years, but who never interacted or bought anything from him before.

Since running his Most Valuable Offer, Tom has launched a group coaching program as well as a 1-1 coaching.

I don’t know if these are directly tied to the Most Valuable Offer he ran and to the leads/buyers he got from that. But to my mind, there’s little doubt that the momentum of a successful Most Valuable Offer can be motivating and can juice you into activity and open up opportunities that were completely unimaginable just weeks before.

This coming Wednesday, September 2, I will hold a live paid workshop, a Most Valuable Offer of my own, about how to plan, sell, and host Most Valuable Offers.

In his message above, Tom mentions accountability, which was part of the Most Valuable Offer cohort I ran in April.

If you like, at the end of Wednesday’s training, I will give you an opportunity to get my direct support and help and accountability for running your own Most Valuable Offer, if you want ’em.

Whether or not you take me up on that, I will give you the essence of what I have learned so far about running successful and client-pleasing Most Valuable Offers, based on my own experiences and my work with coaching clients.

Wednesday’s training happens at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, and again, the date is September 2.

Yes, there will be a recording if you cannot make it live. But you’re sure to get more out of it if you can join me on the actual call.

Your investment, should you choose to join me, is $97 today and $2/month ongoing, because, as moons pass, I will be continuously updating the Most Valuable Offer SOP and sharing my Most Valuable Offer results and the results of clients I am helping on this.

If you’d like to sign up and learn how I run Most Valuable Offers, to engage both my readers and myself, and how you can too:

https://checkout.bejakovic.com/most-valuable-offer/

The ultimate high-ticket lead magnet

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“He’s doing very well. He’s doing VERY well. You know what he’s clearing himself? 14, 15 grand a week! Why? He’s got the leads. He’s got the good leads!”
— Glengarry Glen Ross

A couple days ago, I ran a poll in my Daily Email House community, with surprising results. The poll question asked:

“What’s the highest-ticket offer you have sold successfully to your email list?”

I think there was a bit of selection bias among those who responded, because the majority said they have successfully sold offers of $1k+ to their lists. 20% even said they have successfully sold offers of $5k or more via email alone.

In any case, the next day, I ran another poll. I asked House members why they aren’t selling more of their highest-ticket offer?

This time, the answer came back almost unanimous and much less surprising:

86% responded that they don’t have enough LEADS.

Like David Mamet says in Glengarry Glen Ross, it’s always about the leads, the good leads.

So you want leads? The good leads? The Glengarry leads?

Here’s a bit of advice on that from Dan Kennedy, the marketing guru I have quoted most in my newsletter because I have learned so much from the man, and because he is so quotable.

In Dan’s words, here is how you get leads, the good leads:

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My business comes to me because money follows and flows to authority.

For me, the journey toward this authority status began when I first published The Ultimate Sales Letter in 1981 — a book that has been on bookstore shelves without interruption ever since. It established me as an expert in the craftsmanship of letters that sell. It directly brought me clients, but much more importantly, it elevated my status above other copywriters. People wanted to hear from and get assistance from “the guy who wrote the book” about sales letters, and it is not accidental that the preemptive word “the” is in that title.

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Important point that Dan makes:

Yes, a book can get you clients directly. But it also leads others to you, even if they never buy or read your book. The book acts as a mental shortcut, and puts you in a position of “preeminent expert I want to work with.”

So go and write a book.

Or if you know yourself well enough to know that will never happen, or if you simply don’t want to wait as long as it might take…

… then you might like to know there are other, less painful and less time-consuming ways to build the kind of authority Dan Kennedy is talking about.

For example, my preferred method is to announce a live training, charge for it, and sell it. Then I either keep selling and promoting the recording, or I get it transcribed and turn it into a course or a even a book.

Yes, a live paid training that you sell on your site won’t appear on bookshelves at Barnes & Noble, and doesn’t have the same prestige as a book.

On the flip side, a live paid training is much easier and faster to put together than a book.

The deadline forces you to put out something, and in my experience, the result has always been 90% as good as I could have ever made it. The live, personal factor also makes live training attendees more forgiving than book readers would ever be.

Plus, the fact that you can sell a live paid training for $97 or $197 contributes to your authority as well, in a way that a $9.97 book cannot.

For all these reasons and more, I call live paid trainings Most Valuable Offers, more so than books or courses.

Next Wednesday, September 2, I will be running a Most Valuable Offer of my own, showing you how to sell and run Most Valuable Offers.

At the end of Wednesday’s training, I will give you an opportunity to get my direct support and help running your own Most Valuable Offer, if you want it.

Whether or not you take me up on that, I will give you the essence of what I have learned so far about running successful and client-pleasing Most Valuable Offers, based on my own experiences and my work with coaching clients.

Wednesday’s training happens at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, and again, the date is September 2.

Yes, there will be a recording if you cannot make it live. But you’re sure to get more out of it if you can join me on the actual call.

Your investment, should you choose to join me, is $97 today and $2/month ongoing, because, as moons pass, I will be continuously updating the Most Valuable Offer SOP and sharing my Most Valuable Offer results and the results of clients I am helping on this.

If you’d like to sign up and learn how I run happy Most Valuable Offers to build my authority and attract the good leads, and how you can too:

https://checkout.bejakovic.com/most-valuable-offer/

$7,679 from an 8-person, 2-hour live training

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Last April, I ran a Most Valuable Offer implementation cohort, in which I worked with a handful of business owners to help them launch and run their own paid live training, which I call a Most Valuable Offer.

One of those was AI-agency owner Ryan Lemos, who decided to put on a live 2-hour AI implementation workshop, which he promoted inside some mastermind he is a member of. The results of that Most Valuable Offer, in Ryan’s words:

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I ran one workshop; the $97 one. Had 8 people enroll, of which 7 paid and 1 attended free (had to do a client a favor :). So that was $97×7 = $679.

Converted 2 of them to my 3-month BOT offer (Build-Operate-Transfer) at $3500 upfront.

That’s $3500×2 = $7000.

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I told Ryan he can run this Most Valuable Offer regularly. I don’t know the size of his list, but I figure that with a bit of hustling in groups he’s a part of, he can run this Most Valuable Offer every month, get a few people in the live training, and if the numbers above hold, convert a quarter of them into his $3,500 offer.

Hell, at those numbers, it would make sense to run cold traffic to this workshop.

That might be something for you to consider.

Here’s something else for you to consider:

Next Wednesday, September 2, I will be running a Most Valuable Offer of my own, showing you how to sell and run Most Valuable Offers.

At the end of Wednesday’s training, I will give you an opportunity to get my direct support and help running your own Most Valuable Offer, if you want it.

Whether or not you take me up on that, I will give you the essence of what I have learned so far about running successful and client-pleasing Most Valuable Offers, based on my own experiences and my work with coaching clients like Ryan above.

Wednesday’s training happens at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, and again, the date is September 2, next Wednesday.

Your investment, should you choose to join me, is $97 today and $2/month ongoing, because, as moons pass, I will be continuously updating the Most Valuable Offer SOP and sharing my Most Valuable Offer results and the results of clients I am helping on this.

If you’d like to sign up and learn how I run happy Most Valuable Offers, and how you can too:

https://checkout.bejakovic.com/most-valuable-offer/

A tiny shift for a big difference in passive income

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I got an intriguing reply to my email yesterday from a mystery man named Paul do Campo.

Paul is a copywriter who has been working in the real estate investing space for a long while. Eventually, Paul created OmniDrip, his own productized service, which he has been selling successfully for years to real estate investors.

I’m giving you that as context, because Paul replied yesterday with his own experience around OmniDrip and creating passive income:

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For your business owner, I think a tiny shift in the offer can make a big difference in passive income.

For years I sold a high ticket upfront product-as-a-services (semi templated sms/emails flows and installed for them). Never had a subscription.

Then someone told me: “Just tack on $97 a month for the updates you make.” I did that, and it has been a huge blessing on my business.

At first it was more of a mental hurdle, thinking, “No one would buy that”…

But now I just tell them on the phone that there is a $97 charge that automatically kicks in (I don’t present it as an option). 99.9% of the time no issues. And really high retention. Truly (almost) passive.

I make a couple of meaningful changes to my master template every month or every other month (I never promised monthly changes). I pay my VA to make the physical changes in the CRM (which takes her 30-60 mins per). People seem to value it.

It shows that our perception of what people will pay for can be off.

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I am quite an old dog, but let it never be said that you cannot lead an old dog to water… err… I mean, teach an old dog a new trick.

And so I would like to announce that I am updating my offer for my upcoming Most Valuable Offer training, which I started promoting yesterday.

Most Valuable Offer is a live training I will hold on the topic of how to sell and hold paid live trainings, which I call Most Valuable Offers.

As part of this Most Valuable Offer training, I will share my own SOP for running a Most Valuable Offer.

The fact is, I continue to run these Most Valuable Offers, and I continue to advise coaching clients on how to run them.

I will be updating the SOP as I do that, and going forward, I will also be including the results of Most Valuable Offer campaigns I run or advise others on.

Because of this, the investment to join the Most Valuable Offer training is $97 today, and after that, $2/month for updates.

(If you bought Most Valuable Offer yesterday, rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for you are getting grandfathered into this new feature without any extra investment.)

The Most Valuable Training training will happen live, next Wednesday, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST. Yes, there will be a recording if you cannot make it live, but you and I both are sure to enjoy it more if you come on the actual live training.

If you’d like to sign up, and see how a tiny shift in your own Most Valuable Offer can make a big difference in your (almost) passive income:

https://checkout.bejakovic.com/most-valuable-offer/

Almost passive content

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Earlier today, I was talking to a business owner who has 1) an audience and 2) dreams of passive income. He said something to the effect of (I’m paraphrasing):

I’d love to make money from this audience without having to constantly produce content for them…

… which I figure is a noble goal. Unfortunately, I don’t have a passive content machine for you today. But I can tell you what I told this business owner:

Having cool offers to promote takes care of about 75% of your content creation.

Say you have a cool new offer.

There’s the inevitable announcement email, which is exciting if the offer is exciting.

There’s the deadline emails, which are exciting if the offer is exciting.

In between, there are the case studies… the explanation of the mechanism… the objection handling… the price reveals and justifications… and testimonials from people who have just bought the thing you are promoting.

If you have a cool new offer, something that has people on the edge between “Whoa I want this” and “Whoa I’m not sure I want to pay this much,” then all this content writes itself, or rather, almost writes itself.

On the flip side:

No amount of well-written, insightful, inspiring content will ultimately make up for the lack of good offers.

I’m telling you that from first-hand experience.

I spent years — YEARS — of my life writing this newsletter with ZERO offers to promote.

Yes, it got me better at writing. I told tons of stories… collected and shared tons of interesting information… and gave people tons of insights. Results:

Zero money, and list growth of close to zero.

Maybe most importantly, the people on my list at that time were less committed and less engaged than the readers of other marketers, who were writing emails like mine and who were pitching offers day in and day out.

Coincidence?

I don’t think so.

Because after I started creating and selling exciting offers in my emails every day, my status (and bank account) grew… my readers became more engaged… and my content, even when it was really just an announcement email or a “last call” email, got the kinds of audience engagement I never got while I was simply contenting my life away.

So that’s my lesson for you. If you’re dreading creating content, get yourself some cool new offers.

And if you don’t have any cool new offers right now:

Next Wednesday, Sep 1, at 8pm CET/2pm EST/11am PST, I will hold a paid live training (for $97) about putting on a paid live training, which I call the Most Valuable Offer.

Before you start to think I’m pulling ye ole leg, I am not. I’m being 100% serious.

I’ve put on a dozen or more of these Most Valuable Offers. They are most valuable because of the following math:

1. Value = earnings – expenses

2. Earnings = money today, money tomorrow, leads, relationship, connection, status

3. Expenses = time, effort, despair, actual deliverables

The fact is, a paid live training:

* Has much higher perceived value than a book, and is comparable to a course

* Takes just days to prepare instead of weeks or months or never (books, course)

* Is relationship-building (people get to see you, interact with you) rather than relationship neutral (course)

* Is forgiving (you can make all kinds of flubs and it will still be ok, while a single typo in a book that took a year to write will get you a 1-star review from some would-be nemesis on Amazon)

If you’d like to learn what I’ve learned about running Most Valuable Offers, so you can run them yourself whenever you’re short of a sexy offer, and so you can almost passify your content:

https://checkout.bejakovic.com/most-valuable-offer/

New promo eyedea 4U

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Last night, I got on a call with a dude whose very expensive course I bought just last weekend.

The dude is a media buyer, and he has worked on the teams of the most famous/notorious Internet marketers and biz opp sellers, ones you would for sure know.

Now, this dude has his own brand teaching folks how to launch and scale a low-ticket offer, as a way of building up an email list with buyers.

Like I said, his course is properly expensive, but I figured it will save me both time and money in the long term, so I happily paid for it. Plus, it’s nice to get some 1-1 contact with the guru, which is what last night was about.

The dude and I talked about my “Daily Emails 101” offer, which I recently validated to cold traffic, and which I will be spinning up as my first low-ticket funnel.

He had a handful of suggestions for me, including one thing I’ve myself told coaching clients before, and practiced myself before:

Strip down your offers to be smaller, and charge for what you were giving away before.

(In the case of my Daily Emails 101 offer, that means making the offer just the 101 daily email prompts and maybe the 5-Minute Crash Course On Writing Daily Emails, while turning the other elements into order bumps.)

If you have an offer you’re selling just to cold traffic, then this is a change you can make from today to tomorrow.

But if you have an offer that you’re selling to your warm list, it is a huge waste to simply make this change from today to tomorrow.

Instead, take the opportunity to turn this change into a promo, an event of a few days, where you make a big deal about the fact that something sexy is disappearing (free bonuses in this case), and that there is a strict deadline to protect ya neck before it happens.

I’ve done this with my Copy Riddles program. I’ve done with my Daily Email Habit service. And now I am willing to do it with you.

Specifically, here’s my offer for you today:

1. I’ll help you plan and run a promo, in this case, a “bonuses disappearing” promo.

2. I will help you define and refine the offer, as needed, come up with an occasion for the promo, hooks for emails, and help you run it live (reposition and clarify the offer if it turns out not to be hitting, integrate new events into emails, deal with complications on the fly). I’ll also give you feedback on your email copy if you want it.

3. The investment is $1k up front, and another $1500 after you make $10k from your promo. If you don’t make $10k with this promo, I will work with you on another promo, or as many as it takes, until you get to $10k.

If you’re interested, hit reply, tell me about your offer, your list, and I will take it from there.