Info Products

Where it’s at: Two narrow columns and a PDF

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One of the rare daily email newsletters I read more often than not is by Jason Leister.

Jason used to be a direct response copywriter. He used to write about getting and managing copywriting clients. He’s since moved into stranger waters, where he talks about raising his 10 kids, living off the grid, “unplugging from the matrix,” and manifesting your desires.

All right up my alley, minus the 10 kids.

But let’s talk turkey:

Each Monday, Jason sends an email called Monday Hotsheet. It’s a bunch of curated resources — interesting articles, tech, videos that Jason has come across.

That’s pretty normal.

What was weird is that Jason used to send the Monday Hotsheet as a PDF that he’d link to in his email. Even weirder, the PDF was formatted in two columns, like some insurance brochure.

I liked to read through Jason’s Monday Hotsheet but I always chuckled at the experience. Who does PDFs any more? And in two columns like this?

Well, I guess I manifested something myself, and I should have been more careful about what I asked for.

Because Jason for some reason recently switched Monday Hotsheet to be simply delivered in his daily email, and in just one measly column.

I found myself disappointed. From one week to the next, Jason’s Monday Hotsheet looked cheaper, much less valuable and interesting.

Suddenly, I asked myself if I need another weekly email the curates useful and interesting resources online? I feel like everybody from Arnold Schwarzenegger on down has one of those. I ain’t got time for all these curated valuable resources.

A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos once got a tin pot and a wooden spoon. He then started banging on the tin pot with the wooden spoon while jumping up and down on his couch and chanting, “Format beats copy! Format beats copy!”

(Fine. The part with the wooden spoon and the tin pot I made up. But all the rest of that story is true, except the jumping up and down.)

Parris was specifically talking about the format of sales copy.

Once upon a time, you could take a proven sales letter, format it to look like a magazine or an article or a newsletter issue (the print kind), and you might get a 2.5x bump in response. Format beats copy: Ain’t no copy in the universe that’s gonna get you that kind of a bounce, not when you already have top copywriters working for you.

This holds just as well for info products, whether you give ’em away or charge thousands of dollars for them.

Yes, people should only want the truth, and nothing but the truth. Yes, it shouldn’t matter whether you deliver the truth on a 3×5 index card, or in a 3-ring binder, or a never-to-be-repeated secret performance in an amphitheater in the middle of some remote forest.

It shouldn’t matter, but it does matter.

So my point for you today is, think about the format in which you will deliver your truth.

And if you’ve already delivered your truth, and nobody much cared, or they cared at first and then they dropped off… then think about format again.

Rather than coming up with a new message, you might be able to keep the message and simply deliver it as a 2-column PDF, or whatever else feels unique and different and valuable in your industry.

And sometimes, simple word choice is enough to change the format. Or at least be a major part of it.

Take for example my Daily Email Habit service. At bottom, it’s delivered as a daily email. I could have simply said, “Hey, would you like to sign up for a new set of daily emails, and pay me $30 a month for the privilege?”

Maybe some forward-thinking people would have taken me up on this. But i don’t think it would have worked nearly as well as calling Daily Email Habit a service, which happens to be delivered by email, for your convenience.

Speaking of Daily Email Habit, if you’d like to find out more about this valuable service, or even try it out yourself:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The largest copywriter in the Netherlands gives me his endorsement

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Comes a message from Robin Timmers, whose website bills him as the “grootste copywriter van Nederland.”

Google informs me that, translated from Dutch, this works out to “the largest copywriter in the Netherlands.”

I guess a more elegant translation might be, “the greatest copywriter in the Netherlands.” Though as Robin told me, the tagline is meant to be ambiguous, since he stands over 2 meters tall.

Anyways, Robin writes:

===

Hey John,

Just finished MVE and am now halfway with SME.

Man … MVE is so simple, so easy-ish to implement, but such a strong concept and format.

Awesome course, awesome idea.

Same for SME.

Really simple, really powerful and easy to implement, and model with your own ideas.

I’m very happy with both courses, and can’t wait to start with Copy Riddles.

===

In case you don’t know… MVE is my course Most Valuable Email. SME is my course Simple Money Emails.

You might not know that because I haven’t promoted either course in a few months, ever since I started selling my Daily Email Habit service.

I find my enthusiasm for promoting those courses has dipped.

In part, it’s because Daily Email Habit is not just a daily prompt to write an email… but a distillation of the best ideas in both SME and MVE, as well as ideas I don’t have in either of those courses, particularly around building up status and authority.

And Daily Email Habit presents all this to you as an easy and manageable drip-drip of information, in your inbox, every day… rather than as a course, one which you may go through once or maybe not even once, which then sits behind some forgotten login or in some folder you never check.

But much more important:

Unlike those two course of mine — or any other courses, by me or anybody else — Daily Email Habit is really built around the idea of daily, practical, real-world implementation, rather than simply passive consumption of information.

Because even things that are easy-ish to implement, like Robin says the MVE trick is, tend not to get implemented, not without a lot of stubborn nudging and reminders from the outside.

That’s what Daily Email Habit is for. If you’d like to find out more about this “grootste e-mailservice”:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The end of info products

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THE FOLLOWING EMAIL IS CONTROVERSIAL AND MAY BE OFFENSIVE TO SOME AUDIENCES

READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED

You might be familiar with Max Sackheim’s famous ad, “Do you make these mistakes in English?”

The ad ran for decades, unchanged, and kept bringing in profitable business better than any contender.

Thousands of pages of analysis have been written about the 7-word headline of this ad and the copy that followed.

But what about the actual product this ad was ultimately selling? What about the means by which a prospect could hope to correct his or her mistakes in English? What were prospects actually exchanging their money for?

Sackheim’s copy only teases you about the product, and calls it a “remarkable invention” and a “100% self-correcting device.”

As far as I know, nobody today actually has this remarkable invention stashed away in their garage. Whatever it was, it’s clear it was sold as some kind of tool, a device, and not just information.

This is a well-known direct marketing truth that’s been around since Sackheim’s days and before, back into the age of patent medicines.

A real, tangible, external mechanism — a fat-loss potion, a dog seatbelt, a “100% self-correcting device” — sells much easier than just good info — how to lose weight, how to be a less negligent dog owner, how to speak gooder English.

Smart modern-day info marketers have gotten hep to this fact. That’s why people like Russell Brunson and Ben Settle and Sam Ovens have put their reputation and audience to work behind tools like ClickFunnels and Berserker Mail and Skool.

The thing is, creating a tool, whether physical or software, has traditionally been an expensive, complicated, and risky business.

Take a look at Groove Funnels, another tool created a few years ago by another experienced info marketer, Mike Filsaime. Groove Funnels is a bloated, buggy, frankly unusable product. I say that as somebody who invested into a lifelong subscription in Groove Funnels.

I have a couple degrees in computer science. I also have about a decade’s worth amateur and pro software development experience. But after I quit my IT job 10+ years ago, I never once considered putting this experience to use in order to develop any kind of tool I could sell.

Until now.

Because things are changing. Today even a monkey, working alone, can create and deploy a valuable app simply by querying ChatGPT persistently enough. And there are plenty of shovels available for such would-be gold miners, tools to build tools, which will do much of the in-between work for you. Just say what you will to happen, and it will be done.

Decades ago, master direct marketer Gary Halbert said that the best best product of all is… information!

But I bet if Gary were alive today, he’d be hard at work (or maybe easy at work) creating some kind of high-margin tool to sell, in the broadest sense of the word — a thing to do some or all of the work for an audience with a problem. A few reasons why:

* Again, tools are easy to sell. They fit with innate human psychology of how we want to solve problems.

* Tools can make for natural continuity income if you license them out instead of sell them outright.

* Tools can create their own moat over time. There can be lock-in or switching cost if your users build on top of your tool.

* And now, thanks to the most remarkable invention of AI, it’s possible to create tools quickly, cheaply, and with great margins.

All that’s to say, best product of all… information? I don’t think so. Not any more. Best start adapting now.

Speaking of which, I got an offer for you:

Would you say that there are any tech issues that are keeping you from starting your own email list?

If there are, write in and let me know about them.

In turn, I’ll have something for you that you might like.

My piratin’ days

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ARRR, I be quite old, much like a giant tortoise. And to prove it, I can tell you I was there when the Internet was first becoming a thing.

Quite naturally, I was also there when a friend in high school first told me you could get music, for free, on the Internet.

For reference, this was back when the only way to listen to the music you wanted, when you wanted, was to hand over the modern equivalent of about $30 for a CD.

“No!” I told my friend in disbelief when he told me about this piracy stuff.

“Yes!” he said. “Any kind of music you want. You just type the name of the song into AltaVista, and you look for mp3 files.”

So I tried it. I remember that the first song I searched for and pirated was The Beach Boys’ I Get Around. It took about three days to download.

Now here’s the head trip:

A short while later, I actually ended up handing over the modern equivalent of about $30 for a CD, The Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits, Volume 1.

I did this even though I had already pirated several Beach Boys hits off the Internet… and even though I could probably get the other ones too, with just a bit of searching.

Now let me make it clear:

1. This email is not an invitation to pirate and salve your conscience by saying you will somehow pay for it later, when you have more money. Piracy, romantic though it may sound, is well known to lead to scurvy and hangings, among other unpleasant consequences. It’s a miracle I survived my piratin’ days and lived to tell the tale.

2. This email is also not an invitation to give away your catchy songs for free, in the hope that people will eventually pay for the album. In fact, my point is kind of the opposite of that.

My point is that format is positioning.

I don’t remember exactly what made me pay for the Beach Boys CD.

I probably rationalized it to myself. I could listen to the music on my stereo instead of the crappy computer speakers… there were songs I might not find online, and they took so long to download… I could take the music with me and play it in the car or at a friend’s house.

There was probably a bit of all that. But really, I imagine my decision was mostly irrational.

The album had a colorful, attractive cover. I had the modern equivalent of $30 burning a hole in my pocket. Plus, I had been well trained over the years to buy CDs, and this was in fact a CD for sale. So I bought, and I was even happy about it.

Here’s my takeaway for you:

If you have free content, you can legitimately repackage it and sell it for good money, even to the people who have gotten much of that stuff for free in another format.

And if you’re selling stuff but not making as much money as you like, then the same lesson applies. Change the format, and you can double, triple, decuple, or even vinguple the prices you charge. People will buy, and even be happy about it.

Because format is positioning.

And if you want my help putting this lesson into practice, well, then read on. Today is the last day I will be making the offer below, because tomorrow we weigh anchor and set sail:

===

I’ve set aside time over the next month to help two business owners to quickly churn up new offers using their catalogue of existing products. The ultimate goal here is to:

* Create something new and exciting for your audience, without creating entirely new products

* Develop a new asset for yourself — a new offer you can reissue in the future with little tweaks or maybe without any tweaks

* Bring in new buyers who might then buy other stuff from you, or get deeper into your world

* Do a bit of work and make back a good deal of money as a result

If you want a specific example:

Last week, I sent three emails over two days in what I called my Shangri-La MVE event. Those three emails ended up selling 22 copies of a $297 course that I had already promoted hundreds of times over the past couple years. $6.5k or so when all the money comes in, and all it took in terms of work was a couple of hours of repackaging content I already had.

I’ve run other such promo events, ranging anywhere from 1-14 days. Some were complete duds, and brought in less money than this Shangri-La event. But others brought in more, well into the 5-figures.

Your specific numbers?

It will depend on how big your list is, the relationship you have with the people on there, and of course your offers.

But with my second pair of eagle eyes scanning over all your assets… and my experience running not only my own “reissue events” but also coaching a couple dozen copywriters who worked on these kinds of promos for clients… you will be more likely to come out of this with a result you can be happy with.

Like I said, I’m talking to a few business owners about this already.

If you’re interested in this offer in principle, hit reply and let me know a bit about your list (size, how often you write, etc.) and your back catalogue of previous hits.

I will be promoting this offer until this Thursday. I want to talk to everyone who’s interested and find the two people I think I am best qualified to help… and then we’ll kick things off.

Pick one of these 3 niches

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Less is often more when it comes to marketing education.

Example:

I’ve heard marketer Travis Sago say he was once selling a biz op training, about providing some sort of marketing service to businesses.

The first iteration of the training didn’t work out well — Travis had to spend too much time helping his students figure out what niche of businesses to go after.

After it was all over, Travis took stock.

He paced and paced the floor of his laboratory, deep into the night.

And then, in the early morning hours, he had an epiphany:

For the second iteration of the training, Travis simply took out the niche selection part.

Instead, he made niche selection a part of the marketing and application process. When you signed up for the training, you had to pick one of three niches to be in.

Result:

Much easier delivery of the training, and much better results for the students.

I bring this up because I have my Daily Email Fastlane coming up on Thursday. This is a workshop about sending daily emails for your personal brand.

It’s the first time I’m ever offering this workshop.

I have learned a lot from Travis Sago, and I plan to learn from him here as well. So I will not be covering how to pick a niche in Daily Email Fastlane.

Instead, for anyone who does not yet have a niche, but is considering writing daily emails for themselves, my advice is to pick one of these 3 niches for your daily emails:

1. Personal interest

2. Previous experience (preferably, something you got paid for)

3. Make money

You can mix and meld these. My daily emails started out as #1 (interest in persuasion, influence, and personal development)… moved into #2 (talking about copywriting and marketing, based on the work I was doing for clients)… and I’ve since introduced #3, how to get adequately rich so you can live life on your own terms. Which brings me back to Daily Email Fastlane.

The above advice about niches holds whether or not you decide to join me for Daily Email Fastlane. If you want to write daily emails and build a personal brand based on those emails, pick one of the 3 niches above.

But if you want my advice on topics that are a bit further down the daily email road, then consider actually joining me for this workshop.

I will talk about 3 daily emailers I have coached. Each of them fits primarily into one of three categories above. And each built a nice lifestyle business, with one daily email at the center of it.

The deadline to sign up for Daily Email Fastlane is this Wednesday, at 8:31pm CET. If you know you want in, and you want to make sure you don’t miss the deadline, here’s where to go now:

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

Kieran Drew offers me some feedback

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A few days ago, I got an email from Kieran Drew with the subject line, “Feedback.”

As you might know, Kieran is a bit of a star in the creative entrepreneur space. He has something like 187k followers on Twitter. He also has a big and growing email newsletter, with over 25k readers.

This past May, Kieran launched his writing course, High Impact Writing. He sold $140k worth of it in five days.

Then in September, Kieran relaunched his writing course… and made over $180k from it.

Clearly, the guy knows a thing or two about online businesses, course creation, and keeping audiences engaged.

And with that preamble, let me now share a paragraph from that email Kieran sent me. He wrote:

===

I sat with MVE last night and (I don’t say this lightly), it’s one of my favourite courses. Maybe because it’s written, and super relevant to me, but I haven’t enjoyed something like that since Andre chaperon auto responder.

===

An early chapter from the Saga of Bejako:

The reason I got into online marketing and then copywriting was that a long time ago, I saw marketer Hollis Carter stand up on stage at Mindvalley and talk about his business, which was publishing books for people on Kindle.

In the middle of his talk, Hollis said as a throwaway how his goal is to get book readers onto an email list, and then give them the “Soap Opera Sequence” from Autoresponder Madness by Andre Chaperon.

I took note of that.

So Andre Chaperon’s Autoresponder Sequence became the first copywriting course I ever went through.

And a “7-part Soap Opera Sequence” became the first copywriting service I ever offered the world, back in 2015, on Fiverr, for $5. (I charge even more now.)

Anyways, it’s gratifying to hear my Most Valuable Email course being compared to Andre’s course. But it’s much more gratifying to have people like Kieran going through MVE multiple times, and getting real value from it.

But about that:

Most Valuable Email is not for everyone.

You need to 1) have an email list and be willing to write to it regularly and 2) write about marketing and copywriting topics, because the Most Valuable Email trick will not work in all markets and niches.

But if you fit those two criteria, and you want to see what’s so enjoyable about MVE as a course and about the results it creates, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/mve

Start and grow a “tiny book” publishing business

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I read an article yesterday about a new title for an old book.

​​The old book was written by Aristotle around 350 BC. It has been known for the roughly 2,372 years since as The Nichomachean Ethics.

​​But a new edition of the book has just been put out by Princeton University Press. The new title is, “How to Flourish: An Ancient Guide to Living Well.” ​​From that article I read yesterday:

“The volume is part of a series of new translations of ancient texts. Aristotle’s Poetics, for instance, is now ‘How to Tell a Story: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Storytelling for Writers and Readers,’ and Thucydides’ ‘History of the Peloponnesian War’ is now ‘How to Think About War: An Ancient Guide to Foreign Policy.'”

This reminded me of E. Haldeman-Julius. A hundred years ago, Haldeman-Julius had a publishing business that sold literally hundreds of millions of copies of what were known as little blue books — tiny paperback editions of both new how-to books and reissues of fiction classics.

As part of his publishing business, Haldeman-Julius operated what he called The Hospital, where he would operate on books that were ailing and not making sales.

The Hospital involved several possible procedures. The most extreme was a type of frontal lobotomy, in which Haldeman-Julius would do just like those Aristotle publishers did — lop off the book’s original, opaque, unsexy title, and replace it with something new and clear and exciting. Results:

“The mystery of the iron mask” => “The mystery of the man in the iron mask”: 277% jump in sales

“Ten o’clock” => “What art should mean to you”: 450% jump in sales

“Fleece of gold” => “The quest for a blonde mistress”: 833% jump in sales

Haldeman-Julius wrote up a book about his experiences publishing the little blue books. In a typical move, he didn’t apply what he knew so well to his own personal marketing. So he titled his book, The First Hundred Million.

The title “The First Hundred Million” doesn’t exactly scream READ ME! A much better title would have been something like, “Start and grow a ‘tiny book’ publishing business.”

As it was, The First 100 Million first went out of print, and then became obscure. You had to be a real student of the human psyche, and of the info publishing biz, to get yourself a copy. Somebody truly obsessive, possibly maniacal.

Somebody like legendary copywriter Gary Halbert, who once wrote in his newsletter:

“Indeed, The First Hundred Million is a book that contains a precise and valid statistical measurement of America’s inner most needs and greeds. So why didn’t I mention it in last month’s newsletter when I listed the greatest marketing books of all time? Simply because I didn’t have a copy of it and I wasn’t sure it was obtainable.”

Thanks to his unique connections, Gary did manage to find himself a used copy back in the 90s.

Fortunately, we live in a much more connected era, where even out-of-print books can be tracked down easily for a price.

For example, you can now get a paperback of The First 100 Million on Amazon for $19.95.

Carl Galletti also sells copies on his site for $29.97 (original) or $49.97 (expanded).

Or if you like, you can get The First Hundred Million for free.

​​I’ve tracked it down for you, via the University of Illinois library, at the link below.

I’ve already read this book once. I plan to reread it again next month. ​​Why? Why, to start and grow a “tiny book” publishing business.

​​In case you’d like to do something similar:

https://bejakovic.com/100million

The fastest, but certainly not the newest, way to cash

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Day 3 of the copywriting conference.

​​You can’t make an omelette without cracking two to three eggs, and you can’t go to a copywriting conference without getting your brain scrambled with hundreds of different ideas, stories, pitches, open loops that never get closed, jokes, not-jokes, cliches, and important takeaways.

Let me pull it together for a moment and tell you about the fastest way to cash. It’s not the newest way to cash. In fact it’s not new at all. I’m sure you’ve heard about it. But maybe you need a reminder.

Yesterday, one of the speakers, Adam Urbanski, said the fastest path to cash, in his experience, is to sell what you know.

The day before, Barry Randall, who I wrote about in my email yesterday, said something similar.

Barry said that what he does is, learn something, keep it simple, and then sell it. On the other hand, what most other people do is learn something, complicate it, and then get stuck.

I’m not sure those are Barry’s exact words. In spite of 51 pages of notes so far, I didn’t write that bit down. I’ll have to seek him out today and confirm it.

Meanwhile, I have a deal for you:

Sign up to my email newsletter.

When you get my welcome email, hit reply and tell me what you have learned that you can sell. I genuinely want to know.

In return, I will reply to you and tell you a practical tip to make your presentation better if you ever do sell that knowledge you have in your head.

This tip is something that popped up in my head yesterday during Adam Urbanski’s presentation.

Adam’s presentation was excellent and very effective. But I believe with a small tweak it could be even more effective.

​​I won’t seek out Adam today and tell him that — nobody wants an unsolicited critique. But if you like, hit reply, tell me what you have learned that you can sell, and I will tell you what I have in mind.

Announcing my hot new course

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Today I would like announce my spectacular new course, Barcelona Ballers.

Barcelona Ballers is ​​all about how to find a beautiful, lavish, and yet affordable long-term rental in Barcelona in just 14 days or less. Here’s just a tiny bit of what Barcelona Ballers will show you:

* The 3-second “incognito” trick to gets real estate agents tripping over each other to talk to you. Barcelona realtors are infamous for being unresponsive. But with this push-button tweak, you can triple the number of agents who respond to your inquiries.

* How to use a threatening “I know where you live” message to whip real estate agents into shape if they are slacking off. Not for the faint of heart. Only use this for an apartment you really, 100%, do-or-die want to see.

* The simple 12-word-sentence to get apartment owners desperate to rent their place to you. Why humiliate yourself? Turn the tables and make owners sell themselves to YOU.

But wait, there’s more.

Barcelona Ballers is proven to work. After all, it worked for me, just last week. But to make sure it works for you also, Barcelona Ballers also comes with a spectacular 100% satisfaction guarantee:

If you are not lounging in your dream Barcelona apartment within the next 14 days, I will allow you to stay in my spare bedroom, for free, for as long as you choose to continue your apartment search.

And if you happen to be a direct response marketer or copywriter, I will sit next to you, every day, coffee in hand, and critique your email copy, so you make more sales or book more client work.

In this way, I will help you increase your income and expand the number of apartments in Barcelona you can afford to rent. I will keep this up as long as it takes, until you can find a balling place and start living that Barcelona Baller lifestyle.

But before you start whipping out your credit card, breathe in deeply, and then exhale. And now listen to what I have to tell you.

A few days ago, I read a valuable post by Josh Spector. As you might know, Josh is an intriguing online figure.

For the past six years, he has been writing an email newsletter, For The Interested, with inspiration and advice for “creative entrepreneurs.”

FTI now has over 18,000 subscribers. In it, Josh shares only “value” — no infotainment, no stories, no personality. Only hardcore how-to.

And yet Josh does very well.

The only income numbers I could find for Josh is that he made $48k in the last year just from tiny classifieds at the end of his newsletter.

But based on a few interviews Josh has given, I suspect this is no more than 5%-10% of the income generated by his newsletter and related offers. In other words, multiply $48k by 10 or 20, and you might get an idea of Josh’s true income numbers.

But back to Josh’s post. It shared 8 questions. Josh says asking himself these 8 questions every month is what made his success possible.

Sounds too simple? Let me give you an example, and then you can make up your own mind. Josh’s question #6 is:

“What have you learned to do well in the past year?”

If you look around much of the marketing world, you will see the value of asking yourself this question.

For example, right now, a half dozen big-name email marketers are all trying to outdo each other to sell Ian Stanley’s new course on Google Doc sales letters.

Ian had success over the past year or two, launching his own offers using a sales letter in a Google Doc.

To start, it was probably a hack or an improvisation. In time, Ian realized he had a neat little system that works pretty well.

So he packaged up his experiences and insights with Google Docs sales letters… put a bow and a card on it… and got a bunch of other people to sell it for him.

I’d like to say that you too can do the same.

But the fact is, there’s no point in me saying it.

If I did, the vast majority of people would start listing reasons why this simple idea wouldn’t work for them. Oh I’m just starting out… oh I don’t have an audience… oh I haven’t learned to do anything cool or unique yet.

On the other hand, the right people don’t need to have me say it at all. Those few people are fired up right now, just from the realization that yes, there must be something, however small and niche, which they have learned to do well in the past year, and which they could package up and sell to others.

If by chance you fall into this second group, you will get even more fired up from the other 7 questions that helped Josh achieve his success. For the full list, check out Josh’s valuable post below:

https://joshspector.com/creative-entrepreneur-questions/

Early success

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The gangly young man stepped inside the office and froze. He took a step to the side and pressed up against the wall.

His eyes darted from desk to desk. But nobody took notice of him.

Finally, he spotted somebody even younger than himself at one of the desks. He walked over.

“Hey buddy,” he said. “Maybe you can help me. My company has an account with you guys. They sent me down here because we just got some new business. I’m supposed to buy more ads. Can you tell me who I should talk to?”

The even younger man at the desk blinked a few times. “Actually,” he said, “that’s something I can help you with.”

The year was 1900. The place was the Lord & Thomas advertising agency in Chicago.

The young man who came looking to buy more ads worked for Collier’s Publishing. And the even younger man he approached was a 19-year-old Albert Lasker.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Lasker already. At 18, he started work as an office boy at Lord & Thomas. At 19, he became an accounts man. At 23, he became partner. At 32, he became CEO.

Under Lasker’s tenure, Lord & Thomas ran breakthrough campaigns, building brands like Palmolive, Pepsodent, Sunkist, Kotex, and Lucky Strike. And today, Lasker is known as one of the greatest advertising men of all time.

Lasker had natural talents that made him such a success in advertising, and at such a young age. But none of it would have happened — so Lasker claimed later — were it not for a few early successes. Like that Collier’s account, which landed in his lap thanks to his look of inexperience.

Early success.

I recently looked at the areas of my life where I’ve persevered and achieved something. This includes copywriting.

I made a list of common elements. There turned out to be three crucial things.

The first was an experience of early success. It gave me the belief to persevere when things got hard.

And vice versa. When I look at things where I failed… I find I didn’t have any early successes. Maybe I was following a process that was supposed to work. But without a signpost to tell me I was on the right path, it felt like wandering in the wilderness. So I gave up.

My point is that an experience of early success can be transformational.

Keep this in mind when you’re trying to retain customers or clients… or manage yourself.

An early success can come from blind luck and land right in your lap, like it did for Albert Lasker.

But with a bit of preparation, scheming, and maybe downright fakery, you don’t need luck. You can create an experience of early success with near certain probability. For your clients or customers or yourself. And once that happens… who knows how far you will go?

By the way, would you like to know about the other two crucial ingredients I found for long-term success in copywriting?

It’s something I haven’t written about before. But if and when I do, it will go into my email newsletter. You can sign up for that here.