Offers

Why discounting fails to drive sales, even when it’s by a lot

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A while back, I talked to a business coach, somebody who has a lot of experience with online marketing.

She told me about how she launched a new membership… how she offered a launch discount… how she even ended up increasing the discount over what she had initially planned.

Result:

One person ended up signing up.

Does this mean this new membership offer clearly sucks, since only one person bought even at a double-discounted launch price?

I told this business coach something that took me too long to internalize:

Discounting only works if people already value the thing you’re selling at the full price you’re selling it for.

In short, 20% off nothing is still nothing. So is 50% off.

The long term fix for this is your ongoing presence in your audience’s minds… trust and credibility built up by days and weeks and months of advertising yourself… sharing case studies of people who bought your offers and got value from them… and repeatedly driving home the fact that your offers sell for the price you are claiming for them, and that they’re worth every penny and in fact much more.

That’s how you convince people that, say, your membership is actually worth $300, and is even a steal at that price.

Good news:

There’s also a short-term fix. You can sell your offer at full price, and have people buy it, even if they don’t yet value the thing you’re selling at the price you’re selling it for.

This short-term fix is an obvious idea, but again, it took me too long to really internalize.

It finally clicked for me last year, via a little-known resource I was turned onto by marketer Travis Sago.

Travis is a very clever and very creative guy when it comes to Internet marketing… but he’s also a very thorough student of marketing and copywriting classics.

One of the things I have gotten via first stalking Travis online, and eventually paying him a lot of money for his marketing education and ideas, is simply exposure to really great, simple, often very old marketing ideas, which have made me much more money than the large sums I have paid Travis.

Speaking of which:

Yesterday, I started promoting Travis’s Royalty Ronin community as an affiliate.

I paid Travis $3k over the past year for access to Royalty Ronin and for a suite of his courses, which he makes available for members of Royalty Ronin.

I also recently renewed my membership to Royalty Ronin, ahead of schedule, for another year, in one lump sum payment of $1k.

Good news, part 2:

If you like, you can now get inside Royalty Ronin for a little less than the $3k I paid over the past year… and less even than the $1k I paid in a lump sum a few weeks ago to renew.

Specifically, you can get inside Royalty Ronin for free, because Travis has started offering a 7-day free trial.

Like I wrote/said yesterday, there aren’t many affiliate offers I’m wiling to promote. That’s because most are simply not good enough… because most aren’t a good fit for my audience… because I’m simply not enthusiastic about most of them.

On the other hand, I’m 110% enthusiastic to promote Travis’s Royalty Ronin, and all the multi-thousand dollar courses that come as bonuses, because I’ve so thoroughly benefited from them, and because I continue to benefit from them.

If you’d like to test out, look around, and even profit from Royalty Ronin, for free, for a week, you can do so here:

​https://bejakovic.com/ronin​

P.S. If you already signed up for a trial of Royalty Ronin via my affiliate link above, send me an email to let me know. Skool doesn’t let me see who has signed up, so the only way I know is if you write me.

And if you do write me to let me know, I’ll send you a recording of my Heart of Hearts training, about how to discover what the people in your market really want, so you can better know what to offer them and how to present it.

I previously planned to sell Heart of Hearts for $300, along with a few bonuses. I even had a few people pay me $300 for it, before I changed my mind, pulled the offer, and refunded their money. (I simply didn’t have time or desire to create the promised bonuses.)

Good news, part 3, is that Heart of Hearts is yours free, because you’ve taken me up on this trial of Royalty Ronin.

Plus, as an extra bonus when you write me, I’ll tie up this email, and I’ll tell you the short-term fix I mentioned above, for getting people to buy your offer at the full price even if they don’t value it yet. I’ll even tell you the little known resource, which I was clued into via Travis Sago, that finally made this click in my own head.

Should I offer to eat my shoe?

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Back in 1979, German film director Werner Herzog ate his shoe.

Herzog had once said that a fellow director, Errol Morris, would never finish his movie Gates of Heaven. Herzog was hoping to be proven wrong, so he added that if Morris did ever finish the movie, he, Herzog, would eat his shoe.

Morris eventually finished his movie.

So Herzog put on an event. The thing was filmed. A couple hundred people attended.

Herzog first boiled his leather shoe for five hours with garlic, herbs, and duck fat to make it somewhat edible. He then cut up the leather into tiny pieces. Over the course of about 45 minutes, Herzog chewed and swallowed much of the leather. The sole went uneaten.

I thought of this today because I was thinking of guarantees for an offer.

It is a well-known truth that a guarantee reassures undecided buyers and increases sales.

The standard is the money-back guarantee. You can get generous with it, and offer double-your-money-back. Or you can get creative. “I’ll eat my hat!”

But I don’t wear a hat. I don’t even own one. That’s why thought of Wener Herzog and his shoe.

I looked over to the shoe rack near my front door. There’s a pair of old white Converse All-Stars there. They’re made of canvas. I could boil them? Maybe season them? A bit vinegar? At least eat the laces?

But then I snapped out of my fantasy.

Guarantees are great. I encourage you to think about how to offer them for what you sell, and to get creative.

But I am not and will not be offering a guarantee for Daily Email Habit, the main offer I’ve been promoting over past few months.

It’s not simply that shoe canvas is tough, and my Converse have been through a lot, and that I don’t want to risk somebody actually requesting that I eat one of them.

My reason is simply that I actually want Daily Email Habit to be useful to the people who join.

The basic offer I’m making is to help you start and stick with the habit of sending daily emails.

What I offer is help getting you over initial hurdle of what to write about each day… guidance to making your daily emails more effective… and savings of time and brain power.

But you still have to put in the work.

I don’t want to encourage uncommitted or undedicated people to try out Daily Email Habit by promising to eat my shoe, or by offering any kind of guarantee.

As I wrote a few days ago, I’m even trying to turn people away if they don’t know what they’re getting into. Daily Email Habit only really makes sense for people who are committed and dedicated to write daily and profit from it.

If that’s you, Daily Email habit can be a great help. I have a growing wall of testimonials and case studies on the sales page from people who started their own daily email habit and who profited as a result.

If you’d like to read some of their stories, or start your own habit that can lead you to similar results, here’s where to go:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

A cautionary tale for course creators

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For five years, David Perell had kind of a dream online business.

Perell sold a high-ticket, cohort-based course, Write Of Passage, teaching people how to write online.

Write Of Passage sold for $4k a pop. It had 2,000+ buyers.

Like I said, a kind of dream business, at least in the little space of online course creators and such.

I mean, Perell was writing and helping people to do something positive for themselves. He was working in line with his own values and interests. And he was pulling in great money with it.

And then, last November, Perell shut it all down. In an email announcing that the current cohort of Write Of Passage would be the last one, Perell wrote:

“You need more than a great product to make a business work, and the main thing we were missing was a dependable flow of new students.”

I agree with Perell’s first conclusion. I don’t agree with the second.

You do need more than a great product to make a business work. Particularly if your product sells for a one-time fee (even if that’s $4k), and if you have a whole supporting team of coaches and facilitators and staff and whatever, and you’re running ads or paying affiliates to get those $4k sales.

But I don’t agree that the solution needs to be MORE NEW STUDENTS.

I’ve been making a 6-fig income off this newsletter for the past few years, off of just a few hundred buyers, way fewer than Perell’s 2k. I’ve even embraced this attitude formally. My goal is to make more sales from the same number of readers.

It’s a well-known direct marketing truth that all the profits are made on the back end.

It does take more than a great product to make a business work. But instead of chasing the mythical “dependable flow” of new students… you can just commit to creating a sequence of great new offers. (An offer by the way, doesn’t require creating a new product, though a new product will typically make you a new offer.)

Now about that:

As I wrote in my last email, last year, right around the time that Perell was shutting down his multimillion-dollar dream biz, I came up with a new system for myself to help me get more predictable success with new offers.

I applied this system when I had the idea for my Daily Email Habit service. It worked great.

So far, I have only shared my system with the people inside my Daily Email House community.

This month, I will make this system available a bit more widely. I’ll be sharing it with a few people on my list, if I think it can actually be useful to them.

I will make you a deal right now:

If more predictable success with new offers is something that could be useful to you, then hit reply and tell me a bit about your current offer situation. In turn, I will add you to a private announcement list, so you have the opportunity to get my system when I release it later this month.

More predictable success with new offers

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My first info product was called Salary Negotiation Blueprint. I created in 2012 after reading Gary Halbert’s Boron Letters.

Gary says something like, pick a problem, read a 3-4 good books on it, summarize the books, create your own super-dense guide packed with the best info, and then sell that at a premium.

So that’s what I did.

I picked salary negotiation because I was in an IT office job at the time, and the topic was a bit of a taboo to me, and personally fascinating.

It took me a few months to identify the right books, read them, summarize my notes, write my own little guide, and create a sales letter (maybe my first).

And once I launched The Salary Negotiation Blueprint on Clickbank, the result was…

Nothing.

Zero sales.

I later lowered the price. Nothing. I tried moving the Salary Negotiation Blueprint to Amazon Kindle. It didn’t sell there either. At some point I even ran ads to it via Adwords. Still nobody would buy the damn thing.

I recently checked the Google Drive folder where I kept all the work for this project.

There’s a spreadsheet of possible newsletter topics, a backlog of tasks to complete, and a subfolder of possible bonus ideas. Plus a half-dozen other files, probably totaling thousands of words of preparation, analysis, and plans,

In other words, I did all this work, spent all this time, created all sorts of busy work. The result was a very useful, well written, information-packed guide that nobody in the universe would pay me even a bit of money for.

I’m telling you this because it’s not the only time it’s happened to me.

The same thing has happened many times since — probably dozens of times.

Fortunately, I’ve also had a few random successes along the way, which kept me going, and some of which made me good money.

But last year, I finally got a bit fed up with having a “few random successes.”

So I developed a system.

This system is based on stuff that had done instinctively but inconsistently before… stuff I had learned from other good business owners and marketers… and on common sense which I too uncommonly applied.

I put my system to use when creating my Daily Email Habit service. It worked out really well.

That’s why I am now forcing myself to keep using this system for each new offer I think of creating, though the temptation remains strong to simply wing it once more, and have the thrill and rush of instant activity, followed by the dump and crash that comes when results roll in, or rather, don’t.

So far, I have only shared my system with the people inside my Daily Email House community.

This month, I will make this system available a bit more widely. I’ll be sharing it with a few people on my list, if I think it can actually be useful to them.

I will make you a deal right now:

If more predictable success with new offers is something that could be useful to you, then hit reply and tell me a bit about your current offer situation. In turn, I will add you to a private announcement list, so you have the opportunity to get my system when I release it later this month.

PSA: Beware the anti-launxxers

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This morning at 9am Barcelona time, I wrapped up the Prospective Profit Pricing event for Daily Email Habit.

Since I rolled out Daily Email Habit some 6 weeks ago and only sold it via regular daily emails since, this PPP event served as a kind of launch.

The event lasted for two days and four emails.

62 new people ended up signing up to Daily Email Habit as a result of those four emails.

Considering how small my list is, and the fact that I have been promoting Daily Email Habit pretty much every day for the past 6 weeks, and that I thought demand was near tapped out (there were days in the past weeks when I made 0 sales), I gotta say I’m pleased with how this turned out.

And now, public service announcement #1:

I’ve been seeing a new crop of online marketers who are positioning themselves as anti-launch.

Their spiel is no deadlines, no scarcity, no urgency — “no manipulation!” Just put your offer out there every day, and eventually everyone who is right for it will buy.

I’m not sure if this is just positioning themselves in a contrary way. Or maybe they’re catering to people who have been exhausted by massive affiliate-based PLF-style launches that have to be run every three months in order to generate any income, with a few lonely crickets chirping in the meantime.

In any case, beware their anti-launch propaganda.

It’s ironic, because those same anti-launxxers run plenty of offers with scarcity and urgency baked in — effectively launches, or email promos at least.

But what if they didn’t?

Their core message is still terrible advice if you ask me.

Launches and daily emails are like heads and tails — two sides of a gold krugerand that you can drop into your piggy bank.

Daily emails build desire for what you sell, and overcome objections. Launches, or promos, or whatever you want to call them, give people an undeniable reason to act NOW.

And as for manipulation?

I side with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who said that the only bad manipulation is manipulation that’s obvious.

The fact is, not a single person wrote me during this “launch” to complain about my manipulative deadline and manipulative disappearing bonus. If anything, I got a lot of people who wrote me to tell me they are excited to get started, and that this was the push they needed.

End of public service announcement #1.

Begin public service announcement #2:

I’d like to turn your attention to something free, new, and frankly AMA~ING.

I will write a full email about it tomorrow.

But if you are at all interested in copywriting, you MUST MUST MUST click through below.

Do you ever hear me using such over-the-top and positive language?

You don’t, because it’s almost never warranted, and in fact it usually works against you, by letting people down when they finally see your offer.

Well, not today. If you are into copywriting, you have to click through, and in fact, you have to sign up for what’s waiting for you here:

https://bejakovic.com/back-in-town

Last chance to gamble before the Daily Email Habit price increase

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Here’s a curious story about looming deadlines:

In the early days of FedEx, founder and CEO Fred Smith took the company’s last $5k and went to Vegas.

FedEx had a fuel bill of $25k. That last $5k wouldn’t be enough to cover it anyhow.

So Smith went to Vegas and played blackjack. He gambled and won $27k. That was enough to cover the fuel bill.

FedEx had survived for another week. And then it survived another week. Eventually, it turned into something big.

Now let me ask you:

Will you gamble $20 on a month of Daily Email Habit?

Will-ye or nill-ye, the price of Daily Email Habit is going up tonight, from $20/month to $30/month, at 12 midnight PST, just three hours from now.

This is the last email I will send before the fateful price increase.

As a reminder, Daily Email Habit is my service to help you start and stick with consistent daily emailing.

Here’s what that means in real terms, from virtuoso-making guitar teacher René Kerkdyk, who subscribes to Daily Email Habit:

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Just a short raving review:

I just wrote my daily email in 10 minutes going from sheer panic about what to write to a finished email building my expertise and selling my stuff. Thank you, John!

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I have also created a members-only club, Daily Email House, for business owners and marketers who send more or less daily emails.

Until to-night at 12 midnight, Daily Email House is a free bonus in case you sign up to Daily Email Habit. After that, it will disappear as a free bonus, and rise from its ashes as a new, fiery, paid offer.

All that’s to say, maybe the sales page below is worth a look? And right now? Before the deadline sneaks up on you with its cold, sleep-inducing claws?

If you’d like my help writing your daily emails, tomorrow, and the day after, and then next week, until eventually your daily emailing turns into something big:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Announcing: PPP for Daily Email Habit

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As I mentioned yesterday, a reader from Brazil gave me the idea to finally increase the price of my Daily Email Habit service.

Daily Email Habit currently sells at the Charter Member price of $20/month. It will sell at that price until tomorrow, Tuesday, at 12 midnight PST.

After that, Daily Email Habit will sell for $30/month.

A sizable increase? A minimal bump?

If you ask me, it’s the wrong way to think about it. I’m calling this my Prospective Profit Price event. It’s really about what Daily Email Habit can do for you, if you simply open each day’s email and follow what it says. Specifically:

#1. Daily Email Habit can save you between 5 minutes to an agonizing hour of your day, each time you sit down to write your daily email.

The main part of Daily Email Habit is a daily “puzzle” or prompt, to get you over the hurdle of what to write about.

If you write every day, getting over that hurdle more quickly adds up — a couple of hours a month on the low end, 10 hours or more on the high.

#2. Daily Email Habit can help make your emails more effective.

The Daily Email Habit “puzzles” are not just random prompts, are not written by AI, and are not pulled out of a hat.

I design each puzzle strategically, based on my experience writing this newsletter, managing client email lists with tens of thousands of names on them, and writing something like 3,000 sales messages in my sales copywriting career.

Spend a couple minutes to come up with your own answer to the daily puzzle in Daily Email Habit, and your emails will have a better chance at making more sales today, and keeping readers around and interested for what you offer them tomorrow.

#3. And finally, if you are not writing daily emails yet, or you’re not consistent with it, then Daily Email Habit can help you start and stick with the habit.

It’s not just that it makes the process faster… or even just that it helps you get better results, so you’re more motivated to stick with it.

I’ve also purposely baked in some “consistency” elements into Daily Email Habit, such as the streak counter, to make it more likely you open up each day’s email, and actually stick with the habit of daily emailing.

And as I wrote yesterday, if you stick with daily emailing long enough, you have a real shot at the kind of money, influence, and opportunities that you cannot even imagine now.

I also have a second reason why you might want to join Daily Email Habit before tomorrow at 12 midnight PST.

As I hinted at last week, I’ve created a members-only club for business owners and marketers who write more or less daily emails.

It’s called Daily Email House. It’s quite colorful and lively inside. The members are interacting, posting ideas, asking questions, and contributing possible answers.

I’m in there as well, both to act as a kind of Jareth-like host, to make sure everybody is having a good time, and to share behind-the-scenes secrets I don’t share in this newsletter.

The House started out as a free bonus for Daily Email Habit. But it will stop being a free bonus for Daily Email Habit tomorrow. After that, I’ll spin it off into its own paid offer, which frankly will cost more than Daily Email Habit costs.

So there you go:

A courtesy notice to sign up for Daily Email Habit, if writing daily emails for the long term is something you do, or want to do.

The deadline, once again, to join Daily Email before the Charter Member disappears, and while you can get inside Daily Email House for free, is tomorrow at 12 midnight PST.

After that, the new, higher Prospective Profit Price kicks in, and Daily Email House stops being a free bonus.

If you wanna take advantage of this opportunity in time, and even to get tomorrow’s Daily Email Habit prompt before it’s gone, head on over here now:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Have you just launched a new offer?

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If so, great! Now it’s time to start working on your next offer. In the words of James Altucher, “Best way to market your first book? Write your next book.”

Maybe you don’t like that. Maybe you’ll like this better:

Yesterday, a reader forwarded me an email from Jon Morrow. It had the subject line, “How I made $171,000 selling a $1 book.”

First, I didn’t even click to open the email. What’s there to learn? I’m sure Jon didn’t make $171,000 by selling 171,000 copies of a $1 book.

But today, in the interest of writing this email, and being thorough with research, I opened Jon’s email. I even clicked through to the sales page linked at the bottom.

The sales page has the usual screenshots to prove income claims. And sure enough, there’s a screenshot that shows the $160k that Jon’s $1 book had generated at the time of screenshotting. The income breaks down like this:

$8,880 in book sales…

$151,476 in upsells.

Like I said, you might not like the idea of creating a new offer.

But how about 20x the income that you’ll make from your current offer? Do you like that?

That’s the power of a upsells, followup offers, a back end, whatever you want to call it.

Final bit of motivation:

When Prince initially released 1999 as a single, the song bombed. It stalled at #44 on the charts. Then Prince released Little Red Corvette, which made it the Top 10. He then re-released 1999, and it went to number 2 on the charts.

I think you get my point. So let me offer a tip to make your job easier:

You might not like the idea of creating a new offer. After all, you just launched one. I can understand.

Here’s a trick that I use. It’s to constantly drip out content to promote my existing offer… content which I can then turn around and repurpose into a new offer.

It’s one of the unsung benefits of daily emails, done right.

Plus of course, there’s the more sung benefit of daily emails, specifically:

With daily emails, you’ll sell way way more of your current offer than if you simply have it sitting there, and you’ll even sell more than if you simply promote it periodically without daily emailing.

But that’s really another email, for another time.

For today, if you’d like to start and stick with the habit of daily emailing, both to make sales this month, and to gradually build up a new offer you can launch next month, then take a look at my Daily Email habit service, which is designed to help you do exactly that:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Did I live up to my 2024 “theme”?

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Every January 1st, going back four years now, I have a tradition in this newsletter:

I review my previous year and I make some plans for the coming year. Well, last year I tried to skip it, but then a long-time reader called me out on it. This year, I’ll walk the line.

My “theme” last year — theme being a kind of fuzzy goal — was ambition.

Was I ambitious in 2024? Did I live up to the year’s theme? And what was the result?

Well, in 2024 I did a bunch of stuff:

I launched a group coaching program… started a continuity offer… ran a dozen promos… put on some live trainings… had a job for the first time in I don’t know how many years (coaching in Shiv Shetti’s mastermind)… partnered with a couple people on side projects… came second in an affiliate contest for a Dan Kennedy offer that I only wrote about tongue-in-cheek… got on stage once to talk in front of a sizable crowd… appeared on a handful of podcasts… delivered a couple trainings inside other people’s private masterminds… almost finished writing my new book… launched a community… and overall had my best year in terms of income.

Sounds like I done a lot! But it sure doesn’t feel like it.

Early in 2024, I wrote down a list of a dozen+ items of what ambition means to me.

Looking back on that list now, I see I didn’t get anywhere close to achieving any of the dozen+ items.

And not only that, but stuff I did achieve back in April or August doesn’t feel like it counts for anything today. “What have you done for me lately?” some devil inside me is asking. Who knows, maybe that’s what ambition sounds like.

The natural conclusion to all this — not achieving my goals, for the third year in a row — might be to stop setting goals and to learn to be happy with what I got and what I’m doing now.

But I’m not a natural kind of guy. In fact, I’m a rather contrary kind of guy.

Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion that humans need both, goals AND acceptance, cow-like satisfaction AND ambition and yearning.

Besides, it would be kinda boring if I ended this email and simply said, Michael Corleone-like, “Dear reader, you can have my answer now. My goals for 2025 are this… nothing. Not even to make a million dollars, which I would I appreciate if you would contribute to my bank account personally.”

No, I won’t do that. Instead I got some real live themes, or goals, of whatever, for 2025:

#1. Recurring income

After 10+ years of learning and in some ways practicing direct marketing, I’ve finally accepted that most basic direct marketing truth, that recurring income is where it’s at.

At the tail end of 2024, I launched a little continuity offer, and I happily offered people long-term payment plans to get them to take me up on some of my more expensive offers.

I’ve also started keeping track of what share of my income is recurring income. In 2025, I will be looking to grow that.

#2. Less of me

In 2025, I wanna make more offers that are less about me, my results, my authority, my charming personality, and more about, “Does this sound sexy and credible?”

This isn’t about “Taking myself out of the business” or a fantasy about scaling to cold traffic.

Rather, it’s a desire for competence. Frankly, it’s fairly easy to create an offer that sells well to people who are basically buying YOU. It’s much harder to create an offer that sells based on its own merits. I just wanna get better at it. (Like I said, I’m a rather contrary kind of guy.)

#3. Tech

I’m a luddite by nature, though at some point in my life I was a good software programmer. I wrote code for a decade or more and I even enjoyed it much of the time.

I don’t wanna go back to my old career. But like I’ve been saying lately, it’s never been easier to get little tech tools created for you with the snap of your fingers.

I’ve ignored technology for a long time. But in 2025, I wanna do more of that finger-snapping for my own benefit, and who knows, maybe even build something that can be useful to others.

So there you go, my three new themes for 2025. Let’s see how I manage to live up to them in the coming year.

There’s one final January 1st tradition around here. This is the only day of the year that I remember to link to my “Store” page, which lists all of my currently available offers.

Over the 6+ years of running this daily newsletter, I’ve written and created many courses, books, and trainings.

Here are the ones that have stood the test of time and that I continue to proudly sell every day:

https://bejakovic.com/store/

Holy Grail launch party

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Yesterday, I paid 9 euro to see the Holy Grail. And I did see it, although I walked by it at first without noticing it. I got distracted by the heavy medieval chains on the walls.

After I first failed in my quest to find the Holy Grail, I asked Perplexity to guide me to it. It told me to retrace my steps, to the southeast, in the direction towards Jerusalem.

So that’s what I did. And sure enough, I found it.

The Holy Grail is housed in the Chapel of the Chalice in the Valencia cathedral.

I went there yesterday since the cathedral, which dates back to the 13th century, is one of main tourist attractions in the city.

The cathedral features a museum, ancient Roman ruins under it, and an impressive gothic dome.

Plus, like I said, it houses the Holy Grail.

But is it REALLY the Holy Grail? The cup that Jesus drank from at the last supper? The night before he was crucified? The most holy and elusive relic in all Christendom?

It seems a little implausible. To make it more so, when you see the Holy Grail, it looks like a golden goblet that’s fit for a medieval king.

But a little pamphlet, available at the entrance to the chapel in multiple languages, informs you that:

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Only the top portion is the sacred relic: a cup in the form of a carefully shaped and polished bowl. The cup is made of a type of veined sardonyx agate that comes from the region between Alexandria and Syria. Without a doubt, it is a Palestinian artifact, crafted in the first century AD. It is an example of a Jewish “Blessing Cup” for the ritual Paschal Supper in the Hebrew tradition, the most important piece in a Jewish family’s treasury.

Archeological studies, historical documents, the testimony of Tradition, recent discoveries about the design and the inscription in the base, comparative analyses with other similar cups around the world, references from the ancient liturgy, various investigations from distinct scientific disciplines, and even the legends of the Grail – all of these indicate it is perfectly plausible that the Holy Chalice of Valencia was in the hands of Jesus Christ at the Last Supper, and that it contained the Most Precious Blood of the Redeemer. In contrast, there is no evidence that counters this position.

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The pamphlet goes on to tell the history of this stone cup. How it was used in Eucharist services by the early popes, up to the 3rd century… why it left Rome… how it was hidden in the face of the Moorish conquests of Spain… how it finally found its way to the Valencia cathedral… how it was recently used by two Catholic Popes during Mass.

So… is this really the most holy of holy Christian relics? In a little glass display case, behind a rope? In a side chapel where 9 of us were there to see it (I counted)?

I don’t know. I’m not an expert in Christian relics.

But I am an expert in effective communication. And clearly, the Catholic Church, or at least the archdiocese of Valencia, hasn’t done a great job communicating that the Holy Grail is here, if this really be it.

You might think it a bit distasteful to use this as a topic for a daily email, to profane the sacred, and to talk about better marketing for the Holy Grail.

In my defense, it seems the Church agrees it hasn’t done a good job advertising.

There’s a building across the street, which is being refurbished to serve as a Holy Grail information center and museum, to raise worldwide awareness of the Grail’s location, and to increase the number of pilgrims and tourists who come to see it.

But I think an information center, even it were to send out daily emails about the Holy Grail, won’t be enough.

This relic, if it really is the cup that Jesus held in his hands at the final supper, is infamous for being hard to find.

Hundreds of years of popular legend tell us how the best, bravest, and most noble knights went in search of the Grail, and all but a small handful — Galahad, Perceval, Indiana Jones — died or failed on the way.

If the Grail really has been found, and is available for everyone to see, it’s gonna take a giant announcement, an event, a spectacle, fireworks, buildup, in other words, what in marketing we call a launch.

It’s the only way in my mind to resolve the tension between the Holy Grail being sought and not found for hundreds of years… and the Holy Grail now available for tourists to see, for just 9 euro, and in fact not very popular as an attraction.

(By the way, it might be good idea to increase the admission price. I mean, it’s the Holy Grail. Sir Lancelot, despite being one of the greatest knights, quested after it for years and failed at the last step. How can you justify making something that’s so hard to attain available for 9 euro?)

But maybe I should stop giving the Catholic Church advice.

Maybe I should simply take my own advice.

Let me get to a less sacred topic, and remind you of my Daily Email Habit service.

I opened it up a few weeks ago, and have had a steady stream of people signing up since.

For the moment, I’m making it available at $20 a month because I wanted to test it out, polish it, make sure it works for people, take the pressure of myself, and as usual, reward early customers who trust me enough to take me up on my experiments.

I will have an official launch for Daily Email Habit soon, and the price will go up. There will be a big announcement and maybe even fireworks.

But for now, Daily Email Habit is still available at just $20/month, for the reasons listed above. If you would like to test it out, before the whole world finds out about it:

https://bejakovic.com/deh