The opportunity to become an insight specialist

Reader Carlo Gargiulo, who joined my Copy Riddles program a few weeks back, writes in to ask (the bold below was in his original message):

First of all, I want to tell you something.

The Copy Riddles exercises are helping me so much.

Just yesterday the head of the copy team I’m on right now read my latest sales letter and said: “It sounds like you didn’t write this sales letter. The sentences are short, concise, and specific. You did a great job.”

I’m now on round 18 and can confirm that this is a really, really important course for anyone who wants to improve their writing skills and become a copywriter who can write ads that convert.

Also, the structure of the course is wonderful.

You study the theory part, then you do the exercises, and then you check if your bullets are in line with the master copywriters… and repeat this round after round until you improve.

Having reached this point, I am undecided whether to buy Age of Insight.

I’ve been asking myself this question for days: will the information within it allow me to expand on the concepts expressed in Copy Riddles? Are the two courses related? Or are they part of two different planets?

Fact:

​​All the people who have signed up so far for my Age of Insight training have bought something from me before.

On the one hand, that means I’m doing something right with the trainings and courses I’m selling. Like Carlo above, the people who have been through my courses get real practical value from them, and want to come back for more.

On the other hand, it also means been I’ve doing a bad job selling the opportunity that is insight marketing, and Carlo’s question shows it.

So let’s see if I can make this opportunity a little clearer and more tempting:

The Age of Insight not a replacement for Copy Riddles, just as insight techniques are not a replacement for clear promises, sexy offers, or unique positioning.

But using insight in your marketing is an opportunity to do something that most marketers not aware of yet, but that a few smart marketers are getting great benefits from. For example:

Rich Schefren – who sold $960,000 worth of coaching services in 2 hours and 15 minutes thanks to a 40-page report built on insight techniques

Travis Sago – who manages to convert 20%-25% of his entire list over time, and who says insight the best way to move people towards a sale

Stefan Georgi – who makes a very small but very important insight technique an integral part of the trillions or perhaps quadrillions of dollars he has made with his copy

And what’s more:

All these guys have taught aspects of insight marketing somewhere, usually in one-off trainings behind closed doors.

I know, because I’ve gotten my hands on those trainings. But while Rich and Travis and Stefan realized that they were on to something powerful, their how-to on insight was partial and limited to their own experiences.

I’ve done a lot more thinking and research on this topic, and collected more examples, and experimented on my own.

​​And I will aim to give you the white-hot core of that inside the Age of Insight live training, so you too can start to consciously use insight techniques in your marketing, and start to get the rewards that come with it.

A while back, I looked up the etymology of the word opportunity.

It comes from the Latin phrase ob portum veniens — coming towards a port, and in reference to wind. In other words, an opportunity is a chance to get into safe harbor, with the wind to your back.

Right now, the wind is blowing favorably. But it will shift soon, because registration for the Age of Insight closes in two days.

When the wind does become favorable again — some day, no guarantees when — the price to dock inside the Age of Insight port will be much higher, perhaps double what it is now.

Meanwhile, the waves, pirates, and sharks behind you will only get bigger and more threatening.

Because while insight techniques are nice to have now — see results above — they will become more and more mandatory as the market inevitably rolls on and matures and more people start using these same techniques consciously.

I am only making the Age of Insight open to people who are signed up to my email newsletter. So if you’d like to take advantage of this opportunity while it’s still early days, here’s the first step to getting into harbor.

Marketing prediction: Welcome to the Age of Insight

A year ago, I sent out an email with the subject line,

“Business Prediction: Welcome to the Age of Aquarius”

In that email, I made the claim that the world has gone through three distinct ages of consumption.

The first was the Age of Stuff. That age was made up of straight-up consumerism — Cadillacs and and Frigidaires and Armani suits — which became dominant after WWII. It was about what you own.

The second consumption age was the Age of Experiences. It began around 1990, or at least that’s when I became aware of it. Amazing Thai food, swimming with the dolphins, a visit to Ernest Hemingway’s favorite bar in Key West. It was about what you’ve done.

My claim was that the third age of consumption, in which we are now, is the Age of Transformation. It’s about who you would like to become. Crossfit, sex-reassignment surgery, Masterclass subscriptions.

Like I said, I sent that email a year ago. A year is a long time. I have been enlightened greatly in that time, and I want to share with you some of the things I have seen.

What I have seen is that, mirroring the world of production and consumption, there have been parallel shifts in the world of marketing and advertising.

What I have seen is that the world has gone through three distinct ages of marketing.

The first age was described by copywriter John E. Kennedy. Kennedy correctly divined that advertising is salesmanship in print. As a result, Kennedy gave birth to the Age of Promise:

“Let this Machine do your Washing Free”

The second marketing age was identified by a clever astrological duo, Al Ries and Jack Trout. According to their occult research, some fifty years after Kennedy, advertising had gotten to a point where promises were insufficient — there were just too many players in the market. As a result, we entered the Trout and Ries age, the Age of Positioning:

“Avis is only No. 2 in rent a cars. So why go with us? We try harder.”

And now, if my calculations are right, we are now entering the third age.

It’s the Age of Insight.

Today, a hundred years after John E. Kennedy, it’s no longer enough to make a promise and build up desire.

Today, fifty years after Trout and Ries, it’s no longer enough to give people a mental hook to hang your name on.

Today, the smartest marketers — people like Rich Schefren, Travis Sago, and Stefan Georgi — are doing something different. They are using specific and subtle techniques to take the disgust with manipulation, the disappointment of previous purchases, the confusion and uncertainty and indifference that most of us feel on some level…

… and transform them into something new. Into something motivating. Into something contagious.

Into the feeling of insight.

Maybe you find that idea intriguing. Or maybe you find it confusing.

If so, don’t worry. You are in luck, or rather, you are in the right place at the right time.

I’ll be telling you more about insight over the coming two weeks.

Because, as you can probably guess, I’m promoting something. I’m promoting a series of live trainings, all about the Age of Insight. In these trainings, I will tell you how you can align yourself to this new age in such a way that you prosper and surpass those marketers who do not yet possess this esoteric knowledge.

The first of these live training calls will happen on December 1. So I will be talking the Age of Insight until the end of this month, when registration for this training will close.

If at any point you decide that this is an opportunity you do not want to miss, you can get the full details on my Age of Insight training, or even register for it, at the page below:

https://bejakovic.com/aoi

My recipe for writing a book that influences people and sells itself

I just spent the morning reading statistics about the best-selling books of the 20th century so I could bring you the following curious anecdote or two:

The year 1936 saw the publication of two all-time bestselling books.

The first of these was Gone With The Wind. That’s a novel that clocked in at 1,037 pages. “People may not like it very much,” said one publishing insider, “but nobody can deny that it gives a lot of reading for your money.”

Gone With The Wind was made into a 1939 movie with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, which won a bunch of Oscars. Without the monstrous success of the movie, odds are that few people today would know about the book, even though it sold over 30 million copies in its time.

On the other hand, consider the other all-time bestseller published in 1936.

It has sold even better — an estimated 40 million copies as of 2022.

And unlike Gone With The Wind, this second book continues to sell over 250,000 each year, even today, almost a century after its first publication.

What’s more, this book does it all without any advertising, without the Hollywood hype machine, simply based on its own magic alone.

You might know the book I’m talking about. It’s Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends And Influence People.

One part of this success is clearly down to the promise in the title. As Carnegie wrote back then, nobody teaches you this stuff in school. And yet, it’s really the fundamental work of what it means to be a human being.

But it can’t be just the title. That’s not reason why the book continues to sell year after year, or why millions of readers say the book changed their lives.

This includes me. I read How To Win Friends for the first time when I was around 18. It definitely changed how I behave.

For example, take Carnegie’s dictum that you cannot ever win an argument.

​​I’m argumentative by nature. But just yesterday, I kept myself from arguing — because Carnegie’s ghost appeared from somewhere and reminded me that I make my own life more difficult every time I aim to prove I’m right.

This kind of influence comes down to what’s inside the covers, and not just on them.

So what’s inside? I’ll tell ya.

Each chapter of Carnegie’s book is exactly the same, once you strip away the meat and look at the skeleton underneath. It goes like this:

1. Anecdote
2. The core idea of the chapter, which is illustrated by the anecdote above, and which is further illustrated by…
3. Anecdote
4. Anecdote
5. Anecdote
6. (optional) Anecdote

The valuable ideas in Carnegie’s book can fit on a single page. But it’s the other 290 pages of illustration that have made the book what it is.

In other words, the recipe for mass influence and continued easy sales is being light on how-to and heavy on case studies and stories, including personal stories and experiences.

Maybe you say that’s obvious. And it should be, if you read daily email newsletters like mine. But maybe you don’t read my newsletter yet. In case you’d like to fix that, so you can more ideas and illustrations on how to influence and even sell people, then I suggest you click here and follow the instructions that appear.

My frustrating personal experience reading a well-known marketer’s email a few days ago

A few days ago, a well-known marketer sent out one of his daily emails. I don’t to make it sound like I’m trying to make my name by repeatedly picking on people with bigger audiences than me, so let me just use an impenetrable alias for this guy. We can call him Gavin Juff.

So Gavin sent out an email a few days ago. The subject line read something like, “The one thing all successful copywriters have in common.”

But then, Gavin opened the body copy of his email with a long and I assume interesting personal story.

I say I assume it was interesting, because I just scrolled through it, looking for that “one thing” payoff.

And you know what? The payoff was, in effect, “We all make mistakes, and it’s okay.”

I rolled my eyes at this.

The fact is, Gavin was actually sharing a worthwhile point. The fact is, he put in a good amount of effort to illustrate his point with an (I assume) interesting personal story. And the fact is, it took me all of three seconds to open his email, scroll to the end, and feel he had wasted my time.

So there you go. That’s my personal story of a frustrating recent experience. I’m not sure what valuable point you can take away from that. Perhaps it’s something like:

“Excessive use of proven direct response techniques in personal daily emails can be more of a liability than an asset.”

Or maybe it’s something like:

“Make sure the transitions between your copy sections (including from subject line to body copy) are congruent and adequately prepared.”

Or maybe it’s just something like:

“The number one problem with daily email copy is a preachy, old-hat takeaway. But if you have to make such a takeaway because it’s actually true and important (like in Gavin’s case above), then sell something else in your subject line. Such as, for example, yourself and your frustrating personal experience.”

Anyways, I realize I haven’t done much to educate you in this post. I will try to do better in the future.

In case you would like to get my daily emails, and witness me trying to educate you more on the fundamentals of email copywriting and persuasion and influence more broadly, click here and follow the instructions.

Today is a possible keyframe moment in your life

About two months ago, I reconnected with an ex-girlfriend I had not talked to for over 5 years, pretty much since the day we broke up.

She seems to be thriving now. Maybe because of that, she wrote me a short email this summer to wish me a happy birthday. We exchanged a few more short emails and she suggested we get on a call and catch up. So we did.

It was an oddly pleasant and chirpy call that lasted over an hour.

I’ll tell you one detail from the call that stands out in my mind.

It turns out that in those five years, my ex started her own law office.

“I didn’t want to do it,” she said, “even though it was always the plan. Actually, in a funny way you were responsible for why I did finally do it.”

The “funny way” was this:

Back when we were together, my ex and I used to play-plan, and talk about sharing an office together one day. She could have one room, where she could write serious real estate contracts, and I could have the other room, where I could write serious dog toothbrush advertorials. We could share the coffee machine and the secretary.

It was a nice idea in my mind, and I guess in her mind as well. Because, as she told me during that oddly pleasant and chirpy call, it was this memory that made her finally decide to get the office and to start her own law practice.

All this popped up in my head today when I learned of a new word, watashiato:

“Watashiato: n. Curiosity about the impact you’ve had on the lives of the people you know, wondering which of your harmless actions or long-forgotten words might have altered the plot of their stories in ways you’ll never get to see.”

Watashiato, the word, comes from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. That’s just a blog by some guy, who’s inventing new words for feelings and experiences most of us have, but cannot put a finger, or tongue, to.

And that’s it. That’s all I’ll share with you today. That new word, plus The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, plus the quick personal story.

I did have more to say about this, including talking about keyframe moments.

But I saved that for people who are signed up for my email newsletter, and who get these emails live, instead of getting these emails archived on my website. In case you would like to join them, click here and possibly enter into a strange new area of your life.

Free info on free reports

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

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

The background, as you might know, is this:

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

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

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

1. Go through your past content (newsletter or really anything else)

2. Find the sexiest stuff. It can either be a single bit of info, or a small number of related items you bundle together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Become a Repositioning Specialist”

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

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

sold out

Just a heads up, nearly half of all the artificially restricted copies of Copy Riddles have sol—

Relax. I won’t go there.

A couple days ago, I tapped into a rich vein of discontent by writing about Justin Goff’s “sold out” email, which tried to push an unattractive offer that had “sold out” fewer than half of all available copies.

Many readers wrote in to say they found this kind of marketing sneaky and misleading (“This email had me screaming at my phone”).

And then, among the many “you tell ’em!” replies, I got a message by a reader named Andre, who wrote in with a suggestion for me:

Your email about no real urgency on infinite+ digital copies reminded me of what Tony Shepherd used to do.

Because he had a fairly large suite of digital products…

He ripped a page out of Disney’s marketing book.

What he did was promote a product for a set amount of time and then…

Put it back into the “vault” where it was unavailable until the next time he promoted it.

It’s an interesting strategy to use for digital products.

Not sure if that would ever work for you, or even a creative variation, but hey, there it is.

The fact is, this model is exactly what I was doing with my Copy Riddles program — until yesterday.

I presold and launched Copy Riddles last year in April. I dripped the content out by email day by day — because I was creating it live, day by day.

After that initial launch finished, I placed Copy Riddles inside a heavy trunk and had the trunk locked and brought inside the Bejakovic Cave of Treasures.

​​I then had the cave sealed with a large boulder and guarded by a large man with a large sword, who only ever said one thing, “Hassan chop.”

It was only every few months that I had Hassan move the boulder and open up the cave. Only for a few days at a time did I let people inside to partake of Copy Riddles treasures.

This model worked well. Each time I made Copy Riddles available for a few days, I had new people sign up. And I made good money.

Plus there were other benefits, too.

For example, many people who had signed up during earlier runs signed up again, since they got lifetime access.

​​On that second or third run, some of them finally consumed all the content, which made it so they could finally get the promise of the course — A-list copywriting skills, implanted into your brain.

​​That was good for them and good for me. Because, promise delivered, they were now that much more likely to become my long-term customers.

Anyways, like I said, that’s the model I used — until yesterday.

As of yesterday, Copy Riddles is now an evergreen course. It’s available year-round, and not just during a few launch periods. And it’s delivered through a members-only area of my site (which I might rename The Cave of Treasures) and not through email.

I’m telling you all this because of the ongoing Copy Riddles “launch.”

All the current “launch” really means is that if you do decide to get Copy Riddles before this Sunday, Oct 30 2022, at 12 midnight PST, you will pay less than if you join Copy Riddles after this “launch” period ends. I will increase the price to $400 on Monday as a first step.

But there’s a second reason why I’m telling you about my course model switch. And that’s in case you ever create and want to sell courses of your own.

How you package up and deliver those courses will have a big impact on how those courses are perceived, sold, and consumed — independent of the content and value inside.

But if you are creating your own courses, don’t assume that just because I changed from the launch to the evergreen model that this is the way to go.

The fact is, this switch wasn’t a decision about money or about the number of sales made.

I simply wanted offers I could promote regularly at end of my daily emails. Copy Riddles is now one of those offers.

But this switch means I’ve lost some of the benefits of the launch model. I’ve had to think up ways to try to reproduce at least a part of them.

We will see if the price increase on Monday will work to stimulate the same kind of urgency as Hassan rolling back the boulder on the mouth of the cave.

And as for those other benefits of the launch model — like people actually consuming the content and getting value out of the course — well, I’ve had to think up other things.

I’ll talk about those in future emails during this “launch” period. Meanwhile, if you want to get Copy Riddles now, before the price goes up, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/cr

Isla de Muerta positioning

I recently rewatched the original Pirates of the Carribean movie, and I was reminded of the dreaded Isla de Muerta.

It’s a mystery island, maybe just a legend, where Captain Barbossa docks his ghostly Black Pearl, and where he keeps the cursed treasure of Hernan Cortes.

But don’t bother searching for Isla de Muerta on a map. Don’t make the foolish mistake of ever trying to sail to it yourself.

Only those who already know where the island is can ever find it.

That’s just like the positioning that A-list copywriter Parris Lampropoulos has.

​​I listened to Parris on a recent episode of the Chris Haddad podcast. I have stopped listening to marketing and copy podcasts. But whenever Parris makes a new public appearance, once every few decades, I make sure to listen, and probably multiple times.

Because Parris is the one person in this industry that I have learned from the most and that I have modeled the most.

I’ve learned copywriting tricks and tactics from Parris.

I’ve learned mindset and attitude and work practices.

And I’ve learned business of copy strategies.

Which brings us back to Parris’s positioning. Here’s how Parris explains his positioning, including why he gives talks so rarely:

“No website, no business card, not on social media, unlisted number, gotta know somebody who knows somebody to get to me and then maybe I’ll work with you. If I give all these talks it goes against my positioning. It looks like I’m trawling for work.”

In other words, if any ambitious business owner wants the marketing treasures hidden inside Parris’s head… well, that business owner has to have worked with Parris before, or at least know somebody who has.

This kind of positioning might seem entirely impractical to you right now.

And Parris himself admits he hasn’t had this positioning in the early days.

In fact, he kicked off his freelance career by going to Kinko’s, printing out hundreds of copies of a sales letter selling his own services, and then standing outside of a direct marketing convention, trembling with fear and handing out his sales letter to anyone who would take one. That landed him his first five clients.

Still, if you are interested in learning from the most successful people, then there’s no denying Parris is among them in the direct response industry.

And his “mystery, maybe just a legend” positioning might be worth using as a bearing to take you where you want go eventually go. The same way that Captain Jack Sparrow uses his crooked compass, which won’t point north, to track down Isla de Muerta.

Anyways, on to my Most Valuable Email offer.

Parris once, and only once, held a paid and public training. It included a bunch of super valuable bonuses, including a document titled, “A technique for improving your writing overnight.”

Parris advised his copy cubs, and anybody who paid for his training, to copy this document by hand three times.

Why?

Reason one — or so I suspect — was that the document laid out some important writing advice.

Reason two was that this document used my Most Valuable Email trick.

Like I’ve written before, I haven’t invented this trick. A few very smart and successful marketers have long used it in non-email media.

But nobody has used it in emails as often, and with such good results as I have.

If you are curious to learn this mysterious, maybe legendary trick yourself, then get out your broken compass, jam your tricorn hat onto your head, and set sail for this horizon:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/

Wanted: Competent human to do some monkey work

Today, I have a job offer for you. Before you get excited, here are a couple of negative striplines to start:

First, this is not copywriting work.

Second, this not an ongoing, or even very large-scale job.

The job is this:

I have a course, Copy Riddles, which was previously delivered entirely by email. I am now converting that course, Copy Riddles, to be delivered entirely inside a members-only area of my website.

So the job involves taking the content of Copy Riddles, delivered in 45 very long-form emails, and making and properly and nicely formatting 45 WordPress pages out of it.

This is time-consuming, monkey work. That doesn’t mean I’m looking for a monkey. I’m looking for a competent human being.

I want this job done well, with minimal management or later fixing from me.

At the start of this job, I will provide detailed guidance on the technical stuff of what there is to do. I have also gone through the monkey work of converting one of these 45 pages the way I want it done, to serve as a reference.

Using these two resources, and a bit of God-given intelligence and reason, a competent person who has the minimal requirements below should be able to complete this job the way I myself would do it.

As for those minimal requirements, they include:

1. Experience with WordPress. Knowing how to create a page, and use the built-in editor.

2. Knowledge of basic HTML and CSS. Knowing what a div is, and how to add a class to it.

3. Patience. There are 45 pages to do, and each page involves multiple rote, repetitive, and sometimes finicky formatting tasks.

So far, I have tried to make this job sound as unattractive as it is, and maybe more so.

So now the question becomes, why might you want to take on this monkey work? I can offer you two and a half good reasons:

1. Money. Name your own price, or your own hourly rate. I estimate this job would take me 6-8 hours of mind-numbing work to complete. You might be faster or you might be slower than me. If you can convince me you will do the job well, and if I think your price is fair for the work involved, I will hire you and pay you what you ask.

2. Copy Riddles. I guess that’s obvious since you will be working with the actual content of the course. But I will also give you free access to the course when it is complete, including the bonuses you won’t see otherwise. The last price I sold Copy Riddles for was $350, and that’s the lowest price I will be selling it for going forward. If you are interested in copywriting — and if you are on my list, I imagine you are — then Copy Riddles might be very valuable to you, and more so than the $350 I would charge you for it otherwise.

2 1/2. Access and connection to me. The reason I am not going on Fiverr or Upwork to hire a VA to do this job is that ideally, I would love to find a competent and trustworthy person who also has the ability to write. I’m not making any promises, but there is the odd chance that if you do a good job on this, there will be other tasks, including writing tasks, that I might hire you for, and in the near future.

So if you are interested in this job offer, then:

1. Write me an email

2. Tell me why I should believe that you have the minimal requirements 1-3 above, and that you would do this job well

​3. Name your price

When I get your email, I will write back to confirm I have gotten it. No need to follow up with me after that. Once I make a decision and go with somebody, I will also send out an email to everyone who applied so you’re not left hanging.

That’s it. Thanks for reading to the end. Let the Battle Royale begin.

Last chance to send $100…

Legend says that, once upon a time, in various Midwestern states, an enterprising carny pitchman took out ads in local newspapers that read:

LAST CHANCE TO SEND $1
to PO Box 210, 60611 Chicago, IL

There was no reason given why the reader should send in $1 or whether he would get anything for it.

And yet, the ad supposedly drew in many dollar bills before the postal service guys caught on and put a stop to it.

In other news:

Yesterday, copywriter Van Chow, who bought my Most Valuable Email course, wrote me to say:

Hey John,

I love this course, I bet some money to see if it still talks about boring stuff like AIDA or PAS.

But I was surprised, I had never heard of this concept before.

I think this would help my journey and I’ll practice more of it.

Btw, do I still have a chance to get the bonus?

The answer is yes, there is still time to get the “mystery box” bonus offer that’s inside the MVE training. But time is running out.

In fact, today is your last chance to send me $100… and to get my Most Valuable Email course, and to still get the “mystery box” bonus.

Tomorrow, the Most Valuable Email course will keep being available. But as of 9am CET tomorrow, Friday Oct 7, the bonus offer will go away.

I won’t give you reasons why you might want this mystery bonus offer, or what’s inside it.

But if you want to see what else you get for your $100 — no AIDA or PAS — you can do that at the link below. And if the core MVE offer sounds attractive to you, then it might make sense to get it before the “mystery box” bonus disappears.

​​In any case, here’s the link:

https://bejakovic.com/mve/