Direct Marketing

The Secrets Of Growing Up

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I’m in my home town of Zagreb, Croatia, lying on the bed of my AirBnb as I write this.

A moment ago, I was looking around the room, determined to find something to write about. But what?

The strange ceramic crucifix on the wall, which looks like a starfish?

The mysterious unlit match on the ground?

The flowering white orchid by the window?

None of it was good enough.

So I got up off the bed and started rifling through a basket of tourist brochures and city maps in the corner of the room.

It turned out there were a bunch of old books in the basket as well. Among them was what I was looking for:

A 1996 gem called, “The Secrets Of Growing Up: Advice For Boys.”

The cover shows a manic- and aggressive-looking ruffian of about 14, pumping his fist in triumph.

I flipped through the book. A few section headings jumped out:

“What is petting really?”

“From the first tiny hairs to a real beard”

“Can muscles be sinful?”

I broke out in a light sweat, remembering the horror and awkwardness of my teenage years. These days, whenever I wish that I were younger again, I have to remind myself how bad things were back then.

But really, The Secrets Of Growing Up is such a quaint throwback.

There’s a section describing musical styles for boys to consider: techno (“the more BPM, the better”)… grunge (“the terms ‘punk’ and ‘grunge’ mean the same — garbage”)… and hip hop (“the rapper pays much attention to his artfully rhymed texts”).

I guess The Secrets of Growing Up was a useful book in its time?

It must have been. It was published in German originally, then translated to a bunch of different languages and republished in countries across Europe, including Croatia.

But who would possibly need or want or buy such a book today?

There was a time when there were real secrets, or at least taboo topics. Access to information was limited, scattered, restricted.

That’s not true any more.

Over the past few decades, and culminating today with Perplexity and ChatGPT, whatever you want to know or do, you have the information available instantly, for free, wherever you are.

But will you actually bother to seek out the information?

Will you actually consume it when it’s served up to you?

And most of all, will you act on it, and benefit from it?

I’m telling you this in case you KNOW how to write marketing emails… and if you already KNOW the value of doing so.

If that’s the case, do you need another email copywriting equivalent of “The Secrets Of Growing Up?”

My guess is no. And if you suspect I’m right, I’d like to point you to my Daily Email Habit service.

It’s not more information on how to write emails.

In the words of marketing agency owner Eric Mann, who signed up for daily email habit a few weeks ago:

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Thanks for the DEH – without it and the fear of missing out on getting one more day in a row – I’m sure I wouldn’t be doing this at all.

The content isn’t nearly as difficult as I imagined, I assume because I read so many daily emails from so many great copywriters like you and Ben and Daniel T, etc, it almost feels second nature to me now…

It’s the discipline of writing when you don’t have something dripping from your pen – that’s what the DEH solves for me! Thanks again!! 🙂

===

If you’d like to find out more about Daily Email Habit, and get writing for real, today:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Payment plan lapsed buyer stats

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A few days ago, a reader and customer named Alexander wrote to ask:

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Hey John,

I bought your Copy Riddles on a payment plan, but I’ve just recently changed my banks, so I have new details for the charges. I believe I’m due to be charged again in about a week, so I’d like to change the details so you actually get the money you’re owed… Can you let me know how to do that?

Thanks mate!

===

“Well hot damn,” I said. This kind of email early in the morning definitely cheers me up.

Not that I’ve really had much cause to be worried.

The fact is, over the past six or so months, I have sold 100+ things on payment plan, whether of my own products or affiliate offers.

To date, I have had exactly one lapsed buyer.

The rest have all paid as agreed, updating their credit card numbers when they expire. A few particularly diligent souls, such as Alexander, even do it in advance.

Does this mean that all people everywhere have always been and will always be fundamentally good and decent?

Maybe. I don’t know enough people to be able to say one way or another.

But based on my amateur research into the human mind, I do know a few things:

– We all tend to mirror and adapt to the unspoken context or “frame” of an interaction

– Time is a factor in creating a frame of intimacy, trust, and respect

– So is frequency of contact

What drops out at the bottom of this funnel is that the longer you stay in touch with people… the more often you stay in touch with them… and the more you treat them with trust, respect, and intimacy, the more likely you are to get the same treatment in return.

One way to do this is what I personally do, and that’s to write daily emails like this one.

Which brings me to my offer, which helps you start and stick with writing emails for the long term, every day, or at least dailyish. For more information on this way to create the right frame with the people in your audience:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

The BCG Recurring Income Matrix

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At the start of this year, I wrote about three themes I had set for myself. Theme #1 was more recurring income.

To help me (and maybe you) get there, I’ve come up with the BCG (Bejakovic Consulting Group) Recurring Income Matrix.

Maybe know the Growth-Share Matrix by that other “BCG,” Boston Consulting Group. (The imposters!)

Their matrix asks two questions about a product or company — low/high market share, fast/slow growth. The result are four quadrants:

3. ??? | 4. Star

1. Dog | 2. Cash Cow

I don’t want to even dignify those other BCG people by explaining what their stupid animal quadrants are about.

But I do like the matrix idea.

So I decided to create my own for recurring income. My questions about recurring income, the ones dear to my heart are:

1. Does it require personal authority to sell?

2. Does it require personal involvement to deliver?

I thought about the four yes/no combinations. And so I’d like to present to you the Bejakovic Consulting Group Recurring Income Matrix:

3. Hosting on QVC   | 4. Renting out

1. Flipping burgers    | 2. Pushing the sled

Let me explain the quadrants in order:

#1. The lower left is flipping burgers. It doesn’t require personal authority to sell, but it does require personal involvement to deliver.

In other words, this is a regular job, or at least most regular jobs, except those few regular jobs where you’re truly irreplaceable.

Flipping burgers is a steady paycheck, provided by somebody else, as long as you keep working. Fair enough. Unfortunately, due to a genetic disorder, I find myself highly allergic to any prolonged time spent in this quadrant.

#2. The lower right is pushing the sled. It requires personal authority to sell, and also requires personal involvement to deliver.

This is most recurring income plays for solopreneurs and small info publishers online. Think paid newsletters, paid memberships, coaching, etc.

I call it pushing the sled because it’s like the sled at the gym — you gotta put in a lot of effort to get it moving, and as soon as you stop, it stops.

That might sound like a raw deal. But because it requires personal authority to sell, it tends to pay better per unit of work compared to flipping burgers. (Plus, if you’re the type to enjoy discipline-and-punish activities like Crossfit, you can even convince yourself that pushing the sled has salutary effects.)

#3. The upper left is hosting on QVC. It requires personal authority to sell, but doesn’t require personal authority to deliver.

This is where you trade on your good name, your charisma, or your previous success to promote something that will pay you for a time to come.

My best example of this is George Foreman, who allowed his name to be put on a grill and who appeared in infomercials to promote the product. The result was $200M in royalties and licensing fees into George’s pocket over the years.

This might seem out of reach for mere mortals. But if you have an audience, it’s really what recommending a specific tool in a crowded category is about (eg. ​Convertkit, sign up for it because it’s what I use​). Also, I’d put recurring income like copywriting royalties into this quadrant.

#4. Finally, the upper right is the “renting out” quadrant. It doesn’t require personal authority to sell, and it doesn’t require personal involvement to deliver.

I thought of calling this the “cheating” quadrant because that’s how it can feel, at least if you’re coming at it with a perspective like mine, of selling info products via daily emails.

But really, this quadrant is familiar enough. If you have a lot of money already, it’s what rental income or stock dividends are all about. If you don’t have a lot of money yet, well, there’s ways around that that still make living in this quadrant possible. But that’s really a topic for a $5k course.

Final point:

You can move from quadrant to quadrant.

If you appear on QVC once to endorse a product, that appearance can be recorded and replayed over and over, which basically puts you into the renting out quadrant, as long as somebody else drives viewers to the recording.

If you’re pushing the sled now, you can eventually delegate or automate the delivery and move yourself into the QVC host position.

And if you’re in the flipping burgers quadrant, you can jump straight to renting out quadrant if you have the money or know-how… or you can build up your personal authority, so you can go to the #2 or #3 quadrants.

On that last note, if you would like to build up your personal authority, I have a recurring service to help you do that.

I am still creating this service by hand, day-by-day, instead of automating or delegating, putting me squarely into the #2 quadrant.

Maybe that will change in the future. But for now, I keep pushing the sled, because I tell myself it’s good for me.

In any case, if you’d like my help in building up your personal authority, so you can sell things that pay you over and over:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

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

You’re one mediocre, unread sales letter away from charging 40x more than the competition

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Comes a long but interesting question about magic words that bring you riches:

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Im asking you this for two reasons: A) Your Course on Bullets and B) You’ve been on Ben Settles List, who I’m going to reference.

Long story short I saw a marketer reference a Book and said he was thinking about summarizing and making a Course, that he could probably charge upwards of $300 dollars for.

I have been re-reading ” Ogilvy on Advertising” and was thinking, it’s $25 New on Amazon and is recommended by virtually every top copywriter, marketer etc… Yet Ben Settle and many other sell their info ( and I’m not saying their info is not good and maybe worth every penny they charge ) for MUCH More Money. But on the surface aren’t even in the conversation with the Ogilvy’s, Hopkins’ and many others whose works are supposed to be the Holy Grail.

In your opinion, What’s the difference? Is it Positioning or could it simply be the use of Bullets to create curiosity and build value that allows them to charge So much more?

I mean back to Ben Settle, do his $800 to $1000 products have more useful info in them than ” Ogilvy on Advertising ” or many of the other so-called classics? Im guessing NO

Could the ability to charge so much more just come down to the power of a Good Sales Letter?

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That last part of the question is a reference to a supposed quote from famed direct marketer Gary Halbert, which goes something like, “You’re one good sales letter away from never worrying about money again.”

I don’t know if that was ever true, even for Gary.

I doubt it’s true for anybody today.

One thing I’m sure of, as sure as that the moon is in fact made of cheese:

There’s no “one good sales letter” that will allow you to sell a book for $1k in any mass-market way.

I’ve bought Ben Settle’s stuff before, including books he charges hundreds of dollars for. I never once read the sales page when I bought, except as much as was unavoidable to locate the “Buy Now” button.

Why did I pay Ben so much? Particularly since he makes a big deal about the fact that none of the stuff he teaches is secret or new? Without me even bothering to get the full details of what I was buying?

Positioning, if that’s what you want to call it. But not positioning of the product itself. That’s secondary or even unimportant here.

Rather, it was the gradual, patient, and strategic positioning of the person selling. As Dan Kennedy writes, “The higher up in income you go, the more you’re paid for who you are, rather than what you do.”

That’s the psychological effect.

The mechanism to get there was daily emails.

Emails that, day after day, month after month, year after year, built Ben up as somebody to listen to and respect… put him in a marketplace of one and gave him a mini-monopoly… and did enough teasing of his product to allow me to ignore the fact that there’s nothing new or secret in there, and probably nothing that a careful reading of Robert Collier’s book couldn’t give me.

Ben sums it up himself:

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Don’t get me wrong, sales copy is important.

But if I had to choose between having the world’s best copywriting skills or having top notch email skills, I’d choose email every time. It’s made me (and certain clients who hired me for emails, when I had clients) far more money.

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Email is how you charge 40x more than the competition.

It’s how you can sell at a premium with a mediocre sales page, or even no sales page at all.

Ben’s done it… I’ve done it… maybe you’d like to do it too?

If you would, and if want my help in getting there, then take a look here:

https://bejakovic.com/deh

Free vs. low-ticket

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Comes a question from a long-time reader, Shakoor Chowdhury, about list building:

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OPINION: Free Offers are dead with how saturated and “information bloated” someone is, it’s like offering someone who is full of french fries and big macs another “free big mac”; sure he’ll take it but that’s the last you’ll see of him

+ I’ve noticed even on a GOOD DAY, with lead costs at less than 30 US cents, and 7% Link CTR, my email open rates are NEVER higher than 30%

VS: someone who buys a low ticket offer

I kind of haphazardly published my first book on amazon,

I’m not sure HOW, but this guy found it, bought it, messaged me on Telegram, followed me on instagram, and reads every single one of my emails…

any thoughts on this?

My sample size is too small to make any DEFINITIVE prediction, but it seems to me that I’ll be switching PERMANENTLY away from “free lead magnets” to low ticket PAID offers for listbuilding

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Shakoor’s food analogy is actually a good way to think about this.

If you’re stuffed with french fries and big macs, would you accept and eat another free big mac?

You might, or you might not.

But by the same token, would you accept and eat an extra big mac if you had to pay $1.99 for it?

You might, or you might not.

On the other hand, what if you were offered free ice cream… or a free beer… or better yet, a tour of 4 local microbreweries, which normally costs $200, where you get to be educated and entertained by the brewers, and you get to sample their beers, all for free?

Again, depending on your tastes, and the kind of guy or gal you are, you might accept or you might not.

In case you’re wondering what I’m getting at:

Free and low-ticket are both as old as the art of fishing. Neither method will be going away while humans continue to fish, or for that matter, to do business.

The way I see it, it’s not about price. It’s about perceived value.

Low-priced lead magnets force the prospect to put some value on what you’re offering, because it’s baked into the offer.

But zero-cost lead magnets don’t have to have zero perceived value. Free lead magnets can have great perceived value, if you take the time and trouble to make it so.

Which brings me to another of the unsung benefits of daily emails.

Daily emails increase the perceived value of your offers.

Because anybody can print out a price tag, stick it on the side of a cardboard box, and yell once or twice about how there’s $1,000 worth of value inside.

And yes — this will have some effect. It will make the cardboard box, and whatever is inside it, more valuable than a box without a price tag. It will make it easier to give it away for free, or even to charge a few dollars for it.

BUT.

Take the time over and over to reiterate the value of the stuff in the box… to highlight the attractive things inside… to explain how they can benefit the prospect… to quantify those benefits in as many ways as you can… to bring up previous buyers and their success stories and endorsements… to repeat and justify the price… and do this day after day, repeating your message until both the desire and the credibility pile up via simple persistence…

… and the perceived value of your cardboard box, and what’s in it, doesn’t just rise to a few dollars. Or even to a thousand dollars.

The perceived value can go to many thousands of dollars, so people happily give you $1k for your cardboard box, and feel like they are getting a steal in the process.

And if you ever decide to give that box away for free… suddenly there’s a stampede.

That is what happens when you send an interesting and yet self-promotional email every day.

And on that note:

I have a service that helps you you send daily emails consistently, called Daily Email Habit. Shakoor, who wrote the question above, actually subscribes to Daily Email Habit. He had this to say about it:

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Daily Email Habit is the best thing I ever purchased PERIOD.

It really gets past the first hurdle of “what to write”…

And I love the accountability that comes with it.

While snapchat uses “streaks” for pointless time-wasting, you actually used gamification for something awesome and beneficial

I’m starting to enjoy the habit of daily writing. And, I write more for MYSELF these days than my subscribers.

===

If you would like my help consistently writing daily emails, so you can increase the perceived value of your offers, free or paid:

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/